Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland, and we are now
Speaker 1: going to do my second favorite episode of any given year,
Speaker 1: the follow up from the previous year's predictions. As many
Speaker 1: of my long time listeners know, like many other tech podcasts,
Speaker 1: I take it upon myself to usually grab a hapless
Speaker 1: guest to join me in the studio and make predictions
Speaker 1: about what will happen over the following twelve months. That
Speaker 1: is my quote unquote favorite episode of the year, and
Speaker 1: my second favorite is when we revisited a year later
Speaker 1: and see how he did. So. Last year I had
Speaker 1: I as actar joined me on the show, and this
Speaker 1: year for the results, I have I as actar on
Speaker 1: one of the show. Hey, heyes, how are you. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping I'm less hapless than last year. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I think we both got happed a couple of times
Speaker 1: throughout that year, so we'll handle it. We were not
Speaker 1: not quite too happy, but we're working toward it. Right.
Speaker 1: That's some good feedbacks. Almost haptic, Yes, it is almost haptic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can really sense it. So what we're you gonna
Speaker 1: do today is we're gonna go through the predictions we
Speaker 1: made last year. We've both gone back and listened to
Speaker 1: that episode, written down some notes, kind of evaluated how
Speaker 1: far or close we were when you know, when reality unfolded.
Speaker 1: Did we get it right, were we wrong? Somewhere in between,
Speaker 1: and it kind of spans the whole spectrum. So one
Speaker 1: of the things I said at the very beginning of
Speaker 1: last year's episode was that I was determined to make
Speaker 1: bolder predictions because I had discovered that it didn't matter
Speaker 1: if I made more modest predictions. My accuracy was still
Speaker 1: pretty awful. So if you're gonna make awful predictions, at
Speaker 1: least make big awful predictions right that no one's impressed
Speaker 1: if you make a modest prediction and that's wrong, it's
Speaker 1: just that's that's kind of boring. So the first one
Speaker 1: I made was that in twenty sixteen, the year that
Speaker 1: is now coming to a close, Microsoft would buy Yahoo's
Speaker 1: core business. And I, as you, actually had a slightly
Speaker 1: different take on it. You thought that perhaps there'd be
Speaker 1: some wireless carrier, or maybe um Apple or possibly Facebook
Speaker 1: buying Yah whose core business. As it turns out the
Speaker 1: wireless carrier was the best of the predictions because, as
Speaker 1: we know, Microsoft didn't buy all whose core business, nor
Speaker 1: Apple nor Facebook. Instead, it was Verizon only four point
Speaker 1: eight three billion dollars on the deal. Now, I know
Speaker 1: that the right after the news of that can that
Speaker 1: news of the Yahoo hack that I don't know how
Speaker 1: many was like half a billion people or accounts were compromised,
Speaker 1: something crazy, you like that. Yeah, Verizon is kind of
Speaker 1: cautiously going forward. I've read recently that the head of
Speaker 1: a O L. Sorry sorry, well YEAHOO was concerned that
Speaker 1: this will go cautiously optimistically. Let's use as many adverbs
Speaker 1: as we possibly can. Now, Verizon did acquire A O
Speaker 1: L in twenty fIF so Verizon has been kind of
Speaker 1: on a tear recently. UM and a lot of people
Speaker 1: are kind of curious to see what happens with whose
Speaker 1: core business going on in the future. And I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure at this point I'm gonna have to do a
Speaker 1: full episode about Verizon. UM. And then we came to
Speaker 1: I ass first prediction, Oh yeah, that three D printers
Speaker 1: would go much more mainstream, and the idea was there's
Speaker 1: a lot more three D scanning technology there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of the phones out there now that have like
Speaker 1: three D scanning. But Jonathan, you disagree with me on
Speaker 1: three D printing going mainstream, and not because the de potential,
Speaker 1: because the technology just wasn't ready yet, right, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just was. It was still at level where unless you
Speaker 1: have a lot of patients and uh you don't mind
Speaker 1: babysitting the technology for quite some time, you're not likely
Speaker 1: to have very, um, very satisfying results. It's it's very
Speaker 1: easy to create a bad three D print job, right,
Speaker 1: So take take like the most finicky printer you've ever
Speaker 1: had any experience with, and then imagine that it has
Speaker 1: to print in three dimensions, not just in two, and
Speaker 1: you realize, yeah, this is, um this is a recipe
Speaker 1: for potential disaster. And in fact, that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I've that's been my experience with three D printers. So
Speaker 1: we wanted to take a look like, did three D
Speaker 1: printers really take off in steen did they become or
Speaker 1: at least did we see you know, a good solid
Speaker 1: improvement in in market adoption? Um and and really it
Speaker 1: just kind of it did continue to grow. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's not like it stopped growing. It didn't the
Speaker 1: rate of growth didn't increase, but it's still chugging along
Speaker 1: pretty healthily. So, UM, I guess it's a partial one
Speaker 1: for you. I as I think, I mean more mainstream
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's doing well, but i'd say very
Speaker 1: small partial here. I'm not gonna even give myself a
Speaker 1: lot of credit for this one. It's doing better than
Speaker 1: it was at the beginning of the year and the
Speaker 1: compared to the beginning of the year, but it's still
Speaker 1: still not mainstream by any stretching the imagination. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in fact, later on in the episode you did clarify
Speaker 1: you said that you weren't really thinking about it being
Speaker 1: a three D printer on everybody's desk by the end
Speaker 1: of twenty six. You were saying that you expected to
Speaker 1: see that trend continue, and uh, and in fact, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what has happened. There's no dramatic changes. It's not like,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, I didn't hear about any
Speaker 1: massive drive to buy a bunch of three D printers
Speaker 1: during the holiday sales, for example. UM, I think in
Speaker 1: large part it's one of those things that people who
Speaker 1: are interested in the field are still going out and
Speaker 1: you know, looking at the different models that are out
Speaker 1: there and trying to decide which one is best for them.
Speaker 1: It has not really penetrated your average consumer's mind as
Speaker 1: this is um must have item. But I think I
Speaker 1: think you were more right than wrong. My next prediction
Speaker 1: was that Apple, now that we're getting further and further
Speaker 1: removed from Steve Jobs as Apple company, that Apple was
Speaker 1: going to start offering up more products that would seem
Speaker 1: like they were not as directly influenced by Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: I realized now in retrospect that that is an incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult prediction to to judge whether or not I was right,
Speaker 1: because without knowing, without having Steve Jobs here to say, hey,
Speaker 1: would you do that, it's it's kind of um impossible
Speaker 1: to answer unless you just see something that just looks
Speaker 1: like welcome to the Apple cinder block, Like then you say, okay, no,
Speaker 1: that Steve Jobs would not come out with a cinder block,
Speaker 1: And I don't know about that one. Maybe the only
Speaker 1: the only thing for sure we could tell if there
Speaker 1: was no h clones, you know, mac clones out there,
Speaker 1: that's definitely something that was anti Jobs at the time.
Speaker 1: When we came back to Apple, he killed that off. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, without looking backwards, I don't know how we
Speaker 1: would ever tell, but I'm pretty sure we have a
Speaker 1: decent catalog of things that Apple could have done that
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs didn't like. Yeah, I mean in the last
Speaker 1: year episode we mentioned the pencil stylist device that had
Speaker 1: been introduced in in late and how that was something
Speaker 1: that that Steve Jobs had kind of ridiculed at one
Speaker 1: point back when a stylus was the only way to
Speaker 1: interact with some handheld devices, and he said, no, one
Speaker 1: wants that, and I, as you pointed out, well, the
Speaker 1: Apple solution is that it's it's a an additional peripheral.
Speaker 1: It's not necessary to interact with the device, but it's
Speaker 1: an additional way to interact with the device, which is
Speaker 1: a slight distinction. UM. Not sure how Steve Jobs would
Speaker 1: have felt about abandoning the lightning ports on MacBook pros
Speaker 1: where they switched from Lightning to USBC or the idea.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he would have been down with the
Speaker 1: idea of getting rid of the headphone jack. I don't
Speaker 1: see Steve Jobs as saying no, that's something we absolutely
Speaker 1: have to keep. Um. I think for the that that's
Speaker 1: referring to the iPhone. The new iPhones don't have the
Speaker 1: headphone jacks, they just have the lightning connector. It does
Speaker 1: make it weird if you have a MacBook Pro and
Speaker 1: an iPhone that you can't use a simple cable between
Speaker 1: the two to charge your iPhone while your MacBook Pro
Speaker 1: is running. But um, I don't think I don't think
Speaker 1: any of those were big warning flags, saying Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: would absolutely not want this to happen, but potentially save
Speaker 1: you hundreds and thousands of emails. And you said Apple
Speaker 1: moving away from lightning to USBC, did you mean the
Speaker 1: Thunderbolt ports. That's why I meant Thunderbolt pot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Thunderbolt is built into the new versions of these
Speaker 1: USBC style receptacles. It's such a weird thing that's actually
Speaker 1: in the MacBook Pro right now that I don't really
Speaker 1: have a great way to explain, and maybe you could.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a Thunderbolt enabled USB sorry, Thunderbolt three
Speaker 1: enabled us B C input. It's a very strange name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think moving towards standard things is within the realm
Speaker 1: of Jobs. The idea of simply going, okay, this is
Speaker 1: the future we don't care. We're making were drawing in
Speaker 1: the line right now. I think it looks a lot
Speaker 1: like the way the MacBook Air was set up in
Speaker 1: the first place, with its original one USB port that
Speaker 1: grew a little bit. Same thing with the MacBook pros
Speaker 1: um the headphone jack removal. Yeah, I would I could
Speaker 1: believe that happening. Maybe, although Jobs really did like music,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he would want you to listen
Speaker 1: to bluetooth headphones, be honest. Yeah, I mean it's a
Speaker 1: good point. I mean, well, the fact that you're already
Speaker 1: listening on an Apple device and you're likely listening to
Speaker 1: some form of compressed music. I think you could be
Speaker 1: listening to uncompressed music files, but I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it does seem like it would be another step
Speaker 1: further away from that that that experience that truly defined
Speaker 1: the or redefined Apple. I mean, the iPod, I would argue,
Speaker 1: was the product that brought Apple truly to the forefront
Speaker 1: of the technology world again, and the iPhones cemented their
Speaker 1: place once once it came out that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when Steve Jobs came back to the company and he
Speaker 1: began to revitalize the Mac platform uh, the iPod was
Speaker 1: really the device that kind of got the tech world's
Speaker 1: attention and said, oh wow, Apple's doing stuff again. Uh.
Speaker 1: So to to make that step where you are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, bluetooth headphones are fine, that does seem a
Speaker 1: little weird. But I can't really say this is a
Speaker 1: win or a loss. And it's largely because again at
Speaker 1: the very beginning, as I said, it's hard to judge
Speaker 1: how well I did without having the authority there too
Speaker 1: a d so that in retrospect it was a bad
Speaker 1: prediction just because there's it's hard to judge if it
Speaker 1: was correct or not unless again, there was something that
Speaker 1: was just wildly elt of character for Apple. I predict
Speaker 1: you will not be making predictions like that for your
Speaker 1: next show. I certainly hope I won't. Alright, So my
Speaker 1: my nex prediction was about wearables. Wearables will be better
Speaker 1: with follow ups to the earlier smart watches, and Activity
Speaker 1: Tracker was supposed to be the year we're gonna see
Speaker 1: refined approaches. And I'm laughing at reading my own note
Speaker 1: here there will be a compelling reason to own a
Speaker 1: smart watch. Um. Reality, No, that didn't happen. There's currently
Speaker 1: no true compelling reason that anyone needs a smart watches.
Speaker 1: That's my own opinion. I saw a report on the
Speaker 1: day of recording. List I d C just released a
Speaker 1: wearables market report and they said basic wearables, primarily composed
Speaker 1: of fitness bands, accounted for of the market and experience.
Speaker 1: It's double digit growth now, by the way, year over
Speaker 1: year growth the third quarter between compared to three point
Speaker 1: one percent, So not a huge growth in the wearables
Speaker 1: which includes smart watches and and uh fitness devices. So
Speaker 1: Google basically sat out when it came to Android where
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, we're gonna show a new one. Here
Speaker 1: it is, and we're gonna release it. Seen, they backed
Speaker 1: off very hard. Apple basically said we screwed up. They
Speaker 1: redefine their their watch with Watch OS three. It's it's
Speaker 1: really not even close. Um, I don't see smart watches everywhere.
Speaker 1: Do you see smart watches everywhere where you are? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: I do not. I mean I'm wearing a pebble right now.
Speaker 1: But some people would argue that pebble doesn't really like
Speaker 1: some some would say pebble almost doesn't fit the definition
Speaker 1: of a smart watch because it has limited interactive abilities
Speaker 1: and you know, you've got the monochromatic screen. And but
Speaker 1: that's all I want it because it gives me notifications
Speaker 1: and I don't ignore of them. I don't or I
Speaker 1: don't miss them. Uh So specifically when someone's calling me,
Speaker 1: I don't miss those calls anymore because when I'm walking
Speaker 1: I walked to and from home and work, when I'm
Speaker 1: walking off, and don't feel my phone vibrating if someone
Speaker 1: calls me, but I feel my risk vibrating. So that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's why I have one. But that's the
Speaker 1: that's the only compelling reason is really because otherwise I
Speaker 1: miss phone calls and my wife gets mad at me. Um,
Speaker 1: my wife hasn't I watch. She's gonna Apple watch, and
Speaker 1: I mean she likes it just fine. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't see him everywhere. There's like maybe one other person
Speaker 1: in this office who has one, and that's it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing an explosion and adoption right now. Wearables
Speaker 1: are one of those things where I think the potential
Speaker 1: is there. No one has created the killer, the killer
Speaker 1: product that people absolutely must go out and purchase, and
Speaker 1: so it remains this kind of promised land that no
Speaker 1: one's been able to tap into. I'm sure as we
Speaker 1: record this, I as and I are both in our
Speaker 1: own individual ways preparing for the apocalypse known as c
Speaker 1: e S, which will take place at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of January. And we both know wearables will yet again
Speaker 1: be an enormous story there because it's it's it's an
Speaker 1: area of potential growth, and whenever those exist within the
Speaker 1: world of electronics, you're gonna see endless examples of it.
Speaker 1: On the CEOs show floor. The question is, well, we
Speaker 1: see one that's so interesting and so different from the
Speaker 1: other thousands of products that we've already seen that we
Speaker 1: will be convinced, yes, this is the one that is
Speaker 1: going to redefine the market. I'm not convinced yet. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of good products out there, activity trackers and smart watches,
Speaker 1: but nothing that I would sit there and say like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you absolutely have to go out and get one of these. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't bold prediction. No, we're not gonna see anything
Speaker 1: that's going to change the wearables market sees in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. Um. But I just if Apple couldn't
Speaker 1: figure it out, and Samsung's they got their great approach
Speaker 1: where they try everything, they iterate and they iterate, and
Speaker 1: they iterate. Eventually they get it right. It might be
Speaker 1: another couple of years. I really thought I thought sixteen
Speaker 1: was the year because the the the idea was already presented.
Speaker 1: People were getting used to the idea of having more
Speaker 1: than one device maybe, and there were major companies behind it,
Speaker 1: but the execution just wasn't here this year. In I
Speaker 1: don't see it happening in the next few weeks. Maybe
Speaker 1: long shot, you know, December twenty six of next year, seventeen,
Speaker 1: somebody figures it out, but it won't be public until. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember I mentioned that if you were to pair
Speaker 1: wearables with a r you could have some really interesting
Speaker 1: applications and respect and we'll talk more about VR in
Speaker 1: just a short moment. But I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think I think. I think we're gonna see plenty of examples.
Speaker 1: I think they're going to be lots of products to
Speaker 1: choose from. But I don't I don't see any breakaways
Speaker 1: yet on the horizon. But maybe we'll we'll be proven wrong.
Speaker 1: We're willing to have that happen. At the point being tway,
Speaker 1: sixteen definitely wasn't the wearable year. Uh My next prediction
Speaker 1: was that Apple would make a move to acquire Tesla,
Speaker 1: although Tesla might not agree to Apple's terms, and the
Speaker 1: reality is, whoo, maybe we don't know if that happened.
Speaker 1: We do know that uh, Tesla got shareholder approval to
Speaker 1: acquire or actually to merge with another company called solar City,
Speaker 1: which was founded coincidentally not coincidentally by Elon Musk's cousins,
Speaker 1: and he was the chairman of solar City. Uh So
Speaker 1: Tesla and solar City are merging together. But uh, we
Speaker 1: do also know that Apple held some discussions with the
Speaker 1: executive team over at Tesla. But Musk was very careful
Speaker 1: to say like he could not comment on what the
Speaker 1: nature of those conversations was all about, because you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's confidential stuff. Uh. But a lot of reporters
Speaker 1: kept on asking does this mean that there have been
Speaker 1: talks of acquisition between Apple and Tesla? And he says,
Speaker 1: I even if there were, I couldn't comment on it.
Speaker 1: So it's useless to ask me those questions. So we
Speaker 1: don't know if Apple had made a move. It's possible
Speaker 1: to Apple at least express some interest, but there's no
Speaker 1: way to confirm that one way or the other um
Speaker 1: and in the episode, I as you mentioned that there
Speaker 1: was a possibility that Apple would invest in Tesla, but
Speaker 1: not try to acquire it, and so, in other words,
Speaker 1: there would be some sort of corporate investment on Apple's part,
Speaker 1: perhaps even having some bars of Apple joined the board
Speaker 1: of directors over at Tesla. But as far as I know,
Speaker 1: that has not yet happened either. We do know that
Speaker 1: Apple is definitely interested in developing autonomous car programs. Are
Speaker 1: very recently apples director of Product Integrity, Steve Kenner, wrote
Speaker 1: to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to advocate for
Speaker 1: better rules and regulations specifically for autonomous vehicles, whether that is,
Speaker 1: you know, to expressly allow autonomous vehicles to be on
Speaker 1: the road, or to create the infrastructure necessary to have
Speaker 1: have those rules so that when weird things happen, we
Speaker 1: actually have law to point to and say, well, this
Speaker 1: is what we do in this case. But Apple itself
Speaker 1: as a company has not come out and said what
Speaker 1: they are planning on doing or what sort of timeline
Speaker 1: they're looking at. We just know that they're interested in
Speaker 1: autonomous cars, not when they might pull the trigger and
Speaker 1: jump into the game. Based on the last things you
Speaker 1: were talking about if Apple did buy a pre existing
Speaker 1: car company, that would be a non jobs move back
Speaker 1: to your other prediction. Uh, if Apple actually announced ahead
Speaker 1: of time in we're gonna have a self driving car,
Speaker 1: that would also be not jobs in in that kind
Speaker 1: of way now that I think about it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the idea that Apple and Tesla were gonna work together,
Speaker 1: I like that idea. They seem like they're a natural fit.
Speaker 1: But I've seen enough, I've read enough in the press
Speaker 1: that seems like there's a bit of animosity between the
Speaker 1: two companies. Yeah, I know that Elon Musk says some
Speaker 1: derogatory things about some of the engineers that end up
Speaker 1: at Apple. They're they're the they're the ones who get
Speaker 1: rejected from Tesla. So yeah, there's been there's been some
Speaker 1: like sniping back and forth. And I know that there's
Speaker 1: been like whenever you look into the news stories, you'll
Speaker 1: hear about people defecting from one company and going to
Speaker 1: the other, and there's always some sort of snarky comment
Speaker 1: about that. So yeah, I think there's definitely some some
Speaker 1: rivalry going on there. Um. I like the idea of
Speaker 1: Cook taking the stage and saying essentially doing what Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs did for the announcement of the iPhone, saying, talk
Speaker 1: about an iPod that has wireless connectivity, a phone and
Speaker 1: an Internet device, and that you know, as he goes on,
Speaker 1: you realize he's talking about one product, not three products.
Speaker 1: So something allot the lines of UH. Today, I want
Speaker 1: to introduce to you a phone, a car, and an
Speaker 1: Internet device. A phone, a car, an Internet device. Are
Speaker 1: you guys getting it? It's the same thing. It's the
Speaker 1: I car. That's what I want to see. I think
Speaker 1: a car. Just saying the phrase of cars a little
Speaker 1: bit um what's the word? It kind of gives it
Speaker 1: away too much everything. They would come up with something
Speaker 1: fancier to say, I think it gives it away too
Speaker 1: much too, But I think I got a personal transport device. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because then it could be a segue, right and the
Speaker 1: investing Are you getting it? It's our car and we
Speaker 1: think you're gonna love it. It's the thinnest car, which
Speaker 1: is really bad for the safety tests. Well it would
Speaker 1: it would. It would save on power consumption. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: have is much mass to move around. The lightest car.
Speaker 1: It gets picked up from the slightest breeze Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want to turn left, you just swipe left. Some
Speaker 1: features will be added later. It turns out that you're
Speaker 1: all of your all of your navigation features are likely
Speaker 1: to send you to places that don't exist. Or oh
Speaker 1: that's gotten that's gotten better this year, and Apple has
Speaker 1: drones out there checking out at least that's coccording a
Speaker 1: certain recent report that Apple's got drones out there searching,
Speaker 1: getting a maps app data back to the Maps apps.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not as bad as it used to be.
Speaker 1: Where you where you don't have like the Washington Monument
Speaker 1: located across the street from where it really is that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Oh no, they moved that just for
Speaker 1: the Apple's map decided that's the drones are there for.
Speaker 1: They like, oh, you're right, it does look better over
Speaker 1: here exactly alright. So what was your next one? Sorry?
Speaker 1: Mine was also dead. Rom Google was gonna go wireless
Speaker 1: and finally it was gonna become its own wireless carrier.
Speaker 1: Now that didn't happen. In I remember was talking a
Speaker 1: bit about Project five being out there and Google still
Speaker 1: has that, uh, and I was thinking maybe they were
Speaker 1: tied in with Google Fiber, and Google Fiber would be
Speaker 1: some kind of backbone for a wireless service. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: slowed down to Google Fiber. There was a post on
Speaker 1: it from Google saying, for the most part, our potential
Speaker 1: fiber cities, those where we have where we've been in
Speaker 1: exploratory discussions, We're going to pause our operations and offices
Speaker 1: while we were fine our approaches. So it looks like
Speaker 1: Google's pushed towards wired and wireless internet seems to be installed. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: I really thought they were going to push forward with
Speaker 1: this maybe next year. Then maybe maybe there's always hope
Speaker 1: that they do this because there's so much consolidation in
Speaker 1: the wireless and wired space at this point that competition
Speaker 1: is good. But um, yeah, when when it happened, when
Speaker 1: the news was first breaking that Google was kind of
Speaker 1: putting the brakes on fiber, like they're still rolling it
Speaker 1: out in cities where they had started. So for example,
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, they're still rolling out fiber because they had
Speaker 1: already started that process. They had already wired up several
Speaker 1: of the neighborhoods of Atlanta, not mine, but some of
Speaker 1: the neighboring ones. Um. And then, uh, there was some
Speaker 1: rumors at that point when Google said we're gonna We're
Speaker 1: gonna slow down. That maybe they were going to explore
Speaker 1: becoming a wireless UH Internet service provider instead, and rather
Speaker 1: than have to lay out a fiber infrastructure, they would
Speaker 1: look at, you know, building essentially essentially what equates to
Speaker 1: towers or or using existing UH architecture to attach their
Speaker 1: their technology too. But we I haven't seen any movement
Speaker 1: on that one way or the other. It all seemed
Speaker 1: to be largely based on just assumptions from the media.
Speaker 1: An other thing is that's just thinking about how Google
Speaker 1: did introduced or WiFi router system that us essentially creates
Speaker 1: a mesh network within your own home. If Google sells
Speaker 1: enough of those, maybe they can somehow come up with
Speaker 1: a way to bridge up a Project five to build
Speaker 1: a network. But that that's a much longer term thing.
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that Google is working on wireless solutions,
Speaker 1: but they have yet to make a real move, right Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to see if seen changes that up at all.
Speaker 1: I I do expect, like I keep hoping that Google
Speaker 1: Fiber will continue in Atlanta and continue to deploy so
Speaker 1: that I can hook up to it. I've really been
Speaker 1: looking totally selfish reasons totally. I completely will own up
Speaker 1: to that, but it would make podcasting from home a
Speaker 1: possibility as opposed to a trial, as I as well knows.
Speaker 1: I'm very aware of that. That's actually why I'm happy
Speaker 1: with a service I have now that's wireless, and I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna sound like an AD, but I like my
Speaker 1: wireless carrier right now. So maybe we'll see Google follow
Speaker 1: suit and do the wireless thing. We'll have to keep
Speaker 1: deep an eye out, but at the moment it is
Speaker 1: as not a wireless carrier. My next prediction was that
Speaker 1: VR would fizzle out in two thousands sixteen in the
Speaker 1: consumer market, mostly because it took too long for really
Speaker 1: compelling headsets to make their way to store shelves. In
Speaker 1: late none of the major headsets had yet hit the
Speaker 1: market where consumers could actually buy a finished headset, so
Speaker 1: Oculus hadn't launched, h HTC Vibe wasn't out yet, and
Speaker 1: of course PlayStation VR only recently came out for consumers,
Speaker 1: so um, the only ones that you could really get
Speaker 1: your hands on were essentially apps on phones, and then
Speaker 1: you would get a cheap headset or a Google cardboard
Speaker 1: or something like that and slide your phone into it,
Speaker 1: and that was as close as you were going to get.
Speaker 1: And some of those experiences are all right, but they
Speaker 1: aren't nearly as immersive or as comprehensive as the full
Speaker 1: headsets that were on their way. And my worry was
Speaker 1: that by the time the headsets finally premiered, because they
Speaker 1: we had been waiting for years for them to come out, uh,
Speaker 1: they would not be able to live up to expectation,
Speaker 1: and thus we would end up seeing low adoption rates
Speaker 1: and also we'd probably see some sets just never come
Speaker 1: to market at all. That the fact that there'd be
Speaker 1: a lack of interest after all this time would cause
Speaker 1: that to collapse up So the day we are recording
Speaker 1: this episode, which is on December six, b GR published
Speaker 1: a piece titled demand for VR headsets has been surprisingly disappointing.
Speaker 1: Clearly they didn't listen to our show because I was
Speaker 1: not surprised h And according to DigiTimes, demand has been
Speaker 1: weakening recently for VR headsets and apparently the two big
Speaker 1: reasons that they were citing for the slow sales were
Speaker 1: high prices. So these are expensive headsets for the most part,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're looking at the PC based one, because
Speaker 1: unless you happen to have a PC that has a
Speaker 1: pretty hefty graphics processor, you'll probably have to either upgrade
Speaker 1: your computer or buy a new rig, thus adding to
Speaker 1: the cost of your headset um. Also, the other big
Speaker 1: reason would be the lack of compelling content, which anyone
Speaker 1: who is familiar with like the WE or the WU
Speaker 1: or the WE move knows that will kill a system.
Speaker 1: I mean those those systems were good, they weren't. There
Speaker 1: were decent systems with interesting innovations, but there weren't enough
Speaker 1: compelling games or experiences for them, and so you'd play
Speaker 1: a little bit and then you just put it aside
Speaker 1: and it would just kind of gather dust. I'm seeing
Speaker 1: the same thing in VR right now, and even the
Speaker 1: PS four PlayStation VR is suffering from this. I thought
Speaker 1: that that one out of all of them had the
Speaker 1: best chance of succeeding because there's a big install base
Speaker 1: of PS four sets out there. Already a lot of
Speaker 1: people own a PS four, which means they don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that extra cost if they go and
Speaker 1: buy a PS VR set. Uh. You know, they already
Speaker 1: have the basic system that will take care of what
Speaker 1: they need on the processing end. They don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about their console whether or not it's good enough.
Speaker 1: It is, but even that one hasn't done well. According
Speaker 1: to this piece and b g r Uh they had
Speaker 1: to slash their sales estimates from two point six million
Speaker 1: units all the way down to seven fifty thousand. It's
Speaker 1: a huge drop. So the question now is can VR
Speaker 1: companies remain relevant enough to wait out this period until
Speaker 1: there are enough compelling reasons to own these systems to
Speaker 1: keep them viable in the market. I think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're right in you didn't really go VRS away, and
Speaker 1: there's a are all the different variants on these headset
Speaker 1: based realities. Like I said last here, I said, it
Speaker 1: probably takes probably needs another year or two, and like
Speaker 1: you were mentioning, like I think, one of the biggest
Speaker 1: problems has been that the PC based VR needs really
Speaker 1: beefy processing. It needs a lot of power, and unless
Speaker 1: you have something that's really modern, it's not there yet. Now.
Speaker 1: Maybe in two to three years, when like the cutting
Speaker 1: edge computers of today are the standard low end pieces
Speaker 1: of computing, then then VR will be really universal. But
Speaker 1: we have seen enough of these things come out. Occulus
Speaker 1: Rift came out. I was surprised that that the ATC
Speaker 1: Vibe came out. There's also the Google's daydream View. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of different versions of these things. I believe
Speaker 1: Oculus mentioned that they're working or Facebook's working on a
Speaker 1: version of the Oculus that is somewhere between the full
Speaker 1: on rift that you're connecting to a PC and something
Speaker 1: that's between that and the one where you place a
Speaker 1: phone in a headset, something that's a little bit more
Speaker 1: all in one. And so maybe we'll see these things.
Speaker 1: But like you're saying, the content, I've seen some of it.
Speaker 1: The content is pretty good. It's getting there. But again,
Speaker 1: like with the with smart watches, it's about compelling content.
Speaker 1: Is it just like, hey, look I can turn around
Speaker 1: and see a museum. That's nice, But do I want
Speaker 1: to be in this a long time? I think Again, technology,
Speaker 1: it's just not. The pace is too fast right now.
Speaker 1: The VR stuff is cool, but the screens aren't good
Speaker 1: enough yet, or the processing isn't good enough yet, or
Speaker 1: the headsets or the headsets are too heavy. So when
Speaker 1: you wear them, you only want to wear them for
Speaker 1: up to maybe twenty to thirty minutes, which means you
Speaker 1: have to design experiences that are ideal for twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, not sitting down for two hours to game
Speaker 1: because it's too uncomfortable to wear the headset that long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: friend of mine has the Galaxy the Gear VR one
Speaker 1: and his phone was constantly overheating within it, so he
Speaker 1: hooked up a USB fan to it so he could
Speaker 1: be there for longer than fifteen minutes. That is not
Speaker 1: the experience you should have when you're doing this. So
Speaker 1: it's still I think it's still early days, and UH
Speaker 1: did not exactly like the World on fire. Now I
Speaker 1: I I have, I really do hope that it's able
Speaker 1: to weather the storm and to continue being a viable technology.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of virtual reality, UH, and I
Speaker 1: even love some of the implementations I've seen. I just
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to dive in and spend, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of grand in order to have one of
Speaker 1: those at home, particularly since the one I like the
Speaker 1: most all the ones I've tried, and I have not
Speaker 1: tried all of them, so this is just based upon
Speaker 1: my limited experience is the HTC vive because I like
Speaker 1: the fact that you can move around in a physical
Speaker 1: space and it's reflected within a game. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I don't have a space in my home
Speaker 1: where I could do that. Like, even if I wanted
Speaker 1: to spend that much money, I don't have a room
Speaker 1: in my house that I could dedicate to VR. All
Speaker 1: of my rooms in my house are dedicated to just
Speaker 1: regular R. So I don't think that that's you know
Speaker 1: that that's not for me either. But if we can
Speaker 1: get to that point where the standard PC, just because
Speaker 1: the way technology moves, the standard PC is your baseline
Speaker 1: for being able to run VR, that will help a lot.
Speaker 1: Where people are buying these new computers not because they
Speaker 1: want to use a VR headset, but because that's now
Speaker 1: the standard, low price computer and a VR headset will
Speaker 1: happen to work with that. That's the ideal situation. It
Speaker 1: is unfortunate that, uh, the way technology tends to go
Speaker 1: is we see people try to take advantage of all
Speaker 1: the power of technology has available to it at that
Speaker 1: given time, which then puts the burden on the consumer
Speaker 1: when it comes time to actually buying something because it's
Speaker 1: gonna be way more expensive that way. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you do want it to have a good experience. You
Speaker 1: don't want it something that's gonna be super choppy or
Speaker 1: really low quality graphics or sound, or something that would
Speaker 1: be disastrous as well. So they were early in a
Speaker 1: tough position. They they had to come out with something
Speaker 1: because everyone was yelling for it. It had to be good,
Speaker 1: and preferably it would be cheap. But you couldn't really
Speaker 1: do all three. So we got really good, and we
Speaker 1: got uh, you know, really powerful, uh and compelling in
Speaker 1: a way as long as the experiences there, but not cheap.
Speaker 1: It is not cheap, and I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: out there yet for your average consumer to convince them
Speaker 1: to go and make that big investment. But maybe we
Speaker 1: will see that change over the next year or two.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're gonna see lots of e R stuff
Speaker 1: at CES this year too. It would shock, babe, we didn't.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had a big push into VR and AAR with
Speaker 1: its last update to Windows ten, so I could see
Speaker 1: that with those low priced accessories. I think they were
Speaker 1: talking about two hundred maybe three hundred dollars for more
Speaker 1: VR headsets that are working with Windows ten, so I
Speaker 1: can imagine that. C Yes, we're gonna see a lot
Speaker 1: of other headsets, a lot of other accessories that take
Speaker 1: advantage of this. But again it's not it's not ready
Speaker 1: for the masses yet. There's just it's just it's just
Speaker 1: not there. Yeah. Uh, it kind of reminds me in
Speaker 1: a way of when personal computers first really hit the market,
Speaker 1: like that. That was also one of those things that
Speaker 1: a very niche market opened up for personal computers. It
Speaker 1: took more than a decade for that to become something
Speaker 1: that you would find in uh, in the average home.
Speaker 1: Uh you could even argue almost two decades really for
Speaker 1: that to become a thing. And uh so it may
Speaker 1: be that VR is going to follow probably a much
Speaker 1: shorter cycle than that, but a similar pathway. Now that
Speaker 1: we both were talking about VR in that last one,
Speaker 1: then my prediction came up again. So the next one
Speaker 1: I made was that the cable industry will see subscriber
Speaker 1: numbers shrink further. But it wasn't going to be the
Speaker 1: tipping point where you know, the sky would be falling
Speaker 1: for cable companies. And I was more right than not.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I don't really give myself a
Speaker 1: lot of points for this one because it was pretty
Speaker 1: obvious and to the shrinking actually slowed a bit. Um
Speaker 1: numbers show that, yes, there's still a decrease in subscribers
Speaker 1: overall throughout the industry, but that decrease isn't at the
Speaker 1: same rate as it was the previous year. It's slowed
Speaker 1: a bit, so it's starting to trickle. Uh. Some people
Speaker 1: have said, perhaps we're seeing an end to this attrition
Speaker 1: rate that had been taking place, and maybe now we're
Speaker 1: reaching a point where the people who are currently subscribed
Speaker 1: to cable television are are are not They're not holdouts.
Speaker 1: It's just these are people who are satisfied with the
Speaker 1: service and don't have any desire to move away from it.
Speaker 1: So you could think of the people who were the
Speaker 1: cord cutters and the cord never's as being on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of this group, and now that they're gone, So
Speaker 1: what's left is that core And it's a big one.
Speaker 1: It's we're talking millions of people here, It's not like
Speaker 1: it's a few hundred thousand. So we may have hit
Speaker 1: a plateau. Uh. It may be that we're going to
Speaker 1: continue to see a decrease, but it will be a
Speaker 1: much smaller amount year over year um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Comcast this year reported they had a slight gain and
Speaker 1: subscribers compared to the year before. So it may very
Speaker 1: well be that the cord cutting phenomenon is at least
Speaker 1: pausing right now or or slowing down right now. What
Speaker 1: do you think I as, I mean, I I don't
Speaker 1: tend to cover this so much, but um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know what my own personal feeling is, but that's
Speaker 1: based upon my own biases. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the the big guttural switch from being a cable having
Speaker 1: person to a cord cutter. I think that's happened over
Speaker 1: the past couple of years, but that trend is declining
Speaker 1: just because there's only so much so many people who
Speaker 1: are willing to leave. For myself, I don't have it
Speaker 1: and not cable, my brother does. He would never give
Speaker 1: it to his cable, and my mom would. There's always
Speaker 1: a bunch of people that won't and and people like
Speaker 1: me who are cord killing. So if you want to
Speaker 1: call them that, we don't bother to like evangelize, Oh
Speaker 1: you could do this, you could do that. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's just there's enough options out there that with something
Speaker 1: like the Sony PlayStation View, there's also direct TV. Now
Speaker 1: there's all these different options out there that I think
Speaker 1: the markets getting more and more educated when it comes
Speaker 1: to what can you do with or without the court.
Speaker 1: I think that might change things next year because now
Speaker 1: the direct TV now exists and PlayStation view exists, and
Speaker 1: they're much very much like cable subscriptions that could maybe
Speaker 1: get people to switch, but only if they understand what
Speaker 1: costs they're saving, because a lot of people like, why
Speaker 1: would I ever pay this much money for television if
Speaker 1: I could just get cable. We're not paying for the
Speaker 1: rental of the box, you're not paying for the d
Speaker 1: V R F and other stuff. But it's it's that
Speaker 1: kind of thing that's going to change people's perception if
Speaker 1: what do they understand cable to be? What do they
Speaker 1: wanted to be? And are they just trying to substitute
Speaker 1: that massive pipeline of channels or they just going I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do other stuff. I'm gonna do v are, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read a book. Yeah, I'm gonna play a game.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch Netflix. Right, I'm just gonna mainline all
Speaker 1: the Netflix original shows. Now. Your next one was another
Speaker 1: one revolving around Facebook acquisitions, and I can't be right
Speaker 1: about these Facebook, I said Facebook by atc UM. I
Speaker 1: believe ACC worked with Facebook on phones before and no,
Speaker 1: that didn't happen. Yeah, Facebook, that would have been interesting.
Speaker 1: We would have seen a dramagic decrease in competition in
Speaker 1: that phizz link VR space. Well, that would have been
Speaker 1: interesting if the vibe and the and the rift were
Speaker 1: together somehow. Like it's odd because the word the word
Speaker 1: rift suggests that you could never have such a thing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they have to come up with some kind
Speaker 1: of cross platform. I'm gonna leave that one alone. But
Speaker 1: a c C, which I thought was ripe for an
Speaker 1: acquisition at this point because it's it's struggling. Although a
Speaker 1: CC did get a design win, I believe they're the
Speaker 1: people behind or the company, excuse me, the company behind
Speaker 1: Google's Pixel phone and the Pixel XL so wow, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have any branding from a SC. A c C
Speaker 1: is the hardware partners, so they do have that. I
Speaker 1: still think that company a SEC needs some kind of
Speaker 1: huge win out there because they make some really great hardware.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have Pixel, I really enjoy it. I've
Speaker 1: played with a STC phones for years. They're really quite solid,
Speaker 1: and they just can't make a splash in this crowded
Speaker 1: markets place between Samsung and Apple. Those two just together
Speaker 1: are just monstrously large. And then there's every there's a
Speaker 1: small bit of the pie for everybody else. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and we talked about this last time to My first
Speaker 1: smartphone was an HTC smartphone because it was the the
Speaker 1: HCCG one, the first Google phone in the United States
Speaker 1: with the slideout key board. And uh, it is interesting.
Speaker 1: Just as we were about to go into the studio,
Speaker 1: I saw a thing on the BBC that said that
Speaker 1: that there were some indications in the market that Google
Speaker 1: might be interested in pursuing an acquisition with HTC. Although
Speaker 1: that seems kind of odd to me, uh, mostly because
Speaker 1: we already saw Google do that with Motorola Mobile and
Speaker 1: then that didn't work out. But I mean, who's to say.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on these things by any stretch
Speaker 1: of the imagination. So possibly we could see an acquisition,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's Google not Facebook doing the acquiring um,
Speaker 1: in which case you would see Google get into the
Speaker 1: VR game even bigger than they already have with their
Speaker 1: their daydream stuff. And uh and Google Cardboard, I think
Speaker 1: you just accidentally hit on something there that that would
Speaker 1: be the good reason why Motorola didn't necessarily work out
Speaker 1: with Google, because Google can do hand sets, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to VR, they might be struggling. And the
Speaker 1: Vibe being one of the better experiences I've heard about.
Speaker 1: I have not trying it out myself. I know you have.
Speaker 1: Colleagues of mine have tried it out and they really
Speaker 1: love what the Vibe is. Maybe that's the kind of
Speaker 1: information and technology that they're looking for, but that's all speculation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it may just be that they were talking about other partnerships.
Speaker 1: I mean, like like you were saying, I asked, with
Speaker 1: the Pixel being an HDC handset even without the branding,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big deal. Uh. That's also the
Speaker 1: next phone I want, but I don't have one right now.
Speaker 1: My next prediction was that we would see lots more
Speaker 1: growth in online media like Amazon, Prime Videos, Hulu, Netflix,
Speaker 1: and also we would see a lot more from independent
Speaker 1: or smaller creative studios, which was a total gimme. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think I could have predicted water
Speaker 1: as wet, and that would have been slightly less surprising
Speaker 1: than this prediction. So yes, we did see lots of
Speaker 1: new shows and movies coming out from all of these platforms.
Speaker 1: We also saw YouTube bread getting into the game and
Speaker 1: really pushing original content, including series that star YouTube uh
Speaker 1: celebrities who have become famous for their own channels being
Speaker 1: put into scripted series. Um, I've seen. I've seen lots
Speaker 1: of commercials for those recently. When I've gone to see
Speaker 1: actual movies, like, there's usually a promo there for the
Speaker 1: upcoming YouTube series. So this I think is going to continue.
Speaker 1: We're just going to see more and more of these.
Speaker 1: A lot of different platforms out there, all of them
Speaker 1: are struggling to find a way to differentiate themselves from
Speaker 1: the other competitors in the field. You know, why is
Speaker 1: it that you would go to one versus another, And
Speaker 1: especially for for groups like Netflix where they're having a
Speaker 1: harder time establishing a video library from other content creators,
Speaker 1: why not just go through and make your own darn content.
Speaker 1: If it all happens to be Daredevil's spin off, so
Speaker 1: be it. I'll watch them. Uh So, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: not a bold prediction by any means, but I would
Speaker 1: say I was was pretty much correct on this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: You're right on this. There wasn't like any massive consolidation
Speaker 1: by any means. It wasn't like Netflix was purchased by Disney.
Speaker 1: That would have been crazy. That was a rumor. At
Speaker 1: one point Hulu was dissolved. So there's still competition. So
Speaker 1: I like the fact that you are right on this one.
Speaker 1: And thankfully there's enough competition out there when it comes
Speaker 1: to streaming services. But there's a lot, a lot of
Speaker 1: services out there that are just competing for your dollars.
Speaker 1: I know, there's like NBC C sells like this four
Speaker 1: dollar thing. There's a Lifetime Movie Club, it's four dollars.
Speaker 1: There's all these little tiny clubs that are popping up
Speaker 1: that you know, after a while you're paying. It's almost
Speaker 1: it's almost all the cart television almost, But um, we're
Speaker 1: not going to get that yet. No. I all of
Speaker 1: cart television I think is is I don't know that
Speaker 1: we'll ever get it. Uh not, not until we get
Speaker 1: to a point where cable television and satellite TV just
Speaker 1: don't make sense anymore. And at that point maybe, but
Speaker 1: until that happens, I just don't see it being a
Speaker 1: real viable alternative. The biggest surprise for me was when
Speaker 1: HBO finally went with HBO go. That was one of
Speaker 1: those things where I was I was skeptical it would
Speaker 1: ever happen. Not and I still don't subscribe to it.
Speaker 1: So when people talk about west World, I tune out
Speaker 1: because I haven't seen any of it yet. Wait wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: you haven't seen west World. I know I want to
Speaker 1: so badly, but I don't have HBO go. You can
Speaker 1: get HBO now or she get you can get one
Speaker 1: of those things. Like I'm shocked because I think West
Speaker 1: World would be right up your alley. I I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm still I'm still behind on Black Mirror though,
Speaker 1: so I gotta you can skip half of that. I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that later. Yeah, so your next prediction
Speaker 1: was about a high game company. Yeah, the Nintendo and
Speaker 1: X will be good. That was my prediction. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna give myself, you know, a third
Speaker 1: of a point on that one. Not sure. It's not
Speaker 1: even out until March. But the n X got a name.
Speaker 1: It's called the Nintendo's Switch. It's this hybrid home console
Speaker 1: slash portable console. Basically, doc It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: Nvideo Shields tablet if you think of it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can dock this tablet and it works at your TV.
Speaker 1: But this is all based on Nintendo's promo video where
Speaker 1: they showed off all the different variants of this and
Speaker 1: what it could do. But as far as I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody's played with this device yet. I
Speaker 1: believe in January they're gonna Nintendo will speak about more
Speaker 1: of the features about the Switch, but it's definitely interesting.
Speaker 1: Whether it's good or not, that's for debate. There's the
Speaker 1: possibility that they could be at c ES to show
Speaker 1: it off in a little quiet suite somewhere, because that's
Speaker 1: how I found out about the we U. It was
Speaker 1: before the Surprise, Yeah, would I mean when the WU,
Speaker 1: before the WEU came out, Nintendo rented a s eat
Speaker 1: in once it was in the Renaissance, and I got
Speaker 1: an invite to go check out the Wii you so
Speaker 1: I did, and I got a chance to play with
Speaker 1: it before anyone on the public had had a chance.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just people, just people in the industry
Speaker 1: and people in media who got a chance to play
Speaker 1: with it. So here's hoping they do the same thing
Speaker 1: with the switch. I like the switch is reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of the Wii in the sense that it
Speaker 1: has a very innovative uh style for the way you
Speaker 1: interact with the game system, whether you're using it as
Speaker 1: a handheld or if you plug it into your you know,
Speaker 1: docking stations, that you play it on a on a
Speaker 1: large television, and the various types of controller configurations. Uh.
Speaker 1: It just again drives home the fact that they better
Speaker 1: have some really compelling games and experiences to make really
Speaker 1: good use of that configuration, because if they don't, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is really cool hardware, but what do I do
Speaker 1: with it? Yeah? I don't know if they do, but
Speaker 1: we'll see it's And then I had another prediction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where we went into. This is where we
Speaker 1: went into some rapid fire predictions. Apple will let you
Speaker 1: set default apps on iOS. Now I was wrong about that,
Speaker 1: but you can delete stock apps. You can delete stock
Speaker 1: app all you want to take. Let's imagine you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get rid of Apple's maps app. Cool, you
Speaker 1: can get rid of it. And then you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna set Google Maps as my new default. You know
Speaker 1: what happens is when you click in address it asks,
Speaker 1: you iOS asked you to reinstall Apple's maps apps so
Speaker 1: you can get rid of stock apps. You cannot choose
Speaker 1: any non Apple default app, and then it nags you
Speaker 1: to go back to the stock app. That's also why
Speaker 1: I'm on a pixel phone now, by the way, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair. That's actually why I'm like, Okay, I'm tired
Speaker 1: of this game. I'm moving over back to Android. Um
Speaker 1: and speaking of it, of Android and phones, I said
Speaker 1: something about a battery tech breakthrough. We're going to have
Speaker 1: a battery tech breakthrough in Yeah, we didn't really get that. Well,
Speaker 1: we we've got we've got some promising work in labs,
Speaker 1: but nothing in the consumer space yet. Although one of
Speaker 1: the groups I was reading about and m I T
Speaker 1: was preparing uh the technology to go into consumer products
Speaker 1: in the near future, so we are seeing some movement
Speaker 1: on this now. Batteries are are constricted by these pesky
Speaker 1: laws of physics that unfortunately are keep things from just exploding.
Speaker 1: Well not explains a bad word with Samsung, uh, keep
Speaker 1: keep things from from experiencing exponential performance. Right, You tend
Speaker 1: to see very gradual improvements and in performance with batteries
Speaker 1: as we experiment with different materials. But there are a
Speaker 1: lot of researchers out there who are really working on
Speaker 1: trying to improve battery life because obviously we're making more
Speaker 1: and more powerful electronics that are meant to be portable
Speaker 1: handheld devices especially, and if they're sucking up all that
Speaker 1: power that has to come from somewhere, and you want
Speaker 1: to have a battery that's capable of keeping up or
Speaker 1: else you're recharging every you know, thirty minutes or whatever.
Speaker 1: So some people at M I T have been working
Speaker 1: on the next generation of batteries. Some of them have
Speaker 1: been working with lithium metal batteries, which is interesting because
Speaker 1: early lithium batteries were lithium metal batteries, but they were
Speaker 1: not terribly stable. They were not very safe, and that's
Speaker 1: when we started moving away from lithium metal batteries to
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries. But now we're looking at another move
Speaker 1: back to lithium metal where you can have essentially twice
Speaker 1: the capacity of the previous generation batteries but in the
Speaker 1: same size form factor, which would be huge. Um And
Speaker 1: when we'll see that in consumer products, I don't know,
Speaker 1: or if it will ever actually make it there, I
Speaker 1: don't know. UM. There's been a lot of attention aimed
Speaker 1: at batteries ever since the Galaxy Note issue. And that
Speaker 1: wasn't the breakthrough. I was talking about where things were
Speaker 1: poorly engineered the battery, where where fire was breaking through.
Speaker 1: That's that's not exactly what I was talking about in
Speaker 1: the literal sense. I guess technically it might might have
Speaker 1: actually got a point there, but that wasn't That wasn't
Speaker 1: the breakthrough I was thinking of. I am I gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta go on record and say I am glad
Speaker 1: that neither you nor I made the prediction that Samsung
Speaker 1: was going to suffer this terrible pr disaster as people
Speaker 1: were discovering their their devices catching fire, and I have
Speaker 1: to issue an enormous recall because if either of us
Speaker 1: had predicted that, it would sound like we had caused it. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the other prediction that would have caused more problems,
Speaker 1: that there would be a second recall. Yes, oh man.
Speaker 1: I flew to Berlin shortly after the second recall was announced,
Speaker 1: and uh, and every flight I was on, because I
Speaker 1: had to fly from Atlanta to Chicago first and then
Speaker 1: Chicago to Berlin and then coming back. It was reversing
Speaker 1: that that trip every airport and every announcement before getting
Speaker 1: on the flight involved like if you happen to have
Speaker 1: a Note seven, you can't take it on the plane.
Speaker 1: They even set up an exchange table at one of
Speaker 1: the airports where you were supposed to come in and
Speaker 1: exchange your phone for a different phone that would not
Speaker 1: presumably catch fire in the middle of the flight. So yeah,
Speaker 1: not neither of us were able to predict that. UM.
Speaker 1: I had a couple of rapid fire questions that I
Speaker 1: just asked, and we both gave our kind of our
Speaker 1: our opinions about. One of them was, well, we see
Speaker 1: a truly autonomous card debut in two thousand sixteen for
Speaker 1: consumer use, and both of us said, no, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen, and true to form, that didn't happen, although
Speaker 1: we did get a lot of driver assist systems that
Speaker 1: were being misused as if they were driver less cars,
Speaker 1: Tesla autopilot being the big example there. UM and I
Speaker 1: did a whole thing where I said, maybe calling it
Speaker 1: autopilot was the first mistake, because that sounds like it
Speaker 1: could just take over for you, and that that's You're fine. UM,
Speaker 1: it doesn't excuse people from ignoring the multitude of warnings
Speaker 1: that say, under no circumstances should you do that. But
Speaker 1: we saw some pretty tragic results of people misusing Tesla
Speaker 1: autopilot as if it were a driverless car. And as
Speaker 1: we both predicted, we don't have any driverless cars on
Speaker 1: the market for consumers just yet. Everyone's working on it, though.
Speaker 1: To be fair to the naming convention here, don't forget
Speaker 1: that there's a number of reports. I'm pretty sure these
Speaker 1: are These are real people deciding that they were going
Speaker 1: to hit cruise control on their vehicle and then going
Speaker 1: to the back of their vehicle or doing something else.
Speaker 1: Naming isn't everything. Yeah, now, there at least have been
Speaker 1: plenty of of scenes in movies and television where characters
Speaker 1: have done that to comedic of act, and I would
Speaker 1: not be surprised if those were in fact based upon
Speaker 1: true accounts. At some point or another. You make a
Speaker 1: good point. It's I think when I said it's the
Speaker 1: first mistake of calling it autopilot, I don't mean it's
Speaker 1: the only mistake, like it's the primary driver. As soon
Speaker 1: as anyone knows, Hey, this system that's in this car
Speaker 1: is such an advanced driver assist system. That it is
Speaker 1: essentially driving for you. Then it's you're you're inviting people
Speaker 1: to use it in ways that it was not intended. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, maybe we'll see a driverless car hit the
Speaker 1: market within the next couple of years. I don't think
Speaker 1: is going to be the year for it either, at
Speaker 1: least not one marketed as a driverless car. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a possibility. We still have a lot of
Speaker 1: people working on just getting the legality of driverless cars established.
Speaker 1: I was gonna mention I was gonnaation the legal loopholes,
Speaker 1: not loopholes to the hurdles. Excuse me that they would.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of work ahead. Yeah, and and it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to to dry how long that's
Speaker 1: going to take because it's unprecedented, right, A lot of
Speaker 1: the law that you know whenever we talk law, and
Speaker 1: and I as knows this way better than I do.
Speaker 1: He has training in law. Uh, but much of our
Speaker 1: laws based upon precedent and builds upon precedent. And when
Speaker 1: you get to two cases where it is, it requires
Speaker 1: a new new layer of thinking. It's a lot slower
Speaker 1: because you have to really put a lot of thought
Speaker 1: into how are you going to frame this so that
Speaker 1: you don't cause more problems further down the road in
Speaker 1: this case, both figuratively and literally. So um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: probably gonna take a while before we get truly autonomous
Speaker 1: cars marketed for the book. Now, let me ask you
Speaker 1: this just I know that we're not making predictions right now,
Speaker 1: but do you think we're gonna see autonomous cars more
Speaker 1: likely to be used in uh like, uh like a
Speaker 1: fleet kind of like Uber or lift before they would
Speaker 1: ever be available for individual consumer purchase. I think I
Speaker 1: know they're being tested right now. You can get into
Speaker 1: an Uber that's it's it's essentially driving itself, but there
Speaker 1: is an engineer sitting in the driver's seat. I think,
Speaker 1: I think I believe we're gonna see a lot of
Speaker 1: those happening before we see this the fleet allowed to
Speaker 1: be truly without anybody in the car, because I could
Speaker 1: also see the liability aspects just being through the roof.
Speaker 1: Just imagine some some guys decided to sit in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat of a driverless vehicle and then taking it over.
Speaker 1: That could be a huge nightmare as long as it
Speaker 1: as long as there are physical controls to take over.
Speaker 1: That does remain a problem. Right, So that's that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that I would have to be figured out.
Speaker 1: So fleet maybe I would actually think it probably happened
Speaker 1: in commercial usages. Maybe in trucks. Yeah, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: lead trucker. I think I've seen a couple of those
Speaker 1: already in testing. I think that would happen first because
Speaker 1: that's a an industry that's more used to being regulated.
Speaker 1: It sounds sounds very realistic to me. My next question
Speaker 1: was would we see any big company shakedowns with huge
Speaker 1: changes at the executive level. You had pointed out HTC
Speaker 1: and BlackBerry both had the potential to go that way.
Speaker 1: Neither of us were really certain. We knew that it
Speaker 1: was gonna happen because it happens every year. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about something as big as the tech industry. Clearly
Speaker 1: there's gonna be at least one shakedown somewhere. It doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, it might not necessarily be a top top
Speaker 1: name in technology, but it will definitely happen. So there
Speaker 1: were some big ones. Condie Nast, which is you could
Speaker 1: argue is not really a tech company, UH had a
Speaker 1: pretty significant executive shuffle, but they're they're moving from print
Speaker 1: based focus to digital focus. They've been concentrating on that
Speaker 1: for years, but the shakedown, moving things around and putting
Speaker 1: different executives into into new positions really had more to
Speaker 1: do with let's refocus this on creating a true digital business.
Speaker 1: Hyper Loop one had one of the most bizarre and
Speaker 1: dramatic stories. Did you follow any of the story of
Speaker 1: hyper Loop one and and the crazy stuff that was
Speaker 1: going on between the co founders. No, this I didn't
Speaker 1: know about. Yeah, so alright, so hyper Loop one is
Speaker 1: one of the companies that's working to create hyper loop
Speaker 1: as a reality. Hyper Loop, of course, is Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: little off the cuff suggestion. It's a little more than that,
Speaker 1: but he was very casual in the way he suggested
Speaker 1: this of an enclosed train system where you would pump
Speaker 1: out most of the air so it would be a
Speaker 1: near vacuum, but not a real vacuum, a very low
Speaker 1: pressure uh enclosed tunnel system and shoot trains through magnetic
Speaker 1: levitation at super high speeds so you can travel between
Speaker 1: say Los Angeles and San Francisco in like half an
Speaker 1: hour um, which would be pretty darn fast. And there
Speaker 1: are a couple of different companies that have been working
Speaker 1: on being the first to actually make this a reality.
Speaker 1: One of those is hyper Loop one. UM and the
Speaker 1: former cy TEO of Hyperloop one was Brogan bam Brogan,
Speaker 1: and that is his name, Brogan bam Brogan, who who
Speaker 1: actually came over from SpaceX to be an engineer for
Speaker 1: Hyperloop one. Uh. There was some sort of crazy falling
Speaker 1: out between Bam Brogan and the other co founders of
Speaker 1: the company, and bam Brogan was ousted from the company.
Speaker 1: He then sued his former co workers. They countersued him
Speaker 1: because they said that he was uh spreading untruths about them,
Speaker 1: including saying that one of the other executives had threatened
Speaker 1: him by placing a noose on his desk, which seems
Speaker 1: pretty extreme. Uh, don't know if it's true or not,
Speaker 1: but anyway, there was this big move of suing and countersuing,
Speaker 1: and then in November the whole thing was settled out
Speaker 1: of court. The terms were not disclosed. We don't know
Speaker 1: who was paid what or to what extent. But man,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about dramatic shakedown in the
Speaker 1: executive level, it tells me that I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to do an episode about hyper loop one just to
Speaker 1: really dig into what exactly happened. And uh and too
Speaker 1: because it is a crazy even the bit I've just
Speaker 1: talked about, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We
Speaker 1: saw some other sorry icebergs as uh well you know, uh,
Speaker 1: typically these are would we have to be figurative icebergs.
Speaker 1: You don't really get literal icebergs in enclosed train tubes
Speaker 1: at least not at Yeah, maybe that let's look for
Speaker 1: a hyperop version two point oh for iceberg integration. Intel
Speaker 1: also said goodbye to some executives U some folks who
Speaker 1: were in charge of the mobile chip divisions, the PC
Speaker 1: division and the Internet of Things division were either let
Speaker 1: go or replaced or or moved into a different position. UM.
Speaker 1: Intel has been struggling a little bit in this space
Speaker 1: because PC sales are starting to really well, they have
Speaker 1: been over the last few years on on the decline,
Speaker 1: and of course Intel's big businesses manufacturing chips for for
Speaker 1: personal computers, and that's still where they get most of
Speaker 1: their revenue. But uh, you know, it's they're they're trying
Speaker 1: to maintain relevancy in a world that is changing around them,
Speaker 1: so they've been reevaluating their priorities. I'm curious to see
Speaker 1: what their booth is going to look like this year.
Speaker 1: It's or next year. At CES, since we're still in
Speaker 1: UH and each trade changed several executive level positions in September,
Speaker 1: including replacing the chief executive officer, So there were some
Speaker 1: big shifts around at the executive level at various companies UM,
Speaker 1: but again that happens every year. UH. I also asked,
Speaker 1: are there any tech bubbles that will see burst in?
Speaker 1: And this is kind of similar to the executive shake
Speaker 1: up one. We're like, well, may maybe there There didn't
Speaker 1: seem to be anything that was just on the verge
Speaker 1: of imploding. I, as you said, maybe we will finally
Speaker 1: stop hearing the phrase the uber of whatever, Like this
Speaker 1: company is the uber of mobile game apps. I think
Speaker 1: that's actually right, though I don't don't remember hearing that
Speaker 1: phrase in a long time, or my brain is completely
Speaker 1: blocked it since the last year. Yeah, I I haven't
Speaker 1: heard it a whole lot either. I think I think
Speaker 1: part of that is due to the fact that as
Speaker 1: time goes on, I feel worse and worse about the
Speaker 1: company uber Like I don't I'm not terribly I'm not
Speaker 1: a big fan, Like I like the service just fine,
Speaker 1: but it's a company that makes me uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: way the executive leadership uh communicates. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: executives who are actively talking about a future in which
Speaker 1: they replace all human drivers with autonomous cars, which puts
Speaker 1: thousands of people out of work. Like You're you're saying
Speaker 1: this while these people are working for you. You're essentially announcing, Hey,
Speaker 1: your time is limited, your days are numbered, We're going
Speaker 1: to replace you. Keep driving. It doesn't that that rubs
Speaker 1: me the wrong way. Uh so anyway, but I also
Speaker 1: have not heard people use that phrase very much. Recently.
Speaker 1: I said that we probably see some food delivery services
Speaker 1: start to phase out due to too many players in
Speaker 1: the market space. I think actually there are more of them,
Speaker 1: at least in my neighborhood. So I'm not complaining because
Speaker 1: I'm lazy and I like it when food comes to me,
Speaker 1: So I'm alright with being wrong about that. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know that there is anything that's on the
Speaker 1: verge of imploding, like VR probably would have been the
Speaker 1: closest except for the fact that it hadn't really launched yet.
Speaker 1: So I think to implode you have to be big
Speaker 1: first and then fall apart. I think VRS problem is
Speaker 1: that it it's having a real issue getting traction, and
Speaker 1: so it may be more of a a fizzle rather
Speaker 1: than an implosion. Um. And I also, will any technology
Speaker 1: officially die in sixteen, I don't. I can't think of
Speaker 1: anything where you know, we we just say, oh, do
Speaker 1: you remember such and such? Yeah, that doesn't exist anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say some of the war obsolete
Speaker 1: quote unquote obsolete types of technology made a little bit
Speaker 1: of a comeback in like vinyl vinyl. Definitely I bought
Speaker 1: three vinyl albums on Saturday. Or no, I'm sorry on Friday.
Speaker 1: Well I guess technically one of them was on Saturday
Speaker 1: because it had passed midnight at that point. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I bought three vinyl albums just this past weekend.
Speaker 1: And or like we mentioned, eight millimeter film, we did
Speaker 1: I as You and I did an episode, not not
Speaker 1: the Predictions episode, but we did an episode about obsolete
Speaker 1: technologies once upon a time, and one of those we
Speaker 1: talked about was eight millimeter film. Well, CS code at
Speaker 1: came out with a new eight super eight and millimeter
Speaker 1: film camera, which was one of the big hits among
Speaker 1: my team. We all went crazy for it because it
Speaker 1: was a real kind of nostalgic throwback to how we
Speaker 1: all got started and shooting film. So maybe I am
Speaker 1: a little more gun shy about saying which pieces of
Speaker 1: technology are gonna die at this point. I did just find.
Speaker 1: I did just find while we were talking about this
Speaker 1: technology that did die this year. It was happened in July.
Speaker 1: Headline reads, the last known VCR maker stops production forty
Speaker 1: years after the VHS format launch. Now, yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: the last VHS tapes were being produced is the end
Speaker 1: of the VCR production, which is a very very sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can we can say that the VCR, I guess
Speaker 1: officially is dead now. Uh so, yeah, maybe there we go.
Speaker 1: There's one. Yeah. We we couldn't really think of any
Speaker 1: off the top of our heads when we were making
Speaker 1: these predictions. I also asked, do you think the Facebook
Speaker 1: Professional Services platform will be a success, and we were
Speaker 1: both very noncommittal, like, well, we don't know enough about
Speaker 1: it yet. Maybe it will be, we don't really know,
Speaker 1: and uh no, it got shut down in November, so
Speaker 1: I think we didn't really know about We never really
Speaker 1: got to know. I completely forgot that it existed until
Speaker 1: I saw the note and I'm like, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a thing and it didn't go anywhere. And then
Speaker 1: I asked, you do you think well, I said this
Speaker 1: this question wasn't for you because you're not as into
Speaker 1: computer games as I am. I asked, will the the
Speaker 1: game starts is and actually come out in so you
Speaker 1: had no opinion, I said it probably would not, and
Speaker 1: it was running the risk of becoming the next Nukem forever.
Speaker 1: A game that is, you know, is almost always just
Speaker 1: in development, and so it runs the danger by the
Speaker 1: time it finally comes out disappointing people because it's not
Speaker 1: what they were hoping it would be. It didn't come
Speaker 1: out into sixteen, or at least not since not by
Speaker 1: the time we're recording this AH, parts of the game
Speaker 1: have come out, like you can do little things that
Speaker 1: are connected to the game, but the game itself hasn't
Speaker 1: come out. People have poured a hundred and thirty one
Speaker 1: million dollars into this game, and there there are people
Speaker 1: who have spent thousands of dollars on video games spaceships
Speaker 1: for this game, and the game has not yet come out. Um,
Speaker 1: this game is weird. It's it's like the most successful
Speaker 1: game that hasn't come out yet. Uh so not. I'm
Speaker 1: not shocked that it didn't come out. I keep hoping
Speaker 1: that to see it come out. The last I saw
Speaker 1: there still wasn't a specific date that was being cited
Speaker 1: as the release date. But it's supposed to be coming
Speaker 1: out soon. Um. And the final question is when we
Speaker 1: can't answer, which was do you think Rogue one will
Speaker 1: be any good? I mean, we could answer that, but
Speaker 1: we can't answer whether or not it is good because
Speaker 1: we haven't seen it yet. I assume I as you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet, right, I have not seen it.
Speaker 1: In last year when you mentioned this to me, I
Speaker 1: had no idea this movie was being made. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: now you can't avoid the marketing for it. It's everywhere
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Rogue one the first of the spinoff Star
Speaker 1: Wars movies that are not directly part of the the
Speaker 1: main storyline, although this one is real darn close to it,
Speaker 1: since it's about the team that stole the plans for
Speaker 1: the Death Star, which play an important role in a
Speaker 1: little movie called Star Wars A New Hope. Do you
Speaker 1: know that there's no sequel to Rogue one coming that's
Speaker 1: been announced, because essentially the sequel to Rogue one is
Speaker 1: the New Hope. It's Star Wars. Did you see did
Speaker 1: you see the thing that hit the internet where someone
Speaker 1: like Disney furious that Rogue one sequel poster has leaked
Speaker 1: and it was the poster for Star Wars and New Hope.
Speaker 1: I did see that because that's I mean, that's essentially it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cute. That's a cute joke. Um. Yeah, still haven't
Speaker 1: seen it because it hasn't come out as of the
Speaker 1: time we're recording this podcast, so I'm still anticipating it.
Speaker 1: There's one of my coworkers here who maybe she's already
Speaker 1: seen it. She's got a lot of she's got a
Speaker 1: lot of clout over with the Star Wars folks, but
Speaker 1: she's positively like vibrating over excitement about seeing this movie.
Speaker 1: It's if you if you say Rogue one near her,
Speaker 1: her eyes just light up. So, um, here's hoping it
Speaker 1: will be a truly entertaining film for her sake if
Speaker 1: no one else's. And that's it. Those were all the
Speaker 1: predictions we made. I think we did okay, our big
Speaker 1: crazy predictions didn't necessarily come true, but in some cases
Speaker 1: even weirder things happened, and that's always fun. Um, did
Speaker 1: you have any any that you were like, Wow, man,
Speaker 1: I was. I was just either I was way closer
Speaker 1: than I thought, or I was just completely off base,
Speaker 1: you know it. It's looking back on the Prediction Show
Speaker 1: and seeing the results. I see that I'm consistently yearly
Speaker 1: fascinated with BlackBerry and a PC. It's this sickness I
Speaker 1: have because I keep seeing these two floundering companies which
Speaker 1: I've been covering for years, and so I guess it's
Speaker 1: it's Uh, although I didn't even think about BlackBerry this year,
Speaker 1: so that's waning, So maybe that's already over. I'm getting
Speaker 1: past it, So I was. I guess I'm a little
Speaker 1: surprised at things I've forgotten. Facebook even having that business thing,
Speaker 1: and Yahoo finally finding its proper suitor, or it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a new home. That seems like that was
Speaker 1: an inevitable So we'll see how this all shakes out
Speaker 1: over the long term. Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I'm going to be doing a
Speaker 1: Predictions episode which you guys out there will hear very
Speaker 1: shortly where I will predict what I think will happen
Speaker 1: in seventeen, a year filled with way more uncertainty than
Speaker 1: I think was. There's some big questions, particularly along the
Speaker 1: lines of things like what is the fate of net
Speaker 1: neutrality in twenty seventeen, Big tough questions, so I can't
Speaker 1: wait to tackle that one. It's gonna be a laugh
Speaker 1: riot and people, and I'm gonna try I I as
Speaker 1: is invited to do this as well. I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: and get some of my friends to send in a
Speaker 1: prediction or two if they like, and those will also
Speaker 1: be featured in the show. It'll mainly be me, but
Speaker 1: I will be happy to uh to feature some predictions
Speaker 1: from other folks. Will see how many people are able
Speaker 1: to respond. I gave them a little bit of time,
Speaker 1: but everyone's very busy this time of year, so we
Speaker 1: will try to get as many of those as we can.
Speaker 1: And um, I asked, where can people find your work?
Speaker 1: You can find my work at c net dot com
Speaker 1: or Twitter dot com slash I s I Y e Z.
Speaker 1: That's where I post pretty much everything and anything, and
Speaker 1: a lot on Instagram these days. Same user name at
Speaker 1: I as I y e zy because I think and
Speaker 1: I predict that Twitter, well, it's not long for this world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I wish I could say that's a bold prediction.
Speaker 1: But yeah, every day when I come on and I
Speaker 1: log onto Twitter, I think, I guess it's not this day. Yeah. Interesting. Also,
Speaker 1: if you do follow Ias on Instagram, you might learn
Speaker 1: a little something about the wonderful profession of professional wrestling.
Speaker 1: You never know. Oh good gosh, yes you will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, and it's awesome. All right, Well, guys, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. If you have any predictions
Speaker 1: for two thousand seventeen that you want to share with me,
Speaker 1: send them my way. Uh. The email addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of
Speaker 1: those is text stuff H s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again. Releasing for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: wh