Gadgetory

good morning on November first it's Tuesday time for another delicious episode of the 359 podcast with Ben Fox Rubin and Alfred Aang what are you laughing at that was really nice intro thank you so much I try dee-licious it's nice to be back thank you very much we're glad I'm glad we survived last week i use it's good to have you back fresh cuts that was in yeah yeah yeah thank you hey I to keep up with you man oh um anyway today we're gonna be talking about Google's 3d sensing camera tech called tango it's coming to its first phone first consumer phone ever you could buy it today if you wanted to and we're also going to be discussing our conversation with Microsoft's head of devices Panos Panay and what he had to say about the surface dial we'll see if we can get to somewhere else after that but I think that's about it for today's show as always sending your questions and comments will try to get to as many as possible at the end of the show and I think that's about it anything else that Adam let's get the show started let's do it let's get it started and we'll start the recording of the podcast in three two welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day plus whatever else we want to throw in I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang the first phone using Google's 3d sensing tango camera technology is on sale starting today it's the lenovo fab to phone oh sorry it's the lenovo fab to pro it's a six point four inch device starting at four ninety nine cameras technology if you don't know what it is uses two cameras to measure objects when you're looking right at them where it adds virtual objects to the real into real-world pictures kind of like pokemon go what do you think of this less cool stuff let's just forget about this as a phone in general I mean just looking at it for its camera functionality it it does feel like Pokemon go on like steroids if nothing I'm very excited about the the furniture feature that they were showing all right you can kind of like take stuff from online and then just point it at you know at something your house to see what it look like I think that's one of like the most obvious usages for this type of technology and I think this is like a that's that's like an easy way to do it it's on your own you can just kind of walk around your apartment to do it I think I think it's a good building block in step 2 what basically you know augmented reality needs to be at you know just be in everyone's pockets I I don't think it should be its own device but you know I think there's building blocks to this kind of stuff so I think it's important that they they roll out something like this and then eventually it'll just be on every device yeah yeah yeahs one of the important things to mention too is that more tangle enabled phones are expected next year so this is just the first one and as you said this this could get revised or it could get streamlined as it continues being added in one of the things that I also like about this is that you know like with the oculus rift or the microsoft hololens these are like these big chunky devices you have to stick them on your head and your kind of like divorced from the rest of the world when you're doing it I kind of think that this is a great way to introduce people to a are kind of like Pokemon go did yeah I think this is uh has a lot of opportunity for gaming they were showing off his kind of like racing game that was based off of them they are with their camera I think it has a lot of great potential you saw a Pokemon go took over the world totally interesting to see what they'll do next with it or there's a lot more gamers that are trying to get outside more and use augmented reality as a part of it so you know using you know something i can scan like the object in you know your surroundings just using the camera sounds incredible yeah Pokemon goes different was using a camera in your gps but it wasn't like scanning stuffs i'm saying i'm thinking you know in these terms they might even be able to take stuff and put it to scale with like your surroundings yeah definitely wanted to get to the next story our own Scott Stein chatted with Microsoft's head of devices Panos Panay when he was in town for the microsoft event last week pinay hinted that the surface dial which is a new kind of accessory that can be placed right on a touchscreen is just the beginning or it could be just the beginning for a new sets new set of accessories what do you think about that I think it's really cool I you know I was very excited to learn that the dial could wasn't just for the surface studio that you know that's right we're showing off you put on any Windows 10 device I was compatible with it and I think that's the way to go with it you know you don't want these you know crazy awesome devices attached to like three thousand dollar desktops and things are you accessories like yes really cool access you don't want that like oh but that only works with this thing right than three thousand dollars to use it I'm curious to see what other you know you know accessories are thinking about putting out there the most obvious one seemed to be a pen but you know they already have that I know what would be cool if they just added like um like a touch bar onto their surface book sorry i totally stole that joke from you but no they're probably not going to do that I really think I'd really like you to do too but yeah I my imagination is failing me here on you know what else could be there yeah the surface style is totally different so it will be interesting to see what else Microsoft comes out with anyway if we want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred hang thanks for listening and thanks for sticking with us in the chat i'm gonna start looking at the questions right now a lot of people do like the dial I think we're on par with that we like dial too yeah it's only 99 bucks by the way is okay granted only is not the nicest like some people might not want to pay that much how much was the Apple pen Oh God pencil wiggle pencil I will look it up right now but I'm almost positive are we doing prices right style on this I feel like it was 149 or something off the top of my head but I might be wrong about that I'm gonna go if 9999 it was now so you can either get an apple pencil or a surface dial for ninety-nine dollars I'm more interested in the dial or you could buy amazon prime for a year I'm gonna go with that one no apples and oranges hey slide wants to know do you think six point four inches is just too big and that isn't definitely very big for me that's a personal question yeah that is original context yeah oh we just got scammed dude we just got alright that's fine little mischief night Michael thing that you started on the tango phone no I know I know um I I would have said absolutely it's there but do I have I have an iphone 6 and that's five a seven plus eight point seven yeah seven plus is like 5.5 isn't it you yeah so like 6.4 like nah no I think they're trying to get people excited and interested in the just get a tablet then why didn't they just go to a tablet once michael says that they should have just made a tablet smartphone maybe ideas like they wanted it's something in everyone's pockets you know that it's accessible like that to give a lot more outreach with it but I i agree 6.4 is a little bit ridiculous just make a tablet here's a small possibility that they may have needed to make it that big at least initially so the two different cameras that are used for this 3d sensing could be far enough apart and they could put everything else into the phone that is just a theory i'm just throwing it out there but because this is the first one out in the market maybe they had to make the phone a little i think i think i think that the point is though why make it a phone why make it a phone and because they wanna marry for the idea of like it's going with you everywhere baby yeah that's what I was the rhetoric is about the red primary tablet market Rises yes yeah which was the story they're never gonna get to hit in the hidden character again that was our easter egg story so that we were gonna mention that like the tablet market is doing very very poorly so it makes a lot of sense that they would do a phone because phones just sell better than tablets these days that's true do we want to take a look at that story as little bonus here yeah why not loyal viewers for our loyal viewers in the regular podcast but exclusive to you on youtube right so this is this is something that's been going on for quite some time and researcher IDC just came out with their quarterly report Apple is still number one ahead of everybody else as far as tablets are concerned with tablet sales for the third quarter however they've been seeing shrinking demand for the tablets for a really long time a big reason for that is is that you buy a tablet you don't need to replace it after two years you don't need to replace it after three or four years sometimes or even more than that what was interesting about this report to is one of the guys that was actually coming out with a lot of sales a lot more sales than they did last year was actually Amazon because they sell these low-cost tablets you could throw them at your kids not literally now but um what is going on at the rubin house a lot of people a lot of people probably just want like a simple tablet that they could use and like have kids use and if they break it whenever no big deal yeah i just that i use the fifty-dollar tablet yeah I'm okay with it it's not perfect not the greatest doesn't do with the iPad does know that most people a lot of people don't need that and so that seems to be the main growth area for the tablet let me put netflix on it can you answer an email on it you know i haven't used the fire tablet i have like a i'm different amazon tablet and it works just fine that's what I don't know I got a kind of simple core basic lucky and web browsing personals xsarahx and it's plasticky the back is plasticky the front is glass the screens perfectly fine maybe the touch screen isn't like completely perfect like I've tried out iPads before and like yeah it's a totally smoother device that kind of thing however you're paying so much more money for it like I'm willing to deal with getting a slightly work product for like yeah I point on why the tablet market is shrinking now cuz like I look at that tablet unless that like cracks or like you know craps out on me I'm perfectly fine with just sticking around it it so it's like slower than normal people figure it out or the major tech companies have figured out that tablet market is a lot like the desktop and laptop market that you really do not need to replace a tablet after like five years or something maybe Samsung was onto something by entering a self-destruct mode back to the topic at hand can tangle be used for mapping applications uh that is definitely one potential yeah always fellers one of the I can't imagine that nothing at the top of the list that would be really cool too but that was actually one of the points made in the story yeah where it's like it's got like new GPS features on it when we're comparing it to the original GPS right I think one of the things that I find kind of annoying when using google maps is that when you when you're doing it for like walking directions as opposed to like driving directions or something it's not as easy to use is just not as seamless so that would be kind of cool if they could just use like 3d sensing technology to just add the directions like directly onto your phone so you just see an arrow while looking at the real yeah maybe would be cool if there was like a crowdsource thing like that like with ways mmm but you know like people like taking scans of things like throughout like basically like a like a crowdsource like google street view yeah like using like AR yeah that's an idea I don't know you can have a lethal obviously sound like people are certainly interested in AR I think a little bit more than VR potentially at this point because like Pokemon go showed that you're actually connect to the real world I think like VRS got great technology but at the same time it's like I think it still got this like connection whether it was like what are you doing when you're just yeah anytime I use a VR headset only office anytime I use a VR headset in the office I take it off and I feel like I just woke up from a long nap and I'm like what is going on here I just like year is it I just feel disappointed in the real world and want to go back really it's not gonna to go a lawnmower man you should try it you should try we have the new Playstation one I played Valkyrie for a while it was pretty fun so you should try that well that's what I'm doing at work all day today the ps4 I did that on friday so i don't know if anybody on the chad has tried the new Playstation one but i will say i enjoyed it i thought about like imagine that like in terms of like a are though like compared like if you can do something like that from your phone totally yeah i guess that's the idea i don't think that i don't think you could play Valkyrie on your phone but in the same something versal ray yeah uh Michael comments i bought an ipad pro 9.7 inch head of two weeks and returned it all it did was collect dust and in a similar fashion swim but how good was it at collecting dust it was so good it was the most beautiful dust collector you've ever seen he is also in the market for replacing his uh 2014 macbook air 13-inch what do you think he should get ah that's such a hard question aren't you also in the market for replacing your laptop yeah which is why i know that's a hard question you know i actually looked at the surface book for a little while I feel like touch screens are really interesting and they're just it's just much more intuitive to use so I'm personally looking at a windows-based touchscreen laptop at this point I would probably say one of the best ones out there right now is the dell XP 13 or 15 that one gets a lot of really good ratings I wish the HP Spectre had a touch screen I don't think that it does yet but that's also like a beautiful beautiful design so those are two interesting ones also the new macbook pro the 13 inch without the touch bar I thought was certainly a consideration comparable if you want to if you want to jump it if you want to stay in the Apple universe and you're willing to spend fifteen hundred dollars I think that if you have a macbook air that's that's probably going to be the closest thing that you can get to it but joins a lot of money join debt dongle life that is that is definitely a major issue yeah for sure but hopefully that was out fault yeah I would make the argument that at this point you know the laptop that you're getting should have some kind of touch capability with it whether it be a bar or the screen I wasn't that's old i don't know how much you I was moreso talking about the screen I that like do you not like it's been so long now that like laptops have had touch screens that it's just I feel like that should be a standard at this point it is for the photos based ones they suddenly are so but either way Michael and I'm still doing research myself so those were just a couple of ideas that I had been considering so and I would definitely say look at the surface book because I definitely thought that it had a lot of those check marks in there so Sheamus self plug I don't know what exactly is coming through but I know dan ackerman in the pc lab and working on some laptops here coming up very soon he's got a pretty stack schedule so there'll be some new stuff to look at so keep an eye out for him yeah definitely ask brian Tong from Cena how to dongle that sounds like a really bad dance craze like the next Maharaja sounded dirty that Donald area like like what we were talking about earlier but six foot four six point four inch dongle see all right now I'm officially blushing welcome to the dollar wall I'm fun and games I'm sorry I'm so glad I went back on the bad guys yeah do we have any more questions or we're gonna wrap it I think it's about time to wrap it thanks everybody all right let's do it happy Halloween everybody that was late i know i know but i wasn't on any way the 359 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and of course on cnet com thanks for listening everybody will see you again tomorrow