It's September 1st, 2024, this is August 5th, 1926, I'm Todd Agasso-Ort, with the Dr. John Westwell, Dr. Westwell, how are you? I'm doing very well. I'm here and enjoying September 1st, even though the weather is just the same as it's always been in Mississippi. It's actually hot and humid right now, hearing boy. Not that it's never hot and humid, it's just more hotter and more humidor than usual. Yesterday, the humidity and the temperature were both in the 80s at the same time, which is not good. I don't know what Mississippi is like, but I imagine it's not too different on a hot summer day. I would like to have a little rant, by the way, about September 1st. I keep seeing people say or write on various places that it's the end of summer last month, and I guess today's the first day of fall, but that's wrong. I just checked the first day of fall, it's September 22nd, so I guess from a school perspective, it's the end of summer, but the seasons say no, something in theory. All right, so a couple of things. One, I did not see it myself, but Google blog, there's some new features coming to Google Meet, but I think they're only for the mobile, because I don't see any of these, oh wait a minute, send a reaction. I wonder if it records a reaction if I send a reaction. I'm going to send a reaction like, okay, do you see that? Yeah, I do see that. That's interesting. I guess the question is, my question, the question is, is this being recorded? We'll find out. Okay, so there's some emojis and things like that, but it looks, the blog itself only shows it on a mobile device. I'm not sure. Yeah, take calls on the go. Yeah, Android and iOS, so maybe it's that there, but I'll put a link to it. For the far fives of listeners, you might know that John and I finally switched away from, well, a couple of things. We just skyped for years and years, and it was okay, but then I started using Adobe Podcast Studio, which has its own online recording feature, but it was so unstable, despite its other great features, that we had to shift away. I happened to upgrade my Google One subscription to a level that includes Google Meet recording, so then record these podcasts. More recently, I've been hearing people call them pods, because John and I were discussing for the podcast. They might just be calling them that to you to make you think of that that's the new lingo and the new slang. Because sometimes I hear about new slang, and I think that I can't completely rule out the idea that they're just trying to prank me specifically. Well, you know, as a college professor, you do work with young people who are I'm skeptical of everything, you know, and then, you know, they're slang terms today that those using them know that they just use them. They have no meaning. They just use them to annoy the older generation. So knowing that that is a motivation for certain slang terms makes me even more incredulous thinking that perhaps these things aren't real. So maybe they're calling them pods. Maybe they're not. We're both at the age where we don't care. And I was just discussing it my wife this morning, the fact that, you know, I only learned recently people have been referring to podcasts as pods. And I said, pretty soon, the meaning of it will be just completely lost, because I said, you know, it came from the word iPod, and which doesn't even exist anymore, except as a iPhone descendant as a iPod, I guess. But anyway, the next thing I thought you'd find interesting. And that's that Google Gemini is or OpenStax, which is at Rice University is partnering with Google Gemini to to create educational contents. I feel like you might find that interesting. Although, although when I tried it, it says OpenStax library of more than 70 open license peer reviewed textbooks to be discovered, blah, blah, blah. These materials available to Gemini users, 18 and older, nicely started August 2024. So I looked up things like neural network, and it had no references to it. And you know, this is not a new concept. This is like a 35 year old concept, at least. So anyway, they're getting around to it. We'll get there eventually. Maybe I just was asking the wrong way. You know, yeah, but I'll go back and take a look, because it'd be nice to have a sort of a vetted source of informational material. Oh, this one I found interesting. I did this was a couple weeks ago, actually. And but I think you're on one of your super secret missions. And Apple Podcasts is now accessible through the web. So it is podcast.apple.com not too surprising. And so you can listen. Our five of listeners, if you're really, really in a pinch, you can just go to your web browser and go to podcast.apple.com and search for mobile views. And you should be able to find us and play back. Hopefully, I think I can't remember if I tried to look for us on the web. But let me let me search for mobile views and see what comes up. And yep, yep, you can find us. And it is in the order, more or less, the order of which, yeah, I publish. So I like YouTube, which sorts it in mysterious ways. It sorts our podcast and very mysterious ways to me. So there you go on that one. Oh, this was interesting. So there's a thing called what are they called? Image FX by Google. And they've turned on their image and three engine for it. So you can create it's text to text to image. I tried it. It's kind of interesting. Even one thing can't figure out, John, and this is true for all of the image generators. Microsoft, I think I haven't tried that whatever chat GPT's version is. And Adobe. If you, if you want to like create a logo, and you say I want a logo that has like a wood texture and the words, you know, this is my title. Yup. Inevitably, it will it misspell one of the words. And I don't know why it's not a fix it. Yeah, that's a problem I've seen with AI image generation for quite a while now. And it's across a lot of platforms. I think it's honestly down to the diffusion process where, you know, the word gets close enough in visual appearance to the other to the word you're targeting. And it just sort of goes, Okay, that's good enough. It hits that criteria. And the the algorithms aren't smart enough yet to realize that letters are more precise than pictures of other things like you have to actually get them right and in the right order in order for something to get the message across. You can't just be 95% accurate when it comes to the letters in a word. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of like a very lazy student. Yes. Yeah. And you know, we have to remember that that is how like a fusion model is creating these pictures. It's simply, you know, trying some pixels and going, does that look like a cat? Or does that look like a this? Does it look like a that? And when it comes to a sign that says, you know, a logo that says, I want this in this sort of way, does it look kind of like that? Okay, close enough, we're good. And we don't have models yet that are smart enough to say, no text, I need to take to a higher level of how accurate do you want versus everything else. So if nothing else, it means that logo designers with logos with text in them anyway, or, you know, sign designers, whatever, I have some job security for the near future, at least until, you know, these, these LLM's learn how to spell correctly. Yeah, yeah. Next thing I heard about, I heard about this thing called guru maps, I think on the iOS today podcast. And I thought it's for mobile devices only, I don't think there's a web version, I can't know, but I did download it to my phone. And it's really interesting because it has a bunch of it's free, first of all, I think, for like pro features, but you can download it and use it for free to get started. And it has some free layers, including like wiki maps, which tells you the name of buildings, for example, so I guess for college campus that we really use, or for campus, kind of building names, in addition to street addresses. But, and I don't travel anymore, but my, the rest of my family does, and my daughter's going to going back to visit Asia in a later. So I thought, oh, this might be useful for her, since she's going to a place she's never been before. Unfortunately, it does not, it only has the native language labels on the map. So, basically, if it's not a language you can read, I could not find a way to switch it to what the language I know, for example, even though, you know, that's not a native language with a country of which the map is displaying. So anyhow, if you read multiple languages, you're fine. If you don't, if you, if it's like in Korean or something, and you don't re-tongle, you're sort of out of luck. But otherwise, it's a really cool map. And I'm pretty impressed by it, even though. Yeah, it's interesting to me, because I'm looking at their free service now, and looking at what they offer. But what's, I guess, more interesting, or kind of intriguing, is that they offer a one-time universal license for about $65, $67, depending on what platform you're on that unlocks all of their pro features. So anytime you see a one-time, I mean, hopefully, it's really a one-time, but I do like that versus, you know, the subscription model. Of course, it's expensive. Hopefully, that's enough for them to be able to continue development for a number of years, I guess we will see. And if you use it, if you need maps, if you're a heavy traveler, or a frequent traveler against organs, something like the $65 is cheap. I remember we used to pay 40, 50, 60, 100 bucks for offline maps back in a day. You know, what is it? Map streets from Microsoft and other things like that. So, you know, those of us who forgot we used to have to pay for this $65. It's not too bad if it's something is frequently. Anyway, Google Maps, gurumaps.app.app.app is the domain name. And finally, before we get to John's fascinating topic, I need to try to digest it while I read this stuff, is we're a little over a week away, eight days away from the next Apple event. And I have a list of unlikely products to be announced. And it makes me sad. So we all know that, you know, a new iPhone or several models iPhone going to introduce probably a new Apple Watch series and and then this was kind of disappointing. I thought they were going to do some new AirPods Pro 3. But apparently it's going to be new AirPods, the amateur version, which will not have more pro features. And my AirPods Pro first gen is getting very flaky on me. So, I sort of need a replacement. And I was hoping to buy AirPods Pro 3. But hey, heck, we'll see what the new one anyway. So those are the likely ones with unlikely ones. And for Mac, I'm really looking forward to seeing the price of an M for Mac mini. So I'm disappointed. But not surprised. They don't normally announce Macs during these September events. AirPods Pro 3, unlikely. Home pods don't care about, but also unlikely. And a cheaper Apple vision. I have no cheaper means, maybe $1,000 to the 3. Oh, this one I really care about and I hope they're wrong is iPad mini, a new iPad long over. I think you're kind of looking maybe at a new iPhone. Yeah, I'm looking at a new iPhone. And there are a few other things that would interest me. You know, you talk about the iPad mini and the home pod. And there's all this speculation for years that we'd see a home pod with a screen because Apple hasn't done that quite yet. And wouldn't it be interesting if they take a page from Google's playbook and create a home pod with a removable iPad mini as the screen? Like a pixel tablet. Yeah, that could be very interesting. And I could see that actually being something that would go well for a use scenario like I have where I might want a smart speaker on my bedside table that I could, you know, use for alarms and things like that. And then just slap the iPad up there at the end of the day, have maybe an always on display. So it always shows the time or always shows something like that. And then just take it off what I want to read or I want to browse the web and just put it right back up there. That would be a very nice little scenario. But I don't know if Apple is quite ready to be that nice to all of us. Yeah, I agree. I'd be very interested to see that. You know, I bought the Google Pixel tablet last summer. And I thought, well, you know, it's probably to replace my Google Assistant, which has been deprecated, whose features are being deprecated. And I have to tell you, the Pixel tablet has become like my go-to tablet in the mornings. I am more likely to grab my Pixel tablet than my iPad in the morning, because it's right on the dock. And like you're wishless, you know, I see like a photo frame, a photos that kind of scroll every couple of minutes, and it's got the time and the temperature. And I think I can put more widgets on there too. I'm looking at it right now. And it's great. The sound is pretty decent from the dock. And it's always charged. It's really become a very, very much more useful tool than I anticipated. Yeah. And that's why I said I don't think Apple's that nice. I don't think they're going to give us something that has that much of a utilitarianism in one device, because I see them wanting you to have multiple devices. That's sort of being the exact reason why they would not do that. But if they were to do it, I think it would probably fell well. I think there would be people that would like it. So we'll just have to see about this. Well, we'll know in eight days. Yeah. And so I guess next Sunday, maybe there'll be even more leaks out there that we haven't heard from yet, or we haven't seen. I guess you never know what's going to happen. I did. I think I read Summer might have been Mark Gurman, who's in a pretty reliable rumor, rumor monger for Apple things Apple saying that a likelihood of a Mac, sorry, iPad mini at the September 9th event is more likely than other people think. So I'm hoping that he is right and everybody else is wrong. Because iPad mini came out 2022. So it's two years old now at least. Yeah, it's it's been a little while on it. Oh, let me. Oh, that reminds me. Let me go reach over to my so you have to unlock the tablet to get Gemini assistant with the off regular Google assistant's on. But I can say, Hey, Google, when was the iPad mini six released and it's thinking? The iPad mini six was released on September 24 2021. It was announced on September 14 2021, alongside the ninth generation iPad, iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 pro. There's precedent that it could be it could be there. Yeah, I'm just giving you a thumbs up for a correct answer. Good boy. Good boy. Good Google. Well, by the way, I don't know if you if you haven't used Google assistant, the Google assistant voice by default is a female voice. The Google Gemini voice default is a male voice or what sounds to me like a male voice. Yeah, I I don't know what deep state meaning that has, but it's interesting. We'll see. I mean, there's something to be said about. It's, you know, the AI is confidently wrong. We could say that that is stereotypically a more masculine trait than a feminine trait, but we won't we won't get too far into that. Because I don't think there's any great evidence that that's true. But it's definitely if we're going on stereotypes, it seems fitting that the man's planer would be translated into AI in somewhere or another. By the way, I asked Gemini chat GPT and Microsoft code pilot for it's what it knows about the September 9th event from Apple. Gemini pretty much discussed what we did, you know, things that are fairly well understood to be like the iPhone, sure. And then it also offered a few things. It thinks that, you know, according to rumors will not be announced. All the people are hoping for them. Chat GPT just got it completely wrong. It gave me the synopsis for the 2023 event. You know, it says we're going to announce the iPhone 15 and things like that. Things are announced last year. And co-pilot, Microsoft co-pilot only provided correct information as far as we know, but it only provided the well agreed upon current guesses. So it's interesting that in the three, the three LLMs all had very, very different responses. The same question, literally the same question. Yeah, well, they can't all be accurately wrong at the same way, you know, they'll be accurately wrong in different ways. All right. Okay, John, I mean, I mean, thinking about your question while I've been mumbling up. Yeah. So I'll give you some background and why I think about this, because I struggle with it. When I was younger, a young computer geek, I didn't have a lot of money. I never had anything that sort of matched in any way. It was always whatever's cheapest. So my bag might be from one company, Targis, you know, was very big back in the late 90s and all that. I might have a Targis bag, but my, you know, accessories weren't Targis branded, or I might have IBM ThinkPad, but then have Microsoft mouse and, you know, and even this extended to other parts of my life, you know, a wallet from one company and some other, it felt from another company, something like that. And then as I got older, I started to have more money and I started noticing that there were brands that generally had better quality, or had better features I liked. And it was kind of nice to have matching stuff, you know, buy something from this company and it sort of matches the aesthetic of another company of another item that they make. Obviously, Apple has built an entire culture around having things that sort of match for better or for worse. And drifting back and forth over the last 20 years from liking things that match, liking sets of things, to getting burned by sets of things. So for example, I like Apple's cases, their leather cases, I did like them, but they would wear out, they still wear out about every three years or so, I'd have to get a new case. And their wallet, I liked that too, but it's also worn out. But then they came out with the fine woven stuff last year that's gotten horrible reviews. And so A, I can't get a fine woven case for my iPhone 13, even if I wanted one, because they don't make one for the older models. And B, it's, you know, if I were to upgrade now, they wouldn't match. And that's sort of annoying, because I liked the matching part of it. But then, of course, from a psychological standpoint, I know it's all psychology, there's no real reason it has to match. So this all leads me to my question of, do you generally like to try to create sets of things from different brands that you like, or from different software makers, or anything, or are you all utilitarian? If it works, I'll use it. If it doesn't work, it's out the door, even if it's by a brand I like. You know, I think I lean towards the utilitarian thing. I think, you know, I usually, I very rarely use sports metaphors. I think I don't use very often. But I think, or actually a quote, I think it was Tom Landry, coach at Dallas Cowboys, when somebody asked him, when they're eating at their peak, somebody asked him, how do you, how do you pick your draft picks, you know, because it seems like you're overloaded on this position when you're drafting all that, he says, I don't pick my position, I just pick the best, I could just pick the best players that I can get. And so that's kind of my attitude towards stuff in general, you know, if, if it's a name brand, fine, and I'm happy with it, I'm happy with it, but it doesn't mean that I have to get a matching item, like, like targets, you know, which make great stuff, or back in a day, even before targets, Eagle Creek was one of my favorites. It was reasonably affordable. It wasn't as expensive as it was say to me. And they made great stuff for the last, like, years, decades, really, I've only had to get rid of a few recently, because, you know, I like 30 years old. But if it wasn't Eagle Creek, but it fit fit my need, I was more than willing to buy it if it was at a reasonable price. So I'm trying to think of there are any things that I really wanted to match, even mice, or maybe especially mice, for a long time, I would buy only Microsoft or Logitech mice. And then I stopped liking a Microsoft mice. And more recently, I sort of back in, I don't care category of whatever mice I did. Yeah. And I think it's, like I said, it's a hard one for me to parse, because generally, if I can go with one brand, like, for example, Nomadic, everything I've gotten from Nomadic has been high quality. It works very well. I like it. And I also kind of like that when I travel things match, you know, my sling bag matches this and that. I don't know if it's important for anything, but it's aesthetically nice for me. Yeah. You know, at the same time, brands will betray you. And some brands are not even consistent. I had a brand of shirt for years that I would buy t-shirts that I realized I was buying the same size in the same style. And sometimes what I'd get a shirt that was about an inch longer than other shirts. And then I realized that when I looked at the made-in, one was made in one country and one was made in the other. So they were sourcing shirts from two different factories, but the styles were labeled the same. And I thought, well, that's annoying. I like this company, but apparently I only like when their shirts come from this factory and not from this other factory. Yeah. Well, you know, I remember, I mean, this is not the sets or matching, but I remember when we were getting pretty fussy about which country made various USB thumb drives. Like, I know some people who only wanted the thumb drives manufactured in Japan and not the same manufacturer, the same, yeah, the same company, but sourcing it the same size, thumb drive from a different factory in a different country, things like that. You know, I will say, I'm just trying to think if I ever did sets of stuff, it's except for Apple, come to think of it, except for my Apple stuff. And that's not by design, it's just I like the stuff they make. So I tend to buy a lot of their stuff, except for their keyboards. Their keyboards have betrayed me time and time again. And I stopped buying Apple keyboards years ago. And that's all the great boards for the Mac, for the iPad, you know, just anything. The keyboards are just way too expensive. And they always break on me. So speaking of that, you know, I won't mention a name because I don't want to, you know, cause a ruckus. But there is a well known company that makes shirts that are particularly popular with tech nerds like Gus, because they have a bazillion pockets, generally speaking, and their shirts and their jackets are generally speaking fantastic. But their cargo shirts and pants are terrible. You know, and by terrible, I mean, the pockets send a rip and things like that, which is not true of their shirts and jackets and hoodies. And so basically anything you buy from this company above the waist, good stuff, anything that goes on your, on your legs, not so good. So it's sort of Yeah. And you know, I think one of the things that we cannot deny is that we like as humans some sort of an aesthetic for things. And you know, engineers can argue all day that you shouldn't, that you should just go with utilitarian. But part of the experience, part of the utility of something, is that you enjoy what you're using. And that isn't just doesn't get the job done. It's do I enjoy this thing from a visceral perspective. I, whenever I teach human factors engineering, we talk a lot about how, yeah, the tool might work. But if the tool's ugly, you just won't want to use it as much as you'll want to use a tool that also works. Totally agree. So back and forth. And with Apple's announcement coming up in a week and a half, it's always something people come up with. Oh, you know, this is so expensive. And this other company does it cheaper and it's just as reliable, et cetera. And that might be true. But if it doesn't provide all of the same user experience, including the aesthetics that you might not value as much as someone else, that other person isn't going to be swayed by just it works as well as, as you want it to. Yeah, very true. And you know, it's fun. Here's, here's one where aesthetics did play a big role. And you might recall, you remember the Microsoft zoom? And I think we can talk about it because it's no longer speak. You know, the Microsoft zoom was actually functionally, was actually a pretty good product. I had 30 gigabyte zoom with a color screen. It could play movies back. I mean, it's a tiny screen, but still at the time is sort of unique. And it was cheaper than the color iPod. And but it was just everything from the color from that kind of green color, which I used to preface with a descriptor that I won't say, you know, G rated. But a certain green greenish brown color, shall we say, to the ultra square sort of 1950s industrial look, which is not bad sometimes, but not on a mp3 play of the time. It was just, it was just no, I understood why people just rejected it, even though it was a perfectly fine piece of technology. And in some ways, I preferred it to my iPod, but it was just horrible to look at and hold. So very disappointed. Yeah, and it's, it's food for thought, I think overall, just thinking about what we like and what we don't like. And every year, like I said, people get angry that Apple is able to command the price as they can. And then although now given Android's pricing on their flagships across, you know, Samsung and Google and all the others, it's not like Apple is charging more than what the market is charging. But you got to remember aesthetics play a role and whether we'd like them or not. Yeah, that's true. You know, and sometimes the aesthetics are go beyond the visual to the auditory and the touch. So for example, I recently got a my first low profile mechanical keyboard and it looks fine, but it doesn't feel like a mechanical keyboard, which is kind of weird because, and it's not just that it has a really short travel, which is no problem, because I use like anchor keyboards that are not mechanical, that are probably like scissors switches or something. And I love those keyboards. They are just, you know, short travel, but they feel great. I actually had one in my office, I bought my own keyboard into my office before I retired years before. And I used it instead of the keyboard provided by, you know, my employer. And it was it was great. I typed on it every day. It was designed to be used with like an iPad or something, but it was great on a PC was fine. But there's a mechanical keyboard and I it's a really mechanical keyboard. It's got red switches, which are non noisy ones. And I just wonder if it's the red switch, I might go buy some brown or blue switches for the keyboard and replace a couple of keys, key switches, and see if it's like just like red switches. And for, I'm not a keyboard expert, but for folks who play with mechanical switches, you know, mechanical keyboards, there are different colored switches that go under the key caps that are replaceable mechanical keyboards. And they all have a different feel to them. So some are clicky and noisy, which a lot of people like like me. Some, you know, if you're going to go to office, but you still want a mechanical feel, you can get these quieter ones like their red switches. But they literally feel different when you press the keyboard. So anyway, I'm searching for a keyboard to replace the Surface Pro keyboard that I bought with the service because I just don't like it. Speaking of matching. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't like it as a funny way to think about it. You know, sometimes the tool works, but we just don't like it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a shame. The keyboard that ships with it's a attached mechanical electrical electrically attached keyboards. It's not a Bluetooth. It also has a little slot for the slim pen that is the, you know, the digital stylus for the Surface Pro 11. And so it automatically charges when it's in that little slot and it's, you know, it's stored won't fall off because it's under the screen. So it's a really well designed keyboard from a utilitarian point of view, but it just doesn't feel good to type on speaking of feeling. All right. Feelings matter. I guess that's a good thing in the current political climate. It's a good thing in the current climate of tech. It's a it's good to remember feelings matter. Feelings matter. So we will leave you on that touchy feely. And we'll bring pot and we'll lose podcast five to six, the pod to an end. And we'll talk to you one day before the Apple event. Yes, Peter.
