Tech News Weekly 353 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. TechCrunch's Amanda Silberling is here and she kicks off this week's episode talking about a new baseball team in the Bay Area that's been founded by a startup founder. Then I talk about how Meta has admitted to feeding all of our public posts since 2007 into its AI. After that, Dan Moren of Six Colors stops by to give us an understanding, a nice summary of the Apple event, plus things we might have missed, before we round things out with Kyle Orland of Ars Technica, who joins us to help us understand why that new PS5, the PS5 Pro, costs so much money. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

0:00:48 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.

0:00:58 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly episode 353, with Amanda Silberling and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, September 12th 2024. The PS5 Pro costs how much? Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week, we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and it is the second Thursday of the month, which means I am joined by the wonderful, the super cool. It's Amanda Silberling. Hello, Amanda.

0:01:32 - Amanda Silberling
Hello, how's it going Other than off mic? I just tried to convince you to buy a $30 squirrel mug, so we're off to a great start here.

0:01:41 - Mikah Sargent
I'm feeling great. It's a good start to the day after we kind of talked about both feeling a little exhausted. What can solve that? But a little bit of retail therapy. And speaking of retail therapy, interestingly, apparently you can just use the money that you have to. If you can't buy something, build it. This is me trying to do an introduction to your story of the week.

0:02:12 - Amanda Silberling
Oh, I was like did Mikah discover what money does? So the thing is so you get a paycheck and then, if you need things, you can use that money and it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool how that works. When I go to the grocery store I'm like here's the money I have earned in exchange for goods.

Um, yeah, so all right, in all seriousness, my story of the week is about a startup founder in Oakland named Paul friedman, who, like many people in oak, who particularly sports fans, he was sad because the Oakland A's baseball team is moving to Las Vegas, but first stopping in Sacramento for a weird time. But it's the third professional sports team to leave Oakland in the last five years, which is devastating. And he was like you know what? I might not have $1.2 billion to buy the Oakland A's, but I probably could cobble the money together to form a Pioneer League baseball team. So now, instead of the Oakland A's, there is now a team in Oakland called the Oakland B's which is part of the Pioneer League, which is like similar to the minor leagues but not affiliated with an MLB team.

And why is this a tech story, you might ask.

I think it's a tech story because Paul is using all of the things he learned as being an ed tech founder with multiple exits to apply that to starting a very different type of business than what we usually talk about, which is a professional sports team but not an MLB team, and I think it's a cool story thinking about how, like all the things that he used to talk to startups about, like getting capital that aligns with your own vision and goals as a founder that is now applying to his situation where they just did a whole crowdfunding thing where they raised 1.2 million dollars from 2200 fans um, together not like her fan, that would be excessive, um and so that's like a very aligned source of capital because the fans want the same thing that he wants, which is a good baseball team in Oakland that is fun and cares about its fans.

And I just think that this was a fun story and I like baseball and I like sticking it to the man, and in this case, the man is a billionaire sports owner who is not respecting the wishes of the community.

0:04:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. So let's talk about this, because one thing that I mean, if you don't pay attention to sports, then you might not be familiar with the uh, the way that that it works, like getting up and just leaving a city. Is it typically done because the team isn't making enough money in that place? Is it because talent doesn't want to move to that city? Is it because they feel like the name that's attached to the team, like the city name that's attached to the team, makes a difference in terms of respectability? Why do people keep leaving Oakland?

0:05:43 - Amanda Silberling
I think it has to do with the money of it all. It varies from team to team, but I think with the A's it was like if they built this stadium in Las Vegas, then I think there were like incentives to move to Vegas and the Oakland Raiders the NFL team also is now the Las Vegas Raiders and you see this with other teams like.

0:06:09 - Mikah Sargent
More like the Las Vegas Traders, sorry.

0:06:14 - Amanda Silberling
Like I grew up a fan of the Marlins and because I lived in Florida and they would win a World Series and then sell all the good players, because then you could get a lot of money for the players because everyone was like, wow, they're so good, they just won the World Series and then sell all the good players, because then you could get a lot of money for the players because everyone was like, wow, they're so good, they just won the World Series.

And then it becomes more profitable for the owners of sports teams sometimes to like treat it as purely a business rather than trying to actually win games, and then for the fans that's very frustrating.

And another point that Paul Friedman made when I talked to him was how sports really are important to the morale of a city, and he mentioned specifically when you go to a sporting event and you're taking public transit home from the event and you're just on the train with a bunch of sports fans that were just coming from the same thing you were at. And it's rare to be on public transit where random people are talking to each other in a friendly way and not just like looking on their phones or talking to people in an unfriendly way, which that happens in philadelphia, um, and I do think he has a point that this is really like an asset to the community to have something to rally around, even if, like people that aren't really sports fans might not get it, but it's something that brings people together and gives you like a shared kind of identity and goal as a community.

0:07:46 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely. I do think that that is part of it and that I know in your piece, one of the sort of subheads was community is the product, because it is interesting to take startup know-how and apply it to something that maybe traditionally doesn't have that aspect. Is this a money-making venture for the startup founder, or is this more of just a fun risk, because it didn't sound like they raised a whole lot of money from just the fans directly? Is it one of these situations where, like in a movie theater, most of the money comes from the concessions that you get whenever the teams are playing and so it's a slow burn? Where does the money come into play here?

0:08:38 - Amanda Silberling
Yeah, I think it's a bit more of a slow burn, although the founder did tell me that they're hoping it to be break even next year and then hopefully grow more beyond that.

But I think, like with startups, you have these companies that are getting like ten million dollars of investment and then they're like oh man, how do we like pay our investors back Because they're investing so much money into like the technology and into like trying to build things that have never been done before, and then, in this case, the goals of the company and the way to achieve those goals are a lot more straightforward than like something like be real, where it's like okay, you have all of this funding, but are you ever going to make it back, or are you just going to sell, which is what they did do.

Um, where you want to make a good baseball team, you want to hire staff, you want to build a stadium, you want to make the stadium a good experience for fans, and then another thing they did that I think is interesting is like with like the move to las vegas, for example, the A's are building this half a billion dollar stadium, which is wild, but you don't have to do that. So they built a stadium for the Oakland Bees that was like a condemned Little League field that they just built from the ground up and fully renovated and stuff. They just like built from the ground up and fully renovated and stuff and like, yeah, they are a first year pioneer league baseball team. They don't necessarily have 40 000 fans filling the seats every day, but they have 4 000 seats and that is nothing to laugh about and hopefully over time.

Yeah, and like the way they built the stadium is so that they could add more seating, like over time, like they did, kind of like a modular setup where they can keep building more and more yeah, and that makes sense.

0:10:35 - Mikah Sargent
I there's also some aspect of humanity that really roots for the underdog, and so I could see it just again. Stick it to the man mentality, underdog mentality. All of that, I think, is helpful in gearing up excitement and getting people to come and check it out and root for this team. That is really just trying to give people a point to rally around. So, yeah, there's something triumphant about it and I hope that it's a success for all parties involved. I was also curious if you're not major league and you're not minor league, where you are associated with major league it's sort of this other faction when do they find their? Is it the baseball players who can't get into the? And this sounds bad, but I'm genuinely curious. They can't get into the minor league team. Do they then go to something like this pioneer thing? Or is this a wholly separate draw where it's community members who are good baseball players because maybe they played baseball throughout high school or something? Do you know anything about, like where the players typically come from?

0:11:57 - Amanda Silberling
Yeah, I think it's somewhere kind of like similar to minor league, where it is still a league that is affiliated with the LB league, where it is still a league that is affiliated with the MLB. So you could get like traded, so to speak, or like you could have a deal negotiated so that you go from the ballers to like the triple a team for an MLB team or something. So it's not like you have to choose pioneer league or these other like independentaffiliated leagues or the minor leagues, and I think it kind of just depends up to the player also, because playing minor league baseball is not a super rewarding job.

Like the pay is not great, you're traveling around constantly, like it seems like a pretty rough life, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some guys that are just like maybe there's a different way to do this. Another way that you get people is sometimes there's players that just like need to not be in the minor league system and like something new, to try to like jog them out of a funk or maybe, if they get like suspended from the mlb for some reason, you see players like going to other countries and being in their leagues but, yeah, sometimes like it can just be.

Like this guy isn't performing super well in the minors, we're're going to send him to the Korean league for a few years and maybe the different style of play and the different environment will jog him out of this slump or whatever. Or you can send him to Oakland.

0:13:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's the new Korea, All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break before we come back with my story of the week.

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All right, we are back from the break. I am joined by Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch and it's time for my story of the week. I wanted to talk about a new announcement, revelation that is not entirely, in my opinion, a revelation, and that's where I want to kind of break this down. So Australia basically came full force and made Meta admit to something in a very clear way. Force and made Meta admit to something in a very clear way.

For some period of time now, there's been a question of whether Meta was using the data of its users, all the way back to 2007 as a means of training its AI, and while at first, meta, by way of its global policy director, rejected the idea that it was doing so, the claim that it was doing so because of direct confrontation. It resulted in Meta kind of saying okay, yes, and I want to read this verbatim because I think that it's it's just, it's just good. So this was what Green Party Senator David Shoebridge said in the inquiry with Meta. The truth of the matter is that, unless should I do it in an all? No, I'm just kidding the truth of the matter is that, unless you have consciously set those posts to private since 2007, meta has just decided that you, being Meta, will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That's the reality, isn't it? And Meta's global privacy director responded by saying correct. So what that means is that if you have posted to Instagram or Facebook since 2007, and those posts were not set to well, I should say were set to public, meaning they weren't set to private, they weren't set to anything other than just public then those posts have been used to train Meta, meta's AI.

Here's the thing to understand, though. In its privacy center, in its blog posts, meta has for some time said quote we use public posts and comments on Facebook and Instagram to train generative AI models for these features and for the open source community. We don't use posts or comments with an audience other than public for these purposes, and I need to give credit to Jess Weatherbed of the Verge, by the way, who has kind of brought this all together. So here's what I want to talk about, because privacy policies have existed for years and years, and years, and years and years, and many of us are aware of the fact that when you join a service and you put things on the service that you are giving that service some means of access to this data, you're putting it into their servers, you're putting it onto their site, you're putting it wherever it happens to be. It happens to be, and so there's going to be action taken with that information.

The concern that we're seeing, especially with this inquiry, seemed to surround the idea that, for example, I think it was yeah, it was Labor Party Senator Tony Sheldon who said what about the public photos that I've posted to Facebook that are photos of me with my kids? Were my kids then used to train your AI? And the Meta's global policy director said yes, if your post was sent to public, it doesn't matter what's in the photo, it was trained for use in AI or it was used in training of AI. So here's where I want to talk to you, Amanda, about your kind of initial take regarding this.

But, more importantly, there's a part of me that feels a little annoyed. I guess and I know this maybe makes me seem kind of elitist or something like that I don't know what the word is but maybe makes me seem kind of bad, I guess in that I'm a little annoyed at this shock and awe mentality that sometimes we see these leaders take, and then even just me talking to a family member or something. When I say, yeah, this thing, that you're not paying for, that you are putting your photos into, they're using your photos for things. It's like, yeah, of course they are. I don't know when do you stand on this Right?

0:21:06 - Amanda Silberling
yeah, I think, especially with this particular situation of meta using ai to train uh, meta using our content to train its ai my reaction to this article was kind of like yeah, we know, because we do know, and not just because of the reasons you're saying where we know that we are the product and that we're being sold ads when we use meta products, because we know that this has been something that artists have been in an uproar about for months.

There was a big artist exodus from Instagram a couple months ago when artists were realizing that you only are able to opt out of this training if you live in the EU because of privacy laws that they have in the EU. So if you're an artist posting like your original illustrations on Instagram, then that is being scraped and used to train, and artists need to be public because that's how they find clients and get work. So there was a whole big scuffle about this months ago and the thing is, I think the news here is that this might be the first time that Meta has outright said like, yes, we are doing this time that Meta has outright said like, yes, we are doing this, whereas before it was like, well, you can opt out of it, but only if you live in Europe, and it's kind of just like okay, but so is this happening to us or no? And I guess it is happening to us, we know for sure now.

0:22:52 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and that's a good point In terms of the lack of clarity leading up to this and the sort of bouncing around and and beating about the bush and trying to kind of dodge and swerve. That is not, that's, that's not cool. Not cool, brouh. That does make it feel a little bit more kind of secretive, even if it's in the fine print. By not just coming out straight up and saying this is what's happening, you do then give this opportunity for the moral panic if that's what it is that crops up.

I just, I guess I've always been told to be careful about what I post online and that the internet, even when you might not think it's permanent, is permanent and that if you're using a free service, um, they're getting you some other way, and that feels like one aspect of this.

For sure that, um, you know.

You know I wouldn't expect anything else from the company, but at the same time I try to juggle that understanding with some level of empathy for the folks who for some reason didn't think that that was the case or didn't expect it to go this far.

But what's hard for me is figuring out how it. I want to know how you did not think that your photo, because they're asking Meta and I don't even think that I need to ask Meta this in the first place. I mean, you and I have talked, we just said this, we kind of knew that this was happening and, yes, it's good to hear Meta say it straight out. But, like I just need to know why someone would not think that this would be taking place, and maybe it's the idea that it's a new technology and so you want to kind of have it reconfirmed upon the introduction of every new technology. But yeah, the second that a company comes out with something, I'm going okay, the stuff that I'm putting into this is probably being used in some way to improve upon it, unless I explicitly suggest otherwise.

0:25:28 - Amanda Silberling
Yeah, I mean. I think it just comes down to like tech literacy in general is not as high as it seems when we both work in techie jobs and talk to people who have a much greater than average understanding of how this stuff works and then, like, our parents don't and that doesn't mean that they don't deserve data privacy. But it's harder to advocate for those things for yourself when you don't know where to even begin.

0:25:59 - Mikah Sargent
How can there be so much that you don't know? You don't know in the words of Pocahontas, and so in that way, yes, my dad wouldn't know. That it's not just about not, you're right, I love that. It's not just about not knowing that it's there, it's not knowing, meaning you can't say I don't want this to happen to me or to my photos. That's probably the that makes me feel better about this more than anything else, because it's just been really frustrating seeing this kind of ongoing shock and awe that exists, and maybe in this case it really is about getting meta.

To just put it plainly and say it straight out, and I can't remember where I originally read about this. But on a global scale, I have heard a number of times that Australia is often a People from Australia don't like to hear this, and so I have to be careful when the emails start coming in. But I've heard that Australia is kind of a testbed for other first world countries, particularly the United States, for laws, because it's a smaller country and so you can see how things will play out, and so you'll often see new tech policy come into play, in particular. It's tech policy there, and it's a testing ground to see how things will work out. So we look to Australia a lot of the time. So I thought it was really cool to see Australia pushing at the forefront of this and saying we're going to get an answer from you, meta, the US company. I found that very inspiring, I guess.

0:27:59 - Amanda Silberling
Yeah, Thanks Australia.

0:28:01 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Thanks Australia.

0:28:02 - Amanda Silberling
I think maybe another reason why you're getting frustrated with the shock and awe around this is that, like, understanding tech is one thing, like it's one thing when, like, older people in our lives are like, oh, can you help me, like bcc someone on this email, like that's one thing. It's a whole other thing for people to understand how generative ai works and what it means for your image to be scraped in a data set. Like that's something that I probably would have to explain what that means to my parents and that's not like their fault.

Like I think even like friends of mine that are my age but don't work in tech might not totally get how ai works right and I think this is the fundamental issue where, like, yes, we are using these meta services for free and we are putting data into their products and we can't really fault them for scraping our stuff, but we can fault them for not making it clear to the users what they are like consenting to without consenting to their ability to consent to it.

0:29:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's well put. Yeah, I think you're right that Meta could do a better job of doing that in the first place, but then maybe routinely checking in hey, are these the privacy settings that you still want? And here's exactly what this means. That is asking for a lot, because the company would rather not have you think about it again, almost certainly, and just keep those privacies set up so that it is public and they've got that data to train on, because that's valuable. We've seen AI companies scrambling to find new sources of information to help train their AIs, and Meta having access to this huge back catalog is a very valuable thing, so it's no surprise that they are leveraging their service and the honestly kind of horrible interactions that take place there. And that was my first thought.

0:30:04 - Amanda Silberling
Honestly, I thought- there's going to be so many minions yeah.

0:30:09 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, my goodness, I need to use Met about his ai to make some minion. Uh, there's a whole thing about minion jesus.

0:30:16 - Amanda Silberling
Um, I think the podcast today explained from vox did like a whole explanation of how minion jesus has like made big strides on facebook.

0:30:26 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my god, minion, jesus, there you go.

0:30:30 - Amanda Silberling
Get ready.

0:30:30 - Mikah Sargent
Get ready, folks, Get ready, because you're going to have to learn about Minion Jesus. You've heard of Elf on the Shelf but are you ready for? Minion Jesus, minion Jesus. I don't think I am Amanda Silberling. It is always a pleasure to have you on the show.

0:30:47 - Amanda Silberling
Of course folks can head to techcrunch.com to check out your work but where else should they go to keep up with what you're doing? Yes, you can find me on the internet, on the Twitter / X, which is at a Syllab, writes in the little thingy below me. I am always posting weird takes about many things because this brain does not stop, and I have a podcast called Wow True, which is an internet culture podcast, and you can find it wherever pods are cast is what the kids are saying these days.

0:31:22 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. All right, we will see you next time. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, bye. All right, we're going to take a quick break so I can tell you about our next sponsor and then, when we get back from the break, we will talk to Dan Moren, Six Colors East Coast Bureau Chief, about the Apple event.

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All righty folks. So the Apple event took place, New products were announced and, oh man, my journalist professors are like let's not do passive voice Anyway. And of course, the pre-orders are set to take place tomorrow as we record this episode on Thursday September 12th, joining us to talk about the event and kind of break down the post-show understanding of what was announced. But, more importantly, maybe what we missed is Dan Moren of Six Colors. Hello Dan, hello Mikah.

0:34:18 - Dan Moren
Have you got a little post-event? Glow, time glow.

0:34:21 - Mikah Sargent
Can you tell I'm glowing? I can see the aura around you. It's lovely.

0:34:25 - Dan Moren
It looks great.

0:34:26 - Mikah Sargent
It was glow time and it did glow, I think. In the end there were lots of bright colors of phones, that's true, but something that stood out to me was the way that Apple brought everything to everyone. Can you talk about how the phones are rather similar this year across the whole lineup?

0:34:53 - Dan Moren
Yeah, that's true. I think that in past years we've seen big divisions between both the standard line you know, the iPhone 15 versus 15 Pro, 14 versus 14 Pro, etc. And even versus the sizes right, the plus sizes or the Pro Max size. This year it does feel like things are a bit more narrow. That gap has narrowed, both between the individual sizes within a model and the models themselves. So, for example, last year there was a pretty big disparity in terms of the processors in all the phones. The Pro units went ahead and got a A17 Pro processor, whereas the older iPhone 15 models were left like a generation behind. This year we got the whole new A18 line, which is based on Apple's new three nanometer process, the same stuff that underlays the M4 processors we've seen roll out in iPads earlier this year, and that came to all the phones, from the iPhone 16, low end all the way up to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. So that's one way and you know, and a big reason for that is, as Apple likes to talk about Apple intelligence, which is a huge push they're making with their AI features they want to be sure that all of these phones, their newest, greatest phones, are capable of running Apple intelligence features and running them well, and that means making sure they have the processor power for it as well as making sure they have enough memory. They're being sort of a minimum sort of for that. So that's one way that we got everything for everybody. Another way is in some of the features that were rolled out this year Again.

Last year the iPhone 15 Pro got that fancy action button and that trickled down this year to the iPhone 16, the base models. However, this year we also saw the introduction of a new button ah buttons, they're everywhere. I know for years, no buttons, now all the buttons. Every year. New button for you the camera control button, which is more than just a button. It is in fact a whole capacitive sensor that can be used to not only take pictures but also adjust settings within the camera app. And that too came to the entire iPhone 16 line, from the base model, iphone 16, all the way up to the Pro Max, which is at times a surprise because we did not necessarily again. We've used to seeing these features come out the high end and then trickle down in the succeeding years to the base models, and then, in addition to that, in between the sizes, we often find the Pro Max gets something more than the iPhone Pro of that year.

This year, the 16 Pro and Pro Max both have essentially the same exact camera layout, which tends to be one of the big disparities between them. The iPhone 16 Pro got the 5X optical zoom option that was only on the Pro Max last year, 5x optical zoom option that was only on the Pro Max last year. And they both feature a new 48 megapixel fusion camera as their main camera, as well as upgraded 48 megapixel ultra-wide lenses. So there really isn't as much to sort compare those two models. They are basically the same, aside from screen size and battery life, which is just sort of a function of how much you can fit in the size of phone that we're talking about.

So I mean, this seems to go back and forth for Apple, some years there's bigger disparities between models, some years there's fewer. I kind of prefer this way around where I feel like the only choice is how big a phone do you want, and then you don't have to. Oh no, I'm going to get the smaller phone, but I'll lose out on that 5X optical zoom. That's frustrating. I don't want to make that decision because I don't want a big phone, so yeah, so that's. Most of what we saw this year is stuff that sort of came across the line and a more holistic revamp of everything that's happening in the iPhone.

0:38:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I am pleased too as someone who is asked what device should I get. I think that in years past there had to be lots of caveats included and really more exploration of what the person needed, and this has just made it so much simpler because in most cases I can just offer the standard device as my recommendation, because it has so much of what you can expect. And then people it's been my experience at least, that people like color and there are lots of color options that you get from the standard model. This year things are pretty bleak color-wise for the pro phones.

But I wanted to know is there anything that that wasn't announced on stage for the phones that is worth talking about? Like was, was there? You know some in the past it's been like oh, there was, there's a thread border router inside of the iPhone, which again is the case this year, but that has already happened. Or oh, the, um, the, the, the cellular is better. Or there's a new ultrawide, any secretive stuff that people can get excited about, or is it pretty much they announced on stage what took place for those phones?

0:39:56 - Dan Moren
I think this year, a lot of what you're seeing is what you see is what you get. There is a report going around that the 16 Pro and Pro Max do have a new Qualcomm modem in them that may provide a boost in 5G speeds compared to their predecessors. Some of the reports on that, which were first reported by SpeedSmart, basically say on some networks you're going to see up to like maybe a 20, 25% boost. That's always a little tricky to figure out based on you know, may depend on where you are, may depend on the cell you're in, the provider you're in, how good your signal is, all of that, but it does seem like maybe that's one thing that's quietly been upgraded in the pro models. That isn't necessarily true in the straight iPhone 16 standard models. Other than that, though, it does feel very much kind of like a, like a. It's a WYSIWYG kind of year.

I mean, I think if Apple yeah, apple was trying to pull out every stop it had in terms of talking about new stuff on stage and some stuff, it's weird they didn't even really like quantify right. They're like oh, it's got the best battery life ever. Moving on to other things like how much Do you want to give us a number, even a meaningless chart. Nope, didn't even want to do that. So, yeah, I think a lot of the focus this year was on providing the best platform they felt like they could provide for this upcoming rollout of Apple intelligence features.

0:41:18 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, now, that was an interesting aspect of this For those of us who had watched the WWDC event. We would have learned about Apple intelligence and many of the features that some of us have been able to test in iOS 18.1 beta, but with that there was an introduction of a couple of new features that use Apple intelligence. Can you briefly discuss anything that you know we're supposed to be able to expect as things go on?

0:42:01 - Dan Moren
Yeah well, so again we did see the full rollout of sort of Apple intelligence back in June. This time around we got largely a rehash of those kinds of features, and those features are rolling out over a long period of time, with the first ones expected to come in the 18.1 update next month, but then further updates adding features that haven't even yet been in beta testing, including some of those generative image features. So they talked once again about Genmoji, which is the ability to create custom emoji just using a text prompt, and they discussed their image playground feature, which lets you generate AI imagery in the way that we've seen with a lot of other generative AI features. Beyond that, we also know that Siri has been promised to get a lot of these improvements in terms of being able to be more context aware and in terms of being able to kind of understand you better and pull up information from disparate sources on your phone. That's stuff that we haven't seen in the betas at all and might be rolling out sometime next year.

It's kind of unclear even there when exactly the timeframe is for that. So you know there wasn't necessarily a lot in there for those paying attention. In terms of new Apple intelligence features. We just got sort of that rundown again, but there are certainly a slew of features that are coming in short order to all the devices and it's going to be a lot. It's going to be a lot. This is not one of those years where they release a software update and they're like we're done, it's over. No, you're going to be seeing these Apple intelligence features roll out over the next many, many months.

0:43:31 - Mikah Sargent
Understood the other. Of course there was introduction of new Apple watches. I think when it comes to that, could you tell us just about anything there that maybe people didn't expect ahead of the rumors and anything that kind of stood out to you, even in some disappointing aspects, like with the Ultra?

0:43:59 - Dan Moren
Yeah, yeah, I mean. Well, starting with the Ultra, nobody really expected a new model this year. They've revamped the Ultra the last two years. This year they spent a lot of time talking about it, which is weird because it is physically the same device, but they added a new black finish to it, which, sure, if that's what you were looking for, it looks nice. They added some new bands that were sort of inspired by their classic Milanese loop bands a titanium-based model but there's not a lot there that really changed otherwise.

In terms of the Series 10, some people had wondered if maybe the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch's introduction would be a time to see a more comprehensive revamp of the Apple Watch, and we didn't really get that. We did get some slight changes in terms of size, most notably, they're a lot thinner than the predecessors, as well as having slightly larger cases and bigger screens. And then we also saw, kind of surprisingly, apple decided to off the stainless steel option in terms of cases. So you have your choice of aluminum or titanium now, but that's it, as well as in a variety of different finishes.

One thing that I was really interested to see I actually was just checking this out on the watchOS 11 beta, which is in there, is they added a Tides app I guess they're really into. If you need tides you're in surfing, you wanna know about the tides there's a whole app that Apple makes now for you, I guess, as somebody I do live near an ocean, but not an ocean with a lot of surfing, so I don't know that that will be super handy for me, but it is in that beta if you want to check it out. And I think the biggest thing oh, the thing I did not expect did not have my bingo card this year was the ability to listen to media through your Apple.

0:45:41 - Mikah Sargent
Watch speakers, cool yeah.

0:45:45 - Dan Moren
Just a thing I really need Love to get on the bus with people jamming out to their Apple Watch playing music.

0:45:51 - Mikah Sargent
Listening to their Apple Watch near their head, up to your ear.

0:45:53 - Dan Moren
That's right. That's the only way to listen. That's how you do it.

0:45:56 - Mikah Sargent
And then they're talking, and then the person, and it's just like oh my gosh.

0:46:01 - Dan Moren
It's the future. We didn't know we wanted Mikah.

0:46:03 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, we definitely didn't know we wanted because we didn't want it, sorry.

0:46:06 - Dan Moren
My bad, we didn't want it. Sorry, my bad, we didn't want it, that's right.

0:46:08 - Mikah Sargent
Correct. Last but not least, you just wrote this morning about an update to I think it was this morning. You definitely just recently wrote on Six Pillars.

0:46:18 - Dan Moren
I just wrote right now as we were on the show. I'm not good.

0:46:23 - Mikah Sargent
About an update to Apple's announcement regarding how AirPods are going to offer some new functionality in the future. Could you tell us a little bit about that functionality and what the update is?

0:46:36 - Dan Moren
Yeah, absolutely so. Of the AirPods that did not get updated in terms of hardware this year were the AirPods Pro 2. They did, however, get this big software push Apple, I guess, didn't want them to feel left out, which is all these features related to acting as hearing aids. So this morning the FDA officially approved this functionality, which allows AirPods 2 to act as hearing aids. It means that they can be used for a variety of features that help people with mild or moderate hearing loss understand things better. This is part of this whole thing where the FDA has really loosened up restrictions on over-the-counter hearing aids, which I think is a really intriguing issue because it offers some more competition with those prescription-based hearing aids which can often cost thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Obviously, AirPods Pro, considerably cheaper than that, Won't help everybody with sort of severe hearing loss, obviously as well, but it is something that they're trying to take, this multi-pronged approach, with not only being able to act as hearing aids but also being able to prevent hearing loss, potentially by adapting the audio that you are getting into your ears and preventing hearing damage, as well as offering a feature that lets you do an actual hearing test to determine whether or not you have started to lose hearing in your ears or not.

So very much like the way you might go to an audiologist or something and have that test where they play a variety of frequencies for you and you try to gauge whether or not you can hear them. This should allow you to sort of get a better idea of your hearing health and perhaps, with then consulting with a medical professional, figure out what the best steps are. But it's an exciting and interesting moment and Apple obviously has been big on health tech in the last several years and this is kind of seems to be their latest area of pushing, and I'm very interested to see what comes of it when that feature actually starts shipping.

0:48:30 - Mikah Sargent
Indeed, Dan. I want to thank you so much for taking some time to join us today. Of course, folks can head over to sixcolors.com to get the full scoop on what Apple announced as well, as I'm sure we'll see wonderful reviews of these devices just as soon as that embargo drops. If folks want to stay up to date with what you're doing online, where do they go to do that?

0:48:51 - Dan Moren
You can find me on most social media networks as dmoren on Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon. I'm also on the web at dmorencom, where you can find links to everything that I do.

0:49:01 - Mikah Sargent
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dan, for your time. We appreciate it.

All right, we're going to take a quick break before we come back with our final interview of the day. I want to take a moment to tell you about our final sponsor of this episode. It's ThreatLocker who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Do zero-day exploits and supply chain attacks keep you up at night? I can imagine that they do, but worry no more, because you can harden your security with ThreatLocker. Worldwide companies like JetBlue trust ThreatLocker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high. Imagine taking a proactive, deny-by-default approach to cybersecurity, blocking every action, process and user unless authorized by your team. ThreatLocker helps you do this and provides a full audit of every action for risk management and compliance. Their 24-7 US-based support team fully supports onboarding and beyond.

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All right, we are back from the break and now it's time to talk about something you may or may not have heard about, but Sony definitely wants you to know about. It is the new PS5 Pro. Joining us to talk about what's new and what you can expect from the device is Kyle Orland joining us from Ars Technica. Welcome back to the show, Kyle. Hey, thanks for having me. Mikah, yeah, a pleasure to have you here, so I would love to just get right into it. First and foremost, we've got a new PS5 Pro, and that must mean that it's got new stuff going on. What are the key hardware upgrades for this device, and how do they actually enhance gaming performance compared to the PS5 that people fought tooth and nail to get when it first came out.

0:51:49 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, this upgrade is all about graphics. They focused on a larger gpu uh, which has I have the numbers here to the side 45 faster rendering, 67 more compute units, 28 faster video ram. Uh, it all just means better graphics. Uh, the target that uh sony focused on in their presentation was kind of getting rid of that choice between performance mode and fidelity mode. So fidelity mode would have higher resolutions, but maybe limited to 30 frames per second. Performance mode you'd get that smooth, 60 frames per second but you might see resolutions a little lower. They want the best of both worlds. They want approaching 4K graphics at 60 frames per second in the highest end games, and that's what they're promising. The PS5 Pro will deliver.

0:52:36 - Mikah Sargent
Approaching 4K graphics. Can you tell me how that translates? If I have a I mean many a modern TV that is a 4K television, I plug in this PS5 pro. It does 60 frames per second. You know it supports six frames per second. What am I working with in one of these games?

0:52:56 - Kyle Orland
So it totally depends on the games. You know I wasn't counting the lines of pixels or anything on this. They have to wait until it comes out to get the full spectrum. But you know, some of the games might be natively a 14p instead of 2000 lines. They do have an upsampling system there called PSSR, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, I think it stands for, and they say it's an AI powered upscaling algorithm where it looks at the raw pixels and kind of fills in those pixels to get it to a 4K image automatically, you know, trying to figure out what color would go on that little edge of the line and then smooth it out. This is especially useful, they say, in crowd scenes, like for far off things in distance.

In a game like Ratchet and Clank you might see sharper people in the stands. I'm not sure how much that's really going to impact the average viewer. Unless you're sitting very close to a very large screen, I'm not really sure that you'll be able to pick out that kind of upsampling. You might get kind of a feeling for it. You might think, oh, something is a little different here. But with the AI supersampling I've seen it can get a little fuzzy. It's not really a night and day difference that they might want you to think.

0:54:15 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Now let's talk about what. For me, as a person who's not super steeped in graphics, performance and GPUs and everything else, ray tracing seems like quite the buzzword, and it seems like it's akin to hearing every big tech company talk about AI right now. Can you just give me a basic understanding of ray tracing and then, what is going on with the PS5 Pro in terms of its improved GPU and how that is ramped up in terms of ray tracing and higher frame rates?

0:54:50 - Kyle Orland
Ray tracing. Simplest way of thinking of it is calculating every ray of light coming from a light source and how it bounces off a number of things in the environment, sometimes up to five, seven bounces.

So, like on a shiny car in Gran Turismo, before you would see, oh, it's kind of reflective, but now you'll actually see the reflection of the car next to you in ray tracing and that reflection will bounce back and so forth. It ends up being much more realistic. Your mind tends to notice when these things aren't reflecting correctly, because you have a lifetime of experience seeing shiny objects reflecting the world, whereas they've had to come up with tricks before ray tracing. The PS5 Pro says it'll be, I think, 50% faster at this, so you can have the ray tracing effects while keeping that 60 frames per second. You might be able to do ray tracing in more games.

You might have more realistic shadows in a game because it also calculates when the light isn't hitting, something like if it's blocked by a tree or another wall. I think that is the kind of thing you'll notice if you turn ray tracing on or off in a game. You really can see oh, it's not sharper or anything, but it just looks more realistic. It looks more like you're used to things looking in the real world. It looks more like you're used to things looking in the real world. I think with the extra power of the PS5 Pro, I hope more developers will be able to use it without taking a frame rate hit Understood.

0:56:17 - Mikah Sargent
Now, I would imagine that this list is going to increase over time. What games are set to be quote? Ps5 Pro enhanced, or maybe you can name a couple. And then, what exactly is that going to mean?

0:56:38 - Kyle Orland
How will they take advantage of the new hardware? Yeah, I think there was a list of. They said 50 games would be available. Pretty much all the biggest ones you can name will have it Spider-Man 2, ratchet and Clank, last of Us Part II I'm trying to remember what else was on there. But the biggest games will definitely get these enhancements. I think as time goes on and the PS5 Pro gets into more households, more developers, maybe smaller developers will also get those enhancements. But Sony also says that even if you don't tune the game for these enhancements, you'll be able to get upscaling upgrades on games that are not tuned for it, or even older PS4 games will supposedly look better with PS5 Pro. So we'll see how that goes once we have it in our hands first Understood.

0:57:22 - Mikah Sargent
Now you did mention the PSSR PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, the PSSR PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. So is this an upscaling system that they just have kind of given a unique name, and how would it compare then to something like, for example again, this is coming from a lay person a DVD, and I mean a literal DVD, not even Blu-ray, a DVD player that has 1080p upscaling, for example?

0:57:53 - Kyle Orland
yeah, that's a good comparison.

If you have an old dvd that not even a blu-ray that you know was designed for your tube tv, and, uh, you have an upscaling blu-ray player, it it won't, you know, make it look like a blu-ray.

You you will definitely tell the difference if you had something that was sampled at that 1080p, but it'll make it look nicer. It'll make it look a little sharper around the edges and that's what you'll pretty much see with PSSR. It's the same type of thing that NVIDIA has been doing for a long time with supersampling on its graphics drivers, and the idea is that it allows the game itself to be rendered at a lower resolution and then it kind of fills in the gaps quickly, which allows for, again, faster frame rates. Yeah, I really want to see how this looks when it's actually in my living room, because in the past I've seen sometimes it works very well and sometimes you see a lot of kind of fuzziness, a kind of crosshatch patterns where the AI is trying to fill in pixels and it's not really doing it well. Things have improved recently as machine learning is getting better and hopefully Sony has learned from some of that experience.

0:59:08 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Now let's talk about the big thing that sticks out here. The thing that seems to be getting people upset Pricing. How does the PS5 Pro's pricing and kind of its positioning as this elite graphics package compare to other consoles that are on the market? You know the Xbox Series X, xbox Series S and maybe even upcoming hardware that we are expecting from Nintendo or other players in the space, because there are also a lot of mobile device manufacturers that are working on, you know, making their consoles better. Where does this fit in the lineup and what do you think about the price with your knowledge of kind of the gaming landscape?

0:59:57 - Kyle Orland
Yeah. So the PS5 Pro is being offered at $700. And that is without a disk drive. If you want to play discs, you have an extra $80 on top of that. So when you compare that to $450 for the disc-free PS5, that's a big ask $250 extra. At that price it's really going to be for the graphics heads, the people who really want top of the line.

Price is not important. Sony did this before with the PS4 Pro and as another mid-generation upgrade that also cost more. I think the ps4 pro ended up being about 20 of all ps4s sold. So this is not the mass market device. This is for the niche, even within console gamers, of people who want just the best to the best. Um, that said, there is a bit of sticker shock there.

I think the last 700 console was the 3DO back in the 90s and that's when $700 was a huge amount and the 3DO obviously failed very quickly, partly because it was so expensive. But $700 is not what it used to be. Just if you adjust for inflation since the PS5 launched, the $500 that it cost then is more like $600 in today's money. So I can see why they're charging that much. But also I don't think they're really aiming for a mass market price here. They're aiming at people where price is pretty much no object. They just want to show off, they want to know I have the best graphics, and they also want to know that this is a product that will last into the future, that in four years maybe $700 will not seem as much or maybe they'll be able to reduce the cost. And this is preparing for that kind of interregnum between when the PS6 eventually comes out.

1:01:47 - Mikah Sargent
Got it. And then, last but not least, I'll ask you with the PS5 Pro being a mid-generation upgrade, what do you think it says about Sony's strategy for extending the PS5's life cycle, as opposed to PS6 and beyond?

1:02:03 - Kyle Orland
Right. Yeah, like I said, they did this before with the PS4 Pro, but that didn't really extend how long the PS4 was on the market. It was still the same six or seven years that we've seen between major console releases, and that was partly driven by Microsoft releasing their new console. Both of them saw each other and said, oh, they're thinking about a new console, we have to do ours Now. This time around. Microsoft is not doing a mid-generation upgrade, or has shown no signs of it yet at least. So that leads to an interesting scenario. If Microsoft has been releasing more of its games on other consoles, its sales of the Xbox have been cratering well below expectations. There's a chance that we might not see another Xbox, or it might not be pushing the state of the art anymore. They might go more of a switch route to focus on portables or something.

If there isn't that push for Sony, it's hard to know where they're going to go with their next generation. Will they want to release a ps6 as quickly? Will the diminishing returns that they're getting from investing in all this hardware kind of lower the number of people who want a top-of-the-line system? You know nintendo's new switch will be coming out next year, most likely if and there's the steam deck as a competition too now it's it seems like there's a as a competition too. Now it seems like there's a divergence between PS5 Pro at the high end, really serving those people who care about having the most, and then things like the Switch and the Steam Deck, where it's lower end but it's more convenient because you can play it portably and because it's much cheaper. So there's going to be a real divergence in the market there, and what Microsoft does will have a large impact on how quickly I think Sony will move.

1:03:55 - Mikah Sargent
Makes sense. Kyle, I want to thank you so much for taking some time to join us today to talk us through the PS5 Pro, helping me truly understand what ray tracing means and why it matters, and also some great details on PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution and what upscaling means. When we're talking about something at this level, of course, folks should head over to arstechnica.com to check out the great work that you're doing. Is that the place that they should go to keep up with what you're doing, or do you have any place online? They can go as well.

1:04:28 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, that's where all my professional writing goes. You can also find me on BlueSky @Kyleorland, which is my fun little URL that I just got. Yeah, that's good, and yeah see you online Awesome.

1:04:43 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you so much, Kyle. We appreciate it. Thanks, Mikah, all righty folks, and with that we have reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. The show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. That is where you can go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats, and we'd love it if you did.

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Again, twit.tv/clubtwit just seven bucks a month. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I've got links to the place I'm most active online. Check out iOS Today, which we'll publish later today, Hands-On Mac, which we'll also publish later today, and tune in on Sundays to watch Hands on Tech, which is the show where I do gadget reviews and take your questions and do my best to answer them. Thank you for tuning in and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye, bye.