66: 2024 Highlights

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Examining, a technology focused podcast that dives deep. I'm Eric Christiansen. [00:00:16] Speaker B: And I'm Chris Hans. Hey. Welcome to another episode of Examining. I'm Chris Hans and with me we have Eric Christensen. [00:00:29] Speaker A: Hello. How's it going today? [00:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah, good. How's everything? [00:00:33] Speaker A: Solid, solid. Work is wrapping up for the semester, at least for those of us that work in education. The finals. I don't really do finals as a librarian, but end of year projects and rush and all that stuff is coming to an end. Yeah, it's been quiet enough to get everything that I need to get done, which I'm happy about, but not so quiet that, you know, it's boring. So that's good. It's a good balance. Also updated my basement. Just kind of organized it a bit, which feels good. [00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it looks, looks organized. I'm still, I'm still unpacking some stuff, so hopefully it'll be done in the next week. [00:01:17] Speaker A: My basement's nice. It's nicely renovated. I mean, many years ago. I mean there's touch ups. It's an old house, but it's kind of just one big room. So my office is kind of in the corner of a big room and so that's fine, but I just, I just need to clean it up. I have to get rid of some stuff. I have some things to sell or just donate. I'm just tired of clutter. And we've talked about this before. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [00:01:45] Speaker A: So I think for today we were just going to kind of pick out. We can just kind of take turns. Maybe we can pick a couple of stories each kind of the big things that happened in 2024 or at least what was interesting to us, what we thought the big stories were. And then I think we were going to just briefly touch after that on that documentary on Netflix and just kind of the idea of all the garbage that's created by, by the stuff that we buy. Just throw a little bit of anti consumer in at the end just for Merry Christmas. I'm just Jo. [00:02:25] Speaker B: So I guess probably one of the big things that has happened this year is Nvidia, especially with the AI boom. All of their devices and architecture and everything has been sold out. And so I mean, even just recently, they just launched this new computer and they've dropped the price on it as well. So this new Jetson Orin Nano super developer kit and it's gone from 500 to 250, 249 and apparently just the performance has gone up significantly and it literally actually the video is kind of funny too, that the CEO went and put together, he put it into a little oven and he's like, oh, I might have cooked it too long and it's actually shrunk. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's amazing how much, like, I don't know if they even Nvidia ever planned on their technology. I mean, they were always for gaming and, and so on, and it just happens to have the processing power that works well for the, the AI architecture. [00:03:41] Speaker A: So it does seem like Nvidia is like the quintessential, was in the right place at the right time. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [00:03:51] Speaker A: I mean, they're doing the AI stuff now. I mean, they're doing things that are AI specific, but it's, I'm assuming it's just their good fortune that GPUs happen to be really good. So graphics cards basically, for gaming, happen to be really good at doing AI. [00:04:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:04:08] Speaker A: It's not like they did anything to seek out this market. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah. But again, I mean, it's, it's good on them. I mean, now they've even imagined. Would they have ever thought that they're going to be a trillion, you know, $2 trillion company or what have you? And again, yeah, their technology, that little device can run a large language model, which is really impressive. Yeah. [00:04:33] Speaker A: And I'm wondering, I don't know a lot about running large language models locally. I've been kind of looking into it. Um, Raspberry PI has something similar where with the Raspberry PI 5, there's a little hat they call it that you can put on top, like an AI processing unit. Not, not nearly as advanced as what comes from Nvidia, but I think you can run large language models on it. Or at least a small language model. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. [00:05:01] Speaker A: So I'm kind of curious what you can do on device because I have to admit I'm really not interested in paying for this AI stuff anymore. And I, in fact, I've stopped. I don't know about you. If you continue to pay. It's useful, but it's, it's, it's expensive at 25 bucks a month. I mean, if I, if I was to parse out the cost per query. It's not free. It's pretty high, I think. [00:05:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it just depends on what you're trying to do. And now, especially with OpenAI this year, I mean, they've made it so that it's free. I mean, obviously it's limited access. You can't go and upload as much, but, and keep in mind, whatever's free, there's always some strings attached to it. So I'm sure they're probably using the information that we're inputting and, you know, improving their models and so on. But again, yeah, like from a democratization standpoint and having access, it's amazing. [00:06:01] Speaker A: Well, we, so, But I'm assuming that they're taking the data. Like, is there different privacy implications if you're using free versus Paid? [00:06:13] Speaker B: Well, I don't know how much do you. With those little toggles in the settings, which most people probably don't know about. I, honestly, I, maybe I'm a little bit more paranoid and skeptical, but I don't know if that little toggle switch is good enough. I feel like they still might be going and collecting stuff whether you, you know, have the toggle on or off. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I think I have the privacy toggles. Right. But I just, again, it's, I, I treat it as the, as what is it in the browser, the toggle that's like, please don't track me. It's a suggestion. I don't think it actually enforces anything. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, but yeah, I mean, I'd. Again, I think people, I mean, one of, one of the things that I've been always kind of instilling in people that are using it, like, just be careful with what we don't know what this technology, what the implications in the future. And so just be very careful with what you upload into these systems and especially if they're confidential. [00:07:17] Speaker A: It also says, this is maybe just a question for you. I. Because I'm using free ChatGPT, so it says the memory is full, so do I have to wipe it? [00:07:28] Speaker B: Oh yeah, you might want to, I think just to. [00:07:34] Speaker A: And is that something that, like, what does that do? I guess with paid, you have like a larger. [00:07:43] Speaker B: You probably have more access with the, the paid version. Let's see here. [00:07:49] Speaker A: So what does it do though? Like the memory, like, does it remember all your conversations or is it based off or is it the description that you put in? [00:08:00] Speaker B: I think it also learns from whatever you put in there. Like mine. I actually, to be honest, I've turned it off. [00:08:07] Speaker A: I think that's better because I'm finding it to be frustrating. So this is a question I had for you that I was just thinking on the fly. So I found this to be a really frustrating feature because now it's referencing things like, I, I don't remember exactly what it was. I Asked a very different question and to try to edit something the other day and it edited it based on another conversation that I've archived that it remembered and it didn't follow any of my instructions. It was like trying to. Because I guess what if for every reason it linked back to what it thought I, it was taking another conversation. I was like, no, no, you don't understand, like I don't want that. And I was like, no, this is what you want. And, and so it's actually been quite difficult for me to get what I want lately. And I wonder if. Was this not available before? [00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that wasn't available before. It wasn't just storing and you know, looking at your previous interactions. Okay, yeah. I mean the other thing that might be helpful too. You can also. And again, I don't know if the, what the differences are in the free versus paid, but you can also create temporary chats as well. Right. [00:09:23] Speaker A: So for me, from like a hardware perspective, I like the Nvidia story. For me, one of the biggest stories is just the decline of Intel. So it's funny because a couple of years ago, or maybe even only like 18 months ago or a year ago, intel was doing well. I mean they had been down in profits. Geislinger, whatever his name is, the CEO who was just fired, slash told to retire, Slash, you know, went to spend more time with his family, whatever, whatever line they give when somebody retires. Um, he was an engineer, came from intel and they hadn't had an engineer person in charge for a long time, which was quite promising because it had been a business driven company, not an engineering driven company. I don't think that was working. But you know, Pat couldn't really turn the ship as fast. I don't, I don't have an. I don't feel that he did a bad job. I think they just expected him to turn intel around quickly and he couldn't do it. I think had he been on the job, he actually probably would have. They laid off 15,000 people. They couldn't respond to the demand for AI GPUs. So I have a footnote on that because so Nvidia is dominating it's chips like, like Raptor, like all these different processes. It had like this voltage bug. So it was like it could, the silicon could get damaged. You know, it's rival on the PC side, which is typically AMD, which is a much smaller company, makes these Ryzen 7 processors which just have just been trouncing what intel can do and can do better speeds and Use less battery life in mobile devices. I mean, I think AMD is doing really well and so they've just been, they've just been taking it in the teeth. And it's really interesting example of a company that's basically dominant to a company that's, you know, there's been rumors about them selling off their foundry, you know, being bought out by ARM holdings. I mean, all sorts of crazy stuff. Right. So the whole x86 engineering platform for chips has kind of finally been upended by ARM based chips. I mean even Microsoft Surface computers are running ARM based processors from Qualcomm and they work like a MacBook Air. They're instant on. They don't, you know, Windows Computer is like Chris on a laptop. It never comes on as quickly as a Mac. Even Mac when they had intel they worked fine and so they would go to sleep randomly. They just don't have that responsiveness. So these new Qualcomm Windows chips are great. The only thing they don't do very well is gaming, but they do emulation. You can even run if you get the higher end ones, you can get creative suite emulating. But of course, just like Apple moving to their own ARM based processors, eventually people started making versions of the software to take advantage of it. And I think that's happening. So maybe, I don't know, it's the end for x86 because gaming kind of depends on x86 and that's of course that's a big market. But not great news for Intel. The only good news is that they've come out with these GPUs but not at the high end. They've come out with graphics cards kind of in the mid tier and they are just terrific for the value. And they had like 260 bucks usually and they just, they just stomp whatever the competition puts out at that price. So they actually did get into video cards about a year ago and they've been really good, these ARC video cards. Again, not at the high end to compete with Nvidia. But I don't think going after the high end is great because I don't know how much profit there is. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:13:34] Speaker A: So just an interesting thing. I mean intel was untouchable through my whole lifetime and now it looks like they may be no more and not that much time. Yeah, I don't know what your thoughts are. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's even just look at how I like Apple. They've gone and shifted from intel and started creating their own silicon and now they're dominant. I mean who, who even knows how like this, this partnership with OpenAI as much as like I think they just wanted to kind of get the, the Apple intelligence, get on in this kind of this sort of demand for it that's out there and, but who knows how it'll play out. I, I suspect, and we've talked about this that they probably will develop their own version. You know they're certainly collecting enough data and you know again the, the way that their processors work. I mean I, I've updated my phone to the latest. Yeah, I mean it's interesting like the Apple intelligence is enabled and I don't see it very much what, what's happening but I feel like there's certain operations that are maybe a little bit quicker. Like for instance if, if I want to go and share an image it'll bring up the people that are the ones that I'm mostly corresponding with. And so I believe that's just like a subtle kind of AI learning that it's, it's doing just based on my behavior. [00:15:12] Speaker A: I have to say I've had major issues with their writing tools. I don't think they're very good. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not surprised. Again this is where you know, I think these bigger companies they have to put in guardrails and so they can't go and just put in, you know, let people do whatever they want. I mean they've had issues so far but who knows, we'll see how that changes in the future. But yeah, definitely, you know this, there's a big shift now where the AI, I mean both on Microsoft with Surface as well as with Apple now like they, they have on device or like at least the enable part of having the, the AI powered type of features that you can go and actually use as part of your day to day tasks. So it's definitely a shift. Although I feel like with Apple I think they actually, they're bringing attention to this that there's a lot of AI hype and we don't know if it's sustainable if there's a, you know again in terms of the performance, in terms of the actual benefit to people. I mean there's definitely, there's certain things but on the other hand I mean even like how you message or you mentioned with messages, I mean some of the suggestions that it comes up with whether it was in Gmail or Outlook or even in Apple, like I don't know if I agree with their suggestions, you know and quite often I don't know if it actually Helps. [00:16:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I find, trying to think of how to say this. I, I find personally with the, the Apple writing suggestions that they're just not very good. And I'm not referring to, I'm not really comparing it to. Well, I mean, Chat GPT has guardrails too, though less so than Microsoft's Copilot. I, I was recently using Co Pilot. It's a lot better. In some ways it's better than Chat GPT. It seems to be a lot faster. [00:17:22] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:17:25] Speaker A: I, I really wanted Copilot to be the one that I liked the best because I, I am one of the few people who really likes Microsoft Office. I know a lot of people hate it. Excuse me, maybe because of just the legacy design. I, I've always felt that Microsoft Office is very solid. It's really well supported. So the idea of having an AI assistant kind of built in to that makes perfect sense. So I was, for those reasons I was really excited for Apple Intelligence, for Apple Notes and integration. But I find that the summaries and suggestion are just really lackluster. So I'll be like, summarize this content. And it does a really bad job of it. It misses key points, at least for me. You know how it gives you messages. Here's a summary of your messages. Here's a summary of your emails that came in. The summaries are fine. It doesn't do very well. If you subscribe to like a newsletter where there's a lot of different content. It just doesn't get it. It can't summarize it. It's like it's only designed to summarize. If you wrote me a letter, which most of my emails are not right, they're, they're not letters, they're Amazon take advantage of the tax holiday. Like it just doesn't get it. And what I'm comparing it to is actually Notion. Notion. AI, I think uses both Chat GPT, their latest model as well as Claude's anthropic. I think it uses both. So I don't know if it does some magic to combine the two, but its writing suggestions are awesome. And that's an example of an AI that you can't upload as many documents. It's not quite as railed as Apple's, but it's more railed than ChatGPT and it just does a terrific job. And so to me, I haven't had it propose anything outrageous to me. So why can't Apple do that? [00:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. [00:19:23] Speaker A: Especially since they're using the Same model. Right. So, but I again, I don't. I am not totally clear about what is their model and what is Chat GPT because I think their writing tools is their stuff. I think it only uses Chat GPT with Siri and it'll go and reach out to it because you can connect your Chat GPT account though so far I've tried to do that and it's like Chat GPT is unavailable. I haven't got it to work through Siri. I don't know if you've turned that on, have you? [00:19:56] Speaker B: I not sure if I have. [00:19:58] Speaker A: So if you go into your Mac, you can do it on any device, but then it's the same on the Mac. And so if you go into Settings and then go to Apple Intelligence. [00:20:08] Speaker B: Yep. [00:20:10] Speaker A: So I have Apple Intelligence turned on. And for people listening, you know, this only worked with US English until recently. Now you can use Canadian English. So I've moved it all over English Canada. So. And the language, by the way, for Siri and your default language all have to be consistent otherwise none of this stuff works. It has to be the same English Canada or English US or English UK or whatever language you're using across the board for these things to work. So Siri is on. I have it listening for the hot words and then down below under extensions, there's something called ChatGPT and then you can use Chat GPT and connect it and so you can sign in with your ChatGPT account. It'll tell you if it's free or premium. I'm on free right now. And it'll ask you like, do you want me to reach out to Chat GPT for this if Siri can't do it? So it's like it'll do what it can and then it'll. It's supposed to reach out and I have it set to ask me every time rather than just randomly reaching out. But I have very rarely been able to get if at all, I think been able to get that to work. It just says there's an error, I can't reach Chat GPT. So again, like I find that these tools don't talk to each other very well. [00:21:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I don't have that enabled. [00:21:33] Speaker A: So worth a try. I'd be curious to see if it works well for you. [00:21:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:43] Speaker A: Maybe connected to that. What you're talking about are all these like AI devices that came out this year since now we're talking about, we're not sure where this is going to go or because this year didn't we have like rabbit AI and humane AI, These kind of like AI powered voice assistants that you, like, clip onto your clothes and it would, like, watch you as you walk around, like these kind of AI handheld computers. And as far as I can tell, every single one of these is like dead on arrival. They don't work. [00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:22:19] Speaker A: So doesn't mean that AI is not good or we don't use it. It's just, I think it's like you said, the hype, it's starting to hit. [00:22:30] Speaker B: And it feels like. I, I don't know, this is just. I mean, I. I personally have experienced this, but then even just from what I read, it feels like it's actually gotten worse. So a lot of the, the outputs that are coming out and so, and I. And maybe it's. It's just a matter of, you know, it's kind of like we talked about when you keep doing like a photocopy on a photocopy of a photocopy, and it's at some point maybe that whatever we're inputting into the model is actually transpiring into something that's not as high quality as it used to be. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Like if the model is now being trained because it's going to use up all the human created content pretty soon here it's only. Except for stuff that's behind copyright. Right. So Shakespeare, it's already scraped Shakespeare, all the public domain, the famous, all the good stuff it has. Right. So if it keeps being trained on content, that's all or partially AI generated. The question is, is that does it actually learn from itself or does it get worse? And that's the idea that I've read about, called model collapse in Generative AI. I've noticed that a little bit. I don't know if we talked about this on a previous episode, but I played with that notebook LLM, that notebook thing that Google has, and then you can have it automatically generate a podcast based on whatever you put into it. And it uses the same two voices that go back and forth. I was joking that you and I would be toast because the quality is so good. So I put something in about, like the, like the, the beeper explosions, like a news article that happened in the Middle East. I was curious what it would. If it would summarize the article into a podcast. And it did a good job. And then I put in the transcript that it generated to create another one. And then it went really bananas. And then it was saying, like, your toaster could be next and you better check your attic for things that could blow up and it, it was just super inappropriate. Right. And so I wonder if that's happening with some of the. The chatbots that we're working with and, and again if it would be better if they work offline so they're not tr. They're not pulling from web based content. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:24:47] Speaker A: Like, I feel like chatgpt4o was the peak. I have not had any better results from the newer model. Have you? [00:24:56] Speaker B: No, I haven't. In fact I kind of. I quite often because you know how you can select the models. I feel like the GPT4 is still better than even these 4.0 and the other. They have the experimental like the minis and stuff as well. I guess it depends on what you're trying to do. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it depends. I mean do you still pay for. [00:25:20] Speaker B: Plus I, I still have been. Yeah. But I haven't used it, to be honest. I haven't used it as much as like I might be in the same boat as you where I haven't really used it as much. So I wonder if maybe I should actually just, you know, do away with from it. [00:25:39] Speaker A: Well, the way I see it is that it's like Adobe Creative Suite, so I can pay for it when I need to work on a project and then stop and still have the files installed. I just don't need to use it right now. If I need something where I'm going to use ChatGPT a lot, I'll pay for that month and that's fine. But I don't like ongoing costs if I'm not using something. And so I'm notoriously frugal. So I turn subscriptions on and off, depending if they're recurring. Yeah, I think the exception is Netflix because everybody uses it, but that's a separate thing. I will say though, I feel like AI should be better incorporated into tools in context and we've talked about this before and it should work well within the confines of that tool. Like I need a writing assistant. I want it to work really well. Maybe it can run the model partly locally and I'm in Microsoft Office. Yeah, I don't, I don't need, I don't need something that goes out on the web and brings back links and searches. I think that's a separate tool. I think there's an advantage to having these as a separate tool because every time OpenAI puts a new feature, it's not easy to find. I don't think they hire. I don't know if they hire any UX people. OpenAI. If you want a UX information architect, you should hire me because. Or Chris or both of us actually would be better because the way you've implemented web search and view tools with these little icons below the search bar and stuff, this is like no good. Like, there's got to be a better. This is not clear to me what these things mean. There's no discrete labels. So I think they could do a much better job of breaking this out into like a suite of tools like Google does. Right? [00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [00:27:18] Speaker A: I find this to be kind of jumbled. [00:27:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And probably. I would hope it probably gets better over time, but I hope so. [00:27:28] Speaker A: But I'm losing faith right now that it is. I will say that the AIPC has really gone mainstream and I wrote about that this year. So, I mean, so there clearly is interest in it, but I'm wondering if the interests are more niche. Like you said, it does this thing and this tool really well and then it goes back, rather than kind of like one tool to rule them all. Yeah, maybe. Related to that topic, another art, to me, a big topic of 2024 was the whole Microsoft Recall. So as part of their Copilot plus PC line, which is a terrible brand, they were going to have basically this feature in Windows 11 called Recall. So it would just take, I guess, like a screenshot of what you're doing, like constantly, and then you could have a memory of all the things you did on your computer and where to access it and you'd be able to search it and go back. I don't know if the problem originally was, is that it was on by default. They made it. It was off by default later on. So it was opt in. Then they said they were going to have the ability to uninstall the feature. So like an app. What was interesting to me is that there was so much pushback about it. It was this huge controversy, so basically about privacy and security. So it was planned for public preview in June and then it was going to go. And then early access to this. This Recall feature was delayed until October and then it was delayed until December and so only now are people, I guess, able to use it. And it was really set to be one of the key features of these copilot plus AI PCs. And so it kind of showed to me that there's serious boundaries about, despite the promise of AI, what people are willing to tolerate in terms if they feel they're being watched. [00:29:33] Speaker B: But, you know, I think some of those concerns, like, do you need a Picture taken every single time. I mean imagine you're, you're entering in your login information for something. I mean it could be like banking related or maybe there's some privacy thing. Like do you want to snapshot every single time? In theory seems kind of cool, right? But I don't know. This is where like I, I find like for instance, just in teaching environment, I mean a lot of these, as you know, I'm not. I look at these various social media apps and I find a lot of the, the social media apps like it's just not worth time. But I, I've noticed one thing that was kind of interesting as of late is I've noticed students using Snapchat for group project discussions and which it kind of, that's what I wanted to know. Like why, why would you use that? But after looking and talking to some of these students, I mean one problem is that you lose the history because that the, the actual discussion doesn't go back and forth. But some of the students that I talked to, like some of them, it was kind of interesting, like you don't have to go and exchange your phone number and they like the fact that the, the message disappears and so now you can be a little bit more candid. And you know, I, I thought that was kind of interesting. Then I thought about like for myself, like I have my, I have my iPhone, I have my Mac Book Pro and, and I have my imessages that go and sync up and do I. [00:31:02] Speaker A: Really sync them with the cloud? [00:31:04] Speaker B: I, I sync them with the cloud so that they show up on my devices and it's like do I need all these text messages and all my interactions with everybody? And in some ways like I, after thinking about it, just what how these students are perceiving it, having that message disappear is maybe a good thing because you know it's not being tracked and you can just have like that discussion and it just makes things a little bit more candid for people. [00:31:33] Speaker A: I thought you could. I don't know if this is still the case. So I know that there's the option for messages to enable messages in icloud. I thought that if you didn't do that, it would still forward all the messages to your device. But if you went and set up a new device, it would be like starting from scratch until the next set of messages came in. Am I understanding that correctly? [00:31:55] Speaker B: You might be right. I mean, I don't know when I say that I've enabled it, maybe I haven't enabled it because when I Do have a new device, it doesn't recall all the previous, you know, messages. It starts fresh from that point forward. [00:32:09] Speaker A: And, and do you keep the messages like indefinitely? [00:32:12] Speaker B: I just keep them because I. It's like yeah, you know, but then that's what I would. This is what kind of got me thinking is like maybe it's not a good thing to have all these messages and a lot of them are useless and I mean, although messages don't really take up that much space but when you're sending images and so on, maybe that could. So yeah, I don't know, it was just kind of interesting. Like I just thought like with. And this is where unfortunately like Snapchat, they haven't figured out how to go and you know, be as successful and a lot of their features, like they just come out with some really interesting features and meta integrates those into whether it's Facebook or Instagram. So But I, I do find that thing like it, it just got me thinking. I mean it's just a note for. To just bring to your attention but like yeah, like the fact that you have this message and within 24 hours it's going to disappear and I think there is some value to that. [00:33:18] Speaker A: I think I have it set so messages in the cloud is good for 30 days. [00:33:23] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So yeah, you can go and change that I guess. [00:33:29] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I think. [00:33:36] Speaker B: I mean it's like a. Remember back in the day. I don't know, I might be predating myself now, but back in the day you would, let's say with emails I would quite often, you know, download them and then, you know, archive them and keep records and so on. And then I remember this was probably at least like 10 or 15 years ago. I had somebody tell me, it's like why would you even bother? Like if you need something you could just search it. And so I started taking that mindset. It's like what's the point of even deleting anything? And you can always search it. Although whenever you need to find something. Haven't you noticed, Eric? You can never find it. The search tool is so horrible. [00:34:17] Speaker A: I actually find the Apple Mail search pretty good. Gmail's is good, I get that Though I do think that again over time if you add content to search like this is why I think micro. So here's my. I want to tie this to recall and tie it together here just so people don't. Because I think this is connected and people might not understand how to me recall. I really like what Paul Throt said Where he was like, yes, like these security concerns are totally founded. He didn't, he didn't shut down anybody, but he's like, they're only going to launch on copilot plus PCs, which is like a few million devices at most. So it's like less than 1% of the install base. It's not, it's not a feature that was available or was ever planned to launch to all Windows based computers because you had to have these AI chips built in. So first of all, yes, it's an opt in. It can be uninstalled and even if people did that, it's not all computers. So it's not like launching across all intel computers from the last 10 years or something like that. That would be different. So if people really want to use it, I could see why you'd want to use it in the enterprise. Particularly if it was like a terminal computer where a lot of people are using it and maybe you had to track the history of it to see what would been done. Maybe you roll it out to your computers, to your employees if there's been some bullying or harassment and then it's easier to find evidence for it. I mean, like I get that's creepy, but I can see in a business environment why, where you're not, where the business can do what they want, it's not your private device, it's their device, their property. They may want to do that for confidentiality reasons. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons why you might want that. But I also understand that saving everything and never deleting a message was kind of the Gmail approach. So I work with a lot of people who do that. Like I archive every email and I'm like, yeah, but when you go to search something, you get mostly junk that you never want to see. Especially emails that are like, you know, can you respond by, you know, this date six years ago? Well, why would you archive that? Like, I mean, I guess it's a record that you were asked to do it at that time. But like it doesn't work anymore or I get emails from, you know, it telling me that there was a phishing thing. Well, I'm not going to read that email 10 years from now. [00:36:38] Speaker B: Right? [00:36:38] Speaker A: Like, I mean, I just. So I do archive messages where I think I might need a history. But like in the past I've actually gone and been like, okay, like these are everything that's five years old and that doesn't have a label attached to it, like finance, invoice, personal delete, It. If it doesn't have a tag attached to it where I didn't take the time to market with something, then is it really that important? And I've kind of done that with a lot of messages, like if, like receipts. I used to save receipts for everything, email receipts, every Audible credit I redeemed. But why? First of all, all of those services, you can go into your purchase history and they're all there. So I don't need an email. And they save them for seven years. And I only keep purchases that have a receipt if I need to return something. But eventually. And then I put it into a folder in Apple Mail or Sorry Proton, which is what I use, syncs up called purchases. But even then, I have to go in there, you know, every few years and go, you know, I can't return any of this stuff. It doesn't matter because it's past the date or the warranty's expired. So delete. Right. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:47] Speaker A: And I do wonder about having all of this information. I think it wasn't this year. Maybe it was a couple of years ago. You and I talked about. I kind of got into that rabbit hole about, you know, the personal knowledge archive, where you would archive everything and have interconnected notes and it would generate insights. And I thought it was a really interesting idea. And I do think it has some merits, but is there ev. You know, is there any evidence that any insights are generated from that or insights come from something else and you know what I mean? So I kind of just said maybe it's okay to forget some of this stuff. I like what Sam Altman said about. He likes to take notes on steno pads like the one I'm holding up here, because you can turn the page and tear it out and throw it away. I don't need to have that anymore. It's gone now. It's done. There's something cleansing about shredding old notebooks and journals after you've digitized the pages that you need. Which is exactly what I do. Right. Yeah. So I wonder if recall is kind of like plays off that. I don't know where I'm going with this. Do you ever get the sense that the collect everything, interconnected interwebs has a really sexy appeal, but doesn't actually necessarily turn up a lot? Or do you think I'm on a tangent? [00:39:13] Speaker B: Well, you know what I mean? [00:39:15] Speaker A: Does it make sense what I'm getting at? [00:39:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I. I get what you like. Again, I. I think it's like we have this idea that. Yeah, it would be great. But is it really worthwhile? That's, that's kind of like, I mean, do we really need that email from like 7 years ago that nobody's ever going to look at? I mean I'm, I'm actually trying to even get a little bit better. Like before I wouldn't, let's say that there's certain, like, let's say that that phishing email or whatever the, that notification now like before I would just read it and leave it. Now I delete it because I don't want, I don't think I'm ever gonna like look at it. Why do I want to have like a mailbox with tens of thousands of emails in there even though it's, I, I mean this is a work related thing so it's not me paying for the, the account. And I'm sure we have probably a terabyte that we're allowed anyways, but. [00:40:09] Speaker A: 20 terabytes. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, there you go. So. But is it necessary? Like I just feel, I mean I even feel like I thought about this in the past too. Especially with even doing, you know, like we go to tourist places and taking pictures and we like how much data do we create? Like just taking all these pictures, we're basically probably you know, creating like, I forget what that word is. It's not even terabytes but like teraflops or something. Petabytes, something. And sometimes I wonder about like, let's say especially like a tourist kind of thing. Like if I'm going somewhere and there's a tourist destination, the picture that I'm going to take is probably not going to be that great anyways. But you know, we still take those pictures and, and maybe, and this could have been like, maybe a good application of blockchain. Like let's say if you actually go to that place and through geolocation you could get some professional pictures that you could download or access because you're there and you could keep that as a memory as opposed to your crappy little picture. Although I guess the phones have gotten better. But again, I don't know, it's just, it's interesting how our, I mean back in the day, like look at, if we would take pictures because you had to pay for film, you would only pick the best pictures to take. [00:41:39] Speaker A: Sure. [00:41:40] Speaker B: Right. And now it doesn't matter because it's just data. So I don't know. Also on that note, like even on it seems like data centers, there's huge demand even. In fact I just. [00:41:56] Speaker A: Well, they were in Demand before AI too. I mean, that's, they were. [00:41:59] Speaker B: But now, like, I think they've, there's been more of a push. And so like here in Alberta, for instance, there's a huge amount of demand. In fact, I believe maybe Amazon. And then even like there's Kevin O'Leary through his ventures. They're, they're, they're going and creating some here, especially given, you know, our, our climate, the sunshine and other things. Like, they could probably go and create more power for some of these data centers with potentially cleaner energy. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see, but those were some recent announcements that the government was kind of promoting. [00:42:39] Speaker A: Is that because it's cold here and it doesn't require like air conditioning to cool everything like it does in California? [00:42:44] Speaker B: I believe that. Plus also the fact that real estate's a little bit cheaper relative to some other places. I think geologically we are probably one of the most sound places in the world. And especially because we got the Rockies. [00:43:01] Speaker A: Basically there's no earthquakes. [00:43:02] Speaker B: Right. Like, yeah, so there's those kind of considerations then from a power generation, like between wind and solar, you could get some cleaner energy as well. [00:43:13] Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Can I. We've talked a lot about AI. I'm interested in this topic. I think it's something we should return to and I really like talking to you about the. I think there's a hunger out there for a sober conversation about how to be productive, how to create your own personal knowledge management technique and using technology and maybe AI to do that without overdoing it. I don't think anybody has solved it. I'm not suggesting we've solved it, but I think there is a hunger to solve this problem because currently it's like people are remembering nothing or they're trying to remember everything. And what's the system for doing that? I think there's something there. [00:44:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a good point. [00:44:02] Speaker A: So maybe we can keep an eye on that. I, I do think though, in kind of related to AI and just as a continuing thing that we've discussed since we start this podcast, I think, you know, it's old news for some people, but I think Apple Silicon is still one of the. And Apple in general with their devices. And I want to talk about the Vision Pro is kind of the, one of the top stories of the year. So we didn't. We have been kind of behind on this, so we haven't covered it. But Apple has their release, their fourth generation M4 Apple silicon. So maybe we can Start by talking about the devices particularly. I think we've talked about all these devices before. You and I have an M1 MacBook Pro. By the way, people, if you have a M1 Pro, don't buy another computer. I don't think it's necessary. I think it's. This is already. I think a MacBook Air first gen M1, like my wife's runs Creative Suite faster than any Pro I had before that. So I don't think there's any need to upgrade. So that's old news. I do think though that the Mac Mini is something we didn't talk about. [00:45:18] Speaker B: No. [00:45:19] Speaker A: And it's kind of. And a lot of people razzed it because the power button is on the bottom because they made this really small design and people are complaining about Apple's ability to design and that's a whole separate thing. I think that is. I cannot believe that doesn't show up in any of the top. Like the articles about the top stories from 2024. Anything Apple related is either Apple Intelligence or the Vision Pro. I think the Mac Mini is the ultimate home computer. At this point. I do not see a reason to buy an imac, as much as I love that for nostalgic reasons. I have the one down here below me that I got from you, Chris, right down here in the corner that I need to fix up. But I think the Mac Mini to me and in its current revised iteration is like one of the more interesting stories of the year. What do you think? [00:46:10] Speaker B: I mean, I mentioned this with some of my students, even think about the price point and the amount of functionality and I mean they literally solved all the problems that people, all the things that they were asking for. Like you wanted some ports on the front and back, you know, iPhone jack. [00:46:32] Speaker A: On the front, which is great. [00:46:34] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like, whereas my Mac Mini that I got the, the first gen, it's on the backside. Right. And so again I, I didn't realize that the power button is on the bottom. I mean, that's interesting. That's probably why I found some. Somehow it just started showing up in my feed. I haven't logged into Facebook for a long time, but then all of a. And like I follow this one group where they take those old Mac Pro cases and you know, basically create like hackintoshes. And so all of a sudden I got this thing, it started showing up in my feed where they took a Mac mini M4 and put it in a case, like a Mini Mac, like a Mac Pro case. So then you can put it up on its side and then you can actually access that button and everything. And I, I thought that was, I don't know. I, I didn't think much about it until you just ment that the power button's on the bottom. So maybe that's, that should have been how they should have put it up on its like vertically. Right. But again for the price point, it's just a huge powerhouse and so they've made it smaller for even $800 is their starting price. And I believe it's cheaper. Even with the education pricing, it's a pretty decent computer. I don't know why, like, especially for education side, like you wouldn't even need to do much more. And then if you really, if you start upgrading some of the stuff, which we probably would, I think we would have gone to, instead of even the 16 gigabytes of RAM we would probably go up to. It was, I think it was like 24 is what it comes with. [00:48:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I would say that if you're going to spend the money on this computer, like if it were me, I would get the M4 Pro chip in it, either the base model, but I'd probably spend the money for the better one. Yeah, I would put in 48 gigabytes of RAM and a one terabyte hard drive. And that brings you. It's not cheap. It brings you about 2669. But that computer is a tank. That thing is a beast. And I don't know what the comparative cost would be for a MacBook Pro, but my guess is that it's much more expensive to deck it out with those specs than it would be because it's a built in screen and all that stuff, right? [00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. [00:48:55] Speaker A: Although like, I mean even it's actually $3,000 for that configuration. Canadian with education pricing for a MacBook Pro? Yeah, I think, I think 3,000 with, with, with the 24 gigs of RAM. [00:49:14] Speaker B: You're talking about the, the Mac Mini. [00:49:16] Speaker A: No, no. So the Mac mini with the M4 Pro chip, which has 14 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores, that's the best M4 Pro. You can get better M4 Pros in the MacBook Pro. But that's kind of the best one that you can get in the Mac Mini. That chip plus 48 gigabytes of RAM plus a 1 terabyte hard drive is about $2,600 for the Mac Mini, which isn't cheap, but that's a computer that will last 10 years at least to make that exact configuration in a MacBook Pro, it's like 3,500 bucks. [00:49:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well I was even thinking like especially depending on how much money people want to spend. But even the M4, like look at the M4 that with education pricing, it's with the 10 core CPU, GPU and the 24 gigabytes, probably more than enough. Yeah, right. Plus the 512 SSD, like it's 1169 with education pricing, which you know, that's. [00:50:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:15] Speaker B: And then all you need is a monitor which most people have and you know, I mean even if you didn't, you could probably buy one for like 100 and something bucks. [00:50:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder about the M4 Pro though. I'm taking a look now, like the Pro is a lot faster. What happens if you get. Yeah, even the M4 Pro with 48. Is 24 gigabytes of RAM enough, do you think? [00:50:39] Speaker B: Like, I mean we were going with, went through, most of them come with eight and then we would recommend upgrading to 16. [00:50:48] Speaker A: Yeah. But we have AI models now. Right. So this is a whole. I think, I think 16 is the new minimum and I think 16 is going to be quickly out of date Unfortunately. I think 24 is going to be the new minimum. [00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:50:59] Speaker A: So I think I might even go with 32 or 48 as my future proof. I think this has jumped exponentially just because of the AI models and things. I don't have any evidence other than that the business model for AI seems absolutely unsustainable and the stuff has to move on device. I just do not see a way around it. Yeah, and a lot of those models need to live partly in memory. So that's a lot of memory that you have to have because I think even the Surface devices, I think they have 32 gigs of RAM. Right. [00:51:36] Speaker B: So yeah, but again, yeah, like if you wanted to keep your costs low or what have you, I, I really think this, like even when I brought it up in class and discussing it with students, you know, even the students kind of mentioned this, like why would they bring the price down and give so much more. And personally I believe that, you know, for Apple what they're doing is they, they want to dominate the PC kind of market by having this. [00:52:08] Speaker A: I don't know that I would buy a PRO level chip. I think I would go with a standard personally. [00:52:12] Speaker B: Well, yeah, like, but again, like even for 800 and it's actually less with using like education pricing is 669, the base version with 16 gigs and 256. Like, like, I mean as A student or even like, imagine an educator. And you just want a new computer. 670 bucks, education pricing for just that base version. And you, you know, let's say you had to buy a monitor or whatever. Like you're definitely under $800, right? [00:52:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm gonna guess that the M4 standard is probably very comparable, if not faster than my M1 Pro, right? [00:52:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:51] Speaker A: So it's like, why would I buy a Pro if I can get a Pro level chip in a Mac Mini? I mean, I can buy a MacBook Air and a Mac Mini for the same price as a Pro or less. Right. Like, to me, when I look at this stuff, it's like, you need a laptop. What do you need it for? Portability. Do you really want to have a portable desktop? Is it really worth it? [00:53:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Although I guess you could take it with you. [00:53:16] Speaker A: You could take it with you. You'd have to have a monitor to plug it into. [00:53:19] Speaker B: Yeah, you just need a monitor that you could plug it into. But like. Yeah, I mean, I guess you could. But again, like, what's the normal things that people need is just, you know, some access to like the, the Microsoft Office suite or just some of the, the word process. Like it's more than sufficient. And it'll probably, even with this, like It'll last you 10 years easy. I think just for basic office stuff. [00:53:44] Speaker A: Sans the power button. And I think they put it on the bottom. It's probably a difficult engineering challenge, more than we think. And the reason probably is very few people turn their computer off that often and boot it up. That way they may do a restart. So they're probably like, this is the lowest used. They probably have data that it's like the lowest used button on a computer. Because most people would just close their laptop and they don't turn them off. They just put them to sleep. So they probably said if they have to lift it up twice a year to turn it off or to reboot it, it's not a big deal. That's my guess. Or you can. [00:54:17] Speaker B: So people don't turn it off at all. [00:54:19] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:54:20] Speaker B: Put into sleep. [00:54:21] Speaker A: I haven't turned off my computer. I did a reboot because I had to update the software. That's the only time I ever shut it down. [00:54:28] Speaker B: Oh really? [00:54:29] Speaker A: It's just on. Like why? [00:54:31] Speaker B: I don't know. I always turn it off. [00:54:33] Speaker A: I don't. Occasionally I do, but there's no need anymore. Typically I do do reboot every so often. But like a lot of the time. I just, I don't turn off modern computers that often. I may restart them and then put them back to sleep, but you don't need the button for that. That's in software. Right? [00:54:50] Speaker B: Interesting. So you just keep it on all the time. And I guess when it's in sleep mode, it doesn't take any power. [00:54:57] Speaker A: If it's plugged in, it's just plugged in like it would be if it was off. It does a better job with the power management. It's backing up and receiving my emails and messages and keeping everything up to date when it's synced and running. Fans probably aren't on because it's like the MacBook Air is a fanless computer. So this functions like that unless it needs the fans. Right. And so I don't, I do turn it off. I'm not saying I don't want the ability to turn off a computer, but I just don't turn them off that often. I don't see a need. [00:55:25] Speaker B: No, that's. I don't know, maybe I'm just old school. Like I always, whether it's my laptop or anything, I always just turn it off after I'm done with it. [00:55:34] Speaker A: Occasionally I do that. Like if I was going to travel and I didn't want it for whatever reason, it's going to be in a hot closed environment, then I'll shut it all the way down. But a lot of the time at home it's just on. And part of the reason is that when I need it, I need it now. And I don't really want to wait for it to boot up, even though it's pretty quick. And my thinking is that I use this computer, I treat it really well. I just cleaned it up. I do a deep clean on it with a non static tip for a vacuum and I do everything that I'm supposed to do, but I use it. And when it burns out, I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to buy another one or probably one of these. Actually, you know, I'm not going to buy another one of these comp. I'm not going to buy a MacBook Pro ever again. I think I'm done. I'm going to buy a MacBook, I'm going to buy a Mac Mini and I don't see the need to have a pro level laptop. I only bought it for the ports, for portability, to do something on the, on the, on the, on the, on the move. I can still use this or I'll buy a MacBook Air. I really don't see the need for a pro level computer. I would much rather have a desktop at this point and not pay for a battery and a monitor. I have a 28 inch 4k monitor. Why do I need a, A monitor? Right. I don't use a second display very often. [00:56:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:49] Speaker A: And so that's kind of where I'm at. But I use them hard and then out the door. But that's me. [00:56:56] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's, I mean, it's, it's good to know. Right? Like, I mean, I, I personally, I never. But you're right, Like a lot of times, like here I am, if I, because I turn off my computer and then I have to go and like jump into like a meeting or something, I have to wait for it to boot up. I mean, it does it pretty quick. But I mean, if it was just on and everything's running, I wouldn't have to wait that one minute. [00:57:20] Speaker A: Well, the desktop, I would be even less likely to turn it off because it's not sitting. So if I, if I don't, I don't have the power plugged into it all the time. But it only has, you know. I don't know what I mean. According to Apple, they say you should restart it whenever you notice performance issues every. So maybe. So when I say I don't restart it, I probably restart the computer every couple of weeks. [00:57:45] Speaker B: Okay. [00:57:46] Speaker A: So I don't say I never do it. But that's, that's not very often, given how much I use it. Right. So every couple of weeks, Apple says to restart it because I think it probably clears out the memory maybe once a month because if things are built up in ram, you start to notice performance issues, then you should restart it. But for a desktop, I'd be even less likely to restart it because it's not plugged into. It's not degrading the battery by being plugged in all the time. [00:58:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, that's really the biggest problem with these devices is the battery. Right. [00:58:17] Speaker A: And that's where like, and to me, like, you know, it's funny, I take the iPad Pro, which is an M4. I can't. There's an. I'm at the point it's not the same as using a Mac. But there's nothing I cannot do on it now other than unless I needed full Photoshop or something. It has files. My whole file system is synced. Every app that I need for writing Office, they're all there. Is it the same experience no, but it kind of just says here's the app you want. I keep it in full screen. I just use one thing at a time. I have a really nice keyboard that I take with me. I don't really need to take a Mac with me that often. [00:58:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:00] Speaker A: And if I go travel to see my folks, I'll log into my mom's Mac and then I'll do whatever I need to do on there and plug in a thumb drive. Old school. I mean, there's all sorts of things we can do. Right. So. But that's a bit of a tangent, I suppose. I did want to talk briefly about maybe the Vision Pro. Could that be our. Is there. That was going to be the final thing. I thought maybe we discuss. Is there anything else? [00:59:32] Speaker B: I think so. [00:59:33] Speaker A: I mean, I mean we, there's. I guess we could talk about CrowdStrike. [00:59:36] Speaker B: And I mean there's like. Yeah. Hacks and updates and crashes taking place. I mean, I don't know. [00:59:44] Speaker A: This is just to me all the crashes and the hacks just tell me that we have way too many centralized systems. The. Yeah, but that's just me. I'm a bit biased there. I did want to talk about the Apple Vision Pro because when did that come out in the summer? June or something? June, July. [01:00:07] Speaker B: Yeah. February 24th. [01:00:10] Speaker A: Oh, it came out in February. Yeah. [01:00:13] Speaker B: Pre order started January 19th, but I guess February 2nd, 2024. [01:00:19] Speaker A: Okay. So it was the beginning of the year. [01:00:22] Speaker B: Oh, but then wait, let's see. In certain countries, yeah, it started coming out later. So yeah, it just depends where it was like June. [01:00:36] Speaker A: What did you think? What did you think of the Vision Pro? My understanding is that it is absolutely by far the best. They call it mixed reality. I still say it's a VR headset. The VR headset with pass through Evermade. Like it is like a country mile beyond its competition. Including the Meta Quest 3, which is amazing by the way, if you like VR, it's a great device yet reveals to me that it's never. I'm. I should say never say never in tech. But I just don't see these goggles ever in their current design as goggles becoming mainstream devices ever. Yeah, well, I think about that statement. [01:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Well again, do you want to have these huge things on your face like and even I think the weight wise and stuff. Right. I mean it's the same thing. Like I've heard some students like I've never. I've actually now gone away from. I sold my Beats Pro my wireless because the. It just really Battery crapped out. [01:01:48] Speaker A: What did you go to? [01:01:49] Speaker B: And so I'm just using wired. So I'm just using wired headsets. [01:01:54] Speaker A: Old with the aux or did you go with the USB C1? [01:01:57] Speaker B: No, I'm just using the. I have my. I have this one here which is like an in ear and then I just use a 3.5 to a USB C dongle. But again I might be unusual that way but I find like these hands free. The batteries died. There's issues with them. I don't know the long term studies on it in terms of how we're impacting our bodies and stuff. But anyways, put that aside. Apparently the, the headphones that Apple has come up with, what do they call them? Like the, the Max AirPods Max, I think or something. Or the ones that are over the year. [01:02:43] Speaker A: Those are the max. Yeah, yeah. [01:02:45] Speaker B: So apparently they're awesome but they weigh a lot. [01:02:50] Speaker A: They're heavy. [01:02:51] Speaker B: Right. So it's. And this is where like it just comes down to. And it's the same thing. I, I would imagine even with this Vision Pro, like how long are you going to be able to keep this thing on? And maybe if it's for a certain kind of application but at a certain point it does get kind of uncomfortable. And so maybe this is where like meta with them going and partnering up with Ray Ban and going towards like having an actual sunglass type of device that might be just from a humanity standpoint. It's, it's probably what, what people are going to be willing to adopt. Psychologically speaking, it's, it's the same thing. If you look at these electrical vehicles, I mean there's no reason why you need to have the charger to be designed the way that you would go and pump gas into a vehicle. But why do they do it? It's because we have decades of human behavior where you're going and used to pumping gas that way and that's how you're going to be charging these vehicles. [01:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it could connect like a wireless charger. Why does it have to. I guess it couldn't do wireless charging for that kind of voltage. But still. But why? [01:03:59] Speaker B: I mean you could just. [01:04:00] Speaker A: Like that. [01:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the same thing. If you look at like for instance, I believe the Porsche 911, the engine is actually in the back. Right. And the front is actually is where your trunk is. Right. So you could switch it up, you could do all sorts of things. But people don't. And again I think it's just more so to go. And if you want widespread mainstream kind of adoption. You want to make it easy for people. All right. And in this case, yeah, like probably the hardcore people that are into VR stuff. I mean, I've never really tried it much. I think you probably have way more experience with this, but at a certain point it is going to get uncomfortable. [01:04:44] Speaker A: For you for over the year or. [01:04:48] Speaker B: Even for this like the, the Vision Pro and stuff too, right. [01:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah. To me, you know, part of the reason I'm, I'm skeptical of this is I agree with you is the weight. My understanding is that Apple made a great band that goes around the back of your head, but that causes pain. So you have to use the really ugly band if you're going to use it for any given time where it goes over the top of your head to take the weight off. A lot of headsets, even the lighter ones, if you don't have a counterweight, it can be quite uncomfortable. So that's true. I also, I haven't admitted this, but as I get older, so I like to ski. I can't right now because I have a one year old, but I like to ski, but it's harder for me. I get, I don't, I don't think it's, it's not an altitude sickness because I don't have an issue with high altitude at all actually. But the motion sickness, especially if it's not sunny and blue sky and it's like white out condition skiing. Because it's very difficult for me when I'm skiing, downhill ski, to see the difference between the run and the horizon. I can get really sick. And I wonder if. My understanding is that there's, there's about 10% plus percent of the population that either cannot use VR at all. Yeah. Or can't use it for very long. And I think if you include. Can't use it for very long. It's like 15% of the population. That's a huge percentage, that's a huge minority of people that this is never going to work for as a primary computing device. Not to mention is expensive for now. But I also wonder, is it? I have. So Casey Neistat, the YouTuber, did a video about how his brain just kind of got used to it in the pass through and the depth perception. But I do wonder if it's just good for you to have this on your face all the time. [01:06:42] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [01:06:43] Speaker A: All the, all the research shows that, you know, if you want to, if you, other than having your morning coffee, if you, if you want to be awake and Happy, you know, getting natural light first thing in the morning and going for a walk. I mean, meditation practices. There's just so much research about taking a step back. There's nothing wrong with using a screen a lot, but taking a step back and I just think if you're going to fixate something to your face. I feel like Apple was five years too late. I feel like if they had come up with something like this five years ago to compete with the, when Meta first got in with Quest, when the Oculus came out, maybe 10 years ago it would have made sense. But now it seems like too late. I feel like post Pandemic, this is a hard sell. Yeah, yeah, exactly. [01:07:28] Speaker B: Like, I mean, I, I'm even getting to the point where Eric, like even just I don't want to spend as much time on, on whether it's my phone or a computer or whatever. Like, I mean, there's more to life than these screens. And so, you know, the, again, and maybe the, the, the Pandemic has kind of accentuated some of that too. Who knows? But again, I, I, yeah, I don't know. I mean, even if it was glasses, I don't know if I would want to go and do it. I, I really think for some of these, I mean, we probably need to jump one level. It almost needs to go to like what some of these sci fi, like. [01:08:08] Speaker A: Let'S say like in your brain. [01:08:10] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if even, I don't think I would go and have like an implant or something, but I think projection or audio. Yeah, I think that's the direction. And I, I don't know it, it should have, it felt like it was, it was going and maybe it is kind of, if you look at even some of the new updates OpenAI now you can go and they, they've actually created a phone number that you can call. It's like a1,800, like chat GPT or something. And you could talk to it. So you can actually go and talk to it and it runs it, you know, that way. I felt like with all these smart speakers and you know, the voice like that, that seemed to be like the direction things were kind of going in. And for whatever reason, I, I don't know, it still hasn't gotten to the level that I would have expected. And then yeah, I think certain things, especially if we do have to interact, like I would imagine something like, you know, Tony Stark, Iron man going and dealing with like projections and, and stuff like that's, that's what I, I feel like would be the direction that we should go. [01:09:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. I, I think projection technologies are underrated, especially if you're able to project kind of anywhere, like not even into your eyes, but just like project. You put something down and it projects on a table and you can kind of see dot like a email scrolling through gestures, the ability to do that on a mobile device plus dock it into some sort of display when you need it. Plus audio though. Audio where you speak. Like you said, I. I'm a big fan of audio interfaces, but an audio interface where you don't have to memorize the commands. I think that's where Amazon, Alexa and Google Home fail because you had to ask it something otherwise it didn't get it. So to me, like a chatgpt in an audio would be way better than Alexa though. I think Amazon has partnered with somebody probably to make this happen. Of course now they want to charge for Alexa to get all the better skills and stuff, which I think is silly, but that has to be the case. That's regenerative AI because I've been using Copilot and ChatGPT audio where you ask it and it reads it back to you like an answer and I find that to be far more useful. And so it's something like that connected where you can ask quick questions, especially your directions. Because I think the trying to memorize stock phrases and say them out loud and then know the order of operations is a huge mental load. I've always found it very difficult. This is where, you know, remember Apple a few years ago they had the whole. They released all the Siri shortcuts where you can create shortcuts for Siri and you could have all these custom voice commands. I don't think that took off. I don't have any evidence to support that. But you know, I. To add to todoist I had to say it exactly that way and I'm never going to remember that. And I'm not going to carry around a piece of paper or I'm not going to make notes and Apple notes like a script that I have to read. Right. So to me that's down arrival. [01:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I. And that's where like I think now this AI stuff, who knows it, it might actually be able to go and get a bit of that resurgence and get it to that point because yeah, I mean you, you want to make it easy. You want to make it easy for people. You shouldn't have to go and memorize stuff. You should be able to just Converse. And that's, that's where like again, I, it's that notion of like, converse. Conversational computing. That's, that's what kind of what we should be going for. Or like even like the, like you say, like even the projection technology, I mean, I was looking at it for myself and so getting like TVs just projecting, you know, and it's mobile too. Like you could literally, if you had like a massive wall, you can project out and put out like any type of show or movie or whatever you want to do. And the cost has come down significantly. Right. So if you could apply that to some sort of, you know, computing device as well. So who knows of it? But again, like with Apple, I think there they do have some like strategy issues and it's unfortunate. Like with this thing, who knows, maybe the Vision Pro, they'll be able to use it for other applications, but it might be the best. But I don't know if it was ever going to go and make them the kind of money. And I don't know if they even probably, they never probably predicted or projected that. Even really, if I go back, even this discussion that we had about the Mac Mini, you know, and this is kind of, I, I had this, the, the people that I was chatting with, like my students, like, if you think about it critically, like dropping the price and giving more, really, this is a bit of a loss leader for Apple. I mean, they're probably still making money, right? [01:13:17] Speaker A: Oh, they had a 25 margin for sure. [01:13:19] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Right. But even, let's say if it. They were breaking even on it, why would they do that? If you think about it critically and really what they want people to do is they want everybody to be locked into the Apple ecosystem because where do they make their most money is from the iPhone and that iPhone. I mean, I haven't bought the latest one, but the last time I bought one was a 15 Pro and it was like. And I bought it outright and I think it was about 16, 1700 bucks, which is even way more than any of these computers or anything. Right. So, and for that size of device, like, I don't know if it's actually their margins are definitely the highest. And so yeah, they can take a bit of a cut on some of these aspects, but as long as it's easy for people and like somehow magically, I don't know. Again, my messages that I, I text on my phone, they end up on my computer. If I enable it on my iPad or whatever, like it's just cohesive it just works and that's what. And again, I don't think Apple may not be necessarily the best at everything it does, but because of that convenience factor it certainly is the best for most people. [01:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it works really well. They've rolled out with their processors, is like a win. I can't say anything but good stuff about it. And I'm also like on, I would say equal praises. I haven't used them a lot, but I've used the Surface Pro 7. Borrowed it for a day from a colleague, begged him just so I could see. Qualcomm is hot on their heels. Windows computer's starting to work the same and Microsoft has been. I think Windows 11 is a bit of a mess to be honest but Microsoft with their ecosystem has done a much better job. I think with ARM and the tie in with all these computers together, it's a lot seamless to switch between devices which is kind of the future. You're not going to be the perfect device. Doesn't really exist. I think Jeff Bezos said, I don't know, maybe almost 20 years ago, maybe 15 years ago that we would be a multi device people and you're going to use this for this. And he really believed in single purpose but the ability to switch based on context. And I think he was right. I think he was right. Well, I mean we've covered quite a bit of ground today. We were going to talk a little bit about consumption but perhaps we don't want to spend too long. Is there anything. I know that there was that maybe we'll report back. I have. There's a documentary on Netflix that I want to see about it. But is there anything that you would like to say or that you could say about like holiday consumption? Anything in particular that you're doing this year? Well, I mean I. Decluttering or whatever. [01:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Like I. Ever since moving I. I am trying to declutter because I. It was a bit of a rude awakening discovering how much stuff that we have after you know, living in one house for about 14 years. So I have. It's been more top of mind and so I'm being very even. Like for instance there was something that Costco had on sale that we could have, would have maybe been nice for helping with some storage and cleanup or whatever like in our garage. And then we thought about it. It's like do we really need this thing? Even though it's like on sale and it's like 35 bucks and we decided not to get it because we don't want to add more clutter and get more junk. And so I think just being mindful of some of that, you know, it's. It's funny, even today, I was just having a conversation at home, and I think people. This whole keeping up with the Joneses, I mean, it was interesting to kind of just realize so many people. I. I was under the impression, like, the way that it was being portrayed, like some of our friends or what have you, like, they have these new vehicles and everything's like, they're, you know, doing well. But I just found out today, a bunch of them, it was, like, leased or financed. It's like. [01:17:19] Speaker A: So it's really easy to look rich. [01:17:21] Speaker B: Exactly right. So. And I mean, again, I don't know if, like, a vehicle is the best. Like, you know, it depreciates, it's a depreciating asset and so on. But just keep that in mind, too, that, you know, just because somebody has something and, you know, and I don't know, it's hard because that's how society is like. We're always trying to compare against other people, but you don't know what their financial situation is. And for all we know, they're just in complete debt. Just trying to go and keep up appearances. [01:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. Less is more in many ways, I think. I like what you said about you don't know where people are at because it's really easy to kind of want to buy stuff because you see other people having it. But I. I do encourage people also to other. While vehicle's a bit different, I can't comment on that. If you use it every day, I suppose the cost per use is low, but I would also say that, you know, people get new things and they're shiny. One of the things I started to notice is how. How quickly things are discarded by other people. Like, they buy something, they use it. The cost per use is very high because it loses its luster very quickly. And so to me, one of the things that my. I mean, I kind of always knew this, but my. My wife had a really good way of putting it, which is, what is the cost per use? So rather than thinking about the sticker price of something, like, again, expensive laptop, it's like, oh, it's so much money. And it's like, yeah, but I use it every day. I'm gonna buy the best one. I got the warranty. It's a tool, right? You need to have it just like a decent vehicle. It doesn't have to be a Lambo, but, you know, a Good vehicle is better than a not good vehicle because it's a headache otherwise. Right. Same thing with the computer, same thing with a phone. Buy the best thing that you can get. Have fewer of them and try to use them longer. One of the reasons why we kind of. One of the ways we've done technology recommendations through this whole few years that we've been doing this, it's here's the best value. We usually, we very rarely recommend a base model. We say doesn't have to be the highest, but pay a little bit more and get this and keep it for five, six, seven years and run it into the ground and then go buy another one. Because if you do that, you don't really miss the money. It took me a few years, but I don't know about you. But like this. We were talking about microphones and we'll maybe do a separate episode talking about that. I have a yeti mic. You have a much better one. Once I find a good deal and I'm happy, yeah. I'll spend the money and I'll go buy a setup and it'll make us sound better because I'm lagging behind a little bit. You have a nicer sounding setup and I can tell when I go to edit it and then. But that should be good for like. [01:19:59] Speaker B: A decade and maybe longer. Right? [01:20:02] Speaker A: I mean maybe 20 years. Right. So I mean, I think I've had my guitar for 20 years. Yeah, it was, I mean 20 years ago was about a thousand bucks. Was a lot of money. It's American made Fender Stratocaster made out of maple. There's no knots in the wood. It's beautifully finished. It'll last me the rest of my life. Right, so. [01:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've taken the same approach. I'll tell you, like even for furniture and stuff, like, I mean, I'll have to show you like this desk that I got. This is going to. You know, I did spend a little bit of money on it. [01:20:34] Speaker A: That's the glass. [01:20:35] Speaker B: No, I got rid of the glass one. So now I have this wooden one. But I will never buy another desk for the rest of my life. [01:20:41] Speaker A: Would you get it? If you don't mind me asking? [01:20:44] Speaker B: I actually, I got it. I got it pre owned, so it's actually a restoration hardware. [01:20:50] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [01:20:51] Speaker B: Desk. [01:20:51] Speaker A: Nice stuff. [01:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's really nice. But yeah, I just, I was looking and somehow just came across there was somebody who was retiring as a judge that never used it. So I ended up buying that. Yeah. And even like here I'll give you another little thing. Like, I've been looking for certain furniture, like night tables and stuff, right? Just for the house and all the stuff. Like it's so expensive nowadays, like everything. And it's not real wood or nothing. [01:21:20] Speaker A: No. And so even my IKEA stuff is real wood. Ironically, it's all pine. [01:21:24] Speaker B: Well, there you go. Like, but yeah, like a lot of this, like it's just MDF or some like, I don't know, it just falls apart as soon as you put it together. So I've been kind of struggling and I didn't want to go and spend like, you know, let's say on just one night table, like a thousand bucks to have some, something decent quality. And so I came across somebody who buys old stuff and refinishes it and it's like for a fraction and like again, it'll probably last us unless we really want. I mean, it's made out of real wood. It's, it's been refinished. It's solid, it's heavy. Right. Like, we could probably keep it forever if we wanted to. But again, these are things that, you know, again, certain things I think you can invest in. I mean, I even look at clothes wise, I'll tell you, like, I had so much stuff and now I've kind of, I go, it's not even just about like price, but I, I buy things that even if they are a little bit more expensive, I know they're going to last to kind of like that cost per use. And usually if it is a little bit more expensive, it looks better and lasts longer. And, and yeah, I mean one thing that I've started doing as I get older too, I think this is the other thing because with fashion things go in and out. But really if you look at, if you keep things simple, like let's say a white shirt, A white shirt is a white shirt and it'll always be timeless. Like so and so now like I have some of these things where I just keep a very like simple stuff. And so like, and one of the things I like is having white shirts. So, you know, I'm trying to find like the right ones where I don't have to go. And I'm very practical. I don't want to go and have to press it and, and you know, iron the thing or whatever and get it all like crisp and stuff. I think I showed you like one, one of my little hacks was even getting like the metal collar stays with the magnets and like it makes a huge Difference because otherwise my collar would be just hanging off or whatever, like something happens, but now it stays in place. And so I think that's probably one of the best tips anyways. Not that it's. Maybe it's that time of the year. You could have Christmas parties and New Year's parties and stuff. Maybe it might be helpful. [01:23:40] Speaker A: So, yeah, buying good. Getting rid of stuff. I was thinking that maybe one thing that you and I could do. I'm going to start going through cables and extra stuff that I have. I was thinking that maybe you and I put together a list. I mean, shoot this down on air if you're willing, because I never warned you about this. I was thinking, you know, between Chris and I, we probably have a bunch of stuff that we either want to sell for cheap or we'd be willing to give away if someone would take it. And I wonder if you and I put together a little blog, like, just a list of things that people can reach out to us if they want it. [01:24:20] Speaker B: I'd be game. I mean, I. You know, it's funny you mentioned, like, cables. Like, Eric, I got, like, two boxes. [01:24:26] Speaker A: I know. I'm in the same boat. I gotta get rid of this stuff. It's a nightmare. [01:24:28] Speaker B: And I. I don't even know how. I, like, I. I don't know what happened, but, like, even, like, HDMI cables, I have so many of them. It's like I don't even have the. I mean, I'll probably need some of them for certain things that I need. Like, I haven't bought the equipment yet, but I don't understand how I accumulated so many. And I don't know, maybe it's because of the. Between, like, us moving stuff out of the office and I have no idea, but it's like nuts. Like, I don't need a dozen HDMI cables. Like, everything's already plugged in. So I don't know how I ended up with this stuff, especially, like, the older cables. Although, you know, sometimes some of those older cables, especially if you're doing, like, audio setups, it might not be a bad thing, but I don't see myself ever using, like, these VGA or, you know, those type of cables ever again. I actually did donate some stuff. I'll tell you. I. I had some in my office. I had, like, some security cameras and stuff. [01:25:26] Speaker A: Yep. [01:25:26] Speaker B: I just. I donated them at. What is it that Restore. Which is a Habitat for Humanities. [01:25:35] Speaker A: Yep. [01:25:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So anyways. But, yeah, certain things. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I. I just have to go through and double check some of this stuff. But I, I am looking at. [01:25:46] Speaker A: The reason I ask is that it might be a good test. So because I have notion for education, I actually get a blog through notion, like a publicly shareable link. And so I was thinking, you know, a good test to see would be to put together just a checklist of stuff like, you know, Eric and Chris's surplus junk or something. We'll put together a name or something and then we'll share it. And then like we could put a price. Best offer. We could put a free. Here you go. And I'll keep track of it and I'll manage it because I'm finding, trying to get rid of stuff other than driving it to donation, sometimes that's helpful, but sometimes they end up throwing it out. So if there's a way to advertise it to people who want it, that might be useful. But again, no pressure. This is something I've been thinking about. I just thought about it like a couple of days ago. Maybe we could try. [01:26:33] Speaker B: No, I think it's a, it's a good experiment and I'm willing to try out stuff. Actually, you know, one thing that I've really. I don't know why I ever did this. Maybe it was like just being used to keeping stuff, but especially when I see people returning all sorts of junk at like Costco, I don't know why I would keep all the boxes of things. [01:26:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm terrible for this. I need to get rid of all these boxes. I do keep the Apple boxes because when I go to resell stuff, it is a good package to hand something to somebody, like the laptop, the iPad. Yeah, I don't want to always give away the case or sometimes I give away both. It's like, here's the original box. It's just because they're so well made. Right. And they kind of everything. So those are the only ones I keep because again, if you want to sell something used, it's a good handoff. But keyboard boxes are the worst because of course they have all the interfolding cardboard. [01:27:23] Speaker B: Oh yeah, totally. Like, yeah. So like stuff like that, I just started tossing. I. I bought some new TVs for this house. I've already got rid of one of the boxes. The other two I was keeping, actually the guy who put them up, he recommended keep them like for three months and then get rid of them. And even if I need to, because I bought the TVs through Costco, I'm sure they, I mean, I, I saw somebody. I don't know if it's real or not, but somebody returned a, you know, one of those big, like, projection TVs like, from 20 years ago. I don't know, I don't know what gets you, like, what kind of thought process. Hey, like, yeah, I have this TV lying around for 20 years. It's been, it's been doing well for me. And hey, I think maybe I should just go down to the store and return it. And they took it, apparently. Like, I, I don't know. Some people just have no shame. But again, yeah, there's. Those boxes take up a lot of space and so I've been slowly getting rid of a bunch of those and just, you know, actually one of the best things. I don't know why I, I would always go and rip like boxes, like tear them apart by hand. But taking a box cutter, like, it's like, very handy. Oh, man, it's like the best thing. It's like my new favorite tool. Like in I, I can put it into like, really small pieces and a really short period of time. I don't know. I think I, I just enjoyed the process of ripping a box, but this is way more efficient. [01:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you've inspired me. I should do that. I have some other stuff I need to get rid of. Yeah, okay. Well, I'll float it by. Or I guess we have our Medium blog. That's untouched. We could do that. We have the website, which. What's the best platform for this? [01:29:08] Speaker B: I mean, we'll, we can figure it out and we can, we don't really. [01:29:11] Speaker A: Blog on the website. I guess we should, should we do the medium anymore? [01:29:15] Speaker B: I don't know either, or. I don't know. Yeah, we'll, we'll figure it out. Yeah, we can do it as an experiment. [01:29:24] Speaker A: It'd be easier to embed the stories and media from media from Medium into WordPress than to blog on WordPress. I think. Yeah, I like Medium. It's simple. Do you agree? Maybe I'm wrong. [01:29:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, I, I, that's one of the reasons why I used it for my. Oh man, I, I should, I don't know how I can share. My tables are ready. [01:29:47] Speaker A: Oh, there you go. [01:29:49] Speaker B: These are the newest, actually. Here, I'll show you the pictures. But they're, yeah, they're. The person's refinished them over these cold days and. Wait, where did I have it? I'll, I'll show you the pictures. I'm just gonna air, air drop them over here. [01:30:10] Speaker A: Well, while you're doing that, I think that we've probably covered everything that we're going to cover, so perhaps we will wrap up this episode. So where can people find you, Chris, if they want to get in touch with you? [01:30:23] Speaker B: Yeah, so they can find me on my website is chrishon's ca So K R I S H A N S CA and all my contact details are on there. [01:30:37] Speaker A: And I'm Eric Christensen, and you can reach [email protected] and that has my blog, and it links to my portfolio and my podcast, this podcast, publications, presentations, contact information, and everything. So we will forward people to that. But it's a pleasure chatting with you today and always. I'll see you in the new year, I guess. [01:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [01:31:01] Speaker A: Take care. [01:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, you too.