Transcript

NC_2024_02_20

[0:00] Music.

[0:07] With an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Tuesday, February 20th, 2024, and this is show number 981.
As you'll notice, this episode is coming out super early since we'll be out of town for the weekend.
That means there will be no live show on Sunday, February 25th.
It also means I'm sitting here all by myself right now doing the recording, and it's always lonely. I love the live show audience.
Anyway, we didn't want you to go ahead without a show and miss our nearly 19-year streak, so let's get right into it.

Apple in 2023: The Six Colors report card

https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/02/apple-in-2023-the-six-colors-report-card/

[0:37] The Six Colors annual report card on Apple by Jason Snell is out, and I'm proud to say that I was one of the contributors.
You'll see me quoted next to folks like John Gruber, Adam Angst, Federico Vittici, Dan Morin, and many other Apple luminaries.
It's a fun read with Jason's famous graph showing the trends over the years for each category, along with quotes from the participants.
You can find it at a link in the show notes, and also if you search sixcolors.com for Apple in 2023, the Six Colors report card.

CES 2024: Y-Brush Electronic Toothbrush

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/ces-2024-y-brush/

[1:07] Let's start off with a little interview from CES.

[1:12] When my son and daughter-in-law came to live with Steve and me for a couple of months, we asked them afterwards, what was something that surprised you that you learned from living with us?
And they both said, how much time you spend on your teeth.
And we just thought that was really funny because we do spend a lot of time on our teeth.
So I am in the white brush booth with Saad Sassine who's going to show us a way to speed up that whole process.
What do you have here today? Exactly, this is an electronic toothbrush that has sonic vibrations.
It brushes all of your teeth simultaneously in under 20 seconds.
So you just turn it on, put it in your mouth, chew lightly on it and twist it side to side.
Ten seconds, the timer will tell you when you're done. Twist it to the other side.
Same thing. And 10 seconds, completely done. Same effect as one of these head brushes. In two minutes, you get it in 20 seconds with this.
So I'm going to describe this because we're audio and video.
So it's a big black box with a circular button on it.
And then it can have a nice handle as well. Two different models it looks like here.
And it basically looks like a tooth tray, but it's got a bunch of bristles on both. Oh, all three sides. $35,000.

[2:23] 35,000 nylon bristles and what I love is the demonstration model here.
They've got a little actuator going up and down which is showing you you're you're chewing like you're saying you're chewing and you're rotating it back and forth. That's a good demo.
I really like that. Thank you. So does the Y brush, can you buy it today?
It's already available.
You have it on our website ybrush.com.

[2:46] Or you can buy it off Amazon. We have our new products as well, which is this one.
It's just the universal head brush. So if you already have a Philips Sonicare, you can just buy this and then just plug it in and then same thing, 20 seconds, you're done.
I was using my Philips Sonic brush just a couple hours ago. You can just buy the head brush if you don't want to switch brands completely.
You can just buy the head brush or you can buy our brand, which is another pack and the whole brand is Y-brush.
So what's the advantage of the long stick handle versus the small button?
It's it depends what people prefer.
So it's like different holes in your yes Some people prefer the small cubic shape.
Some people prefer this handle. So just So, how is the sonic brush gonna know to tell me to switch in 20 seconds?
Oh, no, this is this is the the the thing you you have to count when it's gonna have to count Oh, man, that's not our brain.
That's a lot of work yet. I can't be expected to count ten seconds It's quick.
It's my watch exactly ten second timer ten second on each side.
Well, this is very cool Cool. How much is the white brush cost?
You have different brands. You can buy this one for $99.9. The other one over there is $79.9.
And you can buy, the prices start with the head brushes.
You can buy this one, which is not the universal one, for $29.99.
Or the universal one for $39.99. And you can subscribe to have it delivered directly to your house.
It gets you a discount if you do. So every four months. So you're forced to actually remember to change your toothbrush out.

[4:11] If you subscribe, you don't have to remember. every four months we send you a head brush.
Okay, maybe I'll do the counting but I can't be expected to remember to reorder, right?
No. Alright, this is very cool and the company is ybrush.co.
Co, exactly. Very good, thank you very much. No worries, have a nice day.

New and Improved XKPASSWD — Now in Beta

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/xkpasswd-js-beta/

[4:29] If you've been an Ocilicast listener for any length of time, you've heard Bart and me talk about a service he created called XKPassWD.
This service helps you create long, strong, but memorable passwords.
He wrote this service a zillion years ago in the Perl language, and he hosted it at XKPassWD.net.
This is such an invaluable service that it's the one site I have as a permanent pinned tab in my Safari browser.

[4:53] Unfortunately, the libraries that Bart's Perl code depend on are outdated and unsupported.
You've heard me talk about this problem recently and how Helma, our hero, took the reins of Bart's open source project to replace the old and busted code with a new shiny JavaScript implementation of XKPassWD.

[5:12] Now the reason I'm telling you all of this now is that the server on which the original XKPassWD was hosted was up for renewal and Helma had the new version running in a functional but feature limited state, so Bart decided to host the new version in place of the old version.
This means that if you go to xkpasswd.net now, you'll be greeted with an announcement page.
It explains that the service is in redevelopment and it says coders at work. Bear with us for a bit.
I have to give you a heads up that you may see a warning saying the site isn't secure.
The tool is currently hosted as a GitHub page and GitHub's cert generation is being intermittently flaky.
And some people never see this warning, some see it often, and some can get rid of it by changing browsers.
Bart has done everything he can to ensure that he has it configured correctly and has been trying to get GitHub to fix it permanently.
Anyway, hopefully you'll trust us enough while we work through this to bypass the certificate page and choose to go to the site anyway if you do run across this error.
On this landing page, you'll see a giant blue Use the Beta button, and that will take you to beta.xkpasswd.net.

[6:23] I want to emphasize, again, that the service is functional but not yet feature complete.
For example, when the site first flipped over to the new version, you had one option, and it was to generate between 1 and 10 passwords of a fixed preset.
While there was an accordion to choose configurations, it was empty.
There weren't any configurations there to choose.
But if you go there as of the time of this writing, Helm has been hard at work creating the magic behind the scenes to give you the presets you're used to, such as Web32, Web16, Apple ID, and Wi-Fi.
There are placeholders in Config where you'll eventually be able to add dictionaries and do the more manual configurations like you used to be able to do.
What's there works well, but not everything is there. Does that make sense?

[7:07] Another thing you'll see changing over time is the layout of the page, which is the part I'm working on.
As originally coded, it looked great in a web browser, but it wasn't responsive to smaller screens.
It looked really really silly on an iPhone and it was hard to see the passwords.
I've been working my little coding fingers to the bone using bootstrap breakpoints to make it more responsive to the smaller screens.
It's not done yet, but it's much better now.
As an example, in the new design, there's a left sidebar that has the little guy from XKCD, the inspiration for the password design, and XKPassWD written vertically.
If you look at the site on a phone in portrait orientation, the banner is horizontal and across the top, which allows more room for the generated password field.
What you might notice, unless it's been fixed by the time you read or hear this, is that if the phone is in landscape mode, the banner is on the left, but it's above all the content, so it looks awful.
Don't worry, I've got this new part written, and I've got it in as a request for Helmo to pull it into the real code. Might be fixed by the time you see it.

[8:09] My next task is to work on a couple of small accessibility features.
I'm not real happy with some of the contrast and a couple of things aren't labeled completely the way we need them to be, but it's really, really good for accessibility so far from what I can see.
But I'll also be working on the layout of the presets. Right now, if you look at them on a small screen, the presets kind of slide all the way off the screen to the right and you can't get to all of them.
So that's kind of going to be one of the next things I'm going to be working on.
Mike Price, also known as Grumpy in our Slack and in the live show audience, has has called dibs on working a different problem.
When the page is first rendered, you'll see a flash of unstyled content right before you see the pretty layout.
He's working to fix that issue, and he and Helma are going back and forth on the best way to do that.

[8:51] So what I want to also emphasize is, as an open-source project, you too can join in and help out.
To actually contribute code, you only need a few things. A free GitHub account, knowledge of how to fork a repository, which means to download your own copy of the code into your own repo. repo, and let's see, knowledge of how to do a pull request.
And that's where you request to have your changes pulled into the real code.
Remember a minute ago, I mentioned that I've fixed the layout problem with the little xkpasswd guy, but I'm waiting for Helmut to pull it into the code.
I have done a pull request asking her to pull my stuff in. So you need to know how to do that.
And the last thing you need is ideas on how to help improve the code.
Now, if you don't have any coding knowledge, but you just find the service xkpasswd useful, you can still participate.
GitHub has a section called Issues. In there, you can report not only things that don't work quite as you think they should, but also enhancement ideas for the service.
The ideas can be very helpful as we make this better and better.
You do need a free GitHub account to lodge an issue, but you don't need anything else.
I hope you'll go over to xkpasswd.net and kick the tires and more importantly, let XKPassWD create long, strong, and yet memorable passwords for you to save into your password manager.

[10:08] This next interview from CES is with Govee about smart lighting for the home.
Now I do my best to really give you a flavor of what I'm seeing, but remember all of these interviews are also available on video and there's links in the show notes to be able to watch the videos of all of these interviews.

CES 2024: Govee Smart Lighting for the Home

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/ces-2024-govee/

[10:25] Matt Unger is about to take us on a walk through the Govee booth where you do smart lighting and smart home stuff for the average person, right?
That's our goal. We started as a very small company and now three years later we make all this type of lighting.
But we'd love to take you through, show you the different areas and everything we do. All right, this is an audio and video podcast.
Audio by itself too, so I may describe a little extra as we walk through.
But this is visually the coolest booth we've been to so far.
Well of course, you can do a lot of lighting in a smart home and we love very practical lighting.
Some people use very practical lighting but we also do a lot of creative stuff.
The first area we're in here is our home theater area and what's really cool is everyone talks about AI, that's a big buzzword, but we want to use intelligent in really targeted, really cool ways.
So for example, a lot of people know us for our home theater lights.
As you can see, all the lights in the room are reacting to what's on TV, it's reacting to the colors, but we're doing really cool stuff too.
For example, when you watch a TV or movie if there's an explosion we actually know there's an explosion and do a big lighting effect or if there's fireworks we know that we do firework effects and the last thing I'll say is we have our dream view sync system and so dream view it means you can take any of our lights that we have there's no bridge there's no hub and you can literally tell those lights do what the TV light does and really quickly and affordably you can have a whole home theater that's reacting nice so how is it knowing that there's fireworks is it by the sound?

[11:51] No, this is our algorithms, our intelligence we built in.
I'll show you later, we started with our gaming so that we could actually tell what events were going on in the game.
And we're using that same intelligence now and putting it towards our home theater.
So for example, if there's fireworks, right, there might be fireworks on screen, but maybe the outside of the screen is very dark.
So normally you wouldn't get a lot of lighting from that.
But because intelligently with our algorithms, we can tell there's fireworks in the scene. But I'm asking, how are you telling there's fireworks?
By the visuals or by the audio?
By visuals. So this is all based on the visuals.
So there's some sensor on the front side of your TV looking at the video?
So two ways. So you can see on here, we actually have a camera above the screen.
Okay, there it is. So we have two types of systems. We have one that's a camera system. You literally just put the camera on top, the backlight's behind.
It sees everything on the screen. and it sees the colors and can react to those.
That's great. So you don't have to worry about the programming telling you information.
You're doing it from the visuals. That's great. We want things that are super simple. So we have packs that are literally a single pack that includes the backlights and the camera.
You open it up, you put the camera on top, the backlight's behind, and you have a completely reactive system.
No other things to buy, no other hubs. It's super simple. Very cool.
Where are we going next? Well, let's go to the bedroom, right?

[13:09] Wow, Matt, that's a little forward. My husband's standing right behind me.
We love this type of lighting, right?
Everything from in there we have our star projectors to we have lamps and we really believe that lighting can also be calming and nice.
So we build actually some speakers into our lighting so you have white noise and lighting that's reacting to the white noise.
As you can see we do very practical lighting up there on the ceiling, strip lighting, neon skirt lighting.
So this is very much for again even homeowners that just want some elevated, really cool lighting that fits into their place but it's very affordable and very easy to do.
Fabulous. I'm intrigued by the LED lights around the edge of the ceiling. How are those mounted?
They're like ones every six or eight inches. Yeah, well we want stuff to be very simple so it's literally just stickers on the back, 3M stickers.
So you literally, we want you to be able to do this yourself.
You don't have to hire anyone, you don't need to contract anyone, You literally just take this strand and put it up, plug it in, and it connects right away.
And you can have it very colorful or just sort of warm, soft colors.
That's really a nice effect. Are we going into the starlight?
Yeah, it might be hard to see in there.
But no, we also make star projectors.
And it's really cool. Galaxy projectors, star projectors. We have white noise built in.

[14:34] It's really cool. again. So for the audio audience, we're actually looking at constellations on the, On the sky, on the ceiling, and on the wall. We're really proud of this one.
Not only does it have sort of the digital stars, but it actually has swappable disks, so you can put in planets or constellations.
We have music that goes along with it. We've got a beautiful planet with a ring on it. Not Saturn, evidently, but some sort of planet. Yeah.
We love, again, stuff that's really creative, but also really relaxing.
People use lighting and home products in a lot of different ways.
A lot of people like relaxation, and so that's why we love stuff like this.
Very cool. All right. We're leaving the bedroom.
Now we're going back in here. Let's go to the gaming room next.
We're off to gaming next. Let's take a look in here. Ooh, I like this.
So this is more of our creative stuff, right?
We have so many gamers and streamers, and so we have a lot of different types of wall panels that are very creative.
The same thing I showed in the home theater, here's our boxes.
So these don't use a camera.
This uses a sync box. This is our AI sync box.

[15:39] And what's really cool yeah you see it below the screen there is not only is it reacting to the colors on the screen but we actually train it to games so it knows when you're using as you know special item when you're a champion or when you you know kill someone in the game it actually plays special lighting effects and again that same dream view i talked about you can literally tell any light in this room from the light around the table to the wall panels do what this light's doing to have it all react together we've got cubic light panels that are changing all kinds of color we've got a giant light panel behind a display we've got uh that's another one of those we've got another kind of artsy looking hexagon yeah and so i'm i'm on social media marketing the really cool thing is not only do we have streamers who you know are setting this up or gamers but we even have parents who are getting this stuff putting it in you know their kids bedrooms they're never going to leave those rooms but the parents are really proud they're like i actually did this myself, the kids love it.
Very cool, very cool. So we got more rooms to see? Sure, just two more things.
So Govee Life is our home product brand and this past year we've been going really hard into our home products. Things like, ice makers and humidifiers and smart heaters. Even my mother, I can tell you, I even bought her our kettle.
A lot of people know us just for our kettles or our temperature sensors.

[16:59] Tell us about the kettle. It's very pretty. What's cool about it?
Well, I mean, the cool thing, it's a normal kettle, right? To boil water and everything, but it fits into our whole ecosystem.
So for example, if you're in your bedroom, you want to start the kettle or put on the schedule, you can easily do that.
The very cool thing is we have all sorts of sensors like motion sensors, presence sensors, door and window sensors, so you can literally set it up when you walk into your kitchen it knows you're in there and it starts your kettle and it turns off your lights and it turns on your heater.
And it kills somebody in the game in the other room you know.
I get well you might have to do that yourself but but no we do a lot of people know us even our leak sensors some people only know us for that.
And so it's really cool. Govi, the leak sensor people.

[17:46] Yeah, it's, you don't think about it much, but a lot of people are like, thank you so much. I had a leak in my home. You saved me.
Very cool. The last thing, I can show you the outdoor lights.
That's the last thing we can do.
All right, we're walking out of the kitchen. So again, we do a ton of outdoor lighting now, especially for the holidays.
People want to put up outdoor lighting that looks beautiful, that they only put up one time.
So you can see along the top here, those are permanent outdoor lights.
It used to be you'd have to pay professional installation $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 to do lighting around your home like this.
Now we designed it. This is our permanent light pro. This is our second version.

[18:26] You can buy a single pack, nothing else. You can put it on your home yourself.
It It stays up permanently year-round.
Now, those aren't little stickers?
Yes. Really? Still stickers, huh? Outdoors. Yeah, and actually, it works really well, because we want this to be super easy for people to put up.
Works year-round, completely weatherproof. And again, the cool thing is when it's a holiday, you can have, you know, your Christmas lights showing or your Halloween lights.
But any time of year, you know, the other times, you can have them, you know, a soft yellow or warm white, very ambient lighting.
The last fun thing I'll show you for people watching, our curtain lights have also blown up. We do these curtain lights both indoors and outdoors.
You can set any type of things on them. You can make, you know, you can put text across them. So what we're looking at is a series of lines that are going straight down with LEDs at maybe every three inches.
The thing that reminds me of, you remember like the 70s or 80s, you had those bead doorways, right?
It's sort of like, and some people have used them for things like that, but that's also really creative, really cool product. But no, we're Govee.
We have our own factory. We make all this ourselves. And it's just the breadth of stuff we've been able to make the past few years.
It's growing so much. I'm really glad we stepped in because I had heard of Govee, but I didn't have any idea of the depth of products that you do.
So Matt, where would people find Govee?

[19:46] Well, we're always on Amazon, anywhere in the world.
Govee.com, you can see everything we have. That's G-O-V-E-E.com. G-O-V-E-E.com.
And we're also in Walmart, a lot of stores now. So thank you so much.
We hope we have some fans out there and it's great to meet you guys.
This was great. Thank you, Matt. Thank you.

Support the Show

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/referrals/

[20:04] One of the ways you can help support the show is by using my affiliate links for various tech products.
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Are You Bored Hearing about Apple Vision Pro AND Have FOMO at the Same Time?

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/bored-fomo-apple-vision-pro/

[20:37] Are you getting really tired of hearing about Apple Vision Pro? Yeah, me too.
Not really sure why it is, because I'm positive it's an awesome device, and I've no doubt that the people who have them are delighted with them.
I definitely feel FOMO, though, fear of missing out, because everyone is so excited about this device.
Yet, I'm also bored to tears hearing about it. The tech podcast, nobody's talking about anything else.
Maybe you're torn between FOMO and boredom because you live in a country where you can't even get Apple Vision Pro.
The cost is certainly prohibitive for just about everyone, so that creates a soup of FOMO and boredom as well.
If you're like me, feeling both FOMO and boredom, I may be able to give you some easy steps to fix the FOMO part.
All you have to do is try someone else's Apple Vision Pro.
I know that sounds counterintuitive, but let me tell you a story.
I figured my friend Pat Dengler would buy Apple Vision Pro on day one, but she didn't.
But then a couple of weeks ago, she made an appointment to get a demo for Apple Vision Pro.
I was not the least bit surprised when she told me that as soon as the demo was done, she begged Apple to take her money.
She got a pickup date at the Apple store near my house, and she asked me if I wanted to go with her for pickup, and then she'd do her unboxing at our house and let us play with it.
This plan sounded great, all the fun, but without the $3,500 coming out of my bank account.

[21:59] Pat and I met up at the Apple store, and she told them she had already purchased the Apple Vision Pro. Pro. I figured they'd go in the back room, bring it out, and we'd go home.
But Pat wanted to get verification on the size of the light shield, which is this structure that holds tight against your face.
You see, when Pat did the demo, they fitted her with one size of light shield, but when she purchased the app, it ordered her a different size.
In the Apple Store app, as you're purchasing Apple Vision Pro, it asks you to rotate your face to the left, then to the right, and then up and down.
It's kind of like Face ID, but only recording those four positions.
From that, it figures out the size of the light shield you're going to need.
When it determined the size in the app, she couldn't override it with the one that she knew fit well, and they were completely different numbers.
She didn't want to go home with the wrong one, so she asked for a new fit check while we were at the store.
This seemed like a reasonable thing to ask, but they took forever to even start the process.
I define forever as 40 minutes of waiting because I'm not so good at standing around waiting.
After the 40-minute wait, a guy came out with a questionnaire on an iPad or a phone. I forget what it was.
Anyway, I know that sounds weird to have a questionnaire, but it was asking things about her demo experience, like whether her eyelashes hit the glass or if she saw an alert on screen.
This might make sense if she'd had a bad experience with the demo, but she didn't. The fit was fine for the demo.
The problem was that the app was giving a different size for the light shield, and she couldn't change it to the right size within the app.

[23:26] I'm not quite sure what all that was supposed to accomplish, but eventually they came out with an Apple Vision Pro with a light shield.
She tried it on, and it fit great.
Now, I enjoyed that part of the evening's experience, mostly because I get to sit down while she's trying it on.
After confirming the size, they took the light shield into the back, packed it into the box with the Apple Vision Pro battery and cables, and sealed it so it looked like new.

[23:48] Now, Pat had also talked about getting a third-party case for Apple Vision Pro because the Apple ones are so expensive, expensive, but they let her look at the apple case, she fell in love, and bought it on the spot.
I don't blame her, it is nifty. I had worried that the case would get dirty instantly since it's pure white, but it's actually made of sailcloth, which I think would be easy to clean.
The whole boring process took nearly an hour, but we were finally able to go home for the unboxing.
The unboxing was as fun as you would expect, and you've probably seen enough of those that I am not going to go through it, because remember, we're all bored with that.
But then it got super boring again.
Watching someone else be amazed is not amazing at all.
Pat did her very best to talk through everything it was doing and what she was seeing, but I might as well have been across the globe watching it on video, and I'm already bored with that.
It got a little more interesting when the instructions told her to take off the device and point it at her face while she made various expressions.
We enjoyed it because this was to create her persona, and it was really fun to watch as it told her not to smile, then smile, and smile with big teeth and then erase her eyebrows.
So we mocked her a bunch because it was really funny to watch.
But then it was back to just listening to what was going on.

[24:58] At the store, when they conduct the demo, they can see on a screen what the prospective buyer is seeing so they can guide them.
But at home, the most interesting thing we could see was the googly eyes on the outside.
Now, we could have set up screen mirroring to an Apple TV or a Mac, but the content gets blacked out if you look at anything with DRM in it, so you can't see like the spatial video or anything.
Now, Pat could not have been more generous with her new toy.
After maybe 10 minutes of her getting to play with it, she offered to let me try it out. She's so kind. I never would have done that that quickly.

[25:30] So now let's get to what cured me of every ounce of FOMO I had before this happened.
The experience of trying out the Apple Vision Pro that Pat had was dreadful.
When I first put it on, a little green goggle thing came up and indicated that I should push on the digital crown or tap it or dial it or something like that to have it set the correct distance between my eyes.
That's called the interocular distance. distance.
That worked really well, and it's a pretty important thing for it to do if it's going to do eye tracking.
And when Pat did the setup, it scanned her irises, which is the biometric method of logging into Apple Vision Pro.
Since my irises didn't match, I saw a keypad on which to type her pin.
It was super easy to look at the buttons, tap my fingers together at each button, and log in. So far, so good.
At this point, Pat started to tell me how to do stuff, and I snapped at her that I wanted to figure it out on my own. I wanted the fun of discovery.
Well, in about three seconds, I was saying things like, wait, how do I find the immersive experience? Wait, where did that window go?
How do I get it back? I was immediately lost.

[26:34] I had cataract surgery a few years ago, and when asked what focal length I wanted, I chose computer distance. I don't know why anybody would pick any other distance.
With it fixed to 50 centimeters, or 19 inches, my depth of field is still pretty deep so I can also read without glasses. But I do need glasses for distance.
I haven't found any independent confirmation of this, but the folks at the Accidental Tech Podcast say that the focal distance for Apple Vision Pro is 1.3 meters, which, if correct, is almost three times as far away as my ideal focal distance.
Obviously, if I were to purchase Apple Vision Pro, I would need to buy the Zeiss optical inserts to have a good experience and a clear vision.

[27:12] Pat, on the other hand, has monovision after LASIK surgery, so she can see quite clearly without lens assistance.
When I used her Apple Vision Pro, everything was out of focus.
I had expected that, so it wasn't a really big deal, but it did take away from the magic of the quality of the visuals of the the experience.
As I was starting to mess around, doing things seemed to start getting harder.
I couldn't grab the corner of a window to resize it. I couldn't figure out how to move the windows closer and farther away.
When I got to the Apple TV app to try one of the cool videos, Pat said to look across the top of the carousel because that's where they were.
But for the life of me, I couldn't get them to stop moving to select them.
I dragged from right to left to try to get one back, but then it would kind of snap back and disappear again. again. Clearly, I didn't know how to control the device.
Then the whole Apple TV window turned white. I quit and re-opened the app, but nothing I could do would make it show content again.
We finally decided we'd try rebooting the device.
We've since then learned that you can tap and hold on the digital crown to reboot, but at that point in time we only knew about removing the power cable.

[28:16] Things went downhill from here. When I put the device back on my noggin, it had me do the interocular distance thing again, but when the keypad came up, as I moved my eyes to the correct numbers, it was selecting way below where I was looking.
It was selecting like two full rows of numbers, or I should say highlighting two full rows of numbers below my intended target.
I adjusted the helmet on my head to see if that helped, but it was still way off.
I was worried I'd mess up Pat's pin, and if you do that, after 10 tries, you have to take it into the Apple store to be completely reset.
I think I remember handing it back to Pat so she could tap in the code and let me put it back on and keep going.
At one point, the Vision Pro suggested I mess with the strap on the back to readjust the headset on my face.
That made tracking and grabbing things a bit better, but it was still off by a fair bit.
I found it tricky to manipulate the windows before. it was now nearly impossible.
I eventually beat the Apple TV app into submission so that I could select the Alicia Keys video everyone is so gaga about.
For about six seconds, I was immersed in her studio while she walked right up to me, and the audio was amazing and full surround sound. And then the video froze.
Now, Pat asked me how the network was in the room, and I pointed to the Eero on top of a wood china cabinet in direct line of sight right above us.
I mean, it was like like four feet away.
And that doesn't mean it wasn't a network problem. And to be honest, that room has had some issues, but that's why the Eero is in that room.

[29:42] Eventually the video restarted and it was pretty darn cool.
But I started at this point realizing how incredibly uncomfortable I was wearing Pat's Apple Vision Pro.
I must have a giant face because I felt like it was being squished in really tight.
It wasn't the weight of the device. It was the light shield shape and size that was so incredibly uncomfortable.
I had to keep taking it off to give my face a rest.
Now, Steve has a smaller head than me. Now, do not call me a fat head, but when he tried it on, it was a lot more comfortable for him.
He seemed most excited about making the googly eyes on the outside, and he entertained himself quite a bit with that.
Sadly, the googly eyes were not consistently showing up, so we had to pretend for his sake that he was entertaining us moving his his eyebrows up and down.
Now he got into the Alicia Keys video and while he thought it was really cool, being a nerdy engineer like me, he spent his whole time in the experience looking for where the cameras had been and trying to work out how many there were and how the angles had been created.
Now that doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it, just that he enjoyed it just as much for how they created the effect of making something so immersive.
Don't believe me? Let's hear it in his own words.
You know what's interesting is you don't see the camera Oh, I'm wondering if it's in that speaker.

[30:58] I'm trying to see. Oh, I think that's what it is. Okay, I got it.
They have these tall white speakers.
And then right at the top are two what appear to be lenses.
I think those are the lenses for the Apple Vision Pro.
So I see one there, one there, one. Yeah, that's what it is.
And the mics are coming from that. That's it.
See, I told you. We are such nerds. We are a a match made in heaven.
All right, let's get back to my recommendation now after you've heard the story on how to make sure you have no FOMO for Apple Vision Pro.
We have six easy steps here, six, maybe seven steps.
First of all, whatever you do, don't do the demo where they'll teach you how to use it and make sure you have a good fit on the light shield, giving you a great experience with it.
Number two, do try someone else's Vision Pro.
Number three, don't let them tell you how to use it. Number four, make sure their vision is completely different from yours so everything is fuzzy.
Number five, choose a friend who has a different head size from you so that it's really uncomfortable.
And number six, don't let them set up a guest account on the device because that might make it work better.
We never tried that and I'm really glad we didn't. If you follow these six simple steps, you will save yourself at least $3,500.
Steve and I were we're so happy we did it this way because if we'd loved it, we'd both want one, which means we just saved $7,000, not including AppleCare.

CES 2024: INNOPHYS Muscle Suit

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/ces-2024-innophys/

[32:26] When Steve and I have the opportunity to do interviews, he really likes to find things I can get on or get into, anything that maybe makes me look silly.
He's had me on bicycles, he had me doing weird exercise things.
This next interview might be worth looking at the video as well as listening to it, where I'm actually going to be in a muscle suit.
It's really cool, but I of course do look silly wearing this.
We've started this interview sort of in the middle of a story.
If you're watching the video you can see that I have an exoskeleton on right now And this has been put on me by the lovely Yaji Yu from Infosys and maybe you can tell us What is it I'm wearing right now?
Okay, so the product you are now wearing, we call it muscle suit It's an exoskeleton that protect you when you lift up the heavy items from, protect your lower back from suffering injury or feeling the fatigue.

[33:24] So, to describe to the audio audience, I have an audio audience as well, I've got straps around my shoulders, there's some straps that go around, stiff straps that go around my lower thighs, and then I've got a structure on the back, but I'm actually not completely ready to do my work, right? You're going to do something to me here?

[33:42] You're going to pump me up, right? So you explained that this doesn't use any batteries, it uses compressed air?
Yeah. Yeah, the big difference from our company's product to the other competitors is that we don't use any electrical component.
We use the compressed air.
However, although we don't use any electrical component like battery or sensor.
That means you don't have to carry those batteries. Yes, the support force, our support force is reached to a quite high specification.
The maximum support force can reach to 27 kilogram force.
So that's how much I can lift or what do you mean?
It means that the maximum support force, for example, when you lift up the items, for example, for 50 kilogram, it means that you can feel that it's only 20 to 25 kilogram.
I got you. Cutting it in half. Yes. Yes. Okay, so... And that's over 50 pounds.
That's over 50 pounds. Okay.
Okay, great. So now she's going to pump me up.

[34:56] Let's show my best side to the camera here. I'm facing backwards and she's got just a small hand pump. Looks like a bicycle pump.
Yeah. It's like a bicycle pump. Yeah. It is. She's pumped me up here.
And I'm noticing it's getting tighter and tighter. Yeah.
And some people will think, will feel that pumping by heavy lifting.

[35:18] You know troublesome work however only one day once so okay once a day is all you need to do this you don't need to pump it very frequently okay okay i got you and also so it's getting tighter across my shoulders and i'm especially noticing it on my thighs yeah and there is another advantage that we use the hand pump is that the support force can be adjustable so if you think that the support force is too strong for you, then you just need to press this red button.
Then you just need to press this red button.
Oh, that just lets the bladder loosen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The air leakage, so you feel a little less. I like a lot of pressure on it. It feels good.
I've been standing for a long time for the last three days.
I'm kind of liking this. I might want to wear it all day.
Yeah. Okay, now you had me lean down the first time we did this, right? Yeah. So I'm going to lean over. You're going to try to lean over.
I'm bent over at the waist.
Yeah, and you feel that you don't need to use your low back muscle to keep you this gesture.
Right, right, not at all. And it's like it's pulling me up. Yes.
So I feel like it's applying force upwards on me.
So if I was to try to lift something, I need something heavy.
Who can I lift up? Can I lift you up?

[36:39] Yeah. Maybe you can lift this table. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
It's not low enough, but yeah.
So is it, should you still bend at the knees?
Yeah, you can bend it by your very natural gesture.

[36:55] That's really interesting. It's very comfortable. It really feels like just helping me do my movements better. Yeah, thank you so much.
Actually, this is the mission that our professor, he produced this kind of a product because he doesn't want to produce a robot very fantastic.
He wants to produce a robot that really helps people solve their problems.
So that's why the smooth, the comfortable, the comfort is very important when we produce this muscle suit.
I don't feel like this would apply. I mean, it seems like this would apply pressure in weird places, but it doesn't. It really feels good.
So the company is InnoFizz, I-N-N-O-P-H-Y-S.
And how would people learn more about it?

[37:45] Do you have a website? Oh, yes, we have our own website. Yeah, and our LinkedIn. And the website is?
Is when you just Google and enter InnoFace, I-N-N-O-P-H-Y-S, they will show you.
Okay, great. And when will this product be available, I assume, to businesses?
Yes. The product has already been on the market for more than seven years, and this is the seventh version of the product.
So we renew and improve the product every year based on the feedback from the customer side.
Oh, very, very good. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate the interview.
Thank you. All right, I'm going to wear this the rest of the day. Bye-bye.

CES 2024: ViXion01 Autofocus Glasses

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/ces-2024-02-vixion//

[38:29] I'm in the Vixion booth with Taku Nonaka, and he's promising to show me some adaptive glasses that actually help you to be able to see, change your vision, right?
This is going to allow me to see better at different distances without my regular glasses.
Exactly. So this is the O2 focus eyewear. So there is a sensor, and it measures the distance to the object.
And then there are two special lenses, which dynamically transform the thickness and the the shapes of the lenses so that it automatically adapts the focus for each individual video, regardless of near-sighted or far-sighted, or you are looking at the close distance or far distance, it doesn't matter. And each eye independently?
Yes, you can configure it one by one if you want.
Wow, okay. Well, are you going to let me try this? Yeah, sure.
Okay, so I'm taking my real glasses off. This is audio also, so an audio podcast, so I'll be describing a lot. But these look like kind of futuristic sunglasses here.
All right, we're going to pop them on my head.

[39:35] All right, now I wear glasses for distance. Okay, great.
So you need some initial setup. So let me help you with that.
So there's a dial under the right temple.
So you find it. So you rotate it back and forth.
And then the vision may be blurry first, but it will be clear at some point.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, as I'm moving this back and forth, it got clear.

[39:59] And then, you see things close, clearly? Do you see it?
Yeah, I have to look through one eye or the other, though. Okay, maybe... Because I can't see in the middle. Yeah, it's maybe... Oh, okay.
That's a very good point. So, you can fine-tune it, so you can physically grab the lens and move left to right.
Oh, okay, so I can move them in towards each other a little bit? Yep.
People have different knee, peripheral distance.
Okay, so I'm just sliding the lens closer together.
Yeah, that'll be better. Yeah. All right. Oh, yeah. Oh, man.
Yeah. Now I'm seeing one point. That's much better. Perfect.
Perfect. So I'm looking distance. I'm reading signs, Steve, out there.
There's the Riley scooter.
All right. You're going to bring this close to me. Yep.
Can you read it? Yeah. It's not quite as sharp as the other stuff is, but oh, man, I'm reading.
Oh, man, He's making me read a Mac Voices sign right in front of me, but you're right, so that's changing dynamically.
Yep. You see the change like a film? Yeah, yeah. But it's really subtle, but I mean, I'm seeing distance perfectly, Steve.
I mean, I'm reading signs. I can read Innotron.
That's like 100 feet away, 200 feet away, and I am near sighted.
So it works as close as two inches and then up to...
Unlimited. I wonder whether I need to mess with it a little bit on the close vision, because the close vision is a little bit...

[41:25] Yeah, one eye is real good, the other one's acting a little funky.
You know what's funny? Human body, when you're looking close, your eyes go to inside, you know?
So that's why. In the next version, it will be automatic, so it will be even better. Okay.
So what's your delivery time on this? When do you expect to have this product out? I mean this product itself is already available in Japan.
So yeah, we successfully concluded our crowdfunding last summer and we already manufactured it in fall and started shipping in winter.
So it's available in Japan already. There are thousands of users.
And we are aiming to deliver this to all the countries including the United States.
But we need to go through the process of you know, FDA to make sure the quality, but it takes time.
It's out of our control. So it takes time. Sure, sure.
Now one thing is the lenses are fairly short, vertically, so you have a pretty limited vision spot that you're looking in.
Are you working on making that bigger? You're on the right spot.

[42:26] So we are trying to make it larger. So next version, the diameter will be double, and then once the diameter is double, the field of vision will be tripled or quadrupled.
So that's something we would like to realize in the near future.
This is a fantastic technology.
I never would have believed this would work. This is the company is Vixion, V-I-X-I-O-N, and where would we find more information about it?
Our website. We have information about our products itself and about this company.
And also there's a story about our CTO, why he comes to develop this product.
So when he visited the school for the blind kid, he felt really bad about it.
So you can read us or it's very interesting. Okay. Is that vixion.com?
Vixion.net. Vixion.jp slash en.
Okay. That jp and the slash en will get it in English for those speaking English.
Very good. Thank you so much, Haku. This is really cool. Thank you.

[43:22] All right. That's going to wind us up for this week. Don't forget, there's no live show next week.
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[44:15] Music.