The Reality of Augmented Reality featuring Derrick Zierler

Sean, hello, how are you? I'm doing good. Good to hear. Can you— you can hear me okay?

I can hear you.

Okay, is it okay?

Yes. Can you hear me all right?

I can hear you great.

Yeah, great. How's it going?

Good, good. Yeah, no, thanks for, uh, thanks for inviting me. This is great. Good day. It's Friday. Happy Friday.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you, if you want to do video. Yeah, sure.

Sorry, I just, I don't use Zoom that often at work. We're more of a Teams shop, so I'm kind of getting used to the interface, right?

Yeah, yeah. That is the holy war. It's like Teams versus Slack versus Zoom, like the never-ending Web2 war.

Right. Gotcha. Yeah. No, we're a Teams shop. I mean, even at Suncor where I work, right, like they've converted all the telephones actually to a Teams infrastructure. Right? So we don't even have physical phones anymore. It's all Teams.

Oh wow, telephony, huh? Just straight over. Like they used to call it VoIP back in the day. Now it's just, now it's just audio or calling.

Yeah, because we had the Cisco voice over IP phones, right, for years. But they just, with the pandemic, when we flipped to Teams for meetings, yeah, they just flipped the whole thing to Teams. Yeah.

Wow, cool.

Great. That's cool.

Yeah. So yeah, thanks for jumping on the line. I'm curious, I mean, you've been in, gosh, well, I mean, what are we gonna call it anymore? Is it like AR, VR, the multiverse, the metaverse? Like, I don't even know anymore. It's spatial computing, 3D, Web3, emerging tech, hard tech. We just call it like, putting the internet in the real world or something. I don't even know. It's just so— but you've been doing this for, gosh, what, 15 years, maybe before?

Well, I don't, you know, I don't like to talk about how long I've been doing it because then you can start calculating the returns on my investment and they don't look so good even at the best of times over that stretch, right? But yeah, I mean, I took a position in Kopin, right? Microdisplay maker. I'll call it 2009. And it was really about back then the kind of a TV, like a miniature TV headset, right? Like the MyView, you know, you could watch TV on the plane kind of thing, right? That's kind of the idea. And then also they were doing the transistor for the cell phone, which was a big growth area after the iPhone, right? So I was like, okay, well, this seems interesting. But then the big thing for me was Glass, right?

Yeah.

Like, so Glass emerged 2012, 2013. And then John, the CEO of Copan, he bet the company on AR/VR, right? He's okay, we're gonna sell off the HBT transistor business, which is still in use today, right? Big business. All the cell phones need it. Pivot to microdisplays totally. And then the backstory on that is, you know, at the time we didn't know that, but he had the SocketWin for glass version 2, which was gonna be the You remember the barges, right? We were all gonna walk onto a barge, get fitted for our Glass, and like, it was gonna be huge. So he bet the company, but then we know what happened, right? Like Glass faded, they pivot to enterprise, and even to this day, is the volume there? It's probably a great little device, but it's a niche product, right?

Yeah.

So that's how I kind of got into it. And all the way along, I've been trying to figure out like, is it AR? Is it VR? And I think in January, If we're lucky, we're gonna find out that it's mixed reality that is gonna be the consumer killer app, right?

I think. Yeah, I think the way I've sort of thought about this a long time ago was it's just a continuum. So you've got like a dial and you're either, you go from real reality, which is like no internet, and then you dial up the internet all the way to 100%, which is virtual reality. And then like augmented reality is somewhere in between there. And so I think as we go throughout our day is a species, there are certain things that maybe it's just all the way down to zero in real reality and then at certain times it's like augmented and then at other times maybe it's just like pure immersiveness. And so to your point about like the glasses and been in this space for a long time and the startups have kind of come up and down and so just the fact that some companies have had that duration through that time period, I mean, it's hard tech, right? I mean, I mean, think about like internet in the mid-'90s. Everyone knew it was going to be valuable, but it took Microsoft and Apple until 2020, 25 years to reach a trillion-dollar market cap. So you could argue there were certain points, I mean, there was a certain point where Apple almost failed, right? So you could say, oh, computers, like horrible investment. And then it's like, well, were they? Like you just needed to hang on until all of the components, subsystems, user experience, came together and we're at that precipice. The thing for us is like the people operating in the space, the problem is just that frustration of like, yes, we're there, we're there. And then it's like, okay, we got a prototype, then we got a POC, now we're in pilot purgatory and like deployments are happening and it's on a global basis. And so it's nothing, it's that old adage, right? Like nothing happens for a long time and then everything happens all at once and it's like Yeah.

Well, and to your continuing point, I mean, one of the hard lessons I've learned is, you know, when you first get in touch with the industry, you're thinking Iron Man, right? Like you've got this visual of the Hollywood AR experience, right? Awesome. But then when you talk to the folks who know, and even they figured this out, like I spent time with Jon Fan trying to figure this out, right? Because he knows more than probably anyone about this. But I remember once he said to me, Derek, you can do 80% of what you need for AR with audio. Yeah. So we, you know, they got to the realization of like they were trying to put a display on a pair of cycling glasses to give the rider data. But what they learned was the disadvantages of, you know, you can go into cognitive tunneling and distraction and do you get the right image when you need it? Well, you can do most of that with audio, right? Like in series proving that and Then the question is, Sean, is it AirPods, which is a huge business right now and very valuable, or do we look at the headset industry as, wait a minute, 60% of the world, call it 50, needs vision correction of some kind?

Yeah.

The traditional eyeglass form factor has huge advantages because half the world's already wearing 'em if, you know, if they want. You can do contacts, I can't. And the mechanical envelope gives you lots of space for a battery. So now you can go all day. Right? Like, and actually Solos, I don't know if you know about Solos, but it's a bit of a startup that's doing an audio glass out of Hong Kong. It's a spinoff from Kopan and they've got an all-day pair of glasses right now. Like the thing will run 8 hours continuous audio. So you don't need that all day, right?

Right.

And now you say, hey, Zoom calls, I can go into the office with my glasses I wear all day, do all my calls all day, go home. I don't need to charge those things until the end of the day. So for me, rather than AirPods in and out, it's like, My glasses are an all-day device. Then you take the next step, which is, okay, we got the audio AR, which is 80% of the way there anyway for directions. Maybe you throw a haptic on there for nudging people. In a few years, let's put a little display on there and just inject a little bit of visual just carefully and slowly with the consumer, right? And we're all talking consumer here.

Yeah.

I think that's the path. I think the audio is a huge opportunity for AR. Huge. Yeah. Apple's proving that, right? Yeah, right.

Yeah. Just by itself. I mean, we, the main feature, we removed a cord and like, I mean, one of the most successful products of all time that nobody really talks about because it's like a $200 little thing you can shove in that 5th pocket of your blue jeans.

Yeah. John's got a, like, there's a slide that shows the AirPod business like $30 billion. It's bigger than some of the big tech companies combined, right? Like it's a huge business.

It's insane. People just never talk about, I never, I mean, I'm all over the internet like you are and And you never hear anybody really talking about it. But you're so right. And I'll tell you why. I mean, there's so many different angles we could go, so many different roads we could go down with this thing. But the audio thing for me is so important. Like as a consumer, 2 reasons. One, when I was a kid in high school, I had one dream to get rid of that Sony Discman with the CD and the headphones while I was like lifting weights or running because I would literally run.

Yeah.

With the thing in my hand and like trying not to skip.

No skipping.

So my dream, my dream was like put the MP3 player in the headphone and we finally got that with the watch plus the AirPod. And that to me was like we finally unlocked the magic moment and it took 25 years. Oh my God. But the bigger thing for me, and this goes to accessibility, is I have a friend that I've talked to for the last, I don't know, 10 years and I'm trying to get him on the show because I want his perspective out there more. He was a software engineer. engineer by trade, computer networking. But we are sighted and he is not. So he's blind from a very early age. So for him, he writes this blog on accessibility and that perspective where we take our vision for granted so much just surfing the internet because it's all text. It was one of the things I was really passionate about with audio when we were doing the StoryApp stuff was The internet is deathly silent. Like, where is the sound? And just our intonations and voice, which is why I think podcasts are so popular. It is a translator of emotion from one human to another that you don't get through text. So I think to your point, when— to your point, like 100%, when you combine that audio intonation and emotion with the visual aspect in and around your world with like the heads-up display, right? Like a little extra helper.

Yeah.

We have gone to like augmenting humanity. And then the last thing I'll say on the audio thing, I was working on this video platform and the network operations center was in the office and the live streaming team was there. And I used to watch a few of the team members, they would have one headphone in. This is before AirPods dropped. So it was like your headphones, but just one in and it was always in. And I realized, I was like, man, these guys are so smart. They're They're creating a soundtrack for their entire life and like they're walking through the office and they're just listening to whatever, you know, classic hip-hop, rock and roll, whatever it is. Crazy.

Well, and it's a good point, like audio. The other thing that's not understood well about audio and when it comes to AR, again, back to the Iron Man thing, right? Like the consumers being fed this expectation that we're gonna be able to have this Iron Man experience. There's a huge problem though, right? And John has educated me on this. The F-35 helmet is the pinnacle of AR on the planet, right? It is. Nothing else can touch it. The pilot uses it and he gets— I'm done. Like, like, I'm done with this thing, right? Because the cognitive load on the human mind with, uh, augmenting overlays, like putting digital data on the real world— and we'll get into the optical see-through, video see-through debate maybe a little bit later because that's a huge debate right now, right? And I've got a strong opinion there. Um, that's a trained pilot with a $400,000 device that's customized for him or her. Yeah. A consumer cannot take that kind of cognitive load for the AR that we're all thinking. Now, audio, totally acceptable. Humans can easily accept audio augmentation. It's almost natural, right? Visual augmentation, you can— like, I even have a pair of those glasses, the cycling glasses, and you can get cognitive tunneling very, very quickly. Even on your phone, you can. It's like you're at the— walking on the sidewalk, you get And all of a sudden, oh, I'm at a crosswalk. I better be careful here, right? I better check both ways.

Yeah.

So the video AR or the audio, the visual AR, it's a challenge and we have to introduce it, I think, very slowly into the devices, right? Because we do not want anyone getting hurt or killed because of cognitive tunneling, right? Audio, as you say, in the studio 20 years ago, one earphone in, totally the mind can take it and it works beautifully. Right? Yeah. So that's a big lesson for me because we want to jump to Iron Man, right?

It's such a good point and I don't hear enough of that being said because it's like vision, vision, vision spec, right? Versus like the actual experience. And I think there is something to be said from just like picking your head up from the phone and seeing more, which I think is a benefit. But to your point, it might be a learned behavior where we can only dial up that You know, that amount of overlay over time. And it's interesting, like, how much more tired will we get? Will we— we will be rewiring our brains.

Yes.

In such a way. And everybody talks about the privacy implications with like the flashing dot, you're recording me, but it's almost like less about recording and more about my personal experience and how much I can take. That's a really, really interesting point. Like, have you written some research papers or blog posts on this? Because I think people would be super interested in like going deeper in this area.

I mean, I think I've referenced it a few times. I mean, and a lot of my stuff is sitting down with John and transcribing his thoughts because this is where I've learned most of this stuff, right? And so it's in there, it's not called out. And I think he's been cautioning all of us on expectations for a few years now, right? Like since Glass.

Yeah.

And he pivoted me to the audio a couple of years ago because we need to temper our expectations on what consumers will expect. expect. Now again, I'm talking AR, right? I think that Apple— I've heard that Apple's cracked the code on AR/VR, and let's call it mixed reality, right? And I think that is much more acceptable to humans.

Yeah.

If you inject some situational awareness with an immersive experience, but humans need to be able to feel that they're not totally closed off in some way. Right? In order for them to feel safe and maybe not get sick. And then you get into, you know, back to your question about research papers, video see-through versus optical see-through, because there's a big challenge with a digital overlay on a transparent lens, whatever you want to call it, and the human mind knowing what's real and what's not. If you have one image plane with a combined, you know, video see-through AR combined image and it's HDR, 10-bit color, 4K, Mm-hmm. The human mind is perfectly happy with the Pokémon is there. It's real, right? But when you start trying to do that with a HoloLens type experience, heaven forbid it knows it's not real. And then if there's an issue like latency, something, something moves and then the brain's like, whoa, something is not right here, right? Like, and that's a cognitive load that's exhausting and potentially unsafe. Yeah.

Yeah. I watched I mean, this, so I'm super bullish on Apple as the unlock for this entire thing. And the reason is because they're trusted brand and they've been working on hardware, gosh, longer consumer hardware at the highest quality level longer than probably anybody else in the computer space, right? Like Microsoft was mostly focused on the software side and the operating system for so long and You know, with the new CEO a few years back, moved more into the hardware space and have done leaps and bounds and Google's gotten into it too, of course. But, you know, they started as the search engine. So it's like they just have all these years of manufacturing experience, the user research studies, you know, and they've been building their ecosystem towards this path. I mean, Tim Cook has been no, it's been no secret. I mean, he's flagging healthcare, cars and AR. I mean, it's like Once you get so big, there's only one way to grow and it's you gotta go after the biggest markets in the world, which is humans. And so it'll be interesting to see what ends up happening with the AR because I agree with you that I think AR is the big thing that I'm super bullish about. But like the watch, right? At first it was like, get your notifications and people were like, it's way too much and it turned into the health device.

Yes.

So will Will the glasses, like the number one use case, will it be a health device? Will it be, you know what I mean? Like that more human side of the, instead of just information, what does that information mean for me as a real user of this product?

What do you think? I was actually hoping one of my theories for the Apple before we knew where they were really going and we know where they're going, let's face it, right? Before we knew, I had hoped they might do an off-axis Heads-up display, video see-through, right? So in the brow bar of my glasses, just some tiny— it's called pupil optic, like a pinhole optic that injects the rays directly on your retina through your pupil, right? In a very efficient way.

Rather than waveguide kind of thing.

Exactly, exactly. And again, it's off-axis, so you got to look up at it. Like, it's not occluding your vision, which is a big thing for me. So anyway, that's the technical side of it. But the magic they could add is the filtering of data. Like, what do I actually get to see through the course of my day and how is that managed? Because I think they could, if anyone can do it, it's them, right? And in terms of their ecosystem, so critical because you can't just fire electrons down people's ears all day long with Twitter, text messages, phone calls. We're gonna have people—

TikTok.

Getting killed on the street. Yeah, exactly.

TikTok.

Yeah. But I still think like in, you know, the GoldenEye RealWear device, off-access pod just below your line of sight, it's really just suspending your phone.

Yeah, right.

Right. And it's video see-through AR, right?

Yeah, it's just like this.

But you can look down when you need it. It's like you want to read a PDF because you're fixing some turbine. It's like, oh man, I don't remember what the circuit diagram and you just call it up and look down in it without using your hands and boom, it's there and then you do your work. But of course, that's not the Hollywood vision of AR and so people kind of discount it. It's like, oh yeah, that's old tech, but it's Occam's razor, right? It's like, that's the simple solution that works. It's productive, it's safe. The other thing about waveguides, Sean, is you can't create black. You can't create dark colors and black. That's a huge— people don't— it's a huge issue, right?

Yeah.

Like on my screen right now, I've got black parts of my screen that are necessary. You can't do that with a waveguide easily. I mean, people are talking about you doing some, some photochromatic things, but now you're adding heat and weight. And wait a minute, video see-through can do all that for you. We've got micro displays that are opaque, but micro OLED with the right optics, light, power efficient. We're going to get there with video see-through way before optical see-through, right?

Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. And I think One of the things that hit me pretty hard, this is back in my Pixel days, we were building this big video platform. We combined a bunch of, it was a private equity, like a bunch of startups together to do the whole workflow, right? From ingest, transcoding, code, yada, yada, yada. One of the senior product people there, he, after that, he worked with a company I won't name him, but if you're listening, shout out. And it was interactive video, right? Like in YouTube, basically what that means is at the end of the YouTube video when they have those little hotspots and you click on them to go to it, it's like a hyperlink in a video. And I thought about that in the 3D world because those are your portals, like the Pokémon you click on. And now I'm transferring, I'm literally warp driving to a completely different universe, which is just like a different webpage.

Yeah.

But if you're, if you're pushing that information into your eye and it's interactive, and here's the real question, right? Like, am I reaching up to like touch things with my hand? Am I doing a microscopic eye movement?

Yeah.

Right? And then what is the strain on my eye? Because here's the thing about the glasses, what I realized, right? We sit with our phone on the couch in a comfortable position and we're holding with one or two hands and kind of doing the thing. The absolute, like, best case is I call it the layout. One of my buddies was like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna lay out tonight, basically just like starfish on the floor and just completely comfortable, completely spread out. But if you put that eye, those glasses on, you're completely spread out. You don't have to move a muscle. And so it's like the ultimate user experience is you just think it or like it's a microscopic movement. So at what point does like getting up and walking somewhere, that transition to I'm just moving something with my thumb on a smartphone down to what's a similar leap in terms of like friction reduction to interact with video, which is really just AR.

Yeah.

Right? Like that's a really interesting thing I've been thinking about.

It is an interesting question and I got convinced fairly early about the benefits of and this isn't gonna solve the problem obviously, but you know.

Yeah.

Like some investments were made early on for the GoldenEye platform, which became RealWear, that voice, voice is the new touch, right? But the trick with voice is you gotta extract all the external noise because the voice engines need a clear signal, right? And so you gotta solve that problem first and whether you solve it in hardware, software, or some combination, I think it's been solved. And I think GoldenEye did a good job of it on the RealWear device where it's like voice and head movement, right? So you can kind of do a little bit of this and the voice and you kind of get somewhere. But to your point, can you do stuff that voice can't without moving limbs or digits and that kind of stuff? And is it the eye? I mean, you listen to the Mojo folks, that's what they are doing, right? It's like the contact lens and it's going to be the eye movement.

Yeah.

It's all going to work beautifully. In 20 years or whatever that timeframe is.

I wear contacts. I'm hopeful, like next year, that'd be fun, but not—

But you start listening to the technical, like I'm listening to explain like the resolution they've got and they can get to and the batteries. I'm like, wow, this is like, this is a hard problem to solve because the other thing about what Apple's going to do, I think, is consumers, if we're talking consumers, they are used to 4K HDR, 120Hz imagery. You cannot go with even a 640 by 480 screen, like that's not going to work, right? So we got to get— and that's why I'm hot on micro OLED and pancake optics and mixed reality because it's actually going to be better than your TV. Because the other thing, if you listen to Robert Scoble, it's like the idea is you're not looking at a 4K by 4K screen here, you're looking at a sphere of 4K all around you, right?

IMAX.

Yeah, right, exactly. IMAX. And then you throw in the audio, you're wearing, you know, the high-end Apple audio gear, you throw a great audio experience in there like the IMAX. Yeah, 48 Hz. IMAX.

Yeah. Well, that's— and that's the thing. Like, I was listening to this audio engineer the other day, and he was like, 44 Hz, most of the stuff on the news, 48 Hz, really good sound quality is what people try to do. But the problem with social networks is they downsample you to 44. Which is why the audio on social doesn't work so well. But there's some encoders out there when they compress, if you let the encoder before you upload compress, the audio will sound a little better.

Mm-hmm.

But that's the other thing to the audio experience is like, right? It's like, it's not enough for me to just have a new experience. It has to be a better experience, which is so hard and why this stuff has taken so long. 'Cause my audio needs to jump from like 2-channel or like a mono channel or like Needs to go to 7.1 or 8.1 surround sound. Then you need to up from like 44 to 48 Hz. And then to your point, you need to go from— because the standard now is like 4K HDR.

Yeah.

And now you need to jump up to 8K an inch from your eyeball. And yeah, so, and then you have to bring size, weight, and power into the equation and then wear it to the point. And I think, I think these, the reason they're so heavy I think Apple was testing how— and training on how much can you take, because they test everything in production. You just don't know it. They're so good at that. Yeah, it's, it's gonna be wild. And it just feels like, yeah, I'm excited for it. Are you gonna pick up a pair of whatever Apple drops?

Oh, yeah, always. Like, I've got it on my bookshelf. I've got all of the pro— I've got some prototypes of The cycling glasses and the audio stuff, you know, I like to own some of these things. The AirPods have been a bit of a disappointment, right? Like mine are now crackling and crackling when, you know, so I don't even wear them half the time.

Yeah.

And I wear glasses. So Sean, the spectacle platform for me, it just makes so much sense because if I had an all-day pair of glasses with a great audio experience, I just, I'll put them on in the morning, I'll wear them all day because I'm on Zoom, not Zoom, I'm on MS Teams calls all day anyway. So Now it's just a natural login and I'm on the call with my external speakers, right, firing into my ear discreetly. And I've got noise cancellation built in. So maybe I just wear those glasses all day. Then you throw a little display and actually the optimal would be 4 of them, right? So 1 on the— 2 on the top, 2 on the bottom, very thin, small pupil optics. And I either look up or look down for that data and it's natural. Right. But now, but that's all AR, right? Like that's all doing a little bit of augmentation during it. But what I'm really curious about is this mixed reality experience when you get into the neural radiance fields and all the content Apple has on us. Here's a question for you.

Yeah.

Apple mixed reality, 4K by 4K HDR, 120Hz, great Dolby Atmos audio, the whole thing. Can Apple recreate Christmas of 1985 based on my photos? Probably. Yeah, probably. And what is that worth to a consumer? Can you revisit your trip to Hawaii from 2016 in a sense, rather than just flipping through photos or, you know, these curated streams we get from Google and Apple about a little bit of music in the background? Yeah. Could you, could you level up our memories with a mixed reality device? Like, what's that worth?

Yeah.

And then sporting events and concerts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now you're speaking my language, man.

Like, this is—

look, I'll tell you, me and— it's like, I'll call him my brother, one of my creative brothers, the most creative dudes in the world. We've talked about physical objects store memories. I do agree that's where things are going, like photogrammetry of your past. But here's the thing, right? Like, I was looking at ARKit, the latest drop over the summer that, you know, the latest version of iOS, ARKit, all that stuff in order to physically, like, 3D-ize a physical object, I need to take 84 high-resolution images from my phone and then put it on a turntable where it doesn't, you know, it doesn't move up, down. And so that has to become much better. And then to your point about like street maps and everything else, like you need all the other glasses capturing the different perspectives at scale, billions of consumers over a decade. In order for you to step into that immersive world in the past. So it could be— here's the game, right? So I start thinking about gamification and Pokémon Go and all that. It's like your game is to unghost the world in 3D, which is you've taken 40% of the picture of your environment, you know, and the eyeglasses are scanning LiDAR and it's doing the whole thing and the mesh and all of that.

Yeah.

But you're missing a piece. So why don't you walk over there and ding? And now all of a sudden you get some kind of bonus for it. Which gives you like Apple points and you close your ring on your watch. So I don't know, we'll see where it ends up. I mean, I just, it's such a hard bridge because all the cool stuff is at scale, but how do you get from just one person to a billion and continue to manage that use? The retention, retention is the hardest thing. In tech.

Yeah. Well, and I think, and you raise a good point about scale, right? We've all been playing around at the edges of AR and even VR to a certain degree. But let's say AR, you know, like Vuzix has got their little thing going and RealWear is taking a shot at it and like no one's really getting any scale.

Yeah.

I mean, Apple's got scale with the AirPods, but it's not really AR in the context of what we're talking about here. But Apple can pull off another iPhone moment where they lay the groundwork for some scale, right? And I think that's what everyone's hoping for with the headset is they're the first ones who can lay some groundwork. And Meta's trying, but the Meta thing is more about a gaming evolution to some metaverse concept that no one really understands. I think Apple's going to say, well, they've already said that, we don't use that word metaverse. Yeah.

Especially not now.

It's experiences and content. Yeah. Especially not now. It's content and experiences And magic. It's magic. Yeah, right. Like, that's the thing. It's magic.

Yeah, right.

How did they recreate Christmas of '85? Like, how can I walk in my living room in 1985 with my little brother and my parents when they were young and this Jingle Bells in the background? How did they do that? Right. And it's not going to be perfect, but it's like it's a level-up experience of your photographs, right?

Yeah. And I just want Chevy Chase to show up, you know what I mean?

Where is that guy anyway? Right. No one's heard from him. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like he just goes back in time and inserts himself into everybody's somebody's Christmas. It's like do a partnership. That would be amazing.

But think of that App Store now, right? Like now you, it's, and you know, some people remind me Uber was not even an idea until we had the smartphone infrastructure to do that, right? So, okay, now we have the headset infrastructure. What are you guys, what are the developers gonna do, right? So yeah.

Yeah, developers, developers, developers, you know it. Yeah, it's super cool. It reminds me of one of my friends who's actually my first guest on this show and his name's Antoine. And for the better part of years, he's more, I'll just call it user experience, like the feeling side rather than the engineering side, more of the creative than the engineering, right?

Mm-hmm.

And he has his own agency and he works with a lot of governmental folks. But one of the things that he's done in his free time, right? Like Where the smartest people in the world spend their free time is where the rest of us will spend our time in the future. He has been testing wearables, like all the rings, all the like wrist-worn wearables, all the devices, the Snapchat lenses, all of this stuff. And he's a big cyclist.

Hmm.

So to your point about the cycling glasses, I mean, it just kept reminding me of this. He would go out and ride and he's got a big idea of like how he thinks the wearables revolution will play out and sort of like he wants to start prototyping something. But it's interesting for him because I asked him, what is your experience afterwards? And he said, you know, I do actually go back to the recordings I took on the Snapchat glasses and it really is memory because he's like, oh, I forgot that I even right after the ride, he's like, I forgot about like this thing and there was like a car here and like this interesting drive journey. So he got to re-experience his own content And I didn't quite pick up on it until I started doing some of these shows. And I actually enjoy my own content. Like, I go back and I just, I watch it, right? Like, I vibe with this stuff because I'm not going to pick up everything that you say right now. And so I listen to it, I read it, and I listen to it again, and it soaks in more. And I'm like, oh, this is like super fascinating. So I wonder if, you know, you may be onto something even more powerful than we can even imagine.

Yeah.

The fact that you go back and relive some of these things because it's more immersive than just a photo that we lose because there's 10,000 of them in my camera roll.

Exactly. Well, and that's where I was going with the Nerf stuff. And I'm oversimplifying because I'm not the engineer. I'm just the idea aggregator, right? I mean, I've got streams of images in my iPhoto, which it looks like 20 of the same image because of, for whatever reason, I took a bunch that are very similar.

Yeah.

Your idea about can we do the cam with the 84 shots, like, like we may have enough to get some experiences built based on our iPhoto libraries, maybe more than we think, right? And yeah, Apple knows what music we love. And they know, they know who the people are, because we're doing faces, they've tagged everyone. So, you know, can you start to curate experiences? And then when you're living those, reliving those memories in a in an HDR, you know, 120Hz, 4K, and it's, it's, it's around you with situational awareness, right? Like you can still got some peripheral awareness and it's just a better experience now. As, as I've learned from some of the folks, yeah, we can do that in the lab, Derek, but is there value for the consumer? That's the big question, right?

Right.

Like, yeah, putting a little display on a pair of cycling glasses, amazing idea. The cyclists will love it. We'll sell millions of them. I don't think they sold more than a couple thousand because there just wasn't enough value there to be able to not look at your speedo on your handlebars versus looking at it, looking up, keeping your head up, right? So that's the next question is what will people pay for, right?

I think, yeah, I think one of them, and we already kind of see this with Apple Maps, but here's the perfect example in terms of safety, right? So like CarPlay was the Trojan horse into the automotive industry and people buy cars Just because it has integration with CarPlay. And what's the primary use? One, music. Two, maps. It's navigation. And here's the issue with navigation is driving, and I've always had this problem, you have to move your eye away from the road and you have to go down and to the right and then back up. And in that period of time going at 60, 70 miles an hour, like you, that could be it. So for me, like, you know, Apple's gonna have this constellation of apps and I think that's one where Now all of a sudden, I don't have to really care about, you know, I can leave my phone at home, I can get into any car and I can understand where I'm going and then immediately jump out of the Uber and it's given me walking directions as well, direct to the person, direct to the like milk brand I like on the store shelf. I mean, I've seen Tim Cook retweet, forget the guy's name, it's like a small development startup, startup in the UK, I believe, where it had on the phone, you'd go down and it would give you like the walking directions straight to the discounted price point. Yeah, I was a younger chap.

Isn't one of your quotes, didn't I get it from your Twitter feed about one of the greatest retention tools being reducing friction, right?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, like that is, and what you're talking about is reducing friction, right? Like You step here, there, boom, boom. And it's just like, it's just, it's friction, right?

Yeah. And yeah, and I think really what it is, is how much of that can you remove with one device, all these little microscopic friction moments that add up to be a lot. And this is, I talked about this in like a robotics AI episode. But to me, like one of the huge use cases for that is that service bot in home. It's a multi-use appliance where instead of an oven, a microwave, a dishwasher, right? You have somebody or let's just say an artificially intelligent humanoid robot that's safe, you know, the biggest one of all who can save you 2 to 4 hours a day because they're cleaning up the house, they're making lunch for the kids, they're walking the dog, they're throwing away the trash, all these little microscopic things that add up to hours and hours of your day. It's like, would you be willing to pay $200 a month for that? Well, like, yeah, Like the whole population. So the question to me, like with the glasses, is I haven't thought enough about it. Like, let me put down in a spreadsheet my entire day step by step and think about what is every single moment and how many seconds does it, or milliseconds times every day times every human. And what's the societal value add of just throwing these things on to a billion people?

Yeah. Well, and that's why I'm gonna go back to this. Like, I was early fascinated about the complex version of AR and all it could do, but I'm back to now the 80%, the audio. If you had a pair of glasses, and let's pretend that you had a choice, the glasses give you, you know, all your audio input/output, calls, Zoom calls, everything. You're not taking them on and off, you just wear them all day.

Yeah.

Maybe you don't even want to wear contacts anymore. Because because you're augmented, you can't you don't get the same functionality, and you spend more time doing stuff wearing contacts.

Bumping into stuff, right? Yeah, be bumping into stuff. That's the real problem is like I can't leave my house.

But with the glasses, like we get you your prescription, and you got audio glasses. No imaging, no visual, just audio, right? Now it's like people that were wearing contacts. No, no, no. I'm back to my glasses because I don't take my phone out of my pocket on the way to work anymore because. My wife calls me, I just answer it audibly, right? Directions are spoken to me as I walk to work and I'm not taking my phone in my pocket very much anymore. So then you go, then it's down your path of we've just reduced a bunch of friction, right? By wearing just an audio glass. And I think Meta and Google are gonna start doing the camera thing. So audio glass.

Yeah.

And then let's record the world while Sean's walking around.

Right.

Right. So they're getting some benefit out of it and the consumer's getting benefit out of it. So anyway, I think that's the first widely adopted AR is gonna be the audio AR and I think we may be missing it. I don't think people are seeing audio AR glasses is gonna be as big as an AirPod. It's gonna be as big as AirPods. It might actually be bigger than AirPods because AirPods are not comfortable for everyone. And if you could wear something all day versus in and out, I think you'd take the all day Spectacles.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that because the hearing impaired are perhaps the only ones that have years or decades of experience with something in their ear all day, and the rest of the human population didn't. So at some point you take those headphones out, but the glasses, you've got decades of humanity wearing them all day, every day. So I agree with you there. Um, here's my question though, like shifting to the more immersive, like VR stuff.

Sure.

How do you think— there's obviously like the Hollywood thing. I've thought about the Hollywood thing. How do you think this, the totally immersive VR dial turned all the way up to 100%, what do you think that's going to be like? And is there any bridge between the AR/VR piece? Because all of us practitioners, we just talk about it in one breath, but that's a giant Experience leap for the user.

And it's funny, you know, like Meta's taking it from the immersive, you know, using gaming to go down the immersive path. I personally think Apple's gonna flip it around and we're thinking of it as VR, but it's actually gonna be more mixed reality. I think you're gonna put it on and you're gonna see your room that you're in and it's gonna start with more mixed reality experiences, not a fully immersive experience.

Got it.

And I think that the mixed reality is the killer app for consumers. And maybe you have a segment that wants to be full VR. The thing with full VR is I think the experience relies on more than just the headset to be fully immersed in a virtual world that is convincing. I think you're now talking about— What do you mean? More physical haptics.

Yeah.

I think you really got to go to like, how do you walk across a field in full VR when you're in your 500 square foot apartment?

Right, right.

Like, now you need to have some physical mechanism to create the illusion of walking across a baseball field. That's a hard problem to solve, um, to be, to be like the ultimate holodeck VR experience, right? Like, if someone was asking me about that last night, I'm like, well, think about all these challenges, right? Like, yeah, the, the haptics required just to create the physical sensation of being there, the, the smells and things like that, and then the, the illusion of distance. How do you recreate the illusion of distance? I mean, you've seen the videos on the internet of some guy, it looks like he's walking on a beam, and he's jumping off and he, he jumps into his wall, right? Because so—

The Kool-Aid Man in real life.

Yeah, yeah. I just don't know. I, for some reason, I feel that Apple's gonna do something more along the mixed reality, like this, because killer app for consumer headsets is mixed reality. And maybe there's some segments that are fully immersive that we get to in the metaverse in 10 years that are really convincing. But I think the concert experience, the sports experience that's not so immersive that you're closed off, but it's more of a mixed reality experience and it's great. That's what I see.

So you think, so like I'm gonna put words in your mouth here, but I'm just sort of compartmentalizing. So it looks like reality, augmented reality, Mixed reality, virtual reality. So it's like RAR, MR, VR, and as the continuum.

And I feel that AirPods, like we're already using, we've gone from reality to AR with AirPods.

Yes.

Simplifying it, right? Like—

Audio, right?

Exactly. Your audio today on with those headphones, if you have the noise cancellation on and you've got the ambient input on, You've augmented your real hearing, right? Because you've now injected another audio stream from what's going on around you, but you can hear them both to different levels, right?

And you're not here with me, like, but you're here with me.

Exactly. Yeah. So I do see reality and then audio. And then now we're gonna go, I think Apple's gonna jump to, they're not gonna try and do VR and then pull it back to AR. I think it's gonna be more like a mixed reality and then it might shoot off to VR. And then what they'll do is they'll get the mixed reality pulled back to like an AR experience once the technology lets them do that, where you can have a very light AR experience visually. Because it's— Sean, the devices are just too heavy to be wearing all day, right? Like, like you and I both know this. Like, yeah, no matter how— yeah.

It's like a motorcycle helmet. Like, at some point you need to take that puppy off. So Inside baseball, I'm headed to Disney on Saturday for a week. Went there a year ago. One of the most impressive, immersive experiences I've ever been a part of, to the point where I just sat in a seat after Rise of the Resistance for Star Wars with mouth agape and sat there for a minute because I was just in awe. And I do this stuff for a living and have for a long time. And They took me to a whole different place that I didn't know was possible. And I was left with the thought that, like, I ain't nothing. I haven't done nothing. You ain't gonna be nothing because we're doing it on a totally different plane of existence. So to your point about smell.

Yeah.

Audio.

Yeah. Video environment. Yeah.

Disney has killed the game. And I— so we went through some of the old stuff too. And like back when Walt was in charge, he was doing these robotics from the beginning, right? Like this is like 40, 50 years ago. I mean, it's the 50th anniversary now, but like if he would have just kept going on that thing, I mean, Steve took up the mantle and the torch, so to speak, from Walt.

Yeah, yeah.

But here's my question, right? Because Disney and this whole idea of like the multiverse, they already own the property, all of that stuff. They just don't have the technology chops of like an Apple, a Google, a Microsoft, et cetera, like an Amazon. And so how did they— but they have the distribution channel, they have the entertainment assets, they have the 2D, they have the storytellers. So it's almost like you need to smash Apple together with Disney and create Voltron. And it feels like Microsoft would need to get in there as well. And I wonder, I mean, I just don't see this playing out in corporate America, but Wouldn't it be cool if the 5 biggest tech companies in the world work together for once to build something that helped all of us? You know, and like, what, what is Disney's place in all of this going to be? Like, I want to hear your thoughts on this. Have you thought about it much?

Well, I mean, my view of the world is, I mean, they're the king of content, right?

I mean, yeah.

And queen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're the whole royal family.

Yeah. 52 deck of cards. Yeah.

I don't know what you expect. I don't know in terms of the device, as you say, are they there technically? I don't, I don't know. I have an idea of what the technical requirements are for the visual, right? Like in my head and talking to people. And I think Apple's in the best position to provide the device right now. Now, is the Disney experience a park or controlled environment experience? Or is it something that you think could be done in a home? For an individual, right? Like, it sounds like it was— okay.

Has to be, because that's the only way you jump from attendance scale traveling to billions. So you've got to figure out that in-home.

You think you could do what you experienced in a house then? It's not like it required platforms and all kinds of crazy mechanical devices that could only be done in them in a controlled environment. You think this could be done somehow in a— in your house? Maybe.

I think that's the endgame. And the question is, how do we create it? What are the leaps? What are the problems that need to be solved in order to create it? Because to me, that's endgame, you know. So in 20 years, I'm walking around in Star Wars all day, every day, but it's just my kitchen.

Well, exactly. And that's where I'm thinking of the mixed reality experience of the Apple killer app. It's like you have It's, it's a marrying of the fantasy world that you want to experience with the reality construct that you don't stub your toe on your dishwasher, right? Like, you've got that awareness and the world is mapped. The content is probably adjusted to your physical reality. And that's kind of cool because then it's like, then it's like a customized experience, which is the ultimate anyway, right?

Yeah, it's a skin. It's like winning. It's a skin for your house.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And I think the visual technology, like I was at Koppen's head office in 2018 and I experienced the 2K by 2K micro OLED 1-inch panel pancake optics. Like people are talking about that now as new tech. That's 4 years old actually, right? We're now looking at 4K by 4K, which is super hard technically to do pancake optics. I think visually you can do what you want to do in your house and but it's going to take Apple to do it. It's going to take Apple to say, okay, industry, Cell phone panels for VR? No, out. We're now doing 1-inch, 1.3-inch panels, pancake optics. And now you've got that visual that you've been waiting for. And now you gotta have the audio and Apple can do the audio and then the skinning. Like, I really feel like that's where it's gonna go for the consumer scale product.

Yeah, it's interesting. The thought that just crossed my mind is Apple is the distribution channel for experience.

Yeah.

Because they have the ability to not only concept but create, manufacture, and have consumers purchase, which is the ultimate thing. And then and only then can you distribute your media, your products, your services through that distribution channel direct into the eyeballs. I mean, the The other thing I could never get away from— are you a Star Trek: Next Generation fan?

I like Next Generation. I mean, that's one of the better series, right?

Yeah. So there was this one episode, I watched this growing up, that and like USA Up All Night, which was kind of funny. Gilbert Gottfried, rest in peace. But there was this one episode in Star Trek: Next Generation where they put on these glasses, everybody on the ship. And like Gene Roddenberry, genius, put on a on these glasses. And it was, they showed the like visual, which was really horrible '90s CGI, like Lawnmower Man, right? And it was like this ball bouncing or whatever. But the idea, the story was that it was this game or this content that was so immersive that everybody on the ship became zombies and just like stopped. And there was only one person on the ship that was immune from it. So basically, TikTok directly into your brain is how we would experience this. There's only one person that didn't get impacted by this and he had to go around and save the ship and everybody and get them off of this because it was so engaging because it was so personalized, right? It was a game and a story, whatever. And you know who it was? It was Data.

I was gonna guess Data, right?

Yeah, it was just Data the robot that ended up saving humanity from the fact that we created a machine so powerful that it immersed us and engaged us To the nth degree, so it's like the end game beyond the end game is I just go back to service bots to save us from ourselves.

Well, we might need that. There's a couple movies along those lines too, right? Like I Robot. But you know, I think the three winners are going to be Apple, obviously, because they're gonna they're gonna pivot the industry to the headset that we're talking about, and that'll drive the content. Apple Meta will win just because they've got an early start. I mean, not win, but they'll have a good position. And Pico Pico ByteDance. I think you're gonna see Pico ByteDance with a headset emerge in the next 6 to 12 months, you know, with the content they can drive from TikTok and they're gonna lever that. And so I think those are gonna be your titans, those are gonna be your platform device titans. Yeah, and it's gonna be the small guys are gonna have a tough time now. It's the big boys now, it's the big boys.

That's, Derek, that's so interesting. The Pico TikTok, I don't think anybody has any idea the speed at which they've scaled and the areas they're working in. I mean, can you tell us more? Like, what else do you know?

Well, because if you look at—

that's the sleeper.

If you look at what's publicly available, you'll see that ByteDance bought Pico from, you know, Gore-Tex. There's a Gore-Tex connection. Gore-Tex, the number one ODM for all the headsets, like they're the ones building all this stuff. for the brands. They've got the dough, right? Like, you're gonna see where billions have been wasted on optical see-through, back to that, and now we're gonna go video see-through. You're gonna see that there's gonna be billions put into video see-through mixed reality VR headsets. And obviously Apple, we're expecting that in a few months, right? Hopefully January or sooner.

Mm-hmm.

Meta's already made their play. We got the new device coming, Cambria. I'm kind of, I was always hoping it was gonna be micro OLED, but maybe they're not ready. I'm very confident Apple will be micro OLED and pancake. And then I think Pico is going to come out of nowhere because of the groundwork that was laid at Gore-Tex. And I think they're going to have a competitive device and they've got content they can feed that thing with due to TikTok, right?

So basically you think it's going to become basically another internet superpower based out of China?

Yeah.

Yeah. And then, yeah, I mean, to get into the physical geography thing, not the internet geography thing. But then the other sleeper beyond that is India, right? Like a totally different culture, like a population just as big as China. And China's population is starting to not grow as fast too. So that's kind of an interesting— and then Middle East, North Africa, just that whole sector of the planet. Because I mean, I'll tell you, I'm working with a gentleman based in Africa now and there is no difference in terms of skill set, software engineering in that side of the world and, you know, Middle East, North Africa, India, worked with some really great Indian folks over the years too.

Oh yeah.

So it's, I feel like that's only a matter of time and I see Silicon Valley starting to pay attention and fund that area of the continent. So it's like, If US was the superpower, China's next, and then after that India, and it's gonna be a wild 30 years in front of us.

It is. Yeah. And it's gonna be a paradigm shift, you know, just like the internet was, as you mentioned earlier in the discussion here. It's gonna be like the smartphone paradigm shift. Yeah. And we all remember Steve Ballmer saying, ah, the iPhone, it's got no keyboard and it's too expensive. People aren't gonna buy that thing. I mean, that platform has laid the groundwork for multiple trillion-dollar market opportunities like the Airbnb model, the Uber model, like the whole delivery model, right? Uber, not Uber, but the gig drivers, like those industries didn't exist without the smartphone platform, right? So the headset platform is going to spawn trillion-dollar industries, right? And geographically, you're right, they could be very different. I think China is a really interesting space because they've closed the gap on their technical abilities in a massive way, right?

Yeah. Um, quality is going way up.

Yep, big time, big time. And India, as you say, like the technical ability— I know some of the software development even for the GoldenEye and the RealWear, like that was all done offshore, um, in India, right, to develop. Because people don't realize like that Android The GoldenEye platform isn't just the headset, right? Like, I was there in 2017 when they launched it, and what they had done was found a way to put an Android layer on top of a middleware to voice-ify Android, which is an important thing, right? To basically create a whole voice extraction layer for the Android operating system. That was all done, I believe, in India. So yeah, the world's going to change, right? And my big goal is, I mean, I want to own winners. I want to bet on the right folks and it'd be nice if I can make a few dollars doing it, right?

Yeah.

And I like to be right. And so I spend a lot of time trying to find, and it's been this windy road, right? It's like HoloLens, Google Glass, and each time it's like, they're big, they got to be a winner. Well, no, Glasses was a dud, right? And even HoloLens, well, the story's not fully written yet, but I would bet it's more in the dud category. So you just don't know until you get the scale, right?

It feels like the industry has been shooting off little bottle rockets, which are tests. And then in the meantime, someone over here is building an actual rocket that can carry humans.

Exactly.

And people aren't ready for the huge rocket to hit. And people say it's going to be the Apple things, like $3,000 a pop. And it'll probably be, you know, that whole fight between like, do we have a tether to the iPhone? Do you need the iPhone? You can't have the cord, you know, internal debate. So it's gonna be super interesting, but it's probably still gonna be pretty green in terms of capability right out of the gate. And, you know, it could have been a blessing in disguise, COVID and all that stuff to give some more time.

Yeah.

In order to make it a little bit better to help with adoption. Because I think the worst thing for this space is if Apple drops something and for, quote, the first time in history, their product quality, like it doesn't hit the way we would expect it. That would be the worst thing. And I think it would put everything back a long, long ways in terms of just global investment excitement. And I mean, it's like the space program, right? Like after the '60s was giant, we landed on the moon and then it was like winter for decades and we're finally, it took private company to get us back excited and making moves again. So that is my, that's on the fear side, but on the positive side, a lot of excitement. And I think, look, humanity, we are nothing but a set of toolmakers and we're going to continue to build tools until the end of time. And hopefully those tools help people instead of hurting them.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, do you— it seems like you're spending a lot of time on the analyst side. Do you want to be a part of like building, like writing, creating spec, or do you feel like more the— I mean, you tell me, what do you want to— like, what's your dream?

Well, yeah, so my angle on this has always been on the investing side. Right? Like, I, you know, I'm an investor and I saw an opportunity initially with a company and then this whole AR/VR thing kind of emerged and as a part of that emerging, I mean, I have to know everything about my investments, right? Like, I have to know everything and, you know, investments attract capital, right? And so part of it is making sure I own the right entity that's gonna attract the capital.

Yeah.

And it's gonna attract the customers and that's gonna be the successful entity, right? And so I just have spent a lot of time making sure my bet is right. And along the way you pick up a bunch of stuff which is really intriguing. And if you're into technology and you enjoy this stuff, it's like, yeah, I think I can understand how microdisplays work. I think I can understand the difference between a pancake optic and a pupil optic. I think I get this stuff, right? And so then you start sharing it with people and that's the other part, right, Sean, is I just like to share it so people understand it a little deeper.

Yeah. Yeah.

Than what they hear on or what they see on CNBC, you know, Meta is launching a VR device, right? Well, right, understanding is important to me and sharing is important and having these opportunities is cool, right? To catch up with someone who's deeper in the industry and actually probably creating something, I suspect, right?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, I think, yeah, and that's amazing. 2 things. The first one is to your point about reading, spending the time doing it. There aren't that many people in the world that have the fascination, the interest, the time, and the cognitive capability to go the duration, to spend the years doing it. And so at some point, there's a ton of people that fall away, and there's only so many in the world like you that have that domain expertise with the benefit of history, because it's not like you just read it in a textbook. You've been living through it as you've read it. And so, as you said, you've figured out this kind of weird golden winding path that you have a pretty good thesis on. And you kind of, I mean, you read enough, you know what's happening. I mean, you may not know how it all comes together in the finest detail, but you know what stuff's going to be when it hits. So I think that's one thing. You just spend enough time on something and you just by definition become an expert in the space. So yeah, kudos to you and hats off on just picking it because I think it's going to be absolutely gigantic. Consumers are experience and this AR is nothing but more than experience in your everyday life. Instead of being trapped behind a little like 2-inch thing, it's now everywhere. And that is, I think, a giant piece that people don't even know yet. And then to the other point about building stuff. Yes, there's, I think I'll probably help a lot of founders build their things and I'm just more of a playground in my own head. Like I play around with stuff and I'm like, okay, here we go. But I think there's so many founders trying to do their own thing and there's less people connecting them together, which is what it's going to take. It's like build the cobweb or the spider web of the founders and the practitioners and the creators in order to bring together these things because otherwise they just won't exist.

Right.

Like it takes talent, time and money in order for these ideas and these visions to become reality. And I mean, just one, I mean, I go back to like 25 years ago when I was like, I just want AirPods or music in my ears without a cord. And the next thing I want, which people have tested this already in AR is like, I just want a ghost runner. Which is me that I can run against.

Yes.

You know, I like to lift and I like to run. And so when I go out for a run, it's like, okay, show me what my pace was. Because I go from like 7:30 on the first mile to like 8:30 on the second mile. And I only do like 3 miles when I go. But it's like, what does that pace feel like? And can I push myself? And you just, I mean, yeah, you maybe have some numbers on your watch, but being able to see that distance and in real time kind of step it up. But then what's that experience like running with eyeglasses bouncing and sweat? And so like you go down these pathways and you realize the requirement set starts to change for the device. And then the real problem is how do I make it universal?

Yes.

It's like the AirPods. How do I fit every ear?

Yeah.

And they kind of do, they kind of don't. And glasses, we luckily we've been prototyping glasses for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Well, it's a good point, right? I remember sitting in the office with John and like he had— I was wearing his prototypes with a display up above, right in the brow bar. Beautiful little— and I could, I could see it easy. He said, Derek, you probably can't see it. So no, I can see it. He's like, really? Wow. Because the IPD is so different on all the different head shapes, right?

Yeah.

That even the ability to see that display that you and I are talking about, it's a big technical ergonomic challenge. And that's kind of one of the things that's held it back, right? Is it's a big challenge and you get back to the audio, the audio being most of what you need anyway. But I agree with your point about a visual component will be required. Ghostrunner data, whatever, right? That's a key thing. But it's going to be a little while, I think, before we see it.

Yeah.

In a way that's— and then the Mojo, back to that contact lens thing, right? Yeah, cool idea for 2036, right? Like, I, I— that's a long way out, right?

Yeah, long way out. Yeah, I, I would love it though. I've—

oh yeah, I know one founder.

It'd be cool if you just pop it in, hard contact lens, there you go. Where do you get the power? I don't know, piezoelectric. It's some mechanical watch gears, you know, like Miniaturization. But man, that's nuts miniaturization. That's like quantum level machinery.

And then, you know, you could get blood, like you could get blood sugar direct. Like there's also some sensory, some sensor opportunities on the eyeball too, which would be amazing because we can't do the blood sugar thing well yet, right? Because of the invasiveness of it. But the eyeball is a great place to get some sensor data too, right? So, The problem I have is the resolution. Your Ghostrunner might not look what you think it's going to look like with that particular device, right? Because the resolution might be like 40 by 80 or something, right?

Stick figure, stick figure with arms and legs cut off.

Exactly. So, uh, I think the near future we kind of know what it is and, and it's going to be a little different. But, um, I'm excited to see what Apple's gonna produce, right? So if they don't do anything, I'm going to be really And I'll have to change—

uh-oh, internet. Oh no, what happened right at the end? Oh boy, you know, I don't know if you can hear me.

Are you back? There you are.

I'm back, man. I think my internet's unstable.

No, that's fine. And then, so now we're back to my, you know, I've been spinning this yarn about video see-through, optical see-through. This is the disadvantage of going video see-through is when you lose, the panel goes completely black. Uh, anyway, so yeah, yeah, it's been interesting.

Well, this, this has been phenomenal, man. I think I'd love to do this again, whether it's on the show or otherwise. After, because Meta is gonna drop their thing in the fall and we'll see. Yeah, we'll see when Apple, I mean, they're talking about early next year, maybe before that, but definitely after we get our hands on this thing. And because I'm gonna have to, I'm not immune. I just, you know, like you just have to. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then it'll be interesting for us to catch up again on Okay, now what? Yeah. And that'll be super duper interesting because I wonder, it'd be interesting to refer back to this and see like how far off or on we were.

Well, you're right. And just like the iPhone cycle, like the original one, and I had the 3G, I think, right? Because in Canada, we got the 3G first really. But you guys had like a 2G, like the initial one was not what we think of. So again, Expectations calibrated. The first headset is gonna be like the teaser, right? It'll be functional but not really what you and I are talking about. But I think Gen 2, whether it's the following year or whatever, that's gonna be the one that lines up with what we're hoping for.

Yeah, yeah, man. Yeah, I love it.

Awesome. Cool. Well, hey, I appreciate the time. Yeah, no, no, last thoughts is bullish on the space. It's recession-proof in a sense because I think if you've got something people are keen on and relatively low cost. I mean, a $2,000 headset from Apple is a lot cheaper than business class tickets to Paris to go to the Louvre once when you can go back over and over, right? So I think some exciting things are going to happen in the industry. I really appreciate the time and love sharing and love hearing others' perspectives too. I learned quite a few things from you here today as well, Sean. So anytime, just ring me up and I'm there.

I love it. Cool. Well, thanks, Derek. Appreciate your time and hope you have a good long weekend. It's Labor Day. Here in the States, I guess. I don't know, do you guys have Labor Day?

Same here, same here. It's a nice long weekend.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Any fun, any fun plans?

Yeah, my daughter's in town, so we'll probably, uh, do some day trips into the mountains and do some hiking and, you know, try and stay active while the weather's good, right?

Good. Well, don't forget your glasses.

Yeah, exactly. No, they're always on.

All right, brother. Well, thanks so much for the time. Have a great weekend and, uh, love to the family. We'll talk to you again soon. See you on the internet.

Yep, we'll see you on the internet.

All right, brother.

Thanks, Sean. Take care.

Yep, bye.