Episode 33 · 35:31
WWDC 23 Recap: Apple's Latest Innovations & Our Fitness Journey
Dan and Tom review Apple’s 2023 announcements, from watch updates to Vision Pro, and ask how much innovation comes from invention versus patient ecosystem design.
They connect Apple’s product strategy to their own fitness journeys: progress often comes from steady iteration, deliberate constraints and a system that makes the next action easier.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- A coherent ecosystem can make an incremental feature feel transformational.
- Strategic limitations may protect an experience, but they can also delay obvious value.
- New hardware needs a repeated use case, not only an impressive demonstration.
- Personal progress benefits from the same cycle as product design: test, learn and adjust.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
[Music] don't believe [Music] well hello hello hello welcome back to another week of don't be a dust up you're with me and Tom your regular guests we've still not found anybody to come and replace us that's that's why nobody's uh willing to be a doorstep on or not be a doorstep be a hammer um on our podcast but um yesterday the Apple event happened uh both of us are Apple Fans and um yeah we should probably kick off by sharing thoughts.
About Apple and um what it made you emotionally feel in in watching it and how it changed your mindset and watching it because we're always talking about mindset emotions you know the business side of it um yeah so thoughts on Apple event it's quite hard to give my thoughts whilst I'm here I am out of breath running around the house sorting myself out I'm trying not to breathe loud as we've had comments on that and all I can.
Do is I'm hyperventilating by breathing very lightly shallow um so apple apple is yeah I think I've been following Apple since day dot it feels like and as each year goes on I'm always impressed and I think now being going into the world of ux design I think I'm even more impressed with how they can change something so radically but so simple at the same time by re-changing obviously yesterday it was the watch that was the massive push of.
Everything changing on that front it's fascinating how you can just change a couple of things and it's like yeah this makes sense now every issue that people have had or whatever um it just yeah rings a bell so it was good some very useful updates um obviously we won't say that more because I'm sure someone can just research all of them yeah I I think what Apple is very good at is um releasing a first version with a.
Feature that they've included on purpose so their next version can have it without that feature and what I an example of that is so yesterday they released their first um AR VR headset and it has this battery pack that's in your pocket which this battery pack allows it to last for two hours if not you'd have to have it wired at this headset stuff and what I feel they're going to do is like this is the first version with the battery pack and then.
The Vision Pro s is going to be without the battery pack or like battery pack built in so I I always assume that they keep some things in just so their leaps of innovation and yes you still have to innovate so outside of natural innovating I think they also add in extra stuff to make them look better as they go along because otherwise they'd be like well let's just delay it six months and and not have a battery in it they're like no.
Let's release it now with the battery and keep the battery in a lot let's not worry about that then for our s version or version 2.0 we can remove the battery because there's all sorts of stuff in the same way that like being able to view multiple instances of safari in the headset you can't do it it's one Safari app and multiple tabs so they'll be like should we do multiple like Windows of safari they're like no no let's not do.
That let's keep that for version two so then version two now you can have multiple windows of safari so you can have two web pages open at the same time rather than two tabs I think probably have a um I think they said this with the iPhone they had designed the future iPhone and then rolled back and basically said okay what's the first iteration that we're going to release okay we'll release it with um Wi-Fi then we'll release it with 3G.
Then we'll release before you know and like slowly drip feed these things I I think it's fine because again it's about making sales right and about like the perception of innovation and the sustainability for them to actually do it in at some point yes plus chances are if you don't progress certain items or certain features does that mean you can get your product out earlier probably and in this world it is about innovating at a decent Cadence or.
Like momentum so then people don't lose interest and you are able to like basically get that lifetime value of somebody like increasing because they've bought the version one they bought the version s the the other one but for me the standout thing the standout thing is like how inspiring all of it it inspires me as a designer to be better inspires me as a a technologist to innovate more um and like push myself and that's what I love about it is super inspiring.
Yeah is a here's a question do you feel like they're rushed to bring the AR VR headset to Market as we're all changing from the I guess the the movie model going to the Netflix probably the Netflix going to the YouTube of they can't even wait a week for their famous YouTuber to put something up are they feeling rushed in that process hence doing the classic strong boundaries of here's the video but actually it's not coming till next.
Year and actually next year it's only coming to America rather than what they would normally do is bring it to eight countries minimum and then expand it from there it seems even it shrunk even to their levels that oh no Now's the Time to to go with this especially when I guess the quest 3 is out yeah I think they're very good at not bending to pressure because every time they delay or every time they come out later than.
Others what they come out with is always far better so I would say they have I I saw somebody saying like oh they spent their last five years working on this product so they have been working on it internally for a long time yes I think at some point they need to kind of keep people excited because when they're saying that they haven't released a new product line for like ages since the watch basically the watch was the new.
Thing I watch which is what like 10 years ago I think like 20 2014 yeah okay so not ten but yeah like a a while a while maybe it was 28 or something 2008 yeah yeah so like a a while back so now this like reinvigorates the whole Market to be like cool apple is still innovating and still has like Headroom um to go so I I would say they probably do feel a little but they're very good at being like waiting.
Because when they do release something it's always exceptional it's always really really good um and yeah it is annoying that they've released it in a conceptual perspective like oh it's not coming till later and also it's only coming to the US which is a which is a shame but it they have such good brand value that you're willing to wait around I'm like oh this is really encouraging and inspiring because I know what's coming and it's worth the wait so Apple again a.
People that their whole like brand how they've built it is like their Innovation is so Cutting Edge that it is worth the wait because even if you wait a year it's not going to fall behind it's not going to be like oh quote-unquote old um by the time you get it or by the time you want to get it the S version is there so like you think oh I've I've bought a version that's better again anyway um yeah I I just I'm so inspired by.
Um these companies that do something incredibly well the whole ecosystem like we've always spoken about this thing hopefully the reason why somebody would bother to buy an Apple device rather than Oculus Quest is because you're already in the ecosystem like messaging you can now do messaging in the headset through iMessages perfect because that's the hard thing about Facebook I can't send a text message to somebody to play hey are you online or hey I'm on my headset or it's.
Like the um the displacement of Technology there's no like ecosystem for it you know so yeah it's like they're creating oh I came up with the word yesterday an infrastructure it's even getting to that point it's as if they're creating roads to get to I want to get to that friend on that front it's that so getting so much clearer even just from the off the first thing they said is you can update your phone but now you could.
Hand over a contact by just tapping someone else's phone which you're there going that's so basic they should have done that like 10 years ago and this is it they could have done it they've made it seem like it's yeah they could have done it they probably could have done it 10 years ago but they've decided to just like pause and like release it in three years time we're still as excited because we're so like um committed to the brand and the ecosystem.
That we're like oh finally yes great this is it so it feels like they they they're very good at um wording everything and labeling everything in a way that that plays as if they've created it for the first time that they they had to innovate and come up with something new and invent a new way of doing something to be able for you to achieve what you need to achieve I also think um like obviously we were chatting.
In the brothers what's up so when we were watching it we have this uh chat that we're all like pinging in comments and stuff they're still using we should we should probably live yeah live Channel we um the Apple keep on using the phrase machine learning rather than artificial intelligence or AI or any of those acronyms so I find the machine learning stuff is a great phrase because one it's less scary it builds more trust and did you notice how like how many times they.
Had that Apple logo with the lock like the the subconsciously drumming home like everything for you to be like calm you trust us we can be trustworthy which again is like a value that any company if you own a company or run a company like what do you do to build trust like if you think of a payment Gateway a payment gate will like secure and it like labels it and it re-reiterates those things and it has the logos it has.
The padlock and stuff all to like convey this idea of trust so then you're more free-flowing in the in the flow you go down so yeah Apple's events are a great example of like manipulation or like um messages subliminal messaging and also that they actually deliver on loads of innovation and um both on hardware and software so but they also wipe out a bunch of companies in doing so right yeah on a side note I've noticed that the plant in the background makes me.
Look like I've got some bot and mullet things green mullet so I feel like I might need a move slightly to make it more obvious that it's the plan well just so if you do like a bobble head move thing then you'll tell that it's a it's a plant but so I think because Apple innovate so much they are crushing competition so do you know in the fact that you can hand over contacts you know those like um they have these.
Cars nft nfcs near field communication so so those businesses boom disappear overnight you know like Intel even more with them going to their own like Silicon chips and stuff intel was gone a while back but now even more so um when they do Partnerships with unity the game's company unity's share price had gone up you know there's like you can almost categorically like find and like the journaling thing I know people that are running journaling companies that like are probably going to not be.
Crushed but like be challenged by the fact that um or at least they might be scared now I wouldn't be that afraid really because again it's just like just keep innovating don't worry about competition worry about Innovation if you focus on Innovation then you'll be fine um as soon as you worry about competition that's when you start to lose you want to keep on focusing on innovation and that's the thing is no government wants one company to win from a monopoly.
Point yeah anyway yeah so competition is is good but equally it can either encourage you or equally demotivate you I think sometimes that happens to me because like I've thought about oh it'd be really cool for a journal app about or the mood tracker and create it in a certain way in a mood track uh six months ago but that was basically when I heard the rumors of it was coming to Apple and I'm like well I know they're going to do a good.
Job about it so how would I want to do it in my way or Rhythm or whatever it is definitely a chat and they've done so well because they already have a bunch of people on their ecosystem again if you're coming up with a new product rather than coming up with a like a problem and solving the problem through a product can you just find a community and build a community and then through that Community you find their problems.
And then you build stuff for that community in like a community focus and a Community Driven um SAS product or physical product or whatever which I think communities will be harder to replicate because right now somebody could use chat GPT to replicate most of the apps in the app store right most of the um the apps on your phone most of the websites that we see they can be created and copied so what's the differentiator community is the differentiator and.
Innovation is the differentiator so carry on innovating and Carry On Building the community which is something I found like harder to do is because it's so much easier to come up with an idea and build it because you have the problem and sometimes you've not even checked to see if that problem is a youth thing or a many people thing yeah I'm surprised if not pushed gaming yet I know historically everyone laughs when you go apple or Max and gaming.
But the fact that it's like you've got the VR headset obviously you're trying to put push the arcade games from like uh probably more an iPad um Apple TV point of view I'd probably say more so than a Mac point of view but then also you've got the Mac there obviously now you've got the M1 chip from a processing point of view it seems ridiculously powerful especially bringing in that Pro Studio it seems like they're definitely channeling the adverts towards.
Photographers videographers podcasters like the more the creative industry in that regards more so than the right now let's attack The Gamers that the top gamer of YouTube or whatever or Esports would want that pro model which I'm sort of I wonder if they deliberately sort of not attacking that because it'll slowly seep into over years or are they just slowly tweaking it because I noticed that that cat game is being moved to the Mac which some people said that.
Looks quite incredible on my PlayStation and Xbox so I don't know if it's like trialing it with smaller games before because they could probably like buy out card or like fortnite or something ridiculous and just do it themselves and just take the whole Community yeah they've never really done any I don't think Apple are involved in a software to do 3D right they're they're in their music though aren't they because they have apple music they have their um what's their whole.
Um logic logic pro and all that stuff like GarageBand they've got a scene there they've also got a scene in the like the movie maker type approach um but yeah they've always been so pearly Pali with Photoshop and Adobe stuff um that it is interesting that they've not like sat into it but I wonder it's because now they've partner partnered with unity so Unity is there but that that's an application for you to build 3D stuff so why would they bother doing.
It again and I'm like when do these people decide to partner with others versus doing it in-house um is like an interesting divide but the Apple event also I've been trying to get into options trading again so just to describe what options is options is uh um a derivative which is kind of like a financial instrument that has some sort of value um that goes up and down and you can buy options on particular stocks or shares um so you can buy a call option which.
Means that you think that Apple like an apple call would be you think apple is going to go up so call means up and put means down um so I bought an apple option A call option and you you're betting that it's going to go up to a particular level and if it does you make them like a um a multiplier on the the fact that it's going up rather than just buying a share and hoping that it goes up.
Um and I did it all with demo money so I put in about like 1 300 I think which is I don't know maybe that's like a thousand pounds ish something like that and I made six thousand pounds I basically sold it in the event because the event basically you could start seeing the share price coming down which then was affecting which I then now feel glad to because my demo account is now up but I wish I'd gone in with real.
Money because that would have made a I then could have bought two headsets was it I don't know if I've daydreamed or not but is that live stocks yes sake money so all the data is real that's cool um and live but the it's just like Monopoly money of some sorts and it's good because I wanted to build my confidence up again just be like cool let's go in small and start it up again because there's a little bit of a predictability.
Thing you want to know the information a little bit more before you dive in but I feel annoyed because I was then seeing tweets about this is the biggest event in ages so I should have like trusted that and be like yeah let's do it um so it's kind of like how do you basically trust something's big enough to to go to go in so obviously most of the time you'll do them around um when they declare their earnings.
Um so their earnings calls that happen quarterly you do it then and you're waiting for basically a big jump in the share price either up or down and that's what you want to be you want to be have your call or put in place before that happens and then once it has happened it goes up and then you then you sell it so yeah I want to get back into that because that's one way of um another way of making income.
Um with less effort although there's higher risks of course because you can also lose all that money that you put in so yeah is it because we think that it's hard to get money so if we were to lose it it'll be just as it'll be even harder to get back to that Grand because let's say it plummets completely I think whatever or is it the is it the pain of if it got up to six and it dropped to 500 and then.
You lost 500 when you could have made it's the this is what you could have won it's that I think for me because I want to think that making money is easy if we believe that out of a mindset you either feel powerful or don't feel powerful so out of your beliefs right so if your belief is money is hard to make then the likelihood of you making money is possibly less likely than if you from a mindset perspective think that money is.
Easy to make so I try and think money is easy to make but losses hurt right so the losses hurt like because it doesn't feel nice to lose or it doesn't feel nice that you've missed an opportunity so I would say it's those two factors of missing out and failing I like the heart of pieces rather than money is hard to make um but that's only because I'm trying to convince or like trying to brainwash myself to believe like yeah money is.
Easy to to make that it's literally like a cake there's plenty for everybody right you're just taking your slice and it's in a place of um plenty and rather than lack so do you jump on it every time there's a Google or Apple event just yeah so I I used to the typical ones I follow are Microsoft um Apple and Snapchat and Twitter because the prices for those are lower down are like the the price to get involved and then.
The multiplier is kind of less so it's a bit easier to get in and then when it does go up you the benefit is higher whereas things like Amazon or alphabet which is basically Google um their prices or their um buy prices and are a bit higher so it's a little bit harder than to see the bigger jump but really if you're seeing a jump that's more than one percent then that's better than most savings accounts although now we've got three percent.
Savings accounts kicking around so if you do better than four percent yeah that's amazing and I did what like 600 or something I I don't know I don't know my percentages so I'm like even a four percent benefit is good um compared to your typical instruments that the average Joe like the retail investors so yeah that makes sense very interesting yeah I think watching the Apple event really reminds me of um watching the um watching a lot of gadgets that you like.
The look of that you can't afford that's what it feels like but one day you can if you change that trading to real trading this is where we should have a sponsor of trading and now we're sponsored by yeah such as like and just for them if anybody is interested like just open a plus 500 account and you have 40K of like demo money and go on YouTube and um ask it to explain you know what option trading is and stuff and you want.
To just try real real small so you predominantly want to find when earning calls are which is when these big companies uh put their um how much they've made for the last quarter and so forth and it's those moments that typically when they when you mostly have the changes or if there's a product launch so like apple apple events are always good you use that sometimes they go up sometimes they don't move at all sometimes they go down.
You know it's hard like even now it's gone up but it's also then come back down so you could do a call and write it up and then do a put to write it down um but yeah there's some um live traders that I watched I think they're out in Canada well maybe not maybe the Canadian or something it's called um Trader live TV they always stream on YouTube live so in the daytime you can watch them just.
Doing their day trades of like buying stuff and just some of the information is interesting and insightful so they have like a a watch list um of like shares or stocks and shares that they are um watching if you wanted to do like weekly or daily like by the start of the day sell at the end of the day to get but really the numbers there are much much smaller because you need so much more Capital to be able to make a.
Difference but yeah talking about numbers I've um decided I want to get more serious about um Fitness so one I'm gonna say accounting or something because you're talking about numbers talking about numbers of calories and things like that so I've been trying just to improve little things so I've I'm pretty good at drinking like lots of water but I'm just trying to consistently do that I'm getting better at sleeping patterns of going to bed just before 11 or 11 ish and trying to.
Do that and sleeping with an eye mask is definitely improving my sleep and wearing an eye watch so you can see how much deep sleep you've had and things and then food wise I've started calorie counting because I think the the best way or as so I've read the best way to lose weight is a calorie deficit which would be estimating based on your age and height and weight and whatever what your typical calorie intake in general what your typical calorie intake would.
Be and then try and basically cut down from there and they say like healthy weight loss is like 0.5 kilograms a week which is hardly anything yeah I've heard recently one of the best ways to lose weight it works for someone else that had it but yeah it works for us um is apparently a cold plunge going in a cold bath because then it basically freaks your body out and then makes your body work for it and it actually makes your time.
Apparently and what like after a workout because recovery is also cold plungers for Recovery is good so after a workout you do it yeah I think it's just once a day so I'd guess either you build it to routine I'm assuming before work or at the end of the day but I'm assuming if you did it at the end of the day it would shock your brain into waking up so I'm guessing because it would be a shock thing it'd probably be.
The morning and apparently it's a better gives you better when it reminds me you can't remind me I think it's Arnold Schwarzenegger that said um so he's got this like pump club and he's trying to do stuff in the fitness world around like a fitness community I think he said that he it's either him or somebody else but I'll play it with him so I can say with the convictions of people uh like believe it he said he.
Does something really hard in the morning so then he basically tricks his body to be like it's it's like good or like he's good at doing hard things so like don't be scared of hard things so one of the hard things that he does in the morning takes a cold shower so like that's a hard thing he completes it in the morning so he's like I need to retrain and reconfigure your brain to be like I can do difficult things and.
That's one way to like jump start your brain and prepare your brain so then when a hard thing comes around well I already had this really hard moment in the morning so this hard thing that now has turned on one my perspective of that hard thing has decreased it's not as hard as I thought because I've already done something in the same flip of um achieving a goal or doing a task they say in the military you should do your.
Bed um or whatever because then you know you're starting the day with a task completed So you you're like in a better mindset because you've completed a task cool I can carry on completing tasks so like doing your bad is one good thing or um although yeah the cold plungers for like the doing a difficult task um which I thought was interesting so yeah but yeah with to how you finding the journey so um but what I think is interesting is.
Um just the apps that are out there to like scan and tell you uh how many calories are in something or what good things are in it or bad things are in it um and also what I want to do is maybe I will create my own calorie counting app at some point just for my benefit but what I've done is just done it in a spreadsheet um to try and count calories going out and calories going in and trying to make.
It that there's a deficit but already I think yesterday I think I just had two meals no snacks and then just water throughout the day and also I went on a couple of walks so that's like 5 000 calories out 700 calories for each meal or something so like 1400 calories now my goal I'm looking for something around 2000 2100 which is already a deficit on what they would say which I think GPT was saying like you'd be looking at two thousand three.
Hundred two thousand five hundred calories kind of thing so um it's interesting but really I want I wonder whether or not is it better for me to have a negative in the sense of that is like just minusing it out but your day-to-day you want to have like the working out more than you're in taking so then you have like a minus calorie because then you're taking away from the fat that you're basically storing up so I just need to figure out what works.
For me in a way that's sustainable going forward um because I want to do like you've heard before I've been doing more squash and stuff which is good um but yeah I want to see like more noticeable changes like I was doing 10 press-ups a night for like two weeks just as again just trying to crack the whole like Silence of Fitness to to do that and I started noticing differences just after two weeks so if I can get.
Into my brain that it takes two weeks to see a difference then I could be like cool I need to just get this two weeks in and then I'll start seeing something and so how do I like break the the silence as it were um because ultimately the I assume the older you get the harder it is to lose weight let alone keep the weight off so I'm like I want to just be in a better shape just for you know summer's coming.
You should have worked on your Beachbody in in winter but I didn't I'm working on it in summer because what do you do for like fitnessy like staying trim because I think your metabolism is super high anyway because you've always been like Fitness orientated um I don't for my lifestyle I'm not doing hardly anything I would say as much as I do a lot of walking I'll do a lot of um on that door there's a pull-up bar.
Um so I'll tend to do a couple of pull-ups and maybe do press-ups and pull-ups and press-ups and Pull-Ups which is handy because it's easy and then I've started doing hockey again but because it's the summer it's not the league it's just more of a playful keeping your Fitness going rather than to doing Fitness tasks or anything like that to to push it to be the fittest ready for your league it's more just messing about keeping keeping the sort of cobwebs off your.
Skills more so I think for me it's like I wouldn't necessarily say I eat healthy but I think it's sometimes I just don't eat or don't eat that much I think I probably live yeah partial faster stronger type stuff but I think bits of that too I think I either overeat or under eat I mean the I think that's the difficulty I'm getting at the moment is I mean the bloated or I'm starving um because I think I just go I'm not.
Hungry at the moment I won't eat anything until lunchtime and then I'll overeat and then I'll skip dinner and then I'll be hungry later um so an unintentional intermittent fasting I think that's what yeah I do intermittent fasting but I feel like maybe um it's not enough you know because again you have to do hand in hand um working out with also dietary stuff now they say sometimes dietary stuff is the biggest impactor but if you kind of.
Like plateaued then you need to do something additional so if if intermittent fasting gets you so far then consider adding an aspect of Fitness um or working out in there as well yeah I was thinking talking on the topics of Apple that we should trial um Apple Fitness I don't have it at the moment but maybe I could get it for the month and we can do yeah so we can do our dances there's dancing on there there's yoga on there there's stuff yeah.
I life I definitely think on accountability of it is something that I need more of um I miss the lunchtime football that was enough just to get a sweat on every day or after those are some of my Fondest Memories I remember once like defensive line roll the ball forward and Boot It from bottom left and I scored top right in the cage and I was just um like it was just an amazing shot it just like curled right in and I was like what.
A goal like some of my best memories are playing like cage football so foreign football sounds way more gruesome oh it actually is doesn't it sounds like you're fighting and playing football there actually are those games have you seen those things on like Facebook or YouTube and something where it's like there's this massive football and they throw it and then there's a group of guys that have to like hold on to the football and they're like wrestling each.
Other for it or there's another game I think I saw that's like it's kind of like yeah it's on the street though it's in like a town and there's like hundreds of people and teams and stuff and they're all climbing on top of each other uh I think I've seen this because I think yeah it was a tradition in in Derbyshire somewhere where I used to play hockey because I'm pretty sure someone heard about it that every year.
But it it I think it was like a post and they're like a mile apart or something and it's like two sides of the village or against each other but it's sort of like you work as a team or something and it it's like yeah and like I said I may have mentioned this before but the whole UFC stuff hey the creator of that the reason why it does US fees because like in school like the biggest thing that's going to.
Draw attention is when a fight kicks off like everybody wants to go and see the fight so I'm sure that because he's come up with the slap thing hasn't he I think they've added that basically now there's like slap games so you stand like face to face yeah and you take a slap at a time trying to knock each other out but I think that's all this stuff is like I'm not sure how uh safe it is for.
Your brain being like knocked around similar to how NFL they always have the the challenge of people with knocking their heads against their helmets and stuff but um yeah yeah so yeah so this week it's Apple events and getting fit and next week you'll see me and I'll be then well no you'll have to wait two weeks breathing in you'll be able to talk oh yeah I'll be wasting my way out here so Dan would have known how to um yeah.
Ventriloquism just like I'm doing okay thanks again for watching us and letting us entertain you for half an hour and um until next time keep hammering those nails [Music] oh [Music] foreign.