EP282 - Andy Mage & The Apple Vision Pro

It's going to be fascinating to hear some youth pastors actually have to get up there and talk about it. Like, I'm scared of having that talk, and yet I'm also kind of looking forward to it because I have a lot of things to say about it.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech's sake, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciplemaking possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Episode 282 of the Church Digital podcast. 282. Andy Beige coming up right around the corner. But before we get there, we've got a new part of the intro that I'm excited to share with you, brought to you by Riverside. That's right. The Church Digital podcast has a sponsorship now. Riverside. It is an incredible software. I cannot tell you how many hundreds of podcast episodes and YouTube videos and shows we have produced here at the Church Digital utilizing Riverside software. Andy Mage, myself, Garrett Zi, Dr. No, I'm sorry, John Pile, there's been so many people within the Church Digital utilizing this software, and it is incredible.

Listen, we've done the whole like long-distance interviews, remote interviews. We interview people all over the country, all over the world. We've got an interview from Germany coming up in a couple weeks. And so we've done things like, hey, let's try Zoom. Zoom is horrible when it comes to recording video. Can I say that? I don't know if I can say that, but listen, we've tried. Listen, I have tried every product under the planet when looking at remote interview software, and the quality that we get out of Riverside is incredible audio as well as video. So listen, church, if you're thinking about doing a podcast, a remote podcast interview, stuff like that, start checking out Riverside. For more information on this incredible tool, swing over to thechurchdigital.com/riverside. That's thechurchdigital.com/riverside.

Okay, let's get into this Andy Mage thing. So we're going to talk about the Apple Vision Pro today. Just kidding. Yeah, maybe it's a small device. Maybe you've heard of it. $3,500. Apple sells 200,000 of them within the first week or so, something like that. This is a huge device release, one that I've been waiting for vocally for many, many years. But let me tell you, I'm self-confessed here. I'm a huge Apple fan. When the first version of the iPhone came out, I showed up at the mall at Wellington Green in West Palm Beach, Florida at 3:00 a.m. to pick up that bad boy and stood in line for hours. I was number seven to get the iPhone at the little Apple Store, actually the huge Apple Store at the Wellington Green for that. That's so many years ago. But you know, I see the price tag for $3,500 on this one for the Apple Vision Pro, and I decided, you know, I gotta, I gotta wait. I'm a pastor. That's like, you know, way more than I've got to spend on this device. But I am so curious about what it's going to be, and I'm so hopeful for the augmented reality, for the virtual reality, for the XR, the mixed reality that's going to come out of this device. What it's going to do for the workplace, what it's going to do for community. Like, there is so much potential, and I would dare suggest there's so much writing on this on the future. When Apple, you know, I trust Apple a lot more than I trust Facebook. So I really, but I haven't been able to touch this thing. And that's where Andy Mage comes into play.

In a meeting with Andy Mage, by the way, operations director for the Church Digital, producer here of the Church Digital podcast, and Andy just drops a nugget. He's like, oh yeah, I got to play with an Apple Vision Pro for, what, a couple days or something like that? He said. And you know, after my mouth, jaw hit the floor, I said to him, hey, let's jump on a podcast. Let's have a conversation because I want to know all about this thing. What you're experiencing, what you're feeling, what do you think? We're hitting so we did. We jumped on a podcast, and here we are, episode 282, launching right now. We talk Apple Vision Pro. We talk some other stuff. Stick around. We kind of toy with some other things down the road, but 282 is great. And so here you go. Episode 282: Apple Vision Pro.

I did it again. Apple Vision Pro. That's right. Apple Vision Pro and Andy Mage here on the Church Digital podcast.

All right, Andy Mage joining us here on the Church Digital podcast. I'd say something awkward like, how you doing, Andy? Except you know I've talked to you maybe three or four times already today, so not much of a surprise. But for the listening audience, how you doing, Andy?

Hey, Jeff. I'm great. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks so much.

Is that too much? Like, am I putting on too much of the podcast voice there for you?

Maybe a little bit, but we'll go and roll with it and call it done.

So, you know, Andy Mage is no stranger to the Church Digital or the podcast operations director for the Church Digital. He's currently the producer of the Church Digital podcast, is the editing on the backside. In addition to that, he is featured on From Text to Testimony. He's featured and producing on Hybrid Disciple. What else are you doing right now? Is that it? Are you just two shows?

Well, no, actually we're recording and releasing something brand new with your friend of mine, John Pile, called Common Religion, where we're actually taking deep dives into movies and looking at kind of the lingua franca, the common language that people speak. We're revealing a lot of the spirituality behind things without actually talking about Christianity, which is very cool. And also, John is just a wizard. He's like, he's essentially one of those tops that you can just kind of pull the string and I can just interview him about something, and then let him go for 45 minutes and he's perfectly fine just being himself. So that's going to be dropping mid, you know, within the next couple weeks or so. Don't want to date or timestamp this or anything like that. On top of that, I'm also the creative pastor for Lux Digital Church, and so we're doing a whole lot of stuff over there as well. So I just, I feel like most of my days, I was having it. It's funny. I was having lunch with my grandmother who's down from Michigan, and she was like, how's the new gig? And I said, cool, I sit in front of cameras and talk to them most of the day, and I love it. I think it's fascinating. My lower back gets sore. I've gotta, I'm getting old. I gotta like get up and stretch around. I think I may have a disc, you know, it's, you know, you're old when you're talking about like discs that may be out of place, man.

The best thing that happened to my work, sad shape, the best thing that happened in my work environment was the standing desk, the electric standing desk. And so I usually stand all morning. Morning I'll work out in the morning and I'll stand and I'll have coffee, and then by afternoon I'll sit for like two or three hours. So you might want to look into one of those.

I'll check that out. But really good. So let's lean into this. By the way, John Pile's podcast, I think he did one or two episodes on the Poltergeist that was freaking incredible. And so I think he talked about this podcast on his show. So I can't wait to explore that. But we can talk about John Pile, Russian spambot, a later time. And instead, I want to lean into this new device that you happen to get your hands on. The Apple Vision Pro. Vision Pro Max. What is this thing actually called? I'm going to like date myself here.

Yeah, so if you are following the marketing guide as us kind of quasi-Apple nerds do, it is the Apple Vision Pro running Vision OS. And it is out as of right now. It's been out for less than a week as we're speaking. So this device out less than a week costs about $3,500, which is maybe $3,000 more than I was willing to throw down on the device. So I'm praying for the $1,000, $500 option to come sooner than later. And you know what's interesting is that you know I've seen Instagram. I've seen like friends that have it at the Apple Store are wearing it. I guess Apple's got displays of it now in different spots or doing road shows or whatever with it. And you know, I've seen the guys that are wearing the devices walking around New York City and you know, whatever, being stupid, driving, trying to make that work. But I don't know anybody that's actually like had one or put one on specifically until I was in a meeting the other day, and Andy told me, oh yeah, I had one on. One of his friends happened to use it for a period of time. And of course I was like, well, I want to know what's going on. So, dude, you got your hands and you actually wore an Apple Vision Pro. Talk to us a little bit about that.

It is so. First off, I think I need to give a little bit of a background. I am mostly kind of an Apple nerd. I have, it's just kind of been a thing for the last probably ten or fifteen years of my life. I am extremely interested in what Apple does. I'm not, I wouldn't, I'm a kind of a fanboy, although I also PC game and you know, I like Android phones and all that. But Apple in particular always has this thing. They have this design ethos. And yeah, everyone makes fun of them and we talk about, oh, you're a sheep and you know, you're a follower and all that, and that might be true. But there's a thing that happens when you get an Apple product in your hand, and it's something that Steve Jobs actually had in his design DNA. And I don't think of I don't revere him as like, you know, King Jobs and all these other things. But one of the things that he did, in particular in tech, was the idea that when you peel something off, like when you peel off the cover of something, he and Johnny Ive had this mantra that you want, you want the inside to look as beautiful as the outside. And that led to a lot of things happening with Apple, particularly around the turn of the century, maybe a little bit before, you know, late nineties. Right when he came back from being at NeXT, he was, you know, he started Apple and then got unceremoniously dismissed from there and then fired.

Yeah, fired.

And then Apple bought NeXT. There's kind of a whole long story. He came back, and one of the design principles that he said was the inside needs to be as beautiful as the outside. And he hired engineers and he hired people to do all that. So fast forward about thirty years, we've gone through, you know, seventeen different iterations of the iPhone, I think eighteen different iterations of the iPhone. We've gone through nine or ten different iterations of the iPad. We've got the Apple Watch like a thousand things, a thousand different versions of them, MacBook Pros, and so on and so forth. And I love all of these things, not because of, not because of the hardware necessarily, because it's not the strongest hardware. It just, everything just does kind of seamlessly fit together, and it's a miracle how the inside of the hardware mimics the inside of the software and how everything just is beautiful. Like, you pull open a MacBook Pro and it's beautiful. It just speaks to me. And so when they started talking about the Apple Vision Pro back...

At WWDC of 2023, I'm not like necessarily a VR guy. I have a Quest Two. I played around with a Quest Three. I think you have a Quest Two like sitting behind you as well in one of your displays. Um, VR is, it's okay. Like it's not, it's not like a, it's not a life's journey for me. I'm not like, you know, Stu, who, uh, we love Stu by the way here at the church digital, but not like him. Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not seeking to install churches in VR. I just kind of like playing Beat Saber and I like hanging out and shooting things.

Well, WWDC 2023 rolls around and they introduced the Apple Vision Pro and I was intrigued, uh, more so because I thought it looked ridiculous. Looked like a big pair of glass ski goggles and I was like, okay, fine. There's no controllers, gaming is going to be kind of tough on this whole thing. And then more and more reviews started coming out of it and particularly within the last two or three weeks, the Zeitgeist has been high on this thing and it got in the hands of some notable tech reviewers, some guys that I follow. In particular, Marques Brownlee, MKBHD on YouTube. He's brilliant. Like, you know, a lot of people think he's dumbed down all of his reviews, no, no. This is like the first Apple product he's been excited about in years. And then, you know, guys like Casey Neistat are putting this thing on, are walking through New York, and I'm like, huh, this is fascinating. I want to get my hands on one.

And so yes, you're right. Had a friend who allowed me to use it for at length and I must say, um, it is everything that you would think an Apple product would be. It is beautiful. It really is a work of art. The way that the curved glass on the outside feels, the weight, even it's made of, you know, there's plastic interior, but the glass on the outside, the way it cups around your eyes and your head, you know, it could be uncomfortable at first, but then you size it right and you get the right light seal and you get the right everything and it just clicks. You know, it's just one of those things that just clicks. And it, the weight of it is kind of weird and you know, there's a battery pack that you got to put in your pocket, not in your pants, in your pocket. And you know, it's weird, right? But then you start to use it and you go, this is fascinating. It's not, it's not the best product in the world. It's, I don't think it's the best. It's probably the best VR display out there from what I've used. It's definitely not a product that I would want to use for longer than forty-five minutes to an hour, honestly. It's kind of a pain in the butt. You do have to put a battery bank in your pocket. You do have it. It does get a little heavy if you don't have it pushed on your face properly. Um, and we can talk more about controls and about the whole thing in just a little bit, but the core conceit of what the Apple Vision Pro is is that it's essentially a gigantic wearable iPad for your face. And it's fascinating to me. That's incredible. Like the fact that they were able to pull together that seamlessness that you're describing, how the Apple hardware and the software works together on version one, I was really nervous. Um, and I didn't want to drop thirty-five hundred on V1, knowing that V2, you know, they'd work out the kinks and the bugs towards that. But this sounds great now. Uh, I do want to get into, you know, let's get into like Apple software, what comes with it. Um, like is there, you know, I know you can do FaceTime and you and I had a conversation about FaceTime about what that looks like with the headset, the augmented reality approach that it's taking. But maybe start to dig into maybe some of the basic functionalities that come with it out of the box.

Yeah, um, this is not a review by the way, because I have not had any time to do a review. I'd love to become a tech reviewer at some point because I'm just a tech nerd along with all this stuff. But when you, the first thing you put it on, it, oh, you're a nerd. I mean, yeah, you're not wrong there. Uh, truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but so are you and it's okay. Like we're in a comfortable space here. Um, the second you put it on, uh, it wants to scan your eyes because it's all based on eye tracking. It's called, you know, there's a thing called foveated rendering in there where it's following your eyes and it's rendering out the pixels that your eyes are following more than the pixels that are in your periphery. And it does that for processing reasons, but it also actually, if you think about the way that your eyes work when you're focusing on something in front of you, everything kind of blurs off to the side. And that's a processing power of your brain thing as well. It's kind of cool how it mimics it. Scans your eyes. It then uses your eyes as kind of your Face ID. It is Retina ID, I think, is what it's called, eye ID, something along those lines, which is pretty cool. So it does all of those things. And then the way it wants you to control is just simply using your hand. And you use your hand and when you want to do something, you look at it and then you pinch your fingers together. And the first couple times you do it, you're like, this is stupid. I look, I must look ridiculous. And then you start to get the hang of it and you start to pinch and grab a Safari page and toss that Safari page up and it scrolls. And it's seamless scrolling. You know, it's got, I think, one hundred twenty hertz refresh, so there's no like weird jelly scrolling. You don't feel queasy or anything like that. And you pinch and you push things, or if you want to, like, uh, you want to move a volume slider up and down, you look at it, you pinch it, and you just move it left and right. And the way it works, again, is fascinating because you go, this is probably not the most efficient way of doing it. Like the Meta, the Meta Quest, the Oculus Quest, whatever it's called, the Meta Quest Two and Three have hand controllers. You know, pretty much every VR headset has some sort of controller you put in your hand and it's very accurate. And like I wouldn't want to play a game or play Beat Saber or anything like that with my hands because I feel like it would be very unwieldy. But when you're just doing productivity stuff, like when you sit down and you put the goggles on and you look at your Mac and it tells you, hey, I want to mirror your Mac screen, and then you pull your Mac screen up in front of you and you all of a sudden have this huge four K screen in front of you. And then you click the little button which allows you to get immersive or not immersive. You click the little crown and a couple of apps pop up and you say, all right, I want my, I want another Safari window over here and then I want my Apple Music window over here. Oh, I want to put my messages window up there. Um, and maybe I want to be in the desert at some point. You turn the thing and then you're completely enveloped in the desert somewhere. You hear like the wind whistling and kind of this ambient thing. And I'm now staring at my Mac, my, I have two monitors here, but I'm staring at the biggest monitor that I have. And I can move that thing back and forth and left and right and up and down. And I'm getting my messages over here and I'm listening to Apple Music through the spatial headphones. And I'm doing, I have another Safari window if I want it over here. And it's extremely extravagant. And it's a masterpiece of interoperability because literally now I'm operating my Mac with my keyboard and my trackpad and my mouse, but I'm also operating the Vision Pro. And then I spin that button again and then I'm looking at my office again and I'm looking at my lights on my camera and I will adjust something here and then I'll spin the thing, the digital crown again, and then I'm back in the desert. And again, the way it all works is fascinating. And the biggest takeaway that I had from that is it's extremely easy to get lost in what you're doing because of the immersiveness of it.

Is the field of view bad? Yeah, sure. It, I mean, it literally feels like you're just wearing goggles. And for those watching on YouTube, like I'm holding my hands over my eyes, and that's about the field of view. It's a, they call it binocular view. Like that's what it feels like. You're in a bunch of binoculars. Is it, and is it worth thirty-five hundred? No, absolutely not. Like not at least not for me and not for Jeff. Like we're pastors. We don't have a whole ton of money. It's not worth it for us. But you know, for somebody that's going to be flying on an airplane that wants to work in perfect privacy with their laptop or who wants to watch a movie, like an immersive movie on an airplane or something, absolutely. If they have the money, absolutely go for it.

Now, have you ever done any work productivity devices other than Apple's, or this was kind of like your first stab in the virtual type stuff? I've done virtual desktop stuff with the Meta Quest Two via a Link cable to my PC. It doesn't work with Mac yet. I mean, it kind of does, but it's bad. Uh, but I've done it with my PC and it's weird. Like so I, after we were done with the Vision Pro and I gave it back to the friend and all that, um, I put my Meta Quest on and it was essentially like what happened when you got done watching a flat screen TV for the first time and then you went back to your old CRT monitor or like that big gigantic wooden cabinet to play Nintendo and you just saw how big and nasty and gross the pixels were. It was essentially like that. Like it felt like I was stepping back in time when I put that thing on. Um, it, the Meta Quest Two is very, very bad at remote desktop stuff, but it's also a five-year-old product or a six-year-old product or whatever it is.

Yeah, well, they're, I mean, at some levels they're even phasing out the Two at this point. I know the Three is, is, my Two is actually broken. What I've got behind me is actually a One, which is, you know, DOA at this point, legacy dead. But um, the Two is, uh, got broke on, I think my son dropped it. I'm not actually sure how it broke, but it just magically broke one day. And then um, I didn't get real upset, but uh, and then the Three, I, I'm I'll probably honestly I'll probably end up buying a Three just because I want a VR headset and I, um, well, Apple is just a little out of range I believe for now. But um, you know, with the Two, I really didn't ever get into much augmented reality type stuff. Um, you know, like the Meta, the One and the Two on the Meta Quest is, uh, it closes off reality and it creates its own. And so like you're playing Beat Saber and doing that, you're going into worlds like VR Chat or Rec Room, completely independent. You know what's interesting? I'm going to go off on a tangent here. I actually spoke last night for a Canadian Bible school. This was fascinating to me. It was like a college Bible school up in Canada, somewhere way up North. I can't, I don't remember the name of the school. I don't remember the name of where I was at. But I asked in the class, I said, hey, how many of you have ever put on a headset? Ninety percent of these kids put on a headset. I couldn't believe the ratio. Like I don't know if there's more Canadians using virtual reality than Americans, but like just the pure ratio of kids are like, yeah, I've used, I use virtual reality. I was like, tell me some of the stories. What are you guys doing? Where you going? And everybody's using like Beat Saber for cardio, but uh, and some other stuff too. But does the, does the augmented reality aspects of what Apple's done seems to be really impressive to me. Um, like to me, I

Get more excited about augmented than virtual. Virtual, I think, is really going to hit its lid because it blinds people to reality. People don't want to be blinded to physical reality. They want to make it better. They want to add on top of it. And so to me, I was really curious what that experience was, seeing things added to the physical reality. Like, what were some tangible things Apple's doing right now to augment the physical reality around this?

I think that's actually the most fascinating thing is the reaction that people had to the initial VR wave that was back in what, 2012, 2013, when Parker, what's face, released the first Oculus, and then the whole thing kind of blew up. That was very much we're closing you off. You're living in this world. You're doing this whole thing. And I think what people started to realize is that I can't do that for very long. Like, innately, I can't be closed off. I can go sit in my mom's basement and play video games for a while, but even then, like, I have the spatial awareness that people are around me. And I remember the Quest 2 had, they call it pass-through. It had pass-through, but it was really grainy and kind of black and white, and like, mine doesn't work very well anymore.

Oh yeah, it was horrible. Yeah, it was. I mean, you couldn't read your phone. The most interesting thing that they did with this is you're absolutely right. The augmented reality, they call it XR or something like that, extra reality, but it's essentially augmented reality. A couple, it's not perfect. It's definitely not perfect. The cameras on the thing are not nearly bright enough. And so if you're in like the areas that I was using it, it was kind of dark. And it, you know what happens when you turn up the ISO of a camera in a dark room? It gets grainy. It gets real noisy and artifact. I could try to pull up my phone and read it, and I could sometimes read it, but there's a weird sort of spatial bending that's happening. And so I'm like trying to interact with my phone or trying to interact with my watch, and you know, it was fine. It was passable.

The thing really, though, that is really interesting is that you can, so outside of the Mac pass-through, which we can talk about ad nauseum, I think that's one of the biggest features, one of the biggest selling features here, is that when you pull up an app, so let's say, you know, Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal, she's a brilliant reviewer. She reviewed where she was cooking with this thing, which I think seems terrible. She was cooking with this thing, and she set a timer over a pot and then put it there, and then she set a timer over another pot and put it there. And so she was watching these timers over these pots, and they were different times, and she was able to grab the one when it was up and watch the other one. And I thought that was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

And so I was demoing this thing, and I was walking around with it, and I put, I've been watching the show called Slow Horses on Apple TV Plus, great show, highly recommend it. It's this like mystery spy thriller. And so I pulled it up and I pushed it. I was out in my kind of my kitchen area, and I pushed it out into the dining room. Pushed like the theater out into the dining room, and it was just sitting there. And so the literal image of the video, the move, the video itself, like I think of like cinema screen. I did it. You pinch the bottom. There's like a little line that comes up, almost like at the bottom of your iPhone where you get that little line there. You look at that line, you grab that line, and you just push it or pull it depending on where you want to push or move it left and right. And so I, it was too close, and so I grabbed it and this was all like I didn't think about this, it just did it. I grabbed it, I picked it up, and I pushed it backwards. And so now I'm looking out at my island where our sink is, and I'm doing dishes, and I'm watching this show that is back by our dining room table. And I thought that's pretty cool.

And then I walked over to like go put some dishes away, and the thing stayed there. And I turned my head, and because of spatial audio, I could hear like the whole thing was turning. Like I could hear it from where it was coming from, which was like, okay, that's also cool. So I put the dishes away. I crouched down, put some dishes down, and then stood back up and turned back around, and it was still there. Had not moved. Like there was not a glitch. It was still playing at 60 frames a second, or 24 frames a second, or whatever it was. And then I was like, I wanted to try something. And so I opened a couple other windows. And so I put like an Apple Music window kind of off to the side. I put it like out in our living room. It was just kind of floating there doing its thing. Wasn't playing. I just wanted to see what happened. Put my messages like off in the hallway, and I walked over to them. I walked literally up to the screen where Slow Horses was playing, and then I turned and I walked probably twenty feet over to where the messages app was, and I typed in there. I kind of, you know, you can hand dictate or you can poke your finger in there or do some other stuff. And then I turned around and I walked back over to Apple Music, and it was just this like these things are floating in space. Nobody else sees them. I do. I have this augmented reality here where I am the master of this universe. And it was mindblowing. The way, and this is again, the interoperability was mind-blowing. The way that all of Apple's services just knew what to do. They had me signed in. They knew exactly where I had left off in the show on my iPad when I was on the Peloton earlier. They knew all of my messages. They knew who I was talking to, and they knew where I was in my last Apple Music playlist. Like it was mindblowing, Jeff.

And like for thirty-five hundred dollars, again, I keep going back to that, like the price is too much, but maybe for a thousand. Well, I mean, and what you're even describing, you don't need a TV anymore because everything that's online in Apple Store is now available through the headset. And so that fifteen hundred dollars you're going to spend on a Samsung, well, you're probably not going to spend that much on a Samsung, but the point being is all of a sudden you start to throw some other devices in. Now that quantifies or that multiplies very quickly. As I've got a family of four, wife and two kids, and so you know, now I'm spending thirty-five hundred times four, so we all can watch, you know, I don't know what just came out. Oh, we just watched The Marvels last night. And so we all can watch the Marvels on Disney Plus. And you know, and there's, that's a really, that's fourteen thousand dollars worth of Apple glass to make that happen. And that's well beyond the pastor's budgets along with others. But that's a, you know, I got to believe that this is step one of a multiple step plan on Apple's part. So I'm excited to see what's coming from this.

Did you actually, you know, one of the things that when we talk about, you know, Stuart talks so much about this church in virtuality, it's communication. It's building relationships, friendships. It's, you know, sitting around the campfire, got Altspace, God bless it, or you know, hanging out in Rec Room at a coffee house or going to a bar at VR Chat. But it's relationships. It's dialoguing with that. I was actually surprised Apple hasn't, didn't release any virtual community aspects in this device or nothing that I know of. Is there any community built into version one of this? Like, what are the communication tools that are available for the Vision Pro?

That's a great question, and honestly, it's something I think they're getting dinged on a little bit. Apple has repeatedly rebuffed the chance to build some sort of quote-unquote social network that they could have done. I think I personally, I think they might see it as a little below them. Which was the iTunes one that was around?

Yeah, there was iTunes Connect or iTunes Share. Oh my gosh, that was horrible. Horrible. Yeah, it was essentially a glorified comment, a blog post comment is what it was, right? Tied to whatever was coming off of iTunes. But go ahead. I'm sorry. I know.

And that, like, that's what I mean. Like, I think they tried and they got, it was bad. And I think they kind of see that as, that's what Facebook does, and that's what you remember. Google tried Google One. No, Google Plus. I think Google Plus. Yeah, whatever their circles were. And they tried it and they killed it because Google just kills things randomly. Also, Google Plus was bad. But you know, that's what Facebook does. That's what Twitter does, or X, or whatever we're calling it. That's what, you know, Mason and all those do. That's what those things do. That's not what Apple does. We are above that. We are a software as a service company. And all, you know, like that type of thing. And whatever, that's elitism. And I, that's the part of Apple that I absolutely hate. And that's the part that people really glom on to, which I get. Past that, but the communication piece that's built into it is twofold. Number one, you create this thing called a Persona. It's still in beta. I didn't really, when I had it, I didn't have it for long. The one that I had for too long, I had it enough to create a Persona, and it's essentially creating a like a Memoji of you. And everybody knows emoji from Memoji from their phone, except it's a little more lifelike. It feels a little bit more real. And you know, Apple's fascinating the way that they do tech more so than like Microsoft, who throws a bunch of stuff at the wall and says like, okay, businesses pick something, gamers pick something, Xbox pick something. And like, they're kind, and we can talk, we can talk tech news all we want, but like, they're reaping the benefits or the rewards of that in the business sector, but also in the gaming sector. They're losing big time because they just threw a bunch of crap at the wall. And Sony had like a focused thing. So that's gaming. Apple kind of does the same thing that Sony has been doing. Like, yeah, we might get beat in this quarter, or we might be getting this product beaten in this product cycle, but over time, all of the things that we learned, we're going to implement them. Apple did Memoji. They did the AR VR stuff ten, you know, eight years ago with their LAR scanners and their iPads. You know, they've built all of these things on top of each other. And now we have this amazing weird piece of glass that you put on your head. And inside of that, you have these personas that are built on Memoji technology that move with your face. And they respond to your eyes. They respond to your facial features. But they don't have realistic hair. So the hair just kind of feels like Lego hair. Your beard doesn't move. Like your, you're wearing the same shirt. It's essentially from like your collarbone up, if you can think of it, maybe a little bit lower. And so you're always wearing the same shirt forever. And unless you redo your persona, which I guess you can do, I've not, I didn't get a chance to do that. And it looks a little kind of uncanny valley. Like you definitely look like one of the animatronics from Disney at that point.

And so there's all those things happening there. And then when you want to FaceTime somebody and they're on their phone, they see your persona. They don't see you because obviously that's like got an Iron Man visor thing happening. That'd be way too close. They don't see, they see your persona.

You can see this actual entire person, which is cool. So there's that built into it. There's also, you know, your iMessage and your regular texting that are built in. Microsoft just released Teams for Apple Vision Pro. I haven't seen how it works yet. Zoom is working on something as well.

You know, if you think about it, it's really a productivity and entertainment thing. It's not necessarily a community-focused thing just yet. You know, Rec Room is not available yet. Apple was talking about game. Somebody released something called Game Room, I think is what it's called, and it's trying to be Rec Room, but it's going to be extremely difficult because Apple doesn't really let you do anything with the personas. Like, they don't. You know, pornography is one of the biggest things in the world, and Apple, I think, is afraid that they're going to have their personas doing things that are, you know, not what Apple wants their personas to be doing. So I just think that's probably, if I could read into it a little bit.

And then the regular communication tools of Safari and email and all of that stuff—again, very version one right now.

Yeah, it'll be interesting, the community aspects of it, or whether Apple actually does it. It was funny. I remember when AltSpace VR shut down, Stu was actually really pushing, and he said this several times also, that he thought Apple was going to acquire AltSpace and integrate that into the headset. I don't know whether it's a social media network or a community or whatever. I think Apple's missing something here in the community aspect.

Several people I've heard Mark lament about the lack of controllers, really for gaming and making that. And so if Apple's not going to step into the space, man, I believe it's an opportunity for third party, you know, and as Apple gets more comfortable with opening up their SDK—software development kits—and allowing more functionality, you know, I think we're going to see some big winners step into the space and start to develop some things.

I just, to have that much productivity without community—like, even I mean, even Microsoft Teams gives you community aspects within the workplace. You know, we, you know, you and I, Andy, today earlier today we were just talking with Barbara Carero. Word Revolution was on the podcast last week, and she's talking about virtual offices and ways to connect. And she's, I mean, we're on a Zoom call, and she's got like her agency team that's on with her, and there's like several continents involved in the conversation, and they're not missing a beat working together because they're working together virtually. And so even if it's just within the workplace environment, like having some sort of community communications engagement tool is going to have to be necessary. And you know, we can talk about the wins and the losses of FaceTime, but there's a lot more opportunities, I think, open right now.

The Quest Pro, I think, was built on that. So like, 2021, 2022, Meta did the Quest Pro, and then so they did the Quest Two, and then the Quest Pro, and then the Quest Three. And I remember the Quest Pro—like, the thing that turned me off about it, A, it was like a thousand dollars, and I was like, I'm not paying a thousand dollars for something that I don't—it's not gaming-focused. But I think they had in their head like it was going to be a lot of what Barbara's team was talking about. You know, I think in their head they were thinking, well, corporations are going to buy these. With the, you know, corporations with those crappy open office plans, which everybody seems to hate, you're going to put your headset on. You're going to wear your headset for eight hours a day minus a lunch break or whatever you want to go to the bathroom, and then you're going to be able to virtually connect with people in other offices all across the world. And I think they thought that was what was going to happen, and I don't. I have never seen any success stories about that actually.

The only success stories I've seen about community like that has been from two places. It's been from churches, and it's been from like Discord servers that are actually doing the things. And I think that right there is a testament to Christians kind of just taking the space and going like, yeah, people are here. We're going to go there.

Well, in understanding the role of community and the necessity of it, we've talked so much about that, even as of late, that the content, the shows, the relationships that we have, the people that we meet—like, in order to really engage in the dialogue and build those relationships, it's got to be done in community. You know, which is why I'm really—I mean, Apple released a thirty—honestly, Apple released a thirty-five-hundred-dollar device. Yay. Apple hasn't released a new device in a decade. Not for a decade. I've been saying they got to come up with something. They got to come out with something. They got to get into the space. And I think they did a great first step.

When I look at what digital church, when I look at virtual reality churches and what DJ Sto's doing and what Stu's doing and many of the others that have been exploring the pollings, Jason Pollings as well, you know, there's Apple. I don't think delivered what I was expecting, really. And that's, yeah, I'm a little disappointed now.

I think that Apple leans more into augmented than virtual. And so if I'm looking at it with the lens of virtual, of what, you know, guys like VR Tiger are doing where they're building these massive virtual reality worlds that are recreating Biblical context—I'm literally walking the Tabernacle listening to VR Tiger preach his sermon on the Tabernacle, and oh, look over there, a calf just got his head cut off. Like, you know, that is not what's happening. That is, believe me, that is not exaggeration. Thank you, VR Tiger's a listener to this. VR Tiger, I love you, man.

But we're not—I'm not getting that from the Apple device. And maybe, and I don't want to speak ill of anything that we just heard. I think that the virtual reality concepts that we were doing at some level, I think that's like 101. I think that's elementary. I think that's the start. It's phase one. Be less insulting. It's phase one to it.

I mean, even we started this conversation. You were talking about how you put that headset on and the old Quest, and it blocks you from reality, and there's only so long you can be that way, even if you're downstairs playing in your mom's basement gaming. You still have spatial awareness of what's going on around you.

I really do believe, and I've gotten—I remember I did a podcast with Neils Smith on this, and he and I got into an argument. I couldn't believe it. I really do believe that augmented reality is going to be the bigger player long term, not just for the church but in general, than virtual. I think virtual is nice. I think that virtual will have a place, but the ability to supplement what's happening on your phone, end of real estate, to put virtual, to put augmented reality in these pair of glasses that I'm holding in my hand, put it down, and then have that augmented piece on top of it.

And when I look at the church, what I see for augmented reality, I see it tearing down borders and barriers. Like, at we've got to get beyond this persona piece where I'm talking to a semi-real version of whoever's wearing the headset on the other end. And we've got, you know, some of the stuff that Facebook was promising, and Facebook promised all sorts of stuff. Zuckerberg did in that video, but some of the stuff, some of his vision for it, wasn't, you know, fake. It was real hologram person. I'm sitting, you know, I'm traveling. I'm in California. My wife's in Miami. I'm sitting at Starbucks, and I'm watching a hologram version of her in the seat across from me have this conversation. Like, we need to see augmented reality tear down the borders. That's where we're going. Tear down the boundaries.

I can remember I had a conversation with—I'm not going to say who it was because I just remembered who it was—had a conversation with a very popular pastor who is talking about virtual reality church and, I'm sorry, about churches in virtual reality, like doing ministry in virtual reality. And he said to me, "Jeff, it's this—these exact words: Jeff, it's sixty-five percent there." Like, literally, he's describing the effect. He's like, "If I'm looking at that avatar, I'm not actually seeing the person's facial reactions. I'm not seeing their movement. I'm not seeing their skin. I'm not seeing who they are. And so you're asking me as a pastor to build relationships with people that I can't like read body language to." And so what he equated it to was sixty-five percent.

I got a hope, and maybe this is me, you know, pipe dream here. I got to believe that Apple and the technology that they're leveraging, as they're continuing to build out a more augmented reality, is going to be able to finish off that thirty-five percent.

Well, think about it. I mean, yes, I would agree with you. I also, the core conceit of what augmented reality is, is I am splitting the difference, right? I am splitting the difference of what virtual reality can give me, which is a completely different world to mine. It's escapism. It's just it is the core of escapism. And then augmented reality is that sort of, I'm the god of this universe and I can do anything I want. It's a power fantasy, essentially.

And where it gets tricky is that you, we don't have the tech for it right now, obviously. Like, we're Apple's trying, and there Meta is going to try, and you know, Steam is going to try with their new Index, and all sorts of stuff is going to happen. Where it starts to get a little scary is that when you are a god of your own universe, you start to not pay attention to the other things around you.

For example, in the state of California, when you buy a Vision Pro and you drive around in your Tesla, which has autopilot on, and you're playing with your Vision Pro, that is—I mean, they were doing it for clicks, and it's funny. It's also, they're going to get arrested for it or at least ticketed, because now it's a misdemeanor. You're not allowed to drive with screens in your front seat, looking, you know, operating screens in your front seat, excuse me.

So there's that part. But the people that are now going to be doing things with that type of thing are not going to be paying attention to anything. And I look at Casey Neistat. Love Casey Neistat as a videographer, as a filmmaker, as a vlogger. The guy is inspirational. He's like old school YouTube. This is my guy, right? And I've been following him for a hundred thousand years. He got a Vision Pro, and the first thing he did was he FaceTimed his friend and said, "Hey, we're going to go make a review of this out in the street." I was like, okay, cool. And so the guy's just wandering around New York City. It's tethered to his phone, and he's just doing the whole thing. And I thought, okay, this is clever. He's skateboarding. He's doing the thing. People are asking him about it. He's having really kind of heartfelt conversations with people. And then he's coming out of the subway into Times Square, and he stops in the middle of the freaking steps to respond to a text message. And I lost it right there. And I was like, listen, if somebody in front of me stops to respond to a text message when I can't see a phone in front of them, like if they're just walking with both hands, like I'm not, you know, usually if you see somebody looking down at their phone, you know.

Like, okay, I got to pay attention to that person. If that person just stops because a text message popped up in their eyes, I'm going to drill them and I'm not going to feel bad about it. And if that person, you know, Casey's now thinking I'm the god of my universe, I can just take over New York City and respond to a text message, that's dangerous to me. And I, the church has a part to play in that. Like, they really do. I think that we can start to speak into those things a little bit. And it's going to be fascinating in five or ten years when we do have, you know, Google Glass was awful, but when it was, it was thin at least and it was lightweight. And when we do have things like Google Glass that are actually projecting things in front of us that we can interact with, not just screens but interactive things like augmented reality, it's going to be fascinating to hear some youth pastors actually have to get up there and talk about it. Like, I'm scared of having that talk and yet I'm also kind of looking forward to it because I have a lot of things to say about, you know, the reality is, I think Business Insider was reporting, Apple VP of Business saying that iOS devices are dead in ten years. The phones and the iPads that we carry around are going to be replaced by Vision OS. And so it's going to be a very different reality in over the next five or ten years as the technology improves, as the hardware and software gets more developed, and as there's more cultural acceptance.

That's really interesting, like the guy stopping in the middle of the stairway in New York City. I don't know that I react as strongly as you did, but I would totally be the guy just like, you know, ramming them. And you know, for our friends that actually live in New York City, the guy walks around with the thirty-five-hundred-dollar thing strapped to his head and nobody's like that. Just as I mean, he had a camera crew with him to protect him. So there's that. He had a couple bouncers, I guess, protecting security guards along the way. Okay, good. Um, awesome, man. Any other thoughts or insights on the device? You talked a little bit about the dream of not having to buy a TV and instead everybody buys an Apple Vision, kind of like Ready Player One type stuff. And I'm excited. So I talked negative about AR, but like, sign me up for Apple contact lens, whatevers. Like, I'll pop those things in. I wear contacts regularly. I'm like almost legally blind without my contacts. I will wear Apple contacts, scan my eyes, take my brain waves, whatever you have to do. Like, if I can just interact with the world like that, yes, please.

But the thing that is really cool, going back to talking about your family wearing these, is you know, with phones typically what families do with phones is somebody will get the latest and greatest and then hand it down to their kid or to their wife or to, you know, some their grandmother or somebody. You know, there's usually two or three generations of phones in families right now. It's just a kind of an interesting thing that's a phenomenon that's happened in the last seven or eight years. And that's going to be happening with the Apple Vision Pro. You know, Timmy the fourteen-year-old or Jimmy Lipper, you know, whomever the fourteen-year-old is, going to get Dad's old Apple Vision Pro because Dad's going to get the new Apple Vision Pro 3. And he's going to wear it and then they're all going to be able to lock up together and they're all going to be able to position their own movie watching the same movie, synced up, because that's actually a feature in it. It's called SharePlay in iMessage right now. You can actually watch a movie with somebody through iMessage. You guys, one person controls it, they start the movie, and then you guys can both watch it. It's fascinating. So that technology is there. I mean, it's just synced over the Internet, so there's that happening. And that's fascinating. But how does the church respond? Again, back to the further, what's the word I'm looking for, insulation of families and of people pulling, you know, giving them yet another reason to not actually do things in church or, you know, attend online church. That's great, but also have fourteen other windows up around them doing fourteen other things. You know, the human brain cannot physically concentrate on more than one thing at a time. It can try to. You can listen to things, but you are not concentrating on them. And part of being a churchgoer, part of being a Christian, is we need to concentrate on God's will. We need to concentrate on his word. We need to concentrate on what he is saying to us at a specific time. And it's going to be fascinating how the church is able to do that as well. And I don't think we're fighting a losing battle. I just think we're on the cutting edge of yet another cultural battle that if we're not ready for as pastors and leaders and mentors and designers and all this, we're going to lose. And I don't want to lose. I want to win.

Well, yeah, I mean, and that's a Gen Alpha and, you know, whatever the next generation is coming along who's going to be far more comfortable utilizing this technology. And yeah, I mean, I can focus on God and have fourteen other windows open as opposed to, you know, Xers. You're an Xer, aren't you?

Well, I'm a millennial.

Are you millennial?

Yeah, you're a millennial. I'm an Xer. And so, you know, the Xers and the millennials are like, get off my lawn, and I'll shake my cane at them. And it'll be, it'll be actually, I'll probably be fighting for him like, just listen to them. They said they know what they're doing. Give me a shot. It. But no, I think that's, I think the next decade is going to be really interesting. You know what, I got you here, and so we're going to shift into a bonus question. Yeah. Because Apple released Vision Pro, and so that street, which was a big deal. There was another big deal that is maybe in this metaverse type stuff that happened yesterday. Maybe you know this. Disney invested one point five billion, that's with a B, billion dollars into Epic, which is the company that makes Fortnite. You know, I would love to just pick your brain here, maybe five minutes. What's going on in that space? It's scary.

So Epic, Epic has like the biggest game in the world for the last, what, eight or ten years called Fortnite. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's a little game where you punch trees and then you shoot. Little game. Yeah, it is. It is essentially turned into, and the funny thing is, if you ever want to really laugh a little bit, go back and read the creation story of how Fortnite saved the world and then Fortnite the Battle Royale came about. Fortnite Save the World was supposed to be this survival game, and somebody, just a couple of designers, added the Battle Royale into it just for fun, and it became the biggest thing ever. I play Fortnite occasionally. I'm sure you do. I'm sure everybody in the world has played Fortnite at some point.

With the Disney thing, what happened was they, Disney had a really booming quarter, and I, and it took a bunch of people by surprise, I think, because Disney has not had really good quarters lately, which is shocking to me that Disney is talking about being bought by Apple and selling a bunch of shares and getting rid of their CEO and doing all the things. And you know, Bob Iger stepped back in two and a half years ago, coming right out of the pandemic, three years ago, coming right out of the pandemic, and he said, okay, we're going to be strong. Like, we're going to present a strong front. We're going to double down on the things that we have. We're going to get rid of some of the things we don't have, which is why you're hearing that ESPN might be being sold as well. They're selling off properties that they think might be useful elsewhere, and they're really getting to the core of what they do, and that is character-based. Characters, essentially character-based characters. That's a double weird thing.

What Fortnite does and they have done so well is that they license different characters. So they license Doctor Strange. They license all these Marvel characters. They license the guy from Halo, you know, John Spartan. They license, um, different. They license hot dogs and they license all sorts of things. And then they also license things like Lego. And so there is now Lego Fortnite out, which is actually pretty good. It's this completely standalone thing. You play Legos and you build things kind of like Minecraft, and then you just shoot each other inside the Lego world. My fourteen-year-old plays it with his friends online. He loves it. He's having a great time.

So Disney saw that and went, oh, cool, we had a good quarter. We've got a bunch of money to throw around. Let's figure out how we can make this a little bit more successful. Epic had already licensed out a bunch of, again, Marvel and a bunch of Disney stuff already. And Epic said, okay, here's some stock. And I think they bought something like twenty-five percent, twenty-four percent of their, essentially like a very large chunk, a very large voting interest of Epic. And Epic now is owned by a couple of really huge companies. Epic is owned by Tim Sweeney himself, like the owner. I think he's got fifty something, forty-nine percent, maybe fifty percent of the company. And then right behind that is this company called Tencent. And Tencent, if you know anything about Tencent, they are a Chinese publisher that licenses every freaking game under the sun. They have so many properties. Like, if you want to get a kick out of it, find a game that has just released or that has been released in the last five years and start to dig down into the actual publisher. Chances are Tencent owns at least a percentage share of that publisher. They are printing money in China right now. And so Tencent owns this, and now Disney is getting into essentially getting into bed with them.

I'm equal parts scared and also excited to see what they do because Disney now can start putting Fortnite things in its parks. They can have Fortnite representations in their parks. They can have Fortnite movies on Disney Plus. They can have Fortnite, you know, action figures that are coming out in Disney parks and in the Disney Store and things like this. It's insane to me, the world that we are living in right now.

Wow, it's interesting. I wasn't going there at all. I was thinking more that Disney was moving towards developing a metaverse with all these worlds infused with Fortnite technology. But you're even getting into licensing. That's really interesting. You talk about the VR and the metaverse side of it. Fortnite's already been doing that. Fortnite holds concerts in here. You know, I think Lady Gaga was in there. I want to say Taylor, maybe not Taylor Swift, maybe not somebody as large as that. I know, um, was Drake in there as well? Um, there was a number of concerts in Fortnite, and essentially you just show up and you go and do the thing. I'm surprised they haven't done a VR thing yet. I think there's the thinking there that when they do it, they now have the backing of Disney and Tencent. They want to release their own headset. That would be, if I'm reading the tea leaves a little bit, they want to release their own headset. They want to have the Epic, the Epic Quest seventeen or whatever, you know, or let, you know, whatever they're going to call it, the Epic Hammer One. And it's all part of the Epic Game Store, which they have their own game store. They have their own publishing arm. They want to have all of their own kind of properties tied up into this because if you, again, you trace the money back to all of these things, Disney now

Can license the things that it puts in there, so imagine the only way you can watch Disney Plus is if you buy the Epic Hammer One headset. Now you get spatial video from Disney that is now supported in China, and Disney has now taken over the world yet again. Of course they did. It's Disney. It's what they do. And now that Bob Berger's back, man, just great things are going to continue on. I think his eye for things is very good from a leadership perspective, and at least down here in Miami, I know we love the mouse.

Agreed. So hopefully we're going to go visit in '24. I haven't done Tron yet, so that's the thing we're looking forward to. It's awesome. Anyway, man, this has been a great podcast. We kind of danced around some things with the Vision Pro. I just really wanted to talk to you about the Disney stuff, so why not do that on the podcast as well. But hey, as we're landing the plane here, Andy Mage, operations director of the Church Digital and podcast host and producer of oh so many. You're dude, you're like the digital church version of Disney. I'm just saying, maybe. But any, put that out there. And man, any closing thoughts?

No, I am excited to see the next five or ten years of tech again. Being a tech enthusiast, it's just a really cool time to be doing things. Things were getting stale there for a little bit with phones and iPads and tablets, and then the last two or three years there's really been a renaissance coming out of COVID. There was almost like a slingshot effect happening. Everyone sat on their hands for a little bit too long and then wanted to drive products forward. So I'm super excited to see where it goes. And more than that, I'm super excited to see, again going back to my previous statement, I don't want to lose as the church. I want to win as the church. And so I want to figure out how we as the church can be using all these new tools, definitely and completely. And so yeah, we don't have to be excited about Apple adding a fourth camera lens to the iPhone. There's other things that we can be talking about, which is a great thing. But hey, thanks for jumping on the podcast, Andy. So for Andy, this is Jefford the Church Digital. Thanks for jumping here on the show. We'll see you next time. You all have a good one.