- At today's August 25th, 2024, this will be the podcast 525. I'm Todd Agassoa, and I'm a very special guest. Oh, wait, it's John whistle. - Yeah, I'm just, I'm back and ready to report. And I'm ready to get excited about fall tech and everything else, so yeah, I've returned. - And we can talk about our near miss hurricane experiences, so that should be fun. - Mm-hmm, before we get started with our discussion stuff, I just wanted to thank a whole bunch of people who recorded podcasts with me, while John was on his super secret missions. Paul Lawler, Steve Hughes, Al Bonilla, and Mark Savage all recorded in person with me, what a concept. And that was fun, 'cause I got to test a couple of different recording techniques. Interestingly, well, I'll get to that in a minute, but it was really interesting to be able to test some live recording techniques, and the surprise to me, what turned out to be the best. Last week, I wanted to thank Swenya Honson, Frank McPherson, and Don Sertchenelli for filling in on Mobley's podcast, 523 in John's absence. Mostly talked about Google I/O stuff, I'm not Google I/O, Google, whatever the heck they called their, their product announcement, which I know you're not a big Google hardware user, so probably not your cup of tea. - And quite frankly, there's nothing there I'm gonna buy, so that's fine. (laughing) - That is the interesting thing about Google and what they're doing. Sometimes they come out with stuff, and I was just, you know, for those of anyone who listens to things I don't think Google has any place. I will say the things I enjoy about Google are Google photos. I do think it's a much better photo experience than Apple, and Google Meet, I think is much simpler than a lot of other platforms, although you could use a few more features here and there. But yeah, it'd be nice if they did some things that were more exciting as well. - And if they would stop killing a lot of the services we like, that would be really nice. - Yeah, even once I pay for it, which really annoys me, but anyhow, I just wanted to discuss this a little with you. So you have spoken about your Rayban meta smart glasses for a while now, I think I don't like two years or something maybe. - Yeah, I have a lot of Rayban stories that came out about two and a half years ago. And then there's a newer version now that are the Rayban's by meta, so they don't call themselves stories. They're the next version. But both of them I've seen, you know, I've enjoyed my older version, and I've been tempted a few times to upgrade to the newer. - Yeah, so Steve Hughes, when he visited and we recorded a podcast, and we even did some Insta360 stuff together, he was wearing, I think the second generation, Rayban meta smart glasses. And I knew he was wearing them, but you know, to be honest, I kind of forgot he was. And because a lot of people wear dark glasses in Hawaii, 'cause that's a smart thing to do. And he was recording videos and photos without me really thinking about it. Every now and then he tapped the side of his glasses and boom, and he shared a lot of his photos with me. So that was, and they're very nice. I'm really impressed by the picture quality, the photo quality of the smart glasses, which must be a very, very tiny lens. So really impressed. Have you been, did you use your Rayban? - I did, and I do have some videos that I took when I was on my super secret mission that we can talk about in a bit. So yeah, I still find them very useful. The lenses, now that I've had them for a few years, are starting to wear, and I can tell that some of the polarization, filtering, it's going to potentially come off with a tint. So I'm a little unhappy about that, but otherwise I've been pretty happy with it. - Yeah, and you don't have prescriptions in yours, right? 'Cause- - No, 'cause I just work on it. - Yeah, yeah. And I think Steve did also, that's the only hold back for me is I'd have to get prescriptions for him. I don't know if Steve had prescriptions for his. I don't think so, but I forgot to ask him. We can ask him next time we talk. The one thing I did want to mention, I was saying that I tested a bunch of microphones for recordings and stuff. The last in-person podcast I did with my old work friends, Albany and Mark Savage, was my first three-person in-person podcast. And since all my lavalier mics are tubes, that posed a challenge. Like, I'm going to do this. I want to have somebody hold a mic, which is generally a bad idea, and pass it around, which is a worse idea. And so I broke out something I tested, but not tested by myself, basically, to see how far it would record and what the sound quality was like and stuff. And so I could have a USB-C conference phone, a very tiny disk about the size of a, what do we call it, a, what are those things, a coaster? We have to put under a cup, so it's maybe a little smaller than a cup coaster. And just about it sticks, it's very small. And so I plugged that into my iPhone and recorded using an app called Just Press Record, appropriately enough. And boy, howdy, the audio quality. I thought it was pretty decent. Volume, as you might expect, was a little low, 'cause we were sitting, you know, two, three feet away from the microphone. Yeah, at least two, three feet. Each of us in a restaurant, eating lunch. And so it was a challenging audio environment, but I processed it a bit with Adobe podcast enhanced. I think I had only said like 15 or 16%. And then I increased the volume after I cleaned up some of the background noise. And I thought, I think it sounds good. So if you go listen to, I think it's MobileViews podcast 524, you'll geek in here the results of that. And I thought it was pretty good. So yay, I think I might record even two person, in-person podcast with that now. It's way simpler to set up too. You don't have to get clipped and all that kind of stuff. Now, one thing I think you will be interested in, I want to hear your thoughts are, the Apple September 10 possible event. Apple hasn't announced anything, but that's what the reliable rumor mills are saying. You're looking for a new phone. So you're probably not looking for a new phone. Well, I actually am, 'cause I'm on an iPhone 13 pro right now. So I've bought about upgrading to the 16 this year. It would be three years that I've had my current phone. Although I did do a swap of the current phone back in May, if people remember June. I do remember. So I do have a 13 pro with a completely good battery at 100%. So I'm also sort of thinking, maybe I don't need to. So it's really gonna depend on what they announce and what I think I might get out of it, if I were to switch. I know I would get out of, it would be getting to USB-C for pretty much everything. I wouldn't have to travel with a lightning cable for anything really other than my AirPods. My AirPods can charge over inductive, so I wouldn't need to necessarily bring a lightning cable just for them. So it's potentially something I'm interested in. And I'm also interested in new Macs later this year as well. The next on the MacBook Air Pro gets refreshed. I might be interested in that. So I do want things that can do Apple intelligence. And so if Apple intelligence doesn't work on the 13 pro, that might get me to upgrade just the old play with it. - Yeah, I think you need a 15 or newer for Apple intelligence to work. You did buy a M something Mac, iPad recently though, right? - Yeah. So I do have the M4 MacBook or M4 iPad Pro. - iPad Pro? - Yeah. - So that would be a device I know that will be able to do Apple intelligence, but it's also a device I really only use during the school year. I use it for my notes and for teaching, which I'll be enough now that I have a keyboard on it that I can't flip around because the magic keyboard, as we established is a good keyboard. I like the keyboard, but I've now had to use the iPad naked, which I've never done before. I've never used an iPad without a skin or without a screen protector or without a case. So now when I'm teaching, I'll take it off of the keyboard and just walk around with it completely, you know, naked with maybe just the Apple pencil on it. And that seems weird, but it works well. I actually think it works better that way than any other iPad I've ever had. So that extra bulk of a case may have always sort of slightly hindered me more than I ever thought. - I wonder if the magic keyboard's magnetic back would work with a very thin skin protection, just for scratches and stuff. - It probably would, but I don't know. I've thought about it. I've thought about getting like a nice D brand skin or something, especially the ones that show the internals of the device 'cause those just look cool as skins. - It never seems like. - Yeah, it looks like you took the back cover off the device and you're seeing it exposed, but. I don't know if, I assume it would still work through the keyboard. And I know those like the D brand ones, the Pogo pins they have cutouts for. So pins are still exposed. - Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that, you know, because I'm too cheap to go buy the multi-hundred dollar magic keyboard, but I did get a sub-hundred dollar or maybe about a hundred dollar knockoff, you know, for my iPad Pro and it connects, you know, it not connects. It doesn't actually have a connector. It's all Bluetooth. So it's not, I think yours uses the Apple connector, right? - Yeah, for a much better experience. But anyway, so mine is Bluetooth, but it does attach magnetically. And so like you, I now use my iPad, make it also, which is, you know, we should start a naked iPad. I guess, but I've been wondering about a very thin skin to that might let me use it, you know, little bit of back protection, or at least scratch protection, nothing else. But yeah, that's a thought. So, you say this thing is called E-skin? - D brand, if you go to their website, they have the skins that have basically transparent back looking skin. There's also a ton of other designs, but I've had their skin on my MacBook Pro for four years now and it still looks very nice and it still has its nice texture to it. So I've been happy with their products. - You know what I've become really interested in, well, at least I shouldn't say it doesn't exist yet. The rumor I've been very interested in is an M4 based, even smaller Mac mini, like, I don't know. The Mac mini is not very big right now. So I assume it might be the size of maybe some of the nooks, the windows, nooks, and I'm really interested in M4 Mac mini. I do not have any Macs right now. I may have Mac books, I have a MacBook Air and a old MacBook Pro, actually the MacBook Air is old too. It's 2022, 2021, but I don't have any desktop Macs. My last desktop Mac was a 2007, eight, 2008 iMac. So that was my last. And since Windows 11, let me rephrase that. Since the ARM based Surface Pro 11 will not let me install the Insta360 Studio app, I have to use a Mac anyway or an iPad to edit. So I'm thinking about, you know, if it's under like, if it's $500 for say 12 gigs of RAM and maybe I'm dreaming too much, I buy one. I just have a nice editing day for my video hobby. Anything else you're interested in? Well, there was all rumors at this point, so iPhone. - Yeah, everything. - Yeah, I'm not sure if I would upgrade my iPad mini. I'm still pretty happy with the 2021 and I know really, they'd have to put a really interesting new feature on it or something that I hadn't really thought about needing. Because honestly, the whole reason that I upgrade the last one was just that the iPad mini was six years old at that point. And so it was going to be out of upgradable territory very soon. - Yeah, yeah. - But I assume the 2021 will get upgrades for at least another few years. - Yeah. - New AirPods might be interested in that. I do use my AirPods pretty much every day. So new AirPods Pro wouldn't be a bad thing to have because then my old AirPods Pro could stay at the office or stay somewhere nearby and I'd just use it, you know, for purpose-built purpose-length sorts of things. But otherwise it's really going to be contention to see what they announced. I don't have any definite plans or no plans. - Yeah, I'm really hoping that there's a new iPad mini seven or whatever they decide to call it to replace the six. And I'm hoping it provides the external, yeah, I'm hoping it's ARM-based or M-based, I should say. It's already ARM-based. I hope it's Apple Silicon-based and supports external second displays, not mirroring, but you know, an actual second display like your M4 can do now, your M4 iPad Pro can do. 'Cause I find that very handy and I'm looking forward to that. Well, I'm looking forward to it if that's what it is. Otherwise, like you, I'm pretty happy with iPad mini six. It supports the original iPad Pencil Pro, not the new two, but you know, supports original Pro. So that's good enough for me for most of what I do. You know, I forgot about the AirPods. I have the original AirPods Pro, first gen. And they're starting to crackle. So I don't know if I need to do a soft reset or something, but my wife has the same problem with that same, with the first gen AirPods Pro. And mine went that way too. So unfortunately, AirPods Pro and AirPods, I think just all start to eventually have some issues. - Yeah, and unfortunately, this is the first gen. You know, it's not a warranty fix anymore. And it just started recently like last month or two for me. You know, at first, I thought, maybe I need to clean my ears and I realized, no, it's not my ears, my ears are fine, it's AirPods. And you know, the Apple Watch, I have an Apple Watch Series 6. So I am five years behind, I guess. I will be five versions behind when the 10 comes out, right? So why only four, seven, eight, nine, 10, four versions behind. Yeah, it's something to think about. And I think my daughter wants to replace her Fitbit. What is she on a sensor? One of the fancier to fit the watches with an Apple Watch. Since she's mostly an Apple person, no since going with a picked watch. Even though it's cheaper. All right. Well, oh, I did want to report one good piece of news. After months, I've had my Surface Pro 11, you know, the ARM-based Copilot Plus. Maybe since, for three months now, over three months now, I can finally print. I don't know what changed it, but I, you know, I try printing every, you know, two weeks or so since I got it, failed. And in fact, in installing the, I have an HP desk jet that I used with it, right? Actually, I have three prints I tried with it, but the one I try most often is HP. None of them printed. I haven't tried the other two yet. But every two weeks or so, I tried printing and fail and finally worked two days ago. I don't know why. It's so nice when they start working again. But when you think about the situation you found yourself in, it's so infuriating that you find yourself in that situation. Where something doesn't work for no reason. And then it magically starts working. And so you're happy it's working, but you're mad that why did it take so long for this to even. - Green run. - Yeah. - Yeah. And I should note the HP, I think the HP software, you know, there's some software you didn't study the driver and a little app, the smart app to do scanning and stuff. I think it wouldn't install until I rebooted and then it finished installing, which is weird, right? We haven't had to do that in years. So I mean, rebooting to get something installed. So that was kind of annoying, but hey, it works. I got to go test the other printer. I have a thermal printer I want to test with it. - I mean, you know, things that you're just, you haven't done in years. I had to download the Visual C++ redistributable run times the other day. - Oh, I did that too for that thing. - And forever and thought this was weird, but it's no longer in this version of Windows that I have on this thing, yeah. - Yeah. And the same for me, I forget what I installed, but it also needed the C++ redistributable library, which was annoying. Oh, oh, something then new. Chrome for desktop now has Google Lens Search. So you can, I think you can, I haven't tried it yet, but it's been available on, in Google Photos or both iOS and Android for a long time now. So you can have Google web browser somehow search inside the, you know, I guess you do like select something on the screen and you can do a search. I just find it very useful, especially for when I'm looking at old photos and where was that exactly? Or, you know, that sort of thing. All right. And so I was going to mention one more thing. When was it rebooting? That was annoying. Now maybe that was it. Okay. So Dr. Rolle, where have you been? - So my super secret mission, to a lot of people that know, follow this podcast, they know that occasionally my wife and I like to go to Walt Disney World. And I mentioned, I think a few months ago that we were planning a trip. And of course, when I come back, I like to report on what I observed, especially technology. I did this in mobile views 293 after a trip and also in mobile views 437. So if you're curious about which things, I also looked up our notes to see what I talked about before and my thoughts on it reflecting now. The first that I mentioned in 293 back in 2019 is that Disney offers this glimpse into a cardless, contactless world. They have their magic band plus system where you can use it as your resort room key plus charging things to your room account plus your park tickets and linking your ride photos to your accounts that you can download your ride photos. And that plus Apple Pay, 'cause all of their point of sale terminals also accept contactless payment through Apple Pay, Google Pay, Tap to Pay, all of those things. It really is kind of cool that you can use your watch or your magic band and just never have to take out your wallet, never have to think about where your wallet even is. I would keep my wallet in my bag with me. I think I took it out just for some restaurants where, and I remember now I could actually have given them my magic band and it would have worked the same way. I wouldn't have had to give them my actual credit card but I did on a few occasions. - I'm just gonna look up how big the Disney magic band is. I don't think you showed me a while back but I don't remember what it's looking like. - I mean, it's a size of a bracelet slash a small watch. It's got a little emblem on it. So it's not very big. You can almost think of it as a bracelet size. - Oh, and so your resort says specific designs too. That's interesting. - Oh yeah, they've marketed, they've got designs for everything. You can find a magic band that will, and if you buy them in advance of your stay, they come engraved with your name on them, which is really useful if you have a family and everyone wanted the same design, at least you know who's the zoos 'cause their name is literally on the back of it. - But yeah, that is very nice when you're in what they call the Disney bubble and infuriating that it's not in the rest of the world yet. It's been years now and low, slow progress with tap to pay and Google Pay, Apple Pay, I just don't understand why the world doesn't like this idea because it certainly seems I see people fumbling with credit cards or wallets and everything else in a world where I mean, very easy. Well, I go to the grocery store now, now that Kroger stores accepts Apple Pay, I can literally just punch in my rewards number on the pin pad, tap my phone and I'm done. I don't have to ever reach in my pocket at all, which is kind of convenient. - Right. Hey, my camera just decided to-- - I noticed that, it looks like-- - Yeah, I do, a camera is moving, so I had that op spot that I tested a while back and you decided my stomach was more interesting than my face, which, hey, you know, maybe, but (laughs) and you're right. You know, I was just thinking about your desire for a, you know, a heartless world. That works until you have a power outage. - True. - But then even a card won't help you. You know, even with a power outage, even a card won't help you. I'm not saying you're rid of cash. I'm just saying, get rid of credit cards as plastic things that we have to carry around for no reason other than they have information that our watches and our phones already have. - You know, we've had eight major power outages in my little developing nation part of the world called Hawaii. And by major, I mean, many, like, you know, 10,000 customers, not people, customers, probably 40, 50,000, you know, people, plus businesses, affected in this calendar year alone, 2024. And I know a couple of times after power returned, you know, you go to like a large supermarket chain or something and you're out of luck because they couldn't reboot their system or something or something's out of whack and they can't charge you. So yeah. - This is why I say I don't dream of a cashless world 'cause I don't think we're anywhere near that yet, but I do dream of a cardless world. 'Cause if you think about it, your credit cards just contain information embedded on them that your phone and your watch can already do. And the benefit of your phone and your watch is that you have to authenticate to actually use it. Whereas with your credit card, someone can just pick it up and go use it wherever they want. So I would like to get rid of that extra thing that I'm carrying around for no good reason. Same thing with in many cases, some ID cards, maybe not my driver's license, but definitely, you know, student IDs and things like that. Those could all get put digital as well and I'd be pretty happy. - Yeah, yeah, well. - However, there is one thing that did catch out with the rest of the world since 2019 and that is mobile ordering. So Disney was one of the first places that I went to that could do mobile order. And now a lot of different places can. Yesterday I went to a local chain, a regional chain and did mobile order from the table and they brought out my food when it was ready. So I never had to stand in line or my wife and I could just leisurely sit there and pick what we wanted and then place the order. So I am glad that since 2019, mobile ordering from a smart device has become much more common. That is very convenient. - Very true. And I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that. - Yeah. - But I will say that back in 2014 or maybe 15, 2015, I think I went to an ESRI GIS conference in San Diego, California. And I think of staying the Hard Rock Hotel, which is like right across the street from the convention center. It had a Starbucks in it that had the first Starbucks mobile ordering system I had ever seen. I mean, I'd heard about it, but I think it was the first time I'd ever seen. And so I had to go back to my room and download this. (laughing) I'm gonna go back down just to try it out. - Just to try it out. Yeah, that is the sure sign of the geek. I can walk up there and order it right now, but I want to spend an extra 10 minutes just to see how this thing works. - Oh, and then I found out when I walked in, it had Wi-Fi too, which is also brand new at the time. I think it was the first Starbucks I'd seen with Wi-Fi, so I could have actually done it right there, but you know, I didn't know. So, but anyway. Yeah, you know the, although a lot of, of course, many, many, many, many bad things came out of the pandemic. But I think that mobile ordering and work from home, at least for some people all that seems to be disappearing. - So interesting things happen during the pandemic that changed the world in good ways. Doesn't offset the bad thing, but, you know, some, a few good things can emerge that both, or maybe not good, but world changing. - I think tap to pay also was accelerated by, so now when you do go to a store, most of the stores I go to that take Apple Pay and Google Pay don't know they take it. They just know that their new point of sale terminal will let you tap your credit card. And when I use my watch, they look at me like I've just created some black magic, because they know that you can tap a card because people do do that, but they don't know that you can use other things. - Right, Apple needs to come on with an Apple wand, so we can just wait a little more. - You know, I've thought about it. You should be able to put an Apple wand at the end of old magic wand and just do that. That would be kind of funny. (laughing) - Okay, sorry I interrupted you. - No, no, so I talked about also in 293 back in 2019, I talked about taking my MacBook because I had to reset an iPhone passcode, actually reset and re-download it of a restore image. And I said, you know, even though I'm on vacation, I still can't travel without my MacBook. And sure enough, this time I still needed my MacBook. I had something at least one night where I couldn't have gotten away with just tapping it out on my phone. - Oh interesting. - I'm still, even though I was between semesters, I tried my vacation so that literally I turned in all of my final grades for summer and had nothing I had to do for fall yet. It was still still needed. And I also mentioned in 293 that I had bought the Nomadic collapsible collection, or may actually support the seven, I talked about that. And that still serves me very well. If you're looking for luggage, especially if you travel by car and you have a weird issue like I do where your bag starts off very heavy at the beginning of the week, but then you start transferring things out of your regular bag into like a laundry bag and you're gonna take home and watch. You don't need a giant bag at the end of the week 'cause your laundry bag that was very small at the beginning of the week is now very large. So the Nomadic collapsible collection is still a very good collection of bags. I've been happy with it for the last few years. - They have some very nice looking bags by the way. - Yeah, but now let's talk about some things I haven't talked about before. I find every time I go back, I'm needing less and less stuff. This was the first time I didn't take a dedicated camera. I just used my phone. And of course with Disney's PhotoPass, if I wanted really nice looking photos, I just paid for them and had, you know, Disney photographer take them. And they'll also take photos with your camera. They'll take it with your camera or your phone. So Disney will still take your picture without needing to pay them just with your equipment. I didn't take a giant external battery. I bought a fuel rod, which is a little rechargeable battery that there are kiosks in the parks that you can swap. So if you've used up all of your fuel rod, you can swap it for free. But I didn't even need that. I just used low power mode on my phone. I put my phone in low power mode at the beginning of the day. And it's sipped power pretty much all day. And I didn't care that I wasn't getting push emails 'cause I was on vacation. So I was quite happy the only time I got emails when I opened my email app to look at it. And I used an anchor external magsafe pack as well as Apple's external magsafe battery. And those two things basically got me through every day. I never walked into my hotel room at night without a charge enough on my phone where I could use it. And you do use your phone a lot at Disney because a lot of things happen through the My Disney Experience app, which allows you to book things and check status of things and look at wait times and look at your photos. So I think I am going to continue to kind of pare down the stuff I'm using 'cause I just don't... I don't see a need for as much as I used to take. In my park bag or things like... I take little portable flossers 'cause there's nothing more annoying than if you've eaten something in your teeth and you're not anywhere near a bathroom to get rid of it. And just other ear plugs and things like that for loud environments. Although Disney's sound engineering was a little better this time. I didn't find myself in any too loud environments compared to when I was there in 2022. - Or your hearing's getting worse as you age. - Could be, it could definitely be it too. But my Apple Watch also didn't complain as much about loud environments aside from little bits here and there. - Yeah. - The interesting, so Disney has security, airport-style security when you go onto their parks and onto some of their transportation. And interestingly, you walk through a scanner and then they divert some people over for bag check and other people, they just, you know, just walking right through. And my wife and I have always kind of played a game of what gets you flagged for bag check? 'Cause we, you know, rhyme or reason, sometimes you don't realize it. For the last trip, it was the very large external battery I had. It was just way too much metal and that always flagged me. And as soon as I took that out, it stopped flagging me. This time, oddly enough, it was my plastic glasses case with my most fantastic glasses inside. Yeah. And I think it was just purely, they couldn't figure out what exactly it was from the what? - Just the shape or something? - Yeah. Yeah. I think it was just the shape and the fact that it was hard plastic. As soon as I'm about midway through the trip, I took it out of my bag and just, I just actually started throwing a spare set of contacts in my bag instead of taking my glasses. And I didn't get flagged for bag check the rest of the week. So that was kind of interesting. The metal and the batteries and the fuel rods and the pins and stuff like that, they didn't trigger it. It was just that glasses case, so. - You know, back when we used to travel, we both used to travel with a lot of stuff, a lot of gadget stuff. - Yeah. - Including a lot of cables. You know, I used to carry spare ethernet cables, you know, stuff like that. - Yep. - You know, a portable Wi-Fi access point to plug into motels. I had this mess of wires that I swear, you know, it's an untrained eye. That would be me. Did my untrained eyes. If I saw that in X-ray, I think, that looks like the makings of a box. (both laughing) - Yeah. - I know. Whatever. They never flagged me at all. - I think of it as the time I was at Seattle Tacoma Airport and I had a Scotty Vest jacket with a ton of stuff in it. And it took the TSA about 10 minutes to take everything out of it. And then took me, and with me pointing to pockets to them, you're like, yeah, there's a pocket over there. There's a pocket there. There's one here or whatever. And then it took me about a minute to put it all back in, you know, 'cause I knew exactly where it was going and all of that. So yeah, I remember those days of, I actually have an old, I have a couple of old bags that Roadwired made that they called their Mega Media bags. And if you want to trip back to 2002, 2003, look up the Roadwired Mega Media. That just gives you an example of what we used to carry because it has probably at least 30 different pockets in it, full-size document pockets, pockets for your laptop and with a giant charging brick and multiple, you know, expandable pockets for every possible thing you could need. I thankfully never need a bag that big anymore, but I do keep those because A, they were one of the first really nice bags I ever bought and B, it just is a different time when we used to need all those, all of those kutraman of traveling as a tech geek. - Oh boy, those are the days one thing. I remember, I started wearing Scotty this things way after the rest of you and the rest of our MVP cohorts, but I remember when I did start, I got a Scotty this jacket for trip to Europe. And I basically used it as a second carry-on. 'Cause that's what it was. - Yeah, they're great for that. I still say that they're great for your personal, you know, for a second personal item on the plane, 'cause you literally just take them off and throw them through the scanner, you don't have to unpack them. Usually, unless you have like seven phones in them, like I did. - Right. - But, you know, that was an edge scenario. And today, there are other brands that are doing similar things too. You know, Scotty best, I think, did it first and still does it very well, but it's not uncommon to find jackets with 20 different pockets that zip close today. - Yeah, I'd be going back to your original, talking about dbrand skins, the X-ray skins. So I just looked it up and for the iPad Pro 11, it's 30 bucks, essentially. And there's two versions. There's one called Tear Down. Another called Ultra Matte Tear Down, which I guess is a matte finish instead of a glossy, not sure. But hmm, thinking about it now. 'Cause like you, I've been taking my iPad Pro off of its magnetic case to use it without the keyboards. My case, like yours, does not fold over either. And although I don't need the character from class to class, I do need it from my doodle a day project. So, okay, something for me to think about. You know, I was gonna say about the fuel rods. I have to go look up what a fuel rod was. I had an idea. Actually, I had the wrong idea. I thought it was a one time usage. Like, we used to have fuel. We got one at a conference once. It was a fuel cell, fuel cell, I think. So, it's basically used to tell drains, and then you toss it. But this is not that. It's an actual battery that's rechargeable, but not by you, apparently. - Yeah, well, you can recharge it. It does have the same little micro USB where you can charge as well. But if you're somewhere where you don't want to hook up to a wall, and there's an equation kiosk, you don't have a time for a new one, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So, yeah, I did look it up. Yeah, fuel rods, anchor batteries. Yeah, I still can't order them. You know, we got our first Amazon distribution center, big, by Hawaii standards, a very multi-hundred thousand square feet thing. Not millions of square feet, but for our little island, it's pretty big. But they don't depot things that normally don't ship to Hawaii, so I still can't order anchor batteries. - Yeah, very sad. - So, a few other interesting observations at Disney. - Technology has made us rather blind to situational awareness. And I think you and I noticed that, but I like watching people. And so, there are a couple of interesting things. First of all, it's Florida in August. I don't know if you would have thought about this, but it is warm. And my wife and I were aware of this, and we had planned for it, and we mostly were okay with it because we live in Mississippi, so we're used to it being warm. But there were people there that seemed genuinely shocked at how warm it was. And you'd be around a group of people for ten minutes or so, waiting in line, and you'd realize that that was all one of the members of their party could ever talk about. And I thought that must be real fun to be around that person all day, because I've been around for ten minutes and five times they've brought up how hot they are. So, yeah, if you think it might be cool in Florida in August, it isn't. So, don't plan to go there in August. - You know, the converse of that is when people go to visit San Francisco. And I lived across the Bay from San Francisco for, like, less than three years as a kid. But I know what the weather is like there. I still, even as a child, you know, that made in person on me, and I remember what it was like being in the city by the Bay. And so, I remember taking my daughter, we took our daughter there one August, and, you know, I remember what it was like in August in San Francisco. So, we dressed appropriately for its weather. - Yeah, yeah. - And we saw people freezing their behinds off in, like, t-shirt and shirts. - Yeah. - It's like, do you guys not read Mark Twain? - Yeah, yeah. - Or look at a weather forecast. Yeah, that's exactly it. I have a friend who got married in New York and then relocated out to San Francisco and had mentioned with her husband on one of her anniversaries. Yes, I loved you in cold New York winters and cold San Francisco summers, you know. - There you go. - Very same thing. - All right, and all the quote, the quote from Mark Twain. "Is the coldest winter ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?" - Yep. - Yep. The other thing that I do, you know, when watching people is, I'm curious when you're at a place like Walt Disney World, where they have obviously spent a lot of money on creating of, you know, scenery and technology and all these things that immerse you into an environment. And you're sitting at your phone. I'm curious what's pulling you away from, like, all this crazy stuff going on around you. And you could tell that there were some people that were using, you know, the Disney app or messaging, you know, they're doing something related to their experience. I can understand that. You're trying to get ahold of someone in your party or your booking of reservation for dinner or whatever. But there were a lot of people on Instagram not posting, just scrolling. And Snapchat not posting, just scrolling and TikTok watching videos. And it just sort of obeys to me that, you know, I understand some people get dragged to Disney by family members. And they're not really into it. They don't really want to be there. But it seemed like a lot of people were not getting their money's worth because they were engaged in something they could have been doing for free outside of arcades. And my wife and I noticed that this was somewhat more prevalent with the more expensive resorts that you'd go to. We stayed at a cheaper resort and people seemed much more interested in having a good time there. We went to one of the more expensive resorts and the client tell tends to be a little older and tends to also be teenagers that grandma dragged with them. And just look miserable. So I don't know, maybe the more you pay, the more unhappy you are. But that seems to be our observation on that. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was going to return us back to tech. But if you have a psychological observation. No, I've just, I've seen this years ago when my daughter was, I think, a preteen. My wife had a conference in Whistler, which is in, you know, north of Vancouver in British Columbia. And so we tagged along with her because Whistler, you know, it was going to be the site I think of the next Winter Olympics. So we'd like to see it before it gets nuts. And so we went there. And if you've ever been to, to, you know, British Columbia, it's just gorgeous, right? It's beautiful. And so we were in the conference that arranged for like a bus to pick up a lot of the attendees coming in from the airport. And so we piled in or maybe it was like a shuttle, probably a shuttle. And so we piled in. And this beautiful scenery, because it is what it was spring, I think, might have been spring break or something. So it's really beautiful time of the year. It's not too hot. Things are still are green. And I have a picture of my daughter, I took a photo of my daughter with this beautiful scenery passing outside of her looking at her Game Boy with intensity and sort of the night, I captioned that, you know, enjoying nature. I know. I mean, I can understand that everyone does need to unplug or plug from time to time. But it does seem like sometimes you see people that are missing a lot of things that they might have otherwise enjoyed or gotten something out of, but yeah. So the next week, a couple of photos from a museum exhibit that we saw and made me think about some of the programming of the audio animatronics figures, you know, original audio animatronics programming, as you can see from the board was analog done with, you know, analog dials that in essence would code through audio tones what exactly the figure should be doing and what joint should be moving at what time. And today, all of that is digital and of course a digital programming system can plot a smooth linear curve or a smooth curve onto a movement. So when you think about why these figures look so much like more life like today, it's interesting that a human translating movements into an analog dial, which is analog to analog is not as fluid as a digital system plotting a curve and making it look more fluid. So it's kind of interesting where humans can't do it as well as computers can do it to get the programming down. Yeah. That is a fascinating looking old school board for sure. Yeah. And then when we were there, it was also, you mentioned hurricanes at the beginning of the episode. Yeah. Hurricane Debbie was finishing up while we were there and it was kind of a tropical storm. There was a lot of rain and wind when we were there for two of our park days. But it was interesting to observe what Disney can keep running versus what they can't when there's a steady rainfall out. We went to a number of night shows, entertainment shows that we thought were going to be canceled, only for them to actually run. That was kind of shocking because sometimes those things don't run in bad weather, but they were able to make changes and still run the shows, which is definitely in their best interest. Roller coasters that are outdoors kept running, which was interesting to me. Some of those I was expecting were going to shut down. And oddly enough, things you would not think would need to shut down did. So one of the parks we were in was Disney's Animal Kingdom, which has a lot of exhibits of animals and jungle walks and things like that kind of like a zoo would have where you walk through and see animals, those would be closed because of falling tree limbs. But the wind was what I did actually get struck by not a big branch, but kind of a stick coming out of a tree. So I could see why those would get closed. But it is interesting to think about what can run and what cannot run in the remnants of a tropical storm at Walt Disney World. The other thing it goes to you, yeah, a couple other things, wait times. The Disney app has wait times in it, but I like to remind people that those are not fully automated. Disney knows what the actual wait time is, but it is still humans deciding what to show you in the app. And so there were times when you could tell they were trying to basically reset a ride's wait, maybe a ride that had been at 70 or 80 minutes all day. In one case, I actually twice, I walked on to rides in less than a 10 minute wait that normally would have at that time of day had 70 minutes because they had kept it at 70 minutes for maybe a half hour or so, even though the wait time was steadily decreasing as people were saying, well, I'm not going to wait 70 minutes for that. I'm not going to go into it. And then you would see them drop to 10 or 15 minutes. And then of course, an hour later, it'd be back up to 70 minutes. So Disney is very strategic in their wait times as geeks. I think we think, well, surely that's all automated because you could use, you could use a number of things, cameras, sensors, whatever, to know where people are in line and how fast the line is moving. And yet for business purposes and crowd control purposes, they don't fully automate those things. So it's good to remind people that even though technology can do it, doesn't mean technology is doing it. Yeah. Or another way to look at it is they're using technology for their own ends for behavior modification. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. And, you know, in my view on behavioral modification is that if it makes it a better experience for everyone, then I'm okay with that. But there are definitely people that disagree with that. And you can see them at Disney as well being annoyed. A few other things. I saw my first drone show live and in person, which I guess I never realized how loud they would be when you have, you know, 700 drones. Yeah. When 700 drones are near you and they're in the sky, you know, 100 feet away from you, 200 feet away from you, they make noise because, you know, it turns out when needs to be created. Is it high pitched or is it low pitched like a helicopter? It's high pitched. It's basically a line like you would get from a fan near you or, okay. So it's not distracting, but it is definitely interesting and it makes me think about Disney's audio distribution system, which I love to know more about because they are able to pump audio all throughout their network because they'll do things, you know, you'll be able to resort that's across a lake from a fireworks show and they'll pump the audio feed in so you can watch fireworks with the audio. So it's interesting how distributed some of these things are for the territory they have. Yeah. It's only a matter of time till they figure out how to send out appropriate noise cancellation is reduced to drone, but not let other sounds through it. I'll probably not help years away. Yeah. I also noted that Disney's, it's interesting when Disney uses their app to push out apologies and reminders. I have a couple of screenshots that are, you know, and these are geofenced. So reminders and noses, which is kind of a cool thing that it's not to everyone who has the app installed. It's only if you happen to be in that geographical area where the ride is down or the park is closing or something along those routes. So that's kind of neat and it's not a pop up in the sense of a push notification. It's literally when you open a device, it's a, you know, modal window that appears that you have to dismiss. So it gets your attention in that way. And then the final notes, people that ask me, you know, why do you go to Disney multiple times? Don't just go and you're done and you do something else. There are things that you pick up on in different ways. And the example I can give is there's a ride in Animal Kingdom called Flight of Passage, Avatar Flight of Passage. It is a ride where you basically are on a motion simulator, but in front of a giant 80-foot screen and you appear to be riding on the back of a banshee in the Avatar universe. But if you look at how that ride is done, there's a number of ride systems and one of them is the fact that the room that you are in is on four hydraulic pistons on the four corners and it can, it can move up and down, back and forth and the seat you're on is also moving as well. So there's a lot of different synchronous movements and there's wind effects and sound and you know, smell and all of those things that they use for immersion. But at one point, I turned around on that ride, which you're not supposed to do. I mean, they don't want you looking behind you. But when you look behind you, it's quite cool to see half of the room moving up and down and the other half of the room where your bag is sitting in a little bin staying perfectly where it is. You know, it doesn't necessarily break an illusion, I guess it does. But if you're a geek, it adds to it. I think I spent more of the time on this ride. This is the third time I've ridden through this. I think I spent more time looking around into the sides and up and down and noticing the mechanics and thinking about the technology behind putting together this experience more so than the experience. I'd seen the experience before. The first time I rode this ride, my jaw literally dropped for 30 seconds with just taking in the experience. And now being the third time, it is jaw dropping in a different way, jaw dropping in, pull the curtain back and look at all of these things working in concert perfectly to produce this experience sort of way. Yeah. I don't know if they're similar, but two rides, it seemed to me, you know, the simulation of motion kind of thing. I mean, you actually are moving, but not in the way you think. One was at Disneyland in California, Soren over California, where you sit with your legs kind of dangling in a, you know, secure chair and you get the feeling of being like in a glider or something, sorry, that was a lot of fun. And the other one was, oh, god, what was it called? I'm trying to remember now. But there are two actually in Las Vegas back, you know, this is 20 years ago. One was a Star Trek experience where at one point, your shuttlecraft escaping from, you know, some bad guys, I think it was the Klingons, you're flying over the Las Vegas strip, which is, you know, very meta. And the other one was, I think in a Luxor, it was another science fiction themed ride where, you know, again, you have the feeling of flying. So yeah, I love those kinds of rides. Those are great. Yeah. Yeah, you can think of flight of passage as sort of an upgrade to Soren. It definitely has that same experience where a giant screen and being pushed out kind of over the screen that does happen. And it's the next evolution of those sorts of ride systems. So it's, it's neat to see these things evolve. And then, of course, I give rides Soren later in the week. And so seeing kind of the different generations of technology that still provide a really nice experience, but also you can definitely see where they learned from one thing and decided to do something slightly different for the future. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you had a good old time last couple of weeks. And now I'm back to reality, back to teaching and back to all of that, but, you know, there are more adventures to be had. I'm sure there'll be more Disney adventures and there'll be more adventures outside of Disney technology wise to explore. Well, speaking of, of hurricanes earlier, so we have one, I think I already mentioned it. Maybe it was before the podcast with Hurricane Hone passing looks like safely south of us. So I'm very grateful for that. I think the Big Island got hit pretty hard by a lot of rain, but we also have another one that's coming this way. We may, may give us more rain next weekend. So we'll, we'll see. I'm not so much. I'm worried about damage and stuff. I think we'll be okay. I think I'll pass north of us this time. But you know, we, like I said, we've had eight major power outages in my neck of the woods. Sometimes we know apparent reason. It's like a beautiful day with clear skies and you're thinking, hmm, what could have caused this, you know, so it doesn't take a lot for us to lose power. And hopefully we'll be able to reconvene next week and maybe in a couple of weeks after our, our buddies, when Johansson and Don Sartanelli have a chance to play with their pixel nine pros, I think we'll have them back on board to talk about that. And also we've got September 10th, which is not that far away, like a little over two weeks away, for the alleged Apple product announcement event, I'm burping over here, company. Yes. So which we mentioned earlier, right? Well, I hope there's something I can afford to announce to that one that I want, you know, I think in new AirPods, because like I said, mine are crackling an auto warranty, Mac Mini M4, if it's cheap enough and not an iPhone for me, because I've got the 15 pro. And I've had mini with an M chip in it, unlikely, but or if at least it supports a secondary to a second external display, extended display, I guess is the word I'm looking for extended, not mirror display. That's something I'd be very much interested in. Anyway, it is great to see you back, Dr. Westwell, and we shall talk to you next time.
