First Ring Daily 2020: You (Probably) Don't Need It

0:00You don't need it. If you're listening to this in your life is happy and content, you don't need whatever is going to be announced today. I mean, that's probably true most of the time. I don't know. I feel like the, you know, V1 products, rows kind of a tough one, but I feel like Apple will get the foldable thing right in some sense. I mean, it might take a year or two to, you know, iron out a couple of little usability things, but you don't need the fold. You don't need the new watch. You don't need the new air pods. See, here's what we need to do. We all need to blend together not by this stuff so that we can like force this new John guy like into a, into a corner. And then we can like get the things we do want. Yeah, I don't see this happening. I don't need it. I'm, but I'm curious if they announced the Apple TV thing again. I, they usually have like a March or not a March, like an October event too, right? They usually do like phone watch now. And then there's like a Mac event. They already did the Mac mini. So

1:02I don't know. All the other the touch screen Macs or whatever coming something like that. Yeah, but those things don't lend themselves to like the same announcement, you know, or the event if they have an, I don't know. I feel like, you know, for many years, I've kind of complained about Google's sporadic hardware updates, like especially smart home stuff like speakers, whatever displays. Those things are several years out of date, you know. And Amazon, meanwhile, regurgitates this like 115 new devices every September. But, you know, Apple is really the same, right? I mean, the primary devices they release regularly, of course, you know, but like the HomePod stuff. I mean, I don't, you shouldn't trust them for this kind of thing. The only, well, the only saving grace is that the way they can connect with an Apple TV and just be the speakers, you know, like that's pretty good. But that assumes you can get it working. And I get to tell you it's not that easy. Like anyone who owns

2:03AirPods may have noticed. You can't go to some interface and be like, check for updates. So, you know, or it never says, hey, there's an update. We like to install it. Like it's a, it's a magical process. You kind of go into the interface for HomePod. You can look at the firmware update. I, you leave like the case open and it will connect and it will just do it, or it won't, you know, and that's how HomePod's work. And I'm sorry, but that's patently stupid. Like, just, there needs to be an explicit interface for this. I, that is bizarre. So, I don't know. What else are you going to do? Is there, what are they doing the Sonos app update thing or whatever? It's so, so the first version just came out like last night, I think, yeah. Because I was speaking of Sonos continues to frustrate me in ways that it should not frustrate me. Primarily because like I have, the basement TV has a sound bar, has a sub, has two surround sound speakers. Right. I want to be able to click on a speaker and be able to adjust

3:07the individual volume and the EQ of that speaker based on how I want. And you cannot do it. Like, you can turn the volume up, but it, it, it, it maxes out at like number 15, whatever the hell 15 is. But like, what are the things that drives me nuts? You mean volume or, well, based in trouble, stuff, everything. So here's what I want to be able to, you have that little, you've seen that right, the little EQ. No, no, no, but here, here's what I want. When I'm watching football, because of the way the stream comes across, sometimes the, it's not mixed correctly. I don't know how else to describe it, but here's what I want. I want the announced, I want the center channel to be mirrored to every speaker. Like, I want to be able to hear the announcers and not have it. You're, you're almost asking from mono sounded away. Yeah. No, I want to, but right, I want to be able to adjust because it comes across a stereo, but then sometimes Apple TV tries to do like something and I don't know what. And then you only hear like the announcers voice coming out of the center channel. But then they'll go to a commercial and the commercial will sound fantastic

4:08because it's, it's set up. Yeah. And it's like, it's just mixed better. Yeah. So I, this will not help you, but you know, what else does me, I guess. But the, I believe it's the, it must just be the whatever the beam ultra, whatever that is, has new like voice enhancement capabilities and are like four presets feel like the way it can sound. And I, I'd be surprised if they didn't bring that to their other sound bars, at least some of the newer ones, right? I mean, yeah, maybe, but the, the whole smart TV age volume, it's most probably not really the smart TVs. But that, the, the TV volume thing has been a problem forever. Like Apple TV, you know, has like a, like whatever it's called, increased spoken word, whatever the name features to, you know, this is always a problem. Like, yes, so does even have speech enhancement. But what I want is speech coming out of all the speaker, it's football. I don't need 5.1 Dolby Atmos for football. I just need to, like, I just need to be able to hear it. Yeah. You're right. I mean, I, but

5:13then again, I mean, I think for a lot of people having that 5.1 sound or whatever it is, and having maybe the crowd noise around you or however they do that mix, as long as the center channel of audio is, you know, clear and present. That should work, you know, but I don't have that. I don't really have a, I don't have that kind of setup, right? The thing I miss, so you said this, it's old by now standard. It's a Sony amplifier that would sit under the TV. We went back when we wired up all our speakers, and there were knobs for each individual speaker, and I could go and adjust it, or I could just, yeah. So I just, yeah, I had like a, those little boat, we're with a little Bose cubes, there's some holes, you know, I had like a five speaker system, like that. I don't, there's no, I don't think there was a subwoofer. It must have been, though, right? Those things were tiny. I don't remember, but it was a million years ago. Like, we didn't really, the only thing you could use that for was like to watch movies, right? That was all it was for. Like, there was no TV didn't have surround sound. Predating a wild shirt,

6:16that's stereo, but, you know, this was a million years ago. I don't know. I did, we just, we were watching TV last night, same thing. Like, I put up all, you know, I don't, I have, I could do a five, I guess it's a five one thing in here. And I, the HomePod's do totally at most, but it's, you know, two smaller speakers. But anyway, I just put it on all the speakers, and, you know, you spend a lot of time, like, because you're sitting here and you can see like a speaker, or a hear in this one over there. Like, you know, I, I have an idea where they should be. So, like, these aren't too loud. But as we're watching it, all I can hear, I was over here, but all I can hear is like the rear over everything else. It's like, I know, you spent like half the time just adjusting the sound. We'll finally get it right. The credits are rolling. You're like, I don't know what I just spent my last two hours doing, but I do this all the time. The closest thing I've got with the Sonos is actually you turn on speech enhancement, and then you turn on night time mode. Yes. And that gets me a lot closer. But then I have to go through and like, jack up the subwoofer

7:22to get it to like a reasonable, because it's designed for night time up. But it's like, you gotta do a headphone thing and just see what that's like. Not because I think you, you or any other human being should sit on a couch and watch TV with headphones on. But I bet that isolation would actually really help. Oh, I bet I would know it too. But, you know, like, but I just wouldn't want to do it. Yeah, I just I don't want to be like, where are my AirPods? I got to go watch like, because football's back tonight. Like NFL's back tonight. This is great stuff. Yeah. It's not as boring as like FIFA, but it's on that side of the spectrum. Not I knew. Not I knew you. I can't stand this thing. It's beautiful. This is the wrong type for football. I say this every year, I know. Well, I got back into the fantasy football once again doing my wife's league for her work. So I have that level of health. Who just have Stephanie do it? She won that FIFA, that FIFA thing in Mexico. So she's obviously an expert in all things foot and ball.

8:26I'll explain all things AI actually. It's not the worst. Okay, this is another word one. So this is real because I just said this. You know, we're watching TV last night, right? So what we started watching last night was an Apple TV show called Sugar. It's like Colin Ferrell. I think it's the guy's named the Irish actor. And it's the second season had come out early as you would never. And I've even heard of this thing, right? But the reason we're watching this now is we always do this thing. We're like, all right, what are we watching next? Neither one of us has any idea. And she's like, well, there are any new shows to watch? And I'm like, why am I the arbitrator of all the shows? We could what like, don't you have any idea? Like what you know, we always cook this, right? So she's tired of me arguing about this. So what's the last thing? I said, what do you want to watch? And she goes, well, they asked AI and gave me this list of five shows. And I was like, you know, you might rely on AI a little too much. I'm getting concerned here. It's like the people who can't navigate anywhere without Google Maps, like they actually don't know where anything

9:30is. Was maybe like an early version of this. I remember having this conversation like kids, where I was like, guys, you got to put the map thing away and just drive around like you you have to know my daughter didn't know the prostrates of like our poem, which is over there. But like, we were here for like six or seven years. I said something about a street name. It goes, where's that? And I'm like, it's the road that goes by the house idiot. Like you don't know the name of the road? Yeah, it's AI. It's a bad combination. Just saying. I don't think I'm going to buy anything. I think that's nice.