The State of Consumer Tech with Lisa Eadicicco

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Speaker 13 Enter the twisted mind of Ed Zitron. This is Better Offline.

Speaker 13 That's right, we're here in New York City, New York State, and we've got a great guest, Lisa Edichico from CNN. Thank you so much for joining us, Lisa, on this horrible wet day.

Speaker 13 Truly one of the ugliest days in New York history. But nevertheless, we're going to talk about consumer tech today.
And everyone says, oh, Ed, you've got to be nicer. You've got to like things more.

Speaker 13 But what's a gadget you've actually liked this year? Like, what's stuff you've been enjoying?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's kind of funny because I feel like when I think about gadgets, I think about them two ways. There's one, like the gadgets I would actually buy and that I actually use every day.

Speaker 2 And then two, the ones that are, I think, interesting for what they say about the industry or that have been fun to write about and fun to cover.

Speaker 2 And for the things that I have enjoyed using this year, I would say it's a lot of the things you'd expect. Like the Nintendo Switch 2 was a fun one this year.

Speaker 2 The new Apple Watch, because I'm a big Apple Watch user, things like that.

Speaker 2 And then there's the other category of things that I think have been really fun to write about. And for that, I would say

Speaker 2 the Galaxy XR definitely stands out.

Speaker 13 So, what is the Galaxy XR? So, that's the Vision Pro competitor, right?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 13 So, how comfortable is it? Start there.

Speaker 2 I would say, I mean, none of these things are super comfortable, to be honest. It's still this thing that's bigger than a pair of glasses, bigger than something you're used to wearing on your face.

Speaker 2 So, it's always going to be a little bit uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 I do think the Galaxy XR was like very easy to adjust and get to fit correctly.

Speaker 2 For me, I feel like a lot of these headsets usually are a little too big for me or might like fall off my head or something like that.

Speaker 13 The Vision Pro, I have a giant bonce,

Speaker 13 giant head, and that thing, trying to get that thing on was like balancing a cup of tea on my head.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 It's never that comfortable. It's kind of weird.
Yeah. I do feel like it was easy to adjust.

Speaker 2 It wasn't the most comfortable thing to wear, but I only, and I only wore it for like maybe about 20 minutes at a time.

Speaker 2 So I do feel like wearing it for extended use cases, the kinds of things that Samsung and Google think you'll use it for, like productivity and entertainment.

Speaker 2 I think that's, I don't know how comfortable it would be to wear it for, like, you know, if I'm working on a project or watching a movie or something.

Speaker 13 So, you wouldn't do like your actual work inside it.

Speaker 2 I would try it. I think it would just take some time to get used to, you know, wearing that thing for like an hour or longer.

Speaker 13 Because as like a Vision Pro truther, and I think I mentioned this in person previously, but I can't use my Vision Pro right now.

Speaker 13 I can use it, but I can't update it unless you keep it on your head during the update, which is one of the most insane

Speaker 13 ideas ever. But I genuinely like that when I was trying it, I was so torn because 85% of the time I fucking hated it.

Speaker 13 I just, I really, I was just like mad at it because like it would, something would, like, my cat would brush my head and now it would be out of focus.

Speaker 13 But there were these times I'd get in it and be like, this is actually really cool. I'm like writing.
I wrote a whole thing on it. Like it was back in the earlier days of the show.

Speaker 13 I was like, oh, I really like this. It's got some music in the background.
And again, like, Babu, my cat would knock me in the head because he's very affectionate. do.

Speaker 13 No, he's a lovely, affectionate cat.

Speaker 13 Massive part of the show. And then I'd need to readjust it and then I would start to get a headache.

Speaker 13 Did you find that the software was good on the Galaxy 1? Like, how was it in comparison?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so there's a couple of big things that stand out to me.

Speaker 2 I think the Gemini integration is really good, and it should be, because that's the one thing that Google and Samsung are kind of pitching as setting this apart from the Vision Pro and previous attempts at mixed reality and VR.

Speaker 2 But the idea that you can just look at something and ask a question about it, Like in my demo from October, I was looking at photos and Google photos.

Speaker 2 And yes, it's cool that you can look at them on a giant screen and everything.

Speaker 2 But for me, what felt like the new thing that this is bringing to the table is being able to look at that photo and be like, oh, where in the world do those types of trees usually grow?

Speaker 2 And I can like that combination of like knowing what you're looking at without having to really specify. I do think the Vision Pro is better at certain things, like media, for example.
Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, some of the like spatial videos that have been created for the Vision Pro are just like breathtaking when you look at them.

Speaker 2 But I don't, I don't know that I would buy a Vision Pro for that reason, but it is very impressive.

Speaker 13 That's the thing. Like even with both of them, they have the same problem where it's like, this is a cool idea.
Like, oh, I know where that tree is now. Like, great.
But it's like.

Speaker 13 Practically within my life, when am I sitting down being like, when, where's that tree from? Like, where is the, where's the practical uses? And with the Vision Pro, it's like, great.

Speaker 13 I can put this on my head and walk around with it. I can kind of see who is this for?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's the big question.

Speaker 2 And I feel like that's kind of, at least for me, when I try to look at, okay, what new products have been successful and did actually start a category and catch on with consumers and which ones haven't.

Speaker 2 And the thing that I've kind of noticed is the ones that haven't are when you really try to kind of force a user behavior that isn't there.

Speaker 2 And sometimes I feel like that's what's happening with these headsets is that the technology is very, very cool.

Speaker 2 It's very advanced, but it always feels like it's a step towards something more natural that we haven't gotten to yet.

Speaker 2 And you could say that about the Oculus Rift that came out more than 10 years ago. In some cases, even the headsets today, I still feel that way about.

Speaker 13 And the Steam, have you seen the Steam frame? We just had

Speaker 2 the valve. I haven't tried it.
I've seen.

Speaker 13 I don't think, I don't, I think I just had Steve from GamersNexis on, and he tried it a bit, but it's with all these things, it's like,

Speaker 13 I wish they'd have waited four years. Yeah.

Speaker 13 I wish they'd have waited, because there are those moments, like you mentioned with the spatial video where it's like, holy shit, like, this is actually really cool.

Speaker 13 Like, I watched like a basketball game on the Vision Promo. I'm like, this is actually cool.

Speaker 2 It's hard until you try it, right? And that's the thing is, I don't feel like that many people are going to have the opportunity to really try it at length to work it into their lives.

Speaker 2 But yeah, the idea of like, oh my God, it really does feel like I'm sitting courtside right now. That's very cool.

Speaker 13 And the other thing is that even if it's just a big TV, that is cool. The problem is, is you can just sit down and watch a television.
You just turn the bloody thing on.

Speaker 13 have um i have this nebula x1 projector which i like it's like an anchor it's so good sound core now and i just got like a nice screen i pull up

Speaker 13 and that just even that it's like two or three minutes of diddling around but i now have a hundred inch screen in my apartment that's so much less work than the vision pro because the vision pro is like constant maintenance and i feel like if they waited I don't know, it may Casey Kagawa friend of the show, he suggests that this will just never happen.

Speaker 13 I honestly don't necessarily know if I I disagree with him on this one, but it's like, I really hope it does because if it was just something like maybe, I don't know, like a hat that just worked, that would be cool.

Speaker 13 But we're like, no, we're not even close to that.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly. And I think that's kind of why a lot of these companies are kind of working towards these smart glasses instead, because they are natural.

Speaker 2 They do feel like something you would wear whether there was tech in them or not. But

Speaker 2 again, I feel like convincing people that this is something that's actually going to be more convenient might be difficult. Although, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I mean, people who wear glasses might say, hey, I need new glasses anyway. That looks cool.
Maybe I'll try it.

Speaker 13 The thing is, with the smart glasses, is I just have to wonder about the social problem. Because I know if one of my friends, other than like Victoria Songo, came on wearing them,

Speaker 13 if someone was wearing them when I was like at a bar, I wouldn't want to look at them.

Speaker 13 I have to wonder how most people would feel about that. I think there's that.

Speaker 15 That's an important part.

Speaker 15 I also feel like the interaction element is going to be weird socially because you're out, let's say we're sitting here talking or we're at a cafe and we're talking about something and I'm like, oh, let me go look that up on my phone.

Speaker 15 If instead I were to say, I can just ask Gemini in my glasses or just staring dead eye.

Speaker 13 Right, exactly. Well, that Victoria Sung was from the Virgin was showing where she, it's like when you're looking, it is this weird kind of dead-eyed,

Speaker 13 this dead-eyed stare because you're just your eye is staring at the corner. And I just wonder, like, as cool as it is, what's the point of the smart glasses as well?

Speaker 13 Like, I can, I see the Vision Pro as a more,

Speaker 13 and even the Galaxy one as a more fundamentally sound idea than the glasses, because at some point it's like, okay, if I'm wearing glasses,

Speaker 13 like I need guidance where I'm going, I guess that's useful, but like, am I just putting this on? Versus, okay, I'll put on a helmet and watch a... sports game.

Speaker 2 I think the way that I see glasses, if they do take off, the reason why, I would almost think of them as like kind of like the way you think of AirPods and wireless earbuds, like something that's on you.

Speaker 2 You can use it to listen to music, to take calls as you're walking, and then it also has that optional display so that you can

Speaker 2 see where you're going or look at directions or whatever you might want to look at, like the time, whatever.

Speaker 2 So, kind of like bridging together what you would use a smartwatch for and what you would use wireless earbuds for.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I see that. And I just wonder as well, will Apple even bother? Will Google even like

Speaker 13 actually, if Google does it again, I have to respect them after the whole Google Glass debacle.

Speaker 17 Incoming with the old gays, it's Jessé, Bill, Robert, and Mick with a special bonus episode of Silver Linings with the Old Gays.

Speaker 4 No matter what time of year it is, we know it's important to uplift the spirit of Pride, which is relatively easy when Palm Springs celebrates in november

Speaker 19 the first pride i went to it made me feel like i was really part of something

Speaker 19 people

Speaker 19 being so joyous in the streets and being themselves

Speaker 19 we've really come a long way and i realize i am standing on the shoulders of so many millions of queer people who sacrificed their lives for what we have today

Speaker 16 Silver Linings with the Old Days is brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Viv Healthcare.

Speaker 18 Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 21 All rights reserved.

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Speaker 13 Are they still around Google Glass?

Speaker 3 I can't remember.

Speaker 15 I don't know where the latest on Google Glass stands. I don't think they are.
I know they kind of pivoted to Enterprise.

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 13 that's why I wasn't sure if they'd done away with it. Because I know Microsoft has basically killed HoloLens, but they have a very small enterprise division.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, at this point,

Speaker 2 I feel like, I don't know for sure. I can't speak for Google, but it would make sense for them to, I feel like, focus more on Android XR and the future of that platform at this point.

Speaker 13 Well, for me, taking a slight change, the one thing I will say is, this is an unpopular opinion. I'm going to have my ass for this one.
I love the iPhone Air.

Speaker 13 And I heard that they're delaying the next next one till like 2027. I'm very disappointed.
I'm very upset by this. I love the iPhone Air.

Speaker 3 I do like it too.

Speaker 2 No, I think it's a good phone. And for Apple, I feel like they don't, you know, that's all they need is a good iPhone.
People will buy it, right?

Speaker 2 It doesn't have to reinvent the wheel every single time they come out with a new phone.

Speaker 2 I do think where Apple can struggle sometimes is when you have these in-between models that are like not too different in price from whatever the cheapest iPhone and the most expensive iPhone is.

Speaker 2 Like that, for whatever reason, this is just, again, my own observation, Apple's audience has a hard time latching on to like whatever that in-between model is, whether it's the Plus or the Mini or the Air.

Speaker 2 It seems like it's hard for them to generate demand.

Speaker 13 It does kind of feel like a weird... I wonder, I hope, because the whole thing, it feels like, I didn't think of it as an in-between as well, because you're right.

Speaker 13 It feels like they would naturally try and make the main ones this thin, because that's the whole reason I like it.

Speaker 13 It feels like a smaller, it feels like an in-between between an iPad mini and an iPad. But I I love the iPad Pro.
I love having a very thin device

Speaker 13 and every phone's getting fatter, it feels like.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and I think we're at that point also where people aren't super wowed by how thin technology can get because we've been there for a while.

Speaker 2 So I don't think this premise of an iPhone Air really hit the same way the iPad Air did, the way the MacBook Air did. And I think it's just kind of for that reason that we're desensitized to it.

Speaker 2 And I think Apple shoppers tend to fall into two categories. Either I've had an iPhone for years and I'm not even thinking about what phone I have.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to get the next iPhone whenever my current one dies. And then you have the people that do get excited about new iPhones.

Speaker 2 And those people do care about things like maybe not having an extra camera or, you know, the best battery life or whatever.

Speaker 13 It's also the camera's pretty bad.

Speaker 13 I've gotten around it, but like it sucks.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's, I mean, like, I'm not.
I'm the person that takes casual photos all the time. And I think the camera's fine.
I haven't been blown away by it in my own just, you know, usage here and there.

Speaker 13 It does feel like we're approaching peak phone, though.

Speaker 2 Oh, I feel like we've been there for a while.

Speaker 13 Like the iPhone 17 Pro Max, whatever, it's just, it's the same phone.

Speaker 2 Exactly. I feel like we've been at peak phone for a while.

Speaker 2 And I do feel like that's part of what Apple's trying to do here with the iPhone Air is show that it can make something that's different, that's unexpected, that's not just the same phone repackaged.

Speaker 13 And then people hated it. So now

Speaker 13 they don't know what to do.

Speaker 2 I do feel like, and this is a common argument, but I do feel like it's a step towards a foldable iPhone, at least in my opinion.

Speaker 13 That's what I want.

Speaker 2 Because the technology needs to be, they need to engineer the phone differently for it to be foldable.

Speaker 2 It's not just about the crease and all that, but you have to think about the battery, the components, and that, like engineering-wise, that was a big step forward with the iPhone era.

Speaker 13 I have to wonder as well if the reason they haven't jumped on the foldables is they're still very experimental. I was it Jerry Rigs everything.

Speaker 13 There was someone who did a review of a foldable and they made it like one of the Google ones that set on fire.

Speaker 13 And just from like bending it too much, it's like, if we're still there, Apple doesn't want to touch this with a 50-foot pile.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like foldables have gotten really good.

Speaker 2 I feel like Samsung's in particular, like because they have been doing this for so long, it's finally gotten to the point where the fold feels like a regular phone.

Speaker 2 And that's really cool, but I do feel like it's still a subset of the phone market. Most people just want a new phone.
But I agree.

Speaker 2 I feel like the minute that there is a foldable iPhone, iPhone, I'm going to buy one mostly out of curiosity, but also because I really do enjoy using foldable phones.

Speaker 2 And it does make the experience feel a little different. And this, like the iPhone Air to me, as soon as I picked it up, I was like, this just feels like a Z-flip that doesn't fold in half.
Like,

Speaker 3 the shape.

Speaker 13 That's the Motorola one. Oh, the Galaxy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's like the Galaxy flip phone one. And then, of course, Motorola has one as well.
Yeah.

Speaker 13 I know Michael Fisher, Mr. Mobile himself, loves those things.
And there's like the tri-fold ones as well. I love these crazy Chinese phones where it's like three giant things that you unfold.

Speaker 13 Probably Breaks Very.

Speaker 2 Samsung just announced theirs like last night, too.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 13 Yes. I want more weird phones.

Speaker 3 Me too.

Speaker 2 I want phones to be weird again. I had a Microsoft Kin back in the day.

Speaker 2 I had the Samsung Juke. I had all these weird phones.

Speaker 13 Tell me about all what is the Microsoft Kin? I remember the name, but I don't remember what it was.

Speaker 2 So this was, and this was like way before I was writing about phones. I was just like, this thing's weird.
I want it.

Speaker 2 It was their social media phone.

Speaker 13 Oh, my God. yeah,

Speaker 2 oh, so like your front screen picture now.

Speaker 13 I gotta, I gotta look at this.

Speaker 2 Yes, that was like peak weird phone. It like had this cover screen that would look like your Facebook feed, and then you would open it up and there would be a keyboard on the inside.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I had the second generation one, so that one looked a little bit more like the one that looks like an egg, no, not the egg one, the other one. Yeah, that first one, yeah.

Speaker 13 They so they had one one that looked like a Palm Prix, it looks like, and then one that kind of looked like a normal phone. 2010 as well.
Yeah, what a

Speaker 2 classic 2010 decision exactly i i loved it i thought it was so cool but it was so glitchy and that's why i ended up getting rid of it was that like the operating system just crashed one day and i just couldn't use it anymore and this was before i really knew how to like troubleshoot things and before I was really even interested in technology.

Speaker 2 And I just got it. I think at that point, I finally switched to a smartphone.
But yeah, I mean, phones were weird back then and it was really cool. And I kind of missed that.

Speaker 2 But I feel like foldable phones, to your point, are filling that void. Because if you look at the common thread between weird phones, is that they're all trying to be some kind of like hybrid device.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like those phones of the 2010s were like, oh, you still kind of want to use your keyboard, but you also want something that feels like a smartphone.

Speaker 13 And, you know, my favorite was so. I definitely, the BlackBerry Storm.
I don't know if you remember that.

Speaker 13 As far as there was that weird generation when everyone was just trying something weird, and there was this horrible,

Speaker 13 horrible Blackberry where it was like haptic, but it just felt like pressing into fudge with every kind of thing. It was so cool.
But I just looked this up. Samsung Duke, what the

Speaker 13 look like a looked like a key ring?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it was supposed to be like a MP3 player/slash phone. It was weird, but also it came out at the point where you could already store your music on a regular phone.
But I don't know.

Speaker 2 I thought it was cool and weird, and it was so tiny. Yeah, it was so tiny.

Speaker 13 I kind of love how small it is. It looks like a chocolate bar.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 It like swings open.

Speaker 13 I miss when we were doing weird shit with me too there was that weird there would just everyone everything just looks like this now yeah everything's a brig yes and it's a shame it feels like everything is just kind of normalizing around it when we need more weird shit but i guess no we've now seen what happens when you actually know the iphone air wasn't weird enough that's the problem exactly i think that that's you know when i talk about those like in-between phones and i think the what makes it hard to kind of really create a lot of demand for those phones is that they they're not different enough they're just in between and they're not that different in price.

Speaker 2 And I think that's, you know, a big part of what can make it difficult to kind of sell somebody on that. It's not that much less expensive than the Pro, but it's thinner.
So like, do you.

Speaker 13 And also, they're still like $1,000.

Speaker 13 Right. These are not cheap.

Speaker 2 No, not at all. No, it's meant to be like a pro that's thinner, I think, except hardware is different, obviously.

Speaker 13 And it's pretty fast. I like it a lot.
It's just, I'm annoyed because the camera is, it's just shit enough. It's not that it's bad.
It's like just a little bit worse.

Speaker 13 Like like it can't really zoom you have to digital zoom

Speaker 13 yeah it doesn't have a lot of zoom even digitally it doesn't zoom in that far yeah it's weird how little has happened with apple in the last year as well because they tried the vision pro and then they just went ah mm-mm

Speaker 2 yeah i don't know i i feel like the vision pro is one of those things that

Speaker 2 it's gonna i i don't know i feel like people were expecting it for a long time the expectations were really high um and i think for apple they're especially high because they have this history of creating not necessarily being the first, but being the first to get people excited about a new category,

Speaker 2 yeah, and like show how this should be done.

Speaker 2 Like with the smartwatch, like the Apple Watch was not the first smartwatch by any means, but it was the first one that got kind of popular or popular enough.

Speaker 13 And they were smart enough to treat it as a fashion item, which,

Speaker 2 although that's not what it is at all now, and it's so funny to see how that's not that they don't care about fashion.

Speaker 13 Yes, the launcher was like a vanity vogue spread, and they were really, there was a $10,000 Hermes one.

Speaker 2 Yes. Oh my God.
I respect that.

Speaker 13 I love that they tried that and they just walked away. Just like, yeah, there's a sports thing now.

Speaker 2 And that's the thing: when you create a new category,

Speaker 2 it's really hard to predict what people are actually going to use it for or what they're going to gravitate towards.

Speaker 13 I think they were doing it just for the marketing. I think it was literally just to get people to write about it.

Speaker 2 But also, smart watches were so ugly back then.

Speaker 2 That's the other thing. Is that the reason why

Speaker 13 there was like a diabetes?

Speaker 2 With the Pebble, which I loved so much, honestly.

Speaker 2 it looked yes they are back um i you know the the original pebble watch didn't look like anything special but it was the ink as well it was the same yeah yeah i love that it was like funky and weird it was like a had a monochrome display and i just loved and it's funny because i'm not usually this person like that cares about customizing things but you could customize the watch face to be like literally anything you want and talk about like weird gadgets like i feel like that was also like not weird but they had such a fun community around it that would develop all these custom watch faces and things like that and it was just really it was a cool little device

Speaker 4 incoming with the old gays it's jesse bill robert and mick with a special bonus episode of silver linings with the old gays No matter what time of year it is, we know it's important to uplift the spirit of pride, which which is relatively easy when Palm Springs celebrates in November.

Speaker 19 The first pride I went to, it made me feel like I was really part of something.

Speaker 19 People being so joyous in the streets and being themselves.

Speaker 19 We've really come a long way, and I realize I am standing on the shoulders of so many millions of queer people who sacrificed their lives for what we have today.

Speaker 16 Silver Linings with the Old Gates is brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Viv Healthcare.

Speaker 18 Listen on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 20 Did you know Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10? Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop. Voted PC Mag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop Brand for 2025.

Speaker 20 Thin and ultra-lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere, and Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades.

Speaker 20 Visit lgusa.com slash iHeart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PC Mag Reader's Choice used with permission.

Speaker 21 All rights reserved.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

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Speaker 1 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.

Speaker 24 You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.

Speaker 25 This is when mindset comes in.

Speaker 23 Someone will be eliminated.

Speaker 26 Pressure is coming down.

Speaker 21 Trainer Games on Prime Video, January 8th. Watch the trailer on TrainerGames.com.

Speaker 13 I feel like that era was great. I realized there was a lot of fraud on Indiegogo and Kickstarter, but there was also just weird shit.
And now that's all in China. Yeah.
It's just GPD.

Speaker 13 You play with any GPD stuff? You ever seen them? No. Yeah, they just make gaming PCs, but they're handhelds and they all cost.
That's cool.

Speaker 13 It's cool, but it's also you're like, you wacky sons of bitch.

Speaker 13 They're doing a handheld one where you have an external battery. And it's just like, sure, why not? It's like at that point.

Speaker 3 Why not?

Speaker 13 And they always make $4 million on Kickstarter. I hope all of that money's...
not from criminal enterprises. I'm not suggesting it is, but every time.

Speaker 13 But it's just, I wish that there was, I'm sure that there are economic reasons. Sure, someone wants to shoot me an email about this.

Speaker 13 I wish we had more American firms willing to try shit because it's dull right now. It's boring out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's things have looked the same for a long time. And you had like a brief moment in like the mid-2010s, like 2016, 2017, when Alexa was just starting to become really popular.

Speaker 2 And then everyone thought the smart home was going to take off in a way that it never did. Wow.

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2 But I'm thinking about like these different phases of like everyone's like, oh, this is going to be the next big thing after phones. And like, we still have not reached that moment.

Speaker 13 I mean,

Speaker 13 to the point of everything being the same as well, it's like

Speaker 13 you buy a Google device, it's got Gemini on it. You buy an Apple device, it's got Apple Intelligence.
You immediately turn it off. It's just everything.

Speaker 13 kind of feels and looks the same. And you watch a commercial, it's just more fucking Gemini.
I don't know if you use Gemini. I still don't know why Gemini 3 has caused so much.
It's the same.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it's like a short, it's like a better version of the same. I've used it here and there.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't, I, I use AI a lot in like my like personal life or whatever, just to get things done, but it's not like, I don't think we're at the point yet where, at least in my personal usage, I don't see that much of a difference between

Speaker 2 Chat GPT and Gemini in terms of what I use them for. And I think it's, that's one interesting thing I feel like about AI compared to a lot of the other products in our lives.

Speaker 2 Like when you have a phone or a computer, you're like, okay, I'm a Mac or a PC person, I'm iOS or Android. I feel like with AI, people do use different models for different things.

Speaker 2 I don't feel like people are loyal to just one all the time.

Speaker 13 I also think that it's the, you know how I feel about AI, but it's also, it's not clear what makes one different from the other.

Speaker 13 Like with a, I guess that's the case with phones as well, except phones don't just burn money every time you turn them on. But it's, it's strange because this Gemini thing has really taken off.

Speaker 13 It's the stock market. You've got people writing it.
You wrote this piece about like, oh, Google is the new leader in AI. No, it's good.
But it's just like, why?

Speaker 13 And I think it comes down to they mostly do the same. It makes me think people are going to love this.
I think that like the only company that will even do LLMs long term is Google.

Speaker 13 And then they'll just make it, they'll pull back the prices. But it's like,

Speaker 13 no one can really explain what the difference is. And thus, no one actually has any brand power.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think for Google, it's an extension of like their business model naturally. Like people use Google search to find information and do things.
And now people have started using LLMs for that.

Speaker 2 So of course it makes sense for them to do that and they have an advantage in that sense. I think Google has that advantage, right?

Speaker 2 That you have all these people that don't even know about AI are just going to naturally start using their product because it's Gemini and their models are now baked into almost everything Google does.

Speaker 2 Right. AI mode, everything else.

Speaker 2 You know, OpenAI, I think their advantage has been that they were, you know, ChatGPT kind of became a household name pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 So it's hard to kind of, once any brand has that kind of, like, has made that kind of impression, I feel like it's, it's hard to compete with that.

Speaker 2 Or, you know, I feel like that's why I see so much consolidation in the tech industry in particular is because it's, it's really hard to be that third, right?

Speaker 2 You have like one or two that are really big, and then being that third is, is really challenging.

Speaker 13 It's also, there's little, I feel like there's not really much reward for being first with this as well, or even being the household name. You just burn a bunch of money.

Speaker 13 There was a story in the information that came out this week who this will run now a week after that but where it's like open ai's own code red because of Gemini it's like and you read the article it's really funny because there's a bit where it's just like step one make chat GPT's answers better step two make it able to do more step three make people like it it's like what have you been doing what have you been doing the last six months honestly that may be what Gemini 3 is it's just that they sat and went

Speaker 13 what would make people use this this more?

Speaker 2 Well, what's interesting is like you have kind of the opposite, like OpenAI and Google are in the opposite scenarios. They're like the inverse of each other.

Speaker 2 Like, Google is already playing in so many different areas from search to phones to all these other products that shopping, right? All of these things that we do every day online.

Speaker 2 And because they have that in place already, they can just kind of sprinkle AI into things as they go along.

Speaker 2 Open AI had the opposite, where they had this one like breakout AI service, and now they're kind of in this mode where they're like, hey, we're not just this one thing.

Speaker 2 We're the next big internet company, right? That's kind of what they're projecting based on all of these areas that they're trying to expand into. So I think it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 Back years ago, the New York Times had that piece where Google was saying we're in a code because of ChatGPT. And now OpenAI, according to that article, is facing that moment of its own.

Speaker 13 I just, I also think that no one knows what to do with large language, but I just don't, I think at this point, so much money's gone gone in, and you can't get a straight answer out of any of them as to why you're using them.

Speaker 13 Like, in your personal life, I imagine brainstorming stuff or like looking stuff up, like right, like stuff that I would probably use Google for otherwise.

Speaker 13 Yeah, and it's like if this ends with just Google manages to pull in the customers that OpenAI had and then ends up probably making it

Speaker 13 putting some of this away because it's too expensive.

Speaker 13 It's just like, of course, if this is that actually is probably how it ends with just like a large company destroying a startup and nothing happening.

Speaker 3 I hope so.

Speaker 13 The sooner the better. I mean,

Speaker 13 it is three years and we've not really had a proper use case beyond better search. It's strange.
It's everywhere.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would agree in that.

Speaker 15 Like, I do think it's moving fast in terms of like, it started out,

Speaker 2 you know, the shift from just being able to answer simple questions to being able to like reason and whatever and think on these questions more.

Speaker 2 But to your point, that's not the use case, that's the technology

Speaker 13 changing. It's also just more search.
Like it really is just knowledge search instead of web search. Right.
And sometimes it gets it.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm sure you've heard this term more times than you would like. I even hate saying it because I feel like it's become such a nonsense buzzword.
You could probably guess what I'm going to say.

Speaker 2 But AI agents are supposedly going to be the next step of whatever this

Speaker 2 AI stream is.

Speaker 13 I love this.

Speaker 13 Well, it's funny when you go and look at the term agent, it just means like chatbot. It really does just mean chat.
But

Speaker 13 even you go back to 2023, that's how OpenAI defined it. But I loved, I saw this statistics just like 11% was AI agents.
It's like, no, it wasn't. If you're just considering AI search,

Speaker 13 if that's just search engines. And I keep reading about these shopping integrations as well, but I can never make them work because I go and try.
I go and try the Walmart and work.

Speaker 13 I managed to make it do something in Canva.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 13 But it's like, I could have just done that in Canva.

Speaker 2 Right. And that's the thing.
That's, I think, for me where a lot of the skepticism comes in is that I feel like we've been talking about these agents for years.

Speaker 2 To the point, since ChatGPT came out, they're like, this is what it's going to do.

Speaker 13 These things are going to go and do stuff. Right.

Speaker 2 These things are going to do stuff for you. And I do think that could be really helpful, honestly.
But I also have a lot of skepticism and concerns about, like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 handing over anything that I remotely care about being done the right way to an AI agent. Like, I'm skeptical that people are going to trust it enough to handle things.

Speaker 13 Well, it's also, it doesn't seem to be able to do it, is my big thing.

Speaker 13 But even when you look at like the AI browsers from, like, there's, was it Comet from Perplexity and Atlas from OpenAI or whatever.

Speaker 13 When you look, there's like this thing of the prompt injection attacks. I don't know if you've seen this.

Speaker 2 Yes, I've seen it.

Speaker 13 If you use them on a website, the website could attack you.

Speaker 13 What I love, though, is the people who are innovating appear to just be criminals.

Speaker 13 The people who are actually finding AI innovations are like cambodian pig butchering operations north korea i was north korea i heard this story the other day from a mate where it's north korean people are using like in in like hacker groups are applying to and getting american jobs oh really

Speaker 13 and using deep deep fakes for the know your customer stuff and like it's really fucking grim it's just like no everything i read is just like man there is innovation crime well actually Robert Evans of CoolZone Meter in 2024 said that was the actual innovation.

Speaker 13 We were walking to a restaurant. He said, no, that's where it is.
It's like fraud. Massive fraud.

Speaker 2 No, I mean, and I feel like anytime you have a new technology,

Speaker 2 the bad guys always find a way to make use of it before, you know, faster than the good guys keeping up with it.

Speaker 13 They are the only ones. They're making, I will say, North Korean hacker groups, I'm pretty sure, are making more profit than OpenAI, which is cool.
I think that that's cool.

Speaker 13 I think that that's the world we deserve, Honestly.

Speaker 13 And I think that's where we're heading towards, because when you create a technology that you're not really sure what it does, of course, somebody malign is going to use it to your own point. Right.

Speaker 13 It's like, of course, they're going to find a way around it. All right.
As we wrap up, is there anything you're actually looking forward to in the tech industry, though? Is there

Speaker 13 anything on the horizon? It's okay if there isn't.

Speaker 15 Honestly, there isn't really just one thing right now. I feel like, you know, all of this AI stuff is a little dizzying and there's a lot of skepticism about it.

Speaker 15 But I will say, as someone who's been covering this industry for like a little more than 10 years and a lot of that just being the same, I feel like it's been fun to write about something that does feel new, whether for better or for worse.

Speaker 15 It is something that feels new and different. What am I looking forward to? I want weird phones again.

Speaker 13 That's what I'm looking forward to.

Speaker 15 I hope that phones get weird again.

Speaker 13 I want things with hand cranks on them. I mean, that's the Play Date console, but

Speaker 13 I mean, even the Nintendo Switch 2 was kind of safe. I was

Speaker 13 good. I like it a lot.

Speaker 2 But it's weird for Nintendo to do that, I feel like.

Speaker 13 Like doing... After the Wii U.

Speaker 3 I loved it.

Speaker 15 No, I have like almost every Nintendo console, but yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel like coming out with more of the same is not usually in their playbook, but the Switch was so successful that they kind of had to.

Speaker 2 People, could you imagine if the Switch 2 was entirely different and wasn't a better version of the same console? I feel like.

Speaker 13 I do wonder if we're going to get a pushback on this eventually, though. If people are just going to, we need some weird shit again.
That's what what I, the energy I'm putting into the universe today.

Speaker 2 Yes, me too.

Speaker 13 So, where can people find you?

Speaker 2 You can find me on, I'm on X, Blue Sky, and Threads at Lisa Edichico. And you can also find my work, of course, at cnn.com.

Speaker 13 Wonderful. And you can find me at betteroffline.com, subscribe to the newsletter, email me on my webverse.
Thank you for listening. Love you all.

Speaker 6 Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

Speaker 21 The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski.

Speaker 20 You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com.

Speaker 6 You can email me at easy at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter.

Speaker 6 I also really recommend you go to chat.where's your ed.at to visit the Discord and go to r/slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 12 Better Offline is a production of CoolZone Media.

Speaker 12 For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 21 All rights reserved.

Speaker 7 Everybody knows Shaq, but off camera, he's just a regular guy.

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Speaker 1 Ten athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.

Speaker 24 Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.

Speaker 25 This is when mindset comes in.

Speaker 23 Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down.

Speaker 21 Trainer Games on Prime Video, January 8th. Watch the trailer on TrainerGames.com.

Speaker 2 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 3 Guaranteed human.