Latest / The SME Stream / AI slop, smart rings and riding the S-curve: The year in tech and what’s ahead

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AI slop, smart rings and riding the S-curve: The year in tech and what’s ahead · The SME Stream

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: It's the final episode for twenty twenty five off the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Business of Tech powered by two Degrees Business, and what
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a year it's been. From aislop and humanoid robots to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: smart rings, streaming wars, and ev angst. It's felt like
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the future finally arrived with all the weirdness that implies.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: So to help make sense of it all, this week's
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: show turns into a bit of a text doc take
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: for the year that was and a peek into the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: year to come. Joining the podcast is someone who's been
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: watching these Ways of Innovation break for decades, which doctor
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: co founder, market researcher and consumer tech guru Pat Pilcher.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Pat has been tracking everything from the AI megashift in
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Apple's foldable dilemma, to the boom and Chinese evs, the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: great streaming backlash, and why home robots and smart homes
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: finally started becoming useful in twenty twenty five. So we'll
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: cover all of that, and we'll also look ahead to
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the categories about to explode potentially into six from smart
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: contact lenses and humanoid housekeeper robots to solid state batteries
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: that could rewrite the rule for evs, wearables, and laptops
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Pat's been reviewing tech gear for around thirty years. He's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: one of the country's most experienced consumer tech reviewers and journalists.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: So I think you'll enjoy this bumper episode of the
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Business of Tech. We pack a lot in so pour
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: something festive your notifications and settle in for a fast
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: tour through the year in tech with Pat Pilcher here
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: on the Business of Tech. So, Pat, welcome to the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Business of Tech. How are you doing?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Flash and pretty? It's all good. It's been a really
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: crazy time actually, there's so many, so many launchers, and
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Black Friday of course has been utterly insane. It has
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: so yeah, yeah, a whole moment.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And look, we've known each other for probably twenty five years.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: You're the biggest tech head I know. Obviously the co
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: found under an editor of Witch Doctor, which is probably
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: actually the only outlet consistently covering consumer tech in New
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Zealand today.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there aren't many of us about and the numbers
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: are shrinking, but yeah, Witch Doctors hanging in there. So yeah.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Music lifestyle, Gary Steele obviously one of the most experienced
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: music journalists in the country, a massive gear head on
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: home high five stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, So he's part
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of that as well, So go to witchdoctor dot co
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: dot nz to check out all of that. But you've
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: married that over the years. Market research really is your background,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: right with ABC? Initially?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I initially started out with IDC.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: It was the heart of the tech boom. What a
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: time to be doing tech tech market research. It was crazy.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: But it's sort of been really interesting doing research and
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: tech because there is a bit of a relationship between
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: tech journalism and research, because I mean, if you're journalist,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: you're doing research of course, and you get to see
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of crazy treams happening in the market. And
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five has been a year of some pretty
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: cool trends that are started kicking off.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how would you sort of summon up? So it's
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: just ai everything at the moment, and AI agents really
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: hit peak in twenty twenty five. But with your yeah,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: with your sort of marketing research trends had on and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: your love of tech, what are the things that really
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: stood out for you?
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I tell you what what stood out was who was
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: absent from the game? I mean you have you know,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: you have chat GPT, Microsoft co Pilot, Google's Gemini, which
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: is of course the big AI claud treanthropic. Every tech
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: plarer and their pet pedle had an AI offering except Apple,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: you know, and this is just crazy. This is a
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: company that sets the trends that everyone slavishly follows, and
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: they missed the bus on the biggest AI trend probably
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: of the decade.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Or did they? Or have they? I mean, are they
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: been quite clever about about being a late fight in this.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I think, look that there is a lot to be
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: said for doing that, because I mean it's such a
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: fast moving feast at the moment. I mean, you know,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I'm seeing new iterations of AI models and AIS systems
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: almost every week at the moment, and the capabilities are
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: just evolving and advancing almost on a daily basis. So
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: stepping back from that until they get a mature offering
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: in a way quite sensible. And I mean the iPhone
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: folders are common and if I was Apple, I keep
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: my powder dry and slaps MAYI goodness into the iPhone
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: fold And I think they could set the market on fire.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I mean they've got the resources.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: They do have the resources. They're sitting on a cash
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: pile that's just vast. They have had a you know,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: obviously Apple Intelligence has been a dud and they've admitted
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: that they've changed out the team. A lot of the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: products offerings there have been delayed. Serri Supercharged with its
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: generative AI is not that flash.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the thing is they really you know,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: corporate group thing prevailed at the start, and I think
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: the Siri team got handed this AI think as it
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: was emerging and they went, ah, we've already got Suri,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: you know, and of course Syria is script based. There's
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: no AI and Surrey at all in that. You could
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: argue serious is done as a brick really, but so
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: they got off on the back foot and everyone's gone
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: past them. But I think they're now looking at that
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: regrouping and have put some serious work in. So Michael
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: has watched the space.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the iPhone Air, lovely looking device, but has disappointed
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: when it comes to sales. So people are still going, yeah,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I just want the latest iPhone.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the thing. I think it's a really
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: skinny phone, you know, it's Apple Gear. It is really
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: tasty to look at, but you know, it does it
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: scratched at it for an iPhone user, And I think
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: the mid range and flagship models are really what people
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: are spending money on. So who knows. But what struck
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: me the last couple of years with the iPhones is
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: they're very samey Samy. There's been a very little real innovation,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: and I think that twenty twenty six is probably going
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: to be the year of the iPhone fold. You know,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Apple really need to jump on the fold bandwagon, and
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: I'm picking you'll probably get the technology of the iPhone
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Air married with a foldable phone to come up with
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: something comparable to Samsung's Galaxy Fold seven. You know, a
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: really skinny foldable phone that will just be the same
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: form factor as a normal slab style phone, but while
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: unfolded to a mini tablet.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I reckon the equivalent of the flip, which is more
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like the clamshell foldable which Samsung has done up both as.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Date, they're really I mean because they basically really pocketable
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: and you know, they have become a normal phone when
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: you flip them open. I mean, I really like them,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and that's one of these categories that I think hasn't
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: had the love that it deserves.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are expensive. Let's go back to AI assistance
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: because that there's been a lot going on there. We
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: just saw a couple of weeks ago the debut of
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Gemini three, which is getting rave reviews on the benchmarks.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: That's doing very well, also performing very well. We've seen
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: some of those leaked memos from Open Ai. Ei're worried
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: about Gemini.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I think they've got a lot to worry about it
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: at the moment. I mean, the you know, technology tends
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: to go on what they call the S shaped curve,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: and you know at the beginning where at the bottom
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: of the yes before it slopes up, you get you know,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: sort of this this mass sort of promotion and you
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: start heading into mass market adoption. But it's starting to
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: mature really fast, and if you're not at that inflection point,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: you could find yourself in a bit of trouble. So
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: who knows, but open Ai definitely there. But I think,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: you know, the AI think you're hearing a lot about
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: what's bad with AI. I mean, you know, there are
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: some huge downsides. I mean, go on to Facebook, go
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: on to x go on to LinkedIn, and they're a
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: wash with AI slop. You know, it's I went on
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: to a well I won't name them because I probably
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: get in trouble with lawyers. But I went onto a
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: very prominent bookstore last night with my reader, trying to
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: find something decent reader, and all I could find a
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: box packed with AI slot, you know, really badly written books.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: And if you're an academic, I mean friends of mine
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: who are university professors are just pulling your hair out
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: because of course kids are resorting to AI. They're not learning,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: they're getting AI do the work for them. And I
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: think the really fascinating story was UK's Channel four and
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: a documentary called Will AI Take My Job? And this
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: had this lovely host. She went through the program and explained,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: you know, in laypersons speak, what AI was and how
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: it was going to affect businesses and things. And then
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: right at the very end, she steps up at the
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: camera she goes, by the way, I'm not real I
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: generated and was gone, yeah, you could almost hear the
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: sound of fourteen million jaws hitting the shad pole collectively.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: It was, you know, and this is a thing that
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I think people didn't realize with AI. It's the uncanny
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: value effect is, which is you know where sort of
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: machines are close to human but not close enough, but
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: they're creepy. We're sort of getting past that now and
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: ais can actually pass themselves off as humans in specific settings,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: and it's a little scary to watch.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And I think particularly with saw A three open AI's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: video AI generator, and when that exploded onto social media
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: and for the first time, I was actually seeing videos
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: of you know, like a line attacking someone, and normally
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Facebook is full of.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: These real videos all Smith eating spaghetti. I mean that
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: I had nightmares for weeks after watching Yeah, but that
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: one was clearly like weird. But the realism now to
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: a point and sometimes they have a water mic, but
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: we are I think you're right past that uncanny valley stage.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And it's really infuriating when you realize I've just spent
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: ten seconds looking at something and I've only realized by
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: reading the comments that it's fake. That's scary.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: It's really scary. And I think the problem is the
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: general public need to be a lot more critical, a
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: lot more skeptical, and they're not in.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Our platform, so just running this stuff without prompting.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Or I mean, I've had access to Google's Gemini Vio
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: video creation model and that thing is astonishing. You know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: I'm generating I generated a little cinematic mini movie off
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: my Greyhound basically driving a Lamborghini into the Grand Casino
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: in Monte Carlo, and you know, I describe what he
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: was doing, what the car looked like, where it was,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: the camera positioning, and then twen minutes later I had
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: this whole collection of clips that I just ended up
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: with Microsoft clip champ into this little mini movie. It
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: was basically had some James Bond music and voila, and
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: it was cinematic and obviously Greyhound Stone drive Lamborghinis. But
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: other than that, if there'd been a human being not
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: a dog, you wouldn't have known. You know, it was
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: literally that good.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: For all the advances, you still have the taels, the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: things that give it away, like fingers, it still has
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: a terrible job of.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: What is it with things and background signs. You know,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: they have this weird sort of Sanskrit slash tie. It
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: doesn't make sense, you know.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it can't do it can't inject words, credible
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: words into an image and three can.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Now this is the thing they reckon Gemini. Three can
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And in my early testing year, you know it's I
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: could put stuff up in social media. I mean, luckily
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: there's guardrails built in you can't post manipulate public figures
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: into doing things that would incriminate them or whatever. So
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: for instance, I kind of have the PM shagging a
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: sheep or something really that would cause litigation or whatever.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: But there is still so much scope, and as we're
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: in an election year, this is going to become a
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: really big issue I think.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So obviously there's still sort of an experimentation mode
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: with a lot of these AI assistants, but the business
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: model underpinning it. We saw Microsoft slapped majorly in Australia
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: by the Commerce Commissioner over there. They did a big
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: apology here in New Zealand as well about bundling the
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: co pilot assistant into an increased subscription for Microsoft three
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: sixty five. They had their backtracks seriously on that.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Well, this brings me to my next key trend I
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: noticed in twenty twenty five, and I don't know if
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I'm allowed to say this, but inititification.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and Corey doctor O's theory, and it's happening.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: It's happening right now. I mean, you know, you subscribe
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: to a service, it sounds fantastic, and it's only five
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: dollars a month. Three months later, it's twenty five dollars
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: a month. Does less, requires more of your information and
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: they can't guarantee your privacy and by the way, your
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: password has been stolen. It's not good and sort of
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: you marry that up with AI. It's a little concerning.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: So and as I said earlier, we're heading into an
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: election year. I can just see a few problems on
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the way.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the business model isn't quite there underpending these
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: AI agents, right, I mean the investment that Microsoft, Open Ai,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Google are putting into that is not being returned yet
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and it won't be for years.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: But that's the thing. I mean, it's it's got a
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: very long tail. And you know, we're in an environment
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: where geopolitical instabilities and macro economic instabilities are at play,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and we have companies investing billions and billions dollars and
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: massive data centers and Video is doing very nice out
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: of it. But you know, you saw the panic last
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: week when Video were announcing your results. You know that
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: speculation of tech bubble was going to burst. And if
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: that happens, I dread to think what New Zealand's economy
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: is going to do. If there is a tech bubble implosion.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we saw the other news a couple of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: weeks ago about Google doing a deal potentially with Meta
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: for its sensor processing units. So they've been quietly building
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: up their own chip capability to run their own data centers. Yes,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and obviously that's impressing third parties like Meta.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing. I mean, Silicon is, you know,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: such a hot potato now. I mean you just look
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: at what's happened in China with the you know, the
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: tech ban on Chinese companies from getting ultra high end
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: chip fab capabilities. You know, TCMC obviously got shut out
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: from the Chinese market with certain ship technologies, and China's
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: had to really work hard to get around that to
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: go beyond fourteen nanometers. And you know, chips are the
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: new global currency because you've got to have these data
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: centers to run AI, to stay in the game, to
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: keep sheeholders happy, and it's all very circular, could get wobbly,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: who knows.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And the Chinese seem to be doing really well with
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: their own internal economy. Now for chips, they're not quite
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: as good on benchmarks as in video, but enough to
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: do most of what PROTECTAR consumers want, oh for sure.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is the thing. I mean. I wrote
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: a while back in a witch Doctor about the Trump's
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: move to ban Wahwei and how Wahwei, if they were smart,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: would stick to their guns and innovate. And they have been,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: and they're now producing silicone that does rival Western silicon.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: They've got their own operating system which is absolutely exploded
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: in the Chinese market and is starting to get really
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: big in Southeast Asia. It's harmony OS and the band
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: hasn't actually weakened China all, it's made them stronger. And
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: if I were, you know, sort of some of these
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: US companies, I would be a little scared because, you know,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: there's this new operating system, there's new silicon technologies coming out.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: China just announced an analog chip that uses analog, not
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: digital technologies. It's vastly faster than anything digital, uses a
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: fraction of the power. Now, look at the data seender situation.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Power consumption is a real issue. There's a race on
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: with AI. It's geopolitical. China could get the edge through this,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: you know, it's everything's up for grabs.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, probably the biggest most flashy text splash of the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: year wasn't entirely successful. It was metas smart glasses. Oh yeah,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: events where the demos sort of failed. But actually it
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: was quite impressive how far they've come in smart glasses,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: right I am.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: I was Astralia recently and for some reason, you can't
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: get them in New Zealand. I mean, why don't we
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: get certain things in New Zealand? I mean, Google, where
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: is a pixel phone?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Never?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a weird thing. But I had
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: to play with a pair of meta glasses and they
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: were the Oakley ray band or Oakley ray band which
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: one ray bands, and these things were seriously nice and
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: you put them on. You've got an assistant. Basically you
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: can talk through through the glasses and uses bone productions
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: so you can always hear this cons assistant wherever you are,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and it's got a camera. And I just looked around
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: and said describe and a couple what it was. Describe this?
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: It described it to me. I said, translate that sign it?
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Did you know? And Facebook have demonstrated other prototype glasts
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: where you wear a band on your wrist. It can
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: track all the tender movements so you can do hand
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: gestures and all track movement and you are displays built
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: into the glasses that overlay reality, so you can have
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: a graphic pop up beside someone, so having a chat
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: with someone negotiating a deal. The glasses can do stress
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: and they've voice tell you if they're lying or not,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: you know, or if you if you're in a strange
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: city you need to find your way around, you'll get
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: a map overlay on the streets and three dimensions atill
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: point you where we need to go. And these new
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: glasses are I mean, the technology is very tantalizing. But
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: will we see it in New Zealand. I don't know.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Well, eventually it will hit critical mass and they'll have
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: to sell it here. But it's interesting that Meta spent
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: so much money on virtual reality, brought Oculus and created
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: its reality labs spent forty to fifty billion dollars trying
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to create the metaverse that hasn't really worked. But here
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: we have an augmented reality sort of world that could
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: be the breakthrough and may even be the format that
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: smartphones morph into.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, and it's something I'm going to touch
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: on later on. I mean, that's another key trend that
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: I think is going to be really excited in tweeny
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: twenty six, So watch the.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Space Okay, so smart glasses, yeah, twenty twenty six. Related
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to that another wearable smart rings. We both had a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: crack at the at wearing the Samsung smart ring. This year,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: there are a couple more on the market.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm amazed. Actually, how many have just started surfacing
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: your whole pile of little parallel import brands? As a
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Samsung brand is an Aura brand, I think? So a yeah,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: why can't they just call them something normal, bobbed, you know,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: But yes, it's interesting. I mean, you know, you can
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: wear a smart watch. It'll track your health, it'll track
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: your heart rate. But I mean they're seriously big. It's
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: like giving a hubcap on your damn risk. And you know,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: notifications are a real distraction. I whan I've lost count
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the amount of times I've been working my way through
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: a complex subject, researching a story or whatever, and I've
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: got a notification off my watch totally derailed my train
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: of thought, and another two hours later, I'm finally back
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: where I was. You know, so they're blessing and a
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: curse smart watches, but smart rings they aren't obtrusive. You
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: put them on your finger they don't bombard with notifications.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: They're tiny, they fit on your finger and I don't
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: get in the way. And the thing I really like
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: about them is that by monitoring your health stats, they
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: can actually tell you proactively when you're coming down with
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: a cold or a flu a week before you start
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: noticing symptoms.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Are they more accurate than smart watches generally?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Yes. In my initial testing, I was really surprised at
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: just how good it actually was. And I got a
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: blood pressure cuff, I got a digital thermometer, and I
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: tested the Jesus out of the smart ring and I
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty close to mark. I mean,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: it's obviously not going to be medical grade perfect, but
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: it's right up there.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think for particularly for people who are
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: runners and just want to go completely minimalist, it will
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: gather all of that data. It doesn't have to have
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the phone there, so then we'll sink it when you
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: come back to the house. So from that point of view,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the thing for me is I just kept forgetting to
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: charge it, you know, so yeah, it's flat, and then
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to yet another thing, I have to charge it.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I have another trend that will cover that off. So
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, so we'll get to that show. We
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: can keep listening people.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we've covered smart rings. Let's a bit of
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a chat about streaming. What happened in twenty twenty five
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: either than the price going up?
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Oh well, this is the thing. I mean, there's a
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: real history about this, and I've written about this in
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: The Herald years ago when the whole you know, piracy
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: regulation thing and the copyright amendments were all going through,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: and I did a lot of research and very quickly
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: came to the conclusion that, you know, piracy is an
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: unwinnable game of whack a mole for regulators. No one
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: has won the piracy game. And the only way we've
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: actually put a real dent and piracy has been through
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: the launch of streaming services. You know, not only did
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: they push video easy into extinction, thank god, because going
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: and getting a videotape in the southerly is not great fun.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: But you know, they sort of put a dent in
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: local broadcasters, PATV broadcasters, video stores, but also they actually
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: put a real crimp in piracy statistics. Piracy went down
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: massively with outvent of Netflix, Amazon, Apple Plus, because you
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: go pick up something and watch it, and it was
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: twenty bucks a month or something was affordable, you know.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: But this year we've seen a lot of these companies
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: up in their prices, putting restrictions on who you can
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: share your account with, and all sorts of things that
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: have made them really unattractive. Add to that a cost
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of living crisis. People are starting to go, my, the
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: hell with this, and they're bat piraty again. And piracy
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: is actually starting to.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Increase, right, And we do have legislation which was sort
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of ill conceived. We've written about this fifteen years ago
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: or something, which was very much aimed at.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Streaming download peer to peer downloads mainly. Yeah, but I
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: mean a lot of streaming is peer to peer anyways.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So they went after the peer to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: peer networks and left all these streaming sites. So you
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: saw just like all these illegal streaming sites crop up.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Then they decided they're recording companies for music and the studios.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: It was too expensive to go after New Zealanders to
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: prosecute them, so nothing has happened there. But we have
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: seen this return to piracy driven by this just as
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: share expense of it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And also, I mean, look, virtually every key we home
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: well held Kei Home has fiber, and downloading a TV
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: episode now with gigabit fiber is an exercise in two minutes.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: You know, it is just so effortless now, whereas you know,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: about fifteen years ago, we were all sitting on you know,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: DSL if we were lucky, or fifty six K mode
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: ands we're really unlucky, and downloading a TV episode was
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: a day's work. Yeah, so it's going to be interesting
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: to watch. And I think the other side of the
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: coin is that consumers are a lot more savvy. You know,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: they've all got VPNs and they're all looking at services
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: that hide their tracks. And even if law changes happen,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: it's going to be really hard not the crack. And
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: if streaming services keep going the way they are, you know,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: it's going to be interesting. What happened?
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's going to be some consolidation. Netflix
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: has survived as the juggernaut and is doing quite well.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to tell when it comes to Apple
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and Amazon just how profitable they're streaming stuff is. It's
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: sort of a bit of a lost leader for Amazon
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Prime in terms of Prime video and similarly for Apple.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: But we do have a bigger streaming ecosystem than ever,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: but it's more frustrating for consumers because all the good
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: content is smanted across all these players.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: I sat down a while back and did the mathematics
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: on what we're paying for different streaming services, and I
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: shocked myself. I was really surprised that just how much
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: money is quietly being bled out of my bank account
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: every month for all these different streaming services that I
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: barely use. And you know, it's just a mess. So
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Will Amazon stay the course, Will Apple
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: stay the course? And then of course underneath that you've
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: got brick Box and all these other sort of you know,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: second tear streaming services as well, and behind that you've
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: got YouTube, the sleeping giant smart TVs bring it into
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: everyone's lounge. But will people continue to pay vast amounts
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: of money as they're struggling to feed themselves and heat
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: their owns? Yeah?
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. And it's been interesting in watching
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the New Zealand streaming landscape in terms of our own broadcasters,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and I think Timmans has done a good job. It's
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: a much better user experience now, you know, the ads
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: aren't really clunky and jarring when they come in. But
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the reality is they're really up against it, aren't they
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: staying relevant?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: This is to my mind one of the probably the
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: most critical little tech battles happening that no one knows
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: anything about. And you know what we're starting to see,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: of course, is cargo culture happening in New Zealand. You know,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: New Zealand culture, New Zealand stories are being lost in
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: the sea of Netflix, Apple, Amazon, yahd Yah yah and
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: I I think TV and z TV three they all
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: have a really compelling point of difference. They need to
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: play as hard and as fast as they can. Unfortunately
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: requires money, and that is producing New Zealand content, telling
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: New Zealand stories, hearing New Zealand accents on the TV.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, there's been some great New Zealand
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: content produced, but there's just not enough of it. And
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I think New Zealanders need a reason to get behind
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: New Zealand content. And you know, the government did slap
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: that there was that taxa talking about changes to video production,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: but it's still nibbling around the edges of the problem. Yeah,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: and I think, you know, if that doesn't change, so
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: we're going to lose something pretty precious.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: What we also need more of is electric vehicles if
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: we're going to hit our twenty fifty or even twenty
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: thirty targets for emissions reduction. That you know, flipping the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: fleet is essential to that. But effectively, since the subsidies
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: came off, sales are really tanged, haven't they.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: It's really interesting they have dipped. And it's quite sad
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: because you know, up until sort of twenty twenty five,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: you could walk down the road and you know, there
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: was quite good odds that an electric car would just
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: quietly were passed. You to be an MG or a
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: BYD or you know, if you're especially wealthy, a tesla.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: But like you're saying, I mean, you know, it's starting
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: to change, and it's really interesting. I mean EV's are
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: pretty compelling, you know they. I've got a friend who
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: bought a BYD. He's got his house fittered with solar
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: and he's basically charging his car, has got a car
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: to petrol car for long distance driving the EV for
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: you know, driving between the coast and Wellington, and he's
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: basically saving a ton of money.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Even with the road using charges now applied, it's still
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: a really good economic compared to what.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: You're paying at the fuel pump. Definitely, yeah, yeah.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And I think this year has been characterized really by
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the arrival of a whole ranging new Chinese brands, Cherry
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: being one of them.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Yep, Cherry MG byd I've lost.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Count great Great Wall has sort of utes and stuff
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: now and then the Shark, the bad Shike massive, yes,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: hybrid ute.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's a beast, that thing. And this
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: is the thing. I mean, you know, back in the
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: sort of seventies and eighties, you know, the Japanese took
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: over the car market, and I think we're seeing history
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: repeat but with Chinese. And you know, the Chinese EV's
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: just everywhere. It's interested in going to China. You know,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: back in the eighties or nineties, you went to China,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: it was smoggy, it was noisey, it was chaotic. But
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: you go there now and I can't know how quiet
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: it is. Everything's electric, evening just quietly worse passed you
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: and the air is actually clean, which is quite shocking too. Yeah.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I think there's still a couple of challenges around evs,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: even though the price is quite attractive now, the infrastructure
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: for charge out and about. You're still sort of curing sometimes,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: so we just need more infrastructure quickly. It's been doing
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a great job and others, but you know, I think
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the government put a big commitment to increase the number
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: of EV charges. That needs to happen, definitely. Yeah, And
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: also just dispelling the myths about the safety of lithium
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: ion batteries, which there is summers there, but compared to
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: petrol diesel vehicles, you never hear about them going up
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in smoke because it's a lot more common.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Well, this is really interesting you mentioned this because my
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: colleague Gary Steele, who co owned Which Doctor, wrote a
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: story about this a while back, just about how there
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: was an accident between a bus and a vehicle and
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the bus caught fire and you know, all over social
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: media was our batteries exploded and you know, the sky
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: is falling. It turned out, of course, that was a
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: petrol vehicle that a caught fire and set the bus
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: on fire and large parts of the bus of fiberglass
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: POxy resume glass that burns like anything. And you know,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: so there is a lot of misinformation around there about this,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: a lot of fear and a lot of fair uncertainty
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: in doubt, but there is a trend coming intween twenty
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: six I will touch on that really addresses that.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we're sitting in my apartment building in
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Wellington and the Body corporate here has banned electric vehicles
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: from being in the garages underneath this building because they're
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: so worried about a cargoing on fire and basically taking
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: out the entire building because it's really hard to put
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: these battery fires out. It is luckily three minutes down
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the road is the Central Wellington fire station, but it's
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: still not on strike. There's just that fair fact there.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: We've got to get over and you know, the technology
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: is relatively very safe, so hopefully we'll see that happen.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Now here's the crazy thing. Electric vehicles are nothing new.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I mean they had electric vehicles at the turn of
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the century. Yeah, you know in New York in the
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: turn of the century. If you've caught a taxi it
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: was electric. Yeah, you know, it didn't go very far
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: and lead acid battery, so you have five miles or
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: something crazy, but yeah, you know.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, but we're also saying I've been traveling a
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: bit this year and it's amazing, including here in New
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: zeal in airports and that you're seeing these big industrial
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: robotic vacuum cleaners. You go to restaurants. I was in Spain,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Ireland and a lot of food is now being delivered
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: to tables by robots. By robots, dirty plates been collected
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: from tables, so just you know, and that is seeping
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: into the home as well, like the robot Great New
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Zealand company making robotic lawnmowers.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: They're awesome. They're awesome, and you know, a robot launmight
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: is something I cover deeply. You know, I have quite
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: a large section and mowing lawns is basically ours out
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: of my life. I'm never getting back. If I can
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: find a robot that can do that for me, I'm
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: in Like Flynn, I just have to talk the fiscal
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: manager into approving budgets. But they're great, and you know,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: this has twenty twenty five has really been the year
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: that home robots have come of age. I mean, you know,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: robot vacuum clean is that everywhere you.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Know, and ebot I've had in the apartment here. It
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: specializes in deep kipe, which we have does a great job.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and the latest ones I've got the ex
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: eleven at home that I just reviewed. And this thing
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: can actually lift itself over steel threshold, so you know,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: from carpenter to toll floors. It's got AI built in,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: so i'd avoid sea things on the ground and avoids them.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: You know. Used to be that a robot vacuum a
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: few years back would run over a USB charging cable.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: It would tangle up, the robot would stop. We'd have
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: to run and take it apart untangle it. By the end,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: you might as well vacuum yourself. This new breed and
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: new generation with AI and actually does the job really well.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: And I'm actually struggling to tell the difference between a
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: robot vacuum in my kitchen and me going in the
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: kitchen and doing it with the vacuum climber that yeah,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: good they've got.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is the sort of the future we've
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: been promised for a long time.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Where Jetson's we're here.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of the sort of the hassle and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the mundane stuff in life is taken over by robots.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about your picks for twenty
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: twenty six around humanoid robots. Oh yeah, oh yeah, but
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: let's just touch on small homes. We're sort of both
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: enthusiasts of this, you know, connecting up the thermostats, lights,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff to control our homes. The ecosystem
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: is definitely getting a lot more cohesive now, right.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is yeah, And look you've hit the nail
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: right on the head. This is the number of the issue. Previously,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: you had three competing ecosystems. You had Apple's Home Kit,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: you had Googles what was Google's called Google Homes, and
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: then you had Alexa. They were incompatible and if you
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: went up and bought smart home gadgets, you had to
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: make sure you bought the right ecosystem for what you've
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: already had in your house. And to say that was annoying,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: painful and expensive as an understatement, But everyone in the
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: industry put the head together. They came up with the
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: standard called matter and that's now starting to mature and
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: we're seeing a lot of Matter capable gadgets hitting the market.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: These things will basically work regardless if you have an Alexa,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Apple Surrey or a Google what are these smart things
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: called the Google one's complaining Google Home devices Home? Yeah, yeah,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: you know, they'll just work and I mean that's really great.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: So I mean smart homes I think are just really
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: coming of age. And I mean I've got smart home
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: year this year I've used it. I mean the new
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: ring doorbell. Yeah that with the smart TV, which I'll
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: get to what a combination.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got one of those rings on the way
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: into the apartment and if someone gets out of the lift,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: it's got a proximity sensor, so if they go the
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: other way, it doesn't send me an alert, but if
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: they come up to my front door, yes, that will
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: alert me. Says They've got really sharpe in terms of
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: what they're capable of doing.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: And I mean Mike Greyhound comes in, it tells me
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: there's a dog at the door. Courrier drops off a
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: package at my door. It tells me there's a package
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: at my door. And of course if there's a porch
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: partron and steal the package, they're on camera as well.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you know it's I think that's really cool.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: And the other thing, I really loved smart light bulbs.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: They're nothing new, but my god, they're fun, you know.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: And I mean you can change the ammens of a
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: room so quickly and so easily, you know, and I've
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: been using the whiz Hdumi light strip sync thing on
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: the back of my TV and it sort of does
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: for video what's around sound does for audio. Yeah, so
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: I'm watching TV there's an underwater scene. All of a
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: sudden in the back wall and the ceiling are blue
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: and shimmering like water, and it's just it's really immersive.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: It's kind of cool.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cool. And in my apartment, as you can see,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: there's no overhead lights. Yes, it's nineteen sixties apartment. They
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: didn't install lights as a design thing. So I've been
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: putting these sorts of panels, led panels and light strips
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to light the side off the room and it's working
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: out really well. And seeing as we're talking Gadget's twenty
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: twenty five, any real standout things that you've had in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: your lab testing this.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh look, I mean there's been a whole bunch
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: of things. I mean, first one I think would be
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: the Shark Ninja pizza robines. It's not technically tech, but
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: it is sort of, you know, out of nowhere. This
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: brand called Ninja just popped up and they're actually an
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: American brand, even though they sound like a Chinese knockoff,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and they basically said, hey, do you want to review
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: this pizza oven. And as well as worrying about tech,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I write about food. So I went down to Pizza rap.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: I learned how to make really good pizzas and YadA
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: YadA ya, and this thing really astonished me. I was
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: crafting Neapolitan style pizzas with no effort. You know, it's
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: totally bomb proof. And the thing I love about it
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: is that it's got a pizza stone, but it's also
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: got a little palett box. He put wood pealetts in
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: and it supplies a bit of smoke, so you get
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: that wood fired pizza thing happening. Yeah, it's really good.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: I mean an the amount of money we've saved going
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: out for pizza, you know, because I don't need to
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: I can make them as good as anywhere go out
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: for dinity.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's what eight hundred bucks I think that says for.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And what's good about it is not just a pizza oven.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: It can do a brisket, it can do a low
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: and slow cook, it can do a roast. Oh yeah,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: all of those sorts of things as well.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: So I've got to say a roast chalk in the
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: thing is absolutely brilliant, you know.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, You've been covering TVs for for a long
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: time and it sort of seems to have run out
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: of steam really in terms of innovation and TVs. We've
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: gone eight K, we've gone O lead, Q leads, we've
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: gone HDR, we've gone one hundred and twenty herds and more.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Anything exciting in the TV world.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this is a part of the trade. I mean,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: occupational hazard is reviewing TV. So I've put my back
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: up more times than I can count, lugging a you know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: an eighty five inch TV up onto the TV cabinet.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: But one TV that stood out, really stood out for
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: me was Pattersonic Z ninety five A. This TV it's
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: only D so it's got those beautiful contrast level, super
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: vivid colors on screen, motions, silky smooth. It's four K,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: so if you can get four K footage, it looks fantastic.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: But the selling point for me that really got me excited.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: It's got an EXI built in. And just the other
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: night I was watching SO and someone came to the
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: door and I got to pop up on the TV
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: of video pop up showing his people at the door
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: overlaying what I was watching on TV, and I was like, oh.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's coming from your ring camera.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Ring camera on my front door. Just saw them and
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: because the TV's got Alexa on it and I've got
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: the a Lexus skill installed, this video popped up. And
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: the other thing I love about it is that I
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: don't use the remote. I just talked to my TV
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: and Alexa turned the volume down twenty percent. Alexa, find
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: me something good on YouTube. Yeah, and it just works.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: It's a smart TV. I mean there's a lot of
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: smart TVs out there, but some of them are pretty
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: horrible to use. Yeah, this isn't I actually found this
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: really usue.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I think we were a bit skeptical when we went
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: to the launch of that about Amazon basically taking over
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the operating system of a TV. But it does work.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: You do have to sort of sign in to make
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the most of it as an Amazon account hold in
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: which I'll get a larry off, but then it's sort
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: of it does a reasonable job of using AI. I
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: guess going, Okay, these are the things you're interested in.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: So the front screen displays all of that, and then
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the slight home capability.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: So it's Amazon. I mean the downside of course being
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: an Amazon operating system, as it puts Amazon Prime first
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: and foremost, so if you're not an Amazon Prime user, Yeah,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: it's not ideal. But it's Android based, the fire tam
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: is and Android basing, so you can sideload so many different
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: call aps. I've actually got the Xbox app on it
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: and I've peered a control up of the TV. I'm
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: playing Xbox games on my TV with just a controller.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: I don't even need an Xbox. Yeah, that's kind of cool.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Samsung, solid, solid year for Sam saying nothing really exciting.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I was more interested really LGA. The C five I
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: had to look at, was very impressed there with you
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: know again the black blacks, all of that letter is
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: just fantastic. You had to look at the G five,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: which is the high end one.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the G five astonished me. I mean it was
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: only it has the one drawback with O letters. It's
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: not always as bright as LCD with backlighting. But LG
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: have got this new only technology. I can't what the
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: heck they call it. It's got a TLA, a three
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: letter acronym, but it's super super bright and you could
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: almost use this TV as a tanning clinic. It's that
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: bright and it was eye popping, absolutely beautiful to use.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: And the other thing I really like about the LGG
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: five was the remote has a gyroscope in it, so
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: you moved the remote around with your wrist and a
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: pointer moves around on the screen. And I handed the
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: remote to my wife as a litmus test to see
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: how duredive it was without telling her how to use it.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: She sort of sat there for a couple of minutes
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: going what the heck, you know, and then five minutes
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: sadus she was merely away.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a great minimalist remote. They've redesigned for
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: those TVs, so it's just a simpler way of interacting
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Just good design, you know. And I think, like you say,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: the technology, I think it's matured for TVs, but design hasn't.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: And this is where players like Samsung, LG, Panasonic are
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: really earning the stripes, you know, they're refining the design
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: and just making the TV is much more joyful to you.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and similarly, in the smartphone market, it's sort of
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: running out of steam in terms of innovation and design tricks.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: They can come up with anything excite you this year
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: in phones.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Phones. Yeah, so phones are absolutely fascinating. Foldables. You know,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: there are so many foldables coming out, and I my
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: daily driver is a Galaxy Z fold seven phone. It's
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: beautiful and it folds up. It no longer feels like
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: I've got a phone book in my pocket, so you know,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: I'm no longer ripping the lining out of my pockets.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Out of my pockets.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And that's the first year. Really it took sort of
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: seven iterations to get to a point where the S
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: twenty five Ultra, you know, you actually probably tip towards
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: the foldable if you could afford it.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: This is the thing. I mean, the foldables now so compelling.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, the only thing I think S twenty five
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Ultra has over the foldables is the cameras. Yeah, it's
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: got beautiful cameras, but this foldable, it's gorgeous. It just
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: does everything, you know. And the thing which doctor puts
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of which octor is high fi and the
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: thing a lot. But we don't know about Samsung is
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: their phones actually have what they call adapt hearing, and
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: you can put a set of headphones on and far
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: up adapt hearing with your phone and dial the audio
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: output to your specific hearing and the difference that makes
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: with the sound is phenomenal. So yeah, I'm really taken
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: with it. It's been the year I think of the foldable,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: and I think Apple's iPhone fold whoever they're going to
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: call it a crazy marketing name. I think that's just
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: going to basically add a whole new level of competition
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: into the foldable genre and we're just going to see
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: things get better.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been using the Opophone X nine, which I
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: really like. I think it's the coming of age. They've
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: still got a bit of work to do, but at
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the high end, you know, they always really struggled to
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: compete against Samsung, so I think this is the start
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: maybe if of that happening. We've also got Honor coming
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: into the market launching.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: It's really exciting. I mean, you know, I was a
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: bit of a wi Awei fan where I love to
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: phones when their cameras were astonishing, you know, and with
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Wahwei no longer in the market, I was a bit sad.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: But with Honor coming, which has Whawei DNA, it's no
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: longer really waycas I them off. But if they can
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: get the same level of innovation as Whahwei had. You know,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: that's only going to be great news because you know,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: the amount of bang you're getting for your buck with
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: a phone now is just astonishing. I you know, I
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: found in my drawer a few months back an original
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Galaxy Samsung Galaxy. I picked it up, I charged it up,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: parted on and it was nice. But I just couldn't
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: get over just how far we'd come in such a
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: short time. And yeah, this is all to do with competition,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: and you know, more players in the market, more competition,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: cheaper phones that do more for less. It's a win win.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Situation and that Chinese ecosystem of phones me as well.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's good. They're putting pressure on, particularly on
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Samsung as the biggest sort of Android maker in this
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: country anyway, they're huge.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: But you know what I want for Christmas this year?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: That's that a pixel phone. Why can Google bring the
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: pixel phone to New Zealand? Come on, Google, Stephen as
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: an online store or something. I guess there's a bit
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: of customization they have to do, but it would go
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: off well. I mean, it's not a cheap phone, but
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: there neither is the foldable phones. I mean, people have
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: got the money for a phone. Yeah, and they're beautiful phones.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: They're really nice phones. Why can't they launch the New
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Zealand come on Google? Yeah? Finally.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: The other big category is computers, obviously, and I haven't
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: had a huge play with Windows laptops. But I was
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: disappointed really at the start of the year a lot
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: of hype around co Pilot PCs, and with the neural
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: processing unit built in supposedly to do all this AI
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: functionality on Windows based PCs, it was a bit of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: a fizzer. Really.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got to say it. I'm pretty much in
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: the same boat as you. I sort of. You know,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: I'm a three six five premium subscriber, which means I'm
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: paying a lot more than I was a few months back.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: But the Copilot thing, I fired it up because it
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: comes with the three sixty five plan. It's nice, but
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: you know, if you ask to generate a document for you,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: like a PowerPoint presentation, it can do that, but then
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: you've still got to do half the work yourself, and
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: it's clunky, and you compare it with the likes of
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Perplexity or Gemini, and I think they've just got such
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: a long way to go, you know, you know, when
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: you're an operating system vendor, your key strength should be
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: integrating all those features directly into the operating system. And
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: I think they've singularly failed to do that.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's this switch in terms of the hardware
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: to iron architecture. It hasn't gone particularly well. But what
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: do you think the whole concept of sort of edge
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: computing where a lot of the applications take, for instance,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: of the Adobe Sweet they're adapting themselves so that a
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: lot more of the processing happens on this neural processing
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: units on your device. It takes the load off the
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: central processing units, so you should get faster results sending
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: less information to the cloud.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the thing. This is and this is
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: the other big trend of twenty twenty five. The cloud has,
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: you know, from a little we strata cumulus is now
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: this massive cyclonic storm system that everyone is plugged into.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: And it's really interesting. If you're an enterprise in New Zealand,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: you're using AI, you're doing business queries about a sensitive topics,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: takeover a merger or something, and using AI to generate
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: a document or proof of document whatever that's going to
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: the cloud. You know, and I can just see so
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: many potential security issues around that, regardless of what spin
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: the various cloud writers put on that. So it's it's
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: a fascinating one and I just don't know how that's
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: going to land, to be honest. Yea, But the arm
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: processor thing. The thing I really love about arm processes
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: is their battery life. Incredible. These laptops just go and
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: go and go and go, and you know, you're away
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: from the office more than you're in the office nowadays,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: and having that battery life is critical. And yet at
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: the same time, we're running all this AI stuff which
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: is really energy hungry, you know, so we're expecting more
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: of our PCs, but of course we're also wanting longer
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: battery life, and the silicon using your PC plays a
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: huge part in that. And I think this is where
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Armory has got something to offer. Although I do feel
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: sorry for Intel at the moment.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: You know, they've heard in trouble and the government is
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: effectively bailing them out by taking a stake in them,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: which is really weird.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: I don't see that being sustainable. I mean, they if
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: they can't innovate. You know, the tech industry is littered
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: with records from this in the past, and the US
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: government just doesn't seem to be learning from its previous mistakes.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: And the tech industry, you know, if Intel don't start
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: innovating delivering what people want and need, they're not going
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: to survive.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, looking forward to twenty twenty six, put your few
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: tryst had on and your market trends experience to bear
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: on this. What are you picking in terms of tech trends,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: new categories or finally the arrival of categories that have
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: been talked about for a long time.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: When you asked me to do this, so we know,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I did some research, hey, researching, you know, and one
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: of the first things I stumbled across was smart contact lenses. Wow,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: and these things that are the size of normal contact Lensmen,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: they've got their own built in display and power source
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: and you were a movement tracking bracelet so you can
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: do hand gestures with them, which is probably a microphone
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: somewhere so you can use voice commands, and you literally
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: have a computer display built into your eyes. So you know,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: this could actually see smartphones look like as quaint as
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: a model t forward very very shortly. I mean, you
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: could always have access to the metaverse and have augmented
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: reality or even virtual reality overlaid on your world. So
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: you want a shopping list at the supermarket, it's there.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: You need to get to a new building in another town,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: it'll guide you there.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: So going past smoke glasses, almost hopping over it. Will
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Will people be comfortable wearing a you know, contact lens,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: presumably it's going to be a bit thicker than a
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: typical one.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the early models I've seen aren't exactly as thin
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: as a disposable contact. I mean, they're chunky monkeys. But
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: I suspect, like any technology, it's going to mature, and
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: as it mature is it's going to become really compelling.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Your twenty twenty six will b when I think that
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: category starts getting some airtime and there'll be a bit
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: of g w was around it, but you know it's
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: going to be a big watch. The space.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one category that got a lot of airtime this year,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: really thanks to the hype around Elon Musk and his
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: what's it called the robot?
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I can't remember, Rosie.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: No, No, it's Ultimate Optimus.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I keep them transformers. You're optimists.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: So he did his big, flashy debut off the robot
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: and then had that event where he had the robotic
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: taxes and he had the humanoid robots, although that I
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: think they were being remotely controlled, so it was a
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: bit smoke and mirrors. But we're definitely seeing a lot
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: more humanoid robots doing impressive things.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, definitely, And I mean, you know, twenty twenty
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: five was the era where people started dabbling with it
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: and manufacturer started ramping up what they've been doing. And
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: there's a whole bunch of players in the US and
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: China doing stuff. And the humanoid robots have got to
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: the point where they can pick things up, they can
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: recognize objects, they can do a lot of stuff that's
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: really handy. But what we're starting to see now is
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: increasingly affordable AI silicon, increasingly compact AI models marry that
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: with a humanoid robot. You could soon see a humanoid
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: robot that could become your own in house housekeeper. And
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if in late twent twenty six
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: in some markets humor and robots become the next must
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: have consumer electronics category for the well held. You know,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: if you can afford it, you'll have one of these things.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: In your house or do your vacuumen. It will fold
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: your laundry, it'll cook for you, you know.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: And as Musk points out at you, I think ninety
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: percent if the engineering work now on humanoids is in
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the hand.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got to have those degrees of movement as
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: touch sensitivity, dexterity. It's, you know, the hard stuff's pretty
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: much been done. It's you know, it's a category that's
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: about to really ignite. And I think next year it
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: could be the year it really starts to happen, you know.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: And you've got China doing some incredible stuff, You've got
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: the US doing some incredible stuff. And there was a robot.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: The first robot was commercially launched about a month ago,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: twenty thousand US dollars. I can't read the name of
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: it now. It looked really compelling until you realize that
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: it wasn't actually driven by AI but a minimum wage
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: graduate dark room somewhere at corporate HQ, remote your pilot
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: and to sing inside your house. You're all sorts of
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: privicy concerns. And it was a bit creepy, yeah.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Very very creepy, and slightly creepy as well. It's just
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a military application of this. You know, there's just the
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: robotic dogs, for instance, So I will be sent into
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: war in the next big land war. You've got the
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: drones that are on the front lines killing people every day.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: And one of these guys says, are you sir, economy,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: I'm booking it out of here. You know, it's I mean,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: it's definitely going to be fascinating to watch, and it's
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: just going to be like a lot of tech, it's
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: going to be wild down predictable. Who knows. What do
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: you think.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: About the you know, the big sort of term this
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: year was AI Agent's agentic AI and a lot of
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: hype around it. And you know, I've seen lots of
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: demos of this and action. Some of it works, okay,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: some of it doesn't. Some of it's super expensive. When
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: you actually break down the cost, sometimes you might have
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: five or six agents working in the background. That's tokens
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and tokens that you are burning with these big hyperscalers.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: What do you think about what is coming in twenty
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: twenty six with agentic AI.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Well, it's really interesting you mentioned that because recently I
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: got on an early advanced beta of Perplexities Comet browser.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: This thing has a gentic and ergenic version of perplexity
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: built into it, and it's free to use, actually, which
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: is quite surprising. And if you're a free user, you
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: get a very limited number of queries you can use
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: with it. I mean, obviously they want their shareholders kept happy,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: so they're going to charge you for whatever, and they've
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: got data centers to pay for. But just using this
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: thing on the free mode, I said to it, find
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: me returned business class flights to Singapore times dates are
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: not a problem. Find me the best date, best airline,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: and tell me the best month to go. And that
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: would have been probably I would guess half a day's
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: work for someone to sit down and do that manually,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: because you were finding the data and you're recutting it,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: reslicing it. This thing went away, and it actually showed
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: me how it was using a different website, travel labrogration sites.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: It was actually like a human being dropping down drop
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: box forms, clicking radio buttons, filling in my information, like
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: a human being doing my bidding. And it went away
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: and did it five minutes. Said I had a full
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: list of cheap flights by airline, by month, etc. Et cetera,
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: and I was astonished with amount of money it could
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: have saved me if I'd had actually been serious about
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: doing it. You know, it knock something like two and
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: a half k off over return flight. You know.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: So it's getting better, and I think one of the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: things in twenty twenty six that will be even more
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: impressive is the agents. The length of the task that
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: they can complete is getting longer and longer. Yeah, so,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we will get to the point probably in
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six where in the enterprise world anyway, where
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: you can set it to do some bit of add
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: that would normally take someone all day to do and
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: have multiple elements and need multiple different sources of information,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: and you'll just set that to work and it will
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: do in thirty minutes what took seven eight hours.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, weeks. Maybe this is the thing I think, and
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: the corollery to there is a lot of people are going,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm gonna lose my job. But here's
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: the thing AI hallucinates. It makes mistakes, and it can
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: get very simple things wrong and be totally unaware that
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: it's done it. So people still needed to keep an
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: eye on the AI, and you need people who can
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: write good AI prompts and manage the AIS. So I
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: don't really think there's going to be a lot of
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: job losses, but I think we're going to start doing
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: a lot more with what we already have, so it
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: could drive a lot of productivity increases. Yeah, if we
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: get it right, it's a bigger if.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And yes, I was a bit skeptical really at
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: the start of the year, really about our ability to
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: get it right. But the more I see companies adopting
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: this technology, I think they're quite shrewd here in New Zealand.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: You know, they're not doing massive, flashy spins. And even
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: though startups we don't have a lot of AI centric startups,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: what we're seeing is a tech companies are embracing AI
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: and building it into what they're selling. And I think
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: that's slightly more sustainable than just like going where we're
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: going all in on AI. Government's still, you know, lagging
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: in terms of understanding what we need to do with
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: the workforce for upskilling and reskilling to actually take best
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: avent totally.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: You know, we're nibbling around the edges of it, and
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: I think what I'd like to see from the government
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: is a proper task force looking into this and making
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: some recommendations and making it a multi party task force.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, the problem we see with so many of
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: these sort of emerging technologies are investigated by governments is
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: governments are so slow moving. It's like wading through frozen
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: triagule dealing with them. And then, of course, you know,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: and election comes along and one party gets pushed by
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: another party becomes government. That party dismantles the previous government's work,
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: sets up their own stuff. Three is later, their stuff's dismantled.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: The need effect is, of course we're standing still, which
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: in tech means we're going backwards.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: And I think you know what we need is for
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: all sides of the house to go, look, this is
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: a game changer for our economy. We need to do this.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Everyone needs to agree that we need a long term,
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: twenty year strategy.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've got an election coming up. I doubt
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: AI is going to be an election year issue or
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: anything tech related, but labor is you know, the future
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: of work and employment. So you know, Labor party and
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: the incumbent should be concerned about it.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: I think they should. I mean, if I were both
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: all parties, I'd be looking at you know, a government
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: level national COEO. Yeah, you know, and I would have
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: someone whose job it was was to monitor all these
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: different tech trends and help enable businesses. You know, we've
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: got a great, big neighbor seven times our size and
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: three hours they've hoovered up a lot of the gold
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: out of our economy. We're focused on a very narrow
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: part of the economy selling, but it's dead animals and
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: trees to the world. We're a price taker, we're not
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: a price maker. Our economy is to a narrow It
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: means we're very exposed to geopolitics and global economic shocks.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: What we need to do is to add value to
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: our economy, and I think tech is one of the
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: key areas doing that. But like I was saying before,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: we don't have a strategy, we don't have a long
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: term approach. Maybe the government and reous other parties should
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: take that to heart.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: One last sort of thing for twenty twenty six. So
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: I know that you've been looking into solid state batteries.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really interesting. So you're talking about EV's
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: and you know lithium. Yeah, it doesn't mix the water
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: or oxygen very well, has a habit of going boom,
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: very hard to put out. Also, you know, the downsider
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: with an EV is you've got to plug it into
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: a charger and are fully charged. An EV you think
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: up to eight hours, you know, and you've got rain anxiety.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: You know, it may only be you know, one hundred
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: and twenty k's to get to you know, parapraam from Wellington,
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: But there are hills, and that means your battery life
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: takes a much bigger hit than what it initially thinks.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Lithium on batteries have a very finite energy density that
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: take a long time to charge. You're a fire risk.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Solid state batteries don't use lithium. They use a solid
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: electrolyte and this gives them a few advantages. Are much
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: higher powering, so they can hold much more charge. So
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: solid state batteries in theory could see cars having a
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: fifteen hundred mile range of a single charge. You know,
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: suddenly that range anxiety just goes away.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Also, they charge really really fast, and you know, in
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: theory and I sort of think this is quite there, ye,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: but in theory you should be able to charge a
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: sol state battery as fast as you're putting petrol into
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: a standard you know, gas, GUZL and car. That's not
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: quite the case yet, but who knows. And then the
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: other thing is that you can put a nail through
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: a soli state battery. You can drop them in a
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: bath of water. They won't go bang. They're very very safe. Right. So,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: and with evs, that's exciting. That's a total game change
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: that could see EV's becoming far more compelling than they
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: already are. But then add that to laptops, to smart watchers,
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: smart rings, all those other products. Imagine a smart watch
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: that just held a charge and ran for three weeks. Yeah,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: that would be nice, wouldn't it be great? I mean,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: I've got the smart watch on my wrist that does
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: sleep tracking. The only problem is I'm going to take
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: it off from charge every night.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Well that's the Apple Watch definitely, you know, what were
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: they thinking? So there's a lot of players developing solid
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: state batteries. Do you think any of them will sort
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: of hit commercial viability in twenty twenty six?
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of players in the US, Europe
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: and China that say they're on the cusp of it,
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: And I think it's just going to be a case
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: of navigating the hype and finding the reality. Given the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: number of players that are doing it, I think at
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: least one or two are going to Whoever gets there
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: first is going to claim a very large pot of gold.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is huge money in this.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: And it is sodium based batteries for probably more for storage,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: for power plants and that sort of thing. That's going
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: a long way as well, isn't it.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: This is yeah. I was in South Australia recently and
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: I was really surprised that the sheer amount of photovoltaics
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: on houses over there, something like I think it's one
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: in three houses in South Australia has solar on the roof.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: And South Australia is now generating so much surplus energy
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: they're finding out ways to have free electricity with some utilities.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: You know, they're actually supplying other states with electricity and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: they've got more than they can actually use. And I
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: sat look at New Zealand and go, why haven't we
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: done that? Why are we looking at large scale sodium
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: battery plants. Let's burn some more coal. It just doesn't
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: make any sense. I mean, you know, if you think
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: about you put solar on a house your house is
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: quy during the day because you're at the office. The
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: only thing drawing octricity is your fridge. All that extra
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: cultricity goes out to the grid, to the city, to
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: the factories, to office buildings where it's needed. Yeah, and
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: you scared out across some ent our suburbs. You're talking
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: a very large amount of electricity.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've struggled on solar and you know there was
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: that big solar company that sort of went bust. Yeah
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: this year, which didn't help.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: And also just to cost electricity in this country is insane.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that issue has has seen manufacturing shut down in
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: parts of the country. So that's an existential threat anyway.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: So what it's time to be alive?
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: What it's time to be alive A twenty twenty five
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: was a really interesting year dominated by AI. I think
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six is going to be really interesting to
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: see how AI shakes out. There will be some losers there,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: there will be a lot of value that's destroyed. Hopefully
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: it doesn't take down the entire global economy with it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: But a lot of these technologies that have been bubbling
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: away in the background, augmented by AI, are starting to accelerate,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: So it's going to be a really interesting one.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it. When you start seeing some of these
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: technologies married to AI, exciting stuff starts happening. I think
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: next year's when some of that starts hitting the shop shelves.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: You know it's going to be really exciting.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks Pat for worlwind trip through tech and you can
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: check out all of your reviews at which doctor dot
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: co dot nz.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: So you're there.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Happy to be here.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Pewh. Well, that's it for the final episode of the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Business of Tech for twenty twenty five. A huge thanks
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: to Pat Pilcher for taking us on that whirlwind ride
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: through AI hype and reality, the streaming squeeze, ev growing pains,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: and the revolutionary gadgets that actually changed how we lived
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: this year. Incidentally, just after we were recorded this episode,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Panasonic announced that it's pulling out of the TV market
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: in New Zealand, which is a real shame, but it
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: sort of does go to show how fast things are
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: moving in tech and the big names we know so
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: well now from the past won't necessarily be the big
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: names of the future. If you want to deeper dive
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: into any of the gear and trends we talk about.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: You can read Pats reviews and commentary over at which
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: doctor dot co dotian zed. You'll find my own tech
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: reviews in the life section at Business deesk dot co dotianz.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed the episode, follow or subscribe to the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Business of Tech, leave a rating or review, and share
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: it with someone you spent too much money on tech
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: this year and needs to know what is coming next.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening all year forty nine episodes.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: We're here every week delivering tech insights and interviews with
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: some of our best tech leaders, so I'd love to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: have you back next year. Thanks so much to two
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: degrees for continuing to sponsor us into our third season,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: hopefully into our fourth as well. Have a great Christmas,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: a new year, and I'll see you in twenty twenty
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: six as we find out whether the robots really do
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: take over the housework and hopefully nothing more. All the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: best for the year ahead.