Gadgetory

good morning on Wednesday November 8 it's time for episode three 13 of the 359 podcast where the mics going hot mean nothing to Ben Fox River my name is BBG and also in the house is Roger Chang hello good morning thanks going hot let's do it I was like the one high energy Bobo you've had all morning a little slightly under the weather all right let's get to it what I'm talking about Apple's a big they are push obviously they've talked about er a lot this year but at least if you read this if you believe this Bloomberg report 2020 could be an even bigger year with an actual our headset we'll talk about that will talk about obviously Twitter doubling our our allowance or character allowance yay I don't know we'll talk about that and and snap having just a miserable quarter on so many levels so as always if you have any questions on these topics leave in the comments section Brian will get the best and we'll try to answer them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Roger chan I'm Ben Fox ribbon apples push into augmented reality is just beginning a report from Bloomberg has the company working on an AR headset to debut in 2020 the company dipped into AR for the first time this year with AR kit as well as a number of experiences that you can try on your phone but this thing this takes things to a new level right oh absolutely what what actual AR headsets are readily available for anybody right now that's really the question that mean is hololens there's a other that's like a Developer Kit yeah Lauren actually using it and if you've ever actually tried out hololens it's still very clunky it's nothing great your control screen is surprisingly small for such a big big right but at the same time there's so much that could change by 2020 in the tech world so it's interesting that this Bloomberg report comes out when it does because there's just this could this could never actually make it to market there's a there's a clear potential that that might actually happen I mean like we did hear about Apple developing a car at one point yeah I was going to be years away and that never came to light either look I did a lot people were looking at Google Glasses sort of that at first kind of for a day or obviously did not work out the tech wasn't there yet but you can imagine by 2020 the tech could get ready it could get good enough to the point where it fits into headsets or glasses or something that's actually usable right that mean right now the headsets are mostly VR headsets and they're all kind of being clunky I think there's a couple windows mixed reality headsets are out there as well those are also be they're not exactly things you can wear on the street right look all the tech companies obviously realize that the potential for VR and especially AR could be huge I mean like I've been wearing glasses since I was five years old to actually integrate some sort of technology into a piece of something that I wear on my face all the time yep could be a significant change but at the same time is it actually gonna happen are people really gonna want it well I mean I think if people see the benefits they'll definitely want it I mean I can imagine the scenario of like marrying that Google lens capability with a pair of glasses like who wouldn't want that I don't know it goes back to like the privacy versus convenience thing I don't know always harping about privacy all right snapchat reported it's sorry I'm Chad all right snapchat reports third quarter results last night and boy were they dismal it only grew 3% from the second quarter but more concerning is the fact that MSP gold CEO admitted that their clunky user interface which they've kind of chatted is sort of cool it's really cool and exclusive is actually a pretty large liability and they're working to redesign the whole app to make it easier for people to use I thought the whole point was to make it like more difficult for olds like you and I to actually get used to being yourself I'm cool hey ed yeah tubular so and and they also they readily admitted though like we don't really know how the user base is gonna respond to this whole thing if we actually redesigned the app and make it easier for people to use I mean like all this kind of overshadow the the other fact that they basically confirmed that spectacles is a flop that took a 40 million dollar charge on unsold inventory then even admit on the call that you know they got really optimistic after that first of that initial service man ordered a whole bunch of new spectacles it just couldn't sell any of them it's bad it's it's luck they they also got like a big investment from 10 cents so it's not like they're going away anytime soon but I think a big picture thing to think about with this is is that it's really hard to break into the Google and Facebook advertising especially if you're Facebook and you want to crush a company like snapchat mm-hmm you've got Instagram it's it shows like it's pretty easy lastly we want to talk about Twitter giving us little bit more space to express ourselves doubling the amount of characters we could use to 280 bed well as our first super-sized tweet I didn't use it yeah everybody else was like making all these like silly comments including you about like oh my god I have all this additional room I don't know what to do I don't know what to do this everybody was filibustering they were all just trying to prove the point that they could do to 80 characters that's exactly what there is a lot to be said about sticking to 140 and maintaining that level of brevity but nobody listens to me alright for those stories and more check us out in CNET I'm Roger J I'm Ben Fox Rubin thanks real sting I made my first 280 tweet last night ooh what was it I counted to 135 Mazel Tov that's hashtag worth it it's like I think that it could actually significantly change the way people use Twitter oh yeah for the worse I mean there were a lot of people that were actually doing you know like dot entered entered enter you just basically take over your entire feed and then have a punch line at the very end sorry about that that's so annoying you know and the whole point of Twitter is them supposed to you're supposed to have brevity yes I don't like the idea of having to add typos or punctuation errors in into a tweet to actually get it to go under 140 yeah yeah at the same time I like actually liked having the 140 limit because it forced me to be creative about how reword things to make it fit because I'm yes the the misspellings and breviary for me so I'd like to try to keep words kind of correctly spelled and that forces you to like think a little bit more concisely right it's kind of nice but that's what we do is journalists but you know having the 280 is it's nice because there are there are times when I don't need 280 but it would be great to have like 160 write a few extra words here and there and according to Twitter while they were beta testing this with people that are much more important than you or I we time when I've been using 284 for 3 years now yeah most most people did not go straight to 280 a lot of folks were just getting very excited about the potential for 280 so they're just kind of tested it out yesterday but hopefully it doesn't result in everybody just writing these long paragraphs whatever that's what Twitter is just a bunch of lies about everything yeah it's true we're on Twitter right now we're on the Twitter tweets on periscope we'd love our periscope audience obviously hi guys hey all right questions Brian sure let's go ahead and take a look at the chat so far first off we set headset in the headline which confused a lot of people throw you're talking about headphones or earbuds is there a more like no catchy lingo slang term we've been calling them VR I guess that's that's Google got that Google Goggles no I don't think there's a better understand I'm more kind of surprised that the industry hasn't like come up with a catchy slang for it or something like that I probably should have added like pods or buds you know correct a ours in the deck I know I should add an AR that might have helped clarify give it time I'm just I think maybe someday sooner or later we'll get some new what do you think it'll be called Apple my face I'm Apple face guess it would be apples that's the new naming convention right they use apples something's Apple I Apple eyeball oh yeah what they just flip it it'll be like Apple I but like you know like with leather i but you're supposed to say one because jerks no you're supposed to say one alright so first and foremost we got a wish happy birthday to one of our regular viewers a little beefy tech hey happy birthday HPD and in the questions he actually is asking will the headsets start with a thousand dollar price tag - even more probably I don't know easily more you think yeah always sees what the market price is like so expected we don't really have a good price range for headsets cuz as you pointed out there aren't that many in the market yet its way 20 is a little bit of ways that's about three or low at this point like a little bit more than two years you can imagine I guess thousand dollars actually is pretty reasonable think about it not reasonable but like it's like plausible I just say plausible how much was Google glass Google glass yeah so if if they do get to somewhere around it that was really early and that was really and that was also clunky yeah yeah yeah I mean they yeah but like well user interface okay so snapchat spectacles are another one of these glasses but they're not actually a yard look they're not analyst okay it's a camera it's a camera into a person that you then add a our filters into later all it does is send pictures to your phone to your snapchat account okay you can add filter design it's not it's not a you know so like the expectation from Apple would be that you put on a headset and you know you do a lot of the stuff that you can potentially do with a depend on what the heads that's gonna look like if it's gonna be like sleek like Google glass or is it gonna be like this all-encompassing thing like hololens is which is pretty clunky and that's something i want to wear outside of the office so i don't know that the price range could be all over the place yeah this is actually one of the few things that Apple has been dropping breadcrumbs about for along yeah Tim Cook keeps talking oh he loves a yeah but like why do you think he's doing that are they just trying to like show that they are in the game with this whole thing because usually they're super secretive this time around they're like we love it I mean it's a big deal part of the problem is there there is no AR market I think that's why they're talking it out because they need to they need to seed interest in developers and people to actually buy into AR because that's not a guaranteed thing right now I think that's why err Apple like every other company understands they need to build a hype because they need to get people aboard to actually support AR or else is just not gonna work truth alright back into the chat for questions stellar tech Apple headsets or mainly are mainly mobile use or at home usage what about actual Apple television panel displays like Samsung wouldn't that be more attractive commercially what would make more sense I don't know if I understand Apple TV displays that wouldn't really be a are at all unless you slap the TV that's a good point wait is he talking about Apple TV like in the living room or Apple's displays I'm talking about just the displays as manufactured even though it's technically Samsung yeah I mean I think well it I guess it depends on who manufactures don't land the lens isn't really that big of a deal for reality headsets a detail that we're not gonna really get to until very yeah later like much later I mean like it's it's a reasonable question to ask when something like this is closer to actually being available I'm really curious if it's gonna be an all-aluminum you just start swinging but it looks really cool cuz Johnny it does have to look cool and at this point hololens does not look cool right and if i remember correctly it's like it wasn't intel also working on a mixture yeah yeah kallu so yeah this is there's no guarantee again going back to my previous point there's no guarantee that this thing actually makes it to me right and even the Bloomberg report kind of hedges on timing they say that 20/20 might be an aggressive timeline it could go it could fall back and you know they the article makes a point that you know the reason why it's so far off it's because all the experiences right now are like not great right well which is like which is a fair point VR is still an right and it's interesting that our course notes that that they're using VR like oculus gear VR headsets and vive VR headsets to test some of the AR apps they're not gonna be I think they're did they actually I think they're gonna start developing an internal on that they won't sell but they are they are kind of looking into VR internally yep not surprised interesting let's take some more comments and questions I like that Noelle his back does backed us up says to me a headset is earphones with a microphone these are goggles maybe that will actually good job but I mean like Google's trademark that haven't they well you know yeah Google Goggles is something else what is Google God it was a I think it was kind of the early version of Google right yeah listener nice oh me out here I missed that one no this was like early early days with that with Android they had Google Goggles like you could theoretically like it wasn't quite as good as like lens but like if you snapped a photo and I think would recognize what Brian was yeah I'm thinking maybe I'm in favor of this only because when you're a our VR lenses quit you get a an excuse for an entire league of people to go the goggles they do nothing and I can squeeze the Simpsons joke in whenever I can there you go all right well done Pele explain how the hololens a for example makes it so you can see things that are so close to your eyes while you while you also can need to see things far away in your environment well some things be blurry so how does that actually translate your actual sure visual receipts a good right yeah yes for a very short amount of time basically with hololens it's it's a sheet it's a display like out in front of your eyes it's not right on top of them and it's it's it's like glass or it's like a like a dark glass material or something so you could actually look through it and it it wasn't things weren't blurry it was more than it was just a buggy process yeah I mean I've tried it too and what the trick is basically the it's where your eyes focus upon if your eyes focus on the center you'll be on the screen that's kind of superimposed in front of you like I watched a football game or a soccer game being played and it was pretty clear wasn't like super sharp but if you wanted to see also the lens you actually wanted to see the real world you just you just have to shift your gaze up or to the side and you can sort of see things and your eyes readjust it's not I didn't find that confusing or disorienting mhm it's not like VR VR is totally disorienting when you like go on or take it off yeah and I've spent much more time in VR and usually if you're playing like a like a video game in VR you're always you always assume your friends are like recording you looking at it I was I was doing that yeah we've done it to each other yeah man you know you like look at this idiot picking your nose you know you know I'm super disappointed in right now is the fact that I spent this entire weekend watching stranger things - twice yes front to back all nine episodes twice they are you don't have awed mented reality for the upside down anywhere the Gorgon wouldn't okay no in your house it would just basically superimpose that come for brothers get on the reality of what you're looking okay that would be that would be totally sick video game but i might get post-traumatic stress yeah so that is a really cool it was Google that just let me fanboy for a little bit what's that Google to show off that like Demi quarter yeah I think so full upside down thing but it didn't have like the demo Gorgon you could put them next to you in a video I would just like to see it warp the colors and your actual visual spectrum yeah there's a ton of potential with it I'm definitely curious to see totally useless from any potential no but like with them with Google lens I think that that's we've talked about that on the podcast a lot and that is definitely an enablement that if that one catches on it'll give a lot of the tech companies good reason to invest more in a are to say like this is something people are legitimately using and getting value out of speaking of value let's actually go back into some real questions in the chat drone wolf media do you guys think they'll ever bring back Google I'm kind of bummed that they abandoned that project I had high hopes well I mean they didn't actually abandon it Google glass is still around in fact it's but it's still mating no no all right it's like they've basically shifted gears and it's all for the work force I mean I wrote a feature about when I profiled this lie marathon runner who use Google glass to run the marathon that's right that wasn't that long ago it wasn't that long ago and he was actually using sorry it feels like I know he was using one of these so called Google glass 2.0 versions which is basically the same thing but it's almost custom software built to be for that specific use case right so that particular case the whole thing was kind of locked down except for that particular app like your photos and whatever but you could it wasn't the full Google glass experiences really just it was specifically tuned towards having someone having a navigator it was obvious they were still trying to figure out who the customer was who the market is and presenting it to consumer has created so many potential problems like movie studios didn't like it because but if like were you actually able to record movies like - like bootleg stuff with Google glass yes directly could we already like that the light would flash though so it'd be pretty obvious recording so it was also I remember casino started banning it yeah just a lot of well I mean restaurants bars they were banning it as well yeah there was a big social stigma attached to it I think that's why they've kind of retreated back to the enterprise world where weren't you know if you go to Woking you put these glasses on I mean no one's gonna care if they look cool or not right because they're useful for work so that's why I think that's why they've kind of moved into that world and I don't know if they're gonna go back to the consumer role it's really tough let's tackle one more quick one about goggles because we're getting requests to talk about snapchat Michael Brown what do you think we saw around Michael Brown what do you think will sell more in the long run Apple watch or Apple a are goggles I mean yeah this is a very theoretical question like we're talking about a product that doesn't actually exist yet and isn't in the market but arguably AR is supposed to be an enormous market when it actually does take off now that never happened and that might not be 10 years from now but Apple watch not yeah probably not as much as I hate to agree with Bend III I do agree with them because the Apple watch I think they kind of saw Apple watch as this potential successor to the iPhone as a next big product turns out it's more of an accessory it really works with your watch more it's it's it's not its own product right so I think they really are they try that they're viewing a are they're viewing these this headsets is potential next product that maybe you don't need your phone anymore like maybe Isis or all your headset or at the very least as its own platform yet something that exists has its own ecosystem it would have its own App Store right so it would be interesting to see if it would actually happen so let's double down we got another great question from Michael Brown snapchat rebuilding the app could make or break snap as a company Ben Fox Rubin you know how much I love it makes for the better and higher stock for share price rising what do you worry about that as far as from a business perspective I don't really have Alfred here sorry I've tried to get into get into it several times that day like snapchat right there comments like that do they let you oldies use the snapchat yeah no they don't even let you you need to be you know there's like an age yeah yeah you to get out I mean look this redesign is I think it's pretty risky I think it's ultimately the right thing to do is make it more accessible it's you know user but I also don't know if that like taints it for like the old school the hardcore users like that's the that's forever the dilemma for all these companies is like how do you balance you know catering to the original hardcore users while at the same time attracting more of a mainstream audience which Twitter has the same struggle with right I think that hasn't really fixed that problem I think that they've obviously come to the realization that they've more or less maxed out on that audience and to really push into the mainstream they have to redesign the product and actually make it something that is easily accessible now does that mean that your grandma is going to be using it more often the thing like baby are you gonna be using it to Grandma's it yeah but like look at Facebook Facebook has two billion users the motivation to ever create new social networks is because your mom found you on the prior one so you got to move why we getting new social network and drives inside Facebook is minting cash snapchat currently isn't they have a total user base of 178 million daily active users so they they should definitely try to figure out ways to grow and to expand I like that because Evans argument was like with our audience isn't the biggest but we've got we had a very strategic audience I guess the implication is we get all the young ones okay the youths they they don't have me so I had a revelation about how to actually fix the Internet the problem the Internet is the anonymity aspect of that guy what I think everyone needs to do is apply for a license to internet I like to that you need to you need to actually present your identity but then but then the problem is what do you what happens when kids start chalking up fake internet is the organization that would run this particular government license giving entity you know it could be seeing that scene that should do it I don't think they were the case it's too much power Elon Elon should be the internet bizarre sure Wow that's all I get yeah that's rare mood today yes yes Watson the issue with spectacles believers never advertise I mean how could you even bought them they were without social media over the house 11 door sment dacher goes on to expand where do they even sell them yeah pop-up kiosks yes expanded them to like Best Buy more recently more recently but for the first time goes to Best Buy it was the it was a pop-up Keanu greed advertising there wasn't a lot of effort they did billboards in New York City I saw the newer city but like around the country I doubt totally yeah they're not trying to get people in North Dakota to buy snapchat spectacles and they should say lutely but did not do you know regular media marketing again because they're they're trying to push for I mean the youth vote as opposed they're trying to go after that jivin I'll give them credit I mean that deal the early launches spectacles and making that pop-up thing it was it was smart it was a cool novelty it got people excited but like it never evolved beyond that like they just decided well that worked really well so let's just have more pop-up kills not only that but like I think that the second they had to admit that they wrote down 40 million dollars worth of spectacles yeah it's like the kiss of death now nobody wants to be like seen with those on their face because they're no longer they're not gonna be entering the mainstream they're not the hot cool new thing they're like the thing that nobody is buying I still see the I've seen those kiosks in a couple places and I kind of just I just stand there and kind of watch what happens like people go up to it they're still curious like oh those those whatever they're cold and there's a Salesman they're like you have their spectacles whatever and they run through it and then like inevitably oh that's cool and they walk off yeah the price is not cheap enough to make it an impulse buy it would have to be $50 even then like at this point grief still pretty price how much how much are they they're like 100 or something right that's not an impulse purchase from those people all right one more before we call today and I hate to pick favorites about Michael Browns on fire today this one's gonna have to be directed at Roger sincere the only one who's actually used snapchat besides better camera experience on Android how would you like to see the app and platform change just in general he says Android in the question but I think let's just talk about it in general I mean depending on what your personal I mean I would like it to have some sort of hub I think like a menu page yeah when it opens up it's just like the camera you're like what though uh-huh you start school left or right and it just it's not intuitive like you got to figure out it has its own once you figure it out it has its own language and it's it's fine to use like I have fun using it I don't use it that often but I do send snaps here and there but yeah just have like a home screen or something that like takes people and I kind of welcomes people in right like I feel like that alone would help do so much to be to make it easier for people to use actually like welcome one more commentary before we go from intrepid chronics it says I'm 27 and use snapchat it's actually really fun app you have to be young to enjoy something yes I'm 31 and I hate ever yeah yeah we're we're we're older than 27 funny that we shouldn't actually judge anybody on their their UI oh we're like is admitting that like I'm old because I'm 27 I wish is still 27 may enjoy your life this is probably your life my friend I just turned 57 okay I want to just note out to dad she said he was watching the video from his car I really hope you're not driving yeah that's a we hope you're not a saying our videos not worth it that's awesome alright we are out of time that was great show everybody Roger you wanna bring us home yep do you light anything you saw her hurt here check us out on CNET our podcast is available on itunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner and google play music no tomorrow thanks everyone thank you