Hands-On With the Vision Pro, Big Tech's Back in Washington, Elon Musk’s $55 Billion Payday — With Joanna Stern

0:00Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal joins us to talk about her hands-on experience with Vision Pro. We also break down the dramatic big tech hearings in Washington, Elon Musk's$55 billion pay package that may or may not end up going to him, and Peter Thiel's steroid Olympics. Yes, it's going to be a classic edition of Big Technology Fridays. All that and more coming up right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional, cool-headed, nuanced format. What a week of news we have for you today. We are talking about the Vision Pro, which is live, basically, or just went for sale hours ago.

0:39People walking out of the Apple headquarters in our Apple store on Fifth Avenue and a bunch of people applauding them. It's pretty weird. Anyway, we want to go hands-on with the device. And to do that, we were going to bring you a guest who's actually been hands-on with it, has experienced it, spent many days within the Vision Pro and can tell us all about what it is and what it will be. I want to welcome to the show Joanna Stern. She's an Emmy award-winning digital video and print journalist, a senior personal technology columnist, and all-around great reporter from the Wall Street Journal. Joanna, welcome to the show.

1:12Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks for being here. And we're also joined, as always, by Ranjan Roy from Margins. Ranjan, welcome. I still have not tried the Vision Pro, but Joanna, watching you skiing and chopping onions has gotten me even more excited about it. Those are the first things I'm assuming you're going to do in it. Those are the first things I will do. Okay. So Joanna, just give us a perspective of like, is this device going to be something that people are going to want to use like on a consumer level or is it so beta at this point that it will be just the enthusiasts and the developers?

1:47I've been thinking about this all week because there's so much in it. And when you see non-enthusiasts and non-developers try it out, I was at the Today Show and NBC earlier this week and just seeing people try this out and colleagues, they love it. They're like, wow, that's magic. That's amazing. And then I start thinking, okay, that's the first reaction. What would these people really be doing with this in their lives right now as it stands today, which is a heavy, bulky headset with a battery that comes out the top of it. And it's buggy in some places. And I can list all of the, you know, first generation issues.

2:28And that's where it really comes down to. I think everyone should try this thing. But I don't know. A small subset of people should buy this thing. And I'm hoping the people who buy this thing are the people who are going to make this thing better in the future. Those are the developers out there. Those are the enthusiasts who are going to be pushing people in the tech community to do more with this type of technology. But that's how I'm feeling after a week of this thing. So how are you going to be using it next week? First week, being videotaped, wearing it for 24 hours straight, I think it was.

3:06How are you going to use it next week? That is absolutely the biggest question. So I finished the review, oh boy, what day is it today? Friday. Friday. Zero concept of time. And I think that's kind of - You're in the metaverse now. I'm in the metaverse. All I've done is talk about the Vision Pro all week. I've just done so much around it. But so first week, obviously had to use it, had to test all of the things. That sort of ended on Tuesday because the review posted Tuesday morning. Now I've been doing a lot of demos of it. But yesterday was like the first day I went to work. I had like a normal day of work kind of in between media hits and stuff like that, talking more about the Vision Pro.

3:46Oh, and I brought it with me and my office in at the Wall Street Journal headquarters. Look, I'm going to say right here, I have a crappy monitor there. Like, I guess they just don't think that, you know, the senior tech columnist, you know, of the Wall Street Journal should have a decent monitor. And so I like put it on and I was using it to work. I have a private office, a glass office, and I was using it with a giant Mac monitor. One of the coolest things you can do with it is that you pair it with your Mac. You look at your Mac if they're both logged into the same Apple ID. and your monitor just pops up.

4:17You get like a 60, maybe it's 40 inch monitor sort of hovering over your Mac. And I was using, I was fully working. I was doing my newsletter. I was writing my newsletter in there. I was listening to music and people just kept walking by laughing at me, taking photos of me. And I could see them, but I was pretending I couldn't because I don't want to be bothered. Oh, I just loved your tweet. You said, first day working at Wall Street Journal's offices with the Vision Pro on. People keep coming by laughing at me and asking for me even working. First of all, I'm always working. Second of all, I'm writing my newsletter for tomorrow on a giant Mac monitor.

4:50Third of all, I can see you naked. And then you had to follow up in case HR was reading that the last part was a joke. But like, so I do like working in this thing. And that hits on like the use that Ranjan has been looking forward to the most, is that this is going to be an enterprise device that will be helpful in the office. But here's my like downside, and Nilay Patel talked about this in the Verge review. like I have a backpack that I bring my MacBook in every day, take it on the train. Am I going to like be carrying, and I don't actually have it right here, but I have this, it comes with this giant travel pack and it looks like a pillow basically.

5:31And you have, like I would need a whole separate bag to bring that to and from work every day. Like I'm going to carry like my Vision Pro satchel and like my backpack with my MacBook Pro. You didn't see that in any of the product photos that Apple released. I wonder why that was. The travel. The travel bag. Travel satchel. The battery pack. There was the Vanity Fair picture of Tim Cook. You couldn't even see the line coming from that thing. It was as if their battery pack did not exist. I wonder if that was in the agreement. But this is why you need two Vision Pros, one for home, one for work.

6:04I think that's the grand Apple strategy. Yeah, what's$7 ,000 in the long run? Right, right. I think maybe my answer is probably just to get the Wall Street Journal to buy me a nice monitor for my office. So we have actually a great comment here from Jesse Hempel that we're assuming that people are going to be working in an office. Is this when we think about like the future of work, is this something that you can start to like imagine wearing at home, beaming your coworkers in and then like that's the office all of a sudden? It is when Apple figures out the persona. Right, because that was the other that was the big problem.

6:39Can you talk about the personas a bit from the review? But I do, just to Jesse's point, working from home in it is amazing. And like I, or travel working, I think is that thing. Like I do have a nice monitor at my desk here and I have been using it at home, obviously when I was writing the review. But I think travel working will be a big, big use because I usually even travel with an iPad to use a second monitor while I'm traveling. But back to personas. So to quickly explain, when you're wearing the headset, there's tons of cameras, but there's no cameras facing outward really at you, right? There's no webcam to easily capture your whole face.

7:18So what Apple does cleverly is they create a 3D scan of your face using the camera. So you go through this process when you're setting up the Vision Pro. So you hold the Vision Pro out in front of you and it asks you to do a series of basically face exercises or head exercises, up, down, side, all the things, right? And it scans and then you put the headset back on and it creates a persona of you. I cannot describe what mine looks like. People just have to see it. Many have said I look like a deformed Mona Lisa. To quote my colleague, Jason Gay, he said it Botox from hell. to quote my sister terrifying scary just no to quote my father frightening so it just doesn't look it's not me or yeah as neil patel said um they did you dirty joe is my my favorite quote in the video and so look and i've seen others being recreated better but it's not the meta avatar, cartoon avatar situation.

8:22It's supposed to look like a person. It's supposed to look like you, but it just doesn't. And anytime I call someone, they're just laughing hysterically at me. So I don't know how I would get work done. Do you think personas are going to be a consistent feature in the next iterations of this? Or do you think Apple is going to step back? Because I think I read somewhere that they very carefully clarified that this is a beta a feature and we're learning from this, do you think it goes away or do you think they're going to get it right? I think they'll probably double down on it, but it's hard. It's like, could it be one of these features, certain things which with the Apple Watch, if you remember, and I think it might still be there.

9:04They did this with the first Apple Watch when you could send your heartbeat to people. Is that feature still there? It's certainly not when they mark it, right? It's still there. It's still there. I do it as a joke to some friends. Sometimes you can like write out these letters and this weird, the original be real. Everything. Don't send me a photo. Send me your heartbeat. Just show me your life. That's all. Just want to know you're alive. It's almost Valentine's Day. There are certain things that like Apple realizes as they go, yeah, this isn't working. Let's let's not market this or let's change course.

9:35In this situation, you have to like if you want this to be a work device, you have to have a way of video conferencing. There's just no way around it. so much of our work is that now it ha there has to be a solution there i can see it just getting rapidly better or i could see them giving us some other options like i don't understand like i apple we have our apple emojis like we all probably have made those silly you know cartoonish things i'm assuming they didn't do that because they didn't want to be like meta they didn't want to have the like oh competing you know versus yeah like i think that just would step into too many memes, but who knows?

10:15I mean, they got to do better than this. That gets us still to a crucial point, which is how Apple has marketed this device. And by the way, we definitely want to get to like the cool things that you saw there and like what blew you away. But let's talk quickly about the rollout. So Ron and I have had this little debate going on about like how big of a deal that Apple was going to make the Vision Pro because we know this is probably a beta model. We know this isn't anywhere near where they want to get. And to the point where like, well, maybe they're going to downplay the Vision Pro and just get it out into the hands of developers and then see what happens.

10:46Not what happened at all. They have a big Vision Pro logo on the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. Tim Cook basically is talking like he met God inside that device. The Vanity Fair story talking about how it's the next generation of computing on your face. Getting James Cameron and Jon Favreau to talk about it. Like the expectations are now, I think we can all agree through the roof. So I'm curious, number one, was that a mistake? I'm actually curious to hear from you, Joanna and Ronjan about that, about that point. And then B, we don't really know the use case that they're marketing for. Like, is it watching videos?

11:26Is it setting timers on top of your cooking, which that was my favorite part of the video? Or, you know, is it entertainment? Is it enterprise, right? We've talked about work, maybe it's entertainment. Those are two different buyers, consumer versus enterprise. So what do we think about the rollout? You're going first, Rajan. I'm happy that they've gone big on it. And I think they should go big. I think, and especially when we get into the cooler parts of it, especially the entertainment side of it, which I'm very excited about. This is a big step for their future. And they need their next iPhone.

12:01They need their next kind of killer device that drives the entire company. And I think this space of spatial computing, as they're calling it, which I think I would be curious how you guys would distinguish spatial computing in the metaverse and if there is a difference between the two. But I think I am still picturing a world where wearing a headset in a lot of different situations is going to become normal. I think, I mean, sitting on an airplane, sitting at work, these things won't be weird, especially working from home or working, as you said, travel work from a hotel. So I think going big and establishing it as a category is the right move.

12:37And also, I think, again, Apple can take the heat. Apple can take a little bit of blowback. This is not, again, as someone who embarrassingly waited in line for the first iPhone and had Apple employees cheering for me as I walked out of the Fifth Avenue store, I was ridiculed when I went back to work for waiting in line for four hours. So I think it's the right move. Are you waiting in line today? Yeah. Now I'm sitting here podcasting with you guys. Well, that's obviously the right choice, but Apple. But you ordered one, right? I have not ordered one. And I want to try. I'm waiting for a friend to order one.

13:16And one of my friends has. And I'm going to try it on. And then I'll probably pull the trigger pretty quickly. I wrote about this in my newsletter today that you basically just have to contact your early adopter friend, make some small talk, and then be like, can I come over? Actually, are they allowing people to try it at the Apple store? Yes. Okay. Then maybe I will be. And they just announced this morning that, look, it's going to be a mad rush. So like they're only letting you come to the Apple store right now for the next two days through the weekend. You have to go there. You have to wait in line to get an appointment.

13:49Like you have to like, you know, camp out all day. Then starting Monday, you can make these reservations. Or actually, I think you can make the reservations now and you can book a calendar appointment and go on that day. So you and I should we should go on an Apple Apple store. I think we are. Let's do that. because now that you're saying that, Joanna, I camp out at the Fifth Avenue for the night to get our appointment. I'll put the link in here for you. There was this video I saw of the first person coming out of the Apple Store in New York, and maybe I can drop some of the audio in, but there was the Apple Store employees were cheering for this person.

14:23He was holding up the Vision Pro box like it was Simba from The Lion King. I was like, this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I saw these too. I saw these too. Yeah. So but but Ronja, going to your point that we're, you know, obviously they're trying to and I would never I mean, I wrote the book always day one. Right. You always got to be like, is it your it's your first day. Don't worry about the legacy product. Right. That's the whole point. But like talking about the rollout that Morgan Stanley only expects them to sell four billion dollars of these things in 2027. Right. Like the iPhone, the total business did 119 billion in the fourth quarter or the most recent quarter.

15:03So it's a really tiny product category for them. So I'm kind of curious. Well, Joanna, why don't you answer this question from your perspective about the rollout? Yeah. Look, I've been listening to a lot of the analysts on this and that it will be a smaller market than even sort of iPad or Apple Watch in the first couple of years. It won't hit. It will be smaller than those in the first couple of years than those were. And I think that's right. I mean, I think, first of all, you're asking people to do a lot by putting a computer on their face. And then there's this price point to contend with right now.

15:37And I was on CNBC this morning and they're comparing it with the MetaQuest. And it's just, yes, we're in the same category. And, you know, yes, there are some real ways to compare to what happened with the iPhone and BlackBerry and some of the legacy products that were on the market before. But I don't remember a price delta ever like this. you know, this is not priced for the average mainstream market. It just isn't. So just thinking about sort of the category on its own, one thing that I just think that is actually, that I really realized, especially using this device, is there is an ecosystem play and trap here, certainly.

16:17And so partially I keep thinking, you know, the Mac is a really good accessory for it right now, but maybe one day this is actually going to go that way of more of a computing device that is a Mac replacement versus a phone or a tablet. Or maybe I'm wrong. I think they have a number of ways to take this. And I also wouldn't diminish just the thought of like, this is the Pro, right? This is the Vision Pro. Apple is very good at coming out with the Pro and the Air and the whatever other version, you know, the Series SE or whatever. There will be versions like that in the future. I just don't know how long it takes them to get to those because of the price of the components in this.

17:00So do you think that this is enterprise or do you think this is consumer? It has to start enterprise. And I think enterprise is sort of like a bad word for this type of category because it's only success has ever been in the enterprise. But on the other hand, that's guaranteed units and market that Apple can bank on. Right. Already a substantial number of enterprise have bought previously the HoloLens, then the Quest, even the Magic Leap. All these companies always brag. I mean, you guys probably heard it as well. You know, they come in to have you meet with you. Well, we're having, you know, X, Y and Z company bought a huge fleet of these and they're loving them in the factory floor.

17:43And, you know, then they show you the pictures of the factory floor and, you know, you definitely know the guys like grunting being like, I never use this thing. But it works for them. It works, it sells units, and there's a really decent application of it. Let's also not forget that every graphic designer at work has a$3 ,000 plus Mac monitor. So the pricing isn't even out of range anyway. So yeah, I think enterprise, but I guess, has Apple ever successfully launched an enterprise product? Other, I guess, I mean, the hardware itself but anything outside of i'm thinking from a software perspective or i mean everyone i know uses pages sheets as well numbers numbers numbers like if you think about the evolution like the blackberry actually was the thing that pioneered the smartphone revolution and that was an enterprise device but we just got better technology and next thing you know we all started using iPhones and the iPhone became the enterprise device.

18:47So maybe that's what we see here. Joanna, I'm curious to hear your perspective about like, what was cool wearing this thing? I mean, you wore it a lot. So what were the things that made you say this could be special? The entertainment stuff is really cool. I will say like, I have a very nice TV in my living room, but the rest of my house, I've got to upgrade the TVs there. And just this immersive viewing experience. And I think I heard Tim Cook say he's, he watched the whole series of Ted Lasso on the ceiling, on his ceiling. I called that out. That, I got to say, that experience sucks. Like having the thing on your, I haven't done it with the Vision Pro, but I've watched like full movies or shows like with a projector going up to the ceiling.

19:34And also I had like Netflix on one of these Oculus devices. Can we, have you tried it before? Like it's terrible to project this stuff on the ceiling. There's a reason why you don't put the screen on the ceiling. Yeah. I did not know that was a thing. I don't have a projector, but ceiling TV I've never realized is a trend. It's because it's, I just think it's not something that people would want. I mean, also obviously like Tim, Tim Cook's ceilings are so much nicer than my ceiling. So I don't, I can't judge. It shouldn't matter in virtual reality. That's it's a level, the playing field device.

20:07Give Tim Cook$3 ,500 and you can live like him. That's the promise. live like tim cook you're maybe but maybe if my ceiling was as nice as his it would be a different experience for all of us we don't know we don't know but no i mean i'm joking but i think i think that that is something it's i and i really believe around traveling where like you can't be home and you're i think about the long flights or the times i've okay i'm gonna i've gotta go overseas and i'm gonna watch 12 hours of something on my ipad and now i'm gonna use this But so that is cool. Look, the work experience is cool. When you try it, you're like, oh, yeah.

20:47And then you go back to your monitor and you're like, this is kind of stifling. But look, the part that went viral was this cooking experiment that I did. And in no way, shape or form is Apple saying you should cook with this on. And I'm not saying normal people should, you know, wield a sharp knife and be around hot surfaces in a 1.5 pound headset. But I, I'm a little bit, I like to push the limits. This is what I like to do. So I, I, somebody, the, the developer pitched me, the company's called Crouton, the app is called Crouton and they pitched me on this and I'm, sure, I'm going to try it out.

21:22And I really was blown away by it. I sort of just figured like, this is going to be, you know, but like I'm there in the kitchen, I'm cooking. I pin my recipe up on the right side of the kitchen, which already is a better experience than using your phone, because with your phone or your tablet, you're tapping on it, it's dirty, you got like meat on your hands or whatever you're cooking with, and you got to keep washing your hands and then like scrolling on the iPad or the phone. So that's great. And then I see like, as I'm moving through the steps on the recipe that there's a timer and it's okay, we'll set the timer for the pasta of 16 minutes or whatever it was.

21:58And then it pops out and I can drag that over to the stove. And every time I look over at the stove, I see the timer ticking down. And then I take another timer and I've got to put that over the mushrooms. And every time I look over, I see these two virtual timers hovering over my stove. I know why I was blown away because this is such a melding and a useful melding of digital information in your real world. And it sort of just opens up your eyes to what could be. And I think, you know, I think people are laughing$3 ,500 kitchen cooking timers. Like I've been ridiculed. Does she not know about magnetic timers that she can buy on Amazon?

22:41Does she not know about smart speakers? Well, no, I had no idea these things existed. It's crazy. So thank you, internet, for letting me know. But there's something about that, like simple digital information in your real world that opens up your eyes for what this could be. No, no, I loved this example. I mean, even little details like you just said, I cook a good amount. And again, washing your hands every time if you're handling meat when you're going to scroll the iPad to see the recipe again, having another device set up to watch a heavy sports game on to the side, having multiple timers like I agree I think thinking about in different situations in life and what are all the little bits of information that could contribute to making it a better experience and making it more seamless yeah as a v1 I think that one's going to live years from now we'll look back at the uh onion chopping and the cooking as a as an early use case of this or something that showed the promise yeah to me the thing I want to try most is the spatial video and photos where you can actually like, you know, feel like you're in your videos?

23:49What was it like? I feel like that's one thing that it's you really just need to hear from someone who's used this versus, you know, try to read about it or watch it. What was that like, Joanna? Yeah. And I think you really have to see it. I mean, I think that's the tough thing about all of this is like and I didn't even show it's like, oh, when I show it, it looks like 2D video. And that doesn't look like anything to anybody on, you know, watching it on YouTube or wherever they're watching the video. But yes, you can. So for the last couple of months, Apple are a number of months ago, Apple released spatial video on the iPhone 15 Pros, which uses two cameras to record 3D video.

24:22And so the nice thing is, is that I've been shooting this video, and then it just pops up in my photos app under the spatial tab when I'm wearing the Vision Pro. So scrolling through there, I already have a nice library of my kids doing funny things and nice things. And so just watching that, again, another example of travel, when I'm not, I wouldn't want to like be sitting here if they were in downstairs like I'd rather go live and be with them not be in the headset but when I'm traveling it's nice to be able to relive some of those moments and it it really it's sort of it's look it's not fully immersive 3d it's sort of in a you can there's two settings where it can kind of sort of float out in front of you and then there's a setting where it can be within a sort of a square shape yeah like a just like a frame basically and in both of those situations it's it's 3d i mean it depends on how you've shot it works best if there's something in the foreground a really good one is i had my kids petting a llama uh not a llama was an alpaca uh went to alpaca farm and they're petting this alpaca and they're cracking up and the sound is spatial so it's surround sound all this is today it's it's it's it's very compelling and moving is there going to be a point where we're going to have like little video cameras embedded in our in our eyes and then we'll be able to play back any moment in life just like that black mirror episode it feels black mirror in some ways like you know and i think like you think about the potential of this being combined with ai and yeah i i think a lot about some of this technology about preserving people's lives and afterlife and it could get crazy i mean it will get crazy yeah i just don't want to live in a world where i mean you know seeing this my reaction was a technology is amazing.

26:04B, really do not want to live in a world where we have like this mask on our face at all times and we have all these distractions there. Sorry, Ranjan, go ahead. Would you say the difference between, let's say, you know, a photo and a video, is it the same scale of difference between watching a video flat on your phone and experiencing spatial video in the Vision Pro or is it a smaller degree of difference? i would say it's a it's i mean it's just a it's a better experience i mean you can take spatial spatial photos um you can only do that on the vision pro you can't actually take spatial photos on your iphone um but the video just feels more immersive i mean the photo quality is actually not that good um but i i think you know look i i think there's something here too and you know i did go skiing with these on and when i was skiing with them on i sort of was making the comparison more to what Meta's done with the Ray-Bans, where you have this hands-free experience of shooting video.

27:08And I actually always, like when I actually go skiing with my kids, I bring the Ray-Bans now because I don't want to have my phone. I just want to be able to snap and like, I'm not an amazing skier. And it's just, you get a more first person point of view, like you're there. Right. And I actually think that's something Apple's probably really interested in interesting so maybe they'll do their own version of those of those glasses no i don't think it's a crazy thought or at least that that you know we get that kind of functionality down the road i mean that's it seems like that's what meta figured out like you do those two experiences and then you merge them in some way i want to ask a big fan are you a big fan of the meta ray bands like it's exactly for that use case do they fill that purpose well that's like the i take the meta ray bands if i'm going skiing like or i'm doing something like that with my kids basically Or I'm shooting a video and I want some good first person point of view.