 Hi, this is Allison Sheridan with the No Silicast Podcast, hosted at podfeed.com, a technology podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, January 28th, 2024, and this is show number 977. This week I desperately wanted to argue with someone about the incessant hand-ringing that's going on right now about how Apple wants 12% of the revenue that developers will make when they were forced to allow third-party payment systems. I know, I know, it's 27% for the rich developers, but for the regular developers that are, what, I think it's like 90%, it's really only 12%. Anyway, I didn't want to do a simple rant on the No Silicast, so I asked the guys over at the SMR podcast if I could come on and argue with Rod Simmons about it. He's usually good for taking the opposite or whatever side I'm on, and they thought it was a grand idea. So open your podcatcher of choice and download episode 604 of the SMR podcast called The Apple Decision with Allison Sheridan, or you can follow the link in the show notes. I had a complete blast and I think they did too, and you know, if you're already there, you might as well just subscribe to the podcast. This is going to sound like one of those These Kids Today articles, but I'm going to say it anyway. Evidently, These Kids Today use YouTube as a podcast listening service. Now I get watching videos through YouTube, but I'm talking about listening to audio podcasts through YouTube. It makes no sense to me when podcast listening apps are so useful. But then I think about the basic tenet of working with audiences. If you want to increase your viewership or listenership or readership, you need to go where they already are, not try to force them to go where you want them to be. If people are already going to YouTube, why not provide them the content where they want to be? When Joe from the Northwoods first started podcasting, I turned her on to theophonic service I use. It does all kinds of magic for me. I told you aboutophonic in detail back in May of last year, but it basically converts my uncompressed audio to MP3, it sends the audio file to my hosting company, and it auto-generates the transcripts of the show for you. And it does level my audio as well. Now I'm glad I told Jill aboutophonic because she pays attention to new features, and a few months ago she pointed out that I could toggle on a checkbox and my podcast would automatically be sent to my YouTube channel. Again, I think it's weird to listen to an audio podcast on YouTube, but since people like to do it, we figured why not? Now,ophonic takes my album artwork and then it puts a little waveform over it as you hear me talk. So it's technically a video, though a not very interesting video. I'm not sure which service is creating them, but if you toggle on closed captions, you could read along with what's being said on the show. For the no-silicast,ophonic also sends over the chapter marks, so you can jump from chapter to chapter in the audio as you're listening. That's really pretty cool. You also get the links to the show notes below it. Now, it's not just the no-silicast that's now on YouTube for your listening pleasure, it's also chitchat across the pond and security bits. I've mentioned recently thatophonic also creates swell chapter marks for security bits and chitchat across the pond. But for some reason, while those chapter marks do show up in real pod catchers, the ones for security bits and chitchat across the pond are not showing up in YouTube. I've been talking to developer George fromophonic and he can't quite see a reason why it's not working yet. He was able to get it to work on something for him, but between us, I'm sure we'll get it sorted. And eventually you'll see the auto-generated chapter marks for security bits and chitchat across the pond in this YouTube video that's actually just audio. Now, all of the podcasts from the Podfeat podcast are on the same channel, along with the fabulous real videos that Steve creates when we do interviews at shows like CES and the C-Cent Assistive Tech Conference. In other words, there's a lot of reasons now described to subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Now, I could send you a long annoying URL, but we know that everything good starts with podfeat.com, right? So you can find the audio podcast and Steve's videos over at podfeat.com slash YouTube. Steve does all the barbecuing at our house and all of the cooking actually when it comes right down to it. And he won't cook a big piece of meat without using his meter, M-E-A-T-E-R, and this is a set of temperature probes that are Bluetooth enabled, a tie to your phone, help come out with the perfect meat. And I'm here with Kai Chen, who's going to talk to us about the existing products, maybe, and the newest products you've got here today. Yeah, well, first, Steve, thank you and thank you as well, Allison, for being such supporters of meter. We truly are appreciative because we were big fans, big fans. That's so great because we were a small Kickstarter campaign. So anytime I meet someone that's a fan, it truly means a lot to me. Anyway, we can get into the product. So I think what you guys have currently is meter block built in Wi-Fi has four probes in it. The newest product that we have is called meter two plus. So we just came out with this November 6th. So just two months ago, maybe two days ago. So happy two month birthday to meter two plus. And what's different is you'll notice that the new probe completely redesigned, more robust. You'll notice that the ambient end is not ceramic anymore. It's actually stainless steel. So what that means, it's more durable. So now you can take the probe to higher temperatures up to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, super excited. That's important. Steve, just to finish telling Kai about how he got grease stripped on one and it got over 550 degrees and it was like, see me, but it actually did survive. So these probes that Kai has in his hand are what maybe five inches long, four and a half inches long, something like that, just a solid piece of metal has a little, a little ceramic band. This is actually a zirconia ceramic. Super durable. I just learned this actually pretty recently from the UK devs. It's not, you know, adamantium or vibranium, but it is very strong. Okay. So this is, this is one unit and the advantage is that it can go up to much higher temperatures. Yes, much higher temperatures. And because it's also more durable, you can actually deep fry with it. Previously, we weren't saying we weren't suggesting deep frying, but now we say, Hey, you can deep fry it. You can, you know, sous vide with it. If you like air frying is obviously okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So the cool thing about the meter is it's connectivity. You've got the application open. We're going to describe it hopefully in detail here. Yeah. Why don't we go through it? So essentially you take the probe, stick it into whatever meat you want to cook, tap the big blue button to start it. And then what do we want to cook today? It's asking beef, pork, poultry, lamb, fish or other while I'm going beef tonight. Of course, beef every night. And then what would you like to cook? Okay. We've got sirloin, beer by flank, T-bone. What do you think of T-bone? I'm going with the T-bone. Let's go T-bone. And then how do you like it? Oh, I'd like medium rare. Oh, correct. All right. I'm going to tap on medium rare. Now it says 135. Is that's our goal temperature? It is. But you can also, if you know the specific temperatures you like, you can obviously adjust it to, to your liking. I like 132.6. Yeah, exactly. 132. We haven't gone to tenths of a degree for the target, but you know what you'll notice though. I'm so glad you brought that up because you can actually, this is one of the new features, you can actually see the two tenths of a degree for the internal temperature. So this is internal temperature, 75.2. We've got a ways to go. Our target is 132. Ambient temperature, 69 degrees in the room right now. Exactly. All right. And that's going to tell, that's then going to estimate our cooking time. Yep. Once it collects enough data, then you'll know how long it takes for it to cook. So it'll say 30 minutes left. Now you can go make some sides or grab a drink, kind of let meter do the work. Now let me see if I've got this right. One of the problems that we had with the previous system was that if Steve got too far away from it, he couldn't keep track of what was going on. Right. But this is now, this, what has to be near what? Does the sense, what sensor needs to be near the meat, near you? Got it, got it, got it. So meter two plus uses the latest in Bluetooth technology, uses Bluetooth five coded by long range mode. So it's a lot of technical jargon, but it means, yeah, it means better connectivity, more reliable connection. And the way it works is probe Bluetooth pairs to the charger. This is stronger because of the higher Bluetooth and the charger pairs to your phone. And this is also strong. So the, so the probe and the charger need to be relatively close, but you can walk away with the phone because you're over Wi-Fi or this is still Bluetooth. Still Bluetooth, okay. But if you have a second phone or tablet, you can get on to Wi-Fi. Okay. So your first phone can act as a Bluetooth to Wi-Fi bridge. Oh, that's got to be interesting. I've never heard him complain about being too far away from the meat. So that seems to work out. Okay. That's very cool. So how much does one meter plus cost? One nineteen ninety five. Okay. And they're not inexpensive, but I'm telling you, we've been using him for how many years? Four or five years, I think now, four years. And like we said, he lit it on fire last week and and it's still working strong. And it's a reliable device. So really, really impressive. People want to learn more about the meter two plus, where would they go? Meter dot com at me a t e r dot com. Very good. Thank you, Kai. Awesome. Thank you so much for visiting. I said at the beginning of the interview that we really love the meter temperature probes. And I was not lying. Just this weekend, Steve smoked some ribs. He learned at the feet of the master, Chris Ashley, the barbie pew and tech podcast. And he used his meter probes and the ribs were fantastic. They were tender and juicy because he knew exactly when they would be ready. I love how candles can give a warm, cozy feeling to a room. But for some reason, I never like candles in my home. When I do light them, I have trouble remembering to extinguish them. I also worry about them burning down to the table if I'm not paying attention and then making a big old mess. I even worry about using them up. I think, oh, these are for special occasions. And then special never happens. What if you could have the warm glow of real wax candles, but with none of these constraints? Steve actually found the solution. For Christmas, he bought me the tech long three pack flickering, flameless candles. They're flameless in the sense that there's no fire. But instead of fire, they have a wobbly LED light shaped like a flame. The normal gentle movement of air inside your home makes the fake flames move just like real fire does. They also flicker exactly like real fire on a candlewick. The tech long flameless candles are made of real wax. So the wobbly LED flames cause a glow in the candles just like real fire. Remember I said that I've trouble remembering to extinguish the candles. Tech long candles can work on a timer, which you can control either with a switch on the bottom of them or using a remote control. How fun is that? We have the tech long candles in our bedroom for a week or so, and while I liked them there, we eventually put them downstairs on the table under our TV. Every night we turn them on and they give a lovely glow to the room and didn't even have to hunt down a match to light them. I wouldn't have ever put a real candle underneath the TV because that would be dangerous, right? Well, the candles are powered by two C cell batteries each and they save the last for a thousand plus hours running continuously or 200 days on the shorter timer. I haven't had them long enough to tell whether the batteries last that long, but we've tried the timer method and just turning them on and off when we're done. Even if we forget to turn them off, our house won't burn down as a result. You can buy tech long candles in sets of three, like what Steve bought me, or a set of six or even individual candles of different colors. The set of three ivory wax candles that Steve bought me are three inches in diameter and then five, six and seven inches tall and they only cost thirty three dollars on Amazon. I'm delighted to have remote controlled candles in my life, no matter how silly that sounds. People are really getting into air purifiers for I can't think of a reason why, but we seem to be excited about them. And I'm talking to Matthew Blanchard at Pure Path and he's got something very, very different from anything I've ever seen before. Why don't you tell us about it, Matthew? So what we have here is a device. We call it air I wear air wear. You can find it at airwear.com and what it is, is a personal wearable air purifier. It's worn around your neck and what we do is we pull air in. We disinfect in this magic chamber and then we deliver it right to your final point of contact. So the air in your general area has now been purified with our device. So it's a it's a white cylinder on either side. It's got kind of a rubbery touch area there for some reason. Oh, it's vibrating when I touch it there and then it's got a little blue nozzle and that's what's shoving beautiful air at you. That's absolutely correct. So what we actually have here is a silicone based material. So it's itself is antimicrobial and it's very easy to wipe. So this won't it's also hypoallergenic. So it's not going to disrupt your skin or if you have sensitive skin, it's very easy to wear for hours at a time. The battery life lasts over five and a half hours. It takes about two hours of charge and there's two settings, a high and a low setting. And what you felt on the vibration is actually the fan that creates the chamber, a high pressure area right in front of my face. So what it's going to do is it's going to blow all the ambient air around you away. So the majority of the air that I'm breathing has now been disaffected. That's really cool. Now I'm wearing it myself and I sort of forgot I had one on. I don't think it's turned on though, is it? Oh, okay. He's turning mine on. And it's on. So now it's very quiet, right? We don't hear this disrupt your day to day. I'm not feeling any vibration on mine. Oh, it's on the low setting. I think, oh, it's just real gentle there. Yeah, yeah. I don't know about the style look of wearing this but I think the benefits could make it look cooler. Would the style and look of wearing something else maybe be a little bit more uncomfortable? Probably. Yeah, this is really gentle on the neck. It doesn't feel too heavy. Feels like maybe I took my headphones off and set them around my neck a little bit lighter than that, possibly. That's essentially what we're going for here. We don't want you to feel this on a day to day basis. We want it to be very comfortable, very unnoticeable. That is essentially the idea. Very easy for us to communicate right now, right? Sure, sure. Much easier than if we maybe had a surgical mask on our face. That's true. So is there a filter inside that needs to be changed or? There's no filter inside that needs to be changed. There is a very simple film filter on the outside that will stop large particulars from coming in, from your hair from going in, right? But really, the disinfection happens with the UVC light. That's where the magic happens. And it's going to disinfect viruses, bacterias, any kind of pathogen that's going to go through there. That's what we're really focused on disinfecting. See, I see. And so this is a rechargeable unit, I assume, after the five hours? Yes, ma'am, rechargeable with a USB-C. And that will come with the product. Oh, there you go. Oh, it comes with the cable. Oh, it comes with the cable and a little carrying pack. You can see, you can get a full look over here with all the products that comes in the packaging. Very good. And when is this going to be available? 10 days. 10 days. All right, and for how much? $2.99, a full retail. But at the show here, we're offering a promo. And the promo is? $1.99. $1.99. But nobody else is going to be at the show. So we'll just teach you up there that you should go to CES next year, right? Well, if you use our promo code pre-order, get in now. OK, sounds good. All right, thank you, Matthew. And where would people find the airyware? At airyware.com. Oh, I said it wrong. Airyware, A-I-R-I, W-E-A-R.com. Very good. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you. This week, listener Corey contacted me, asking for advice on how to buy Apple Vision Pro. His question centered around how to choose just the right Zeiss inserts to correct his vision. I'm not certain I gave him good advice, but I did do some research and I did give him my best guess. He was evidently happy because he made a very generous one-time donation to the podcast via PayPal. I asked him after he did that if he might not want his money back if the lenses don't work out for him. He laughed at my little joke and then he said, quote, I love hearing your perspective on all things computing and you deserve to be compensated for your creativity, unquote. Isn't that the sweetest thing? Well, you can be sweet, too, by following Corey's lead and going to podfee.com slash PayPal to show your appreciation for the shows. Everybody likes to go to the bathroom. And why not go to the bathroom in a toilet that takes care of you a little bit more than others? I'm here in the Beamus booth with James Ambergy and he's going to tell us about their products. Yeah, thank you. Here at CS2024, we're excited to share some new innovations in the bath space. So what you're looking at here are three add-on electronic bidet seats. We have a good, better, and best. And each of them provide the user with the optimal cleansing experience you would come to expect from a bidet product. So what do I mean by that? Warm water pressure settings that you can specify, heated seat ring. But one of my favorite products that's new for our lineup here today is this complete toilet replacement. This is the BioBidet Discovery DLX. So while the other products are designed to work with your existing porcelain base, this completely replaces your toilet and has bidet functionality built in. Why is that better than just adding onto your existing toilet? Well, with this, you'll get a few extra features where we can start to innovate now with some of the flush components of your toilet, where these are just add-ons to that. And then one of my favorite features with this actually has nothing to do with the fact that it's a bidet toilet. It's this little foot switch at the bottom here. So the first tap, and typically you do that with your foot, it opens the lid, which is really nice. It's hands-free. A second tap opens the seat ring. Now you could do a standing use here if that was your case. And then a third and final tap. What I like about this is that it flushes the toilet and then automatically closes these two. So it really reduces the amount of touch that you have with your hands in the bathroom. But then again, full bidet functionality. There's a stainless steel wand that comes out and sprays the water. There's a warm air dryer. Just a really, really nice user experience. It's feeling luxury. Now you've also got a toilet version that's app-controlled, correct? That's right, just over here around the corner. We're going to walk around the corner here. So this is an electronic bidet seat. It does come with a wireless remote control where you can customize and do all of those cleansing features. We can see your rear wash, turbo wash. We've got front wash, dry, dryer pressure, water temperature, seat temperature, nozzle position. Boy, a lot of stuff there. Oh, user one and user two, so programmable. They're programmable. You can use a user preset to your specified requirements. And then it becomes a one-touch kind of operation. Well, it's really nice. And we have it displayed on the screen here as we've incorporated an app to control this bidet product. As you know, we all have our phones in there anyway. Why not? That's what our research shows. To those who admitted, at least. Exactly. We convinced the ones that said no just weren't brave enough to admit it yet. We do think they're using their phones in the toilet. But anyhow, here, this is where you can actually take this user preset to a whole new level. So now you're able to customize some of the timing of these features. Whereas the remote has a pre-programmed kind of duration for you. You can start to stack features now and put them in an order that's most meaningful to you. Oh, I never thought of tailoring the experience to this kind of depth, but that's pretty cool. So this final one is the BioBidet BB 1200. This looks great. So where would people find the Bemis products? So you can find Bemis products at toiletseeds.com, biobidet.com. And then we also work with really great national partners throughout North America, Home Depot, Costco, and Lowe's, just to name a few. Very good. Thank you very much, James. This was fantastic. Thanks for stopping in today. Thank you. Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods. You know I want a podcasting empire. And in order to get that, I have to become a lot more efficient. I have to make use of my time processing the podcast, posting the podcast, and doing all the technical aspects of it much faster if I'm going to have so many podcasts. So finding efficiencies or better tools is high on my list. Now, because I'm technical and I used to be a server administrator, I decided initially to host my own podcast and make my website myself using WordPress. It works out just fine for me. I can publish my own feed. I can control everything. And the cost is pretty low. For example, I have five websites for about $30 a month. For a single website, you can certainly find places that will give you an introductory rate for $3 to $5 a month. So it's pretty low cost to have your own website and host your podcast from that website. But I've always wondered, would a podcast host help me do more faster? And I love the people at Buzzsprout. I listen to their podcast, their blog articles, and their podcast help me get started as a brand new podcaster. They are really in this for the independent podcaster. There's other groups out there, too. Libsyn, Blueberry, and Anchor, which is owned by Spotify. But Buzzsprout always struck me as a different kind of group. Like I said, they just love the independent podcasters. So I've always been curious, maybe they would help me do better. One of the things that's happening is podcast number three is going up. And I thought this would be an excellent time to try Buzzsprout, see if it will help me in my processes. The new podcast is going to be the Bible in small steps. And the website does not have to be terribly complicated for it, because the information that I'm sharing is going to be on a Notion database. So I thought maybe this is the perfect time to try using this. So the first thing you do when you join Buzzsprout is you give them the name of your podcast. And you give a little blurb, what is the podcast about? And then it'll go through and create a feed for you. No technical knowledge needed there. It's ready to go. But then at that point, you have to decide what level of account is best for you. You can do this for free. They will give you two hours of podcasting time a month. And it will delete after 90 days. And that's free, and some people are for that. I've noticed that there are people who have about 10 podcasts in their queue. And so I assume that that's what they're doing. They don't have that big catalog of podcasts going all the way back through time. So my podcast tends to be somewhere around 20 minutes. And that's going to be four times a week. And so that's 80 minutes. I should fit in there nicely. But think about Allison. She has a podcast, and it goes from 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes, four times a month. And so she would exceed that type of account. So then we will have to go up in levels. The first paid account gives you three hours of podcasting a month. And the time is unlimited. They never delete your podcast. That comes in at $12 a month. They also give you a simple website. They create the feed for you. There's some other features, too. When you get a brand new podcast, you have to submit your podcast to places like Apple. Maybe you want to submit it to Google. Maybe you want to submit it to Spotify so that your podcast is available on their services. They have a nifty tool out there that when your podcast is ready to go, with a click of a button, you can just submit your podcast to run on those services. Now, it's not technically hard to start a new podcast and get them up and running in the new services. But it probably took me about three to four hours to get this new podcast set up. And to submit it to the various hosts. This is a click of a button and you can submit it to all of them. So that's very nice. The other thing, too, is if you wanted to import an older podcast, like if I want to take my other podcast and give it to them, I would have to have a paid account. There are two side services that you can pay extra for if you have a paid account. One of them is called Magic Mastering and it cleans up the sound. It gets rid of some of the artifacts, some of the extra noises that are there. And then the other extra feature is called Co-host AI, which will give you a summary of your podcast, create the chapter marks and give you a transcript. I ran the first episode in the new podcast and the transcript was perfect. The summary was a bit boring. I use Grammarly to create my summaries and it does a much more interesting job. Everything was usable. Although my best friend read it and she goes, did a robot write this? Yeah, she's right, it did. But it was acceptable. And you also get statistics. And so the statistics will show you how many downloads did you get, what devices they were listening on, and it will show you where in the world they're listening from. Now I use a company called Blueberry and they also provide those type of statistics for me. It costs $5 a month. So now if you look at the fact I'm paying $5 a month for statistics, really all those other features were coming at $7 a month. So that's pretty reasonable for me. If you want magic mastering at the $12 per month account, it will cost $6. If you want co-host AI, it'll be $10 a month. So those are add-ons to that. Then if you want to get six hours of podcasts, that's $18 a month. And then the magic mastering goes up to $9 per month and the co-host AI goes up to $20 per month. You're basically paying for computer time. So the prices go up when you have more hours of podcasting to process. And then the last tier is $24 a month and that's for 12 hours per month of podcasting. And at that point magic mastering is $12 a month and co-host AI is $30 per month. So again, it depends on how long your podcast is to see what kind of cost you will have with it. So again, if we look at that, you could have a site as low as $3 a month with a host. I pay $5 a month for my statistics. And then I also pay something like $10 a month for the various AIs I have so that it can create my show notes, my transcripts and everything else. So there is cost involved in the way I do it by hand. So having $12 a month for all of this is not bad. Now in analysis, when I uploaded the first podcast episode to Buzzsprout, this will give me a chance to analyze things just a little bit. I like said, I use magic mastering and it was okay. It sounded nice. But I know that the system I use, which is Isotope along with Hindenburg, that's expensive. And, but it does a very nice job of cleaning up audio. I tend to be a very deep breather and Isotope does great on it while magic mastering didn't do as nice of a job with it. But it was fine. Again, I said that the AI did a good job with the summary, the show notes, the chapter marks, even if they were a little bit boring and the transcript was perfect. The website itself, once I set up this website was boring, but efficient. It worked just fine. It had a place to show you what my podcast was about along with the podcast logo. And then each episode was underneath that main header. They gave you a little player button so I could listen to the podcast right there on the website. There's some people who don't have podcast apps. So that's great for them. And it works. As soon as that podcast publish, then I have the website and it's working just fine. Also gives you a bit of code if you would like to take that particular player and embed it into another website. So it makes it very handy. But one thing I found lacking is that when you have a WordPress site, which is essentially a blog, you can categorize the posts. And so in the case of this new podcast, I would probably want categories because there's 66 books of the Bible. I will want to have a category for Matthew, for Mark, you know, and so on. So the categories are important to me in order to have this string of 1189 podcasts so people can break them up and then jump into a specific location if they would like to hear it. Maybe they're just interested in hearing the book of Genesis. So they could jump right to those podcasts because they're coded as a category and now there's a menu navigation to get directly there. With the Buzzsprout, there's no such navigation that's there. So the website was maybe a little too simple for what I was looking for. And the other fun part about it is it tries to make the podcast fun as well as easy. So you get achievements. I got the achievement from my first published podcast episode. And so that was allowing me to test it out and, you know, it was fun. And I liked the fact that they're so encouraging about it. And then the last step is that Buzzsprout will help you monetize your podcast. There are certain rules in place that you have to do in order to monetize the podcast. You have to have podcasts that are at least 23 minutes long. Mine are somewhere in 17 to 20 range. You have to have a verified email and a paid account. Okay. You have to have at least five episodes published and your episode has to have at least 1,000 downloads. For me, getting 1,000 downloads takes a little bit of time. So the monetization part wasn't really going to work for me because my podcasts are too short and I probably don't have quite enough listeners. This monetization program that they have is with ads for other podcasts. And so what they do, and it's really neat, is show you other like-minded podcasts, things that your listeners would like to hear and then you can approve the list. Nothing will get advertised in your podcast without you approving it. If you just happen not to like a specific person and you don't want their ad in your podcast, then you can nix them. And that's fine. You have complete control over this. And then as soon as the ad buy is done, let's say that person bought 200 listens, this is a dynamic advertising, a new advertisement will get inserted in all your podcasts for monetization. You also can have an introduction to your podcast advertising. So it's cool that they try to help you find ways of monetizing your podcast. So in the end for me, I think that I'm going to continue hosting my own podcast. I loved the thought of going to bus sprout on this last podcast, but I think because of the very simple nature of the website, I want categories because I can host these podcasts myself for lower amounts of money, even though that this wasn't terribly expensive. And how to have the tool set up like transcriptions and like show notes and all the other things. It wasn't really saving me that much time to go to bus sprout. What clarified to me is that if you just want to get a podcast up and running, you don't want to set up a website. You don't want all the technical hurdles of creating a feed, of creating the website, of getting the podcast show notes and everything else involved in it and eventually monetizing, this is great. Maybe for free or maybe for just a really low amount of money. I think that's fantastic. And like I said, the bus sprout people, they're so encouraging with all their blog articles, their information and they have a podcast too, telling you how to be a podcaster. So you just know they love this whole process. So I think if you're thinking about a podcast and you don't want any hassle, bus sprout is a great way to go. After this experiment, I upgraded my website hosting and decided I was going to keep hosting my own podcast just because I could have it exactly the way I want it. And again, the technical burden wasn't great for me. But I hope that helps you in making decisions that if you're thinking about getting a podcast going, maybe bus sprout is for you. You can always email me at Jill at startwithsmallsteps.com and I'm always found at Allison Slack channel. Again, this is Jill from the North Woods. Thank you for listening. Well, you've heard from Marty Gensius before. He's done quite a few reviews and actually I've interviewed him before. And if you're in the live chat room, you know him as the illustrious drunk Nick Nolte. He's also the pod podcaster with two podcasts, the tech savvy professor and circular firing squad. But he's the first person I thought of when Apple Vision Pro went on sale, I thought this is someone who will have bought this and I thought it'd be fun to just talk through the buying experience of the Apple Vision Pro. I'm sorry, of Apple Vision Pro as they want us to call it. Welcome to the show, Marty. Thank you, it's good to be here. And you know, and you were the first one to tag me with this idea that I have this incredible fear of missing out when it comes to new technology. And so yeah, I did go through the pre-order process and some setup before the pre-order process too. Yeah, it's been very interesting watching and listening to what people are asking about. And the parts that you're gonna talk about here are exactly where I think Apple has maybe stumbled a little bit and given too much confusion to the buyer made it a little hard for us to figure out, I'll do whatever you want, just tell me what I need to do. But so did you get up at the crack of doom or was 8 a.m. Eastern time a normal time for you? It is a normal time for me. And it's better than the old days when we had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to satisfy the midnighters on the West Coast for pre-orders. So it's a good time of the day for me to get up. I had done some work beforehand, trying to call Apple support to find out whether or not they were gonna have the preset up for new devices as you can do with the iPhone. So all you have to do is press the buy button at that time in the morning. And I asked twice to two different folks and it was like they didn't even know that existed in the universe. So it was hard to get a straight answer from them. They just kept saying pre-orders will be available Friday morning at the February or Friday morning at 5 a.m. I'm like, yeah, but you don't understand what I'm saying. Let me explain it to you again. Pre-orders will be available Friday morning at 5 a.m. There was nothing going through that. So that added to some of the confusion of the problems I had. I feel like that's the classic answer everywhere you go. I went to buy pants today. I said, I want low-rise jeans. And they said, we have high-rise jeans. And I said, no, those aren't low-rise jeans. They said, we have mid-rise jeans. I said, no, those aren't low-rise jeans. They said, we don't have low-rise jeans. You could have just said, no, I walked in the door. This of course was like seven minutes to get to that point. So you didn't have to get up early but you started the signing process and I think what most people are running into is what do I do about my vision? Because it's all, it's Apple Vision Pro. And what they don't really publish is what is the focal distance? What am I supposed to do if I have, if I wear reading glasses and I wear distance glasses or I have essentially bi-focals with progressives, how do I choose what I'm supposed to put on my face? And I think that's where you initially, well, you started out, you got into the queue right away with a February 2nd delivery, which is the first delivery, right? Right, right. And I had problems with my Apple Card. I had stored an old Apple Card because I went to use my phone and hadn't checked it, whereas a pre-order setup would have fixed that problem. Right, right. So I kept trying to submit by and I kept rejecting it and then I realized it's working off an old Apple Card. So I had to make a bunch of corrections in that point. And so I eventually did get a sale once that happened, but the problem was my delivery date was then pushed to February 16th through the 23rd. Okay, so I wanna ask a question here and maybe tell you a theory I have. I think that date might be a function of how many Apple stores are near you because at 7.31 a.m., which would be my time, which is two and a half hours after you did that, I got up to right before you put the credit card number in and I was seeing February 3rd as my delivery date, not delivery, but pickup date. So it seems to me there's some correlation and I'm surrounded by Apple stores. There are three or four within a half an hour of me. Yeah, I've got two about 40 minutes away depending on which direction you drive. That's a fair amount to know. I didn't set it up for pickup though. I set it up for delivery and I think that might have also pushed the date back. Yeah, delivery was a little bit later if I did that, but it just really surprised me at that hour. I thought they'd all been long gone and let me see really quickly here. February 16th to 23rd would have been my delivery at 7.31, two and a half hours after you hit that. Yeah, wow. Well, it took me a while to get to the point where I could do, could even get the delivery going, so. Yeah, so now the way the process works, you get to a point where it says, okay, we got to look at your face. We want to know how big there's apparently light shields that keep the light leak from coming in from the sides. So the process is it looks kind of like face ID, except you just, you look up, down, left, right, and then it goes, okay, do it again, up, down, left, right. Now, that was really easy to me, but you said that was cumbersome for you. It was cumbersome in the sense that when I did the first version of it, it said I was a 33 wide. And then I was looking on the chat and it said, on the Discord chat, it said, take your glasses off. Hang on, hang on, you've jumped into something I don't know anything about, what Discord chat? There is a Discord chat that I found through actually Reddit and then they offered go to the Discord chat. It's a great chat and... It's a Vision Pro group or an Apple group? Vision Pro group. Okay. Yeah, it's a Vision Pro group and there's about 700 members in it. Anytime you jump in, it's very active. Okay. So I went there and they said, they didn't tell you not to take your glasses off. So back up, I'm really confused on the process here. So you're sitting there, you do the face things, it tells you you're a 33W, don't you keep going on? You don't know anything's wrong. Okay, so stay on that thread and then circle back to this other thing. Okay, so I keep going on, I buy the item. Then it's time for me to get my lenses. Okay. So I go in to get my lenses and they want to do my head again. Okay. To make sure that the head size will fit with the Zeiss inserts. So does your head width change because you have Zeiss inserts in? Well, I don't know, but my head size got smaller and it's gotten progressively smaller. So I will probably be like a Tim Burton character by the time this is over. My head is shrinking. Okay, so you didn't order the lenses as you were going through. You paid for them, but you don't order them until afterwards. You don't pick them out until afterwards or something like that. Is that how it works? No, you don't pick them. You get a notification that you can, once you're ordered, you have to have the order in. Okay. Then you get the option for lenses. And that's where I went. And they wanted to measure my head again. Okay. And I had looked at the Discord chat and saw that people were saying, well, if you wear your glasses, you get a completely wacky kind of head shape or head size. And they couldn't detect that to say, take your glasses off? That's, you know, when they do, when you do face ID, you leave your glasses on, it recognizes your face. But there was no indication of whether you should have your glasses on or not. But I think my, you know, the frames and the width added to the whole head shape or head size. So they can do facial recognition to tell who you are, as long as you don't have an identical twin, it's a hundred percent, right? But they can't tell that you have glasses on in doing this. Okay, that's... They can't tell that I can. Other people seem to not have the problem. They had done multiple attempts and it was within one or two. I dropped from 33 to 25 when I took my glasses off. What do you think that number means? I think it's probably, I think if you look at the wrap, I think it's the length of the wrap. So if you take the cone of open and open it up, so it's flat, I think it's the size of the wrap. But what are the units? You think it's millimeters? Oh, not millimeters, probably maybe centimeters. Let me see. Okay, that's 30. I'm wrapping it all around my head. So 30 is about like half the circumference of my head, 30 millimeters, centimeters, right? But remember, it bends around as a mask on your cone. So I think it's measuring around that circle, that's your light, that's your light. So take the glasses off and I dropped to 25. Okay. So how did you end up getting the 25 measurement is when you got to the part where it said, okay, now you're ready to order your Zeiss lenses. And it, how did you know to take your glasses off? By that time you had started talking to the chat. I checked the Discord group and the Discord group said, yeah, you probably need to take your glasses off. So when you order the lenses, okay, this is so confusing. When you order the lenses, they're also telling you to order a light shield? They're measuring your head to make sure that I don't quite understand this part, that the Zeiss lenses will fit within that, that size of dimensions. I didn't have any problem with it. Because they know how big the lenses are and it doesn't change how big around your face is. I don't know, but I had to do a head check first. At that point you had to order another, did they tell you to order another light shield? No, I went ahead and ordered it independent. So I have a 33, at that time I had a 33 coming in the box, or with the box. Then I went ahead and ordered a 25. And order- Did you have to be an answer for that? Oh yeah, how much? 200 bucks. 200 more dollars, okay. Yeah, okay. So, you know, at that point my head shape, my head size was 25. And I ordered two sets of lenses. One that is with everything out of my eyes, my contacts and my readers. And another set that was just readers that would, if I was wearing the device with my contacts in, which I probably would do more. So one was your full prescription with Progressive, essentially? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, so that gives you the option of going with contacts or with glasses, depending on what you're gonna do, okay? Yeah. So that was my first date primarily, getting the lenses and getting that all set up. And I had ordered some additional items to go with it, carrying case at a wonderful charge of $200 with a carrying case, and an extra charger, an extra battery, so. Oh, that's nice. So I didn't know, it's so confusing. If you go into Apple Vision Pro to buy, one of the options is, I just wanna buy a light shield? Yeah, you can buy it as an accessory. I think I'm gonna do that. I'm just gonna buy a light shield, and then I'm gonna take it to Apple going, this doesn't work. You'll only buy the light shield. You could do that. I figure whatever I buy that doesn't fit, I'll just return. And in fact, that's my plan. I suspect they're shipping, if they're shipping or you're picking up the Apple Vision Pro, and then they have a separate package that has your whatever size light shield you're in. So I also suspect when I go into the store, part of getting the item is they're gonna put that thing on my head, or they're gonna put a sample sizing for the light shield and saying, no, you need another light shield. You need a different size. So I think maybe you skipped a step. You ordered it for delivery, you said, originally. Did you order another one? Yeah, I ordered another one for delivery. So that was my first day of dealing with that. So I had a 33 and a 25 coming on my first day plus the other things. So I go to bed, get up, look at the Discord group, and they go, hey, some of the stores are like, if you get it in store, you can still get it. Like when I tried the day before, it was a push out date till mid-February or March, but I checked this morning and they have available devices for pickup on February 2nd. Oh, and this is a whole day later. Yeah, yeah, this is the next morning. And so I'm like, oh, no, I'm just gonna let it go. And I said, no, I can't let it go. So I went in. Because if FOMO isn't FOMO, if it isn't, I gotta have it on day one, right? Yeah, well, it's also, it's like, you know, I know how to get through this now. I had a days worth of training to get through signing up for this. So I went in and ordered one. They asked me to, again, scan my head. My head has gotten smaller since then, and it's now a 21W. So as I say, you know, in the next two weeks, I will probably be, my head will be the size of a thumb. But I went ahead and ordered that with the 21W and then deleted the device from my previous day's order. And it will be available to me February 2nd in the late afternoon. In-store. In-store for pickup. So are the lenses related to the first one or the second one or do they just, they stand it as an independent order? They stand as an independent order. Oh, that's good. Because if you had to measure those again, you might get even smaller. I don't, no, they will be supposedly little disks that I can pop in and pop out. And they're gonna arrive on February 2nd. So everything else is arriving on February 2nd and now the device is coming on February 2nd too. Okay. So some of this- Then I went through and deleted the other device and the one that I had bought the day before. And everything is- Okay. So that means you're only getting two light shields, not three. No, I'm getting a third light shield with, oh, once I, yeah, once I deleted the device, I deleted the 33 light shield. Right, right. So you're not getting a 33. That's attached to, yeah, I went in and ordered a 33 to pick up at the store. So when they measure my head in the store and they'll say, oh no, you really need a 23, I'll like, well, take back the 21, take, you know, forget the 33 and, you know, give me a 23, you know. So that's how I'm managing the head size kerfluffle. Wow. I'm just baffled by how it is this confusing, you know? They could have given some information. I mean, maybe nobody would read it, but people like us would, right? If they'd provided that information upfront, here's how to pick out your lenses. Here's what you need. Here's what the focal distance is gonna be to ask your doctor which one you're gonna need. Here's the sizes. Here's what the light shield thing means. Take your glasses off. All that could have been in instructions. I know. And none of it was I able to get out of Apple support because I asked about, so if I, you know, I have a prescription for when I'm not wearing, you know, for glasses that I actually don't own because I'm using a contacts and a reader combination. But what if I just wanna get readers? Well, I need a prescription for that. I don't, I was trying to argue I didn't and they kept saying you can order that on pre-order day at 5 a.m. in the morning. They are ill trained for this. That's for sure. I have a feeling that, so this is gonna create a lot of waste. There's gonna be a lot of those face shields laying around. That's interesting. So bottom line, what you think you've ordered is, let's see if I can add it up. You've got two sizes of the face shield. You got two sets of lenses, one with readers and one with your full prescription. You've got one Vision Pro, sorry, Apple Vision Pro. They want us to say the whole words and no the in front of it. What size did you get? The storage. I got 512. So I dropped from one terabyte in my first day order to a 512 because I figured that. Because I thought that's plenty. And I was again, reading the Discord group and they were saying 256 and 512 is probably the sweet spot. Okay, okay, and you got a case. You got, let's see, you got, you had to get AppleCare, right? Yeah, I got AppleCare. There's another 500 bucks. That's 500 bucks, yeah. But man, you don't wanna have not AppleCare on something, A, this early, you know, this new of a product, this thing could go belly up. And do you know how long that's for? Is that two years or three years? It's two years for 500 bucks or $29 a month if billed monthly. Okay, and I assume there's some sort of fee if you do need to use your AppleCare, if you break it, I guess. It's a 299 deductible. Now, is that, that's probably not for product failure. That's for, I cracked the glass or something. Yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah, I would imagine that's what the other one is. A $29 service fee if something breaks on your light shield or any of the accessories need repair. Oh, okay, cause the light shield is separate. Gosh. Well, like batteries or, you know, the, yeah, the light shield. Okay, okay. Well, this has been interesting. I'm truly shocked that they've managed to make it such a chaotic process with so little information, especially on the focal length thing. I mean, they've really done a botch up job of that cause people are asking, you know, computer distance. Is it reading distance? Is it, is it all at one distance away or is it truly gonna feel like it's close and far? Maybe it's a fixed focal length. I don't know. I mean, that's part of figuring it out when you get it. And that's what betas are about. So. Information they could have provided though, right? I mean, that's a known answer. Yeah. I mean, I found out that through the Discord group, well, first of all, Canadians and Europeans are going nuts trying to figure out how to order it. You know, having a domestic Apple ID is one thing. Also having a US based prescription for lenses if they need lenses. And a credit card. Another is another, and the credit card too. Folks who have prism lenses. And I think one of the members of our Castaway group got stuck because they had prism lenses. Right. You can't, I've seen other people report they can't get the device if they have prism lenses. And then the range of tolerance for, I guess, readers, I don't quite understand the eyes stuff, but it's from minus 11 to plus 650. That's for stigmatisms? A stigmatism? For me, it's what my readers are to 175s or 150s. So if you fall outside of that range, people have said they, there was a discussion going on around somebody who fell outside of that range and wasn't able to get the device. I'm telling you, the solution to this is to have cataract surgery. I've mentioned that several times in the show that having had cataract surgery, I have the best vision of my life right now. I mean, I wear glasses, but it's just kind of a choice. Mostly I can see computer distance and I can read. It's the best thing ever. My stigmatism is gone. It costs more than a couple of vision pros to get it done, even with insurance, but I'm gonna save money in the long run on my vision pros. Yeah, everybody who has had cataract surgery lords it over to people with poor vision. And it's like gluten-free folks. Okay, you can stop talking about it. I know that you've got really good vision. And I'm waiting for my eyes to get worse so I can have cataract surgery. Yeah, just go out and stare at the sun. No, no, no, don't do that. All right, Marty, well, this has been fun. Maybe we'll talk to you soon. I'm sure about the excitement that comes on February 2nd when you get to open your new toy. Okay, great. And so again, people should look for the tech savvy professor and the second podcast, Circular Firing Squad, in your pod catcher of choice to hear more of Marty and his silliness. All right, well, that is gonna wind us up for this week. I hope you enjoyed this smorgasbord of different content we had here. 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