Would you like to control your iMac with gestures? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 112)
Would you like to control your iMac with gestures? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 112)
38:27

Would you like to control your iMac with gestures? (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 112)

Culture
[MUSIC] Hello everybody my name is Steven Beecham producer of the Apple Byte extra crunchy podcast. With your host Mr. Brian Tong. What's up hostess with the mostest, Beach and Tong in the house. Guess what it's episode 112 of the Apple Byte extra crunchy. This is our complementary piece To our weekly show the Apple Bite. It's only around five, six, seven minutes. We get down and dirty, and also new stories drop by the time you watch the show, and it's always constantly evolving, this Apple world. We have fun talking about it, we are fans of tech, we're fans of Apple when they do the right thing. So Everyone that's listening, you know the drill. To be a part of the show all you have to do is call us at 1-800-616-2638. That's how you can participate, leave your name, where you're from and talk to us about what's on your mind. What questions you have. We did have guess what we had the voicemail full box thingy majigger go again this week. Yeah it filled up. because that's a good thing, It is because you guys call so much, it fills up and then we have to empty it, so thanks for calling It is a good thing, so yes, we will get to those calls, we have a couple, but you know if you guys are watching live and you want to tweet me at Brian Tong, that will be an easy way, I'll try to look at them when it's our phone call time, see if we can bring up some of the questions or things you all want to say, okay Lets jump into the show. And we know, I guess just to kinda set things up. We just had Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And how did Apple actually do? Well according to reports from analyst at Rosenblatt. The iPhone X did really well. As in sold six million units this weekend. Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Holy smokes. That's kind of. 6 million units, are you serious? That's crazy man. I mean. That's amazing. If that's true, it's true they also said nthat the 256 gig model is said to be more popular, which makes sense because most people that bought the iPhone 10 were like there's no 128 gig option. You are making me get 256, they said more than half of the purchases were the 256 gig models for the iPhone 10, that is kind of insane. So the 256 is what, it is little more than a 1000 dollars. Is 1200 bucks dude. I think it is like 1200 dollars. so, 1200 times six million, that's like five trillion dollars, that's incredible [LAUGH] I think that math is actually really accurate, thank you for computing that so quickly I flunked math in college a couple of times I'm not allowed to flunk math, it's in my DNA, we're supposed to be good at match, I'm like a walking abacus, you know what an abacus is? That's great, yes, Abacus Finch I know what an abacus is. [LAUGH] All right, also just another quick story about the Black Friday, Cyber Monday before we jump into kind of all these new hardware news. AirPods and iPads were listed according to Adobe. Adobe takes analytics of the activity going on during that weekend. So thanks to you all. Airpods and iPads were listed as the top selling electronics during this years record setting cyber Monday. Now on cyber Monday it is believed sales hit an all time record of 6. 59 billion dollars in sales. That's almost 17 percent higher than last years sales. Also, the number one product out of all these sales. They broke down like some of the gadgets, we have the Xbox, One X, PS4, Pro is there. A lot of things that were discounted. The Airpods were the most desirable cyber Monday product and I found that interesting because. When you looked out there, there weren't that many discounts on it. So, I think really people were just buying AirPods straight up. Straight up. Man, I see a lot of people around the office wearing them now, so they might have picked up a dip, right/ It's growing, right? You're jelly. You want a pair of AirPods, don't you? I do, I do. I know you do. I know you do so bad. [LAUGH] Yeah I like the way the regular Air Buds or what are they called Ear Buds? Ear Pods, Ear Pods. Ear Pods yeah, they fit me fine and I have no problem with them so I would like a pair, I do, I do want You want a pair. Okay, we'll put it on Santa Beacham's, little Stephen Beacham's Christmas list. So we'll see if he's naughty or nice. [LAUGH] I know he's naughty. I don't know know that. I don't know know that. I'm pretty much naughty 24/7. I'm always naughty. Naughty. Naughty. All right, let's talk Apple hardware. Lots of cool stories. This week coming out, I think the lead story that has accumulated over time is the fact that apple pushed through a patent application for a future foldable iPhone. Yeah. Are you ready for this? I'm ready for it man. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published this patent application that Apple has put through. Here's some of the things that it's using and elements that's described, even last week we talked about how Apple is looking to get into developing and manufacturing their own micro LED displays. This is a thinner version of the current o-LED technology. This patent specifically calls out micro LED technology. As the display type or one of the display types that could be used with this. It talked about a foldable type phone, smartphone that could be folded into like a book. Also, they talked about kind of, some of the hinges that would be involved in making this happen. Using liquid metal parts. It doesn't mean that it's liquid metal like the terminator. I was just gonna say. It's a more flexible hing lets put it out that way and I do also bring this up because Samsung has already showcased kind of like this faux concept video back in 2014 of a foldable Samsung galaxy. They actually went on the record this year to say Samsung will be coming out with the foldable phone in 2018 that we will actually see it in 2018. Maybe we'll see it at CES in a couple months. So, guess what? Samsung is doing it, Apple's gonna do too. Yeah, so that like Later That's like an immediate, that's an immediate reaction to Samsung doing what you think like The patent filing or is this something Apple has been working on for awhile. I'm sure they've looked at it. I'm not sure they've taken it seriously. And look, Apple jumped on the trend when was it the pebble watch, was that what they were called? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, the pebble was the big kickstarter one. With that became so hot, every major company started pumping out smartwatches after the Pebble opened people's eyes. Cuz I think it raised something like 10 or $11 million on its Kickstarter. It was at the time a record-setting product for Kickstarter. So, look, we know Apple's not always first. A lot of the times, they like to say that they get it right, or at least they get it right the best that they can, so we'll see. Apple foldable phone? I don't think we're gonna see it next year. If they're actually gonna do this thing, this doesn't mean they're actually gonna do it, but if they do it, sure, maybe like two years, three years down the road we'll find out. [CROSSTALK] You want a foldable phone, bro? Yeah. You want the flip? Hell, yeah. I think the most popular joke is, Apple already makes a foldable phone. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] That's right, it's bendalbe, right? iPhone 6, Bendgate, yes, you are all correct. This render right here, real quick, this render, it looks like a chair. You could put some Some legs on the bottom, and just have an Apple chair, it's cool. It ain't even real. [LAUGH] Everything goes full circle, trends. We got the Razr flip phone. that was one of the dopest phones. I like how our phone is today, but it could be interesting. I'm just saying it could be interesting. Yeah, yeah. If your phone could be half the size and fold out like that and still have the same screen real estate. And you could just like flip it out, that would be cool. That little fidgety thing. I would be totally cool with that. All right. A new report from the [UNKNOWN] Asian review says Apple is planning to design their own power chips In-house as soon as 2018. And what does this really mean? All right, so we know recently that Apple pretty much squashed a company. They're doing their own kind of core co-processors. We've seen the M processor for fitness and movement, we've seen this bionic neural engine chip that Apple has implemented To handle the facial recognition, image and speech recognition, really a machine learning chip on the new iPhone ten. And we also saw how Apple decided to build their own graphics processor a little earlier. And this company called Imagination Technology was literally destroyed in the stock market, because at time they were Apple's number one supplier. So Apple's like, we're gonna do this on our own. Apple's really gonna be doing the same thing. They wanna take even more control of this experience. So it looks like, according to multiple sources, that they will be designing their own main power management chips for use in these iPhones coming as soon as 2018. There's another company that's gonna be a casualty of this is called Dialog Semiconductor. Who's shares plunged as much as 19% after the views. There's multiple reports claiming this but the main advantage of this. Apple controls that shift. Apple a lot fo the time can tie their hardware together more intimately when they have all the pieces of the puzzle from the ground up being built So this could help with charging functionality, battery management, and energy consumption, which I don't think anyone's gonna complain about. No. If it benefits us, the consumer, we're all about it. Sure. Do you want a phone with better battery, Beecham? I don't wanna have to ever charge my phone. I want it to be solar powered, just Work all the time. I don't want to have to plug it in, nothing. I don't care about wireless charging. Just work. There was a patent that Apple had some level of solar charging through the screen. Yeah. This is from a couple years ago. Again, we haven't seen it come to fruition. These are just patents but it is what it is. And we stick with more talk about the iPhone and this was kind of interesting. Johnny Ive, right, Apple's, I don't know what his official title is right now. I believe he is the VP of design. I don't even know exactly what his official title is right now. He's there design chief at Apple. Has had some great hits. And is also in my opinion had some misses but he had this really interesting interview with the Smithsonian magazine talking about his work, but really he kind of shed light on Apples's new campus specifically, and so he's talking about how Apple pack their new UFO circular ring building Is really cool because they're going to be able to have multiple different design teams work together. Industrial designers, font experts, motion graphic experts, and computer interface designers will be able to come together. They show this video clip that has a lot of, kind of some of the design elements of their, also the space will actually have their own milling machines. What is that? Why is that gonna help Apple? This enables them to build physical prototypes. Sure, they've been able to do 3D printed models but these specific milling machines will allow them to. Use the native materials that would be on some of these products and their first, kind of, concept. And I wouldn't be able to grasp, like, okay will this work or not. I think that's really cool that these are being implemented on site in Apple Park. He even says in this quote, "I think you really only understand a material, it's properties and attributes, and importantly The opportunity the material allows, if you actually work it yourself. And the most remarkable point in this whole process is when you make the first model. We might like it, we might not, but the first model you make, and then everything changes. So I think the other thing that, there's another quote in this story that made me laugh, is they had talked to him, Johnny Ive about the iPhone 10, And I've talked about its all glass design, and its edge-to-edge display. He said this is something that Apple has aspired for years to make. Then he dropped the bomb in comparison, he critiqued the older iPhone designs and says, "It now seems to me a rather disconnected component housed in an enclosure. When talking about the iPhone 7 plus. Wow. So he's basically saying the 7 plus is dated, it's old, he's over, he doesn't even care about. Moving on. You've got dated technology if you have the 7 plus. It is unacceptable. That's crazy that it's like dizzing his own product, kind of. It's just like It's just in a shallow that blows my mind actually I think in a way though as a designer it's always like you're always looking forward to the next evolution. So I think your newest work is always gonna be your best work. Your oldest work gonna be like, it was good at the time but you know now That makes sense. That makes sense. You know there's things that I've done a long time ago and I look at it and go, "Now that is crap. What is that?" [LAUGH] "That doesn't make sense." I mean, as a creator of music that's in line with that same type of thinking and mentality. All right, another cool pattern that has surfaced is Apple wins a pan for, really, the true depth pan that is used on the IPhone But using this to support hand gesturing in a 3D interface for iMacs. Are y'all ready to be like an Apple Jedi with your iMac. So it has different functions where, right? We know that Apple acquired Prime Sense. I think back in either, it was either 2013 or 2014, PrimeSense was the company behind the Microsoft Connect, Apple acquired them. And really what you have in the iPhone ten kernel is aspect, not a Connect itself, but aspect of a Microsoft Connect in the iPhone ten in that lovely little notch that you know I love so much. Love it. So in this notch, right, they're saying we wanna implement the same technology in an iMac, do things gestures like a push gesture with your hand, a wave gesture, or move your hand up to do things like unlock the computer and other tasks. I think it's actually kind of cool. I'm down with it. It is cool, but figure five is kind of funny. I mean. [LAUGH] Wait what's in figure five. [LAUGH] Like the arrow where his thingy. Where his hands are going up and down figure five. Yea, I wonder if like the app. [LAUGH] Sorry, but I'm not going to go there. [LAUGH] My gosh, dude where is your mind you perv? [LAUGH] I'm sorry I saw figure five I was like what is happening here, he's doing a gesture. [LAUGH] Okay yeah, so your Mac might misconstrue some things, that's a concern. If you watch the video show, we have a new term for people that got real excited about Apple. Fapple. Fapple. When you get real excited about fap, you gotta do, you gotta fapple. If you're really excited, you're juiced up about it, it's fapple. [LAUGH] Fapple it up. That blew it up. All right and before we take our little break. Apple is reportedly planning to release an even cheaper 9.7 inch iPad in 2018. This is according to Digital Times. We know that right now the lowest priced, at least standard-sized iPad, the 9.7 inches 329. DigiTimes reports that Apple is trying to target a price in the range of $259. We've seen, really, a new life being breathed into the iPad line. Thank you to the iPad Pro which is one of my favorite Apple gadgets in so long. iPad sales growth recovered this year after, remember they went something like three straight years of declining sales because it was just, you don't have to replace them that much, we talked about that, it was a stale market, there wasn't any new real innovation, but iOS 11 plus iPad pro, awesome, still cannot do as much as the surface pro, but still awesome. For apple users, very cool. Love it, love it. [UNCLEAR AUDIO] [CHUCKLING] Yeah baby. That's what we want. I love that. All right, should we take a break to show some love to our sponsors my man? Let's do it, I got some music right here. Just got [INAUDIBLE] sound. Go ahead. All right, check this out. The single router Wi-Fi just doesn't work for our increasingly high bandwidth World so, yes well what you need is a distributed system, the answer is Ero. We've talked about Ero before, we love them, whatever your wi-fi needs Ero has the power to seamlesly blanket your home in fast, reliable wi-fi via ethernet, wireless or really any combination. So you simply set it on a flat surface, plut it into a wall outlet to expand coverage into any room Not to mention you have the addition of a third 5 gigahertz radio. This is the second-generation Eero that's now tri-band, which is twice as fast as it's predecessor and lets customers do more in every room of their home simultaneously. Plus with this a new addition of the thread radio You're [UNKNOWN] can connect to low power devices. This is going to be really important for the smart home, for locks, door bells and other sensors moving forward. Also, not only do you have this main router Aero has the beacon, it's this half size, kind of, white, rounded squares that are even more powerful than the original Aero that you can plug into the wall to kind of help Your wi-fi get covered in multiple rooms. Which ever model you choose with Eero's incredible customer support, you can call and get ahold of a wi-fi expert within they say, 30 seconds. So I've told you this before how I've set up the Eero system that they had us use in my parent's house. It was really easy. My parent's house is pretty big, it's like three levels. I put in a couple of the beacons and then the setup was cool. It was really easy. I mean to me, because Apple is getting out of WiFi hero. It is not better than what Apple is offering by far right now. But it just has that nice sleek design. I am a fan. You also have the ability to customize it and it is an easy simple setup, like I said, did it in my parent's house. That was dope. So check it out. For free overnight shipping to the US or Canada, visit eero.com. Select overnight as the shipping option and enter applebyte at checkout. That's eero.com, spelled E-E-R-O. The code applebyte, A-P-P-L-E-B-Y-T-E, at checkout. Thanks Eero. That's dope. It's actually a legit Really good product. Awesome man! Cool. So, I'm not saying that because they sponsor my show, but I'm saying that because they also sponsor my show. [CHUCKLING] Yes, Okay, back to the show, this might be kind of boring, but I think I kind of mentioned this, we talked about how Qualcomm And Apple have beef with each other, there have been lawsuits, patent infringement complaints going back and forth with each other. It took another layer to this kind of intricate 12 layer cake. Qualcomm on Thursday filed three new patent infringement complaints against Apple, saying there were 16 more of its patents That Apple was using in its phones. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just going to say, aren't they going to block Apple from selling the iPhoneXs too? Yes, iPhone 10, iPhone 8 and 8 pluses, because of this, they are trying to block them from being sold. We know how that doesn't really work, it is almost kind of like. A threat that ends up getting resolved. But there's a lot of history here. Apple felt that Qualcomm was unfairly charging higher prices for their components in their phones then when Apple has models of the Iphone 7 that had different Intel modems and Qualcomm modems that were Plenty of reports that substantiated and showed that the Qualcomm modem was a faster performing modem, but Apple throttled it down so that it would have equal-ish, on the same level performance as the Intel-based modems, Intel modem-based iPhones. Qualcomm wasn't happy about that. This continues to go on Apple files a law suit against Qualcom, Qualcomm does the same, Qualcom is now like we said filing this pattern infrigement complaints against Apple. This is not going to end anytime soon. So they go on, and on, and on and on forever. Its just a wide ranging legal war Apple actually sued Qualcomm for nearly $1 billion in Patton royalty rebates. Again, I told you that they felt Qualcomm was charging them too high. So there you go guys. Have fun with that. When big boys fight. When big companies fight it gets ugly. First world fights, first world fights. All right software stuff a lot of stuff came out this week, I'm gonna kinda try and run through some of these because you might not wanna linger on this. But we heard about the root password vulnerability that came out about a week ago. This is where anyone if you are a Mac OS High Sierra user, it's specifically the High Sierra users Could go into your user and groups kind of where you type in your password. You can ask computer typing your username routes and leave the password completely blank and that person could get complete access to pretty much any file on your computer. [LAUGH] Wow. Yeah So thanks Lenny again for finding this one out. That has been actually patched with a Apple's security update. And then there was a followup where some users after that update were having file sharing issues. That has also been fixed with another update to that update. This is happening a lot, unfortunately. It is, yeah. It feels like almost every other day there's another update to iOS or Mac OS or something. Yeah, there is. Someone is on the periscope like, you really read comments? I'm like, yeah I do when I can take a peek, like I'm doing the show right now. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Also, others, another autocorrect issue affecting users of iOS 11 and later. This time if a user typed in the word it, it would potentially autocorect it to capital I .t. The same thing was happening for some users that were typing in the word is. It would change it by autocorrect to I.S. There's been no response by Apple for a fix of this. It's not happening to everybody, but it is happening to hundreds of users. Not just like two or three, but A lot of people. I finally updated my phone from the iAir. You did? Because I was out of town and I couldn't plug into my computer. My phone itself has been asking me to update to one of the betas, but I do not wanna do the beta, because you can't back up your phone right now with 11.2 beta. so I'm like no, I don't wanna touch that. So anyways, I did finally update this original iBug issue. Apple's also seeded the fifth beta of iOS 11.2 to developers. Or if you are part of the public beta program, which is free, you can download that as well. We talked about Apple paid cash, Siri specifically working without a connection on the phone. And then also to support for the 7.5 faster wireless charging. I didn't know this but I don't know if you can show it in that article beach. On the iPhone X, you pull down from the top right-hand corner to bring up your control center We know that Apple has this annoying bar on the bottom of the phone to let people know you swipe up to go back to your home screen. They're going to put a second bar on the lock screen, under the top right-hand corner just to let people know that you can swipe down here as well. Okay. Can you scroll down the article more? Is this in here? I see. Is this it, no. I can't see it anymore, it's okay. It's there, it's that blue thing. Okay. There's gonna be a bar in the top right hand corner and a bar on the bottom on your lock screen. That's awesome. I see, it's just kinda like a visual cue. You could swipe here. I don't think we're that dumb, I honestly don't think we're that dumb. [LAUGH] I think its an insult, like it makes it really maybe as an indication of the broad general use of the iPhone fine but common men, we're not even like being snubs here, you really need to put a bar up there now? I think the most people that get their iPhone 10 that aren't even that tech savvy, don't even know what the bar is there for. They're like, there's a bar. I should swipe up. They don't know that. I'm pretty sure if I saw that and I didn't know what it was, I would think it was a problem with my screen. I'd be like, there's a issue here. There's a line in my screen, like what is this? When I did first play with the IPhone 10, there was a little learning curve. I had to figure out how to do it, which way to swipe and stuff so I don't know, maybe they'll get rid of it in the next update or something. Yeah it's like they're gonna teach us, train us first and then yeah. Anyways, there you go. The bar is there like someone saying in the chat like, it's for early adapters. So how about that? Also I have to admit that I was totally wrong in this. I thought the iPhone X was gonna be really really hard to get Even through the beginning of next year. But according to reports, shipping estimates for the iPhone 10 have improved to under one week for the United States. We had heard stories about how iPhones were getting shipped to customers earlier, that were seeing four to five weeks and getting it more in like two to three weeks, so I mean, everyone's going to be happy about that. There's nothing bad about that. Is that someone like cracking the WEP or is that just you know. I think its just them getting their supply chain like this totally ramped up. And maybe changing the tolerance of the face ID recognition that I love that color that called in about. You think this is like a scandal going on back there? I'm like, I don't know. Apple TV also gets this new, if you're using the preview versions or the public betas Of iOS 11.2 and tvOS 11.2 they introduced the ability to watch sports games, sports matches, sports teams directly through that watch app on your Apple TV, or through the Apple TV app on your phone. That has actually gone live if you have early versions of this. Really cool. Right now, ESPN is really the only app that is supported at the moment. This hasn't been rolled out general consumer live, so I'm expecting we'll see other apps like NHL, MLB, TNT, even, to get plugged in with this. But, it is pretty cool, like I love that. It's pretty sweet. And then Just to talk about other shipping delays with the Apple TV, right now an Apple TV with 64 gigs of storage is facing a four to five week shipping delay. Man. So, holiday, you want that 4K Apple TV that is still yet to get Dobly utmost support [LAUGH] People know what bugs me. [LAUGH] That's a four to five week shipping delay at the moment. So they straightened out the iPhone shipping but not the Apple TV? I think just a bunch of people, Apple TV $199 that's like a really, I don't want to say easy gift to get, but it's kind of a nice gift to get someone. Hey, that's gonna be your present for Christmas. Yeah, I was seeing them on sale. For like 85 and that's for an earlier version over Black Friday and several Mondays or sing it myself like 85 bucks. Are you tempted? I was. I was tempted. Were you tempted? [LAUGH] All right, I said let's just get to our voice-mail right now just get two. What do you think? Let's do it. Do it Baby? For calling. We got some good call. Our voice-mail did filled up this week so There probably were some of you guys that didn't get through, but we thank you for trying. We thank you. Yeah, I cleared it out so you can call us and leave a message. And let me put the phone number out just so you guys have it. And here is our first call, here we go. Hey B Tissel this is K Dog from Chicago I just had to bring up a point on Apple Car Play missing that I can't use my Google Maps. Do you think Apple will ever let you put Apple maps on Car Play? It'd make it a lot more useful, let me know what you think, looking forward to hearing from you.Thanks bye. I'm pretty sure he meant Google maps but he first said are they gonna bring Google maps and then he said so are they gonna bring Apple maps. It's not gonna. Google maps. I mean I could go on the record and say I don't think we're ever gonna see google maps in Apple's car plight. It just doesn't make sense for them to do that. They're competing with Android's own Car software system, it's an Apple ecosystem thing. I know they have third party music services that are supported by car play. But I just don't think we'll ever see Google Maps in Apple car play. How about this at least not for the next three years. After that maybe, maybe they'll get over themselves. So car play is not open to developers like Like an iPhone is. They have very specific deliberate partners that they allow to show up on their display because it looks like an iPhone with I think a row of like five by five apps that are the grounded off corners and it's not like they are going to let you play games or have an app just go to town on it. It's Apple, it's a very controlled ecosystem, we've always known that. Google Maps, I would love it but its not gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, they need to open that up though because the car is like the next space you know. Like, we've done the phone- They need to open up a lot of things up. They need to open up the home pod. I mean they don't have even right now the developer files have shown that they are not looking to open it up, they're only gonna have Apple Music as the native music service on the home pod. Yeah And no other third party apps like Amazon, Echo, third party apps thousands. Whether you use them or not. And you know we are going to be talking to Alexa in our cars in the next couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Play me this song Alexa and it will do it. Okay. Here we got another caller. Here we go. [LAUGH] Hey guys. Nick from Alameda again. I just wanted to comment on your last podcast and talking about the home pod. The bottom line is Apple can't see the forest through the trees Because they want to design an entire product around functionality. Whereas, Amazon designed an entire product around just functionality. I look at the Amazon Echo as being a gateway, or a key, to an entire voice automated world, and That's where I think Apple's missing the mark. Because for me I have an Echo Dot. And I used 3.5 milimeter phone jack and I plug it right into the back of a Bose system. And it sounds awesome. And that's 50 bucks. And the Homepod's 350. So I could have a Dot Literally in every single room, if I wanted to for the price of one home product. [CHUCKLING] I think Apple needs to take a look themselves and honestly design something that is cheap, affordable and maybe just a modular hook up to something that would allow people to interact with their eco system. Love the show, thanks, bye. Awesome call. Yeah. I love that call because not only is he talking about the problem but he's talking about a solution, and you know what guess what Apple isn't always first to market. They've made mistakes, we've seem them trail. I feel like they're trailing like they haven't been before at anytime but Guess what? The power of their ecosystem allows them to trail and allows them to one day maybe come up with a little home pebble instead of a home pod because there is no way. Look at. Okay, how about this. This Cyber Monday and this Black Friday. Where were the biggest deals? They were around the Amazon Echo, the Echo Dot, Smart Lights from Philips, Logitech Harmony Hubs, Google Mini, Google Home. The smart home voice assistant was the hot spot during this sales season. It's gonna continue through the Christmas break. Apple again is delaying their homepot in so March or whatever to early 2018. They shutdown their company for couple of weeks in December., so we know nothing what is going on then. They're missing all these. This is what? Is it year 3 or year 4 of the Amazon eco where they are truly mature platform and now they are at the point where mom and dad are doing it not just tech Tech elite, tech fans, it's mom and dad who have already started doing it. Now it's like grandma starting to get into it, right? Like main, mainstream general consumer. Apple's missing this, they can do something similar, but there's gonna be a point in this race where People just think of either Amazon or Google as the voice assistant and for the home, Siri might be for your phone, but it's not gonna be for your home. Yeah yeah. And you just don't wanna be there, you don't wanna be number three. Yeah you wanna be number one but at least be one or two, you're a far away third right now, and that sucks. That sucks and Siri isn't even as smart as Google Google's assistant or Amazon's alexa, it's just bad news, and it's disappointing. The caller said that the echo dot was $50, but I've seen it, it's on sale for $30. 30 bucks. It's super cheap now. Right now you can get them for 30 bucks. Should I tell the story when we were all having lunch and saw that the echo's were Were free for a couple of hours. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] And everyone made a mad rush to their computers but it's a great product. We're all sitting having lunch, Brian Tang a couple of coworkers here at CNET and then we got a text or something. I think you got the text right Brian? That Echo Dots were free on Amazon. [LAUGH] We all went and we order and we all got free Dots. So I know it was like a random thing that happened but you know it was a good random thing. Yeah, and again Siri is Apple's, well you know one of their biggest missteps quite honestly. Look, I'm not a future I'm not a future teller but I am [UNKNOWN] but you can't understate that they had this platform out long before anyone did. And they built a Home Pod without the foresign of having Siri be at the heart of it. They talked about it in that report from Bloomberg last week, it was The center of, they wanted to make a high-end audio device. They don't want to make a high-end voice assistant that happened also to be a high-end audio device. They wanted to make a great sounding speaker. That completely changes how the Home Pod is developed and built and looked at from ground up from the company. And they're not catching up any time soon, and it's a shame. Yes. It's a huge miss. It's one of their biggest misses. That's it then. All right. That's all she wrote. You know what, though? Before we go, we do have one more thing to do. You wanna talk about this? Sure, let's talk about that. Is that the one more thing? [LAUGH] No, but we wanna say thanks to our buddies at Joel Noel, right? Yeah, Joel Noel From Hawaii, hand carved, hand made us an Apple Byte extra crunchy podcast plaque for our studio that I will be in in a couple weeks. Can you read the message he wrote to us? This is so thoughtful. Thanks for all the great podcasts you do. Hope you like this handmade plaque. Same as the 404s the 404s just kidding I love the 404. Just the way I like to say mahalo. Mahalo baby I love it, love it. People are saying do we review Periscope Live comments, yeah when I see them, I totally look at them. All right the other thing that I wanted to do, that's awesome we're gonna hang it up in there and it's gonna be a fixture in our podcast studio. We also wanna wish you Mister Beecham a happy birthday today, today is the day. No actually it was the 26th. The 26th is the day! [LAUGH] The 26th is the day! Thanks man! Yeah I turned a big four. Four! I still feel like I'm 21 though. I still feel like I'm 21. That's great. I feel like I'm 16. [LAUGH] So, that's all- And we still act like it, we still act like it, too. Well, yeah, I know that for sure. So- [LAUGH] It gets me in trouble sometimes. [SOUND] All right, well, hey, happy birthday Beech. You're an amazing part of the show. I just wanted to shout you out because I don't think people understand how much you do behind the scenes for this podcast. All of our live streams, you're amazing man, so I got nothing but love for you, bro. Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. You are the man. All right. Everyone that's gonna do it. Remember, our phone line mailbox has now been opened up. Call us at 1-800-616-2638. Name, where you're from. we love. We gave that man love about the homepot, Amazon I feel because it's a great. Thoughtful call. We love hearing stuff like that. So keep it rolling Apple Byte nation. Thanks so much. Be safe and enjoy the weekend. And, I guess we'll see you all next week, yeah? Yeah, yeah. All right, Take care now. Peace. [MUSIC]

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