Your front door is the key to the smart home

25:23Yeah, we've seen a lot of cars before horses at the moment, but it's an excitement in the space. And Apple is a huge part of developing the Alero standard as are the big smartphone companies because basically the idea here is that you'll be able to use your phone or watch to unlock any door. And no matter which operating system you're using or which platform you're using, it's the universal access. Just like matter is the universal standard for the smart home, this is like a universal standard for the smart lock, which is kind of connecting you into the smart home. So it's separate from, but connected to.

25:57So this is a space we should be watching quite closely. I think we'll get a lot of movement around CES, especially since Apple announced that it's supporting UWB unlocking in Apple Home. So anyway, that was just to wrap up Smart Locks and now into Smart Home. No, it's good. The answer, as I've always said, is let's invent more protocols. That's what I'm glad that we're continuing on the trend of more protocols. I know. I know. But it gives me something. It gives me stuff to write about. I know it's true. If everybody figures this out, we'll be out of jobs. So like this is for the best. So but yeah, the talk to me about thread with a D and no S.

26:36It's just the one single Thread. Okay, so Thread is, as I've written about in the past, is one of the two main wireless protocols for Matter. So Wi-Fi and Thread. Thread's been around for a decade or so prior to Matter, and it was originally developed inside Nest, along with a few other companies. And it is a low-bandwidth, low-power protocol developed specifically for IoT devices, which actually is a sort of a first, whilst we've got things like Z-Wave and Zigbee, they weren't necessarily designed for the smart home. Thread is designed specifically for the smart home. And so it was sort of relaunched with big fanfare when Matter launched a couple of years ago.

27:17I was like, this is going to solve all our problems. Because talking about battery life, this is something we've seen throughout the smart home. Smart home devices constantly running out of battery, needing to be charged. Thread is low power. So supposedly should, especially things like smart door locks, should not need to be recharged or have their batteries replaced frequently if they use Thread. But we've been having a lot of issues with Thread since it kind of launched into the broader smart home space in the last year or two. And just last, you know, two weeks ago, just around IFA when I was at the tech show in Berlin, and the Thread group launched Thread 1.4, which is basically their pancia to all the problems that we've seen so far with Thread, specifically around interoperability, which is one of the main points of matter that we're supposed to be solving here.

28:15The idea that anything you buy for your smart home, your smart lock, your smart lights should all work together no matter which phone you use or which platform you use. And so Thread uses something called Thread border routers to help communicate from your thread device to the internet and to whichever platform you want to use. And this wasn't necessarily the thread group or the thread protocols problem. I'm trying to avoid saying threads problem. Sorry. Thread apostrophe S. Yes. Because every border router is made by a different manufacturer. So you have border routers from Apple. So like your Apple HomePod, your Apple TV is a thread border router.

28:56From Amazon, your Echo, your Echo Show 10, number of devices from Amazon, the Eros are thread border routers. Same for Google. But unfortunately, these thread border routers didn't talk to each other. And this was causing all sorts of problems because your devices, you'd think you'd connected your device to your smart home, but it was on a different network from, say, your smart lights might be on a different network from your door lock. So it was causing headaches and problems. And so this 1.4 should, they say, fix that specific issue. But we have to wait. This is the thing with these protocols.

29:33They come along promising all these great solutions and then it's all down to the manufacturers and the platforms to then implement them. So we're going to have to wait for that. So I mean, I think with being optimistic, which is definitely my preferred method of approaching, we should see some movement around CES. I think we'll see a lot of products that are coming out with Thread 1.4. But still, that's a long way away. It is. But I will tell you, here is the thing that gives me optimism, is I think the last time you and I talked, my worry was starting to become that this was moving so slowly that everyone is essentially just going to give up on all things matter.

30:12And it would be kind of a thing that existed, but nobody really cared about and thus kind of languished. And it actually doesn't seem like that's the case. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm missing it, but it doesn't seem like there has been sort of reverse momentum where everybody has just decided to go back to doing their own things. It's just that it's moving slower than we hoped, but it still seems to be actually moving in the right direction, which gives me optimism about the fact that we will get where we want to be. It's just going to take a lot longer than anybody hoped. Yeah, I think that's spot on.

30:45But the problem has been, I think, around expectation. And a lot of companies kind of jumped on the bandwagon with Thread and Matter. And we're like, this is our solution. We're going to make everything work with Thread and Matter and ship it to our customers. And it's going to be a great experience. And specifically companies like Nanoleaf and Eve, who are quite well known in the smart home space, but not broadly very well known. And they were sort of seeing this as their opportunity to become more sort of household names because their products can be so much easier to use. And they've really been burned by these protocols not working in the way that it was predicted or promised.

31:25And so we have seen a lot of companies kind of walk back from these protocols. At least Nanoleaf specifically created its own protocol. Another one. Oh, no, it did. Oh, no. Because it's like we can't rely on thread. It's not that we can't rely on the protocol itself. It's a great protocol is what their CEO, Jimmy Chu, told me. But it's the way it's implemented by the platforms. And this all comes back down to this interoperability issue. And it's something you and I have talked about a lot. The different manufacturers, the different platforms playing nicely together. Apple playing nicely with Amazon.

31:59Google playing nicely with Samsung. You know, we all worry that that could be the issue eventually. That they, you know, they all got together to start with. but when they are going to start going their separate ways and causing issues. And that's where the Thread border router issue came from. But they've come back. They said they're going to work on it. This should hopefully be fixed. But yes, right now, if you went all in on Thread or if you went all in on Matter, it's not the sort of panthea that we were hoping for. But we're getting there and people aren't giving up. You're right. There is momentum.

32:31It's just not ready for the real world yet. It's not ready for the people that want a good door lock and a good video doorbell. And we are definitely past the point where a lot of these companies promised us it would work by now. And it doesn't. Right. But it will. I still believe that someday it will. And speaking of, last thing we should talk about before I let you go is there's been some big software changes on that front, right? Like you mentioned Homekey with Apple. There's some stuff in iOS 18 that I think has been really important to the smart home things. Google is doing a bunch of smart home stuff right now with its TV products.

33:08I have a TV streamer right over there that you and I both really like. Yes. That feels like it's moving in a really good direction, right? Like the stuff is getting built into the devices it needs to get built into. So, yes. So, the iOS 18 has an update that's specifically designed to address this problem, this problem of thread and border routers, because people were buying a thread device, bringing it home, and it wasn't working because they didn't have a border router. They didn't know they needed a border router. Because you shouldn't have to know that. No one should have to know about border routers.

33:37Right. And so, as you may recall, all iPhone 15 Pros and newer have Thread radios in. And with iOS 18, Apple released an update that allows you to add Matter devices directly to your Apple Home app without requiring any hub, either a Home Hub or a Thread border router. So Wi-Fi devices and Thread devices can connect using your phone directly. I mean, this isn't a solution for the long term, because if you want a smart home, you do need a hub for orchestration. But it does solve the problem of, I just bought this cool new smart light and I want to set it up and I don't want to have to go buy a Thread border router.

34:19And that's also an answer to sort of why Apple decided to put Thread chips in their iPhones. Which you kind of called. You should take just a mini victory lab on that one because you were way out in front of that whole story. Well, it did make sense. It's confusing a bit, though, because people are like, oh, doesn't that make your phone a hub and a threadboard a router? It's like, well, no, it's not. But it's like a temporary connection that you can use if you don't have anything else. It's like a fallback. But if you do want a threadboarder router, that's getting easier. There are more and more devices, like you mentioned.

34:56There's the Google Streamer that just came out. This is Google's new answer to Apple TV. And that is a smart home hub as well as a streamer. It has threadboarder router and Matter capabilities. And also great smart home controls, which was my favorite thing about this device. We said we both tested it out and reviewed it. And we try all the streamers in our house and most of my family just ends up using the regular Samsung remote and going to the built-in OS. Like, no! But they all love the streamer and they've all set up their own profiles and it's like it's been a huge success in my house. But it's great to see more devices like this that kind of have a good use case in your home.

35:38But for every day, like you would go buy this because you want a good TV streamer. But it's also going to help if you do want to use a smart home to give you a bit more infrastructure built into your home so that when you come home with that shiny new thread light bulb, it will work and you didn't have to worry about it. But what I'm most excited about right now overall with the smart home is where we're going with generative AI. Because, and this is something that Google talked about a lot at its event, at what was the last big event they had? Made by Google. I think that's what they call it.

36:12But yeah, basically, both Apple and Amazon, we know, have kind of struggled in this space. Google says it's about to release some really interesting updates. I'm interested to see who gets there first. But where I see the most interesting use case of generative AI in the smart home is making the smart home easier. It's that natural language that we're being promised, being able to just say, oh, I'm a little cold and it's too dark. and your smart home voice assistant knows that it should raise the thermostat and turn the lights up for you. And Google has promised with some new enhancements through Gemini for Google Home and the Google Assistant that it's going to be bringing these kind of features to the smart home along with interpretive notifications, which is another thing I'm interested in.

37:03Like I mentioned at the beginning of this chat that my smart home when my smart home cameras send me notifications non-stop and it's really annoying so what's happening with google home is they're using gemini to sort of filter through your video footage and only send you relevant notifications like you can say i only want to know if this person shows up at my front door or this car shows up at my front door um those kind of you know specific notifications rather than just oh there was a breeze and plastic bag flew past your phone. And then back the other way and then back the other way. Yeah.

37:37Wake you up at one o 'clock in the morning. So these kind of sort of quality of life make the smart home so much easier to use, less annoying and more intuitive, I think will really sort of push smart home adoption because there are so many benefits. But like you said at the beginning, just trying to unlock or figure out how to replace a battery. There are too many parts of smart home and home automation that require a lot of time and attention and reading and Googling and watching YouTube videos and reading my articles, which is a good thing. But I think we've seen both Google, Amazon and Apple and Samsung all trying, you know, using generative AI to make this experience a lot smoother and therefore hopefully encourage more people to kind of reap the benefits of what I think is a great experience in your home when it all works.

38:33I agree. I mean, and it seems like we're presumably only weeks away from Amazon launching the generative AI underpinnings of Alexa, which we've been hearing about for a long time ago. We were at the event, was that a year ago at this point? They were the first ones to promise this. Yeah. And is that the same kind of stuff that you think we're going to see? I think, honestly, if Google Assistant and Alexa both get even kind of a pretty good version of what you just described, that instantly upgrades many, many millions of people's smart home lives, which I think is very exciting. Very much so. Yeah, I mean, Amazon promised, you know, they launched all of this a year ago, and it's taken a long time.

39:14It's not here yet. So this is why I'm interested to see when Google is actually going to implement what they've promised. And Apple hasn't even mentioned the smart home. You know, none of its Apple intelligence or Siri improvements are specifically for the smart home. It is a difficult space. You get, you know, you get hallucinations in the smart home and it can go really, really wrong. And this is what, speaking to all of the companies involved here, I hear a lot. It's like, it's complicated and hard. So I think we're going to see baby steps. We're going to see, I'm hoping we'll see something from Amazon here.

39:49I mean, it's fall. We normally have a fall event. It's kind of later than normal last year. I think it was this week. But we know there's been a lot of reporting on the struggles the company's had to really nail this down. And every time I've spoken with an executive at Amazon about the new Alexa, they said, well, we're working on it, but it's very complicated. So, yeah, I think it's a struggle. But if and when we can see these solutions, I really do think it's going to be a game changer for the smart home. It's going to just make it – takes it from being something you have to program and fiddle with to something that just works if they get it right.

40:34Yeah. Remains the biggest question. Yes. All right. Well, we'll have you back on after all this Amazon stuff happens because I think in a very real way with all of this stuff, the proof is in the pudding. And by the pudding, I mean your house. So we will come back and we will do this. Jen, thank you as always. Thank you. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to do a mic test. We'll be right back.

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43:36All right, we're back. So if you've been listening to the Birchcast for a long time, you know that a thing we like to do occasionally is test the microphones on a bunch of different kinds of headphones. The last one of these I think we did was the face gadgets, the meta Ray-Bans and the Vision Pro and that kind of stuff. and that I thought was actually really interesting. The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses might be the best like body worn mic we've tested yet, which is pretty cool. But this time I wanna go through all of the new headphones that have come out from kind of the major headphone companies in the last few months.

44:09Because for people who just want like a normal set of wireless earbuds, you're suddenly spoiled for choice, right? There's the new Pixel Buds Pro 2 from Google. There's the AirPods 4 from Apple. Samsung has some new Galaxy Buds Pro. Nothing has the new ear open. Bose has some stuff. There's just a lot of new options on the market. Chris Welch has them all, as he is wont to do. And so we sent him to a coffee shop, and we're going to talk a little bit about the audio quality and his feelings about them overall. But mostly I want to test the microphones, because my running theory is that microphones really matter.

44:42I mentioned this a bit in the intro, but right now, so much of using your headphones is using them to talk to people or to make videos or to talk to Siri or to do this increasingly multimodal AI stuff that these companies are talking about. Microphones matter, and we don't talk about them enough. And I think to some extent that lets these companies off the hook from building better microphones. Like, it's not impossible to build a very good microphone. It's just hard. And a lot of these companies care a lot about noise cancellation. They care a lot about sound quality. and I think they should care more about mics.

45:13So we're going to talk about mics and we're going to see who is doing the best job. Right now, Chris Welch is sitting in a coffee shop, I assume with lots and lots of headphones around confusing everyone else in the coffee shop. So let's do some testing. Chris Welch, hello. Hello again. Where are you right now? I feel like I'm growing to like learn the different spots that you are when we test earbuds. Where are we? This is my go-to coffee shop in my neighborhood that I come to fairly often and work from. And yeah, it tends to be pretty loud, as most Brooklyn coffee shops aren't. Do they know you there by now?

45:51You're like the guy who shows up with a pile of gadgets and takes a bunch of pictures. They just understand when you walk through the door? That's good. I'm glad. So we're here because we're kind of at the end of this year's cycle of new earbuds. You just published the Pixel Buds Pro 2 review. You have a bunch of them, so we figured this is a good moment to test them. Before we dive in, just give us the list. What are we going to try here? What do we have? We've got the AirPods 4, which I have right now in my ears. That's what you're getting to start. We've got the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, the Pixel Buds Pro 2, the new Bose QuietComfort earbuds that just came out as well, and the Nothing Open, very funky open-style earbuds that were just announced as well.

46:39I'm very excited about those. I have developed an unnecessary attachment to an obsession with these open earbuds. So I'm very excited to see if those are any good. And I'm glad you started with AirPods. So this is actually good. This is a good first test because I feel like AirPods are a useful control in a lot of this because they're just like the one that everybody has. Yeah. They sound fine. I described them to somebody the other day as like the nice thing about AirPods is that you can get them to sound like a C plus in almost any situation. The downside of the AirPods is you cannot get them to sound better than a C plus in any situation.

47:14Like perfect scenario. They're going to sound just like this. That's fine. I guess. Yeah. So like here's their like normal modes, but on phone calls, you can do like the voice isolation feature, which is like machine learning to make you sound even clearer. We're not getting that fear, unfortunately, but it does get a little bit better on phone calls. Yeah. Cause the voice isolation, you can only do, it's like phone calls and FaceTime, right? Yeah. not here. But you know, they sound fine, which is all you really need like 90 % of the time to listen if they shot somebody else. Yeah, they do the job.

47:49Alright, well, we've got enough of this. Let's switch to the next one. Let's do Google next. I think that's a good... If I remember correctly, Google has outperformed my expectations several times on these tests over the last couple of years. So I'm curious about this one. Let's do it first. We'll see. Yeah. All right, I'll do it. All right, let's do it.

48:12All right, hit me. We're back again. These are the new Buds Pro 2. They're smaller and lighter. And the mics have gotten mixed feedback so far. I'm going to go decidedly lower than mixed on this one. Really? That much of a difference from the AirPods? Do you remember when we did a test on the ferry in New York and it was just blindingly obvious how hard some of them were working? Even though they were kind of working and I could kind of hear you, you could hear how hard it was for them to get to that point. That's what I'm getting here, too. It's like one of the interesting things that just happened was between recordings here, just to let everybody in on how this works, We use this app called Riverside, and you have to stop and start recording every time you want to change devices.

49:05So we have to stop each time. So I get to hear the natural audio coming out of your Mac. And there was music playing that I didn't really hear on the AirPods. There was more noise than I expected that I wasn't really hearing on the AirPods. I'm hearing all of that now. Interesting. There's no cancellation whatsoever. Almost. I mean, there's some. And it's coming and going. It's kind of like they're raising and lowering the volume as time goes on. and uh your voice sounds fine it's like it's picking up more of everything uh so i'm actually like your voice is a little richer than i was hearing through the ipod or through the airpods but so is the background noise not great uh yeah but i guess that's a trade-off i'm getting smaller and lighter you know they're even further away from my mouth when i'm talking obviously so it's harder to kind of separate voice from background noise but these also have like clear calling on phone calls, which again, you can't do on like video chats, unfortunately.

50:00So like, it should be a little bit better when you're actually talking to someone on the phone. But if you're in a coffee shop, this is what you're going to get. You know what this makes me think of? Do you ever do you ever do the thing where you're wearing noise canceling headphones, like over the ear noise canceling headphones, and you just kind of take them on and off your ears and you can sort of hear it pulse the noise in and outside? It feels a little like that as you're talking. It's like it's sort of constantly picking up and letting go of the background noise in a way that is like, it works, but it's also like a little unnerving as I'm listening to it.

50:32I think if I was just holding up my phone to my head, it wouldn't really bother me, but I'm on like pretty good headphones in a pretty good situation here. And it is like, I'm hearing stuff that I was not hearing with the AirPods. Yeah, it's really interesting. So yeah, we're going to give Google like a gently passing grade, I would say. This is not like a disaster. I can hear you. but I can safely already say Google is not going to win this evaluation. They do look good, though. They're super small in your ears. That's really nice. And they seem very comfortable from what I saw in your review.

51:08Very comfortable. They still have that Mentos look, which is what it is. But you can barely see them in your ears anymore, which is nice. Yeah, when you're head on, I can basically not see them at all. That's really cool. All right, let's switch to the next one. Let's do, I don't know, you pick. Surprise me. What are we doing? uh let's do samsung okay the big three out of the way yeah i love it all right let's switch

51:33all right samsung buds how we doing these are the buds 3 pro they have stems now just like the airpods pro do so hopefully that makes them a little bit crisper clearer oh my that was loud i didn't hear that at all this is okay this is the opposite of what we just heard from google This is actually super fun. I'm glad we did this in this order. Because basically the AirPods are the middle. Google is all the way at the end of the spectrum of like, let's make this sound kind of as natural as possible, even if it means getting noise in. And you are just compressed to within an inch of your life. But there is no background noise.

52:09Like it sounds like you are in a silent room. Yeah, it's super loud. Someone's like thumping dishes and stuff over there. So if you can't hear that, that's impressive. Do I sound like intelligible though? Intelligible, yes. You almost don't sound like yourself. It sort of sounds like if you held up a pillow to your mouth and then had a phone call. That's kind of what you sound like right now. I can hear everything you're saying. But, I mean, you are processed to death. But again, I cannot overstate the extent to which I'm not hearing anything but your voice right now. That's kind of wild, actually.

52:47That's fun. So, yeah, these have been pretty good so far for my worst calls and talking to people. I've heard similar feedback to that, that I sound processed quite clear. Yeah, and this is a fun test case because normally with these headphones, at least my experience has been, that they process your voice less when they're having to process less background noise. So, in theory, when you're in a perfectly quiet space, they should all sound better. Right, yeah. But they'll sound worse. in where so we tried to pick this is a pretty good like normal-ish use case to like test them but not overly so uh but yeah this is this is solid i take this over google okay 10 times out of 10 like it's just more pleasant to listen to you even though you don't sound amazing just because there's not that kind of roller coaster volume of background noise interesting there's a lot of noise so you can't hear that that's that's nice uh but yeah these are these are great they sound really nice they have lights on the stems so you can have them light up in your talking people you know these are the ones that samsung just went full airpods right like they just they just did airpods but like the samsung way yeah so i don't even mean that as an insult like it just is what it is that's just what samsung does yeah uh yeah in terms of like pleasant to listen to and wear all day which has been your favorite of the bunch if you're gonna just like do your life wearing headphones?

54:11Do you have a favorite? I'd probably say it's a tie between these and the Pixel Buds, honestly, those are newer. So I'm still sitting used to those. But these I've used a ton. And they feel like AirPods Pro. They're stable, they fit well, it's down really nice. They do all the equal Samsung ecosystem tricks. So they're not super original. But at this point. They're all the same. Yeah. But, yeah. Okay. Yeah. You can hear me very clearly. I'm impressed. Yeah. You sound very clear, but you don't sound very good. And if I have to make that trade, I'll make that trade. You know what I mean? I'd love to have it both ways, but I will pick this over the alternative.

54:53Fair enough. All right. Let's switch. Let's do Bose next. You tell me. Yeah, let's do it. All right. Let's switch.

55:03All right. Bose time. How are we doing? We have a brand new quiet comfort here for the second generation. You're already laughing. That's not a good time. Was I just very loud in your ears just then? You, like, startled as I said something. Oh, okay. No, no, no. I was good. Okay, just making sure. I'm not sure I can hear you. But it's just from this past week. And they have really good, super good noise cancellation. I don't know if you're but it's a small, hard-conversion cost-of-bugs. It's a cheaper,$179, same as the AirPods 4. obviously whereas the passport did not but so far I like to try the best I don't want to be hyperbolic here this is awful it's so bad this is the first time I can't understand some of the words that you're saying and again I wonder if an experience I've had so I have a pair of Bose's like over ear quiet comforts and And the impression that I get every time I use them is kind of what I was saying before, that the mic is, it's never good, but it's fine when there's not a lot of noise.

56:11But Bose seems to so aggressively prioritize noise cancellation over audio quality that when you get into bad sound, it will just destroy everything else in the name of noise cancellation. So I'm guessing you're sitting there and it's like not very loud to you and it all sounds fine. It's just ruining it. Yeah. uh it's doing a decent job of suppressing the background noise it's actually like it's better now than it was when we started which is interesting it's like it it's it took the processing a minute to like figure it out but it seems to have cut a bunch of the background noise uh but you sound like trash that's really important that's good yeah this is this is not the one to take a zoom call in a coffee shop with that is like basically the the two reasons we do this test are like, are you the worst if you're on a video call with these?

57:02And, you know, grand theories about how we talk to AI and all that stuff. Like, I really do believe microphones matter. This one will fail at both of those tests. And I feel very confident about that. Big yikes. Okay. Well, they're true that everything else so far. These are good listening headphones. Like Bose makes very good headphones to listen to. Please don't call me from these headphones ever again. okay all right let's let's get off this one as quickly as we can yeah let's let's go to the next one we're going to do next oh let's do the nothings the funky open ones sweet love it all right nothing the nothing ear open that's what they're called right how we do it yeah these are the first call i've actually uh had on these period so it's an honor experience where it's full i kind of like how those look in your ears i have to say it's a little it's they're a little more like deliberately space agey than anything else you've tried they've got the the sort of ear hook uh and slight yeah they just they just look like you're wearing some kind of futuristic star trekky headset uh which is not the worst thing in the world uh some people love this for like bike riding that kind of those kind of activities i'm not an open earbuds guy but i can see the appeal like i can hear everything in this room right now that's just kind of absurd so like you sound pretty quiet compared to like all this right racket and then but how does the voice quality pretty solid actually i would put this kind of right in the airpods range i'm getting a little bit of the background noise like i can tell you're in a coffee shop unlike the samsung's where it was like truly just deathly quiet uh i can it's clear you're somewhere but i'm only catching kind of bits and pieces of the background noise like i can tell there's a there's a woman talking somewhere near you but i'm only catching like snippets like syllables of it instead of like the whole conversation uh and i can hear you pretty clearly actually this i'm i'm i'm sort of impressed by these see i'm not sure where the mics are in this particularly there's like a stem that rooms down here so who knows but they're pretty funky they're fun they're interesting uh but it's good to know if you're gonna make phone calls on your bike or wherever you might be or in these uh people will be able to understand you i'm getting so many looks at what this coffee shop doing this being that guy who i hate every day yeah we'll only keep you a couple more minutes i promise but i think the part of the reason i'm interested in these is like you i hear from people all the time who are like, yeah, I'm trying to do more phone calls while I'm walking.

59:45Right. It's just like, like I work from home now. I sit in my basement all day and I'm trying to do more of that to just get out. And it's like, oh, we're going to talk for a half hour. I'm going to just wander around the neighborhood for a half hour. And that's one reason that a open ear is useful. Like I think for this particular case in a coffee shop, open ear headphones are actually the wrong answer. So like for this purpose, you probably wouldn't use these, even though they sound okay. but for like general sort of day-to-day life like it's the same reason i like the the ray-ban meta smart glasses right like i can just sort of have a conversation into my sunglasses in a way that sort of works uh and i feel like this is appealing to me for the same reason and they sound pretty good it's not it's not the best one but it is it's kind of right in that sweet spot middle with the the airpods that i'm sort of impressed with okay good to know uh should i switch back to the AirPods for the conclusion?

1:00:35Yeah, let's switch back. Now that I've heard all of them, let's go back to the AirPods and we can pick a favorite here. Let's do it. All right.

1:00:47All right, so we're back on the AirPods 4. We are. And he still sounds pretty serviceable. Yeah, this... It's such a boring answer, but I think of this round, this is actually probably my favorite. I think there's a little more background noise here than there was on the nothings, but it's also a little less. I'm realizing like a little bit of consistent background noise is actually less annoying than kind of intermittent background noise. Yeah, it's like this, you just kind of have that low tone behind you all the time. And so it's actually easier for me to pick out your voice. Whereas like the pixel buzz, which kept coming in and out, were like giving me a headache trying to figure out what was going on.

1:01:31But I'm curious, Eric Gomez, our producer, hi Eric, is here. Hello. You have been listening to and making all of this work. What do you make of all of this? You're the audio expert here. Definitely impressed by the Samsung, but the quality is, yes, it's being squished and compressed to death, but at least you're not picking up anything going on in the background at all. And it's clear enough and it's coherent enough to be able to have a good conversation. And I'm really surprised by the Pixel Buds. They're just not good at all. Just not impressive, yeah. Yeah, I'm really disappointed in that. I think Google did a good job in terms of hardware this round, but I'm just a little disappointed by the quality of the mic on these Pixel Buds.

1:02:22I do wonder, I mean, Welch, you mentioned that they're smaller and thus just further away from your mouth. And I wonder at some point if that just is like an insurmountable physics problem. Like, the things with stems tend to be better because they have stems. Like, it just seems to be a fact. I think so. I mean, I don't want to see everybody do stems, so that would be boring. So I hope they can find a way to, like, you know, use machine learning or AI or whatnot to, like, find some way to fix this problem. maybe the Pixel Buds will sound better on, like, phone calls with clear call line. Like, so far, I haven't gotten so many complaints there, so that might make a difference versus just, like, this overall audio mode.

1:03:00But, yeah, it's clearly that Samsung and Apple are kind of the head honchos here, and the rest are kind of okay at best. Yeah, the winner for most improved is Samsung for sure. I think the last time we did this, I think Samsung came in last, and it was it was the one that was like borderline unintelligible uh and and i think samsung here is either in first or second place depending on just kind of what you like like the right the thing for me of that sort of eerie quiet super compressed just doesn't sound as good as what i'm hearing now from the airpods which just feels a little more natural it's like if i were sitting across from you at a coffee shop that's what it would sound like but i can also understand that if what's clear is also if there is one that you are going to trust in awful situations to keep you intelligible, it's probably the Galaxy Buds.

1:03:50Right, Eric? Is that your takeaway here? Yeah. I would have to agree with that. They're like the worst case scenario Buds. Yeah. Don't use them. Good to know for the future whenever I'm stranded somewhere and I carry around several pairs of your Buds at all times. So it's nice to know that those are the ones. Don't call 911 with those Buds. Yeah. They'll be like, it's fine. You can't hear anything. All right, good. Well, we've done it. I would love for somebody to just blow my mind here. That's everyone's charge for next time. It's just like, do slightly better. We're still at a point where the Ray-Ban meta ones are the best-sounding ones we've tested maybe in the history of this segment on the Vergecast.

1:04:32Still, I've never tried those myself, but I want one of those nuclear colors. They look awesome. Clear glasses look awesome. Yeah. I have two pairs now, and I don't want one of them, so you can have one of my pairs. Next time I'm in New York, I'll bring you my pair and you can just have it. They look stupid on my face anyway, so we'll make it happen. I appreciate it. All right, we should take a break. Chris, thank you as always. Please apologize to everyone in the coffee shop for us. I will right now. As soon as I'm off here. Thank you. Thanks be both. Cheers. Appreciate it. All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to do a question for the VertiCast hotline.

1:05:06We'll be right back.

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1:07:26All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. One, the email is vergecastattheverge.com. You can hit me up personally on threads or on Signal. We try to answer at least one hotline question on the show every week. And actually, I think we're due for like a full hotline episode. We've gotten a lot of fun stuff. We're in deep gadget season right now. So we've gotten a lot of gadget questions. We'll probably get to all of those at some point in the very near future. But for now, we have a question that feels so, so very VergeCast-y. Let's hear it. Hey, VergeCast.

1:07:58This is Jeff from North Carolina. I was listening to your latest episode on Meta's new glasses, and I'm wondering, I remember, I believe it was Scott Galloway, made a comment that any product that you're wearing on your body that makes you less attractive will never succeed. I'm wondering if you think with the Vision Pro and then now the Meta smart glasses, this will apply, that if you don't look cool in them, no one's going to buy them. Love the show. Thanks very much. Bye. All right, there is only one person on Earth who can answer this question. The Scott Galloway of the Verge cast, I call him sometimes.

1:08:35Brutal. Why would you invite me here to insult me to my face? Hey, buddy. This is my own show. I didn't even prepare you for this. You didn't even get to listen to this ahead of time. This was just, this is everything I wanted to do. Hey, would you like to walk into your own house and be slapped in the face? Amazing. So I love this question for two reasons. One, because I think it's a good question. And two, because it threatens the very core of Nilay Patel's theory of wearable bullshit, which is just this. This just says, actually, it doesn't even matter if it doesn't make you look cool. It's out.

1:09:11So I want to know your thoughts on this particular take with these devices. Well, you will recall that the matrix of wearable bullshit has a minus 100 face penalty. Right. Which is basically what we're talking about here. because you can put all kinds of stuff on your body that makes you look uncool. People wear fanny packs all day long. Fair. Just walking around. They're not even wearing them on their fannies, from what I'm told. Yeah, they're slings now. Yeah. Watches, incredibly subjective fashion choices. True. Clothing itself. Shoes. The way people talk about shoes in this world. All kinds of ideas about things you put on your body.

1:09:52It's really just, do you have it on your face? that sets people aflame, right? That's the thing we're talking about here. Is it on your face? Is it in your way? And the matrix of wearable bullshit is fiddliness versus utility. And then there's just like this big penalty for face somewhere in there that brings you way below the line. And then you have to offer vastly more utility to get back above the line so that people wear it every day. Regular glasses on your face. They take the penalty, but they're pretty useful to most people. so they come back up. And now we've, you know, over decades, we've turned glasses into fashion accessories.

1:10:32We've made this choice. That's the thing that I keep thinking about, thinking about this, because there's basically two ways to look at this. One is these things will never be cool. And the only way they're ever going to work is if we make them so phenomenally useful that it doesn't matter, right? And I feel like, I don't know, like wired headphones is probably a good example of that, right? Like, I don't know that a pair of ear pods is like cool, but they're like simple and they're useful. And we all just kind of got over it. Right. That that crossed the threshold with utility, not with cool.

1:11:05The other option is that in some way, someone figures out how to make these things actually objectively cool. And then and then it flips. Right. Like in glasses, some people like how they look in glasses better than how they look without glasses. Like, that's a real thing. We have made them a fashion object, and that seems like a much harder road for any kind of technology, but is maybe the actually most effective way to get there. It's just make them objectively cool. Figure out how to make it, like, iconically awesome to have ski goggles on your face, and then none of the rest of it even matters.

1:11:41But this is, I think, what Apple tried with the Vision Pro. They tried to make it cool, and it fell on its face because it just, we can't be. It just isn't. Well, there are some ski goggles that look cool. I've certainly seen like sweet pictures of 80s people wearing ski goggles. True. They look cool as hell. Have you ever seen the movie Ski School? Highly recommended. Anyway, my point is one, you should watch Ski School. Two, even the people who think they look better in glasses that don't, have not created enough of a market for like clear glasses. Like there's a little bit of a market. for clear glasses.

1:12:21Right, like unprescription or non-prescription clear glasses that you just wear as a fashion accessory. Like a little bit. But it's as a signifier, it's part of another outfit, right? It's supposed to be part of another vibe that you're sending out. Not just, I wear these every day, all day, like my shoes. Right, as pure fashion statement, there's not much there. And so you just, I think for a tech product, you need to vastly increase the utility of the thing. Like AirPods, they're so useful and I care about them so much and they provide me so much value every single day as a product that I will overcome the fact that they're in my ears all the time and people can see them because they're white.

1:12:59And like regular over-the-ear headphones are fashion statements in different ways, right? They look different. There's different ways you can style them. There's different ways you can wear them. Remember when Beats came out? The Beats were not the best sounding headphones. Like Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre had one idea for what headphones should sound like and it was super bass heavy. Right. And they were a fashion statement at first because it came in all the colors. Like they were the first headphones to like really push that idea. And they were a phenomenon in their time just for that. I think with smart glasses, yep, you got to make the form factor smaller.

1:13:32Yep, they've got to be, yep, they've got to look more like regular glasses. You've got to solve the battery. You've got to bring the fiddliness way down and the value way up. They've got to be able to do more things. and then somewhere in there, you might overcome the penalty of it being on your face. But I still think that the core tenet holds, which is if it's really, really useful, people will get over the fiddliness. And part of fiddliness is like, is this shit on my face? Right. And whether or not that you want to interpret that in the Galloway fashion of, does this make me more attractive?

1:14:06That it is up to you to decide if that is the type of utility you desire from a product. Fair. And I guess to be fair, Post Malone is out here being like, you know what? Face tattoos. That's how I'm doing it. Listen, some things are attractive to some people. No accounting for taste. No one is attracted to the Vision Pro, I think is basically the only true statement I can make at this particular moment of time. Okay. So the 100 point deductible is on a scale that it's an apple. It's not like a tax return. I apologize. The 100 point deduction is is like it's it's Apple chart crime. It's out of nothing.

1:14:46But what I wonder is, is have we have we not hit it enough? Like, should it be a 200 point deduction? Like, I am starting to think that this thing might be harder to surmount even than I had thought, because even like I look at the Orion glasses, which are smaller and much closer to being normal glasses. And then somebody puts them on their face and they still look kind of stupid like they're cool because they're cool technology whatever but like in no way are they like cool looking glasses and that is like the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge of where we are in terms of being able to make these things awesome like should we be should we be dinging these things harder for their face wearing issues for the foreseeable future well i would say one of the most fiddly things about the orion is that you need to work at facebook and apparently have $10 ,000 in order to have one.

1:15:34It's pretty fiddly. It's very fiddly. Whether or not it's on your face doesn't matter. It's a product you can't buy. You need to grow crystal lenses in the basement of your underground Hawaiian lair, apparently, to have them. Very fiddly. You're just in the hole, and then you're a little bit further in the hole. I think a better example is the Ray-Ban glasses that Meadow's doing, where their utility is not that high, right? Like they can take some photos. They can do some AI stuff. People actually like the photos. People like listening to music on them, but they're not very fiddly. That is true.

1:16:09They're just, they're just Ray-Bans. They're mostly glasses. Yeah. And so they can overcome the face penalty because their fiddliness is so low. Right. And then, and then you get whatever utility you get out of it. And they, they kind of just curve right back up to glasses, maybe a little bit under regular glasses because they have a little more fiddliness to them. But I think they're just on the same curve as regular glasses, which also take the 100 point face fiddliness deduction. I'm going to be so interested to see how the clear ones end up doing in the world, that limited edition one that they came out with, because my threads algorithm is filled with people who are obsessed with it.

1:16:47My threads algorithm is also filled with nerds. And it's also owned, I would point out, by Meta. It is also owned by Meta. That's a very good point. So I think the question of, like, I have a pair here that are essentially indistinguishable from normal Wayfarers. Like, you would never look at me twice wearing them. They just look like Wayfarers. That is a huge victory. I think the clear ones look a little more like gadgets. And so I think how those sort of percolate out into the world is going to be really interesting. Because there is this, like, all the way at the other end of that spectrum is Google Glass, which is like the gadgetiest gadget of all time.

1:17:21And also offered almost no utility. Right. I just, everyone forgets this about Google Maps. You had a little display in your face that was not very useful at all. No, it like told you you had a text message. Yeah. My phone buzzes when that happens. You were just in the hole. It was like, it would be like, turn left. It's like when you were doing Google Maps. And it's just, none of this is useful at all. So the real thing that I think that the Ray-Bans have accomplished is they've gotten closer to the curve of regular glasses. What's really interesting is the clear ones you're talking about. have the next generation of transitions lenses in them, Gen S they're called, which are supposed to go from sunglasses to clear much faster than before.

1:18:02And the idea is that that will make you want to wear them all the time. I don't know. You know, like, are people going to buy these things that look like Wayfarers and then just like wear them around their office because they're getting so much value out of wearing the meta Ray-Bans? And I think the answer is no. I think you're still on the same curve as just regular sunglasses. So we'll see. I think that's the most successful of these products because they've gotten to the same sort of value equation as a regular set of sunglasses. Yeah, I think that's right. And that's a good example of, I don't know that your sunglasses generally make you look cooler and more attractive, but they are useful and they look good.

1:18:43I think historically, in the history of culture, people have thought sunglasses make them look cool and attractive. No, they just like make you mysterious because nobody can see what you're looking at. And that. Yeah. Sexy and dangerous. How do you feel about your sunglasses? I'm just saying. I think this is how most people feel about sunglasses. That's no, that's fair. So maybe, maybe we're onto something here that there's maybe the new, the, the, the, whatever seventh dimension of the theory of wearable bullshit. I think I'm down to just two. It's two in the face deduction. But there's also like a sexiness quotient.

1:19:20No, I disagree. All too subjective. It's fiddliness versus utility and then face. So do we put sexiness under utility? Is one of the utility, like a possible utility, just it makes me look hot as a hell? Yeah, perceived utility. It's all in there, which is why face is such a, wait, is face a fiddly? Face is utility deduction. Okay, I think that's right. No, it's a fiddly deduction. Face is very simply. I'm never going to get this right. So it just depends on which axis is which. Whichever one brings you down below that curve, like hard, and then you've got to like, you've got to pay it off with utility.

1:19:58So it is a utility deduction. Okay. Right. You put it on your face, you suddenly need to deliver vastly more utility to get back above the curve. Right. And one of those utilities can be sexy. Looking hot. Yeah. All right. There we go. We've solved it. And as always, if you listeners can figure out how to graph this for us, please, dear God, we'll let you sponsor the lightning round for free. And we've mentioned it before. So there's regular glasses. This is the first thing to put on your chart is regular glasses, which are quite fiddly, especially if you need them to see. The fact that if you lose them, you can no longer see is really quite fiddly.

1:20:38Yes. Agreed. You got to keep them clean. You can't lose them. You don't want to scratch them. You got to wear them all the time. Very fiddly. Utility off the chart. You're way above the curve of success on this whatever quadrant chart we're doing. AirPods also in the chart. Good thing to graph, right? People like them, but they make you look like you have AirPods in your ears. Apple Watch, first gen versus the current gen. First gen, so fiddly. Yep. Not a lot of utility. So fiddly, below the curve. And they evened it out to where they are now. So that's the chart, right? You just got to, if you're going to put something on your body, it's got to be so useful, it's worth the time and attention.

1:21:18And then you've got face deduction. Face deduction is the title of Neelai. The face penalty. All right, we did it. Neelai, thank you as always. I'm still mad about the Scott Calloway thing. I want to be very clear with this. All right, that is it for the Vergecast. Thank you to everybody who was on the show today. and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, all of Jen's coverage of matter and thread and the video doorbell. She actually wrote about a smart door just yesterday. Great stuff. All that is on the website. All of Chris's reviews of these various headphones are on the website.

1:21:56I think the wearable theory is mostly a Vergecast thing. So, you know, keep it locked here for all of the updates on Neelai's insane wearables theory that basically doesn't make any sense. And if you have thoughts, questions, or feelings, or anything else you want to talk about, other headphones you want us to try, other ways to put terrible audio on The Verge Cast, you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. We love hearing from you. Please keep all your questions coming. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

1:22:32Neil, I, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the weird stuff going on in OpenAI because that keeps happening. Some strange lawsuit stuff with Epic and Google and Samsung and a whole bunch of other stuff. See you then. Rock and roll.

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