December 18, 2024 • 44 mins
Other than a few big-swing failures, it’s been a bit of a holding pattern for consumer technologies this year, with many minor improvements but nothing truly revolutionary.
This week, Peter and Ben are unpacking all that and more as they dive into the consumer products and services from 2024 they thought were good, bad, and just plain silly.
Topics include the series of disappointments that were built-in artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, Dyson’s $800 headphones, the AI services they actually found useful, hot digital travel tips, a skin-smoothing LED mask and a whole lot more.
This is the last episode for the year and The Business of Tech will be back again with more great guests and tech news analysis on Jan 23, 2025.
Additional music by Music Unlimited from Pixabay.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
On the Business of Tech this week. It's our last
episode as we had into the summer season and the holidays.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We wanted to look at some of the tech we've
played with this year. Some of the stuff we love,
some of the stuff we were bewildered by or perplexed by,
and some of the stuff that was just a complete dud.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
This is the Business of Tech, powered by Two Degrees Business.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin. It's been a
sort of an interesting year for tech. I described it
in the listener this week as a gap year. It's
like all these great ideas we've had AI in twenty
twenty three, there was lots of really cool stuff came
out multimodal AI, chatbots and the like, but nothing that
(00:56):
really impressed. And they seem to be working away behind
the scenes with the hope that there will be some
really impressive stuff next year. And that sort of went
for some of the hardware stuff we saw as well.
What's your sort of if you wanted to wrap it
up in a bow, what would your takeaway be for
where sort of tech went in twenty twenty four in
terms of this sort of consumer tech space.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I think we've reached a point in consumer tech where
people were just kind of companies were just kind of
iterating and finding their next little step forward. And with
the launch of AI, I think they've seen it as
a time when they can try and do something really
new and reinnovate and whatever however you want to put it.
So I think this year was kind of a year
(01:40):
when these consumer tech companies are starting to try and
find their feet again figure out what the next big
step forward is working from this platform. Also, we know that,
like people aren't buying as much new stuff, so people
are holding onto their devices for longer. They're not necessarily
splashing out on the latest or if they've only got
(02:02):
you know, two or three generations ago. So that's really
what it's been to me is companies trying to find
something that will get everybody excited, and I don't know
if they have to be honest.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And we'll get to some of the sort of things
that have been bubbling away coming out of R and
D or prototypes or rumors we're hearing about what they're
working on that could be sort of new new formats
or game changes. But maybe let's start with just some
of the gadgets that impressed us this year. Is there
anything really that you reviewed or looked at or had
(02:36):
the opportunity to test drive where you thought, wow, that's
that's actually you know, it's expensive, but it's really worth
the money.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, I think weirdly, like, one of my favorite things
that I reviewed was the Motorola Razor that I reviewed
this year. I find it just surprisingly functional. And the
Android phones can be very hit and mess in terms
of the operating system layer, the kind of user interfaced
(03:04):
layer that that companies will put over it can slow
their phone down or it can be cumbersome, but Motorola
is really clean. I really enjoyed it, and the fact
that it's a flip phone with a nice big screen.
It's functional. I very much have enjoyed that phone, which
is an unusual thing for me to say, because I'm
not a super Android person at all.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well I am, and I tried that phone and loved it,
particularly that big display on the outside. It can easily
fit in a pocket, and obviously a throwback to the
iconic Razor from around I think two thousand and five,
two thousand and six something like that was just a
gangbuster phone in terms of sales. This is a bit
of a slow burn. It's quite expensive as well, isn't.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It one nine nine nine, so two thousand.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's pretty expensive.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It is quite expensive. But if you're a person who
travels a lot, who wants a nice compact phone that
is functional, and if you a you know, sick of
big phones, it's it's an awesome option. The other phone
that I've been wielding this year is the iPhone sixteen
Pro Max, which is kind of the other end of
(04:13):
the spectrum when it comes to phones. It's an Apple phone.
It's big, but I have also really enjoyed it. I mean,
it's an iPhone. It's got the little camera button, which
is useful to have, and the camera is pretty impressive.
I haven't found the camera button to be revolutionary. I
still don't really use it for zooming and stuff like
(04:35):
that because I find it a little bit fiddly, the
kind of touch press zooming. So I don't know. It's
hard to say a huge amount about an iPhone at
this point because they just haven't really done anything massively different.
And I'm including Apple Intelligence and that.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, so obviously the update came out. I always say
eighteen update just last Thursday, which allow Apple Intelligence features
to be available. Have you had a chance to play with.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Them a little bit? I have enjoyed the what do
they call them, the gen motion, that's the name they
gin moji with them, and it's a bit of fun,
you know. I made one that kind of looks like
my son holding his favorite stuff toy, and I sent
you one, didn't I yeh, yeh pretty cool. It was
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But I'm probably more interested in the, you know, the
productivity stuff like summarizing your emails in the mail app
and all that. Is it any good at doing that?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
No? Not really. They revamped the whole mail app and
they've put the thing on it where it sorts it
into different you know categories, your primary, your sales, and promotion,
and it's fine. Has some weird kind of backsteps in
terms of user interface where you go into an email
and then it brings up the whole thread and then
you have to tap on the email again to actually
(05:53):
load it. So they've added an extra tap in there
to fully load an email. I'm like, why would you
do that? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't feel
like a classic Apple update where it is all about usability,
and streamlining and user interface and making it as accessible
as possible. So yeah, I'm thinking I might even just
exit the mail app unless the next update really comes
(06:15):
out with something that makes it worth it.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
What about Supercharged Siri? Any improvement there?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, Siri can access chat GPT now, so it actually
answers questions when you have questions. I found it okay,
people have called it half baked. Probably still better than,
for example, the co Pilot laptop. Yes when I tried that,
better than Samsung's Ai, but still yeah, I think it's
just the technology. I think it's just the technology is
(06:43):
just not there to do what everybody was hoping it
would do, and big promises were made and unfortunately they
haven't been delivered on.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I got to say that the iPhone sixteen pro the
short time that I've spent with it, I've been thinking
of upgrading. I want to do a lot more video
stuff next year. Sorely tempted by it, just because I think,
you know that it is one of the best sort
of camera phones around, particularly that Max one. You know,
just the how feature rich that is that that I've
(07:12):
my mate I watched him using that button to very
good effect on a tripod, so he's a photography enthusiast
and he was getting real granular control with it, so
I was sort of all excited about that. And then
I started reviewing the OPO find x eight Pro, which
is the first upgrade since the fine x five, which
(07:35):
is what I'm using at the moment, and that's dyeing
that phone. But the fine x eight Pro is very
much a camera phone, so four fifty megapixel cameras, a
wide angle, an ultra wide, a telephoto, six times optical zoom.
So I'm thinking, you know, wow, this is actually designed
for photography. It's got some you know, mimicking the Apple one.
(07:57):
I guess it's got a physical button for for photography
as well. So if I want to stay in the
Android world, that's looking like a pretty good option. But
that's pretty expensive as well. That's a two thousand dollars phone,
and I guess, you know, we're a three horse race
in New Zealand when it comes to phones. It's Apple,
It's Samsung with the IS twenty four ULTRAE and it's
(08:19):
a very nice phone, and it's Opo at the moment
as well. Huaiwei has sort of died and then you'd
have some sort of cheap feature phones that are put
out as well, so there's not a heck of a
lot of choice and competition. Unfortunately, we don't have the
Google Pixel for instance.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, I've always found that fascinating that Google's never bothered
to properly launch the Pixel in New Zealand. It's not
unusual for Google though, to be fair, although I have
to say in terms of Google products that I have,
like this year, they did release a new Chrome cast
which was called it's not called the Chrome Cast anymore.
It's called the Google TV Streamer four K and it's
(08:55):
a little white box, quite nicely designed that sits on
your console or entertainment unit. And I have really found
that to be such a big step up from other
streamer dongles, which can be very limited in their processing capabilities.
But because this has a little bit more dedicated space,
it actually is just really nice to use, and we
(09:17):
use it now instead of the built in smart TV
on our TV, just because it has that slightly better
performance that makes it much smooth to use.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And it's also got an Ethernet port on it, right yeah, yeah,
and a great way to if you do have an
aging TV or something with a crappy user interface, a
great way to upgrade that experience. I was using for
a while that the fire Stick from Amazon to do
that on an old TV. And this year we went
(09:48):
to the launch of this, which was the new Panasonic
only TV's beautiful TVs. But the big differentiator this time
is they're actually based on the fire operating system. So
they've done a deal with Amazon to build that operating
system into their high end O lead TV's quite a
bold move to sort of tie your fortunes to this
(10:12):
massive e commerce and digital assistant giant, but it sort
of works. Did you have a decent play with it?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I didn't really get a chance to play with it
properly because it was, you know, it was a busy
event and they kind of did a little demo and
it looked okay, But I didn't get the I didn't
get a fire stick or anything like that, so I
haven't had a go.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
But you rate it, well, yeah, I've had it for
a few weeks, been using it at home here And
the good thing about these sort of new ole heads,
I mean, these are expensive TVs. This is a three
and a half thousand dollars TV. But it's got some
technic speakers built into it, like to a degree they've
(10:52):
never done before. So the audio is particularly good. But
it's got a lot of microphones in there, so you
can be across the road and to trigger Alexa to
turn on the TV, to control your smart devices, to
pull up my ring camera, who's at the front door.
All of that was done before on for instance, Samsung TVs,
but it was just really clunky, and the voice recognition
(11:16):
was not particularly good. But because they've optimized this for Alexa,
it's actually really effective. So I like that. One thing
I don't like about it is they you know, they're
pushing you. For instance, you have to log in with
an Amazon account, which annoys me because when my sister
comes here, she wants to log in on her Prime
(11:37):
account and she can't because you have to completely log
out of the whole TV and log in as her.
So that's slightly annoying. It just is another thing about
the way Amazon just tries to control the whole experience.
I think, you know, Google's a little bit more flexible.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, yeah, I quite like the more disparate nature of
that stuff, because it doesn't mean that you can have
the whole family kind of doing what they want to do,
and they need to do Google TV with the different
Google accounts that you can log in and just like
on the fly switch between them. So if I want
to watch my YouTube, then you know, then I can
(12:14):
log into my just quickly change over to my account
and then I don't have Miss Rachel or whatever it
is clogging up the works, which.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Not much happening. Really incremental gains in TV. I think
that probably the flagship TV was the Samsung IS ninety
five D. That's another oh lad, very expensive four and
a half thousand for the fifty five inch, but that's
a stunning, stunning TV. Samsung's embrace of oliad has really worked.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
TV is now like three years old, and because it's
o lad, it still feels really new, like there's no issues.
It's just really looks beautiful to this day. So Yeah,
the other lead technology really is the is kind of
set the standard and I think will remain for a
long time. I can't see it's going to anywhere else
(13:04):
really until we get to the point where it's like
holographic or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, another luxurious sort of gadget. I really enjoyed this year.
I've just sending it back. Unfortunately, the Dyson on track
headphones dyceon you think vacuum cleaners and fans and that
sort of stuff. So they a few years ago they
went into headphones quite controversially, was sort of just during
(13:31):
the COVID years. They came up with a pair of
headphones which also had a mask built into it for
filtering out horrible diseases and pathogens and the like, and
it was lambasted heavily. I think people in New York
and places like that. The wealthy commuters sort of liked it,
(13:51):
but really didn't take off. They've ditched that aspect off
it with the on track headphones and they're just a supercharged,
high end pair of headphones to compete sort of with
the what's Apple's sort of headphones called the Max or something, yeah,
which are beautiful and bows and they're high end ones.
But these are eight hundred dollars pair of headphones. But
(14:14):
the noise canceling. I went to the US on the plane,
I really struggle to sleep on a plane. I put
these things on, and not only was the active noise
canceling just incredible, it just sort of deadened everything, but
they're so big the earphone pads that you can basically
rest against the wall with these things and have have
(14:34):
sort of a pillow effect. So oversized, very hipster design,
so you know, flashy color. It is not really my
sort of design asthetic, but man, if you want high
quality audio, that that's got to be up there.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, they look interesting. I don't know if they are
my dial, but yeah, that cushion does look very luxurious.
Look that I mean. I'm I'm still using my Sony XM.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Fives and they're great.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
They're awesome headphone and I love them to death. So
again when I'm on a plane as well, check them on.
Checked the noise canceling on with nothing behind it, and
it's super helpful for trying to get to sleep. Also,
the the other headphones that I found really made well.
Two headphones I've found amazing this year which are true
wireless in ear headphones, and the first one were the
(15:27):
the Technics headphones, and I believe you would have a
pair of those as well. Yeah, they're great, the A
Z eighties and really surprisingly good for the price, Like
they're the under four hundred dollars under three fifty I think,
and I have just I used them for quite a
while and just found them extraordinarily good. But maybe one
(15:48):
of my favorite pairs of true wireless headphones i've tried.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
They're great, even the AD forties. I don't like to spend,
you know, three or four hundred dollars on a pier because,
like I lost one when I was out in my
paddleboard a couple of months ago and I went to
shuffle through my songs and one of my ear bloods
fell out into the drink. So they're a bit sort
(16:12):
of unfortunately, a bit disposable for me. So so those
ones are the lower end ones, surprisingly good entry level
for about one hundred and forty dollars, and that's typically
what I like to pay for whiless earbuds because they
end up disappearing.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, understandable. Yeah. I also have been reviewing the new
Apple AirPods, not the pro but the standard ones with
active noise canceling, and I was really unsure because without
those silicon tips, how are they going to do proper
active noise canceling. But yeah, really impressed by those. And
(16:48):
don't tell Apple, but I did accidentally put them all
through the wash and they were absolutely fine. So I
survived there. They survived that. I put the whole container
with the two air pods in it, right through the
whole wash cycle, and I just chucked them in the
hot water cupboard for a day and they were fine.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
That's incredible because they're not it's not a waterproof container,
so that was sloshing around.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, no, it was. It was definitely pretty wet in that.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Wow. Oh, that's good endorsement. Looking a bit now at
some of the services that we may have tried during
the year. One I wanted to call out Erlo, which
is a quite a cheap e SIM service if you're
(17:37):
going abroad, and I did it a couple of times
this year rather than roaming is obviously super expensive, and
there are lots of options for international e sims to
add a second SIM to your to your phone if
you have capability on your phone, which most modern phones
do have. And I've always found it a bit clunky
some of the other providers, but this one is great.
(17:59):
You just download the app. The plans start really reasonable,
about ten dollars for a week's coverage a couple of
gig and sixty minutes of calling and sixty texts or something.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Like that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
But what I really liked about it it just automates
the whole process of activating the eSIMs. So I got
to lax, got on the Wi Fi, went into the
Rallo app, and it just did the whole thing. I
didn't have to mess around, which is a different experience
to what I've had before. And you know, just one
of several now that are doing this the whole I
(18:35):
guess the virtual network operator thing has taken off on
an international basis, So if you are going abroad, really
look at alternatives to your roaming plan, which are typically
quite expensive if you go for beyond a week or two.
And I found I was in the States for a
couple of weeks earlier this year, and that was just
perfect for me. It costs about thirty bucks and was
(18:58):
everything I needed.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, that's super interesting. I haven't traveled in a while,
so that's a really great suggestion because it can get
pretty expensive pretty quickly if you're paying for your paying
for your roaming. My mum did travel this year and
she was trying to figure out how she was going
to spend money while she was over in the States,
and she was talking about getting a tourist card through
(19:22):
a New Zealand. I can't remember what they're called now,
but and it was kind of thinking about exchange rates
and what she was going to do, and I said, look,
go check out the service called wise and she was like, oh,
that was great. It was awesome. It was so easy
to use. So I think the rise of FinTechs as well,
in terms of being able to spend internationally with massively
(19:47):
reduced costs in terms of currency conversion, things like Wiser
or or so really worth checking out.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
We've talked in previous episodes about our experience with blue
Sky in terms of social media. I mean, this is
a free service. It's not like X where to get
longer character limits and stuff like that you have to
pay a monthly fee. So blue Sky is set up
as on a sort of not for profit basis at
(20:17):
the moment anyway, and is really becoming the alternative for
people who are a bit disillusioned with X and really
gaining some traction. I'm really starting to use it on
a daily basis, which I haven't done with Threads or
mastered on or anything else. So there's just enough momentum building.
Now do you think that's going to carry on into
(20:37):
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, I think so. I don't know if it's going
to the acceleration will continue. I think that will slow
down and growth will continue, but at a slower rate.
But I love it. I love being on Blue Sky.
It's nice. You can be quite specific about who you are, like,
you know, it really does just let you do what
you kind of want to do. In terms of following,
(21:00):
you can just get the feed from the people you're following.
You can add a little bit of extra with the
Discover feature, and it brings in some other stuff that
thinks you know everybody might like, and then you have
your feeds for science or tech or I don't know,
I'm assuming there are ones for cat shows or whatever.
(21:20):
So yeah, I really rate the list guy. I will
keep using it throughout the next year. I'd imagine probably
increase my use of it. A pretty slack person in
terms of actually posting, but I do occasionally throw something
up there that I, you know, a bit of an
opinion or a reference to a work that I've done
or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, and we've both been testing various AI services this year,
so my go to one has become Perplexity. It's expensive
for Perplexity Pro is twenty dollars US per month, which
is the same as chat gpt Pro, but I absolutely
(21:59):
love it. Sort of revolutionized how I do research. I've
also been using Gemini because I use Google Workspace for
all my productivity and email, so Perplexity doesn't plug into
that in a in a compelling way, whereas Gemini is
native to Google Drive and Gmail. Really loving Gemini, but
(22:20):
if I'm going to sacrifice one, because that's also quite expensive,
I'll stick with Perplexity.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I think I haven't bit the bullet and paid for
any services this year, so I've been using my work
provided service, which is co Pilot. Oh yeah, it's most
mediocre experience imaginable. Occasionally I'll dip into chat GPTs free
service when it's nonsensitive stuff. But my favorite is Notebook LM,
(22:48):
Google's Notebook LM. I just adore the service. It's free
that doesn't use the stuff that you upload for training,
and it's kind of like an on the fly retrieval
AUGANI to degenerate of ai, a rag ai as they
call it. You can chuck in a bunch of documents
into into a kind of notebook. They call it and
then you can interrogate those documents through chat. You can
(23:11):
ask questions, you can get it to make suggestions, and
then you can, of course, if you really want, to
make a little podcast about it with AI hosts. But
that really is a gimmick, and I think it was
I think it was actually I think it actually detracted
from the tool the hype around the podcast, because when
I mentioned it, people are like, oh, that's the podcast thing, right,
(23:32):
I'm like, but it's so much more.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It's pretty incredible though. I've feared a quite a complex
scientific paper into notebook earlim and it and it generated
the cliched sort of podcast with the West Coast and
you know, soft American eccience and all that sort of stuff.
But it was incredible just how how accurately it summarized
(23:55):
this really complex piece of research. So so it's obviously
doing that in document form as well. It's coming up
with context on things. My big concern why I don't
use it so much as I'm working with a lot
of sensitive documents. I really don't want them escaping anywhere else.
So as long as they are truly protecting your privacy,
not holding onto those and scanning them because obviously the
(24:18):
big nightmare is that stuff appearing somewhere else because it's
ended up in their model. They say specifically, they're not
using your data to train their model. Are they retaining
the data? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, it's a good question. I'm taken them at their
word and saying that they don't. And I think that
it makes sense because at the moment where we are
with large language models, they the ingesting of data has
reached a kind of saturation point. People are talking about
it and saying more data isn't diminishing returns at this point,
(24:53):
so they're probably not desperate for extra things to put
in there. So I kind of take them at their
word that they're not ingesting it and using it in
whole holding it. But yeah, like to your point, I
put a financial report in there, and I couldn't find
a piece of information that I was looking for, so
I asked, I put it in any way, and I
asked notebook LM. I said, what is the you know,
(25:13):
how much are they spending on wages and salary for employees?
And they went, oh, it's this much. It comes under
this particular heading, And I was like, I had no
idea that the term short term business expenses actually encompassed
employee salary in wages, and so it was able to
tell me that, and I just went and checked it
(25:34):
to make sure that that was accurate, and it was,
and so I was able to use that in my reporting.
But easily one of my favorite generative AI tools this year.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, another one I've just signed up for, so I've
only just started using it as as open Ayes Sora
video generation tool. So this has been hyped quite a lot.
If you want some stock sort of video as a
pre roll into some of your own generative video, it
could be quite useful, but still got a long way
(26:04):
to go to actually be useful as a self contained
sort of short film where you have three or four
minutes and a narrative. It will put that together for you,
but there's going to be flaws in ther glitchy things
still which sort of take you out of the experience.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
In the looking ahead section. I guess Google has also
announced their own Saura competitor, VO two. It's like an
updated version of that that they are claiming is even better,
So that will be interesting when they come out. On
AI video In general, there was also that fully AI
generated advert for Brentworth wool carpets this year. I don't
know if you saw that one.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
No, I didn't.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, it was quite cool. I quite rated it. I
think it worked because it was kind of abstract and
it was, you know, advertised as being a generative AI advert,
so we'll link to that. It's interesting to watch. There
have been so many cases of bad uses of generative
AI for marketing and these kinds of things, but I
think what it does show is that we are entering
(27:03):
a world where generatively I can be used in a
positive way for marketing. In terms of job losses and
what that's actually going to mean for the people who
work in that area, I don't know, and it does
make me feel a little uncomfortable. But the reality is
is that marketing and you know, is a value driven
(27:25):
space and people are always looking to do things cheaper
and faster, and if that's what it offers, then that's
what it offers. And there is a new Zealand company
as well, Matter Studio that is generating backgrounds that you
can put your product onto. So yeah, you know, it's
it's definitely coming for that industry in terms of advertising.
(27:48):
And marketing.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Just before we jump ahead to look at twenty twenty
five and some of the tech that we expect to
emerge here. I just wanted to call out a few
other things. The rides I did in San Francisco were incredible,
incredible experience, and I think if and when that takes
off and other cities around the world, it will take
(28:11):
a long time, I think, to come to New Zealand,
but that's going to be a game changer. I also
took a Tesla Model three. Friends has one of those.
I took that around to Hawk's Bay recently and used
this sort of the self driving assisted sort of thing,
which I found incredible as well. I actually got in
trouble because I took my hands off the steering wheel
(28:35):
because I was expecting it to do the driving for me.
But that turned out to be one strike against the driver.
You get three strikes before they turn that feature off.
So I'm sorry from my friend for doing that. But
I am looking at getting an EV at some point
in the next couple of years, and I've been really
(28:56):
impressed with the Tesla Model three. The BYD three was
another one, but plastically sort of interior not really my thing.
But man, a price of evs this year. You know,
you're getting the Model three is still quite expensive, but
you're getting the Atto. You're getting the Pulstar two now
for fifty thousand dollars with a when you take in
(29:20):
the five thousand dollars cash rebate you get on it.
So they're obviously struggling to EV makers. So there's actually
some pretty good deals out there. What you have to
consider now is obviously road user charges and acc levees
are going to increase for EV owners as well. So
a lot of my friends who own them already are
feeling a little bit miffed that they were incentivized to
(29:41):
get into this and they're still saving money compared to
a petrol engine, but maybe not as much as they expected.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah. Look, we've got a plug in hybrid, but it's
an older one. It's like a twenty sixteen, and so
the battery on it isn't great, so we don't get
a lot of K's pure battery. So it really does
most of the time rate more like a non plug
in hybrid, like a regular hybrid, but we still have
to pay the bloody road user charges on that. I
think they haven't really done a great job, because there
(30:13):
are going to be plugging hybrids where you'll get fifty
to one hundred k's on ev ours is more like twenty,
So it feels a little bit unfair, but hey, I
guess you know, eventually we are going to be moving
into that space where every car has a flat road
user charge anyway rather than petrol taxes. So once we
(30:35):
get there, really it's not going to make much difference.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, Starlink, I was very impressed. I went to the
Cook Islands, there was a big mobile outage there and
they just happened that day to be installing Stylink in
the airbnb we were out. I wasn't just incredibly impressed
at how easy it was for them to set that up.
It was literally a fifteen minute job, and then I
(31:01):
was online fast transfer speeds. So that is an absolute
game changer, and I think that's reflected in just the
uptake at least thirty seven thousand, probably more like forty
thousand connections in New Zealand. Now they're generating something like
seventy out eighty million dollars in revenue in New Zealand.
So in the space of a couple of years they've
(31:21):
just come from out of nowhere to be a major
telecommunications provider. They've just launched Stylink Mini, so the main
Stylink terminal they keep heavily discounting it. That's three hundred
and ninety nine dollars, and then you pay seventy nine
dollars a month for residential light. They've re badged that recently.
It used to be called a deprioritized plan and one
(31:44):
hundred and fifty nine for prioritize, so obviously that branding
was not ideal, so they've rebranded it. But Stylin Mini
is actually more expensive terminal. It's six hundred ninety nine,
very compact, you can put it in a backpack. But
for people in rural areas, people who have flaky coverage
and can afford it, especially if you can afford to
(32:05):
pay one hundred and fifty nine dollars a month if
you have a small business. Wow, what a great service.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Let's get into some of the kind of weird and
wacky stuff that we maybe didn't try, but we have
seen around and think is worth chatting about. You have
here one that really peaked my interest, which was the
thoroughface mass. So can you give a little bit of
a background on why that's on our list.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, we'll put an image of this on the website
because it is quite bizarre. FDA cleared. Apparently, it's an
LED face mask that delivers red and red plus for
red and blue light onto your skin, as well as
so called tension relieving vibration therapy, so vibrates your skin
(32:54):
to give you healthier looking skin with a visible reduction
and fine lines and dark spots and as little as
eight weeks.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Fair a face. Get in touch. If you'd like to
use that as your voiceover for your ads, I'm sure
we can arrange a deal.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Seven hundred bucks Australia. I have seen a few skincare
sort of stores and beauty treatment places are selling it here,
so it's probably more like eight hundred bucks. Look, I've
got no idea of the efficacy of this sort of thing.
It looks ridiculous. It probably feels ridiculous to weird as well,
particularly if this thing is vibrating on your face. But look,
(33:29):
they're selling a truckload of them in the US by
the looks of things.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, look, I had a good look because I was
curious as to whether it would work, and from trying
to unearth these clinical Some of these clinical studies, a
lot of them are small scale. So I looked at
some meta studies and they do appear to have some
evidence of efficacy when using LED lights. I don't know
if you need an eight hundred dollars mask to deliver
(33:55):
LED lights to your face. I'm sure they're probably more
cost effective ways of doing it. But look, if you
want to have the latest and greatest, then that seems
like a good option.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
A few sort of big fails I think this year. Obviously,
the Rabbit R one and the Humane AI pin needs
sort of AI devices, so trying to build a piece
of hardware with an AI assistant built into it really
fell flat. The Apple Vision Pro I had to play
with it, loved it. I think it's a stunning device,
(34:34):
but it's it's a device with nowhere to go at
the moment. Really, they've stopped production off the the Vision
Pro while they figure out how to create a cheaper model.
And the co Pilot Plus PCs were probably the most
overhyped and underperforming sort of segments off the year. We
looked at a Microsoft Surface Book, which was an okay device,
(34:57):
but you know, based on arm processes a Snapdragon processes.
This is a big move by Microsoft to partner up
with arm. It's still only like one percent of the market,
so it really hasn't taken off this year. And just
the underwhelming performance of Copilot as well, using a supercharge
version of paint to create landscapes and you know, having
(35:21):
Copilot in the background there. But you know you have
to pay for all the good stuff to summarize your
email and create PowerPoint slides and all that sort of thing.
So not a great start.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Blah blah.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I say, yeah, So, just wrapping up, Ben, let's gaze
forward to twenty twenty five. I mean, as I said,
I think this is a bit of a gap year.
Do you expect to see any major advances in any
particular categories off tech in twenty twenty five? If so,
which ones are you sort of picking to be quite spectacular? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
I don't know if we'll see the massive leap forward
in twenty twenty five. It's possible, but I do think
and you put it here, but smart glasses, I don't
know whether they're going to be something that people will
generally wear all the time, but I think they might
start to find their niches for certain uses a lot
more so the soul sol e reader glasses, which some
(36:18):
people seem to really like. So you put glasses on
and you've got your book there and you read that way.
So yeah, I might say that we might finally see
some strong consumer products in the glasses market coming out.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah, you've got Meta unveiled Oriyan that will be a
few years away, but that is their big play for
smart glasses. They've already got the ray bands out there
at the moment, which aren't available here, but they have
AI functionality built into them, so they will progress that.
Google unveiled Android XR, it's platform for smart glasses, just
(36:58):
last week. Soviously Google Glass was a failure for Google,
but they've never given up on that idea, and so
I'm pretty excited about that as someone who lives in
the Google world. To be able to have Google Maps
come up in the bottom of the lens of your
glass showing you where to go, to be able to
recognize buildings and objects and give you information about them
(37:19):
without having to take out your phone and look at it.
Love the idea of that. I think that's the future
of format that's going to reduce our alliance on that
rectangle in our pocket all the time, so love that.
The other category, I think we will see a lot
of progress. We probably probably won't see them walking around yet,
but as humanoid robots, we've seen a lot of progress
(37:43):
with the Atlas robot, for instance, from Boston Robotics that
moved from sort of a hydraulic design to fully electric design,
so that's made it a lot more effective. This stuff
will be useful both in the industrial and business context,
but also in the aged care industry and in hospitality
(38:04):
in retael and hopefully one day as a humanoid companion
for all of us.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
I don't know about hopefully. Maybe I don't know why
we need it to be humanoid. I'm still confused on
that point. But you know, maybe I'm a luddite when
it comes to these particular things. I still push back
a little bit on the idea that we need something humanoid,
but hey, I could be wrong. One of our listeners
Michael Spicer. He pointed to a company called proto Hologram,
(38:33):
which can produce these boxes that you can show a
holographic three D representation so it looks like it's standing
in your space of a person or an object and
it's kind of a neat thing proto hologram. I just
wanted to call that out. I think it's interesting and
(38:53):
could potentially progress in the coming years to change the
way that we communicate. Probably not next year, but maybe
down the line. You know, rather than just having FaceTime,
we could actually hologram in to visit people in hospital
or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Well, we've seen a few high profile examples of that,
I think when one New Zealand Jason Parris did a
holographic sort of thing on stage. So we've seen it
sort of very high end holograph stuff that needs a
team of engineers to make sure it all works. But
as you say, when it is a replacement for FaceTime
(39:30):
where you can literally put your phone down and create
a holograph, that's very powerful and it's very difficult to do,
so it's going to take a while, but it is possible,
technically possible. I've seen some great holographic stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, definitely one to watch, and yeah, I think Apple
going foldable seems to be something that may happen next year.
Foldable technology, obviously, it's come a long way, is pretty smooth. Now,
Like we mentioned, the Motorola razer. But Apple might finally
be bowing to pressure and delivering us a foldable starting
with the iPad.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, the rumors are just in the last couple of
weeks a twenty inch iPad foldable iPad. And the thing
that Apple really don't like about foldables is the crease.
They want a flawless They're moving to olead screens, so
they want to flawless o lead experience beautiful display, which
the iPad is well known for. So they're working on
(40:26):
a way to completely eliminate the crease. And they think
they're on the right track. So whether we see an
iPad debut first or a foldable iPhone effectively a flip
phone for the iPhone, they've moved into the formal R
and D stage and product development off that. So they've
(40:47):
got prototypes, but now they're moving closer towards something that
they will produce as a mass market device.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
And I guess the big thing that we can expect
if the rumors are true is agentic A Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, well that's again overhyped and a bit underwhelming. At
the moment, they're out there, the agents are out there.
You can as a salesforce agent you can go in
and create one of these things to I guess, automate
a task. But you know when it gets really useful
is when we can set up agents ourselves in our lives.
(41:25):
It's not just when you're interacting with a big company
that will automate things on your behalf. It's like, Okay,
I want you to respond to my emails and put
stuff in my calendar and organize my documents in this
way and do it all autonomously, and I will keep
check and balances and keep oversight off it. That's what
(41:47):
I really want. And we're still some way away from that,
I think.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah, and I think we will remain so for several years.
I think that the promises of it coming in twenty
twenty five may be greatly exaggerated personally from what I'm seeing.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
I just.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I just think that we've got a lot of excited
companies who want to make their shareholders feel good. But yeah,
so that's twenty twenty four's Gadgets and Review. Did we
miss any Let us know what was something super exciting
that you thought that you played with or saw this
year that you think we should have mentioned, And what's
(42:26):
the thing that you're most looking forward to next year.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Get in touch with us. We've got a LinkedIn page
the Business of Tech podcast. We'd love you to follow
that and a great way to keep up to date
with all of our updates. But you can find Being
and Myself on LinkedIn. We're also still clinging on on
x Sick for Yourself Blue Sky as well, so increasing
you'll find this on blue Sky and LinkedIn. But you
(42:53):
know that was episode eighty one of the Business of Tech.
We'd love to hear your feedback from what you'd like
to hear more off next year as season three off
The Business of Tech, and we will be featuring some
of the top thinkers and leaders in technology once again
from New Zealand and around the world.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Who do you want us to speak to? Think? Beg
Think you know, if you could hear us speak to
anybody in the world, let us know who that would be.
No holds, but we're really looking forward to next year.
Thank you so much for sticking with us throughout this
year and we hope that this has been a nice
bit of light relief at the end of a long
(43:33):
year for you.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
It has been a tough year, a lot of people
doing it very tough a lot of people in business struggling,
so hopefully take a decent break, recharge, reset, have a
great Christmas and New Year, and we'll see you in
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
So you then
On the Business of Tech this week. It's our last
episode as we had into the summer season and the holidays.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We wanted to look at some of the tech we've
played with this year. Some of the stuff we love,
some of the stuff we were bewildered by or perplexed by,
and some of the stuff that was just a complete dud.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
This is the Business of Tech, powered by Two Degrees Business.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin. It's been a
sort of an interesting year for tech. I described it
in the listener this week as a gap year. It's
like all these great ideas we've had AI in twenty
twenty three, there was lots of really cool stuff came
out multimodal AI, chatbots and the like, but nothing that
(00:56):
really impressed. And they seem to be working away behind
the scenes with the hope that there will be some
really impressive stuff next year. And that sort of went
for some of the hardware stuff we saw as well.
What's your sort of if you wanted to wrap it
up in a bow, what would your takeaway be for
where sort of tech went in twenty twenty four in
terms of this sort of consumer tech space.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I think we've reached a point in consumer tech where
people were just kind of companies were just kind of
iterating and finding their next little step forward. And with
the launch of AI, I think they've seen it as
a time when they can try and do something really
new and reinnovate and whatever however you want to put it.
So I think this year was kind of a year
(01:40):
when these consumer tech companies are starting to try and
find their feet again figure out what the next big
step forward is working from this platform. Also, we know that,
like people aren't buying as much new stuff, so people
are holding onto their devices for longer. They're not necessarily
splashing out on the latest or if they've only got
(02:02):
you know, two or three generations ago. So that's really
what it's been to me is companies trying to find
something that will get everybody excited, and I don't know
if they have to be honest.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And we'll get to some of the sort of things
that have been bubbling away coming out of R and
D or prototypes or rumors we're hearing about what they're
working on that could be sort of new new formats
or game changes. But maybe let's start with just some
of the gadgets that impressed us this year. Is there
anything really that you reviewed or looked at or had
(02:36):
the opportunity to test drive where you thought, wow, that's
that's actually you know, it's expensive, but it's really worth
the money.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, I think weirdly, like, one of my favorite things
that I reviewed was the Motorola Razor that I reviewed
this year. I find it just surprisingly functional. And the
Android phones can be very hit and mess in terms
of the operating system layer, the kind of user interfaced
(03:04):
layer that that companies will put over it can slow
their phone down or it can be cumbersome, but Motorola
is really clean. I really enjoyed it, and the fact
that it's a flip phone with a nice big screen.
It's functional. I very much have enjoyed that phone, which
is an unusual thing for me to say, because I'm
not a super Android person at all.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well I am, and I tried that phone and loved it,
particularly that big display on the outside. It can easily
fit in a pocket, and obviously a throwback to the
iconic Razor from around I think two thousand and five,
two thousand and six something like that was just a
gangbuster phone in terms of sales. This is a bit
of a slow burn. It's quite expensive as well, isn't.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It one nine nine nine, so two thousand.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's pretty expensive.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It is quite expensive. But if you're a person who
travels a lot, who wants a nice compact phone that
is functional, and if you a you know, sick of
big phones, it's it's an awesome option. The other phone
that I've been wielding this year is the iPhone sixteen
Pro Max, which is kind of the other end of
(04:13):
the spectrum when it comes to phones. It's an Apple phone.
It's big, but I have also really enjoyed it. I mean,
it's an iPhone. It's got the little camera button, which
is useful to have, and the camera is pretty impressive.
I haven't found the camera button to be revolutionary. I
still don't really use it for zooming and stuff like
(04:35):
that because I find it a little bit fiddly, the
kind of touch press zooming. So I don't know. It's
hard to say a huge amount about an iPhone at
this point because they just haven't really done anything massively different.
And I'm including Apple Intelligence and that.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, so obviously the update came out. I always say
eighteen update just last Thursday, which allow Apple Intelligence features
to be available. Have you had a chance to play with.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Them a little bit? I have enjoyed the what do
they call them, the gen motion, that's the name they
gin moji with them, and it's a bit of fun,
you know. I made one that kind of looks like
my son holding his favorite stuff toy, and I sent
you one, didn't I yeh, yeh pretty cool. It was
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But I'm probably more interested in the, you know, the
productivity stuff like summarizing your emails in the mail app
and all that. Is it any good at doing that?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
No? Not really. They revamped the whole mail app and
they've put the thing on it where it sorts it
into different you know categories, your primary, your sales, and promotion,
and it's fine. Has some weird kind of backsteps in
terms of user interface where you go into an email
and then it brings up the whole thread and then
you have to tap on the email again to actually
(05:53):
load it. So they've added an extra tap in there
to fully load an email. I'm like, why would you
do that? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't feel
like a classic Apple update where it is all about usability,
and streamlining and user interface and making it as accessible
as possible. So yeah, I'm thinking I might even just
exit the mail app unless the next update really comes
(06:15):
out with something that makes it worth it.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
What about Supercharged Siri? Any improvement there?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, Siri can access chat GPT now, so it actually
answers questions when you have questions. I found it okay,
people have called it half baked. Probably still better than,
for example, the co Pilot laptop. Yes when I tried that,
better than Samsung's Ai, but still yeah, I think it's
just the technology. I think it's just the technology is
(06:43):
just not there to do what everybody was hoping it
would do, and big promises were made and unfortunately they
haven't been delivered on.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I got to say that the iPhone sixteen pro the
short time that I've spent with it, I've been thinking
of upgrading. I want to do a lot more video
stuff next year. Sorely tempted by it, just because I think,
you know that it is one of the best sort
of camera phones around, particularly that Max one. You know,
just the how feature rich that is that that I've
(07:12):
my mate I watched him using that button to very
good effect on a tripod, so he's a photography enthusiast
and he was getting real granular control with it, so
I was sort of all excited about that. And then
I started reviewing the OPO find x eight Pro, which
is the first upgrade since the fine x five, which
(07:35):
is what I'm using at the moment, and that's dyeing
that phone. But the fine x eight Pro is very
much a camera phone, so four fifty megapixel cameras, a
wide angle, an ultra wide, a telephoto, six times optical zoom.
So I'm thinking, you know, wow, this is actually designed
for photography. It's got some you know, mimicking the Apple one.
(07:57):
I guess it's got a physical button for for photography
as well. So if I want to stay in the
Android world, that's looking like a pretty good option. But
that's pretty expensive as well. That's a two thousand dollars phone,
and I guess, you know, we're a three horse race
in New Zealand when it comes to phones. It's Apple,
It's Samsung with the IS twenty four ULTRAE and it's
(08:19):
a very nice phone, and it's Opo at the moment
as well. Huaiwei has sort of died and then you'd
have some sort of cheap feature phones that are put
out as well, so there's not a heck of a
lot of choice and competition. Unfortunately, we don't have the
Google Pixel for instance.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, I've always found that fascinating that Google's never bothered
to properly launch the Pixel in New Zealand. It's not
unusual for Google though, to be fair, although I have
to say in terms of Google products that I have,
like this year, they did release a new Chrome cast
which was called it's not called the Chrome Cast anymore.
It's called the Google TV Streamer four K and it's
(08:55):
a little white box, quite nicely designed that sits on
your console or entertainment unit. And I have really found
that to be such a big step up from other
streamer dongles, which can be very limited in their processing capabilities.
But because this has a little bit more dedicated space,
it actually is just really nice to use, and we
(09:17):
use it now instead of the built in smart TV
on our TV, just because it has that slightly better
performance that makes it much smooth to use.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And it's also got an Ethernet port on it, right yeah, yeah,
and a great way to if you do have an
aging TV or something with a crappy user interface, a
great way to upgrade that experience. I was using for
a while that the fire Stick from Amazon to do
that on an old TV. And this year we went
(09:48):
to the launch of this, which was the new Panasonic
only TV's beautiful TVs. But the big differentiator this time
is they're actually based on the fire operating system. So
they've done a deal with Amazon to build that operating
system into their high end O lead TV's quite a
bold move to sort of tie your fortunes to this
(10:12):
massive e commerce and digital assistant giant, but it sort
of works. Did you have a decent play with it?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I didn't really get a chance to play with it
properly because it was, you know, it was a busy
event and they kind of did a little demo and
it looked okay, But I didn't get the I didn't
get a fire stick or anything like that, so I
haven't had a go.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
But you rate it, well, yeah, I've had it for
a few weeks, been using it at home here And
the good thing about these sort of new ole heads,
I mean, these are expensive TVs. This is a three
and a half thousand dollars TV. But it's got some
technic speakers built into it, like to a degree they've
(10:52):
never done before. So the audio is particularly good. But
it's got a lot of microphones in there, so you
can be across the road and to trigger Alexa to
turn on the TV, to control your smart devices, to
pull up my ring camera, who's at the front door.
All of that was done before on for instance, Samsung TVs,
but it was just really clunky, and the voice recognition
(11:16):
was not particularly good. But because they've optimized this for Alexa,
it's actually really effective. So I like that. One thing
I don't like about it is they you know, they're
pushing you. For instance, you have to log in with
an Amazon account, which annoys me because when my sister
comes here, she wants to log in on her Prime
(11:37):
account and she can't because you have to completely log
out of the whole TV and log in as her.
So that's slightly annoying. It just is another thing about
the way Amazon just tries to control the whole experience.
I think, you know, Google's a little bit more flexible.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, yeah, I quite like the more disparate nature of
that stuff, because it doesn't mean that you can have
the whole family kind of doing what they want to do,
and they need to do Google TV with the different
Google accounts that you can log in and just like
on the fly switch between them. So if I want
to watch my YouTube, then you know, then I can
(12:14):
log into my just quickly change over to my account
and then I don't have Miss Rachel or whatever it
is clogging up the works, which.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Not much happening. Really incremental gains in TV. I think
that probably the flagship TV was the Samsung IS ninety
five D. That's another oh lad, very expensive four and
a half thousand for the fifty five inch, but that's
a stunning, stunning TV. Samsung's embrace of oliad has really worked.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
TV is now like three years old, and because it's
o lad, it still feels really new, like there's no issues.
It's just really looks beautiful to this day. So Yeah,
the other lead technology really is the is kind of
set the standard and I think will remain for a
long time. I can't see it's going to anywhere else
(13:04):
really until we get to the point where it's like
holographic or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, another luxurious sort of gadget. I really enjoyed this year.
I've just sending it back. Unfortunately, the Dyson on track
headphones dyceon you think vacuum cleaners and fans and that
sort of stuff. So they a few years ago they
went into headphones quite controversially, was sort of just during
(13:31):
the COVID years. They came up with a pair of
headphones which also had a mask built into it for
filtering out horrible diseases and pathogens and the like, and
it was lambasted heavily. I think people in New York
and places like that. The wealthy commuters sort of liked it,
(13:51):
but really didn't take off. They've ditched that aspect off
it with the on track headphones and they're just a supercharged,
high end pair of headphones to compete sort of with
the what's Apple's sort of headphones called the Max or something, yeah,
which are beautiful and bows and they're high end ones.
But these are eight hundred dollars pair of headphones. But
(14:14):
the noise canceling. I went to the US on the plane,
I really struggle to sleep on a plane. I put
these things on, and not only was the active noise
canceling just incredible, it just sort of deadened everything, but
they're so big the earphone pads that you can basically
rest against the wall with these things and have have
(14:34):
sort of a pillow effect. So oversized, very hipster design,
so you know, flashy color. It is not really my
sort of design asthetic, but man, if you want high
quality audio, that that's got to be up there.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, they look interesting. I don't know if they are
my dial, but yeah, that cushion does look very luxurious.
Look that I mean. I'm I'm still using my Sony XM.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Fives and they're great.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
They're awesome headphone and I love them to death. So
again when I'm on a plane as well, check them on.
Checked the noise canceling on with nothing behind it, and
it's super helpful for trying to get to sleep. Also,
the the other headphones that I found really made well.
Two headphones I've found amazing this year which are true
wireless in ear headphones, and the first one were the
(15:27):
the Technics headphones, and I believe you would have a
pair of those as well. Yeah, they're great, the A
Z eighties and really surprisingly good for the price, Like
they're the under four hundred dollars under three fifty I think,
and I have just I used them for quite a
while and just found them extraordinarily good. But maybe one
(15:48):
of my favorite pairs of true wireless headphones i've tried.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
They're great, even the AD forties. I don't like to spend,
you know, three or four hundred dollars on a pier because,
like I lost one when I was out in my
paddleboard a couple of months ago and I went to
shuffle through my songs and one of my ear bloods
fell out into the drink. So they're a bit sort
(16:12):
of unfortunately, a bit disposable for me. So so those
ones are the lower end ones, surprisingly good entry level
for about one hundred and forty dollars, and that's typically
what I like to pay for whiless earbuds because they
end up disappearing.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, understandable. Yeah. I also have been reviewing the new
Apple AirPods, not the pro but the standard ones with
active noise canceling, and I was really unsure because without
those silicon tips, how are they going to do proper
active noise canceling. But yeah, really impressed by those. And
(16:48):
don't tell Apple, but I did accidentally put them all
through the wash and they were absolutely fine. So I
survived there. They survived that. I put the whole container
with the two air pods in it, right through the
whole wash cycle, and I just chucked them in the
hot water cupboard for a day and they were fine.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
That's incredible because they're not it's not a waterproof container,
so that was sloshing around.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, no, it was. It was definitely pretty wet in that.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Wow. Oh, that's good endorsement. Looking a bit now at
some of the services that we may have tried during
the year. One I wanted to call out Erlo, which
is a quite a cheap e SIM service if you're
(17:37):
going abroad, and I did it a couple of times
this year rather than roaming is obviously super expensive, and
there are lots of options for international e sims to
add a second SIM to your to your phone if
you have capability on your phone, which most modern phones
do have. And I've always found it a bit clunky
some of the other providers, but this one is great.
(17:59):
You just download the app. The plans start really reasonable,
about ten dollars for a week's coverage a couple of
gig and sixty minutes of calling and sixty texts or something.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Like that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
But what I really liked about it it just automates
the whole process of activating the eSIMs. So I got
to lax, got on the Wi Fi, went into the
Rallo app, and it just did the whole thing. I
didn't have to mess around, which is a different experience
to what I've had before. And you know, just one
of several now that are doing this the whole I
(18:35):
guess the virtual network operator thing has taken off on
an international basis, So if you are going abroad, really
look at alternatives to your roaming plan, which are typically
quite expensive if you go for beyond a week or two.
And I found I was in the States for a
couple of weeks earlier this year, and that was just
perfect for me. It costs about thirty bucks and was
(18:58):
everything I needed.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, that's super interesting. I haven't traveled in a while,
so that's a really great suggestion because it can get
pretty expensive pretty quickly if you're paying for your paying
for your roaming. My mum did travel this year and
she was trying to figure out how she was going
to spend money while she was over in the States,
and she was talking about getting a tourist card through
(19:22):
a New Zealand. I can't remember what they're called now,
but and it was kind of thinking about exchange rates
and what she was going to do, and I said, look,
go check out the service called wise and she was like, oh,
that was great. It was awesome. It was so easy
to use. So I think the rise of FinTechs as well,
in terms of being able to spend internationally with massively
(19:47):
reduced costs in terms of currency conversion, things like Wiser
or or so really worth checking out.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
We've talked in previous episodes about our experience with blue
Sky in terms of social media. I mean, this is
a free service. It's not like X where to get
longer character limits and stuff like that you have to
pay a monthly fee. So blue Sky is set up
as on a sort of not for profit basis at
(20:17):
the moment anyway, and is really becoming the alternative for
people who are a bit disillusioned with X and really
gaining some traction. I'm really starting to use it on
a daily basis, which I haven't done with Threads or
mastered on or anything else. So there's just enough momentum building.
Now do you think that's going to carry on into
(20:37):
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, I think so. I don't know if it's going
to the acceleration will continue. I think that will slow
down and growth will continue, but at a slower rate.
But I love it. I love being on Blue Sky.
It's nice. You can be quite specific about who you are, like,
you know, it really does just let you do what
you kind of want to do. In terms of following,
(21:00):
you can just get the feed from the people you're following.
You can add a little bit of extra with the
Discover feature, and it brings in some other stuff that
thinks you know everybody might like, and then you have
your feeds for science or tech or I don't know,
I'm assuming there are ones for cat shows or whatever.
(21:20):
So yeah, I really rate the list guy. I will
keep using it throughout the next year. I'd imagine probably
increase my use of it. A pretty slack person in
terms of actually posting, but I do occasionally throw something
up there that I, you know, a bit of an
opinion or a reference to a work that I've done
or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, and we've both been testing various AI services this year,
so my go to one has become Perplexity. It's expensive
for Perplexity Pro is twenty dollars US per month, which
is the same as chat gpt Pro, but I absolutely
(21:59):
love it. Sort of revolutionized how I do research. I've
also been using Gemini because I use Google Workspace for
all my productivity and email, so Perplexity doesn't plug into
that in a in a compelling way, whereas Gemini is
native to Google Drive and Gmail. Really loving Gemini, but
(22:20):
if I'm going to sacrifice one, because that's also quite expensive,
I'll stick with Perplexity.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I think I haven't bit the bullet and paid for
any services this year, so I've been using my work
provided service, which is co Pilot. Oh yeah, it's most
mediocre experience imaginable. Occasionally I'll dip into chat GPTs free
service when it's nonsensitive stuff. But my favorite is Notebook LM,
(22:48):
Google's Notebook LM. I just adore the service. It's free
that doesn't use the stuff that you upload for training,
and it's kind of like an on the fly retrieval
AUGANI to degenerate of ai, a rag ai as they
call it. You can chuck in a bunch of documents
into into a kind of notebook. They call it and
then you can interrogate those documents through chat. You can
(23:11):
ask questions, you can get it to make suggestions, and
then you can, of course, if you really want, to
make a little podcast about it with AI hosts. But
that really is a gimmick, and I think it was
I think it was actually I think it actually detracted
from the tool the hype around the podcast, because when
I mentioned it, people are like, oh, that's the podcast thing, right,
(23:32):
I'm like, but it's so much more.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It's pretty incredible though. I've feared a quite a complex
scientific paper into notebook earlim and it and it generated
the cliched sort of podcast with the West Coast and
you know, soft American eccience and all that sort of stuff.
But it was incredible just how how accurately it summarized
(23:55):
this really complex piece of research. So so it's obviously
doing that in document form as well. It's coming up
with context on things. My big concern why I don't
use it so much as I'm working with a lot
of sensitive documents. I really don't want them escaping anywhere else.
So as long as they are truly protecting your privacy,
not holding onto those and scanning them because obviously the
(24:18):
big nightmare is that stuff appearing somewhere else because it's
ended up in their model. They say specifically, they're not
using your data to train their model. Are they retaining
the data? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, it's a good question. I'm taken them at their
word and saying that they don't. And I think that
it makes sense because at the moment where we are
with large language models, they the ingesting of data has
reached a kind of saturation point. People are talking about
it and saying more data isn't diminishing returns at this point,
(24:53):
so they're probably not desperate for extra things to put
in there. So I kind of take them at their
word that they're not ingesting it and using it in
whole holding it. But yeah, like to your point, I
put a financial report in there, and I couldn't find
a piece of information that I was looking for, so
I asked, I put it in any way, and I
asked notebook LM. I said, what is the you know,
(25:13):
how much are they spending on wages and salary for employees?
And they went, oh, it's this much. It comes under
this particular heading, And I was like, I had no
idea that the term short term business expenses actually encompassed
employee salary in wages, and so it was able to
tell me that, and I just went and checked it
(25:34):
to make sure that that was accurate, and it was,
and so I was able to use that in my reporting.
But easily one of my favorite generative AI tools this year.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, another one I've just signed up for, so I've
only just started using it as as open Ayes Sora
video generation tool. So this has been hyped quite a lot.
If you want some stock sort of video as a
pre roll into some of your own generative video, it
could be quite useful, but still got a long way
(26:04):
to go to actually be useful as a self contained
sort of short film where you have three or four
minutes and a narrative. It will put that together for you,
but there's going to be flaws in ther glitchy things
still which sort of take you out of the experience.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
In the looking ahead section. I guess Google has also
announced their own Saura competitor, VO two. It's like an
updated version of that that they are claiming is even better,
So that will be interesting when they come out. On
AI video In general, there was also that fully AI
generated advert for Brentworth wool carpets this year. I don't
know if you saw that one.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
No, I didn't.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, it was quite cool. I quite rated it. I
think it worked because it was kind of abstract and
it was, you know, advertised as being a generative AI advert,
so we'll link to that. It's interesting to watch. There
have been so many cases of bad uses of generative
AI for marketing and these kinds of things, but I
think what it does show is that we are entering
(27:03):
a world where generatively I can be used in a
positive way for marketing. In terms of job losses and
what that's actually going to mean for the people who
work in that area, I don't know, and it does
make me feel a little uncomfortable. But the reality is
is that marketing and you know, is a value driven
(27:25):
space and people are always looking to do things cheaper
and faster, and if that's what it offers, then that's
what it offers. And there is a new Zealand company
as well, Matter Studio that is generating backgrounds that you
can put your product onto. So yeah, you know, it's
it's definitely coming for that industry in terms of advertising.
(27:48):
And marketing.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Just before we jump ahead to look at twenty twenty
five and some of the tech that we expect to
emerge here. I just wanted to call out a few
other things. The rides I did in San Francisco were incredible,
incredible experience, and I think if and when that takes
off and other cities around the world, it will take
(28:11):
a long time, I think, to come to New Zealand,
but that's going to be a game changer. I also
took a Tesla Model three. Friends has one of those.
I took that around to Hawk's Bay recently and used
this sort of the self driving assisted sort of thing,
which I found incredible as well. I actually got in
trouble because I took my hands off the steering wheel
(28:35):
because I was expecting it to do the driving for me.
But that turned out to be one strike against the driver.
You get three strikes before they turn that feature off.
So I'm sorry from my friend for doing that. But
I am looking at getting an EV at some point
in the next couple of years, and I've been really
(28:56):
impressed with the Tesla Model three. The BYD three was
another one, but plastically sort of interior not really my thing.
But man, a price of evs this year. You know,
you're getting the Model three is still quite expensive, but
you're getting the Atto. You're getting the Pulstar two now
for fifty thousand dollars with a when you take in
(29:20):
the five thousand dollars cash rebate you get on it.
So they're obviously struggling to EV makers. So there's actually
some pretty good deals out there. What you have to
consider now is obviously road user charges and acc levees
are going to increase for EV owners as well. So
a lot of my friends who own them already are
feeling a little bit miffed that they were incentivized to
(29:41):
get into this and they're still saving money compared to
a petrol engine, but maybe not as much as they expected.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah. Look, we've got a plug in hybrid, but it's
an older one. It's like a twenty sixteen, and so
the battery on it isn't great, so we don't get
a lot of K's pure battery. So it really does
most of the time rate more like a non plug
in hybrid, like a regular hybrid, but we still have
to pay the bloody road user charges on that. I
think they haven't really done a great job, because there
(30:13):
are going to be plugging hybrids where you'll get fifty
to one hundred k's on ev ours is more like twenty,
So it feels a little bit unfair, but hey, I
guess you know, eventually we are going to be moving
into that space where every car has a flat road
user charge anyway rather than petrol taxes. So once we
(30:35):
get there, really it's not going to make much difference.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, Starlink, I was very impressed. I went to the
Cook Islands, there was a big mobile outage there and
they just happened that day to be installing Stylink in
the airbnb we were out. I wasn't just incredibly impressed
at how easy it was for them to set that up.
It was literally a fifteen minute job, and then I
(31:01):
was online fast transfer speeds. So that is an absolute
game changer, and I think that's reflected in just the
uptake at least thirty seven thousand, probably more like forty
thousand connections in New Zealand. Now they're generating something like
seventy out eighty million dollars in revenue in New Zealand.
So in the space of a couple of years they've
(31:21):
just come from out of nowhere to be a major
telecommunications provider. They've just launched Stylink Mini, so the main
Stylink terminal they keep heavily discounting it. That's three hundred
and ninety nine dollars, and then you pay seventy nine
dollars a month for residential light. They've re badged that recently.
It used to be called a deprioritized plan and one
(31:44):
hundred and fifty nine for prioritize, so obviously that branding
was not ideal, so they've rebranded it. But Stylin Mini
is actually more expensive terminal. It's six hundred ninety nine,
very compact, you can put it in a backpack. But
for people in rural areas, people who have flaky coverage
and can afford it, especially if you can afford to
(32:05):
pay one hundred and fifty nine dollars a month if
you have a small business. Wow, what a great service.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Let's get into some of the kind of weird and
wacky stuff that we maybe didn't try, but we have
seen around and think is worth chatting about. You have
here one that really peaked my interest, which was the
thoroughface mass. So can you give a little bit of
a background on why that's on our list.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, we'll put an image of this on the website
because it is quite bizarre. FDA cleared. Apparently, it's an
LED face mask that delivers red and red plus for
red and blue light onto your skin, as well as
so called tension relieving vibration therapy, so vibrates your skin
(32:54):
to give you healthier looking skin with a visible reduction
and fine lines and dark spots and as little as
eight weeks.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Fair a face. Get in touch. If you'd like to
use that as your voiceover for your ads, I'm sure
we can arrange a deal.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Seven hundred bucks Australia. I have seen a few skincare
sort of stores and beauty treatment places are selling it here,
so it's probably more like eight hundred bucks. Look, I've
got no idea of the efficacy of this sort of thing.
It looks ridiculous. It probably feels ridiculous to weird as well,
particularly if this thing is vibrating on your face. But look,
(33:29):
they're selling a truckload of them in the US by
the looks of things.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, look, I had a good look because I was
curious as to whether it would work, and from trying
to unearth these clinical Some of these clinical studies, a
lot of them are small scale. So I looked at
some meta studies and they do appear to have some
evidence of efficacy when using LED lights. I don't know
if you need an eight hundred dollars mask to deliver
(33:55):
LED lights to your face. I'm sure they're probably more
cost effective ways of doing it. But look, if you
want to have the latest and greatest, then that seems
like a good option.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
A few sort of big fails I think this year. Obviously,
the Rabbit R one and the Humane AI pin needs
sort of AI devices, so trying to build a piece
of hardware with an AI assistant built into it really
fell flat. The Apple Vision Pro I had to play
with it, loved it. I think it's a stunning device,
(34:34):
but it's it's a device with nowhere to go at
the moment. Really, they've stopped production off the the Vision
Pro while they figure out how to create a cheaper model.
And the co Pilot Plus PCs were probably the most
overhyped and underperforming sort of segments off the year. We
looked at a Microsoft Surface Book, which was an okay device,
(34:57):
but you know, based on arm processes a Snapdragon processes.
This is a big move by Microsoft to partner up
with arm. It's still only like one percent of the market,
so it really hasn't taken off this year. And just
the underwhelming performance of Copilot as well, using a supercharge
version of paint to create landscapes and you know, having
(35:21):
Copilot in the background there. But you know you have
to pay for all the good stuff to summarize your
email and create PowerPoint slides and all that sort of thing.
So not a great start.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Blah blah.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I say, yeah, So, just wrapping up, Ben, let's gaze
forward to twenty twenty five. I mean, as I said,
I think this is a bit of a gap year.
Do you expect to see any major advances in any
particular categories off tech in twenty twenty five? If so,
which ones are you sort of picking to be quite spectacular? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
I don't know if we'll see the massive leap forward
in twenty twenty five. It's possible, but I do think
and you put it here, but smart glasses, I don't
know whether they're going to be something that people will
generally wear all the time, but I think they might
start to find their niches for certain uses a lot
more so the soul sol e reader glasses, which some
(36:18):
people seem to really like. So you put glasses on
and you've got your book there and you read that way.
So yeah, I might say that we might finally see
some strong consumer products in the glasses market coming out.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah, you've got Meta unveiled Oriyan that will be a
few years away, but that is their big play for
smart glasses. They've already got the ray bands out there
at the moment, which aren't available here, but they have
AI functionality built into them, so they will progress that.
Google unveiled Android XR, it's platform for smart glasses, just
(36:58):
last week. Soviously Google Glass was a failure for Google,
but they've never given up on that idea, and so
I'm pretty excited about that as someone who lives in
the Google world. To be able to have Google Maps
come up in the bottom of the lens of your
glass showing you where to go, to be able to
recognize buildings and objects and give you information about them
(37:19):
without having to take out your phone and look at it.
Love the idea of that. I think that's the future
of format that's going to reduce our alliance on that
rectangle in our pocket all the time, so love that.
The other category, I think we will see a lot
of progress. We probably probably won't see them walking around yet,
but as humanoid robots, we've seen a lot of progress
(37:43):
with the Atlas robot, for instance, from Boston Robotics that
moved from sort of a hydraulic design to fully electric design,
so that's made it a lot more effective. This stuff
will be useful both in the industrial and business context,
but also in the aged care industry and in hospitality
(38:04):
in retael and hopefully one day as a humanoid companion
for all of us.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
I don't know about hopefully. Maybe I don't know why
we need it to be humanoid. I'm still confused on
that point. But you know, maybe I'm a luddite when
it comes to these particular things. I still push back
a little bit on the idea that we need something humanoid,
but hey, I could be wrong. One of our listeners
Michael Spicer. He pointed to a company called proto Hologram,
(38:33):
which can produce these boxes that you can show a
holographic three D representation so it looks like it's standing
in your space of a person or an object and
it's kind of a neat thing proto hologram. I just
wanted to call that out. I think it's interesting and
(38:53):
could potentially progress in the coming years to change the
way that we communicate. Probably not next year, but maybe
down the line. You know, rather than just having FaceTime,
we could actually hologram in to visit people in hospital
or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Well, we've seen a few high profile examples of that,
I think when one New Zealand Jason Parris did a
holographic sort of thing on stage. So we've seen it
sort of very high end holograph stuff that needs a
team of engineers to make sure it all works. But
as you say, when it is a replacement for FaceTime
(39:30):
where you can literally put your phone down and create
a holograph, that's very powerful and it's very difficult to do,
so it's going to take a while, but it is possible,
technically possible. I've seen some great holographic stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, definitely one to watch, and yeah, I think Apple
going foldable seems to be something that may happen next year.
Foldable technology, obviously, it's come a long way, is pretty smooth. Now,
Like we mentioned, the Motorola razer. But Apple might finally
be bowing to pressure and delivering us a foldable starting
with the iPad.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, the rumors are just in the last couple of
weeks a twenty inch iPad foldable iPad. And the thing
that Apple really don't like about foldables is the crease.
They want a flawless They're moving to olead screens, so
they want to flawless o lead experience beautiful display, which
the iPad is well known for. So they're working on
(40:26):
a way to completely eliminate the crease. And they think
they're on the right track. So whether we see an
iPad debut first or a foldable iPhone effectively a flip
phone for the iPhone, they've moved into the formal R
and D stage and product development off that. So they've
(40:47):
got prototypes, but now they're moving closer towards something that
they will produce as a mass market device.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
And I guess the big thing that we can expect
if the rumors are true is agentic A Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, well that's again overhyped and a bit underwhelming. At
the moment, they're out there, the agents are out there.
You can as a salesforce agent you can go in
and create one of these things to I guess, automate
a task. But you know when it gets really useful
is when we can set up agents ourselves in our lives.
(41:25):
It's not just when you're interacting with a big company
that will automate things on your behalf. It's like, Okay,
I want you to respond to my emails and put
stuff in my calendar and organize my documents in this
way and do it all autonomously, and I will keep
check and balances and keep oversight off it. That's what
(41:47):
I really want. And we're still some way away from that,
I think.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yeah, and I think we will remain so for several years.
I think that the promises of it coming in twenty
twenty five may be greatly exaggerated personally from what I'm seeing.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
I just.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I just think that we've got a lot of excited
companies who want to make their shareholders feel good. But yeah,
so that's twenty twenty four's Gadgets and Review. Did we
miss any Let us know what was something super exciting
that you thought that you played with or saw this
year that you think we should have mentioned, And what's
(42:26):
the thing that you're most looking forward to next year.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Get in touch with us. We've got a LinkedIn page
the Business of Tech podcast. We'd love you to follow
that and a great way to keep up to date
with all of our updates. But you can find Being
and Myself on LinkedIn. We're also still clinging on on
x Sick for Yourself Blue Sky as well, so increasing
you'll find this on blue Sky and LinkedIn. But you
(42:53):
know that was episode eighty one of the Business of Tech.
We'd love to hear your feedback from what you'd like
to hear more off next year as season three off
The Business of Tech, and we will be featuring some
of the top thinkers and leaders in technology once again
from New Zealand and around the world.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Who do you want us to speak to? Think? Beg
Think you know, if you could hear us speak to
anybody in the world, let us know who that would be.
No holds, but we're really looking forward to next year.
Thank you so much for sticking with us throughout this
year and we hope that this has been a nice
bit of light relief at the end of a long
(43:33):
year for you.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
It has been a tough year, a lot of people
doing it very tough a lot of people in business struggling,
so hopefully take a decent break, recharge, reset, have a
great Christmas and New Year, and we'll see you in
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
So you then
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com