So Apple reports earnings soon Apple reports earnings on the 4th of May And what should be pretty exciting is in June they're having their WWDC and we're finally expecting the unveil of Apple's new virtual reality slash augmented reality headset. It's expected to cost quite a chunk of change, somewhere around three thousand dollars. But something that I actually really support Apple on if these rumors are true, is the idea that virtual reality probably won't be the near-term future. Rather, augmented reality will When I was skiing just this last week, I was thinking myself, my goodness, there's so much literal screen real estate when you're wearing massive goggles.

Not saying you want to wear those all the time, obviously, but I was just thinking about it. When you're skiing, there's so much screen real estate in here you could easily have like, you know, hey, is the ski school trying to call me or text me like a notification, hey, pick up your child because he's screaming his head off and he doesn't want to be here or whatever right? Like or whether or not notifications or Warnings or a map of of how to get around about like all these things would be really cool from an augmented reality point of view and something like that I could actually see myself wanting to use. Now the problem that I have is I Believe that what Apple's going to do is they're going to have cameras forward so that they can project on that like what your reality actually is in front of you. In my opinion, the issue with that is you're still going to have that feeling of looking through a screen, right? I Think the longer term future needs to be some kind of almost transparent glass that could essentially be overlaid over sort of like the old Google Glass style because I I'm not entirely convinced that having basically I mean you could do it yourself right now, right? Just put your phone on the video camera mode and go like this.

and I mean maybe, but like my eyes already feel like there could be messed up from doing that right. so who knows? that'll be really interesting. But I do agree with Apple if the rumor is true that augmented reality is going to be something that's more of a future for. Apple I Think virtual reality.

We're just not there yet. Uh, I've done many and used many of the new virtual reality headsets. Uh, my children have them and it seems to be more of one of those novelty things where you use it for a few weeks you kind of put it on. You do like the roller coaster rides and you see, oh, this virtual reality is so good you might experience motion sickness and you're like, okay, I maybe I'm feeling it.

Maybe they're right, baby. it is so good. I I Don't know, but it just doesn't seem yet. Super functional.

and maybe that's because the platform just isn't there yet, right? In terms of the type of games you have, relatively limited, Uh yeah, you got some Fitness games you can do, you know, sort of. uh, the music games or whatever like the old Guitar Hero and dance DDR style stuff. Uh, but I really feel like you know virtual reality is going to be epic in the future when I could play Like My World of Warcraft carrier a character in virtual reality but it actually feels like I'm there. but in order for that to be possible I probably have to have some kind of like platform that I could stand on that could move.

so I could kind of like run in One Direction right and never hit the wall. Uh and I think that'll come but so don't get me wrong, big fan of virtual reality I just think that's 10 years out. I'm excited though about Apple's announcement of augmented reality. Apparently they're supposed to announce new MacBooks as well iOS 17 Mac OS 14 a major watch update which I just thought they came out with a major watch update I'm actually I've got the major watch update on right now which I'll talk a little bit about this.

uh the but the but the headset is probably going to steal the show. One of the things that is interesting about the headset is Apple is talking about having essentially a way that um, uh, that you can um, basically scroll. Kind of like if you've ever used a watch before here, let me show you because maybe you haven't before. So let me see if I can get focus on the stupid watch.

Uh, there you go. See that little wheel that's gonna happen. Um, if I block some more here. uh yeah.

see this little wheel right here. So Apple is suggesting that if you if you turn this little wheel here, you, uh, might it with an augmented reality headset be able to go from augmented reality to Virtual Reality as you kind of turn this sort of wheel around and so that's what they're expecting might be like at the top of your your head on this headset. So kind of think about it. like and then you dial the Little Wheel and then you go from augment minute reality to virtual reality.

That seems pretty cool Again, I'm not convinced that projecting with cameras what's actually really in front of me. uh, onto a virtual reality headset is going to be so convincingly great. Specifically because, uh, what's it called? the uh, the The Meta one does that when you first, uh, you know when you first go around and you do the uh, you set your perimeter for the virtual reality headset. It shows you the augmented reality right? It shows you you in your room, uh or all the things in your actual room and just overlays.

It's not bad, but it still makes me feel like I'm looking into a little screen because well, ultimately you are so uh. I think that'll be interesting to see what Apple comes out with and if that's a kind of product that creates any kind of headaches or pain over using but AR Augmented Reality I Think it's the future for 2023 to 2030 and then virtual reality may be thereafter. I Get what Meta? what Meta is doing? Facebook they're they're trying to invest for the advertising world of 2030. Plus I Just think they're burning too much cash flow today to be smart about that.

Now Apple is expected to lose money on their virtual and augmented reality headset as well, so we'll see what happens now when it comes to the watch. I'll give a little bit of commentary on this. Uh, so up until probably about a week ago, I've been a big believer that this new rugged watch is really, just, uh, the same as all the other watches. Mostly it's just a little bit bigger.

I Haven't really noticed any functional difference in the fact that it's a little bit bigger. But one thing I will say that I've really enjoyed because: I generally wake up pretty early and if I have to go into uh or you have to walk past my kids or I have to walk past Laura and my wife then I I don't want to be rude and wake them and usually what I used to do in the past is I would just use the iPhone flashlight app and I would kind of like cover it a little bit and I try to use that to kind of navigate around where I was going to get what I needed to do in the dark so not wake up other people. That was okay, but there's still probably too bright if anybody remembers back in the 2007 2008. Actually, it's probably more like 2007.

in 2007, the first iPhone ever, there was no flashlight app and so what you actually had to do back in 2007 is you would just open the video camera feature, push the flashlight button on, and then you add your flashlight but they didn't have a separate button for that which I thought was wild. But anyway, what's cool now about the Rugged Watch is they give you this this third button. this little orange button over here and what I did is I programmed that orange button to flashlight so when I press the orange button, it turns the watch flashlight on which is really good and then I could go to strobe which I never do but I could also go to red light flashlight over here which is pretty neat uh and uh and sometimes that functions if it's if I'm in super low light I could go with the red light flashlight nobody sees it while they're sleeping and the other ones a substantial step down from from the watt or from the iPhone uh but I love it from that point of view because of the productivity element of of the watch. just me being able to go into a dark room click that one button.

Boom! My flashlight works pretty fast, especially since I don't always have my uh, my uh I uh phone on me. Now another thing that I like to do is the um, the actual sort of main screen. My big productivity hacks on the watch I'll show you I'll actually throw it up I'll throw up a screenshot that I just took the way I'd like to organize it generally during the week and you can change your your home screen obviously regularly on the weekends sometimes. I just like to have pictures of the kids but this is usually my productivity screen on my watch.

and what I like about this is I'll put at the bottom right whatever ticker I might be trading that day. so uh on Thursday I was trading triple uh, triple leveraged QQQ So I kept QQQ on because my goal was for QQQ to get to 319 and then I was going to take my attendees and it started out at like 3 15 that day. So I'm like I got a long way to go. We ended up getting the 319 and I took some nice Tandy so I was really happy about that.

But anyway. so I keep that little tracker at the corner my kids regularly. Uh, the most effective way to sort of like mini discipline them if you will is by setting one minute timers. so if they're like super annoying and Naggy I I set a one minute timer and and then they get pissed and then they learn to stop bothering me.

The cool thing about that at the bottom right or bottom mid there is I can push with one click and that one minute timer comes up. that I think is is, um, a little overpowered. Uh, so I like that I'll show. Let me see if I can put it a little closer to the camera here so you can see it a little bit more functionally.

So if I pull out of this all right, let's let's see how am I going to do this without it locking on me? All right I think I got it. So we have our little watch cover here and the cool thing is if I just go ahead and push that but look at that timer's right there. like how nice is that and then obviously you can hit the little back arrow there and go to like two minute timer, three minute time or whatever. but I made the button the one minute timer just to make it like super fast.

Now I don't have to again go find my phone, try to unbury the darn thing which which I usually generally leave docked but I'm not always where the dock is. you know sometimes I'm playing in the backyard with the kids and the phones are docked inside and it's like I really want to be able to sit at one more time so that's been really useful. The little uh music button is great because I could uh, if I go on a run I could Bluetooth that really quickly to my uh, whatever headphones I run with usually I use the Apple Pro Max's just because the band is really soft rubber and I really enjoy that. uh now someone from Israel is calling great.

uh then uh, we've got um, the little calendar thing. Super useful to have that calendar right in my face. otherwise I'm gonna miss it if if I don't have my calendar event like right there I'm gonna miss it so that's pretty useful of obviously date time. And then recently I put the calculator at the top which has been pretty functional for me, mostly because there's so many times I just need to do some quick math and oftentimes I'm on a run and I'm like oh I wonder you know if this happens, that happens or this with a stock or something? I'm trading or whatever and I just need some quick math and it's beyond the level of mental math or I want some more accuracy? My goodness, the Little Apple watch calculator has actually been surprisingly functional.

So I've I've come to like the watch a little bit more and more over time, but I think you could do this with the non-ruggeds as well I Don't know if you get as much screen real estate to have all of these buttons here, but that one's been pretty functional for me. That's the modular setting on, uh on the watch. so uh, they're useful. You know I know a lot of people are pretty anti-apple they don't like Apple products or the Apple ecosystem.

Uh, and and I get it. You know there's some things that are quite different I think eventually everybody will be a blue texter. Uh, but uh, don't get me wrong, there are definitely some things you need a PC for like gaming gaming. Unfortunately, Apple just has never caught up with for uh for PC games or or you know, whatever it is compatibility I Don't know, but maybe one day, maybe one day we'll be able to actually game on a Mac But let me put it this way: I got one of those uh, the the Mac Pros uh Those computer.

they're like ten thousand bucks I Bought it as a workstation like four years ago and I'm like that's just gonna be great. it's gonna be so wonderful. First of all, it wasn't It was a waste of money. uh I was really disappointed about that.

but I tried to run rust on it the video game rust and I compared to Lawrence twelve hundred dollar gaming computer because she gained so little she's like just give me the cheap one on Amazon hers had like three times the graphic settings that mine had. It's just it's not possible yet to game on. Uh, a game on the Max. Now maybe that's a good point.

Someone here says uh uh uh. new cloud gaming? maybe? uh. cloud gaming. You have to be careful.

So I've done a bit of cloud gaming I actually bring uh oftentimes I try when we go on trips I'll bring like a little um iPhone or Android remote control where I could stick my phone in it because I do have an Android as well and uh, then we can cloud game and uh, it's great when you have good internet obviously right, cloud gaming. But that's been a little bit challenging for us because usually when I use the remote control and where you plug your phone in I'm traveling and when you're traveling, the internet usually sucks. so obviously, uh, you know, sometimes that's that's all on the way. Uh, if you were to invest in augmented reality, would you look at Snapchat you know I don't know that much about Snapchat Snapchat is um, very much dedicated to uh, I shouldn't say dedicated to, but it it's very much used by a substantially younger demographic and there's nothing wrong with that, right? like I'm not I'm not age discriminating here I'm just saying yeah, it ain't me I don't understand.

uh and and that that seems weird because I You know I feel like as a millennial I'm still supposed to be like that younger generation that everybody makes fun of. but I'm not that younger generation anymore. It's weird. You know it's like now it's it's Gen Z and I'm like okay I mean like a lot of people I employ are gen Z and I'm like they're cool, like they're normal people, like they're awesome.

like I get along with them just like I get along with Millennials It's not like all of a sudden they're a different breed of human. Uh, you know. so I think everybody's the same I I don't know I just I haven't Incorporated snap into my life. but then again, you know I could just be different in that sense because I did I did just recently delete tick tock Twitter um and probably gonna delete Instagram next to my phone mostly because of what I'll do is I'll go like I'll go on Twitter and I'm not gonna not use the apps but I'll do it when I'm in the office and I can be on a computer which sounds insane I know but what? I found myself doing IRL in real life when I found myself doing is literally if I had Tick Tock or Twitter on my phone every second I was like in the conversation or whatever or at a red light at a stoplight or whatever.

it was like oh, what's what's the latest refresh Tick Tock or Twitter Twitter refresh refresh refresh and it's just like oh God no no way too addicting. uh and and it was it. just not useful like I Found these these apps were really useful for me when and still are when I go on them and I get like a scheduled summary right? I Have to say that is something that Apple has done extremely well. The scheduled summaries are probably my most favorite Tool uh out of uh, the Apple ecosystem right now because they helped me so much with uh with with basically just organizing what what I'm doing.

but uh, notifications are pain. I've talked about that a lot before on this channel how notifications are just horrible because you could be in the middle of doing something and you're constantly just like oh God I gotta answer the phone oh God I gotta respond to that text like the worst and most annoying thing is when when you go into like a conference or something and everybody's got like their their their uh um chime on for their text messages it's just like so anxiety inducing. it's like turn that crap off like do you really need to drop everything you're doing when you're interacting with other people to to uh uh to like instantly respond. Now don't get me wrong, there are some things the answer to that is absolutely right of course uh but uh but I don't think that's necessary for for everything.

So um I think you could sort of create like V you can, you could create VIP It's like if your wife calls you or there's your school, your kid's school is calling you great instead of VIP like put them in the little VIP category. Uh, but uh, but otherwise you have to respond to everything instantly God no, which is terrible for productivity. But here's an example of a notification summary. hopefully I don't dox myself.

But anyway, so like. this is the next summary that that I I think I've set for like 8 30 a.m and so, uh, this one's not actually too long just because I think I got the last notification at like 6 a.m But anyway, what it basically does is it gives me this little collapsible segment that rather than getting all my notifications at once, it just basically collapses all these notifications into little summaries. So here let me show it to you like this: so at the bottom you could see sleep cycle and recommended colon. Funny, those are just regular notifications, right? But over here, these summaries I could click on just one notification and then it expands all of these notification summaries.

For me, this really functional, really cool. uh, and then it'll even, you know, generally collapse within. Uh, like if there are five Bloomberg articles, it'll collapse Nest them all under Bloomberg and you can separately expand those. That's been amazing.

Productivity? Hack. Uh, because then again, you're not missing all those notifications. Instead, they're bundled at a time where it's convenient for you to sit down and go through them. You know part personally.

I Think the easiest time to do email is not every minute an email comes in. but when you sit down and you're like, all right I got all my emails ready, you bang out all your emails, you bang out all your twittering, you bang out all your notifications, and then you go do normal stuff but constantly like reacting to notification. Quite frankly, it's just idiotic and terrible for productivity. sorry I'm not trying to call people uh, you know, idiots here.

oh so uh, that is my take on uh on on Apple uh. big fan? uh very very uh, very excited by the way about uh the next Apple event. uh but then again, I'm I'm always excited about um uh about Apple products and then usually you kind of just like they come out with the product and it's like yeah, all right like everybody gets super excited around the time of the releases and then you kind of just incorporate into your life and it's like not that different like I will say the iPhone 14 it was so jazzed I'm like this is gonna be the iPhone that that like actually makes me excited about upgrading. Oh my gosh the always-on display.

oh my gosh it it's not really that different from my 13. I have the 13 It's actually sitting in a dock right next to it. The one thing I do like is that always on display I will say that that is nice because I don't have to tap the darn other thing to sort of wake it up. but uh, but beyond that it's basically the same.

In fact, I did a video comparison of comparing the iPhone 13 to 14 camera on a gimbal? you don't even need to use a gimbal by the way anymore these days that that I will say is insane like the gimbal Market when it comes to iPhones I don't know how they're not out of business yet I'll show you an example. but anyway, uh, the quality is it like I Did not notice that much of a difference at all. if if anything, it was challenging for me to notice a difference between the 13 and uh um and the 14. but uh, the the handheld uh technology now in in some of these uh phones is just amazing.

I'll show you oh yeah, this is. this is a really good example. Okay let me show you this little video clip here and I think you'll you'll enjoy it because so this was a video clip of uh uh, me, probably Jack on it like his third day ever of skiing. so it's not like super Advanced uh we're on like a green slope or whatever, but we go down the sort of offside where uh, where you have all the little bumps and the trees or whatever and uh, I'll show you that here.

So what I want you to see is is just basically how smooth this camera feels. Uh, so here's Jack and his instructor and this is freehand. Like there's no gimbal here. This is crazy.

Uh, this is me. you know, skiing up to him or or skiing behind him or whatever and it's it's crazy how stable the footage is these days. I also did some shots in cinematic mode although I noticed when I was in cinematic mode you had a little bit more of um, uh, that AI wasn't that great yet for the technology for keeping your um, keeping your focus at. But let me get some more shots here as I Stumble up this little tree to get a shot of Jack There we go.

Uh, so here we go. Uh I mean I I think this is amazing. Do you think this is in your pocket and it's so smooth? I think I actually follow him here through the bumps and you'll be able to see a little bit more but I do don't quite remember. Yeah, let me see here, you'll be able to get it to see a little bit more.

I think of motion following which is pretty neat, but uh yeah. I used to have to do this stuff with a gimbal which was always a pain in the butt because then the gimbal would unbalance and then wonky around or something like that. But for an iPhone I I don't know. this is this is awesome.

So big fan. Yeah, look at that. Ah, good job. Jack I Don't know.

like really cool. That's all. I say I mean I know that camera technology has just gotten good, even in Androids right? So it's it's not just, uh, hey, look, there's me. It's not just, uh, the the iPhone that does this sort of stuff I don't really know what I'm doing here I think I'm getting ready to turn it off.

Yeah, anyway. uh, okay, so so uh. camera Tech Fantastic. Uh, but I don't think anybody really disputes that anymore these days.

I do worry a little bit about DJI and their iPhone gimbal. Market but other than that, uh yeah. really cool. So um, all right Let's uh, let's go ahead and um, yeah, end that segment.

So hopefully you enjoyed that segment on Apple because I'm excited about the augmented reality. Not convinced yet on virtual reality but augmented I'm interested I could be really convinced I'm tempted I'm almost tempted to buy one which is scary because I don't know first gen from from Apple I I don't I don't know I don't know we'll see and then again, what are you gonna do with it I don't know. can I go on a run with it They say it has a huge detached battery pack I don't want to go on a run with that so we'll see foreign.