Engadget Podcast: Why the Windows 11 2024 update is all about Copilot AI

Engadget Podcast: Why the Windows 11 2024 update is all about Copilot AI

This week, Microsoft started rolling out the Windows 11 2024 update, but it quickly became clear that the company was far more eager to unveil new features for its Copilot AI and Copilot+ AI PCs. In this episode, Devindra and Cherlynn chat about Microsoft's current AI priorities, and what it means for people with older PCs. Also, we discuss the death of HoloLens and Microsoft giving up on AR as Meta, Apple and even Snap build for an augmented reality future.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="mailto:podcast@engadget.com?subject=Engadget%20Podcast%20Feedback">email us[/url] or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-01-engadget-podcasts.html">Engadget News[/url]!
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<h2 id="jump-link-credits">Topics</h2>
<ul>
<li>The new Windows 11 update goes all in on Copilot integration – 1:25</li>
<li>Amazon announces Fire HD 8 tablet line along with a few (pretty boring) AI features – 28:28</li>
<li>Tech debt led to Sonos’ disastrous app relaunch, will they be able to win users back? – 37:48</li>
<li>Google is making Gmail summaries more useful and adding a “happening soon” tab to your inbox – 41:11</li>
<li>Harvard students hack together facial recognition for Meta’s smart glasses that instantly doxes strangers – 44:00</li>
<li>Reddit introduces a policy change that will make site wide protests harder – 46:58</li>
<li>Around Engadget: Dan Cooper’s reMarkable Paper Pro review – 51:31</li>
<li>Working on – 55:53</li>
<li>Pop culture picks – 57:08</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="jump-link-livestream">Livestream</h2>
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<h2 id="jump-link-"></h2>
<h2 id="jump-link-credits">Credits </h2>
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
<h2 id="jump-link-"></h2>
<h2 id="jump-link-transcript">Transcript</h2>
Devindra: What's up, everybody, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.
Cherlynn: I'm Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.
Devindra: This week it's all about Microsoft. I guess Techtober has officially begun, Cherlynn, even though it feels like We've been doing Techtober since August, thanks to Samsung and Google and everybody.
yes.
Cherlynn: Yeah, it
Devindra: just never, it never freaking ends. But yeah the wave of tech news, which we used to call Techtober, which is now just TechFall, I guess, the fall of our lives and our productivity. Yeah. That is all happening. Microsoft announced that the Windows 11 2024 update is going out this week.
But I honestly think Microsoft is way more interested in the AI capabilities that it's bringing to CoPilot and also CoPilot Plus systems. And I think that's kind of funny. I think Cherlynn, you and I as Windows nerds and PC geeks I think it's something worth exploring because more so than even last year, this feels like a major shift for Microsoft.
So that's our first topic. We'll talk about a couple other things too, including HoloLens [00:01:00] 2 and basically the entire HoloLens family dying. As always, folks, if you're enjoying the show, subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice, leave us a review on iTunes. That's always appreciated. Drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com.
com and join us Thursday mornings, typically around 10 45 AM Eastern on our YouTube channel for our live stream. If we have gadgets, we'll do you know, sometimes we'll show them off. We'll do Q and A's. It's a fun time. Join us. Sherilyn, I'm sorry that I basically threw these giant stories at you ahead of ahead of the.
Big news announcement this week. A lot of big stuff happening from Microsoft Windows 11 2024 update, but also new features coming to co pilot plus AI PCs including more information about privacy and recall new features for the co pilot AI assistant. How did you notice something odd?
About these stories as I sent them to you, Cherlynn.
Cherlynn: Beyond it seemed like Microsoft might have given you the information incredibly close to the deadline. Well, there's
Devindra: that there's at least we got a heads up, but something that I don't know if you've noticed because I think you had [00:02:00]access to these docs too The news was essentially, Hey, this update is coming.
Everybody get ready for it. We love windows. We love windows updates. And then my entire, the entire document was like, Oh, by the way, copilot plus AI PCs, that's all we care about. So I got this document that was just like all new features. And then one little paragraph at the end, Oh, by the way, when this 11 update, you get HDR backgrounds, you get all this stuff, like literally 10 sentences.
But the entire like presentation for Microsoft is we love Copilot plus AI PC systems. Did that feel weird to you?
Cherlynn: I mean, I know that there was this the main post that you filed was like at the end where you said, Oh, by the way, there are these Windows 11 updates as well coming. And I think it didn't feel weird to me, I guess, because I was like, yeah, of course they're all in on Copilot and everything is about AI.
And maybe that's why, maybe I'm so over You're just so used to
it.
Right, the incremental cadence of every platform update being like little things, even though you know, before 10, we had a big significant jump to 10, and then 10 to 11 just felt kind of [00:03:00]minor because it was built for like better arm based improved performance, and then Now AI seems to be the mad rush here.
So I agree with you. It is weird, but it took you pointing it out for me to realize or feel it. You know?
Devindra: I mean, I totally agree with you. Like typically when we talk about windows updates, especially the annual cadences, like they're not huge things. And even windows 11 itself felt like a weird half step update where the most compelling thing was like, Hey, we put the task bar in the middle of your screen.
Rather than the side of your, that was the only thing people were talking about. I think, yeah, Microsoft is aware that the thing that could be more exciting now to people is Copilot Plus, first of all, and I think that's also key. I think more so than the Copilot AI Assistant, which is going to be in, you know, pretty much most Windows 11 machines, the Copilot Plus stuff, that is for the newer systems basically released this year.
So stuff like with the new snap track and processors, go ahead.
Cherlynn: Yeah no, I mean, the thing you're pointing out is exactly the thing that, got me questioning while I was reading your pieces because it wasn't about the windows 11 updates. It was more [00:04:00] you clearly have a distinction between co pilot and co pilot plus, and I was like where?
And then I had to like, I sussed it out for myself eventually, but I was like, Oh, so there is co pilot versus co pilot plus, and there's a bit of a difference here, right? There's, I mean, there's a total,
Devindra: yeah. So when I covered, I went to Microsoft's campus in May, right. Head of WWDC and everything.
That's when they announced the co pilot plus. PC initiative. And that was these custom, not custom, but these like systems that had a certain level of quality, right? So they launched with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X elite and X pro chips. But basically there was a minimum standard of 16 gigabytes of RAM, right?
40 tops NPU. So really powerful NPU for AI work. So it could do a lot of stuff locally rather than sending AI stuff to the cloud. You know, decent amount of hard drive space too. But that's the thing. It's like a certain level of computing quality. And that's the sort of thing Microsoft had to basically launch as an initiative with Qualcomm, AMD, Intel, everybody.
Whereas when Apple did their big push for ARM [00:05:00] based and new chips and everything, they could just be like, well, here's our new thing. We did it all. We did all the work and developers just have to catch up with us. So the copilot plus features are things like recall, but also new things that they talked about.
There's something called click to do, which if you hold down the windows button and right click, there will be contextual things you could be doing within that dropdown menu. So if you're in the photos app, I believe you can like, you can have it like just blur the background. Just remove this object if you click on an object.
So that's kind of useful. We're kind of getting a sense of what Microsoft wants to do with these new NPU powered features in the photos app, you can also super resolution photos, which is something you could do in Adobe stuff and Lightroom and other apps Pixelmator does that on the Mac too, but.
That's kind of cool. If you have a Lowr resolution photo and the AI basically interpolates a lot of stuff in that image to give you a bigger file that also looks pretty sharp. I've used that in Pixelmator. It's pretty good. Yeah, just a couple improvements down the way the recall stuff is interesting [00:06:00] too, because Microsoft also basically held a call last week to be like Hey, Recall privacy.
This is actually very important to us. And we're going to be very clear about this. And this follows the whole debacle after the recall launch where the recall announcement where everybody was like, there are gaping security holes here. Security researchers found things like where if you were an administrator, or actually, no, if you were able to hack into a computer, even without admin access, you could get access to the recall database, which is the screenshot of everything it's recording that you're doing on your system.
So Microsoft had to. Delay that feature by several months. Didn't even release it to testers to really lock that down. So the whole it sounds better now. It sounds like they're encrypting the entire database. Recall itself is running in what they're calling. Let me see here. A VBS enclave. So not even just like an encrypted thing, but like a virtual package of like where the program is too.
So hackers can't like directly access it. Windows Hello biometrics is necessary by default. And [00:07:00]also, Oh, the feature is not turned on by default. You have to turn it on. And these all came from complaints from everybody. I also asked Microsoft specifically, so what did you learn from this whole mistake, like this whole situation, which is they announced recall and they were like, this is one of the coolest things you can ever do.
You can remember anything you've ever done in your computer. Was completely mired in controversy. So, I talked with, or I sent a question to Pavan Devaluri, which is the head of windows. He's the head of windows. He knows we had an interview with him on this podcast months ago. He knows our complaints and our criticisms of surface and windows and everything.
And he basically said that they realize now that users want to have. Extra confidence with anything involving like their sensitive data, or especially AI things that are recording all their data. And also AI involves a rethinking of how Microsoft and other companies think about security on a Windows system, right?
Typically, if you have an administrator account on a Windows computer, The thinking is you could just go in and do anything, right? You could [00:08:00] do anything on any other accounts. You are an administrator of that PC. You have really like basically broad privileges, but now if you're using these AI features, which are sucking in a lot of data and a lot more data than windows PCs used to, maybe there's a good.
excuse for not giving the administrator full access to that, you know, to whatever that database is. So there's just things that they're thinking of that they didn't think of before. And that's a shame, but they're saying like that basically this whole fiasco they're taking into consideration. I don't quite know if I trust them yet, but how do you feel about their turnaround I
Cherlynn: think it took quite long.
And I re I realize it's more than just allow people to opt in. There's the holes they had patched the access to admin versus like user. Encrypting everything
is an encryption.
It still felt like it took a little long, but I mean, It just goes to show how little Microsoft had any forethought, right, about this sort of [00:09:00] privacy concern.
That it took public backlash to be like, Ah, crap. And that they had to, it felt like a ground up attempt to fix all these issues. And it doesn't bode well for me for any of their future sort of features based around your information. Like I think they are, I tend to think of Microsoft as the most engineer brain of the top three, like AI companies out there.
They're very engineer brain. They're very like, Oh yeah, this is convenient. Oh, it works. Let's ship it. They don't think about what about all these other things? What about people who are using your product that are not engineer brain that are going to break it in some consumer way, right? So I think it took a while, but I'm glad they're at least considering, and I hope it's a lesson, to be considering these things ahead of time, you know?
Devindra: Yeah, most definitely. They're also like, let me see here. I like the security things. Revamped copilot apps are getting some interesting features too. I think this is all kind of interconnected. So they basically announced this whole new [00:10:00] strategy called copilot labs, where they're going to talk about where they're going to let people play with new features ahead of time.
Let me see here. Copilot vision is one of those, and this is a weird thing. This is like literally the thing we're worried about. That's. It's going to basically see everything you're doing in your web browser showing and be able to basically give you tips on it. It's basically involving constant eyes on what you're seeing.
That's a lab feature. And also think deeper. Which is the ability to just give it a task and have it process a little longer to maybe get you some more helpful advice. These are all Copilot Labs features, these are like extra experimental if you think about the old Google Labs stuff. And right now only people paying for Copilot Pro subscriptions, so those are the 20 a month thing.
Only those folks can test it for now. I think at the very least, Microsoft is being very careful about how it's rolling this stuff out. It is showing it to people, but also a very small audience and taking that feedback before it rolls out broadly. And the thing about recall, they were just like, Hey, here it is.
Look, everybody, this is so [00:11:00]cool. We're capturing everything you're doing on your computer. And they were more excited about it than I think they realized. P other people would be because they didn't realize how little people trusted Microsoft, right?
Cherlynn: Yeah, I think the conundrum of having to pay for access to some of these extra features ahead of time is Both like a joy and a risk that you're taking and I guess we talked about this early adopter mindset a lot on the podcast which is Yeah.
You pay a premium to get to access things like prototypes, right? And these features in the labs are basically prototypes, but then you're also risking exposing yourself to a lot of potential, like, vulnerabilities. I guess. I don't think the word is exploits. I don't think the word is like bad. Like it's not bad.
It's just you have to be aware. The vulnerabilities is
Devindra: the world. Yeah. Is the word.
Cherlynn: Yeah. And, you know, I guess, cool, pay for that but at the same time, these are people who are paying there for early adopters, probably already much more on top of their security and knowing the risks they take.
It's just like Microsoft selling it to people [00:12:00] who are paying, meaning they're selling it to people who are fans, who are less likely to question is, you know, curious, in my opinion.
Devindra: I think it makes sense just being careful and also not too long after the show when we both went to Apple's campus and they announced Apple intelligence and it seemed like even Apple intelligence was launched with, The awareness of everything that went wrong with recall, right?
Like even Apple and other companies are kind of learning from all this. It's a learning experience for everybody, but the people going first usually take the first hit. So in this case, it was Microsoft. It's often open AI. We saw Google bar, you know, stumble right out of the gate too. And Apple at least is able to sit back and just watch and see how it can make things more useful.
Speaking of So this is the CoPilot app itself. CoPilot on the web, CoPilot's mobile app. There are some new features coming there too. CoPilot voice, which gives it a more personable assistant like voice. So you can actually have a back and forth conversation with it. That's kind of cool.
I think that's, that just makes it feel more more [00:13:00] useful to a lot of people. Copilot Vision, we talked about, they're going to do this thing called Copilot Daily, which that voice will also give you like a daily rundown of news and also things you may have scheduled or on your calendar. They want you to think of Copilot as like this thing that you can basically always turn to.
It feels like Copilot is your new computing interface in a way. And that's also probably why they're a little more excited about it rather than A Windows update, even though the Windows update is pretty big according to Microsoft, it is a full OS reconstruction. So it is not just like a minor step up.
It is like a full re installation and a full re architecture of Windows. Maybe following along the lines of what they did for the ARM stuff, back around the Copilot Plus launch, that version of Windows that went out with the ARM systems is very different. They had to rebuild Windows a lot.
To deal with arms. So I feel like we're going to see more of that basically on the Intel and AMD side. Any questions for one? This is, I see the chat is talking about this too. [00:14:00]This is just kind of wild to me. Cause last year we went to the Microsoft event and ended up being a surprise event about AI and we were all very confused.
How do you feel about like their standing now around AI and windows and everything?
Cherlynn: Yeah, I think you're pointing to the fact that Simon B. in the chat asked who is leading in AI, Windows OpenAI or Google for the consumers. And I mean, the rest of this episode. Windows is OpenAI
Devindra: at this point.
Cherlynn: Yes. The rest of this episode I think talks sort of about that, right?
We're getting to some Amazon news later in this episode that was announced this week as well. But what we're seeing, and to your point, Devindra, compared to this time last year or like last year in April or February, I forget. It was being AI. It was like the first time we had to contend with like consumer facing versions of these features.
But now here we are a year and a half after the fact, and every company has pushed out their own version of writing tools, summaries, basically, Chad GPT. And then we've got other companies doing their own implementations, you know, co pilot, we've got Google stuffing AI [00:15:00] into literally anything it makes.
We've got Apple with the redesigned Siri, which is still in classic Apple style, not actually here yet, right? Apple intelligence, slow to the party. And Amazon will see in a bit, gave us kind of, a teaser at what AI on it's going to look like. And it's much more of the same, but here's what you said got me to thinking, right?
You say that it's a, their new, basically the new interaction mode is the new interface, right? Well, how people are going to interface. I think I saw this trend when Tik Tok started becoming more of a thing, like short form videos started becoming more of a thing and I was like skeptical of it ever really taking off.
And yet you see. That generations for example, that, that story from the verge a while ago, where kids don't even use directories anymore, they just search in their file, explore for the file they're looking for. I was like, Oh crap, I guess. Yeah. You don't need to organize how
Devindra: files work. Yeah,
Cherlynn: I did. And I thought that was the way and these things are changing.
I think we're at. The start of [00:16:00]maybe gen alpha, whenever they get their first laptop, whenever they start using these Google services are going to be so used to AI that they'll use it in a way that we never thought, you know, and I, it's disappointing to me because I think it's even more critical thinking or kind of offloading to a computer as opposed to having our own brain process.
But I could also see human beings finding new, unique, creative ways to interact with AI. So I don't know, it's, Ooh it's
Devindra: it's
Cherlynn: weird, you know?
Devindra: It is weird. I am, I'm still unsold on the idea of the AI stuff taking over everything. Like I think at the end of last year, I wrote like Microsoft is really all in on copilot AI, but doesn't really have a vision for what it is going to be.
Now we're kind of seeing more of that, but also at the same time, like the basic copilot search is not super useful to me, I would rather search the internet and get actual results from, and go look at those results rather than have this. Machine feed information back to me and me not under, like it playing a game of telephone and us [00:17:00]not knowing if that information is actually accurate.
And then I have to go back and check that. Meanwhile, the actual Bing search is still as useless as ever. Which is funny to me I use edge a lot because I use different browsers for work and personal stuff, so I sometimes stumble into Bing search and it's still man, I wrote, I literally know I wrote this article about this thing.
It is at Engadget. com. And Bing just doesn't know it exists. I can put almost the full title of the whole thing there and Bing can't find it. And yeah,
Cherlynn: Not to okay. So disclosure, our parent company is Yahoo, which is owned by Apollo. Right. And even on yahoo. com
come on. Yeah.
Yahoo. No I've used Yahoo because I was forced to because of my corporate machines to hold to Yahoo as a search engine.
Sadly. Even Yahoo is I'll be like Engadget iPhone review or something. And the first result is not. Engadget, Yahoo, iPhone review, it's something else. And I'm like, what? Thankfully, because we know the people at Yahoo, we can be like, what is going on? This [00:18:00]search is bonked. And then they're like, oh, let's fix it.
So they'll, they can fix it. To your point though, like Bing AI, Bing search is pretty useless still. I think we're going to get to this later in the episode too. But I think Google search, Is also getting worse and worse. I've seen this online for a very long time, right? Yeah. With the ads placements up top, with the shopping modules up top, with the top stories and the discover boxes up top, it used to be helpful.
Now it's just getting the actual results further down the page, the things that I actually want to do. I don't care what Google wants to put in front of my eyes. I want to go and look into the results myself, maybe because I was born in the eighties, but
Devindra: This is why I like, I'm not so chilling on this AI driven future because Google is forcing it at us.
Microsoft is the Google search right now. You will see generative AI stuff at the top, usually then sponsored topics and other ads and stuff, maybe Google shopping. And then towards the bottom, you get to the results you want. So all these things are making our. Computing experience is worse. And I wonder like there it's high time [00:19:00]for some sort of user revolt on this stuff.
Like we looked at one look at recall and we were like no, thank you. Not like this. And Microsoft had to scramble back into its cave and fix it. Society took one look at Google glass and was like, no, thank you. That's not going to fly right now. We are just not ready for this, but also there are so many problems with this tech.
I do think we're going to get see a lot more pushback now, personally,
Cherlynn: I will say to be contrary. And I will point out that in our chat, Lee Woods says they use Gemini advanced several times a day just to summarize articles. You're hoping that they figure out a way to integrate Gemini into the Chrome browser.
Look, I think summarize is could be one of the easiest, like the best things that I can do if it's accurate and reliable. And I think For a lot of people who've been trying out the Apple intelligence stuff on betas, they found notification summaries to be quite accurate and super helpful. Yeah. There are tools that are going to be helpful.
We're just going to figure out and weed out, you know, the bad from the good. Yeah.
Devindra: Yeah. I mean, it's all about how we use this information. [00:20:00]Yeah, notifications. You know, what sucks right now in modern life and modern computing life is notifications. Too many notifications solve that problem for me.
Thank you. Less of a problem. Is finding stuff on the internet, but also making it harder for me to find stuff on the internet because you want to sell me this service that you, Oh, I'm so glad you love Gemini Google. That's cool. Nice. Good for you, Google. I would just like to use Google. I would just like to use Google search.
So yes. There is a point where it's getting in our way and these companies care more about it than we do. And then I think there are companies that are being, trying to be a little more thoughtful. Apple is doing some of that. Microsoft is getting there with some of the Copilot plus AI features, but we shall see.
I don't want to sound like an old man shouting at the clouds, but sometimes when things are dumb and things are stupid, I think you have to be like, the emperor has no clothes here. You know, last year at that event, Trillian, I distinctly remember talking to Microsoft executives and being like, how can you have this thing, which you know, is not always accurate, is not [00:21:00] always correct.
How can it be the basis of all these new interactions that are going to be a big part of windows and they're just like, this is a learning experience. I think people will understand if we make mistakes, that's not. It's not how computers should work, folks. Like I don't, you don't want to calculate or to have a learning experience as you're trying to, you don't calculate a critical figure for you.
You want me to just do the specific task. And even Microsoft was unaware of that. We shall see how all this goes kind of related to this. We also saw the news that Microsoft is killing HoloLens too. And there's no plans for a followup device. It's going to be using I think I heard. That they may be going to Anduril's headsets.
Like they're going to be doing software for that for military uses or something, but essentially HoloLens is dead, which is funny to see after literally last week, Facebook was just like, this is the future of augmented reality computing. Here are Orion glasses. [00:22:00]We saw Snaps glasses. We saw Vision Pro last year.
It seems like finally this category is heating up and Microsoft's response is okay, no, thank you. No, once there's
Cherlynn:competition, we're out. Sorry.
Devindra: Yeah. I mean, it doesn't help. Remember the HoloLens guy, Alex Kipman, I believe was booted out of Microsoft for being kind of a dirt bag. Just like we, he was like a weird sexist horny guy who really liked his AR.
Glasses. So that was the story going around. He just did not make that team a really good environment. So if you lose the guy who's like leading that technology, that's one thing, but also if you have Facebook, if you have meta, who's willing to spend tens of billions of dollars to really get ahead and Apple, who's clearly thought harder about vision pro than I think Microsoft has about HoloLens when it comes to making a consumer product.
It just seems like Microsoft was here early, but it can't compete. This is such a pocket PC situation for Microsoft. They had some Hardaware, they had some ideas. This is a web TV moment, but. Ultimately, they just [00:23:00] couldn't make it work and that's a shame. I liked HoloLens too. Like they, if they were willing to, I think there is space for Microsoft to play here.
I don't know. Did you ever try a HoloLens too? Or do you
Cherlynn: have feelings
Devindra: around this? I,
Cherlynn: I can't remember if the one I tried was an old one or the two, the second, I believe it was the second gen and it was like an event in Times Square. It was one of those art events and they were really trying to steal it.
So I'm going to be talking about how you can sell the potential of HoloLens outside of industrial and workplaces. I mean, I remember when the first few demos of HoloLens were just so interesting, where you could use these hand gestures, you could like, collaborate with teammates on this virtual diagram or whatever.
And I got to say, like in the headset wars, right? I mean, everyone made their own. There was the Mirage, the Quest. I mean, the Quest obviously with Meta having bought them became kind of the front runner right now, in my opinion, for more consumer friendly devices but HoloLens did stick around for a while there as something that people used in like factories or like more industrial places and commercial uses, and it [00:24:00] definitely had.
Felt to me for a while that Microsoft won in that category, even if it was very niche. And like you said, the defense category is somewhere where they can probably make a lot of money out of, but I, it's sad to see that just as it's getting, you know, to a point where the race seems to be properly heating up that like Microsoft's no, we're good.
Thanks.
Devindra: No, thank you. Yeah, we're it's a little, it seems like you guys are far ahead of us right now. So we're just tapping out. I did a demo. If you go back and read about I think it was called Microsoft mesh, which was their like virtual meeting software. And they sent me a HoloLens too. And I sat here in my office and I had a group Call with Microsoft executives and like 10 other journalists.
And it felt like they were all just, we were all just sitting near each other, even though we were all at our own homes. It was like 2021 maybe. So pandemic was still like keeping people away from each other. And that's, it felt good. It felt like it worked. It wasn't super clunky, but the Hardaware was just too expensive and I [00:25:00]don't think they wanted to do the work to like really make that cheaper.
They also had the whole like, you know, Windows mixed reality stuff for them to try to get into VR, but that felt like a little too late. Because Oculus was doing stuff before HTC Vive was doing stuff before. So Microsoft was too late to VR, too early for AR. And now everybody else is just like trekking ahead for maybe in 10 years, we'll get like the true AR glasses that everybody's dreaming of.
And honestly, I also feel like we as a society are not ready for those either. But yeah, just kind of, kind of sad to see. So RIP HoloLens. Maybe the, They look so cool is the thing. I kind of do want one when they're like 50 bucks being thrown out in a couple of years, I would love a HoloLens just to put on my shelf, just like I have a Microsoft Kin.
I have both Microsoft Kin phones in a drawer somewhere.
Cherlynn: I continue to hold on to Engadget's Google glass. So I understand
Devindra: the aliens are going to find our drawers full of like old tech and be like, [00:26:00] well, no other humans have these things. Why do these people like, what is the story here? What happened here? Anyway. Yeah. A shame for HoloLens, but yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Cherlynn: Maybe they'll come up with co pilot glass.
You know what I mean?
Devindra: They're going to do, they're going to work on integrations for everybody else. So that's the thing. Microsoft rather than. Being the platform being the Hardaware. They're gonna try to work with everybody else's stuff That's why we're seeing Xbox and quests and everything right now.
So yeah, just a shame to see and Let us know what you folks think I mean I feel like maybe just because I'm a 90s PC kid who grew up on Windows like I have an affinity for old Windows I think about the way it works a lot If you have thoughts about Microsoft's new trajectory Drop us an email at podcastsandgadget.
com.
All right, let's move on to some other news. We got some stuff from Amazon and, oh boy, [00:27:00] is this, Sherilyn, we make fun of Amazon for being really boring when it comes to Hardaware, except for like their crazy random stuff, this is a nothing burger of a news hit. We got a new Fire HD 8 tablet, everybody. It's slightly faster.
It has a better camera. It's still a fire HD eight. I guess the crazy thing is it is available for 55 on sale. If you go for the ads and everything. So that's not, that's pretty good for a tablet with just free to sit down and watch stuff and it's faster than before. So there's that, but also like they want to do AI stuff with it.
Sure. Okay. Of course. Everybody wants to do AI summaries and whatnot. Is there anything special about these tablets, Rowan?
Cherlynn: So to be clear, Amazon announced the Fire HD 8 and two variants, the HD 8 for kids and I think like Pro is the other version. Anyway Alongside the launch of the Fire HD 8, it also announced some AI features are coming with the HD 8, but we'll also be rolling out to compatible Kindle tablets that already have been in the market for a very long time.
So [00:28:00] I was most intrigued by that. I want to do clarify that the HD 8 normally will retail at 99. 99, so 100. And right now it's on sale up until the end of Prime Day, which is from today. I, I don't know if you've opened your Amazon app, you'll see the big ad October 8th, October 9th, Prime Day.
Yay. I guess we needed another one. And up until then, the HD eight will cost, I think closer to 50, I forget if it's 55, but like somewhere in that ballpark. Anyway, what did jump out at me when I saw the press release was A, this is not the Amazon Hardaware event we've been waiting to happen in October, right?
This is just a drop ahead of Prime Day. And B, the AI tools. So, I was looking at it, I was like, first thing that came to my mind, I was like, Have we heard of AI? Amazon's AI features like this because it was like writing summer. It was summaries, writing tools and that sort of stuff. Yeah. I was like, Oh, this might be our first look at Amazon's own AI for devices.
Right. We've heard about some of their chat [00:29:00] bots. We've heard about, you know, it's improvements coming to its voice based assistant, which I will not say the name of right now, but like this for devices is basically rehashing what we've seen before, except for with an Amazon spin. So the only thing that stood out at.
To me was that you can get the AI to generate new wallpapers for the tablet, which cool. I guess the Alcatel idol four could do that. You know, it's just so many Android's material. You to quote a more recent example. So nothing super groundbreaking. But the fact that it's going to be available on a cheaper device, the fact that it's coming to a tablet.
Just to recap, like last week Samsung had the its FE event where it said it was bringing Galaxy AI to all, right? Samsung hammered home the point that with its new Galaxy Tab S10 series, that now you've got Galaxy AI on a phone, a tablet, and a watch. It's, you know, Samsung. It's, quote, bringing its AI to all, I guess, form [00:30:00]factors.
And Tab S10 starts at, I want to say, 650, maybe 700. So it's, yes, it's coming to a different form factor, but it's not necessarily super accessible. And so now, if you want to get a cheap little tablet for your kids for 50, you can. can get one that has AI, or if your existing fire tablet, I have a list of what's compatible.
If you want to upgrade that software, you can also get access to Amazon's AI tools, which are basically like every other chat GPT clone we've seen in the last year and a half. And that just brings me back to the point we were making earlier in this episode that it's becoming more and more prevalent.
We don't know how people are going to use it, but now that more people are going to be able to use it and kids. Ostensibly using a lot of fire HD tablets. We got it. We're gonna start seeing people Mass adopt these I guess I don't know. That's where I'm at with. Yeah.
Devindra: Yeah I mean, it's compelling because these are such cheap tablets.
I don't know about like base model You're giving up a [00:31:00] lot by staring at those Amazon ads folks, but it's hard to deny The usefulness of a 55, eight inch tablet. The kids stuff is cool because they keep saying first of all, there's ad free content, their parental controls. Amazon says that they are going to, they will still replace those tablets if they break, which is like the number one nightmare for a parent.
It's that. Tablets are just screens, like giant screens with glass, and they will be destroyed by your kids. The kids version of the E Fire HD puts them in a nice protective case. They have this guarantee from Amazon, so you feel a little better about it. I still have not done this for my kids.
Like we, I basically buy iPads on sale. I buy old iPads on sale and that's really what we've used as a family. So my son is using an iPad from like 2017 with a cracked screen, but that's what he uses, like in the car, if he needs to watch a video or something. My daughter has a 10 inch, one of the more recent 10 inch iPads.
But we, she wants to play Minecraft. She wants to play like a games from Apple arcade. And you can't, you are very limited [00:32:00] in what you get in a Fire tablet. These are sLowr machines. They have a limited library of games. They can't access all the apps that Android tablets can too, because of the Google stuff is not included.
So just be aware of what you're losing with a cheap tablet. That's all.
Cherlynn: Yeah. And that's why they're good for, I guess, kids, but to Dpro9's point in the chat, this is e waste right out the gate. Yeah,
Devindra: kind of, kind of. No, you're
Cherlynn: not wrong. I don't, I can't argue.
Devindra: It's a digital catalog. For buying stuff on Amazon, also for watching stuff on Amazon prime.
That's really what they want you to be doing. And then, oh, by the way, it can also do Netflix. It can also do these other things, but they just, they care about their own stuff. I
Cherlynn: see. I see the appeal of it being like a cheaper Kindle with a not great screen. And I can only imagine what a summary AI tool on a Kindle book might do.
Like it's not, I think, going to work with Kindle titles, but one day, Final Evolution, don't read books. Just read these AI summaries. I mean,
Devindra: the AIs can already summarize books. So I do. Yeah. [00:33:00]I don't know if you'll get it all within text, but it'll, they'll do it through the cloud or whatever. And then who needs to read who needs to really engage with content and wrestle with complex moral choices like just let's Smooth brain all the way AI brain means no tough choices for any of us And that's where we're going as a society.
Love it. Love to see it
Cherlynn: I will point out that a person in our chat. I think it was I've missed it, but you pointed out that you were you're doing your master's Tom Rogers or Someone that you're using the Kindle scribe and that's the like Tablet that Amazon makes you can write on which like this week, you know We are also gonna talk about a bit more about writing tablets.
And I think For me, that's where Amazon's Hardaware is still intriguing. And to be clear, no new Kindle has yet been announced this year season slash whatever. So we could still be waiting to see stuff from Amazon. And I wonder what would happen if they decided to stuff AI into a Kindle. Like I have no clue.
Devindra: It's mainly the [00:34:00] ink technology that keeps Kindles the price that they are. They occasionally go down, but they, those do not have super fast processors. Those are like really like basic devices. I would imagine they could easily get some cloud AI stuff. So like cloud source, Hey, some interesting topics that, you know, that these people have, or also when you go on Amazon now, you get AI crowdsourced user reviews.
I can imagine that being a thing. In the kindle like store when you're browsing around. Yeah,
Cherlynn: I could see that I could see also with the kindle scribe Like I said being a writing or drawing tablet like they could not only give you prompts for drawing. They could also Start an outline for you teach you calligraphy or teach you show like I used When I was reviewing the Kindle scribe originally, I used it a lot for Japanese, you're not going to practice.
So like handwriting practice for a different language. I could see if AI would just generate worksheets for me. That would be interesting. Hire me, Amazon. I will think of these ideas for you. That would be actually useful.
Devindra: I don't think [00:35:00] you want to work with Amazon. No, I don't know very few people don't work at Amazon.
I want to point out a thank you, Mark Dell for this wonderful comment, because it also fits into a bunch of things. But he says somebody needs to make an AI pin that just listens to everything and makes every decision in your life. Perfect. For those who are bad at decision making, it'll be the last decision you ever make.
That is a black mirror episode just waiting to happen. That certainly is going to be a thing. Also, Yeah shout out to the Yorgos Lanthimos movie, Kinds of Kindness, which is sort of about that too, which is sort about the idea that humans, we kind of all just want to let go a little bit and let people make decisions for us and then be like little subservient little slobs.
So depending on your view of humanity, you don't even need AI for that. You just need you just need a Dom to basically build your entire life. Let's move on to some other news. How about that?
Cherlynn: Did you see, did Sonos stuff,
Devindra: Sherilyn?
Cherlynn: I did not, but please explain to me. I mean, I saw it floating around and I kind of [00:36:00] have the TLDR, but I'd love to hear your details.
The
Devindra: TLDR is that Sonos released an app overhaul earlier this year. It was supposed to be a big redesign for them and it was a disaster. It was buggy. It crashed a lot. I honestly had trouble like connecting to my speakers properly. It lost features, including things like setting alarms that the original app did.
Disaster. Like literally Sonos, your only job is to give us the software to send music to your speakers. That's all you have to do. And what came out is that basically Sonos is a company that's been sitting on a lot of technical technical debt over the last few years. So there's a lot of stuff.
The old app was. Basically built on a lot of things and there were things they never cleaned up. The kind of underlying technology is something they never cleaned up. As Sonos was racing ahead to launch this app, a lot of people inside the company were complaining about it and kind of raised the alarms and saying this is not up to snuff, we should not release this.
And people were ignored. People were kind of bullied for even bringing up issues. So [00:37:00] that's a great corporate environment that you want to see. And now Sonos is at the point where they're just like fully fully. Apologizing and basically saying that they're going to do everything it can to fix this.
So, the quota here is our priority since its release has been and continues to be fixing the app. There were missteps and we first went in, went deep to understand how we got here and then moved to convert those learnings into action. I love when everybody said, anybody says learnings, by the way. Such wonderful corporate speak.
The quote continues. We are committed to making changes to get us back to being the brand people love by offering the best audio system for the home and beyond. And the quote I believe the Sono CEO so they're saying they're going to do a lot of changes. They're going to do a lot more testing.
And they're extending the manufacturer warranty for all home speaker products, including home theater gear and plug in speakers. I saw the news that the CEO is also declining to take a bonus this year, which is like the least you could do. You're still going to get paid millions, tens of millions of dollars.
Cherlynn: Rejecting this little bonus on top of my multi million dollar salary. Okay.
Devindra: Yeah. But at least [00:38:00] it's more than most CEOs do often when a company screws up, either somebody gets fired but rarely is somebody like, Hey, like I'm just going to take a direct hit for this. So, Hey, that's something good to see.
I would love to know what your stories are. With with Sonos speakers at this point, folks, I still use them, but it's stuff for sometimes I'm within Spotify and I like to send audio from Spotify straight to Sonos that's hit or miss these days. The Sonos app itself is still all over the place. I still like Sonos speakers cause they sound so much better than a lot of them in the actual networking.
The actual synchronization stuff is great. But just kind of a mess. I feel like they should discount some of these things. Be aware of the ARC whatever the new headphones are too. That was kind of the thing they were rebuilding the app for. And
Cherlynn: the
Devindra: ACE headset. Yeah. Those also don't seem like they're really worth buying at all too.
So check out our review of that whole thing. Yeah, Sonos is still keeping it real, I guess, trying to fix all these mistakes. You have something you want to mention from [00:39:00]Google, Cherlynn. Yeah, just a
Cherlynn: really quick bunch of news from Google. There was this is like a drive by recap, really, because the stuff that I want to talk about apparently isn't happening yet.
Gmail is getting better summaries, and Google is adding a happening soon tab to its Gmail service. I like that. I mean, like sometimes Google has really improved Gmail. Like I think Inbox was an app we all loved for a time and then they killed it. But the Inbox was really where they surfaced a lot of these good features.
Oh, there's a pack you know, like notification. You say
Devindra: we all very broadly, but it was certainly, I mean, the people
Cherlynn: online at that time,
Devindra: I remember Inbox. being launched. I'm like, what the hell is this? This was like when Google had 10 different video conferencing apps and couldn't decide on it either.
So I was mainly confused by Inbox, but yes, those designs did come over to main email. Yeah.
Cherlynn: I think there were some really interesting features that debuted on Inbox. And then finally when they did get integrated into Gmail and then, you know, cohesively bringing all of them into one app is the choice to make.
I agree with that. I just think there was some [00:40:00] nostalgia for Inbox. I still see online sometimes. Anyway. I mean, I like when like for example, last two weekends ago or something like that, I was watching James McAvoy movie that I cannot remember the title of anymore. Speak No Evil or something?
Devindra: Yeah.
Cherlynn: Okay I bought the ticket on an iPhone and had a Pixel 9 Pro next to me. Both had their SIM cards in them. And the Pixel 9 Pro had the SIM card. Tickets just like the instant I hit pay and it pulled up the tickets on Google pay because gmail was so good at parsing the receipt That I got in my inbox and just pulling that information.
I mean, yeah, it's a little creepy, but it's also very convenient for me whereas like You know, other features like track your packets, there's an event in this email, I will add it to your calendar that sort of stuff is really helpful in Gmail. And honestly, I think it's not a bad thing. I don't know if there's a net loss overall in terms of security and privacy, but we'll see.
So anyway Google also updated its Chrome Plus Chromebook Plus Slate of products this [00:41:00] week. Go to Engadget. com for all the details. Nate covered it for us, but yeah, I mean, as we continue to see all the big companies fight it out over AI it's nice to, you know, I guess, see what else is being put out there.
Devindra: That's something. I mean, it's also, I guess we're still waiting for are we waiting for like a Google Hardaware event again?
Cherlynn: No, thank God. I hope to God. No, if they did, I would be very upset.
Devindra: I mean, looking forward, we were waiting for possibly an iPad event slash Mac book event from Apple. Something more from Amazon.
Cherlynn: Exactly. I'm just waiting on Amazon.
Devindra: It's a whole bunch of that. There was a cool story. Did you see this one? It's really about a pair of students put facial recognition technology onto meta smart glasses basically to instantly dox strangers. They're not going to be releasing this code. This is more of like a project they did to prove what is possible.
And things that, that basically are kind of trivial to add to something like smart glasses. Did you see the story?
Cherlynn: I saw the headline, but what you're describing sounds a lot like that black mirror contact lens situation, right? Where you like scan people face [00:42:00] recognition and immediately pull up their like profile info.
There are social network and it's not just black mirror, right? It's a lot of science fiction movies have done that, but yeah, I, that's what it sounds like they're doing. I don't know if I'm mistaken.
Devindra: So essentially like they, it looks like it's going through the glasses, but also going straight to the information is going to a smartphone.
We're actually seeing it too. So you're kind of getting more information there. I will say there is a certain. Especially from a company like Meta, which I'm sure has looked at this stuff. Like we have all your, we have all your friends. We know who your friends are. We have all these databases of faces and names.
So we have that information too. I'm sure once Meta is ready to do like true AR stuff, this is going to be something that they do. I also think, and I think I learned this later in life is that I'm probably a little face blind. I used to think I was just bad at remembering people. But I personally think Oh, I have, I genuinely have a problem like deconstructing a face, unless you're somebody with like really distinctive [00:43:00] hair or something like that, or like a really distinctive face, things just kind of blur together for me.
So just professionally, I could see it being kind of useful or socially, I guess. So I see the uses, but yeah.
Cherlynn: Like that scene in Devil Wears Prada where like Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt are instructing, walking out to her. That's your like nightmare.
Devindra: Which is which?
Cherlynn: Yeah, but then like with the glasses, you never have to worry maybe, but again, AI has to be like reliable.
What if it recognizes, what if AI is also face blind and it's this is the governor or of, I guess, I don't know, Minnesota. I think I already
Devindra: know to distrust my brain when it comes to faces. So now it's just okay, you're just helping. Maybe I distrust you a little bit too, but you probably. You are probably better than me at some of
Cherlynn: this stuff.
However, to be clear, it's not as if Emily Blunt was all that reliable in the movie as well. Anita and Hathaway, the update pack to help her. So we, that's
Devindra: a great movie.
Cherlynn: You know, I saw that in
Devindra: theaters. It's a great movie. Anyway, this is a story from 404media. So yeah, check them [00:44:00] out at 404media. co. Love their work and love that they picked this whole thing up.
I also love to see like students doing this sort of work because this is what you want to see people doing, like not being like, I can't wait till I get a job at Google or Meta or wherever, but also taking this technology and like pushing it to its limits and like showing what is possible and what could be dangerous about it too.
So this is super cool. Did you have any thoughts, Cherlynn? Cause I know you went to talk about this before, but Reddit's policy changes to make site wide protests nearly impossible. We saw this story float up too. Kind of interesting there. Maybe a little disappointing from Reddit. Yeah.
Cherlynn: I am a chronic Reddit.
So I am
Devindra: as well. Yeah.
Cherlynn: Yeah.
Devindra: Yeah.
Cherlynn: When I'm not playing match factory, I am trying to rot my brain by doom scrolling Reddit, and I know that Reddit has had a lot of issues recently too that's got a lot of us up in arms. There was like that