Speaker 1: On the Business of Tech this week. It's our last
Speaker 1: episode as we had into the summer season and the holidays.
Speaker 2: We wanted to look at some of the tech we've
Speaker 2: played with this year. Some of the stuff we love,
Speaker 2: some of the stuff we were bewildered by or perplexed by,
Speaker 2: and some of the stuff that was just a complete dud.
Speaker 1: This is the Business of Tech, powered by Two Degrees Business.
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin. It's been a
Speaker 2: sort of an interesting year for tech. I described it
Speaker 2: in the listener this week as a gap year. It's
Speaker 2: like all these great ideas we've had AI in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, there was lots of really cool stuff came
Speaker 2: out multimodal AI, chatbots and the like, but nothing that
Speaker 2: really impressed. And they seem to be working away behind
Speaker 2: the scenes with the hope that there will be some
Speaker 2: really impressive stuff next year. And that sort of went
Speaker 2: for some of the hardware stuff we saw as well.
Speaker 2: What's your sort of if you wanted to wrap it
Speaker 2: up in a bow, what would your takeaway be for
Speaker 2: where sort of tech went in twenty twenty four in
Speaker 2: terms of this sort of consumer tech space.
Speaker 1: I think we've reached a point in consumer tech where
Speaker 1: people were just kind of companies were just kind of
Speaker 1: iterating and finding their next little step forward. And with
Speaker 1: the launch of AI, I think they've seen it as
Speaker 1: a time when they can try and do something really
Speaker 1: new and reinnovate and whatever however you want to put it.
Speaker 1: So I think this year was kind of a year
Speaker 1: when these consumer tech companies are starting to try and
Speaker 1: find their feet again figure out what the next big
Speaker 1: step forward is working from this platform. Also, we know that,
Speaker 1: like people aren't buying as much new stuff, so people
Speaker 1: are holding onto their devices for longer. They're not necessarily
Speaker 1: splashing out on the latest or if they've only got
Speaker 1: you know, two or three generations ago. So that's really
Speaker 1: what it's been to me is companies trying to find
Speaker 1: something that will get everybody excited, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if they have to be honest.
Speaker 2: And we'll get to some of the sort of things
Speaker 2: that have been bubbling away coming out of R and
Speaker 2: D or prototypes or rumors we're hearing about what they're
Speaker 2: working on that could be sort of new new formats
Speaker 2: or game changes. But maybe let's start with just some
Speaker 2: of the gadgets that impressed us this year. Is there
Speaker 2: anything really that you reviewed or looked at or had
Speaker 2: the opportunity to test drive where you thought, wow, that's
Speaker 2: that's actually you know, it's expensive, but it's really worth
Speaker 2: the money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think weirdly, like, one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: that I reviewed was the Motorola Razor that I reviewed
Speaker 1: this year. I find it just surprisingly functional. And the
Speaker 1: Android phones can be very hit and mess in terms
Speaker 1: of the operating system layer, the kind of user interfaced
Speaker 1: layer that that companies will put over it can slow
Speaker 1: their phone down or it can be cumbersome, but Motorola
Speaker 1: is really clean. I really enjoyed it, and the fact
Speaker 1: that it's a flip phone with a nice big screen.
Speaker 1: It's functional. I very much have enjoyed that phone, which
Speaker 1: is an unusual thing for me to say, because I'm
Speaker 1: not a super Android person at all.
Speaker 2: Well I am, and I tried that phone and loved it,
Speaker 2: particularly that big display on the outside. It can easily
Speaker 2: fit in a pocket, and obviously a throwback to the
Speaker 2: iconic Razor from around I think two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: two thousand and six something like that was just a
Speaker 2: gangbuster phone in terms of sales. This is a bit
Speaker 2: of a slow burn. It's quite expensive as well, isn't.
Speaker 1: It one nine nine nine, so two thousand.
Speaker 2: It's pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: It is quite expensive. But if you're a person who
Speaker 1: travels a lot, who wants a nice compact phone that
Speaker 1: is functional, and if you a you know, sick of
Speaker 1: big phones, it's it's an awesome option. The other phone
Speaker 1: that I've been wielding this year is the iPhone sixteen
Speaker 1: Pro Max, which is kind of the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum when it comes to phones. It's an Apple phone.
Speaker 1: It's big, but I have also really enjoyed it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an iPhone. It's got the little camera button, which
Speaker 1: is useful to have, and the camera is pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: I haven't found the camera button to be revolutionary. I
Speaker 1: still don't really use it for zooming and stuff like
Speaker 1: that because I find it a little bit fiddly, the
Speaker 1: kind of touch press zooming. So I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say a huge amount about an iPhone at
Speaker 1: this point because they just haven't really done anything massively different.
Speaker 1: And I'm including Apple Intelligence and that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so obviously the update came out. I always say
Speaker 2: eighteen update just last Thursday, which allow Apple Intelligence features
Speaker 2: to be available. Have you had a chance to play with.
Speaker 1: Them a little bit? I have enjoyed the what do
Speaker 1: they call them, the gen motion, that's the name they
Speaker 1: gin moji with them, and it's a bit of fun,
Speaker 1: you know. I made one that kind of looks like
Speaker 1: my son holding his favorite stuff toy, and I sent
Speaker 1: you one, didn't I yeh, yeh pretty cool. It was
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
Speaker 2: But I'm probably more interested in the, you know, the
Speaker 2: productivity stuff like summarizing your emails in the mail app
Speaker 2: and all that. Is it any good at doing that?
Speaker 1: No? Not really. They revamped the whole mail app and
Speaker 1: they've put the thing on it where it sorts it
Speaker 1: into different you know categories, your primary, your sales, and promotion,
Speaker 1: and it's fine. Has some weird kind of backsteps in
Speaker 1: terms of user interface where you go into an email
Speaker 1: and then it brings up the whole thread and then
Speaker 1: you have to tap on the email again to actually
Speaker 1: load it. So they've added an extra tap in there
Speaker 1: to fully load an email. I'm like, why would you
Speaker 1: do that? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like a classic Apple update where it is all about usability,
Speaker 1: and streamlining and user interface and making it as accessible
Speaker 1: as possible. So yeah, I'm thinking I might even just
Speaker 1: exit the mail app unless the next update really comes
Speaker 1: out with something that makes it worth it.
Speaker 2: What about Supercharged Siri? Any improvement there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Siri can access chat GPT now, so it actually
Speaker 1: answers questions when you have questions. I found it okay,
Speaker 1: people have called it half baked. Probably still better than,
Speaker 1: for example, the co Pilot laptop. Yes when I tried that,
Speaker 1: better than Samsung's Ai, but still yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: just the technology. I think it's just the technology is
Speaker 1: just not there to do what everybody was hoping it
Speaker 1: would do, and big promises were made and unfortunately they
Speaker 1: haven't been delivered on.
Speaker 2: I got to say that the iPhone sixteen pro the
Speaker 2: short time that I've spent with it, I've been thinking
Speaker 2: of upgrading. I want to do a lot more video
Speaker 2: stuff next year. Sorely tempted by it, just because I think,
Speaker 2: you know that it is one of the best sort
Speaker 2: of camera phones around, particularly that Max one. You know,
Speaker 2: just the how feature rich that is that that I've
Speaker 2: my mate I watched him using that button to very
Speaker 2: good effect on a tripod, so he's a photography enthusiast
Speaker 2: and he was getting real granular control with it, so
Speaker 2: I was sort of all excited about that. And then
Speaker 2: I started reviewing the OPO find x eight Pro, which
Speaker 2: is the first upgrade since the fine x five, which
Speaker 2: is what I'm using at the moment, and that's dyeing
Speaker 2: that phone. But the fine x eight Pro is very
Speaker 2: much a camera phone, so four fifty megapixel cameras, a
Speaker 2: wide angle, an ultra wide, a telephoto, six times optical zoom.
Speaker 2: So I'm thinking, you know, wow, this is actually designed
Speaker 2: for photography. It's got some you know, mimicking the Apple one.
Speaker 2: I guess it's got a physical button for for photography
Speaker 2: as well. So if I want to stay in the
Speaker 2: Android world, that's looking like a pretty good option. But
Speaker 2: that's pretty expensive as well. That's a two thousand dollars phone,
Speaker 2: and I guess, you know, we're a three horse race
Speaker 2: in New Zealand when it comes to phones. It's Apple,
Speaker 2: It's Samsung with the IS twenty four ULTRAE and it's
Speaker 2: a very nice phone, and it's Opo at the moment
Speaker 2: as well. Huaiwei has sort of died and then you'd
Speaker 2: have some sort of cheap feature phones that are put
Speaker 2: out as well, so there's not a heck of a
Speaker 2: lot of choice and competition. Unfortunately, we don't have the
Speaker 2: Google Pixel for instance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always found that fascinating that Google's never bothered
Speaker 1: to properly launch the Pixel in New Zealand. It's not
Speaker 1: unusual for Google though, to be fair, although I have
Speaker 1: to say in terms of Google products that I have,
Speaker 1: like this year, they did release a new Chrome cast
Speaker 1: which was called it's not called the Chrome Cast anymore.
Speaker 1: It's called the Google TV Streamer four K and it's
Speaker 1: a little white box, quite nicely designed that sits on
Speaker 1: your console or entertainment unit. And I have really found
Speaker 1: that to be such a big step up from other
Speaker 1: streamer dongles, which can be very limited in their processing capabilities.
Speaker 1: But because this has a little bit more dedicated space,
Speaker 1: it actually is just really nice to use, and we
Speaker 1: use it now instead of the built in smart TV
Speaker 1: on our TV, just because it has that slightly better
Speaker 1: performance that makes it much smooth to use.
Speaker 2: And it's also got an Ethernet port on it, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and a great way to if you do have an
Speaker 2: aging TV or something with a crappy user interface, a
Speaker 2: great way to upgrade that experience. I was using for
Speaker 2: a while that the fire Stick from Amazon to do
Speaker 2: that on an old TV. And this year we went
Speaker 2: to the launch of this, which was the new Panasonic
Speaker 2: only TV's beautiful TVs. But the big differentiator this time
Speaker 2: is they're actually based on the fire operating system. So
Speaker 2: they've done a deal with Amazon to build that operating
Speaker 2: system into their high end O lead TV's quite a
Speaker 2: bold move to sort of tie your fortunes to this
Speaker 2: massive e commerce and digital assistant giant, but it sort
Speaker 2: of works. Did you have a decent play with it?
Speaker 1: I didn't really get a chance to play with it
Speaker 1: properly because it was, you know, it was a busy
Speaker 1: event and they kind of did a little demo and
Speaker 1: it looked okay, But I didn't get the I didn't
Speaker 1: get a fire stick or anything like that, so I
Speaker 1: haven't had a go.
Speaker 2: But you rate it, well, yeah, I've had it for
Speaker 2: a few weeks, been using it at home here And
Speaker 2: the good thing about these sort of new ole heads,
Speaker 2: I mean, these are expensive TVs. This is a three
Speaker 2: and a half thousand dollars TV. But it's got some
Speaker 2: technic speakers built into it, like to a degree they've
Speaker 2: never done before. So the audio is particularly good. But
Speaker 2: it's got a lot of microphones in there, so you
Speaker 2: can be across the road and to trigger Alexa to
Speaker 2: turn on the TV, to control your smart devices, to
Speaker 2: pull up my ring camera, who's at the front door.
Speaker 2: All of that was done before on for instance, Samsung TVs,
Speaker 2: but it was just really clunky, and the voice recognition
Speaker 2: was not particularly good. But because they've optimized this for Alexa,
Speaker 2: it's actually really effective. So I like that. One thing
Speaker 2: I don't like about it is they you know, they're
Speaker 2: pushing you. For instance, you have to log in with
Speaker 2: an Amazon account, which annoys me because when my sister
Speaker 2: comes here, she wants to log in on her Prime
Speaker 2: account and she can't because you have to completely log
Speaker 2: out of the whole TV and log in as her.
Speaker 2: So that's slightly annoying. It just is another thing about
Speaker 2: the way Amazon just tries to control the whole experience.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, Google's a little bit more flexible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I quite like the more disparate nature of
Speaker 1: that stuff, because it doesn't mean that you can have
Speaker 1: the whole family kind of doing what they want to do,
Speaker 1: and they need to do Google TV with the different
Speaker 1: Google accounts that you can log in and just like
Speaker 1: on the fly switch between them. So if I want
Speaker 1: to watch my YouTube, then you know, then I can
Speaker 1: log into my just quickly change over to my account
Speaker 1: and then I don't have Miss Rachel or whatever it
Speaker 1: is clogging up the works, which.
Speaker 2: Not much happening. Really incremental gains in TV. I think
Speaker 2: that probably the flagship TV was the Samsung IS ninety
Speaker 2: five D. That's another oh lad, very expensive four and
Speaker 2: a half thousand for the fifty five inch, but that's
Speaker 2: a stunning, stunning TV. Samsung's embrace of oliad has really worked.
Speaker 1: TV is now like three years old, and because it's
Speaker 1: o lad, it still feels really new, like there's no issues.
Speaker 1: It's just really looks beautiful to this day. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: the other lead technology really is the is kind of
Speaker 1: set the standard and I think will remain for a
Speaker 1: long time. I can't see it's going to anywhere else
Speaker 1: really until we get to the point where it's like
Speaker 1: holographic or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another luxurious sort of gadget. I really enjoyed this year.
Speaker 2: I've just sending it back. Unfortunately, the Dyson on track
Speaker 2: headphones dyceon you think vacuum cleaners and fans and that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff. So they a few years ago they
Speaker 2: went into headphones quite controversially, was sort of just during
Speaker 2: the COVID years. They came up with a pair of
Speaker 2: headphones which also had a mask built into it for
Speaker 2: filtering out horrible diseases and pathogens and the like, and
Speaker 2: it was lambasted heavily. I think people in New York
Speaker 2: and places like that. The wealthy commuters sort of liked it,
Speaker 2: but really didn't take off. They've ditched that aspect off
Speaker 2: it with the on track headphones and they're just a supercharged,
Speaker 2: high end pair of headphones to compete sort of with
Speaker 2: the what's Apple's sort of headphones called the Max or something, yeah,
Speaker 2: which are beautiful and bows and they're high end ones.
Speaker 2: But these are eight hundred dollars pair of headphones. But
Speaker 2: the noise canceling. I went to the US on the plane,
Speaker 2: I really struggle to sleep on a plane. I put
Speaker 2: these things on, and not only was the active noise
Speaker 2: canceling just incredible, it just sort of deadened everything, but
Speaker 2: they're so big the earphone pads that you can basically
Speaker 2: rest against the wall with these things and have have
Speaker 2: sort of a pillow effect. So oversized, very hipster design,
Speaker 2: so you know, flashy color. It is not really my
Speaker 2: sort of design asthetic, but man, if you want high
Speaker 2: quality audio, that that's got to be up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they look interesting. I don't know if they are
Speaker 1: my dial, but yeah, that cushion does look very luxurious.
Speaker 1: Look that I mean. I'm I'm still using my Sony XM.
Speaker 2: Fives and they're great.
Speaker 1: They're awesome headphone and I love them to death. So
Speaker 1: again when I'm on a plane as well, check them on.
Speaker 1: Checked the noise canceling on with nothing behind it, and
Speaker 1: it's super helpful for trying to get to sleep. Also,
Speaker 1: the the other headphones that I found really made well.
Speaker 1: Two headphones I've found amazing this year which are true
Speaker 1: wireless in ear headphones, and the first one were the
Speaker 1: the Technics headphones, and I believe you would have a
Speaker 1: pair of those as well. Yeah, they're great, the A
Speaker 1: Z eighties and really surprisingly good for the price, Like
Speaker 1: they're the under four hundred dollars under three fifty I think,
Speaker 1: and I have just I used them for quite a
Speaker 1: while and just found them extraordinarily good. But maybe one
Speaker 1: of my favorite pairs of true wireless headphones i've tried.
Speaker 2: They're great, even the AD forties. I don't like to spend,
Speaker 2: you know, three or four hundred dollars on a pier because,
Speaker 2: like I lost one when I was out in my
Speaker 2: paddleboard a couple of months ago and I went to
Speaker 2: shuffle through my songs and one of my ear bloods
Speaker 2: fell out into the drink. So they're a bit sort
Speaker 2: of unfortunately, a bit disposable for me. So so those
Speaker 2: ones are the lower end ones, surprisingly good entry level
Speaker 2: for about one hundred and forty dollars, and that's typically
Speaker 2: what I like to pay for whiless earbuds because they
Speaker 2: end up disappearing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, understandable. Yeah. I also have been reviewing the new
Speaker 1: Apple AirPods, not the pro but the standard ones with
Speaker 1: active noise canceling, and I was really unsure because without
Speaker 1: those silicon tips, how are they going to do proper
Speaker 1: active noise canceling. But yeah, really impressed by those. And
Speaker 1: don't tell Apple, but I did accidentally put them all
Speaker 1: through the wash and they were absolutely fine. So I
Speaker 1: survived there. They survived that. I put the whole container
Speaker 1: with the two air pods in it, right through the
Speaker 1: whole wash cycle, and I just chucked them in the
Speaker 1: hot water cupboard for a day and they were fine.
Speaker 2: That's incredible because they're not it's not a waterproof container,
Speaker 2: so that was sloshing around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it was. It was definitely pretty wet in that.
Speaker 2: Wow. Oh, that's good endorsement. Looking a bit now at
Speaker 2: some of the services that we may have tried during
Speaker 2: the year. One I wanted to call out Erlo, which
Speaker 2: is a quite a cheap e SIM service if you're
Speaker 2: going abroad, and I did it a couple of times
Speaker 2: this year rather than roaming is obviously super expensive, and
Speaker 2: there are lots of options for international e sims to
Speaker 2: add a second SIM to your to your phone if
Speaker 2: you have capability on your phone, which most modern phones
Speaker 2: do have. And I've always found it a bit clunky
Speaker 2: some of the other providers, but this one is great.
Speaker 2: You just download the app. The plans start really reasonable,
Speaker 2: about ten dollars for a week's coverage a couple of
Speaker 2: gig and sixty minutes of calling and sixty texts or something.
Speaker 1: Like that.
Speaker 2: But what I really liked about it it just automates
Speaker 2: the whole process of activating the eSIMs. So I got
Speaker 2: to lax, got on the Wi Fi, went into the
Speaker 2: Rallo app, and it just did the whole thing. I
Speaker 2: didn't have to mess around, which is a different experience
Speaker 2: to what I've had before. And you know, just one
Speaker 2: of several now that are doing this the whole I
Speaker 2: guess the virtual network operator thing has taken off on
Speaker 2: an international basis, So if you are going abroad, really
Speaker 2: look at alternatives to your roaming plan, which are typically
Speaker 2: quite expensive if you go for beyond a week or two.
Speaker 2: And I found I was in the States for a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks earlier this year, and that was just
Speaker 2: perfect for me. It costs about thirty bucks and was
Speaker 2: everything I needed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's super interesting. I haven't traveled in a while,
Speaker 1: so that's a really great suggestion because it can get
Speaker 1: pretty expensive pretty quickly if you're paying for your paying
Speaker 1: for your roaming. My mum did travel this year and
Speaker 1: she was trying to figure out how she was going
Speaker 1: to spend money while she was over in the States,
Speaker 1: and she was talking about getting a tourist card through
Speaker 1: a New Zealand. I can't remember what they're called now,
Speaker 1: but and it was kind of thinking about exchange rates
Speaker 1: and what she was going to do, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: go check out the service called wise and she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was great. It was awesome. It was so easy
Speaker 1: to use. So I think the rise of FinTechs as well,
Speaker 1: in terms of being able to spend internationally with massively
Speaker 1: reduced costs in terms of currency conversion, things like Wiser
Speaker 1: or or so really worth checking out.
Speaker 2: We've talked in previous episodes about our experience with blue
Speaker 2: Sky in terms of social media. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: a free service. It's not like X where to get
Speaker 2: longer character limits and stuff like that you have to
Speaker 2: pay a monthly fee. So blue Sky is set up
Speaker 2: as on a sort of not for profit basis at
Speaker 2: the moment anyway, and is really becoming the alternative for
Speaker 2: people who are a bit disillusioned with X and really
Speaker 2: gaining some traction. I'm really starting to use it on
Speaker 2: a daily basis, which I haven't done with Threads or
Speaker 2: mastered on or anything else. So there's just enough momentum building.
Speaker 2: Now do you think that's going to carry on into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I don't know if it's going
Speaker 1: to the acceleration will continue. I think that will slow
Speaker 1: down and growth will continue, but at a slower rate.
Speaker 1: But I love it. I love being on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: It's nice. You can be quite specific about who you are, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it really does just let you do what
Speaker 1: you kind of want to do. In terms of following,
Speaker 1: you can just get the feed from the people you're following.
Speaker 1: You can add a little bit of extra with the
Speaker 1: Discover feature, and it brings in some other stuff that
Speaker 1: thinks you know everybody might like, and then you have
Speaker 1: your feeds for science or tech or I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming there are ones for cat shows or whatever.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I really rate the list guy. I will
Speaker 1: keep using it throughout the next year. I'd imagine probably
Speaker 1: increase my use of it. A pretty slack person in
Speaker 1: terms of actually posting, but I do occasionally throw something
Speaker 1: up there that I, you know, a bit of an
Speaker 1: opinion or a reference to a work that I've done
Speaker 1: or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we've both been testing various AI services this year,
Speaker 2: so my go to one has become Perplexity. It's expensive
Speaker 2: for Perplexity Pro is twenty dollars US per month, which
Speaker 2: is the same as chat gpt Pro, but I absolutely
Speaker 2: love it. Sort of revolutionized how I do research. I've
Speaker 2: also been using Gemini because I use Google Workspace for
Speaker 2: all my productivity and email, so Perplexity doesn't plug into
Speaker 2: that in a in a compelling way, whereas Gemini is
Speaker 2: native to Google Drive and Gmail. Really loving Gemini, but
Speaker 2: if I'm going to sacrifice one, because that's also quite expensive,
Speaker 2: I'll stick with Perplexity.
Speaker 1: I think I haven't bit the bullet and paid for
Speaker 1: any services this year, so I've been using my work
Speaker 1: provided service, which is co Pilot. Oh yeah, it's most
Speaker 1: mediocre experience imaginable. Occasionally I'll dip into chat GPTs free
Speaker 1: service when it's nonsensitive stuff. But my favorite is Notebook LM,
Speaker 1: Google's Notebook LM. I just adore the service. It's free
Speaker 1: that doesn't use the stuff that you upload for training,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like an on the fly retrieval
Speaker 1: AUGANI to degenerate of ai, a rag ai as they
Speaker 1: call it. You can chuck in a bunch of documents
Speaker 1: into into a kind of notebook. They call it and
Speaker 1: then you can interrogate those documents through chat. You can
Speaker 1: ask questions, you can get it to make suggestions, and
Speaker 1: then you can, of course, if you really want, to
Speaker 1: make a little podcast about it with AI hosts. But
Speaker 1: that really is a gimmick, and I think it was
Speaker 1: I think it was actually I think it actually detracted
Speaker 1: from the tool the hype around the podcast, because when
Speaker 1: I mentioned it, people are like, oh, that's the podcast thing, right,
Speaker 1: I'm like, but it's so much more.
Speaker 2: It's pretty incredible though. I've feared a quite a complex
Speaker 2: scientific paper into notebook earlim and it and it generated
Speaker 2: the cliched sort of podcast with the West Coast and
Speaker 2: you know, soft American eccience and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: But it was incredible just how how accurately it summarized
Speaker 2: this really complex piece of research. So so it's obviously
Speaker 2: doing that in document form as well. It's coming up
Speaker 2: with context on things. My big concern why I don't
Speaker 2: use it so much as I'm working with a lot
Speaker 2: of sensitive documents. I really don't want them escaping anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So as long as they are truly protecting your privacy,
Speaker 2: not holding onto those and scanning them because obviously the
Speaker 2: big nightmare is that stuff appearing somewhere else because it's
Speaker 2: ended up in their model. They say specifically, they're not
Speaker 2: using your data to train their model. Are they retaining
Speaker 2: the data? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. I'm taken them at their
Speaker 1: word and saying that they don't. And I think that
Speaker 1: it makes sense because at the moment where we are
Speaker 1: with large language models, they the ingesting of data has
Speaker 1: reached a kind of saturation point. People are talking about
Speaker 1: it and saying more data isn't diminishing returns at this point,
Speaker 1: so they're probably not desperate for extra things to put
Speaker 1: in there. So I kind of take them at their
Speaker 1: word that they're not ingesting it and using it in
Speaker 1: whole holding it. But yeah, like to your point, I
Speaker 1: put a financial report in there, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: a piece of information that I was looking for, so
Speaker 1: I asked, I put it in any way, and I
Speaker 1: asked notebook LM. I said, what is the you know,
Speaker 1: how much are they spending on wages and salary for employees?
Speaker 1: And they went, oh, it's this much. It comes under
Speaker 1: this particular heading, And I was like, I had no
Speaker 1: idea that the term short term business expenses actually encompassed
Speaker 1: employee salary in wages, and so it was able to
Speaker 1: tell me that, and I just went and checked it
Speaker 1: to make sure that that was accurate, and it was,
Speaker 1: and so I was able to use that in my reporting.
Speaker 1: But easily one of my favorite generative AI tools this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another one I've just signed up for, so I've
Speaker 2: only just started using it as as open Ayes Sora
Speaker 2: video generation tool. So this has been hyped quite a lot.
Speaker 2: If you want some stock sort of video as a
Speaker 2: pre roll into some of your own generative video, it
Speaker 2: could be quite useful, but still got a long way
Speaker 2: to go to actually be useful as a self contained
Speaker 2: sort of short film where you have three or four
Speaker 2: minutes and a narrative. It will put that together for you,
Speaker 2: but there's going to be flaws in ther glitchy things
Speaker 2: still which sort of take you out of the experience.
Speaker 1: In the looking ahead section. I guess Google has also
Speaker 1: announced their own Saura competitor, VO two. It's like an
Speaker 1: updated version of that that they are claiming is even better,
Speaker 1: So that will be interesting when they come out. On
Speaker 1: AI video In general, there was also that fully AI
Speaker 1: generated advert for Brentworth wool carpets this year. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw that one.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was quite cool. I quite rated it. I
Speaker 1: think it worked because it was kind of abstract and
Speaker 1: it was, you know, advertised as being a generative AI advert,
Speaker 1: so we'll link to that. It's interesting to watch. There
Speaker 1: have been so many cases of bad uses of generative
Speaker 1: AI for marketing and these kinds of things, but I
Speaker 1: think what it does show is that we are entering
Speaker 1: a world where generatively I can be used in a
Speaker 1: positive way for marketing. In terms of job losses and
Speaker 1: what that's actually going to mean for the people who
Speaker 1: work in that area, I don't know, and it does
Speaker 1: make me feel a little uncomfortable. But the reality is
Speaker 1: is that marketing and you know, is a value driven
Speaker 1: space and people are always looking to do things cheaper
Speaker 1: and faster, and if that's what it offers, then that's
Speaker 1: what it offers. And there is a new Zealand company
Speaker 1: as well, Matter Studio that is generating backgrounds that you
Speaker 1: can put your product onto. So yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely coming for that industry in terms of advertising.
Speaker 1: And marketing.
Speaker 2: Just before we jump ahead to look at twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five and some of the tech that we expect to
Speaker 2: emerge here. I just wanted to call out a few
Speaker 2: other things. The rides I did in San Francisco were incredible,
Speaker 2: incredible experience, and I think if and when that takes
Speaker 2: off and other cities around the world, it will take
Speaker 2: a long time, I think, to come to New Zealand,
Speaker 2: but that's going to be a game changer. I also
Speaker 2: took a Tesla Model three. Friends has one of those.
Speaker 2: I took that around to Hawk's Bay recently and used
Speaker 2: this sort of the self driving assisted sort of thing,
Speaker 2: which I found incredible as well. I actually got in
Speaker 2: trouble because I took my hands off the steering wheel
Speaker 2: because I was expecting it to do the driving for me.
Speaker 2: But that turned out to be one strike against the driver.
Speaker 2: You get three strikes before they turn that feature off.
Speaker 2: So I'm sorry from my friend for doing that. But
Speaker 2: I am looking at getting an EV at some point
Speaker 2: in the next couple of years, and I've been really
Speaker 2: impressed with the Tesla Model three. The BYD three was
Speaker 2: another one, but plastically sort of interior not really my thing.
Speaker 2: But man, a price of evs this year. You know,
Speaker 2: you're getting the Model three is still quite expensive, but
Speaker 2: you're getting the Atto. You're getting the Pulstar two now
Speaker 2: for fifty thousand dollars with a when you take in
Speaker 2: the five thousand dollars cash rebate you get on it.
Speaker 2: So they're obviously struggling to EV makers. So there's actually
Speaker 2: some pretty good deals out there. What you have to
Speaker 2: consider now is obviously road user charges and acc levees
Speaker 2: are going to increase for EV owners as well. So
Speaker 2: a lot of my friends who own them already are
Speaker 2: feeling a little bit miffed that they were incentivized to
Speaker 2: get into this and they're still saving money compared to
Speaker 2: a petrol engine, but maybe not as much as they expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, we've got a plug in hybrid, but it's
Speaker 1: an older one. It's like a twenty sixteen, and so
Speaker 1: the battery on it isn't great, so we don't get
Speaker 1: a lot of K's pure battery. So it really does
Speaker 1: most of the time rate more like a non plug
Speaker 1: in hybrid, like a regular hybrid, but we still have
Speaker 1: to pay the bloody road user charges on that. I
Speaker 1: think they haven't really done a great job, because there
Speaker 1: are going to be plugging hybrids where you'll get fifty
Speaker 1: to one hundred k's on ev ours is more like twenty,
Speaker 1: So it feels a little bit unfair, but hey, I
Speaker 1: guess you know, eventually we are going to be moving
Speaker 1: into that space where every car has a flat road
Speaker 1: user charge anyway rather than petrol taxes. So once we
Speaker 1: get there, really it's not going to make much difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Starlink, I was very impressed. I went to the
Speaker 2: Cook Islands, there was a big mobile outage there and
Speaker 2: they just happened that day to be installing Stylink in
Speaker 2: the airbnb we were out. I wasn't just incredibly impressed
Speaker 2: at how easy it was for them to set that up.
Speaker 2: It was literally a fifteen minute job, and then I
Speaker 2: was online fast transfer speeds. So that is an absolute
Speaker 2: game changer, and I think that's reflected in just the
Speaker 2: uptake at least thirty seven thousand, probably more like forty
Speaker 2: thousand connections in New Zealand. Now they're generating something like
Speaker 2: seventy out eighty million dollars in revenue in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: So in the space of a couple of years they've
Speaker 2: just come from out of nowhere to be a major
Speaker 2: telecommunications provider. They've just launched Stylink Mini, so the main
Speaker 2: Stylink terminal they keep heavily discounting it. That's three hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety nine dollars, and then you pay seventy nine
Speaker 2: dollars a month for residential light. They've re badged that recently.
Speaker 2: It used to be called a deprioritized plan and one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty nine for prioritize, so obviously that branding
Speaker 2: was not ideal, so they've rebranded it. But Stylin Mini
Speaker 2: is actually more expensive terminal. It's six hundred ninety nine,
Speaker 2: very compact, you can put it in a backpack. But
Speaker 2: for people in rural areas, people who have flaky coverage
Speaker 2: and can afford it, especially if you can afford to
Speaker 2: pay one hundred and fifty nine dollars a month if
Speaker 2: you have a small business. Wow, what a great service.
Speaker 1: Let's get into some of the kind of weird and
Speaker 1: wacky stuff that we maybe didn't try, but we have
Speaker 1: seen around and think is worth chatting about. You have
Speaker 1: here one that really peaked my interest, which was the
Speaker 1: thoroughface mass. So can you give a little bit of
Speaker 1: a background on why that's on our list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll put an image of this on the website
Speaker 2: because it is quite bizarre. FDA cleared. Apparently, it's an
Speaker 2: LED face mask that delivers red and red plus for
Speaker 2: red and blue light onto your skin, as well as
Speaker 2: so called tension relieving vibration therapy, so vibrates your skin
Speaker 2: to give you healthier looking skin with a visible reduction
Speaker 2: and fine lines and dark spots and as little as
Speaker 2: eight weeks.
Speaker 1: Fair a face. Get in touch. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: use that as your voiceover for your ads, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we can arrange a deal.
Speaker 2: Seven hundred bucks Australia. I have seen a few skincare
Speaker 2: sort of stores and beauty treatment places are selling it here,
Speaker 2: so it's probably more like eight hundred bucks. Look, I've
Speaker 2: got no idea of the efficacy of this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: It looks ridiculous. It probably feels ridiculous to weird as well,
Speaker 2: particularly if this thing is vibrating on your face. But look,
Speaker 2: they're selling a truckload of them in the US by
Speaker 2: the looks of things.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I had a good look because I was
Speaker 1: curious as to whether it would work, and from trying
Speaker 1: to unearth these clinical Some of these clinical studies, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are small scale. So I looked at
Speaker 1: some meta studies and they do appear to have some
Speaker 1: evidence of efficacy when using LED lights. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you need an eight hundred dollars mask to deliver
Speaker 1: LED lights to your face. I'm sure they're probably more
Speaker 1: cost effective ways of doing it. But look, if you
Speaker 1: want to have the latest and greatest, then that seems
Speaker 1: like a good option.
Speaker 2: A few sort of big fails I think this year. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the Rabbit R one and the Humane AI pin needs
Speaker 2: sort of AI devices, so trying to build a piece
Speaker 2: of hardware with an AI assistant built into it really
Speaker 2: fell flat. The Apple Vision Pro I had to play
Speaker 2: with it, loved it. I think it's a stunning device,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a device with nowhere to go at
Speaker 2: the moment. Really, they've stopped production off the the Vision
Speaker 2: Pro while they figure out how to create a cheaper model.
Speaker 2: And the co Pilot Plus PCs were probably the most
Speaker 2: overhyped and underperforming sort of segments off the year. We
Speaker 2: looked at a Microsoft Surface Book, which was an okay device,
Speaker 2: but you know, based on arm processes a Snapdragon processes.
Speaker 2: This is a big move by Microsoft to partner up
Speaker 2: with arm. It's still only like one percent of the market,
Speaker 2: so it really hasn't taken off this year. And just
Speaker 2: the underwhelming performance of Copilot as well, using a supercharge
Speaker 2: version of paint to create landscapes and you know, having
Speaker 2: Copilot in the background there. But you know you have
Speaker 2: to pay for all the good stuff to summarize your
Speaker 2: email and create PowerPoint slides and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So not a great start.
Speaker 1: Blah blah.
Speaker 2: I say, yeah, So, just wrapping up, Ben, let's gaze
Speaker 2: forward to twenty twenty five. I mean, as I said,
Speaker 2: I think this is a bit of a gap year.
Speaker 2: Do you expect to see any major advances in any
Speaker 2: particular categories off tech in twenty twenty five? If so,
Speaker 2: which ones are you sort of picking to be quite spectacular? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we'll see the massive leap forward
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five. It's possible, but I do think
Speaker 1: and you put it here, but smart glasses, I don't
Speaker 1: know whether they're going to be something that people will
Speaker 1: generally wear all the time, but I think they might
Speaker 1: start to find their niches for certain uses a lot
Speaker 1: more so the soul sol e reader glasses, which some
Speaker 1: people seem to really like. So you put glasses on
Speaker 1: and you've got your book there and you read that way.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I might say that we might finally see
Speaker 1: some strong consumer products in the glasses market coming out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got Meta unveiled Oriyan that will be a
Speaker 2: few years away, but that is their big play for
Speaker 2: smart glasses. They've already got the ray bands out there
Speaker 2: at the moment, which aren't available here, but they have
Speaker 2: AI functionality built into them, so they will progress that.
Speaker 2: Google unveiled Android XR, it's platform for smart glasses, just
Speaker 2: last week. Soviously Google Glass was a failure for Google,
Speaker 2: but they've never given up on that idea, and so
Speaker 2: I'm pretty excited about that as someone who lives in
Speaker 2: the Google world. To be able to have Google Maps
Speaker 2: come up in the bottom of the lens of your
Speaker 2: glass showing you where to go, to be able to
Speaker 2: recognize buildings and objects and give you information about them
Speaker 2: without having to take out your phone and look at it.
Speaker 2: Love the idea of that. I think that's the future
Speaker 2: of format that's going to reduce our alliance on that
Speaker 2: rectangle in our pocket all the time, so love that.
Speaker 2: The other category, I think we will see a lot
Speaker 2: of progress. We probably probably won't see them walking around yet,
Speaker 2: but as humanoid robots, we've seen a lot of progress
Speaker 2: with the Atlas robot, for instance, from Boston Robotics that
Speaker 2: moved from sort of a hydraulic design to fully electric design,
Speaker 2: so that's made it a lot more effective. This stuff
Speaker 2: will be useful both in the industrial and business context,
Speaker 2: but also in the aged care industry and in hospitality
Speaker 2: in retael and hopefully one day as a humanoid companion
Speaker 2: for all of us.
Speaker 1: I don't know about hopefully. Maybe I don't know why
Speaker 1: we need it to be humanoid. I'm still confused on
Speaker 1: that point. But you know, maybe I'm a luddite when
Speaker 1: it comes to these particular things. I still push back
Speaker 1: a little bit on the idea that we need something humanoid,
Speaker 1: but hey, I could be wrong. One of our listeners
Speaker 1: Michael Spicer. He pointed to a company called proto Hologram,
Speaker 1: which can produce these boxes that you can show a
Speaker 1: holographic three D representation so it looks like it's standing
Speaker 1: in your space of a person or an object and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a neat thing proto hologram. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to call that out. I think it's interesting and
Speaker 1: could potentially progress in the coming years to change the
Speaker 1: way that we communicate. Probably not next year, but maybe
Speaker 1: down the line. You know, rather than just having FaceTime,
Speaker 1: we could actually hologram in to visit people in hospital
Speaker 1: or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Well, we've seen a few high profile examples of that,
Speaker 2: I think when one New Zealand Jason Parris did a
Speaker 2: holographic sort of thing on stage. So we've seen it
Speaker 2: sort of very high end holograph stuff that needs a
Speaker 2: team of engineers to make sure it all works. But
Speaker 2: as you say, when it is a replacement for FaceTime
Speaker 2: where you can literally put your phone down and create
Speaker 2: a holograph, that's very powerful and it's very difficult to do,
Speaker 2: so it's going to take a while, but it is possible,
Speaker 2: technically possible. I've seen some great holographic stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely one to watch, and yeah, I think Apple
Speaker 1: going foldable seems to be something that may happen next year.
Speaker 1: Foldable technology, obviously, it's come a long way, is pretty smooth. Now,
Speaker 1: Like we mentioned, the Motorola razer. But Apple might finally
Speaker 1: be bowing to pressure and delivering us a foldable starting
Speaker 1: with the iPad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the rumors are just in the last couple of
Speaker 2: weeks a twenty inch iPad foldable iPad. And the thing
Speaker 2: that Apple really don't like about foldables is the crease.
Speaker 2: They want a flawless They're moving to olead screens, so
Speaker 2: they want to flawless o lead experience beautiful display, which
Speaker 2: the iPad is well known for. So they're working on
Speaker 2: a way to completely eliminate the crease. And they think
Speaker 2: they're on the right track. So whether we see an
Speaker 2: iPad debut first or a foldable iPhone effectively a flip
Speaker 2: phone for the iPhone, they've moved into the formal R
Speaker 2: and D stage and product development off that. So they've
Speaker 2: got prototypes, but now they're moving closer towards something that
Speaker 2: they will produce as a mass market device.
Speaker 1: And I guess the big thing that we can expect
Speaker 1: if the rumors are true is agentic A Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's again overhyped and a bit underwhelming. At
Speaker 2: the moment, they're out there, the agents are out there.
Speaker 2: You can as a salesforce agent you can go in
Speaker 2: and create one of these things to I guess, automate
Speaker 2: a task. But you know when it gets really useful
Speaker 2: is when we can set up agents ourselves in our lives.
Speaker 2: It's not just when you're interacting with a big company
Speaker 2: that will automate things on your behalf. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I want you to respond to my emails and put
Speaker 2: stuff in my calendar and organize my documents in this
Speaker 2: way and do it all autonomously, and I will keep
Speaker 2: check and balances and keep oversight off it. That's what
Speaker 2: I really want. And we're still some way away from that,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think we will remain so for several years.
Speaker 1: I think that the promises of it coming in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five may be greatly exaggerated personally from what I'm seeing.
Speaker 2: I just.
Speaker 1: I just think that we've got a lot of excited
Speaker 1: companies who want to make their shareholders feel good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's twenty twenty four's Gadgets and Review. Did we
Speaker 1: miss any Let us know what was something super exciting
Speaker 1: that you thought that you played with or saw this
Speaker 1: year that you think we should have mentioned, And what's
Speaker 1: the thing that you're most looking forward to next year.
Speaker 2: Get in touch with us. We've got a LinkedIn page
Speaker 2: the Business of Tech podcast. We'd love you to follow
Speaker 2: that and a great way to keep up to date
Speaker 2: with all of our updates. But you can find Being
Speaker 2: and Myself on LinkedIn. We're also still clinging on on
Speaker 2: x Sick for Yourself Blue Sky as well, so increasing
Speaker 2: you'll find this on blue Sky and LinkedIn. But you
Speaker 2: know that was episode eighty one of the Business of Tech.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear your feedback from what you'd like
Speaker 2: to hear more off next year as season three off
Speaker 2: The Business of Tech, and we will be featuring some
Speaker 2: of the top thinkers and leaders in technology once again
Speaker 2: from New Zealand and around the world.
Speaker 1: Who do you want us to speak to? Think? Beg
Speaker 1: Think you know, if you could hear us speak to
Speaker 1: anybody in the world, let us know who that would be.
Speaker 1: No holds, but we're really looking forward to next year.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sticking with us throughout this
Speaker 1: year and we hope that this has been a nice
Speaker 1: bit of light relief at the end of a long
Speaker 1: year for you.
Speaker 2: It has been a tough year, a lot of people
Speaker 2: doing it very tough a lot of people in business struggling,
Speaker 2: so hopefully take a decent break, recharge, reset, have a
Speaker 2: great Christmas and New Year, and we'll see you in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: So you then