Why is Apple's HomePod 3 years behind the Amazon Echo? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 111)
Why is Apple's HomePod 3 years behind the Amazon Echo? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 111)
45:29

Why is Apple's HomePod 3 years behind the Amazon Echo? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 111)

Culture
[MUSIC] Hello everybody, we are live coming to you. It's not thanksgiving yet, but we are recording this for a future episode which we're gonna post on Friday. We have to post on Friday after thanksgiving. Yeah, we have to post on Friday. So this the Apple Byte Extra Crunchy with your host, Mr. Brian Tong. Keep it extra munchy hopefully your tummies are full of thanksgiving turkey, cranberry sauce and all that good stuff but thanks so much for joining us this episode. Believe it or not Beech 110. It's actually 111. Sorry you're right it's 111. I looked at the wrong number. I'm sorry. I'm being if you havent realized it everything I say is like. There is someone on side here hand typing things and I just say what they say [LAUGH] I know. Episode 111, thank you so much for joining us, this is kind of our complementary piece to be Apple by main showing again, tons of news drop so we kind of update you with the latest. Also gives us a little more time to talk and freestyle about what is happening in the big stories. The thing is also you guys and gals are a part of the show every week. You keep on bringing it for us, so call us at 1-800-616-2638. Leave your name, where you're from. I thought we had a lot of great commentary this week, so we've got some good calls. Also my voice is a little rough because I was at Disneyland, screaming all day yesterday and Monday. How did it sound? Were you like! If I scream again my voice won't last for the show. It does sound raspy. It does sound beaten up. Hey, ladies. [LAUGH] There are ladies that are listening. Two people just put their hands up. [LAUGH] All right, Apple Pie Nation is Dude Nation. Let's get to the show. First up, we did start, last week, talking about Time's 25 Best Inventions of the Year. And so what they did is they then whittled down their list. To the top 10 best gadgets of the year. So this is everything in the text base. And I think it would be kind of run down from ten to number one. We will go quickly. So you guys won't be like okay so why are you wasting my time. Number 10 the Sony Alpha A7R3. Arguably really one of the best mirror less cameras every made now. If you've ever played with the A7, it's amazing. Number nine, check it out. Apple Watch 3, LTE. You know that we've talked about how it kind of really, it's finally a product worth getting that I can wholeheartedly be behind because of its evolution and I love that. Number 8, Xbox One X 4k gaming. The most powerful console right now on the market, but it's not really being utilized because developers have to get to it. Number seven, Amazon Echo second generation. Very cool. Kind of revamped and more miniaturized. Number six, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System the SNES Classic that most people did not get. Yeah I did not get one. You know I could care less, could care less! Number five the Samsung Galaxy S8. People are gonna debate that one. Number four, the DJ icespark, their [UNKNOWN] drawn from the masters and drawing Dj and number three, the Microsoft surface laptop.>> Wow.>> the hybrid. Not a laptop, not a note book just a little bit of everything. Love it. Number two, What we all talk about here every week? The iPhone X. Or, you know- the iPhone 10. 10. 10, 10,10 iPhone 10 made it for number two, and number one- the number one gadget according to Time. However much relevance you put behind time, that's up to you. The Nintendo Switch was the number one gadget of the year. Mm-hm. That's pretty cool. The only reason why I kind of I don't know if it's number one, but I think it's the top three. The Nintendo Switches because although we've had the PS Vida and the DS before this is like at least quote on quote console level gaming that's portable. And the fact that they have two ridiculous games this year with Mario Odyssey and a Zelda. It's breathe a while I mean that, it doesn't legitimize but I still think a phone is gonna be a better gadget that a game counsel. [CROSSTALK] Yeah. cos it's a lot more uses with the phone definitely. Am asking CROSSTALK] Yeah. Yeah. Totally. But I have been asking from my wife [UNKNOWN] switch [UNKNOWN], You need that bro. I do. So those are the top ten best gadgets of the year. One of them, on that list was the Amazon Echo and who is chasing the Echo right now, it's Apple, Apple is chasing the Echo with the HomePod. Now recently, I know, you all probably heard or saw about the HomePod delay. Right you remember that. Yeah that's a big deal. It just happened to have been dropped I think on Friday after a show and basically Apple gave us a spiel that it's not ready yet. We want to give the best product to our customers so we're going to hold it back to early March. I did an eight minute rant about it just to talk about. The home pod Wyatt. Wyatt is really another misstep. We have the AirPods that were delayed last year for the holiday season. They came out really more like December 13. But by the time they were released, they sold out. They were on a six week waiting list if you ordered them from Apple. Until July of this year. So it was based on a waiting list for Seven months. Six, seven months. So now they're doing the same thing. They have this, hey we're going to have this new holiday product out, it's going to be the home pod, but they're pushing it back as well. You can kind of see all the thing I said about it in our Apple bite episode but it's not a good look for Apple and they've done this two years back to back. Yeah, it's about Apple, it's about Apple so then our buddies at Bloomberg, Mark Gurman the man, right? He decided to kinda give us this whole back story of really why is Apple's HomePod three years behind the Amazon Echo. And I think from day one we have always talked about People say what is Apple's next thing? The Amazon Echo is the next thing right? It has been the newest hottest consumer platform, and it's been that for at least the past sure three years ago it wasn't as understood, but now I'd say going strong for at least two years. Google has their Google Home product Both of these are [UNKNOWN] in different ways, both of these do things at just let the whole pads not going to be able to do. So am gonna kind paraphrase you can check out this great article of some of things that happen with the [UNKNOWN]. So this is kinda where it starts. Apple had been working with their audio engineers who wanted to create kind of superior, Audio device, but they had five years ago quite honestly. But they had been working on an early version of the home pod speaker for about two years. In 2014 when they were literally blindsided by the Echo smart speaker from Amazon. The Apple engineers even jokingly accused each other of leaking the details to Amazon because it was like how How could they be doing this? So they bought Echo to take them apart right? This is what other companies used to do for Apple. THey buy their product, take it apart to see how they're put together and what Apple did in classic Apple style they're like the audio quality if totally inferior. We're going to make a better speaker because at the time Apple's focus was. Let's make an amazing speaker that sounds better than anything Saunos, Bows, Monster. All these companies. They wanted to make again kind of their own [INAUDIBLE]. So we could look. If you are a fan of audio, and if you work for company that will let you pursue these side projects. I'm happy to hear that they were able to pursue this. Here's the thing where they missed. It says more than two years passed, the Echo took off. became a hit with customers. Integrated voice, integrated new apps, the accessibility to it. It made it a killer product. I still use my Echo today. I used it first, I bought it first. I have it at home just to use it as comparison but the Echo is the center Of my smart home ecosystem and this is really where things fell off because think about this. Apple had all the ingredients for to make an echo like product. They had Siri the first consumer. Assisted before anyone else really did, right. I mean, we used to talk about Siri and you were like how cool, right? Siri was the first robot assistant I ever spoke to and I was excited. I was like, it was the future I felt like the future. I was telling my phone to set alarms, you know timers, what is the weather. Like all this kind of stuff And now I'm talking to Alexa way more [LAUGH] Right. Unless my phone's right next to me or something but, yeah Alexa's definitely come and taken over my house. I'll use Siri to set like basic alarms or timers. But when I'm in the kitchen, I'm playing music through the Echo, I'm asking it to set timers when I'm cooking, I'm turning on the lights and off. It's become In my brain, the assistant that I talk to. And again, Apple had Siri. Apple had the App Store. They could have tied all these things together but they were focused. Because I'm sure there was no vision for it, they didn't know what other people were thinking and normally they set the bar for what people are thinking about. So they never had somebody say, let's make a smart speaker. Amazon was doing that and Again, let's reflect that Amazon didn't have, at the time, a heritage or a history of being a consumer electronics device. Sure they have the tablet, and the Amazon Phone they played with [UNKNOWN] Fire products. They're aren't runaway successes, but they've used what they had, they learn from it. They came up with the Echo, right? This is a company that's really an e-commerce. Company at it's core. Yeah. And they came out with the Echo before Apple. We'll the thing that's also really great about the Echo. Is that they made it affordable. It's was like $100. Not $350. The echo dot is $50 or $40 now. They're just making it affordable and easy for people to get and use. And the home pod feels out of reach for me, it's $350. That is a lot of money. That's not just like a $50, that is a big investment for something that who knows how long it's gonna last on your shelf? So here's also, and your absolutely right, here's also some of the thinking that's detailed in the article, again, the home pod was cooked up as a side project for audio engineers that worked inside of Apple. They were the Mac audio [UNKNOWN] engineers. They wanted to create a speaker, better than [UNKNOWN], better than JBL,better than [UNKNOWN] and other.>>And that's sounds great. That sounds wonderful you know, like I am all for that. But they told [UNKNOWN] on the AI personal assisting you know.>> And they had the lead by years it wasn't even like, they had a [UNKNOWN] they had a lead by years. So, This is the thing, they were looking at this so much like an actual speaker. They even talk about how, as they were building this speaker, they didn't want it to be a direct sound speaker. Their strategy was going to use this kind of anticipated technology at the time called beamforming. And basically, it directs sound to different areas of the room in different ways by detecting where it's at. And then helps kinda treat this 3D sound. That's what they were doing, right? So again guess who has this? Amazon [UNKNOWN] uses a little differently. They use beam forming to listen to or talk to it. But things like Google home max that is expected to up by the end of this year. So as well are smart speaker that has Alexa integration Is also doing that is well using beam for men, but now let's look right now out what Apple has in the home pad. And how it stacks up Apple's home pad has access negatively to one service. Apple music, Apple's home pad also does will not have. At least out of the gates. Any type of third party support, so for example if you ever have fiddled with Amazon's Echo and you wanna find something. I've talked about this before, I like to listen to white noise when I sleep like the sound of waves crashing. There's apps, you can just look on the Amazon Echo app and be like white noise, or waves crashing and there's one called Smooth ocean sounds or something like that. It's literally called that. Yeah I use that every night. I use that every night. You do? I used to use an iPad so I would open up the iPad and I'd turn on white noise and then play like waves crashing. But that was a process. I had to go to my iPad, push a button. Find the app, turn it on, find the sound. Now I just go, Alexa, start ocean sounds, and it starts. Yes, exactly. It's ten times easier, so, [LAUGH] [UNKNOWN]. I'm sorry, I don't use my iPad. I actually deleted the sound effect off my iPad the other day, cuz I don't need it anymore. Yeah and so you have all these third party apps, thousands of apps that Amazon made accessible. So they have a better app community. They have better third party support. They have more music services. And let's say their flagship product. I can't remember the price off the top of my head. It's around 170 right now okay. You guys can correct me later. But, the whole part isn't compelling enough even if you're an Apple user. It's only gonna do some basic Siri tasks like yeah, set reminders and timers. But it's so limited at 349 coming out of the gate and all I'm gonna say is that sound better blown me away. I know it's gonna be better than the Echo. I know it's gonna have better sound in a home. And so people are really gonna be buying this. And today's day and age, to have a speaker that is really I'm sorry, I'm gonna say it, the dumbest smart speaker that's coming out in the market, is not a good thing. Yeah, let me read you the music services That are on Amazon's Echo. Amazon My Music which you have for free if you have Amazon Prime account. Apple Music is there, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Tune In. There's Sonos, Audible, Kindle, there's just a massive list right here and three of them that I use regularly. And then I am going to get a home pod and have apple music only which I don't subscribe to? Sorry, you lost me. So, this is not a dump, this is again real talk of >[LAUGHS] what is happening don't say we are hating on apple. Everything we said is completely factual. It's just damn disappointing. It is disappointing. It's disappointing and again it's not, Apple isn't one year behind or two years behind, they're legitimately three years behind. They had another delay that's coming in early 2018. Look, no one works during December really. It's kind of like in tech people, they have extended vacations. People aren't gonna be working to try and get this Home Pod out in January. If I am wrong, you can spank me and give me a bad apple. But I'm expecting we're probably gonna see something about the Home Pod in March of 2018. And then it also makes me wonder, literally when we look at what the Home Pod has inside of it, I'm not saying I can do this but it's not like it's a super complex product compared to what other smart speakers are doing out in the market. Yeah. It's not. Yeah, I mean the sound quality is their big selling point and they should have definitely taken that in a different direction. Focused on the AI personal assistant. I will tell you right now they do have a chance to wow us and wow me with sound quality. Google has two pop up shops in the US, one in New York and one in Southern California, off Melrose avenue. I went to that store and I listened to the Google Home Max, it was a big speaker. It did not sound as full Like, it didn't have as deep of a bass tone as I wanted in a speaker that size. Also, the touch controls on it, they were continuously reminding me it was a prototype. They were like, it's a little sensitive, so don't touch here, don't do that, it'll getter better when it's, and I'm like okay. But you're showing this on a showroom floor, so I'm gonna take it for what it was. From what I saw, the Google Home Max. Is not good enough from what I saw to be like, okay it's going to be better than the home pod. But again, the home pod still has to prove to me that it's even worth 350 bucks. Quite honestly, it's not gonna replace my Amazon Echo. I don't even have a second generation Amazon Echo. I probably should just Cuz I need to compare it to them eventually but the home pod can win in sound quality, but it's not gonna win in app support, third party support or assistant support. And that's, those are really the key things, key reasons to use a smart speaker. Yeah, I agree. Definitely agree. So, we're not pooping on it, we're just talking home pods. If you guys and gals listening live want to tweet us, A Brian tong, I'll take a look at that, and maybe we can throw in your twits and get to the show [UNKNOWN]. So before we do that though, guess what? We keep the lights on because we have these amazing sponsors so, am just gonna jump into with our friends from OB and I know you guys have heard about this company. Wi fi is something you don't really think about until you don't have it or guess what? it's not working properly. You have videos that are buffering. You've got wi-fi dead zones when you're roaming around the house. Too many devices are connecting and slowing everything down so with the holidays there's always more people trying to get into your wi-fi. Like family friends are over it's annoying. So when was the last time that you upgraded your wi-fi at home? I'm actually asking you Steven. I haven't for years. Right? You might. Did you have a five g system? I don't know. I got to go look at that. I might need a firmware update. 80211 are you on that train yet bro? Anyway you just want better wi-fi everywhere check out an awarding winning orbi wi-fi system from Netgear. Orbi is the simplest and smartest way to get get super strong and fast wi-fi in every corner of your home. If you have one wi-fi network it's easy to install. You can set it up in advance and then you and the family will be enjoying faster more reliable home wi-fi from your basement to your backyard. So what are you waiting for? Change your wi-fi world and get an Orbi, that's spelled o-r-b-i. Wi-Fi system from NetGear for better Wi-FI everywhere. Visit netgear.com/orbi O-R-B-I. All right man, I will do that. Do it baby, check it out. All right, let's keep on jumping through the show. Other news that dropped in here during this short week and really towards the end of last week New rumblings about the iMac Pro honestly I'm not gonna lie to you, I kind of, it was kind of an after thought that, yeah the iMac Pro is still coming this year. Like this was their $4,999 behemoth of an iMac and if you recall at the time once they announced it I was like okay that's really cool you're making a super powerful iMac and this also happened after that failed we're going to start working on a modular desktop because that's what professionals want and it also lined up with the fact that the iMac pro is a reflection of how Apple. Completely doesn't understand their customers as much, They put [UNKNOWN] is going to sell to a specific market because of it's form factor. But it's gonna have server derailed level processors. But it showed where Apple's vision was gonna make a crazy i Mack Pro OK well here it is. I think people are going to buy it but it's not going to be a consumer device. It's for the pros. But pros still aren't going to be happy with the iMac Pro. The pros are going to be like all right this is a stop gap because you missed the boat and completely ignored the Mac Pro and didn't know what you were doing and now we have the iMac Pro that's supposed to hold us over for a year, maybe a year and a half. It's just a black, it's a reflection of just how poorly Apple had thought out their professional strategy and thought this is really what pros wanted. So there are some cool news from the iMac Pro for people that are interested in it. One of them, we have developers that really kind of dig into Code that kind of can reveal nuggets of what's going on. These guys that revealed so much about the iPhone when there's that leak of iOS 11 earlier on. Someone like Stephen [INAUDIBLE] Smith, [INAUDIBLE] and some other guy. They looked at some of the code and have been able to dig up that is new iMac Pro. Is expected to have a complementary A10 fusion chip right the same chip similarly that is in ios devices. It will be supported with with 5, 12 megs of ram and will give although we don't know the full functionality of what this A10 chip will be capable of, It will at least appear. That the chip will enable support for Hey Siri functionality even interestingly enough. This is kind of interesting when the iMac Pro is turned off. Now whether that means the iMac is asleep, I don't think it's when it's completely turned off but maybe it is. I mean in a weird way I wonder if it was active in the background. You could say, Hey Siri, turn on my iMac. That would be kind of interesting and kinda cool right? That would be cool so it's like It's like in a standby mode. Like my PS4 does this. It goes into this weird standby mode. Yes yes. Which kind of annoys me because then I know it's drawing power. It's like using the electricity. [LAUGH] You see the orange glow on it. Yeah yeah yeah but that's interesting. So it's going to be listening to you all the time too so you got like a listening device in your house but. That's interesting. I mean, you and I are, you know, we both use Echo. I think most people now these days, it's like, if it makes my life easier, I don't care that everyone listening all the time. There's very few people that are now, there are people that are saying I don't want listening devices in my home, but I think it's a lot less now. It continues to get smaller and smaller, those group of people that Don't want listening devices. Our phone is a listening device. Yeah and I'm pretty sure my Facebook app is listening to me and serving me ads when I talk about certain things. Yeah, I've seen that. [LAUGH] But yeah, that's interesting. If you can wake up your computer, say wake up computer or something like that, and it turns on, I'm all for that. Yeah right. I know you're down with that so what's cool with that is there is a actual kind of custom OS specific for the a 10 iMac pro that has been revealed. It will be called bridge OS so that is what they will dig into and actually reveal this information. I thought that was pretty cool. Another thing. iMac related is that according to lore reports the iMac pro could feature something like the find my iPhone feature according to bloggers. Actually were some of the first people to reveal the specs for this reported iMac pro before it was officially announced by Apple. They're the ones who said look. We expect to see Intel next generation server grade processors in an iMac Pro. They are the ones that called it out first. But they've also been able to find out that it looks like there will be some sort of advanced theft protection similar to the find my iPhone service where it will know exact GPS location of your computer. So that's nice. Just a little nugget about the iMac pro. That is again $4,999 starting. Starting. I do want one though cuz I love mine here at work I do love it. I do. As a work computer, if work's gonna pay for it? Hell yeah. Hell yeah please. Right? Like If you're in the professional industry of video editing you want your company to buy you an iMac Pro. But you also still would rather have your company buy you a Mac Pro that's modular. Yeah [LAUGH]. That's the thing right? Yeah that would be nice. I could put some cards in it, do some other stuff. All the types of good stuff. Okay, we'll just kind of go through them. There are some also future iPhone. We always get more new stories and now it gets about what's coming from the iPhone and what's coming next. A new report by Minch-Chi Kuo KGI says that the 2018 iPhones again last week we talked about How they're expected to come in three sizes. A 5.8 and a 6.5 which will be o lead based and a 6.1 inch that will be LCD based with a lower pixel inch per density that I jokingly say is blurry but people took me seriously and said dude it's not going to be a blurry screen. [LAUGH] It's like There's a lot of come on yeah but- They're worried. They're concerned. The people that get the joke are like that's funny ****. I'm sorry. My bad. It's all good. All right, so this new story quote and DIGITIMES are saying that the 2018 iPhones will feature. An upgraded antenna design so specifically to boost LTE transmission speeds. It will feature an upgraded liquid crystal polymer antenna models that will help to contribute to faster LTE transmission speeds. The new phone model will use at least 2 LCP antenna models much like the iPhone 10 currently does. But with improvements to support the new 4x4 MIMO standards. And so I was like, okay, I've heard of 2x2 MIMO, what exactly is that? Thanks to the power of our friend at Google, just so we can all learn here, although there's people that do know everything 2x2 MIMO devices are devices with dual antennas and radios, so that allows them. To communicate via two streams of transmission and reception of data information. There are three by three MEMO devices but these new antennas that are expected to be popped into the LTE or sorry the 2018 iPhones will support four by four. MIMO. So that's four streams to transmit and receive data which will obviously help a booster effect on this. And we've also heard there was a story about Apple talking with Intel and potentially the 2018 iPhones only using Intel modems. And that incidentally kind of makes me cringe a little like squeamish because We know what kind of the story in the background how in the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 10. Some phones have Qualcomm modems, some phones have Intel modems. It has literally been tested and proven that that Qualcomm modems perform better, they support more bands but also Apple and Qualcomm are going into this legal back and forth battle where Apple saying Qualcomm charge too much for the modems. Qualcomm is saying you throttled our modems. So they basically hate each other, okay? And so therefore, Apple is looking to work with Intel exclusively for what we have heard With the 2018 iPhones. That remains to be seen but to me that would be that would hurt because we want the fastest tech. Such insight that's exactly why people listen to this podcast. I wish I could have a modem in my iPhone 10 but I don't have it because. I got an AT and T/T-Mobile GSM phone, which is using the Intel modem where the Verizon and Sprint phones do have access to the Qualcomm modems. So is this the picture right here of the new 5G modem? It's just a picture. The actual component, it's just kind of a fun marketing picture, you know? Like hey, it's a square that says the word In some 5g modem So will this be like a case of like a company biting the hands of the fingers that feeds them or something. Wait, who's biting who though. Like it's Apple that is biting Quancum or is it Quancum. Yeah they are biting Quancum. Yeah I think Quancum has every right to be mad but by at the same time Apple is a company, can't have two phones. Gather the same phone on the exterior and one perform significantly better than the other right? Yeah. Like there's a con Apple about also guess what? it's about margin, it's about cost. I'm pretty sure the equal con modem is more expensive than the Intel modem. It also is a better performing modem. If you have hundreds of millions of devices, it's smart not to rely on one single supplier, but you still have to pump out phones, you still have to give them to the people. And so, throttling down one of the modems so that it can't reach its full potential in order to have a somewhat consistent result across your entire. Product line is something that they do have to do. I just wish it wasn't that way. Yeah yeah. So. It's interesting. Anyway we'll see what happens with that. And then another small story about the iPhone or at least Apple in General working with new displays and screens is that. Apple's collaborating with its Taiwanese supplier TSMC, they've made plenty of displays for Apple in the past, but they're working to solve manufacturing issues with the next generation of displays called micro-LED displays. What's different is they do have a lot of the same benefits as OLED, the T-deep true blacks that are optimized to be energy efficient Wide colored [UNKNOWN] as well the main thing about micro LED display is the fact that it is actually thinner than the current [UNKNOWN] it's a little it's even more energy efficient, but I got expect that we'll see maybe the first indications that we have programmers of micro LED displays potentially be use an apple [UNKNOWN] in the future. But they're nowhere near even getting enough factories to build OLED screens other than Samsung at a large size. So I wouldn't see it coming any time soon for like micro LEDs coming to an iPhone nature. No, I mean, that's gotta be a couple of years out. So there you go. Two other little quick, just a couple of other quick bulletpoints. Apple put it's visitor center on campus. Our CNet proper got to check it out, I have not yet been able to see it but it has features like an Apple store, it has this cool new architecture. You have like exclusive goodies that you can only get from the Apple Campus. It's their new place that you can go visit, so they had a lot of cool stuff going on, so just check it out. We have a video up and they had some neat stuff going with that. And finally, before we get to our calls, this has to be the Apple executive boo boo bad apple of the week. Did you see the story, Beach, at all? I don't think I have. Let me see. Okay. So check this out. Last week Apple's Tim Cook tweeted a congratulatory message to Australia on its same-sex marriage vote. So he tweeted out and then he tweeted out a flag but that flag was actually the New Zealand flag emoji and not the Australian flag emoji. Man. And you know that he heard from people I am obviously not a flag expert so i used as amazing tool called Google. And found that the big difference really is that there's a large star on the Australian flag. It's the Commonwealth start, it's associated with Australia That is there but is not existing on the New Zealand flag. Also the New Zealand flag has four stars on it, that are five points stars.They are red with white outlines whereas the Australian flag has four seven point stars and one five point star on it. I'm just giving you guys some flack. Now I gotta Google the Australian. You know you're not gonna Google it. You're gonna Google Australia versus New Zealand flag and you're gonna learn everything I just told you. Okay this is the Australian flag we're looking at here and then New Zealand okay. [LAUGH] People that are listening are like I don't see anything bro. They're like I don't care. I know someone listening right now. Someone right now is I literally know there's at least five listeners who are typing in New Zealand versus Australia flag right now guaranteed. I'm going to have to forgive Tim Cook on this one cuz look at how similar they are. Look at that. Bro come on everyone knows what the Australian flag looks like compared to the New Zealand flag. That's common sense. Man you're right. That is common sense. Shame on him, just kidding. Bad Apple. [LAUGH] All right, so we cancel the calls then? Let's do it. Thank you guys all for calling, we had a lot of great phone calls, we whittled it down to five cuz that seems to be a good number of calls to have. So here we go, here's caller number 1. Hey, what's up guys? This is Najam. I'm calling from Miami. I'm leaving a second message because the first one got cut off. But I wanted to you guys about augmented reality and how I think Apple is spending way too much time in And money on AR and AR kit and all these sensors that they want to put on the phones for AR. I first saw AR maybe like seven or eight years ago on the Nintendo 3DS when it came out and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. But I got over it really fast. And ever since then, the best implementations of AI have been maybe Pokemon goal and Snapchat filters. And neither of those two things really required 3D sensors or things like that. That maybe use image recognition and that's about it. So I think Apple is a little silly We're spending so much time on these sensors and research and what not to get AR into the iPhone when in my opinion there are no big killer apps for AR. No real reasons to use it in my opinion. What do you guys think? Do you think that there's a lot of potential in AR and that's why Apple is focusing on it? Or are you in my boat where you think it's a little overrated and a little bit of a gimmick? Let me know what you guys think. I love your show. Keep it up. Thank you, goodbye. Thank you. Hey Beech, where do you stand with this? At first I agreed with him but after thinking about it, I disagree. I think gaming, they're trying to corner the The market on gaming. So, having these 3D chips is gonna allow you to sense like a wall or a door or a piece of furniture or something, so that now will become an object in your AR world. I think they're aiming towards that like, I understand like the snapshot thing is cool but that is modeling your face. Pokemon Go is kind of cool but those things are just kind of randomly placed, right. So I think Apple is going in a good direction with this. If they want to corner that market but there's already so many people in that space, it's hard to say if they're going to make something really cool that's compelling. We've been able to get some hidden gems from AR. I don't know if it's going to be The thing about it is if you think of AR and you think about it like in ten years from now, obviously to me there's a lot of potential. This is a playground where you have to play in, because as we've seen this historically, there's gonna be technology platforms whether it's hardware based or software based that become the hot thing to do. And you have to try them. And you have to see if it sticks, and if it resonates And sometimes piece of technology is too young, and we see a takeoff way later. For example Microsoft had tablets way before app like not even year, like a couple of year, like ten years before Apple did, The iPad, and then all of a sudden the right company at the right time with the right software happens to put it out there. And then all of a sudden everyone's like wow tablets are actually worth using. And now it's evolved where we're really starting to see more of a tablet laptop hybrid. I think with AR I agree with you we haven't seen many successes but I think there's huge potential and when I look at AR right now to [UNKNOWN] it's like being able to wear glasses that show you information while you are, or even like your dashboard on your car, with cameras that sense things, it's [UNKNOWN] that's probably [UNKNOWN] easiest way to show how [UNKNOWN] successful to a consumer audience, But when I go past that it could be in medical fields. It can be driving. It can be heads up displays. Some sort of glasses that not everyone will wear but people will wear and if it can become useful and serve amazing information that makes our life easier. Then it will. But I don't even think we've seen Where we see maybe 10% of what AR is capable right now. Just watch Minority Report, that's what I wanna see. [LAUGH] Give me my Minority Report. I wanna be the Terminator and just look around and identify things. Yeah, like see if a dude's leather pants and glasses match you. And then Take them off his body and then wear them outside of a bar. [LAUGH] Yeah. I wanna be able to identify threats and like it will just say kill, kill. And I'll be I have to kill this person now. Okay great. [LAUGH] And we're not gonna take that out of context cuz then someone is gonna post a clip of you beach him and say Steven Beecham is crazy. I'm the terminator. I'm the terminator. So you know what? I don't know what other people think but I'm still excited about it, but yeah. We haven't seen anything that says yes, this is gonna revolutionize my life. It hasn't yet, it's not there yet, but there are small steps to get to that point. All right, next call, thank you very much. Miami, I forget his name. All right, here we go. Hey, this is Brian from New Orleans. I've had my iPhone 10 since launch date. Something I really like about it is actually Face ID. I really like just being able to swipe up, and I'm in my phone. Don't even have to worry about positioning my thumb the right way. Some things I'm still getting used to is the added weight. I feel like my fingers are getting stronger from holding the phone. Yeah, I know, I guess I have wussy fingers, but. [LAUGH] I'm still getting used to that. Quick tip. I downloaded the quick clips app and it would not work on my iPhone actually called Apple support got kicked around to three different people. They had me backup restore my phone none of that worked. So finally under some privacy settings and location services and system services. If you have compass calibration turned off, the Clips app will not work properly. So it took a couple phone calls and about two hours with Apple to get that figured out. So not sure if anybody else has compass calibration turned off under Privacy Settings, but if you do, turn it back on. All right, I mean I would have known, I would have probably tried to figure that out like [UNKNOWN] but I don't use clips. [LAUGH] When I first heard it I was like, just spend like two hours on the phone till I used clips and it was plugging in like once or twice. But he wants to use it because you know he is a fan of technology. That's awesome. [LAUGH] That's awesome, it's just One of the things I like, I stop using clips. You when apple came up the social media app clips, I tried and i'm like kind of mine but I will never use this. And I think they updated and i'm still not going to use it. Yeah, Ok! next call, thank you for calling, here we go. They tried though, they tried Hey, Beach and Tong, or possibly Brian and Tong, this is Jim calling from the great white North. I just wanted to call in and let you guys know that the iPhone X bug with the cold weather, before they just patched in the latest update here was driving me just absolutely bonkers. It's minus 18 on the reg up here. And yeah, the phone just still wasn't still working We're catching the bus and we're not even able to change the volume on your phone. Pretty nuts. Anyways the reason I'm actually calling in is I was hoping you guys might want to touch on why Apple X Series 3 has the limitation of not being able to roam in other countries. So right now as I said you can't take Apple X Series 3 abroad and use roaming. Or if you're an American and you use your phone so you're watching it in another country you can't take it home and use it. So anyway, long story short, I'm just here so you can touch on what you think the technical limitation is there [INAUDIBLE] watch doesn't work while [INAUDIBLE]. Anyway, thanks so much for [INAUDIBLE] go [INAUDIBLE] and bye bye, Great call, from what I gather and this is off the top of my head. And I remember this even when Apple announced it. The eSim technology is very new, but that's not really the reason why it doesn't work overseas roaming. Not all carriers are capable of supporting eSim yet. And so because of that you have a, specifically internationally too. If you look at which companies, I'm sorry, which carriers and which countries are supporting the Apple Watch LTE version to work, it's pretty limited overall. It's not like every countries doing the Apple Watch Series 3 LTE. That's the LT version we're talking about. So with the eSIM technology, not all carriers are supporting it. It's very limited outside of, I believe, US and did Canada recently? Even with some of them, there's only one specific carrier that would support it in other countries. So That's really why. They will get up to speed, but at the moment that's the biggest reason why you don't see any roaming with the Apple watch, LT specifically. It's just not ready to roll and carriers aren't on-board with support for it yet. All right, well thanks for that call from our friend from Canada Canada. We got another call, two more here we go. Hey guys this is Mark in Orange County California. Question, I just bought an 8 plus and love it, I'd like to be able to use the lightning headset on various audio devices. I'm having a difficult time finding an adaptor, so I wanna know if you know of any adaptor that goes for my Lightning c mail to either 3.5 milimeter mail, or USB mail so I can use my headset to just more than an iphone. I love the show looking forward to the answer and thank you. Shopping for you. No I thought I actually had his answer but he said lightning v mail. To 3.5 milimeter jacked mail, I thought he meant like my lightening mail to 3.5 milimeter jack mail and I do not see anything, like I don't see that Might not exist. But I've- Yeah. Like a Google search, well would it be lightning female- Lightning female to male 3.5 Yeah if you put that in a Google search something will pop up, although I'm not sure Or not What it is, yeah or not so we tried to help. We thought we could help but [CROSSTALK] [UNKNOWN] I'm trying to [UNKNOWN] Part of the reason why that's also probably tricky is because typically unless you find some bootleg version Apple charges a licensing fee to use their lightning connection in a third party accessory. Wow. Just saying. Okay I was not able to help him, my bad. It happens. Don't [UNKNOWN] this. All right, here we go, dongle problems Last call. Hi there, it's just Noah calling from Canada. I just wanna share I found a quick little trick on the Apple TV that I don't know if it's new, but it didn't seem to be apparent. Anyway you can double-click the button To the right of the menu button or TV button or whatever that is. It pops into like a multitasking scroll wheel. Anyway other people find that useful. Thanks bye. Cool I didn't even know that honestly. I'm going to try that. Try it out. I'm gonna check it out. We learn things from everyone all the time. So that's great. So okay bro, is that gonna be it? That's it. We just have one more piece of business to take care of. And then we can get out of here. You're right. [INAUDIBLE] Okay I would read. I will let you play some nice fan fancy music. There we go. It's playing. All right. Let's check this out again. Thanks to our friends at Orbi WiFi. It's something you don't think you really need or you don't really think about. Because we're so jaded by it. But You'd only think about it, when you don't have it, or it's not working properly. You got your video buffering, you've got your WiFi dead zones, everyone home for the holidays is fighting for your WiFi. So, remember, think about it. When did you last upgrade your WiFi at home? Stephen Beecham hasn't done it in a long time. Yes, long time, need to do it. So, if you want just better WiFi everywhere, check out an Orbi WiFi system from Netgear. With Orbi you'll enjoy super strong fast and more reliable Whole home Wi-Fi from your basement to your backyard. From the windows to the walls. I added that part. Change your Wi-Fi world. Get Orbi, o-r-b-i-system from Net Gear. Visit NetGear.com/orbi. That's o-r-b-i. Boom shackalaka all right take care everybody. We'll see you guys. Next week, remember, enjoy the holidays with your friends, family, loved ones, the people that matter. You can also call us at the number to be a part of this show like everyone does. 1-800-616-2638. 2638. Until then Beech I'm good. All right. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Well no. Thanksgiving already happened. It already happened you're right. It happened. This is the future. All right guys. Have a good weekend. Happy black Friday. Go get some toys, go get some toys. I got one in my living room right now homey get ready. Nice, nice. All right take care everybody, be safe, peace. [MUSIC]

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