Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the IA cast. All right. With me today, we have Lyn back with us.

Hello, everyone. Everybody.

And we have Damasi.

Hello, everybody.

We have a great group with us today, so we have a great topic to talk about. So let's get started with some of our typical news. And to start off, we're going to start with some news about the podcast, and that is that we're going to make a little bit of a change for you guys. So our podcasts typically run a little long, and maybe you don't want to listen to everything that you've heard that you get in the podcast. So we've added chapters to the IA Cast on the last episode. You may have noticed that, which is really exciting, but we're also going to be breaking the episodes up. So you'll get the full episode, but you'll also get little segments throughout the week in the feed. So you'll be getting each segment that we talk about in the podcast throughout the week. So be looking for that. It's pretty exciting, I think.

Yes.

So that way you don't have to listen to us talk about stuff for an hour or so. You could just go and like, oh, this topic on iPhone batteries in the EU sounds really exciting, which kind of brings us to that, right?

Yes.

So you guys talked about this, I believe, yesterday or Thursday when you recorded it. Lynn on Friday. Fine.

Yeah, that's right.

So you want to explain what's going on?

Sure. Well, there's legislation in the EU right now. In fact, it has a very high chance of getting through Parliament because it has pretty much universal support in the EU parliament. And the idea is that they want to make it, quote, unquote, easy to change your batteries in your laptops, your phones, and your tablets. And the reason they give for this is actually a good reason. They're trying to cut down on the e waste. They want to just give people more control over what they do with their tech. And they're trying to, again, trying to keep people from just discarding these batteries, which are very polluting, right into the atmosphere, into the environment. And I know that this has sort of been coming for a long time. This has been something that people have thought about, and it also ties into that right to repair movement. That sort of a global initiative where people are saying, hey, I want the right to repair my own tech, or I want the right to take it to a shop, a local shop with people that I trust. Not everyone lives close to an Apple Store where they can go, or lives close to the repair places where they can go. And so this is an idea of just really changing the dynamic of just discarding this equipment after the battery runs down, which is what oftentimes happens, right. People get rid of their phones because the battery is dead and they can't change the battery. It has universal support and I think it's not going to have any trouble getting past.

So I have a lot of opinions on this topic, but I'm curious Damasi, what are your initial thoughts on this?

So I just have a question. It's the most burning thing for me here, which is what is easy or easy for a user to repair?

Yeah, that's a good question.

That has several connotations. Like there are people who could easily, if they made it a little bit easier, to just unscrew a few screws and take your battery out and swap it in. There are still people who would not find that easy enough for them to want to risk doing it. So I'm curious about what the definition of user repairable is going to be and also think that perhaps a company like Blind Shell should start putting this into marketing. Hey, our batteries, you just pop the back off and swap it, right?

Exactly, that's a good point because, yeah, the Blind Shell is very swappable and.

As far as I know too kind of outside of the US. More so than inside of the US. A lot still quite a few Android phones that have user changeable batteries in that way as well. So that could be a business push for them if they start marketing that. But I'm really curious what easily replaceable or changeable means.

Well, that's my biggest concern with this. Does it mean that you have to be able to take off the back of your phone as a user? Because the way I read this was user removable. So what concerns me is, does that mean that any user can just take off the back of their phone and change their battery? If that's the case, that's going to really damage the creativity that these handset manufacturers can do to make their phones. They also say that this involves headphones as well.

So remove the thinness that we're used to now too with a lot of devices are going to have to naturally get more bulkier to make room for all of the components in the battery and still have that space to be able to take that battery out easily.

And I feel like that is a detriment to creativity. I'm never a fan when government tries to regulate the creation of hardware because it says that creativity is and I even feel like about this on accessibility, right? When you go and write a line of code, in my mind you're creating art and when you dictate how a thing can be written and presented and all of those things, whether it be code, whether it be a website, whether it be accessibility, whether it be how a phone is built, there are things within reason, right? But at the same time, what happens when your AirPods pro have to be bigger because you have to be able to remove the batteries from them. Right, right. And that's what they're saying with headphones as well.

I think Apple actually has been kind of moving in this direction for a while now. I think they said since the iPhone 14 that they have actually now you can get a toolkit to replace your battery. You can do that if you know how to do it. But I guess of course the manufacturer's concerns are that people who are not equipped or really not able to do this correctly can damage their phones. They talk about the introduction of malware parts that are not manufacturer approved. And safety, I mean these batteries do have safety issues. But as Damasi was saying, there are phones out there that you can replace the battery. I just wonder, like with iPhones they're so sort of I don't know what the word I'm trying to say, they're more sophisticated, they're more complex. And how is that going to work? I'm not sure how that could even work, but I know that there is a kit. Like you can buy this kit and you can buy batteries to replace your battery if you want to do that in the later iPhones.

But you have to get that kit and then you have to send it back.

Right.

I think the EU is going to accept that as acceptable. What I'm really thinking about more, because at least I don't hear as much about this when it comes to the Android phones out there. Apple has been in the past couple of years moving more towards their stuff. I believe the iPhone 14 lineup entirely got the highest repairability rating from ifixit that an iPhone has gotten in a long time because they're using more screws and less glue to put things inside of the phone. But what I don't hear about a lot is what are other handset makers like the pixels for example. I know Samsung has been making some moves in this direction a little bit too copying Apple tend to do. They tend to do, yeah, I'm curious about that. And again, it really comes down to how they define you because right now you could say the iPhone 14 does have a replaceable battery. And yes, me as a user or maybe Michael or anybody that's sophisticated enough that wants to go through the steps to order the kit from Apple get a battery, could change their battery in their phone. The average customer though is not going to be able to use that. So how simple does it have to be? And the more simple the battery replacement is, I feel like the more problematic that is going to be for the design of the iPhone because again, we're going to have to go back to thicker phones because the battery can't be buried in the middle of where it is now. It's going to have to be more user accessible, which means putting a frame in between putting some sort of backing in between the electronics of the phone and where the battery sits. So that when a person does go to pop to back off their phone to change that battery, they're not in danger of messing up something like a chip or putting their hand in the wrong spot and disconnecting a Face ID doesn't work anymore. Right? And it also concerns me a little bit as to what is this going to do for the overall repair cost in general for devices with Apple? Because I tend to purchase Apple Care on portable stuff, because if it's portable, you're taking it around in the world, who knows what's going to happen? And is my Apple Care now going to cost me more than it currently costs me right now? Because they have to account for the fact that you could also go change your battery. So this is potential more damage. How does it affect that? Like you, Michael, I don't necessarily like to see legislation come in from anybody's government that dictates specifics. That to me is where we count, because the specifics, when you get too specific with the law, you're not accounting for. And we see the fallout of this in the US. In general. We have online privacy and protection laws somewhat here in the US. But they were written back in the late 80s, early 90s, which don't account for where the internet is today. And that is my concern, is when you're too specific within a law, you either tie people's hands from innovation or you don't account for a thing that arises five, seven years later and then we're back to the whole free for all situation. I would much rather see guidance on we want a policy in place that devices have to be more upgradable or parts of the device need to be more upgradable or repairable. I'm all for things being more repairable because most times, as Lyn said, people have iPhones, that they may still have an iPhone XR or eleven that outside of the battery health not being all that great on it is a perfectly serviceable phone for them. They should be able to change that battery or get that battery changed. And they shouldn't have to go to an Apple Store specifically to get the battery changed because I've lived in places here in the US where I was literally 4 hours from any Apple Store period. And there are some states that don't have Apple Stores in the mall, not to mention outside the US. There are whole swathes of countries that don't have an Apple Store. It should be something that a professional or reasonably competent individual could change their battery or change batteries for people. That does two things. It gives people options and it also can generate a small little business market there for people to make some money changing batteries out and things like that for people.

Now. What about the AirPods? Because they say headphones fall into this like wireless headphones fall into this category as well.

And see, that's another thing, right? The AirPods, those batteries are all glued. I mean, right now, at this point, from my understanding at least, I've never had to exchange a pair of AirPods. My understanding with Apple is if you have Apple care or you have a warranty claim on some AirPods, they just give you a new AirPod, like to replace one that's damn try to open it up and do surgery on it to get it back working. So like you said, it could be that your AirPods are going to now be bigger, which means they're not going to be as comfortable as they currently are, which shifts off a lot of things. And again, how big would it have to be? Because a phone I might attempt to change the battery on a phone or an iPad or even a MacBook, but an AirPod at its current size or even slightly bigger, I'm not touching that battery because all it takes is a puff of wind or breath and the battery going on.

Another thing, a couple of things I had thought about as well is what about waterproof? I mean, if you're going to yes.

I was going to bring that up.

Good point.

Not just that, but you can see people trying to get parts from places that are not Apple approved and you can see people getting batteries from suppliers that are not Apple approved and those batteries exploding or something. And then who is liable for that?

This battery will make your iPhone last twice as long.

It's just like the ink, right? The printer ink. People go out and buy that ink from the and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But with an iPhone, it's just I don't know.

Yeah, and you know, exploring that a little bit for people too that aren't really familiar with why. Because I think a lot of people have the impression that Apple forces you to buy stuff from them and they don't want you to buy from anybody else. Which may be partially true, but there's also a bit of manufacturing. What, you got quality assurance from Apple parts versus just going to buy a battery off of ebay that somebody says will fit your iPhone. Right. Because again, there's that liability that Land just mentioned. If I go buy a it's just like buying a non MFI. The reason the MFI program is this for cables and chargers is because Apple wants a way to make sure that when you buy a cable or buy a charger, whether you buy it from them or you buy it from Anchor, for example, there's some liability or guarantee that this is going to work with your phone versus buying that random $2 cable out of the corner gas station at 03:00 in the morning, lost your charger, and you set your phone on fire. And this is a thing that has happened. This is not just what if like this has happened because people are using chargers or cables or chargers that don't have the correct kind of voltage regulation that they should have. Right? So that is a legitimate concern about knockoff parts, basically.

And going back to what you are talking about, the specifics of the laws and things like that, that are being put forth, we're already seeing that with USBC because what happens whenever the next best USB type comes out? Like USB. D I don't know. I'm just saying random concepts. But if that happens, then we will be limited to the USBC connector in the EU because they say that everything has to be that connector. So it's saying we can't have anything new because we made that that specific.

Right? I don't know. I can't figure out how these governments get off telling a company what to do. That's pretty unusual, right? I mean, usually companies not really. I guess it's not unusual.

So just like Apple always says when somebody tries to lambast them for something that they've done inside of a country that typically here in the US. For example, we would be like, that is unconscionable. Apple has to comply with the laws of the countries that it does business in or they don't do business in that country. It's just like here we're a little bit more freer than some countries. When China requested they pull certain apps off the App Store for Chinese users inside of China, they don't have a choice, right? I mean, their only choice is to not do business in China. But that's not really a choice at this point for them either. My thing is, I just really feel like oftentimes the law gets written. I mean, we can step away from this just for a quick second and say GDPR, right? The principles, why GDPR was created in the EU were laudable principles. I appreciate it and even applaud them for the attempt that they made. But the implementation, which they were also very specific about, has created nothing but a Wrath of Cookie banners that we always have to deal with when we go to a site that are times completely unnecessary. That's the fallout of somebody being too specific in an industry where things change very fast and not having the foresight to try to put together more of a framework as opposed to a specific set of rules.

And I want to point out, we have been getting chat messages on YouTube from this one person. I think you all may know him. He goes by unmute. I think you all might know who that is. He mentioned that. Yeah, Michael, we're talking about you. But basically he says that it brings up the question about dexterity for removing batteries. And then he also has said and this is why we can't have nice things.

Yeah.

And see, that goes right back to my point, though, of like what is defined as user replaceable. Because there could be an instance where somebody sues up under this law. I don't think people tend to sue as much as they do in the EU as they do here in the US. But I could see somebody trying to file a lawsuit because they do have a dexterity issue or they're missing a couple of fingers. Right. And they can't change their battery because it's not as easy as say a phone was twelve years ago to just pop the back off your Android phone and swap the battery out. Right, right. It's sticky. And I guess we won't really know until they put the law out. But at that point it's done. Right. There's no recourse. Like it's done. It's like, okay, well now we know what they mean. I don't think they should have did it that way, but now we know what they mean. Right? Yeah.

And also I can just see it now, iPhone explodes in somebody's face. Well that's because this person tried to change their own battery. They used the battery from someone place on ebay or whatever. And then it gets all over the news that it's Apple's fault, which it isn't.

And we all know that's going to happen, right. I think I even said that in a text message there. Like despite the link baiting nature of this, this does apply to everybody that makes a phone or a tablet in the EU, but the headline was Apple is being forced to make their phones more because they want those clicks. Right. So the first time something explodes or catches on fire or doesn't function properly is going to be Apple iPhones are exploding. And just remember the few years ago with the notes, right, when they were catching on fire, you couldn't even get on a plane with a note. Right. And that was a Samsung issue. Right now we're letting people just grab random batteries and lyn touched on it earlier. There's going to be a battery. Somebody's going to sell this. This will double the capacity of your iPhone, right? Yeah. Okay, sure it is. Until it blows up.

Well, it's very interesting. This was going to be a short kind of check in on this story and we, we could, you could tell.

That we have thoughts.

Yeah.

But you know, you do, you do wonder like will this, this thing come to the United States? You know what I mean? Is this going to be something that everybody decides to do? And also I think the EU is trying to, I don't want to get political here, but I think the EU is trying to become a technology hub itself. It's trying to have a Silicon Valley of its own. The EU wants to get more into the, I guess they want to be more into the manufacturing side as well. So all these regulations and everything, I just feel like, I just sort of wonder is that trying to dampen the competition over American goods? I don't know.

I don't know that I think they're trying to do that. I think they're just trying to regulate technology so that it doesn't get out of control and so that they can have a say in what goes on. But the bigger issue is that even though they're doing things here, we may not think it affects us, but it does because these companies have such a large market in the EU. Look at the USBC thing. It might force, well, kind of like back to that clickbait kind of talk. It might force Apple to make USBC on iPhones and that's been the talk. But it goes back to like Damasio saying GDPR and other things. Even though we're not the EU, we still have to put up with all the cookie banners and all those things. So even though the rules aren't here in other places for those things, the.

Consequences are felt right, which means if they do this right to repair this battery thing happens, in a way it is going to affect the phones that we have here because there's no way for Apple to minimize that. I don't think it's so much that they're trying to control the companies. I think there are two things going on with the EU. Number one, unlike the United States, where we have a federal government that can make a federal law and make it broad and expansive and cover the entire country, we tend not to do that on most subjects because the founding principles of our country are the states are more independent, they have more autonomy than the countries that make up the EU. So the EU can more easily pass a law like this than we could get passed in the federal government because there would be pushback from state representatives that wouldn't let it pass. Things like this don't necessarily easily pass in the US. Whereas the EU, they're more of an all united. Nobody really pushes back against a lot of things because that's how they're structured, right? Our structure, our overall structure is made up different, and I deal with this on a regular basis. We have states that are enacting privacy laws for protecting user data online. Seems like the federal government should make that law, but instead I have to deal with 17 different states with 17 different sets of rules here. So I think the EU tends to have their pull out a cliche here. They're harsh in the right place, I think, when it comes to a lot of what they're trying to do, because they're really trying to protect the consumer on a level. I just think the implementation oftentimes is where they go wrong.

Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to USBC. Maybe the lock could have said that a consortium should come up like the USBC or whatever. Whoever comes up with these standards should make it a standard and all manufacturers need to follow that standard, not say this is USBC is what you must use. Right, right.

What if a better one comes up? Like the Monte?

Exactly.

Are we stuck with this? It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Yes. Let's go ahead and finally move on because I think we've talked this one quite a lot to more of a positive thing that we found out. And that is a new feature coming to the Vision Pro. And even before we get to that article that we talked about, that we're going to talk about, I saw a tweet and I think that this will blow you all away on this and it's not involving a Samsung phone. The Vision Pro, according to Paul Hudson, who does hacking with Swift and things like that, has been in development for seven years.

Wow.

Seven years. That's incredible.

Wow. Because I know that I had read an article where there were some problems getting things off the ground and some teams within Apple, I guess, were not cooperating together or they were saying that they didn't think that Tim Cook was real excited about the project. They didn't feel like he was real excited at first about it.

Well, they always knew they wanted to build this thing, but I think they wanted to wait longer before putting it out.

Right.

I think it was they wanted to see where it would go further. They didn't want to put it out yet. But with AI and all of these other things coming out this year in technology, they had to do something. And Apple is not a software company. Apple is a hardware company. So AI was never going to be, hey, look, we have new AI stuff for your iPhone. That's not what they do. Right.

Although I have to say, I saw an article in The Atlantic just recently titled something like apple is now an AI company. Isn't that weird? I saw that and unfortunately it was behind a paywall, so I couldn't read the article.

Well, it is true. iOS 17 with what's it called, the Autocorrect and with the dictation has gotten much better. And they really do use some AI standard transformer based AIS to learn what you're saying. And it's a lot different from what Apple was doing before. And I think that Apple refuses to use the language of the day like AI or anything like that. They'll use machine learning or the proper terminologies, but they will not use AI or the other one. To me, it's very interesting. They will not say virtual reality. They'll say, I think they've used augmented reality or different things, but they will not use virtual reality.

Yeah, I think some of that is that they have leaned I mean, from what I've seen about the Vision Pro, they really focused very much on the fact of being aware of the world around you. It does have the ability to kind of go into that VR mode where you're just in that virtual space, but they really leaned more into, you can do these things and still be here. Look at the eye tracking thing that they did so people can see your eyes or the indicators that, oh, this person can't see you right now. All of that sort of stuff is designed to keep you engaged and also let people know around you when you're not able to directly engage with them. So I think that's why they lean so much into it. And I honestly think that the overall goal for this device, even though this is just the first iteration. And for me, I really feel like the Vision Pro is in a lot of ways what the Apple Watch was when they first launched it, right, which it had a lot of features. They were on stage talking about all these things you could do. You can open your garage door, you can do this stuff, you can do that stuff. And over time, the price has come down a little bit on the Apple Watch some, but more so the software has moved more towards what people actually use the Watch for the most, which is notifications, quick interactions, and health, which is the biggest thing I think has been used for. And I feel like we're kind of at that point here with the Vision pro, where there's a lot of things that they want to let you know can be done with the device, but it's just a first gen. We don't know how people really are going to take to it and what they're going to use it for. And I think they ultimately want glasses, just a frame that you put on that will have augmented reality related world and still have some of those VR components probably built into that. But I think that's really where they've been trying to get to for the longest time is we want to overlay augmented reality over the world that you're in, so you're still in the place that you're in and you're just getting more information or more engagement with the thing.

And we've had more chat messages from Unmute, and he's saying that he hasn't noticed much of a difference with autocorrecting dictation, but he's heard from a lot of users that they have. And I'm one of those. I feel like dictation for me has gotten so much better in 17. I almost can trust as long as I'm in a good environment, that's not going to be too loud, that it's going to have a good experience with getting my voice. So I've been very pleased with it. There's still a few things that doesn't get right, and it's unclear if that's the audio or the beta, or if there's bugs, or if it's switching between the old model and the new model, like the way it worked before and the way it works now. But I feel like we are and. Going back to the Apple Watch, could we even be seeing the end of the Apple Watch? Because if you have the Vision Pro on, can you imagine this for sighted users? If you look down at your arm, what if you saw an Apple Watch there? Think about that. Wouldn't that be incredible? Maybe you'd need the watch for workouts and things like that. But what if you weren't wearing one and you looked down at your arm with a Vision Pro on and you saw the Apple Watch and you could see the time. All of these things are possible with this headset. And that kind of brings up the topic I want to bring up mention and that's item search, like with voiceover and things on, you'll be able to search for different items and see what's in your environment that was announced. So I'm really excited about that.

Yeah, that is exciting to hear about it. And I think it's going to be a useful feature. My thing with that is I feel like there is a lot of uproar, shall we say, from the Internet, because there was no specific mention of accessibility during the keynote about the Apple vision. And I think just patience, right? Patience. This is such a new device. This is an entirely new platform for them. And like I said, I'm pretty sure accessibility is going to be there. Curious how they're going to do it, how is it going to work? What additional features for accessibility are going to be added that may not be as useful for a sighted user or a person without a disability? I'm pretty sure going to be things that come out that don't affect me directly as a blind person, but may help somebody that has a hearing impairment or I've already heard about the eye tracking. I forget what they exactly name it, but the eye tracking feature being able to be switched to just using your eyes to manipulate the interface, right. For a person that may be paralyzed or may have motor skill issues. Right. So again, not something that directly affects me as a user, but there's another feature for someone else with a different type of disability or a different category of disability that is there already, like it's already here. Right. And I still honestly don't feel like their software at this point.

Right. And also I think Apple is sort of handing this to developers and saying, okay, we're giving this to you guys. Let's see what you can do with it. And that is probably where a lot of the excitement is going to be because developers are going to say, oh, I have this and I have this, and this is what I can do. I can build an application that is able to do something that's never been done before. And it's just developers. It's going to take time for them to get excited about it and just take the software to its limits.

I saw one of the developers that I follow on Mastodon was doing a demo with the Vision Pro this week, and he put a little animated GIF up on Mastodon. And this is why I think The Vision Pro is going to be so incredible. He showed a little app he created and in the vision simulator it showed him moving up to and looking down at a table and there was a little credit card sized now playing widget sitting on the table with a play button next previous and all of those things on this little credit card size, little device or thing sitting on the table. And it showed him, like, just taking it, spinning it, moving it around. And I'm like, that's incredible. That kind of detail is just incredible. Right? Because if we can just make UI, that's just in our environment, okay? And just think about this. What if in the future and this might even be in version one, what if there's just objects? What if somebody gives you a virtual object and you could just take it with you, you just grab it, you put it in a virtual storage, and you just have it. It's digital. It's just virtual, but you can pick it up and look at it anytime you want or hear it or anything else like that. That's incredible, folks. Just that amount of what you can do with this technology is going to be endless, and I will be going on about the Vision Pro until I get one. So just letting you all know, that's the thing.

Yeah, and I understand that because I go on and on about AI all the time. So I'm trying to get people out of the mindset of thinking about AI as destroying humanity and all this stuff. And I think maybe The Vision Pro has a little bit of the same problem, is that the public needs to feel like it's something that could benefit them. I mean, it's awesome for us geeky people that love tech things and love to be able to just imagine what these things can do. But, I mean, we're not really normal people, per se. Hate to tell you guys that, but you're not normal.

Okay, well, and let's be real. AI. If used incorrectly or if taught incorrectly, could be a detriment to humanity.

Absolutely.

But any tool can be that. And I think we just need to monitor our expectations, really, is the key.

Well, and keep an open mind as well. I'm trying to keep an open mind because part of me is like, I can't afford this thing at its current price, I will not have it.

But that's the case for a lot of people.

Yeah.

And I also really think that here's the problem that Apple has to kind of fight against, is one that a lot of just people who are not following the stories, not really paying attention, like you said, not the geeky people that are really getting excited about it right now without it even existing in the world. There's probably less than 1000 people outside of Apple that have actually put their hands on one of these at this point. And we're still excited about it. I think for a lot of people there's going to be the expectation, oh, it's just Apple's version of insert name of any of the preexisting VR headsets that are already out there now. That's one thing they have to fight against. Another thing is just the unexpected nature of Apple early releasing a device before they even feel like it's perfect. Typically when Apple releases something, they're pretty sold on what they have created at this point. And if they're wrong about that, it takes them several years to figure out that they were wrong about that. I don't think they're doing that with this device. This first version I really believe is for developers. It's for the enthusiasts that can afford it and it's for the early adopters. And again, go back to the Apple Watch, right? Everybody didn't run out and buy it. I didn't even have the first generation Apple Watch because I'm like, I mean, all I think I'm going to get for is notifications and like, I'm cool. I don't think I need to get one right now, especially for that cost. I'm going to want the sale model. And also I was eyeballing the stainless steel model, which for me with Celery at that time would have been like eleven. Was like, I'm not really sure if I need that. But again, you look around now there are more Apple Watches. There are people who have Apple Watches now that I know personally that if you would have asked me would this person ever have bought an Apple Watch, I would be like, no. The only way they would take somebody gave one to them and they probably would never wear it. And they're very avid Apple Watch users again, mostly for exercise and health, which is what that device turned into. I think their first round of division pro developers are going to get to buy it and build on it. Enthusiasts like Michael and others are going to buy it. Michael's kind of in that dual space because he's a developer and an enthusiast. So he's going to be one of the people that are going to come back and tell us how this thing works great about it. But I also feel like they're not at a point that this is supposed to be yet for everybody because the price is way too high. Let's be honest, the price is way higher than anybody. Most people won't spend that amount of money on the actual computer, let alone just a headset that you can wear for about 2 hours where you need to charge it up. But I think over the next few years what we're going to see is more refinement out of this product, the technology is going to be cheaper. I was reading the other day, and I can't remember where the source was for it, but we're saying that they are getting these screens from, I think Sony and Sony only make X number of these screens a year. Like Apple's tried to get them to make more like, no, this is all we can do. But there's not a market for those there has not been a high demand market for those screens either. In three years time, Apple may be having invested money in Sony or, as Apple has done in other cases, went out and found another company that can make similar quality screens for them and either buy them or, like they did with corning in the Gorilla glass. Invest a ton of money into them to get them where they need to be so they can be Apple's manufacturer. So all of those things have to come along, as well as the use cases for this device, the improvements, the miniaturization, the cost level to come down when Sony says they can make 100,000 of these screens a year or something like that. Nothing like 800,000 of these screens a year, generally speaking. And I'm pretty sure Apple is not their only customer at this point. So that leaves Apple probably getting somewhere between five to 700,000 of these, which is two to 300,000 units that they can ship in a year. We're nowhere near the scale that they need to be for everybody to have this. And that's one of the cost is so high. But the cost is going to come down and we're going to learn more about how people want to use this. And rumors out there already working on a standard vision, which won't be a pro. I'm not sure what would be the differences there, but I feel like we're in an unusual position of seeing Apple, in a way, do what Google has done so much of over the years, which is throw a thing out there and like, okay, let's figure out what it does now. Let's figure out how people use it, what they like about it, what they don't like about it, and iterate over that over the next five to seven years, usually, like I said, Apple releases a thing. Look what we've given you now we can't wait to see what you do with it. Whereas now it's like, hey, we don't really know what we're going to do with this either, but let's work together on this, which is unusual for Apple to be in that position.

Now to wrap this up. One thing that's interesting though, about the vision pro is that it does fulfill this new EU law that we just talked about.

Think about it. You can replace the battery. Nice.

Oh my gosh. Maybe that's what's going to happen. We're all going to have battery packs hanging off of us.

That's a good point to think about here's. Your removable battery right there.

Yeah, that's going to be awesome. That's another thing I feel like, though, that holds this product back and I don't say holds it back, but curves the potential for a headset from anybody at this point is the battery. We're still on battery tech. That was current 20 years ago, 25 years ago, right. Battery tech has not moved as fast as everything else has. We still don't have that smaller source of power that could let you power a headset or a pair of glasses like this all day long. They usually top out around 2 hours. Seems like.

The interesting thing is we don't have new battery tech, but we have new charger tech. And that's, that the Gan chargers.

Oh, yeah.

And those are really cool.

That's all I buy now.

Yeah. And like the the MacBook chargers, I I'm wondering if that 35 watt adapter for the MacBook Airs is Gan. But for sure, the 140 watt charger for the MacBook Pro, the 16 inch, is definitely Gan. I remember reading that. So it's interesting seeing the miniaturization of these chargers from Apple and they've done some really cool plugs and chargers lately. But moving on, according to the stream, we've already been going nearly an hour, which is crazy, and we haven't even talked about Pass keys yet, which is our big topic today. And so, I guess to start off, we've talked about Pass keys before on the podcast, but do you demon do you guys use Pass keys?

Absolutely.

I haven't used it yet, but it does seem like there are a lot of advantages.

So, Damasi, do you want to talk about basically what your opinions of Pass keys are and how they're useful and why they're different?

Sure. So, to quickly review, for listeners, Pass keys are a new means of logging in and authenticating to a web service or application instead of using a username and password, which we're used to. And they're basically using public key cryptography to manage this. And essentially the first one, it's not the first one I set up, but probably the easiest one for anybody to go set up right now would be a Google account for sure, because most people have one of those. So now when I log into my Google account, I just type in my email address because I still have to give it my email address for it to know who I am. But then I get an alert that pops up and I can either touch ID on my Mac or Face ID from my phone. And a really cool thing for me with the Mac and Pass keys is because I use my Apple Watch to unlock the Mac when the Pass key prompt comes up. And my MacBook is actually like maybe a foot or two away from where I'm actually sitting at because I'm using the external Bluetooth keyboard, I don't have to reach over to desk to hit touch ID. I can just double click my watch to get in and that's it, I'm done. There's no second factor. There's no typing in a code. There's no remembering a password. It's email address, touch ID, face ID, some kind of magic authentication with the watch or anything like that. And then you're in, right, you're into your account. But it still is very secure. There's not a lessening of your security there. It's actually more secure than a username and password because it's not possible for a website to now lose your password in a breach. And then now people can access that site. If they don't have your device that holds the private key to authenticate to this website, they're never going to get in.

Right? Now there are some concerns that I have, and maybe damas you have a way of debunking these, but I'll get to those in just a minute. But I think it was Steve Gibson on security, now the podcast on the Twitt network. He said that logging into a system has been the same for 50 years. In 1973, he said that he would log in with a username and password on a terminal client where you didn't even have a hard drive. You would just log in with your username and password. And that's been the way that things have worked on the web ever since then. And now this has been the first big change to that process, which I think is fascinating.

That is fascinating, but it is true. I mean, we're still using usernames and passwords the same things that they started within the early days when computers were as big as small sheds. You still would connect to that mainframe with a username and password. So it's fascinating that we have finally gotten to something that may replace that, which can remove the angst. And I'm interested to hear what some of your concerns are about pass keys, because I have some myself. I like the technology. I know the technology itself is solid and secure, but I do have some concerns, right?

Basically, I've only used pass keys on my Google account, but I know that Best Buy and other websites do support them. But one of the things that I've heard is a lot of these websites are not implementing pass keys on their own. They're using a third party solution to implement pass keys. And so I guess my question is, if somebody's using a third party solution to implement a pass key system, what is keeping that third party solution from being hacked to request your public key and then socially engineer the person to use their private key, the pass key. Basically, if somebody's impersonating Best Buy, right, and they've gotten your user data from.

Best Buy, right, does it make it possible for a bad actor to intercept and get in the middle of your authentication and pretend they're Best Buy? Or on the other side, pretend that they're you to Best Buy. So I want to first give a qualification here. I don't know exactly what Best Buy is using. We're going to use them in this example, but I don't know exactly what they're using. So I want to make sure that I'm not besmirching them intentionally. I just want them as an example. There are companies that are using third party services to service Paskis, and these are some of the ones that popped up very early with Pasqui support. And there are depending on I don't know if this applies to all of them, but I know one that I first became familiar with that was providing the Pasky service to websites. As a third party. They were susceptible to a man in the middle attack, which means someone could have intercepted your authentication to, let's say, Best Buy, and then had you on a site that pretended to be Best Buy but was not. And because you're trusting the pass keys because they're supposed to be, the way pass keys honestly are supposed to work is you have a private key on your device. In Apple's ecosystem and Android's ecosystem, those pass keys can be synced between devices. And some of the password managers are also working on the ability for you to store pass keys there. What you're essentially storing is a private key that never should leave your device, and it is always on device. Apple and Google are syncing those between devices for you in a very secure manner. They can't access them, at least with Apple, they can't even see those. But that means my pass keys are on all of my Apple devices. I go to Best Buy. The way that this should be done, to be done correctly, to fully comply with the specifications, is Best Buy has a public key for me on their server, and they send me a secret. Essentially where we'll put it like this, they send me a secret, and I can't decrypt that secret unless I have the private key. If I can decrypt that secret and then send them back to answer, they say, oh yeah, you're, you, we're gonna let you into your account, right? If Michael were to try to go to Best Buy and put in my email address, he wouldn't be able to give the correct answer to the secret because he wouldn't be able to decrypt it because he does not have the matching private key. And that's a very simple, simplified way of how public private key cryptography works, is people encrypt things with your public key, and if you have the correct private key, you can decrypt them. If you don't have the correct private key, you can't decrypt them. That's essentially how it works. So that should be a client to server relationship. Basically, my device is the client. Best Buy should be the server. Well, what's going on with some companies is they're offloading that and kind of redirecting your request to a third party server to have the third party server do the authentication and then they tell Best Buy, oh yeah, this is democy, let them into the account. Or no, this is not democy, who's not able to answer the secret. Don't let the person into the account. Right. So they are open in some cases for a man in the middle because if somebody were in the right position and sound enough, they could intercept any of these conversations and pretend to be someone on the other end of this process and manage to access your stuff, which is not the best. And it's one of the reasons none of the websites that I have built or manage at the moment have pass key support because I haven't found a reliable server sideway and haven't taken the time to try to build it myself. Server side component to run for WordPress that will give pass key support. Right? Because I don't want to use a third party service because to me, that's opening me up to them losing something or to again, somebody intercepting a message between my device, their third party server, and the service that I'm trying to authenticate to and in some way get to be me in Best Buy. And then they go buy a TV in Best Buy on my credit card, and then I got to pay for it. So your concerns there are valid. I know for sure Google is doing it right, because Google has the infrastructure. I understand these third party companies have existed. And to be fair, I don't know about all of the third parties that are providing this type of backing up service for Apas key. So there may be a means that they're doing it and doing it correctly where none of these concerns exist. But I do know the first company that I became familiar with, it was very quickly pointed out by security researchers that, hey, up under these conditions, this is less secure because of how they were doing it, and it could just be their implementation of it. So that is a concern to be aware of.

So I guess for most people, I guess it comes down to anything because any website could be using a third party to handle logins. You just don't know most of the time, not right. But I think they could be. But I think with pass keys right now, it's so early on that I think that you'd want to do your in my opinion, you want to do your research before you just say, yeah, I'll just start using my pass key on every website that I can possibly do it on. Right? Is that kind of how you would handle it if you're a user out there? Like, oh, pass keys are so amazing, right?

Yeah, that has been my position. One, I don't actually have a Best Buy account, so I don't have one set up with them anyway. But yeah, for me. I'm not activating pass keys for sites unless it's a company like Google or Apple or Amazon, who I know for sure. I only have to go research it. Like, I know Google has the infrastructure to put this in place. They were a part of the team that came up with the specifications and implementations for this. So they have their stuff together. If I were, say, going to my website, I'm not going to implement Pascues until I know I can do it right, and I know exactly how to do it. I'm not going to use a third party service to provide that pass key authentication for me just to be amongst the first sites, first hundred or thousand or 100,000 million sites to offer pass keys to people. I'd rather be done right, because, one, not everybody's going to adopt them anyway, so you're still going to have to support username and passwords. And two, yeah, I want it to be done correctly. So Google, I turned mine on when they told me, oh, it's available for your account. I answered me when I set it.

Up because I was like, Me too.

Now let's see how this works, right? Because here's a company that I know did it right. Let's see how it works. And it's been great. I like it. But no, I'm not rushing out to turn it on everywhere that I possibly can. I'm still, in most cases, using username password and everywhere possible, a second factor, authentication as well.

So, Lynn, have you done much research into this? Is Pasky something you're interested in, or is it just kind of a techie thing?

I definitely am interested only because the whole idea of the whole password thing and it's just not the greatest thing, even TFA, I don't know, it's really clunky and it just feels like there has to be a better way. And so, I don't know. I haven't implemented them yet, but if I'm convinced of the goodness of doing so, then I will do it. I just haven't done it yet.

One concern I have is so I'm traveling. I'm going to make a little bit of an exaggeration here, but I'm traveling to Houston next week for NFB convention. I'll be traveling to Houston for the NFB convention, right? If I were not going for work, it is entirely possible I would go and take just my iPhone with me, right? No computer, because I wouldn't necessarily need the computer. Let's say I took this trip with just my iPhone, my Apple Watch and all the other stuff, headphones and all of that, right? But no laptop with me at all. So I only have the one or two Apple devices. What happens to me in Houston if I drop my phone in the pool? Now I have a laptop or a desktop back at home that has my pass keys on them, but I don't have one with me. I could go buy a new phone or go make an Apple care claim and get a new phone. And I recently read somewhere, I didn't dive into it yet, that Apple is now offering, or is going to start offering pass key support for your Apple ID. So if I had pass keys turned on for my Apple ID and I dropped my phone in the pool so I don't have my phone, don't have another Apple device around that could serve to help me get in. Even if I go get a replacement phone from Apple, how do I sign into my icloud to get all of my stuff back on that phone if I'm using Paskies?

Well, I do believe that they, I mean, I I could be mistaken, but I do believe they offer, even Google offers the option to enter your password, but they do scrutinize that approach because they say if you're using a pass key, why do you need to be entering your password? So I did read that they do monitor the password entry more if you have pass keys enabled.

How about Biometrics as a backup?

Well, that's basically yeah, the pass keys are using your Biometrics for working with those private and public keys.

So my question I guess I should be a little bit more explicit, though, because yeah, everybody right now, that's another thing to mention. So I'm glad you did bring that up, though, Michael, is that people right now, even Google and other companies are still offering the ability to fall back to a password. If for some reason you don't have your pass key device handy, or it's not working or whatever this may be, that is still an option. But the goal, as stated, is that we're going to eventually get to a world where Apple, Google, Amazon, especially all of the big tech companies and all of the big websites are going to only be using pass keys. So in that world, what happens in this scenario I just described?

Right?

Maybe it's not a thing to go nuts about or say, I'm not going to use pass keys. It's not a thing to be overly concerned about today, and it's not a reason not to start using pass keys on places that are safe to use them. But it is, to me, one of those issues that needs to be solved for before we get too far down this road. It kind of ties back to something you said earlier, Michael, just being mindful and conscious of what steps we're taking with technology before we get too far down the road and there's not a way to turn around.

Right. And this kind of comes back to what's in the box when you buy something, right. We assume that when you buy a new iPhone, you've already owned an iPhone, so you don't need a power brick, right?

Yeah.

That's an assumption that Apple and Google and others are making now when they sell these phones that. You don't need a power brick because you already have one, or you're going to plug it into your computer. Right. So they don't sell power bricks with their phone.

I wonder how much of that too, is also going back to earlier conversation is in response to the EU insistence about reducing the waste, too, though, right?

Right. So it also is how much is it about all of these things? Because a lot of people did not have USBC. Whenever you got a cable in your iPhone box that was USBC to lightning, what's this? I don't have this kind of plug. So then you had to go out there and spend money, and I think that's kind of the same here. People have their one phone. I also think about the people that use blind shell. Right. I could be wrong, so if I.

Am you're not wrong. The current blind shell, classic two as it exists today, will not have support for basket.

Right.

I don't see a way for them to implement that.

And so what if this becomes mandated in the future where everybody has to sign in with pass keys right, to get into your Google account, to get into whatever account you're going to sign into. What if that becomes mandated? What do people that use these older devices do? It's kind of like I keep hearing different things change about this, but Am radio possibly going away and people still use it, right. Like the headphone jack people use that. Right. So it's like, what do you do to stick with the times, I guess.

Yeah. What do you do to stick with the times? And how do you bring people along who are not going to be whether they're earlier adopters or just they move along as the herd moves along. What about those people who lag behind intentionally? I talk to people on a regular basis who still have flip phones, and I didn't even know they still made flip phones, but apparently they still buy one.

Right.

So what do you do about because you can't go to a person and say, okay, well, if you want to be able to access your Gmail account from your computer now you're going to have to implement these pass keys. That is mandatory. Okay, well, that's fine. They're connecting to it from their laptop. Everybody thinks that's great. Nobody thinks about what happens when this person is at a family member's house on vacation and needs to check their email and there's no pass key there, and they're carrying a flip phone or they're carrying a phone that does not support this. Right. Again, it's just being mindful and thinking about and it kind of goes back again, tying back to our early conversation about the EU, having the flexibility to make changes to something when needed instead of just dictating, like, this is the way it must be because it's too rigid. Right. You don't account for the edge cases, you don't account for the improvements that may exist or things like this. And that is a concern for me. One of my concerns about some of the devices people use nowadays is there's no two factor application available to you on that device. And people are moving away from text messages. Twitter has said if you're not paying for Twitter, you have to use which is a little weird, but you have to use an app or UVA key if you want text messages, you have to be paying those money. But what people don't realize is those text messages do cost them money. Right, I understand the principle behind that. It just looks weird from the outside. Like, you want secure method, you got to pay money. I'm all for improving the security and trying to make improvements of security easy for everybody, because even in 2023, not everybody you know has a password manager. Not everybody you know is using Icloud keychain or Google's password syncing. They should be, but they're not. So passkeys are an attempt to make things more secure and alleviate the anxiety for people, whether it's I forgot my password, which happens routinely to people around me, I forgot my password, what's my password? Let me go look it up for you and get it to you. Or more so, from my perspective is right now if a site gets breached and they were not doing their security correctly, now they've put me at risk because now my password has been breached. And more so for those people not using a password manager are really at risk because they probably are reusing passwords. Even if they have a method and a means to how they do so, they're still probably reusing passwords. So pass keys are an attempt to make the world of online interaction more secure for everybody. Even those that are not the geeky ones, not the techie people that don't know, not going to use any of that. But like you brought up and I've said there are still some and lens kind of hesitation I've seen is a little bit from like, well, I'm not sure if I could jump in this yet because I just don't know, like, it's too new. But as we get further and further down the road of people implementing this, I do want answers to the edge cases, right? And maybe my example for me was a little bit of an edge case because there's no trip for a week and not have my laptop on a business, right? There are a lot of people who I know that's all they're going to have at convention is going to be their phone.

I couldn't do it. I can't live without my computer.

I couldn't do it either. For me, it's a hypothetical, but in reality, there are people that would be there with just their phone or just the device that they use most of the times that has their pass key and again, what happens when you lose that connection to that device for whatever reason? Are you now locked out of everything? It's very similar to what do you do if you forget your one password and one password like you're hosed is what you are, right?

I hope people listening to this podcast are not thinking that we're saying don't use pass keys. No, use them. If you want to use them, try it out. It's a great experience as long as they work for you. I know Alison Sheridan was saying she had trouble with her Google account working with pass keys, which is a shame because for me it just worked perfectly the first time I set it up.

Alison should try again because initially I wasn't able to get it to trigger to ask to do pass keys. Once I set it up in Google, they still just want to use username and password. And the initial account I set it up on was Gmail account that I don't use a lot because my other Google account is a workspace account. I recently got told from Google that, hey, you can turn this on now for your workspace account, can you? Because that's where I want it.

Can you got that email? Yeah, no. Well, they send so many.

That one I had been looking for though, so I saw that one coming.

Oh, that's great news. I can't wait to go turn that off. Turn that on.

Workspace users. Yeah.

Oh, that's exciting.

But I went back maybe a couple of weeks after I initially activated it for [email protected] account and it worked fine. And I was even in a private tab and I was like, okay, I typed in my email because I needed to check email for a program that I'm in. And I was like, I need to see what's going on here. And it popped up, I was like, oh, use your pass key. And then my watch tapped me on the wrist and I was like, oh, I could just double click the watch. Hey, I like this. This is really nice. I really like this login experience I've ever had, right?

And I wonder if they're going to store pass keys on the watch or if that's not a thing.

I don't know because I don't know. I actually don't even know the details of how icloud keychain goes across. Like if that gets fetched from the phone to the watch, or if that's in some way stored on the watch.

Right.

So that's going to be interesting to see how they do that.

Can you imagine? Maybe you do drop your phone in the water, right, and you have to.

Get a new phone watch. No, I'm good. That would be my hope for Apple is that they would spread it out across as many devices. Again, we're still in the early stages of this. There's probabilities of different ways of being able to recover access to your account, right? I mean, there's going to have to be a wages. Right now, I don't know what serious, and until I know what the answer is, I'm curious. Until we know, how do we solve for that?

Right? Well, this has been very interesting and this is kind of the conversation I was hoping we'd have. Do you guys have any final thoughts now that we've been talking people's ears off for like 80 minutes?

We still came in under the hour and a half mark that I thought.

We were going to hit anyway. Well, we're not done yet. We still got ticks and all that good stuff.

Well, my advice is to make sure you have more than one Apple device. So if you don't have more than one Apple device, go out and get one. Today she's working for Apple.

Apple devices. I knew she was secretly working for Apple. Now we know.

And it doesn't matter which Apple device you have. If you have more than one, you can use these on any of them, which is really nice. And they do have that new feature coming where you could share your pass keys in iOS 17.

That's what I'm excited about. Icloud keychain now, getting a more synchronous password sharing and pass key sharing. Because again, when Netflix turns this on and you have family in your house who also watches Netflix and they have pass keys turned on again, how are they going to solve for that? I know how one password would solve for that. But now icloud keychain will also solve for that, which is awesome. I am really excited about that.

Now I guess it just shares to other icloud accounts. But the question is still out how you could share between iOS and Android. Like if you want to send the pass key to your Android phone, fortunately, if it's a Google Pass key, it will set it up on both iOS and Google devices. So that's pretty nice. Or Android devices. But if it's like Best Buy, then you have to set it up on both. You'd have to create a pass key on both your iOS and your Google devices.

Yeah. So whichever one you set up first, you will have to authenticate with. And then you can add that second device, which will give you a second pass key for that account. But now you have it on Android and Apple, which it is a way I feel like that's a little fiddly, but I also know for sure that the possibility exists that they could sort this out and make it a little bit more seamless. And again, it's going to take time for some of that stuff to shake out immediately.

Just like the vision pro. This is all still early.

We have less than probably 10% of the top million sites in the world using Pascals at this point. So it's still a thing that has to grow. And as it grows, we're going to see more and more solutions come out. I mean, when they launched them last year, which is when they launched them when they launched them initially, there was no icloud. There was no way to share a pasky from icloud if you had jumped on the early site and set them up. But look how long it took Google to roll it out for themselves.

And Google was the first of the big ones, I believe.

Yeah, as far as I know, they were the first of the big companies to do it. And they simply, I think, were the first of the companies that came together. I think it was Google, Apple, and Microsoft that all came together to put a few others. But yeah, I think Google is the first one to actually have it implemented where it just works.

And I think others are just looking at Google and saying, okay, what worked and what didn't right before they implement their own.

But like you said, just like vision, bro. This is still early days. A lot of this stuff is going to shake itself out. We're going to see improvements, we're going to see, I think, a lot of the edge cases get covered ways to back these up, or alternative methods to get into an account. It may be a hassle, but try losing your Google password and proving to them that you are who you say you are.

Like, trust me, I have a family member where this is all too common.

I have one too, who Shall Not Be named, that we had to go through this process one time, which started me to saving their Google password in my password.

This person would would I would save it and then they go change it. At one point, we locked them out of their account for six months because we could not get into it. And so I said, the first thing I do when I go home from convention and see my family is I'm setting up pass keys for them so that this is not an issue anymore.

Yes, sir, that is a good idea. Actually. I should set pass keys up for my family member that has this problem, too.

Well, with all that being said, I think we'll go ahead and wrap this thing up for today, but as we typically do. Lyn, do you have a pick this week and where can people find you online?

I do have a pick, and this is a book this time, and it's called The Loop how Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and how to Fight Back. And it's by Jacob Ward. And the DB number is if you have NLS, it's 106549. And the book talks about how companies are exploiting our human nature, the things that our inborn biases and our behaviors, that we needed evolutionarily, but now are being sort of turned against us and keeping us addicted to our technology. And it's just an interesting book.

I'll have to read that because I have very strong opinions on that topic, too. But that could lead us down another 90 minutes.

Another 90 minutes. Rabbit hole, right?

I'm very opinionated on that topic.

Yeah, I don't totally agree with everything in the book, but it's very fascinating how they understand how our brains work and they're able to manipulate our human nature, really, to turn us into mindless zombies.

It comes down to who has more willpower, the companies or the people that use the technology. And then we have the other side of people that want to protect us from ourselves saying, well, we need to have regulations so you don't get addicted to your front. I could get down the soapbox like.

The guardrails on AI for another show.

Yes.

Yeah, that definitely is a rabbit hole.

That is an interesting conversation to have. But that is a long conversation because a lot of thoughts, too.

So where can people find you online, Lynn?

I have email is caneprints. Almost like footprints, only [email protected].

Excellent. And how about you, Demosi? Do you have a pick, and where can people find you online?

So I do have a pick, and I came in with a tentative pick on my mind. But as we were talking about Apple Vision and the future of technology and how things can go wrong or not go wrong, I switched my pick, and Lynn picked a book. I was like, oh, man, lyn is going to pick exactly what I was going to pick. But she was not picking what I was picking. So I'm going to recommend two books. They are a pair that go together and they're by Daniel Suarez. Unfortunately, I did not do enough research like man. So I don't have DB numbers for you, but Demon A-E-M-O-N system Monitor and Freedom TM yes, read those. And there are two things that the reason I switched over to these picks is because I feel like there's a good example from how Daniel Suarez wrote in these books of what the apple vision glasses could be and michael's comment about what if there was just a virtual object that you could just pick up and take with you, and it was always there, and you could manipulate it and use it, and it's like sounds like demon. So there's that aspect of it, and there's a little bit of that whole how people try to manipulate you, which somewhat ties in the lens pick a little bit, but also how we as human beings and cynicists tend to figure things out for ourselves. So, very good set of books. I was turned on to them a few years ago by listening to a podcast that mentioned them, and they're one of my favorites. So definitely check those out. Demon and Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez. And you can hook up with me online. I'm on mastodon. Where am I at on mastodon. I'm Damasi damashe at Unmute community.

And there's a new book, two books from him, delta V. Yes. Like critical mass.

Yeah, that's it. Critical Mass.

Critical Mass. I haven't finished critical mass yet. But I love his critical mass yet.

But Delta V was really good. That guy, I'm telling you, that guy. That one guy in the book. Don't spoil the training by the animator. But that guy in the book is Elon Musk. I'm telling you.

Oh, yeah. There's comparisons to a lot of people in real life. Yeah.

Daniel Torres is a good pick amongst themselves, man. Really good. Change Agent is another one that's really interesting. You read that one, Michael?

I have. I've read most of his books. People call him kind of the modern day Michael Crichton.

I can see that. I can definitely see that.

Yeah, I heard that. And I was like, that's very true. He writes great books.

He worked at Microsoft.

Did he? Wow.

Yeah.

That's cool. That's really cool.

He gets a little wait, am I take that back. Scratch that. I might be mixing him up with a different writer. Mark Racinovich, I think, is what I was thinking of.

So my pick is another entertainment pick, and that is this week, Disney Plus started the Marvel TV show Secret Invasion. And if anybody knows me, they know I'm a huge Marvel Comics fan. I love all the stories. I love the Marvel cinematic universe. So this one is a very good the first episode was amazing. The audio description is really good. And like, I posted in a short that I put on YouTube and TikTok, I didn't like the ending of the episode. Not spoiling anything, but it just starts it off with a band. It's very interesting, now that I think about it, with current events that have happened the last few days, what happens in the episode. So I'll leave you at that.

Oh, nice teaser.

Yeah. Like, with political and world events that are going on in other countries. Very interesting parallels between what happens in that show and what's happening in real life. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. So check that out. And where you could find me online. I'm Michael Doey's on Facebook. You can find me on Mastonized Mikedoeyes at Techopolis Social. You can email me at [email protected]. And I'm all over the web. I have a YouTube channel. If you're watching this after the fact, please subscribe. And all those things on YouTube, we put all of our live streams. We keep them up notifications. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know anything about I'm just throwing in words I hear people say on YouTube. Yeah.

We put all these live streams up here. We don't take them down. And we also put the actual podcast up here. And you can now use the YouTube music app and listen to the IA cast from YouTube, which is really cool.

We shouldn't say Smash that, like button.

People say that.

Smash that like button.

Yeah, people say all kinds of stuff.

Just to we would appreciate if you would actually do that.

We already have two likes on this stream, so that's pretty awesome. And it's interesting. I bet people that are on YouTube just get so tired of saying the same things every time they do a video. They have to liven it up some.

Yeah.

I do have one recommendation. If you're on the watchOS, beta the snoopy watch face. Definitely check that out. I recommend it. I hadn't seen it. I just like snoopy. So I'm excited about snoopy. Watch faces.

I love watchOS ten. It's so nice. It's really cool. Anyway, we can just keep going for hours. But I want to thank Lyn and Damasi for being here. You guys have been great. And Damasi, we need to have you on more because this has been fantastic.

All right, man. Well, you know where I'm at.

Yeah.

And we wish everybody a nice trip. If you're going. Oh, yes, traveling to convention, we gave you plenty of stuff to read and keep you busy and quiet on the airplane. So you're not trying to open the doors or anything, right?

And we will not be here recording next weekend. We will be at conventions. They just start next weekend. So we have our usual we're going to add to it today because it was a funny event that happened before the podcast started. But our Outtake show is back, so we will be having our Outtake show come out next week, and there's going to be some really funny moments, and we may mix some old favorites in from previous years as well, so be on the lookout for that. I think it's going to be hilarious and great fun. Also, you can now find me as a regular on the Tuesday Unmute Call, so I'm really excited about that. I'm helping Michael and Marty answer your tech questions, so if you have tech questions, head over to the ACB community and get on the Unmute Call and have your questions answered. So, again, thank you, Damasi and Lynn, for being here, and we'll see everyone next time.

Take care, guys.

Bye, everyone.

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