In the News

131: Super Vision, Epic Denial, and Final Cut Gore

Episode 131

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https://youtu.be/lzCdyOCn9Rc

In the News blog post for January 19, 2024:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2024/01/in-the-news710.html

00:00 Superior Pre-Vision
26:15 Stolen Device Awareness
28:53 An Order of Magnitude Slower than Technology
35:35 MagGo MagPower
39:32 Final Cut Gore
41:14 Solid Market Share
43:23 Where Y’at? Segment - SUV - Surprisingly Unavailable Vehicle!
46:18 For All Schmigadoon!
49:45 Brett’s Gadget: Ember Smart Travel Mug 2+
51:47 Jeff’s Even More Info & Tips on Apple Vision Pro

Chance Miller | 9to5Mac: Apple Vision Pro: EyeSight, comfort, and more impressions from my latest demo

John-Anthony Disotto | iMore: Every 3D film you can watch on Apple Vision Pro at launch — from Avatar: The Way of Water to Avengers: Endgame

Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: iOS 17.3 and macOS 14.3 RC now available ahead of official launch next week [Release notes]

John Gruber | Daring Fireball: iOS 17.3, Now in Beta, Includes New ‘Stolen Device Protection’ Feature

John Voorhees | MacStories: What’s Next for Apple and Epic’s Legal Disputes?

Rikka Altland | 9to5Toys: Tested: Anker’s first 3-in-1 Qi2 charger packs 15W MagSafe into an ultra-compact design

John Gruber | Daring Fireball: Al Gore, Mac Nerd and Internet Pioneer

Ed Hardy | Cult of Mac: iPhone grabs top spot in global phone market for the first time

Thomas Daigle | CBC News: SUV stolen from Toronto driveway shows up 50 days later — and 11,000 km away

Apple: A Guided Tour of Apple Vision Pro

Brett’s Gadget: FindMy Coffee (Ember Smart Travel Mug 2+)

Jeff’s Tip: Even more info on Apple Vision Pro. Tech Specs. Apple Vision Pro Guided Tour 

Support the show

Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for January 19th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey Brett.

- Hey Jeff.

Happy Apple Vision Pro pre-order day.

- Indeed.

- You did it this morning, right?

Did it happen this morning?

Please tell us.

- Yes.

You know how when you purchase something

with an Apple credit card,

you get 3% back on your purchases?

Let's just say that.

I got a lot of money back today

is the good way to look at it.

The bad way to look at it

is that I had to spend quite a bit of money.

But yes, I did the pre-order process this morning

and I have a lot to say about it.

Because we now know so much more than we knew before.

You know, before today,

I just had a ton of questions about the Apple Vision Pro

and Apple did not provide us a lot of information

until this morning when the pre-orders went live.

So first of all, for the first time we learned today

that there's three sizes for the Apple Vision Pro.

There's the entry level 256,

but then if you want to have 512 megabytes,

that's an extra $200.

And if you want to go up to one terabyte,

that's another $200.

I went for the entry level one.

I figured the entry level will be fine.

The big question is probably,

do you wanna store things on it,

download lots of videos,

and stuff like that.

Hopefully 256 is enough for me.

We'll see.

- I have no idea,

but this is just a brand new product.

- Yeah, who knows right now.

(laughing)

- The one thing that I had-

- Okay, so we got that.

Okay.

- The one thing I had so many questions about, Brett,

was glasses.

Because Apple says that you really-

- Exactly.

- They say you should not wear your glasses

with an Apple Vision Pro.

If you wear contact lenses,

you can wear those with one exception that we learned today.

The new exception is if you wear hard contact lenses.

- Oh.

- Apple said that one of the,

part of the magic of Apple Vision Pro

is that the device can see where you are looking,

which is critical.

So that you're basically,

your eyes become your cursor.

- Right.

- And Apple warns that if you have hard contact lenses,

that feature may not work,

which is a pretty big problem.

So that's something to keep in mind.

If you just wear glasses like I do,

what Apple says is you want to get inserts.

And you can use,

if you just have reader glasses,

then you can get that for $100.

But for an actual prescription,

it costs $150.

They purchased from a company called Zeiss,

which is an excellent optical company.

- Yes, of course.

- Very, very well known.

But I had so many questions about how this would work.

And it worked pretty seamless.

When I purchased it this morning,

I said, I want to get prescription lenses.

And so Apple said, okay, that's an extra 150.

And then after I finished my entire purchase process,

after I paid money,

then it sent me to a screen to say,

now you can start the process

of dealing with the prescription.

And what I had to do,

you have to have a valid prescription.

In the United States,

prescriptions are valid for one year.

I had an issue that I knew about a week or two ago,

because although I do go to the eye doctor every year,

I went last year, like a year ago on Tuesday.

So as I'm talking to you today,

my prescription was expired by only three days.

I'm like, oh, no.

So I mean, I was going to see my eye doctor anyway.

I made an appointment for this past Wednesday.

So I went to go see him two days ago.

I got my prescription,

which he actually did speak a little bit.

So I planned for it.

So fortunately I had my brand new prescription ready to go,

but keep that in mind that prescriptions

have an expiration date on them.

And if yours doesn't have, you know, if it's prescribed,

you will not be able to use this.

So I had my new prescription.

And what it said is, you know, click this button

and you can upload your prescription

or you can take a picture of it and give it to them.

But then I was still a little nervous, Brett,

because I know that I have pretty poor vision.

I have very, you know, my glasses are very powerful.

Without my glasses, I can't see very well at all.

And so I was afraid, is it possible

that because I am blind as a bat,

that my prescriptions going to be too powerful?

I was also concerned because I wear progressive lenses.

I had no idea if that would have anything to do with this.

So here's what I learned.

Progressive lenses don't matter at all.

That's fine.

They're okay with that. - Okay, great.

- When you look at your glasses prescription,

it has all these little columns of things

that I don't really understand,

but you know, somebody that knows optical stuff would know.

But if you have something called a prism, a prism value,

then you cannot use prescription lenses.

Now, what is a prism value?

I had to look that up today.

And that is for people that have certain eye conditions

that basically cause double vision.

There's a certain type of glasses you can buy

that use prisms in there to redirect the light

so that instead of you sort of seeing things double,

it redirects it so that you see it single.

That's not an eye condition that I have,

but if you do have that eye condition

you probably know if you have that eye condition.

- Yeah, right. - And that's something.

But otherwise it was fine.

And in fact, even after I ordered it,

I have since found that there's a page on Apple's website

which has all the information about the optical stuff.

In fact, this is right here. - Oh, here you go.

- You're showing on the screen. - Yeah, yeah.

- And there's actually a place where they will link you

to the ZEISS website and you can actually type in

your prescription numbers and they will tell you

right then and there, - Oh my goodness.

- is your prescription okay?

And so I did that just before we started recording today,

Brett, I actually typed in the numbers

and ZEISS said, "Big thumbs up, I'm totally fine."

So I was good to know. - Nice.

- Yeah, you're showing it right now.

So you can double check yourself. - Interesting, okay.

- If you have your prescription and you think,

"Wow, maybe there's something funky about my prescription,"

go ahead and just type in your numbers.

But again, I thought that I was on the edge

and it turns out that I was fine.

So hopefully the same is true for anyone out there

who wants to order it.

- Just the amount of planning,

like this is a specific page on the ZEISS website,

"Eyeglass Prescription Guide for ZEISS Optical Inserts

for Apple Vision Pro."

- Yeah, yeah. - Like,

it's not like Apple hasn't done this in the past, right?

We know that, but I mean,

like they've been talking about this for months and months

and they have this website, good to, I love this.

I love the fact that you can go

and check out your prescription beforehand, that's great.

- I'll say one last thing about the prescription.

If you have, through the place that you work,

some people have something called a flexible spending account

or a health savings account, - Right, right.

- which basically means, like we have it in my office,

at the end of a calendar year, I can say,

"Okay, next year, I want you to take out, you know,

$1,000 from my salary and hold that

for certain medical expenses."

Apple says on its FAQ that this may actually be eligible

for it, depending upon your plan.

Now, I didn't know that. - Ooh.

- If I did, I would have. - Okay, hello.

- It's only 150,

you're basically saving the pre-tax value of it.

But if you have one of those plans,

you might want to look into it.

I mean, if you're going to spend the money anyway,

you might as well spend the 150.

- Absolutely.

- Pre-tax instead of post-tax.

Okay, so the next thing that I learned

when I was ordering this morning,

was that when it gets to the point of delivery,

what they told me, Brett, was that I could pick it up

at my local Apple store, or they would deliver it to me.

You know how Apple has this service?

That they will deliver things directly to you, express.

And it gave me the option of doing it.

And I actually did parenthetically think it might be funny

if you and I were recording the podcast

and like a courier showed up with the Apple Vision Pro.

- We've done that before, right?

- We have done that before.

But I actually decided, it specifically says,

Apple recommends that you go to the Apple store.

And so what I did is I made an appointment.

So this was part of my buying process.

For me personally, I selected the very first appointment

that I could see, which was 8.30 AM,

which is before the store even opens here in New Orleans.

- Nice.

- And so I will be there at 8.30.

And the reason that I thought it made sense is the,

you know, there's all these different bands on it

that sort of, there's something called a light seal.

So like there's the hardware part, right?

- Yeah, I'm looking at this.

- But then right behind the hardware part,

there's this gray thing that looks to be

about an inch or two thick.

And it is actually what covers the front and the back.

It's sort of the goggle part.

And that light seal comes in many different sizes.

It looked to me like it actually comes

in like 28 different sizes,

but I just saw something this morning

that was written by Dan Morin over at Six Colors.

And he said that it actually comes in four sizes

that Apple calls N, which I'm guessing is normal,

N plus, W, which I'm guessing is wide, and W plus.

So whether there's four sizes or 20 sizes,

suffice it to say, now when I actually purchased it,

I had to use my iPhone and I had to move my head around

just like I was doing with those face scans.

And it was supposed to guess, you know,

the size of my face based upon that.

But I'm glad that I'm going to an Apple store

because that way somebody can double check.

And if for some reason it guessed it wrong,

I'm sure they'll have the other sizes there.

- I was gonna say, right, they'll have a box of these,

right, so like if one doesn't fit

and I mean, to me, that's the better way to go.

So quickly, can I just ask on this?

Did you like have to measure your head

to like get the size of the strap?

Okay, because it's adjustable, right?

- Yeah, all it did, it was just like the face ID thing.

You did the circle once and it said, great.

Let's do it a second time.

I did the circle a second time, it said, great.

And it was done.

How accurate is that?

You know, time will tell, we'll see.

But that's how they did it.

- Okay.

- So then the last decision I had to make

was what accessories to get.

And this was something I actually

did not even think about beforehand.

I was like, wow, I didn't even think.

You're spending so much money on this thing.

And it does come with a number of things.

Like it comes, for example,

with a little cover for the lenses

so that when you're not using it,

you can always protect the front part.

That comes for free, you know, free.

- Okay.

- You're paying 3,500 bucks.

- That's nice.

- That comes for free.

And it comes with two different straps

that hold it on your head.

But the ones that jumped out at me

that look like accessories

that some people might wanna consider

is first of all, you can get an extra battery for 200 bucks.

Remember that when you are using this thing on a battery,

it's got a cord that goes down to a battery

and the battery lasts about two hours.

And so if you want to have like a long time to use it,

like on a plane ride, for example,

that's gonna be maybe more than two hours,

I guess you could take a second battery with you

and you can get your first two hours on the first battery

and the second two hours on the other battery.

I did not buy an extra battery.

I guess I could go and buy one later if I wanted to,

but those are 200 bucks.

- I would think so, yeah.

- So that's something to consider.

Although, but frankly, even if I'm on a plane,

you can plug the battery into power.

So it seems like that would make more sense.

It's like, you know,

you don't usually have a power jack in your seat.

So just plug it in.

Belkin makes something,

I think we talked about this last week

called the battery holder.

If you wanted to clip that battery on you,

I did not purchase that,

but that's 50 bucks if you wanted to get it.

- Oh, interesting, okay.

- But then there's something that I did purchase.

Apple sells the Apple Vision Pro travel case,

which is sort of a big hard case

that gives you a place to put everything in it.

And even though I don't know

that I'm gonna travel that much,

it occurred to me that, you know,

I probably wanna have a case

to sort of keep this thing safe.

And although I'm sure third parties will sell cases

that are less expensive because the Apple one is $200.

And Apple is always historically overpriced in their cases.

As I think through history, Brett,

I mean, I remember 25 years ago,

spending $100 for a leather iPod case

that I know was overpriced, but I enjoyed it.

And I was happy to have it.

- You loved it, right.

- And you know, over the time,

something like this, you know,

like that was the one that I'm like,

you know, I've spent this much money.

Why not get the official case

that you know is gonna be the right size.

It's gonna give me some protection.

- It fits, it's nice.

It's gonna last, it's Apple.

I mean, they are expensive, but they do last.

- Yep, so that was $200.

And then another question, this is not really an accessory,

but Apple said, do you wanna get AppleCare for this thing?

And I'm like, I didn't even think about that.

And then Apple said, that will be $500 for AppleCare.

And I'm like, you know what?

- Hello.

- I know this is expensive and I know that if I drop it,

it's gonna be ridiculously expensive to fix, but for me,

I did not get the AppleCare Plus.

- Whoa, okay, hello.

- If I regret these words in the future,

then I don't know what to say, but I did not get AppleCare.

- Yeah, yeah, okay.

- Two other things that I saw that are not really accessories

that are just sort of tips that I saw

when I was purchasing it.

Apple has like some FAQs.

One of them is, the question is,

can you share an Apple Vision Pro with somebody else?

And Apple's answer is, yes, you can.

But they say that that person may need a different light band

and a different light seal.

And by the way, Apple sells those light bands,

they are not cheap.

The light bands are $200.

And I think the light band comes with the seal,

but if you needed to buy a seal separately, that's 30 bucks.

So like if you and your spouse wanted to share one,

first of all, if they have a different prescription,

you'll have to get that for them.

And then second of all,

they might have a different light band,

but at least the main part of the thing

you can actually share.

Another thing I didn't mention

about the prescription eyeglasses is when you purchase them,

Zeiss says for no additional fee,

and they claim that it will not delay your order,

so I did it,

you can etch your name or initials onto the lenses.

And the reason that Zeiss recommended this is like,

if you're ever around somebody else that has lenses

and you're switching lenses,

that way you could actually look at the lens

and see which one is yours.

And so I figured since they claimed on the website,

it wasn't gonna delay delivery.

Again, not that I was gonna be around lots of people,

I may never take my lenses out, but I figured why not.

So I just put Jeff in there, J-E-F-F,

and so that was my engraving on it.

- Okay, can I just ask real quick on this?

So these Zeiss things, they're actually inserts

that go inside, okay, I just wanted to-

- It's a magnetic lens.

- I think I knew that at one point.

Okay, a magnetic lens, okay.

- There's a lot of magnets in this thing

because the light shield,

the light seal attaches with magnets,

the light seal cushion attaches with magnets,

the light seal, the insert lenses attach with magnets.

So there's a whole lot of magnets in this thing.

And then the last thing I was gonna mention

was that from the FAQ, it says that if you are on an airplane

which we mentioned before, it says,

and I'm just gonna read this,

on the airplane, customers can turn on travel mode,

I guess sort of like airplane mode,

which adapts an Apple Vision Pro

to the unique motion of commercial air travel

to give you the best experience.

What in the world does that mean, Brad?

- Whoa. - Adjust to the unique motion.

- What? - And then they go on

to say that of course you can turn on an environment

and you can sit back and enjoy your movie,

but I don't even know what that means,

but whatever it means to adjust to the unique motion

of commercial air travel, I guess I have that function.

That was part of my $3,500 to get that feature.

So I'll be curious to try that out.

- It's like virtual shock absorbers, I guess.

- Exactly, that's what I was thinking.

- Maybe, maybe. (laughs)

That's amazing.

Okay, a couple of questions real quick

because this has been fascinating,

just living vicariously through your pre-order here.

So both of these, like there's two bands on this, right?

The first one is the one that everybody's seen,

the big one that's like fat in the back, right?

- This goes around the back of your head.

- That's the Solo Knit Band, correct?

That's what that one's called here.

- Correct. - But then it also comes

with a Dual Loop Band.

So in other words, it's one or the other, right?

You decide which one is gonna work best for you.

- And from what I have learned

from just reading some reviews from other people,

that although, and you described it well,

that the regular band looks good

because it just goes around the back of your head,

but after extended wear, depending upon your head size

and everything else, you may find

that the glasses get a little heavy and start to sag down.

The Dual Loop Band has not only does it go,

the dual is the two parts,

not only does the man go around the back of your head,

it also goes over the top of your head.

- Right. - So it's got

some additional support. - I remember talking

about that. - So it would not surprise me.

I mean, I might decide that I'm gonna use,

there's the Dual Loop Band.

I might decide that I'm gonna use the Dual Loop Band

100% of the time, just because it's more comfortable

to have something over the top of my head.

I have no idea. - Right.

- But again, I have nothing of a hairstyle.

If you've got like poofy hair,

you might decide that you don't want,

Brett, you do not have that problem, by the way.

- Exactly. (both laughing)

- But if somebody has like a big poofy hair,

they may decide that they really don't like that thing

going over the top of their head.

So that's just gonna be another personal preference

that you have.

- I gotta tell you, just looking at these quickly together,

like that Dual Loop Band looks so medical to me.

- Yeah, it does almost. - Versus that,

yeah, versus the Solo Nip Band.

And then you lead to another review just quickly,

which we can get into a little bit more in here,

but this is Chance Miller from 9to5Mac.

And I think I like it because it looks like

it's like real life pictures of somebody wearing

the Vision Pro.

My first thought when I looked at Chance Miller,

who's not a small man, that, wow,

that Vision Pro looks really small on his face.

But he actually talks about the fact

when he looked at these pictures,

it was apparently Apple executives,

or the PR folks taking pictures of him wearing this.

And it's like, he goes,

"You notice my hair is like poofing up."

I don't know, it just, to me, this was like

one of the first times that I'm seeing somebody

like wear this in the wild, even though it's a picture,

but it was just kind of interesting

to see how this was gonna look on there.

But that just goes to your point.

Yeah, with a solo knit band,

he was talking about how it fit

and he had to make sure that it fit on there,

but this was a good review.

We can get into this as well.

- I'm gonna mention something about the picture

that you're showing.

You see how on the front of the Apple Vision Pro,

when you're looking at somebody wearing it,

you see how you see that blue over his eyes?

- Yes.

- So apparently the way that this works,

and we got a preview of this last year,

but the Apple Vision Pro has these different modes.

And so if you're in the mode where you're looking

at another person,

it will actually show your own eyes on there.

It's not literally showing your eyes,

it's showing a reproduction of your eyes.

And we'll see how freaky this looks

if it's the uncanny valley effect.

But the idea is that a person looking at you,

they can see your eyes, they can see if you blink,

they'll see you blink.

If you move your eyes left and right,

they will see something that looks like the same way.

And so it gives the illusion

that you're actually looking through the lenses at them.

But when you're watching something in the Apple Vision Pro

that changes more from an augmented reality

to a virtual reality,

like there's a screen in front of your eyes

or something like that,

then the person that's looking at you

does not see your eyeballs.

They see something like this sort of blue,

hazy sort of thing.

And so it's a visual representation

to somebody looking at you.

They can see, right?

You know, that person can look at you and see,

is that, you know,

is the person wearing the Apple Vision Pro looking at me

or are they looking at something else?

Another thing that I saw linked somewhere,

and it may have actually been in the chances review

that you're talking about,

is that if I'm wearing an Apple Vision Pro

and I start to take pictures or video,

the front of the lens actually changed,

the front of the goggles actually changes

to show like a lens sort of thing.

I don't know exactly what the picture looks like,

but something that sort of looks like a camera lens.

And so that's a visual indication

to people that are looking at you

that you're taking a picture

or that you're taking a video.

- That's great.

Yeah, this review I just thought was really good.

So apparently, again,

Apple invited several journalists to New York, right?

I think that's what he said in here.

And it was just a chance for them

to like get some additional hands on.

We don't have any reviews from the wild necessarily,

but I just thought this was really good.

That chance was like getting into some of the practical

things that you and I have been asking about

or wondering about, like how is this going to,

I mean, one of the first things at the very top here

was like, right off the bat, he's like, it's heavy.

Like, this is heavy.

Like when you pick it up, he said, it feels heavy.

When you put it on your head for the first time,

it feels heavy.

But then he did say right after maybe a couple of minutes

or so, once it's on, you just kind of get used to it.

And I think it's just that your brain kind of gets

into the flow of like where you are and what it's looking at.

But this was just really good review.

I'll make sure we link it in the show notes as well,

because it was just really interesting

to hear him talk about that.

And even just as he's seeing some of the other components

of the videos, and even one thing that just struck me

and quickly in this review was like,

you see people like with their hands,

like doing the tapping like up in the air,

but he's like, no, you can just leave your hands

like in your lap, right?

And on your knee.

And it works out just fine on this.

So good review here in nine to five Mac for sure.

- He's also showing off in here that the,

some companies like Disney have a special app

for the Apple Vision Pro.

And one of the things that Disney app is offering is,

imagine you're watching a movie,

instead of just watching the movie fill in your screen,

it might be cool if you could feel like you're

in some theater or some interesting environment.

And so Apple itself has some built-in environments.

So if you want to pretend like you're watching a movie

on the beach or on a mountain top,

but third parties can do this too.

And so what Disney has, for example,

is one of their environments is it looks,

if you look all around you,

it looks as if you are sitting in the,

what's called the land speed or whatever

in Star Wars on Tatooine.

And so you could be watching like the Mandalorian

or a Star Wars movie and you're in,

so your screen is showing the movie,

but if you look above or around the screen and around you,

you're actually on Tatooine,

which is sort of a fun way environment.

And Disney also has through their app,

if you're watching one of their movies through their app,

they have an environment that's called the Disney theater.

So it looks this way,

like this really nice theater just around you.

So it's just sort of an added thing that not only

are you watching a screen size

that can be whatever size you want,

you could make it the biggest screen,

like the biggest IMAX type movie theater experience,

but you can truly add to the movie theater experience

by having what looks like a movie theater around you.

- Okay, well, Jeff, you just mentioned like Disney Plus

and I mean, I think one of the things

that we're all looking forward to is the content,

especially 3D like movie content

that's gonna be on the Vision Pro,

which is why when I saw this story you linked to today,

that Netflix is not going to put their app on the Vision Pro

at least not yet, not at the beginning.

I guess I was just a little flabbergasted.

I would think to myself, it's like,

this is one of the big things

that everybody's looking for the Vision Pro.

How can a company like Netflix not be there?

Now you did have another story.

I think HBO Max or the Max app is gonna be available

on the Vision Pro at the beginning, but Netflix is not.

Hmm, just interesting.

And then immediately the second second,

in the second second I read this headline,

I'm thinking, well, just not yet.

I mean, how can you not, right?

Maybe they're just kind of holding back

and waiting to see what's gonna happen exactly.

- I think that's right, but it's not even just Netflix.

We also learned this morning

that YouTube is taking the same approach.

And it doesn't mean that you can't watch Netflix

on YouTube on the Vision Pro.

You can, but you'll watch it in a web browser.

So you can still make the web browser really big

and do that sort of stuff.

But the big thing that you can't do is download a video

to watch it, for example, on a plane.

I guess you could watch it on a plane

if you got enough bandwidth for it.

But no, but the question for me, Brett,

is why did they do that?

I mean, we know that for this first year,

very, very few of these units relatively

are gonna be sold.

And so it's not like they're giving up a lot of market

and maybe they just wanna get back.

- I think a lot of companies,

yeah, I think a lot of companies are gun shy about Apple

because they know that Apple's the big gorilla

and maybe they can try to cut some deal where Apple gets.

I just think that they're being cautious.

Some people are enthusiastic like HBO, Max and Disney,

but other companies,

and are they making the right decision

or the wrong decision?

Who knows?

Well, time will tell, we'll see.

- Another link that you had was literally,

every 3D film you can watch on Apple Vision Pro at launch,

which is great.

'Cause I'm expecting on February 2nd, my friend,

you're gonna be at least spinning up some of these movies.

I'm very excited about "The Dune."

I'm very excited about "Dune II" coming out,

but I mean, that's gonna look great.

There's a "Cirque du Soleil,"

there's "Avatar," of course, "Jurassic World."

I mean, these have to be just amazing.

Like, I mean, I just can't wait to see

what these things look like,

you know, on a huge screen in the Vision Pro.

I was listening to another podcast this week.

I think it was, I think it was the Mac,

oh, it's the one on the Twitnetwork

with Alex Lindsay and all of them.

- Oh, "MacBreak Weekly."

- Yeah, "MacBreak Weekly," thank you.

And "MacBreak Weekly," Alex Lindsay was pointing out

that over the last decade or so,

there's been sort of two types of 3D movies.

There have been a very small number from directors

that really try to do 3D right.

And that includes, for example, "Avatar" and "Dune"

and those sorts of ones.

And then there's a whole bunch of them

where they actually film it in 2D,

and then later they just sort of add an extra plane

that yes, it's in 3D, but it's not a huge effect.

And so some of these movies are gonna be the latter.

In fact, most of them will.

But for the movies that were actually done

with a lot of care,

and I think "Avatar" is a perfect example of that,

the second "Avatar" movie, which I have not seen yet.

I will probably go ahead

and either purchase or rent that one

because something that was really made for 3D

and these goggles that are really made to show 3D

as amazing as possible,

I think that could be a really cool experience.

So that'll be interesting to see.

So far, I've been one of these people, Bret,

that's not really a fan of 3D.

If I'm going to the movie theater and I have a choice,

I don't see the 3D version

because it's usually brighter and stuff like that.

But the Apple Vision Pro might be the exception

that finally gets me to say,

this is the one environment in which 3D is really worth it.

Or maybe not, I don't know.

I can't wait to find out.

- Yeah, we don't know, right.

Oh my goodness.

Well, I wanna find out in two weeks.

(laughing)

You are gonna have it in two weeks on February 2nd.

I just love the fact that, you know, I've done this before.

I can't remember what the product was.

It may have been one of my iPhones several years ago

that pretty much all the Apple stores across the country

open at 10 a.m., right, whatever the local time is.

But if you have some kind of a pre-order,

then you can, I've only got it at around nine o'clock.

- Oh, okay.

- And I've been able to go in and get it.

But the fact that you got an 8.30 appointment,

I just think that that's gonna be great.

And you know, I think you and I

have either talked about this

or we've seen the headlines.

Like Apple apparently has been training

several of the store managers and employees

across the country, right,

to get everybody up to speed on how to set everybody up

and make sure that they're accommodated on launch day.

I don't know, just really excited.

And hopefully, hopefully, right,

in the next two weeks, Jeff,

we would expect that some of our favorite technology

reviewers will actually get a version, right?

I mean, they'll get a product.

Apple is very good typically about sending these out early.

And, you know, we'll see some YouTube videos.

In other words, by the time that you get it,

we should have a very good idea

of even maybe some more of these answers

being answered, questions that we have, you know,

and just to kind of understand maybe generally

how it's going to be, how it's going to be accepted.

Just so excited, I love it.

- Yeah, it's a brand new platform.

I mean, it's not very often in real life time

that you get to see Apple introduce a new platform, so.

- Well, the iPhone is not a brand new platform

and thank goodness,

because it just continues to get more mature.

And just quickly, I think you started off your post today,

Jeff, with something that we have been talking about,

stolen iPhones, right?

And the fact that once they get a stolen iPhone,

people can get access to your passcode

and it really all hits the fan at that point.

It really can.

I mean, it's just fantastic.

Joanna Stern and her colleagues at the Wall Street Journal

have been reporting on this

and that's what we have been referencing.

And finally, now it looks like with 17.3,

iOS 17.3, which we're thinking maybe out

in the next week or so, is gonna be available.

And it's going to have some protections

against these stolen iPhones, stolen Apple devices.

And that's just great.

I know we're both happy about this.

We just wish it would have happened a little sooner.

- Yeah, I expect this to come out probably Tuesday

or Wednesday of next week.

When you get it, it will not be on by default,

but I encourage you to go in wherever it's located.

It's called Stolen Device Protection.

And if you turn on Stolen Device Protection,

what it means is it makes it a little bit harder

to change your password.

If you try to do it, it will say, okay, let's check now.

Let me do a face ID.

I'm gonna wait about an hour before I let it happen.

Apple has a series of things that they are doing

to add protection so that if somebody was to steal

your iPhone and try to immediately change your password,

you would still have some time

once you figure out the theft has happened

to protect yourself.

And the person that's changing,

so it will slow things down if you are the true owner

of the iPhone and you're trying to change your password.

But I think it's worth it to also put an extra barrier

that might be the difference between the bad guys

taking over your iPhone and not.

So I'm glad to see it.

- Yeah, I feel like that this is a no-brainer.

Make sure you have this turned on.

Although, John Gruber is always very good to point out

some, not necessarily contrarian views,

but other considerations out here, right?

He had an old iPhone that hasn't left his house

and he tried to change the iCloud password

and it made him wait an hour or something like that, right?

Where it'll just be interesting to kind of see

and hopefully over the time that Apple

will kind of learn from this,

that it's like, "Hey, yeah, this phone hasn't moved.

"It's okay.

"We can let them change their iCloud password."

Versus if I'm traveling across the country,

I'm in Los Angeles, it's like,

"Wait, this isn't where Brett usually is.

"It's weird that it's in that location.

"So maybe we'll just require a little bit of a delay

"before we allow any changes on that."

Anyway, I think this is as good as it's gonna get right now

and hopefully Apple will continue

to learn from this on there.

- Agreed.

- Good stuff on that.

All right, let's talk about some lawsuits

that include Apple.

Just real quick, we don't spend a lot of time on this,

but I was actually talking to my son

who has been a Fortnite player

and we actually played together.

And back in the day, Jeff, he would play on the Xbox

and guess what I would play on?

I would play on my iPad.

And it worked out great.

And then a little time after that, Epic decided,

"You know, we don't like the way

"that Apple's kind of doing their store.

"So we're just gonna bring a lawsuit against them."

I think that was in 2020, right?

So it wasn't too far.

Anyway, we reported on this a little bit

and it's gone through all the normal machinations

in the legal proceedings.

And finally, Epic was continuing

to not get the ruling that they wanted.

And so they appealed to the Supreme Court, right?

And you linked to a good story in Mac's stories

from John Voorhees that they didn't really get,

and basically the Supreme Court,

as they want to do many times,

it's like, "Yeah, you know what?

"We'll pass on this.

"And yeah, we'll see how this goes."

Although I think you mentioned John Gruber

or somebody saying, "It just really means

"that the Fortnite game or the app

"will probably never come back to the iPad."

- Yeah, when I think about back when it was available

on the iPad and the Mac,

and my kids used to play it all the time

and often ask me, "Dad, can you please,

"can I have $5 or $10 to buy a banana costume

"or something like that?" - Oh, V-Bucks.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. - All those V-Bucks.

- You gotta get the V-Bucks.

Oh yes. - Epic, I am positive,

especially around the holidays.

Epic could have gotten a lot of money

out of the Richardson household

if they had not started this battle with Apple.

But whatever, for the most part, Epic lost.

The one small part of the lawsuit that they did win

is that Apple has to allow people

that sell digital goods like this,

things that are just like a head-in,

that if you want to not have it as an in-app purchase,

if you want to instead send someone to your own website

to pay for it on your website, you can do that.

And there's all these scary warnings

that come up when you do it,

that you're leaving the Apple protected garden

and you're going somewhere else.

And also, Apple has not made it very favorable

because Apple says that if you still go

to somebody else's website,

instead of paying 30% of the price to Apple,

you pay, what is it, 27%?

So it's like, you're not even really making

that much money by going,

and plus you got to handle all the credit card

processing fees on your own.

So I'm sure some people will find it worthwhile

to use this system, others will not.

It was the most narrow victory that Epic can win,

but because Apple won the rest of the antitrust lawsuit,

they have a court order that Epic's going to have to pay

Apple some, what, $75 million for their attorney's fees

and stuff. - Yeah, 73.

- So Epic did not really accomplish

very much in the lawsuit. - That's a good day's work there.

- But it's interesting to see what happened.

Another lawsuit that I got to tell you

even got the attention of my wife

because she loves her oxygen sensor in her Apple Watch.

And we reported on this a couple of weeks ago or so

that Apple had to temporarily stop selling the Apple Watch 9

and what, the Ultra 2, I believe,

because it had this oxygen sensor,

which another company claimed they had the patent to, right?

And so it sounds like, well,

I'll let you explain it a little bit here.

You're an appellate lawyer,

so you kind of understand a little bit more, I think,

of exactly, they can still sell it,

but not with the oxygen sensor,

but you could try to find it maybe like on Amazon

or somewhere else that they don't,

aren't restricted from selling it, right?

Is that halfway correct, Jeff?

- The lower court ruling is that Apple cannot import

anything, any Apple Watch that has this feature enabled.

And so what Apple is apparently doing,

and Apple asked the appellate court to stay that

while the appeal is pending.

And although they did do so for a couple of days

to sort of give them time to brief the issue,

the appellate court has decided,

no, we're not going to have this be stayed

pending the appeal.

So the appeal process itself will take a couple of months,

but during the appeal process,

Apple cannot sell an Apple Watch

that has the blood oxygen detection enabled.

And so what apparently Apple's going to do is,

it sounds like Apple's going to sell the exact same device.

They're not going to go back and change the hardware

that would probably be really expensive,

but through a software update,

they're just turning off the feature for new sales.

Now, if you have a current one,

whether it be an Apple Watch 9 or an 8 or a 7,

any model Apple Watch that has blood oxygen sensor,

if you already own it,

that function is going to continue to work.

- You're fine.

- All that they have is a ban on new imports

during this period of time.

And then when the appeal is over in a few months,

if Apple wins,

you got to presume that they're going to issue

a new software update, which turns it back on again.

Or if Apple loses,

then you have to think that Apple and Massimo

will try to settle it and reach some understanding

and who knows, I don't know.

We'll see what happens.

- Wow.

Just what a mess.

- It is a mess.

- Because I mean, because I only,

nothing against Massimo or Apple or anything,

but it's just like, man,

this is great technology that we,

I mean, I definitely want to see the Apple Watch

just continue to be available from the aspect

of all of the potential health components on there.

I've always thought that this is really more

of a health device than anything else.

And I absolutely love my Apple Watch

and so does the entire family.

And we use it, right?

From the sleep aspect of it,

from the running, from the steps,

anyway, just good stuff.

And I hope finally, hopefully it'll get ironed out there.

- I will say, Brett,

that of all the health features on my Apple Watch though,

I have to admit blood oxygen detection,

every once in a while I'll do it just sort of as a gimmick.

It's not something I do regularly.

I thought about it a lot at the beginning of COVID

because people used to say that your blood oxygen

was sort of a indication of whether,

but so I was using it more a couple of years ago.

But like, if you ask me how many months has it been

since the last time I've used it,

I mean, maybe six months, you know, it's been a long time.

- I'm trying to remember exactly.

I said that my wife uses this

and I believe it's because she's been tracking her sleep

a lot better, right?

So we haven't had any other sleep trackers.

In fact, she was gonna do a sleep study just to see,

you know, testing from a sleep apnea kind of an aspect.

Right?

I mean, she's mostly fine.

It's just, she wanted to make sure like,

was there anything, 'cause her father had it,

that kind of a thing.

And so this specifically, I know she checks every morning.

- This has some relevance to it, yeah.

I didn't realize that this had relevance to sleep apnea.

- It does, exactly.

Yeah, and so I'm just trying to think like,

that's where I believe that she's doing it.

And I think it's involved in like in the morning,

she wants to know, did your oxygen level drop?

And by the way, we should put in the same disclaimer.

It's like, you know, Apple doesn't sell this

as a sleep tracker.

And there's all kinds of disclaimers of like, you know,

this isn't gonna be completely true.

And the same thing would be for the blood oxygen level.

And of course they just have to say that

because of lawyers more than anything else.

But the fact is, is that we're wearing it already, right?

It's something, it's better than nothing, I guess,

is the way that I look at it.

And while the sleep tracking may not be a hundred percent,

it's good enough for the things that I might be looking at

or somebody like, you know, my wife on that.

So good stuff on that.

Another gadget that we have talked about quite a bit,

here, let me find it down here

'cause I know we talked about it,

is the Anker, is it called the Cube, the MagSafe Cube,

or exactly what Anker calls that?

I can't remember.

You've got it probably sitting on your desk right there.

- Yeah, the Anker 3-in-1 Cube.

It's literally right below your face on my monitor.

I'm looking at it right now and I love it

'cause it's a small little device,

charges all of my stuff, it's great.

- I didn't get it yet.

- It's $150 is what at least the retail price is.

But I know we talked about this last week, I believe.

Anker now has a Qi 2 charger pack,

which just means that it can be a little bit more powerful.

And they call this the MagGo 3-in-1 charging station,

I believe.

I might have to actually get this, Jeff,

because I travel with the MagSafe Duo.

Isn't that the thing from Apple, right?

That they stopped selling

because it was lightning plug on there.

But I loved it 'cause I could charge my phone

and my watch at the same time.

- And this Anker device looks really, really good.

- The main thing that I wanted people to know

is if you want high-speed wireless charging for your iPhone,

Apple's technology is called MagSafe.

So if you see something that says it's got MagSafe,

you know it's the Apple approved technology.

- They got it licensed, right.

- But now Qi, which is spelled Q-I, of course,

the Qi 2, so Qi and the number two,

something that is Qi 2, Qi 2, is just as fast as MagSafe,

but it doesn't use the Apple specification.

It uses the open standard.

Now it's an open standard that was influenced by Apple,

but because you're not paying the royalty to Apple,

it means that a manufacturer can offer it

for a little bit cheaper.

And so this is a perfect example

because Anker is selling these two devices.

One of them is advertised to be MagSafe compatible.

You can get it on Amazon for like 135 right now.

Or if you get their version that, what do they call it?

They call it Mag, they say MagSafe compatible,

but they call it MagGo.

It's a totally different thing, Brett.

- I'm so glad you pointed that out.

Oh my goodness.

- So with MagGo, if they sold it here in Louisiana,

it might be G-E-A-U-X, MagGo.

- Uh-huh, yeah, I like that.

Okay, very good, very good.

- So by calling it something else,

they can be a little bit cheaper.

And here, at least based on the Amazon prices,

it's about $25 cheaper

for the suggested manufacturer prices a little bit more.

- I didn't even see that.

- I haven't seen anything bad.

I mean, this is all new,

but this is just something for you

to be looking for as a consumer.

If you want this technology,

do you want the complete Apple certified?

You know it's gonna work,

or do you want Qi 2,

which I really think should be just as good.

It's just that that's the open standard.

So, and it could be a little bit cheaper.

And I'm glad that the open standard's out there

because now all of these companies

that have really thin margins,

and they just want something

that has the fastest possible wireless charging,

but they don't wanna pay Apple anything,

they can use Qi 2,

and hopefully it means we'll see

even more useful devices like this.

So again, I linked to this new product

because it does look like it's an interesting product,

but I really just wanted people to be aware

of the difference between Qi 2 and MagSafe.

- I'm so glad you pointed that out.

Yeah, I completely overlooked that on there.

I'm so glad.

You know, the other thing quickly,

I know neither of us have this device,

but I just, the way that,

it's hard to see if you're not looking at a picture here,

but the way that I've seen it

is the iPhone is kind of at a slant,

which is, that would be good.

In other words, when I put it on the stand,

on this charging stand,

it's at a slant, you know, a little bit.

And so if I'm looking down at it,

like if it was on my desk, for example,

that would be fine.

But I wonder, can it be all the way straight?

Because then I'm thinking,

if it's sitting on my bedside table,

I want to turn over and look,

and I don't want it to be at a slant.

Does that make sense?

And I have seen any pictures yet.

- I don't know if it goes all the way to 90 degrees,

but I will tell you-

- 'Cause I feel like if it does,

it'll tip over is what I'm afraid of.

But anyway, yeah, go ahead, please.

- Even on a bed stand,

'cause I have a different device for my bed stand.

I still don't use it at a completely 90 degrees.

I still have a slight tilt to it.

- Oh, really? Okay.

- And that just sort of, that works perfectly fine.

So I suspect that this is gonna give you the angles you want,

but you do raise a good question.

I don't know what the expansion angles go to.

- I might have to buy it just to do the,

for public service aspect on there.

We have an inconvenient hole in the Apple board,

but apparently it's been filled already.

I thought this was just great because when I hear Al Gore,

everybody has their own impressions.

But one of the aspects that I do from a technology angle

is he has always been a Mac user, right?

In fact, John Gruber calls him a Mac nerd.

And several years ago, many years ago now,

we remember that film "Inconvenient Truth," right?

That Al Gore was going around, proselytizing on that.

But I just remember that that video,

which is still available, I think, on Apple TV+,

but I just remember the impact that it had

from how gorgeous it looked.

And I remember even at the time

it was done on Final Cut Pro.

Anyway, Al Gore apparently has served his time

on the Apple board of directors and is moving off now.

So I'm glad that we can at least recognize that.

- Yeah, and this is a nice post for John Gruber.

He points out, for example, that Al Gore got a lot of flack

because his political opponents claimed

that he said that he invented the internet,

which is not at all what he said, but regardless.

And so he links to this "Nopes" article on that.

But yeah, I mean, for an Apple director,

you would hope that somebody

that's on the board of directors of Apple

actually understands technology.

And I tell you, Al Gore had many things

that he brought to the table, his political experience,

which is incredibly important for a company like Apple.

But when it comes to technology, he wasn't faking it.

I mean, I really think that he was a true tech enthusiast.

- Yeah, yeah, I agree. - And I loved it.

So we'll see what the new people are.

Two people are retiring from the board.

They've already announced one replacement.

And I guess eventually they'll have a second one as well.

We'll see, but hopefully it works well.

- Here's another story you'll link to today

that kind of just blew me away.

- This is interesting, yeah. - iPhone grabs the top spot

in global phone market for the first time.

My first reaction was, what?

Don't they already have the phone market?

And the second reaction after I read through this,

I'm like, wow, like that's amazing

that it has never happened in this way until 2023.

- Yeah, as popular as the iPhone has been

for all of these years,

it has still not had the largest market share

because so, so, so many people

buy the lesser expensive phones around the world,

for many people's needs, all that they need,

that the iPhone is the king for the medium to high end.

But when it comes to the lower end,

Apple has never been there.

But for the first time in 2023, what are the numbers here?

So Apple had 20, it's such a, there you go.

Apple had 20.1% of the global market

and Samsung had 19.4.

So we're talking about a point, a very slight difference,

but just the idea that iPhone was ahead of Samsung

and all of the others, that just, that tells you,

what I read this as is more and more people,

not that the low end of the smartphone market

still isn't huge,

but I think that people are starting to graduate up

and that over time, more people are deciding,

I might want an iPhone.

Now let's also remember that, you know,

here in the United States,

we might all buy the latest, greatest iPhones,

but Apple will sell many, many generations of iPhone.

- Exactly.

- And so in some of these markets,

it might be somebody not buying, you know,

the latest and greatest,

but an iPhone that's four or five generations old,

but that still gives them lots of features

that they're happy with.

So that maybe that's how Apple's getting market share

and maybe it's not people moving up,

but regardless, you know, as popular as the iPhone is,

this was the first time in history

that they were number one just on units sold.

So that's a milestone.

- And it's still only 20% of the global phone market.

But I mean, you did a good job of explaining why.

I understand why, but I don't know, you know,

if somebody would just ask off the street,

I kind of probably would have thrown out

a much bigger number than that.

But now that I understand sort of the basis behind it,

that's still pretty incredible.

20% of the entire market is great.

- Around the world, yeah.

- Let's go to the where are you at segment.

This, wow, what a fun story.

This one was.

- Oh, this story, my goodness, my goodness.

- Okay, so yeah, so it's a gentleman out of Toronto.

I'll just set it up real quick.

Apparently he had one SUV stolen

and then he didn't want it to happen again.

So he put air tags in a second SUV,

it got stolen and you pick up the story from there, Jeff.

- Well, I mean, let me first say

that you should read this story if this interests you.

- Absolutely.

- Because it's like a detective story.

He tracks it, he tracked the car from when it was stolen

to the train, you know, near his house,

to the dock in Montreal.

And then he loses contact for a while.

And then it shows up in,

I think it was the United Arab Emirates.

And then eventually in Dubai,

he could actually see that it is on a used car lot in Dubai.

So first of all, let's just talk about

how interesting is that,

that whatever the cost of shipping the car is,

you know, the thieves still think it's advantageous

to steal the car and ship it all the way to Dubai.

But then second, he talks about how he tried to get relief

going to the police.

And, you know, according to the article,

they just weren't very helpful.

He even tried to go to Interpol,

which makes me think of like a spy movie

or something like that.

- Yeah.

- But so it's gotta be frustrating.

- Like slow horses happening here or something.

- Exactly, there you go.

So maybe this is the next great movie, who knows?

But it's fascinating that like,

it's almost like he can all but see his car

on this used car lot around the world.

And there's really nothing he can do about it.

But I guess there's some satisfaction in knowing,

you know, at least it solves the mystery

and who knows, maybe somehow something will,

I don't know if he'll ever get his car back,

but it's interesting.

- Like you said, so many things just is,

are just mind boggling to me.

First of all, the fact that this air tag technology

is working even when it's going across an ocean.

Well, it actually did ping it across the ocean to be fair.

- Yeah.

- But it's like, you were still able to track it

all the way around the world.

Like that's incredible to me.

The other thing quickly, there's a picture in here

where it's a York regional police officer texted a picture.

In other words, this police officer pulled up to,

it looks like this is a train rail here.

And the police officer took a picture

of the shipping container that apparently contained his SUV,

sent this picture to him, but then said,

"Sorry, I can't do anything about it."

Like because it's a shipping container,

what he had to say, like,

"You have to talk to the Canadian Pacific Kansas City

Railway police or security."

And it's like, how frustrating is that?

The police officer is sitting right next

to the shipping container.

What the hell?

That he knows has the car,

but he still can't do anything.

I would just, I'm already screaming,

but I would be screaming very much louder, I think,

if that happened there.

But what an incredible story there.

- It really is.

- I don't even know if there's a happy ending.

I don't even got it back necessarily.

- Not yet.

- Unless he went to Dubai.

(laughing)

But hopefully he'll post something.

Anyway, just a really a fascinating story on there.

I like it.

Okay, how about some Apple TV Plus news real quick?

'Cause we are always very happy to talk about this.

For all mankind, I am very happy to let you know, Jeff,

that I am still planning to watch "For All Mankind."

You're talking about the final episode, I think,

just you viewed.

Don't give any spoilers, of course.

But obviously we know you've been a big fan

of this show for a long time.

- Yeah, well, season four just ended

and they have not yet announced the season five.

I'm certainly hoping that Apple renews it for season five,

but season four had a great ending.

And the one thing I wanted to tell you

is for anyone that has watched it,

there's a great podcast that I recommended a link to there

called "NASA Vending Machine."

If you watch the show,

you will understand why vending machines are important.

But Jason Snell and Dan Morin did a great job

of interviewing the show runners.

And so they actually can talk about

what went into the show

and how they made certain decisions.

And it's really, really great stuff.

So that's a fun podcast to listen to if you like the show.

- I just love their little logo here.

I mean, that's like one of the best podcast logos,

the NASA vending machine.

I love that.

It makes sense if you watch the show.

- Okay, okay.

Which I will.

One day.

How about "Shemiga Dune" is now "Shemiga Dunne."

This is a little sad.

My wife and I loved the first season of "Shemiga Dune."

We haven't seen the second one yet.

I think we're gonna start that very, very soon.

But apparently not a lot of other people,

not enough other people liked it

to come back for a third season.

- Yeah, what was frustrating to me is that,

I mean, it wasn't the best show ever,

but it was certainly enjoyable.

And if you like musicals,

every show is a musical with original music.

Some of the songs were very memorable and very catchy.

And what was frustrating to me is the showrunners

revealed in this article that they already wrote season three

and they've already wrote 25 new songs for season three.

They just want to start filming it.

And Apple said, we're not picking it up.

And so they said something at the very end of,

maybe some other studio will pick it up.

Who knows?

I guess it's possible.

It may show up on Netflix or somewhere else.

But it's a great show.

And it's one that I would,

if you're into musicals,

I recommended it and enjoyed it.

And I would have loved to have seen a third season

on Apple TV Plus, but apparently not.

- It just made me think quickly.

It's like, we've seen Apple TV Plus now been around

as long as it has.

We've talked to several stories

about how they put a lot of money into some big budget.

They do it right, right?

The movies, they do it right.

But now I feel like it's been around long enough.

They're starting to be like a player,

like we've heard,

well, the Marvel Studios didn't pick it up for here

and they shipped it off to Fox or,

in other words, I don't know anything about that industry

necessarily from the ins and outs and the inside baseball.

But it just seems like now Apple TV Plus

is kind of coming into its own.

Because I would think as successful as this was

on Apple TV Plus,

somebody else is gonna pick it up, right?

Because that's part of just the industry.

Anyway, just to kind of see that Apple TV Plus

is kind of coming into its own

as an industry player there is great.

- I mentioned one last thing about Apple TV Plus,

which is that I just finished watching the first season

of a show called "Monarch Legacy of Monsters."

- Yeah.

- Basically a Godzilla movie.

And it was a Godzilla TV series.

It's, I mean, it's not the best show I've seen

on Apple TV Plus, but I did enjoy it.

And so, I mean, if you have an interest in it,

I thought it was worth watching.

I'm actually particularly interested now

because apparently Apple reported some of it in 3D.

And so I might go back and watch another episode,

rewatch one of the episodes on the Apple Vision Pro.

- Oh, you gotta.

- See how it looks,

to see how Godzilla looks in 3D and stuff.

So anyway, that's another show out there

if you're looking for something to watch.

In the know, here is a nice gadget that I found.

You know, we just had Christmas,

but I'm already thinking about next Christmas,

Jeff, by the way, because I'll tell you why.

Christmas 2022, my amazing daughter

got me an Ember coffee mug.

So you've heard these before, right?

- And you love it, you love it.

You said that, yeah.

- I love it, every single day, I love this mug.

In fact, my wife bought one because she liked it so much,

she had to buy her own.

But it's like, it's such a great device.

I love it, it works great because I have the little coaster,

it keeps my coffee at the exact temperature

that I say to keep it at,

because it has an app on my iPhone.

So I say I set it at 139 degrees

and it stays there as long as it has the charge.

So I have been following Ember now for a while,

and I remember several months ago,

they announced an Ember Smart Travel Mug 2 Plus.

And I'm like, well, I don't know about the travel mugs

because these are not inexpensive.

In fact, this travel mug is $199.

But Jeff, the thing that caught my eye about it,

that it's finally available now,

is that you always had the ability to control it

on the app on your iPhone,

but now the Ember Smart Travel Mug 2 Plus

comes with Apple Find My.

So if you ever find your--

- That actually makes good sense, yeah.

- When you need to find your coffee mug,

you now have an ability,

like you can actually change the temperature

and everything through the app,

but now you can go into Apple Find My app

and then you can make sure

that you can add it to your list of devices.

And you can always find your coffee when you need it.

So I don't have this yet,

but this is on my early list for Christmas now.

- I can see that.

Did you leave it upstairs?

Did you leave it in the car?

You know, where did you leave it?

Someplace else.

So yeah, that actually makes some sense.

- But a $200 mug,

I'm probably not gonna be leaving it anywhere.

You know, I'm gonna be keeping that pretty close to me.

But just the fact that I know that it can, you know,

then that way I can track it to Dubai if I need to.

So it's all good.

- I like it, I like it.

I'm gonna end up today where we started,

which is some more tips on the Apple Vision Pro

for people who are interested in it.

And there's two things I'm gonna recommend.

Apple updated a whole bunch of its website today

to reflect new information.

One thing is they now have a technical specs page.

And so if you wanna get all sorts of--

And I haven't even started to study it yet,

but you know, it includes some things

that I described earlier,

like the fact that there's different capacities,

256, 512, and--

- Right, I saw that here.

- And then it's got all these itty bitty things

like 12 millisecond photon to photon latency.

Is that fast enough for you?

How fast do you like the photon to photon latency to be?

- I think so.

I gotta check my vending machine.

- You'll have to see exactly.

But some of this is all over my head,

but it is all sorts of details.

And so I'm gonna take a look at it

just if you want the nitty gritty.

The other end of the extreme,

if you don't want the nitty gritty,

but you just want the big picture,

Apple has released a page for something called

the Guided Tour.

And what I think this is,

is you know how you were talking earlier, Brett,

about how people went to New York this week

and they got like a sort of a one-on-one demonstration?

- Right.

- This is a video that seems very, very close

to what those people did.

- Okay.

- Of course, you're not wearing the device,

but you're getting sort of the illusion of it.

It's about a nine minute video.

I just watched it this morning after I purchased it.

- Okay, you watched it, all right, all right.

- And it's full of information I had never seen before.

It's, you know, as if somebody is guiding you.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me

if you go to an Apple store and have a demo,

it's probably gonna be the same thing that,

you know, very similar to what you're watching here.

- Right.

- So if you wanna get a sense of the Vision Pro

and you've got nine minutes to spare,

I totally recommend the video.

I really enjoyed watching it this morning.

Lots and lots of information.

- That is great.

I will make sure it's linked in the show notes.

A Guided Tour of Apple Vision Pro.

And yeah, I mean, there's several other videos.

Some of these I think we've seen before.

- Those are actually snippets of it.

At the bottom when it says see how it works,

those are just little subsets of the main video.

But the top of the page has got the full video.

And it's not very long.

It's less than 10 minutes.

- Jeff, I wish we could jump to two weeks

from today immediately.

(laughing)

Because I just wanna hear like,

when you get your hands on it.

But it's gonna be a pretty exciting next couple of weeks.

And like we discussed, I think by next Friday,

we'll definitely have seen some folks

probably hands on reviews, some YouTube videos and stuff.

And yeah, if you're not interested in Vision Pro,

you may not wanna have to listen

to the next couple of episodes.

But it's gonna be worth it, we promise.

And we'll talk about the other things as well.

As always, Jeff, thanks very much.

We will talk with you next week.