The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 754 – A really good price!

TBTT #754 – A really good price!

Podcast: Two Blokes Talking Tech
Date: 15 October 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long & Stephen Fenech

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[00:00:00] Trevor Long: Just calm down, Stephen. Okay, calm down. Stephen’s getting very anxious. We had a late start to the day, that’s my fault, and now Stephen’s thinking, if this— I’m going to end up in traffic.

[00:00:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, peak hour.

[00:00:11] Trevor Long: And you are.

[00:00:12] Stephen Fenech: Peak hour drive home. Thanks, mate. Hour and a half drive home.

[00:00:15] Trevor Long: Nah, you’ll be sweet. Just take the air, mate. You’ll be sweet.

[00:00:17] Stephen Fenech: I don’t think so. I’m going to go where Waze tells me. I was just going to say, just wherever Waze says I will abide.

[00:00:23] Trevor Long: All our faith in Waze. You know, I was in, um, Where’d I get it? Oh, buddy, out to MSR where we pick up the press cars every second Monday. So I get in, oh, it was when I flew back. So we landed from the US, the family. I came to work, I did the EFTM podcast, I did a couple things I had to get done that day, and then I went home and ordered an Uber. Uber comes and it’s like, picked me up at 2:30 in the afternoon. And it says I’m gonna get there at, I don’t know, 3:45. And I’m like, what is going on here?

[00:00:59] Stephen Fenech: An hour and 15 minutes.

[00:01:00] Trevor Long: Like at that time of day it should be 45, right?

[00:01:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah, right.

[00:01:02] Trevor Long: I go, hang on. So I’m in the back. I just go Waze. It’s 45 minutes. 3:10 I’ll be there. What are we doing here? I said to the bloke, hey mate, I’m just looking at the Uber map. I don’t love the way it’s taking me. Do you mind just taking the M2, the M7, and it’ll reroute you from there? And he’s like, what, I don’t know. And he couldn’t understand what I was talking about. And I said, mate, have you got Waze? He goes, no. And I went, you’re an Uber driver, trust me, get Waze. Like, you should have Waze. Anyway, we were on Pinedales Road. He was dicking around his phone a bit. And what he did, he used Google Maps. And I said, oh, beautiful, that’s okay. ‘Cause that’s better than Uber Maps. Google Maps says it’ll be 3:13. I went, that’s perfect, mate, let’s do that. Saved me 25 minutes in the car or more.

[00:01:42] Stephen Fenech: Uber time is mysterious.

[00:01:44] Trevor Long: Yeah, but I get Uber time, but once you’re in the car, the map is set. It sets your route. I’m like, that’s a crap route.

[00:01:50] Stephen Fenech: But it’s anticipating traffic that might not be there. I think it’s trying to save you time.

[00:01:54] Trevor Long: Save me on tolls. I don’t give a rat’s about tolls.

[00:01:56] Stephen Fenech: I’ll tell you what it does. I noticed that when you order an Uber, it very much overpromises and underdelivers. It’s here in 3 minutes and it takes 15, right? But in the car, it’s the opposite. It’s gonna try to underdeliver and overdeliver. So it’s gonna say—

[00:02:16] Trevor Long: Underpromise and overdeliver.

[00:02:16] Stephen Fenech: Underpromise and overdeliver in the car, right? So you’re thinking, oh, you’re not here fast enough.

[00:02:20] Trevor Long: I find that it gets me there exactly on the time it says it’s gonna get me there once you’re in the car. ‘Cause the map is pretty accurate. But seriously, that whole finding you a driver and 3 minutes away, number of times I’ve gone, okay, it’s 3 minutes away, we’ll get an Uber. We did it in New York ’cause we took a lot of Ubers instead of subway. And I’d go, it’s 3 minutes, we’ll be right. And then it’s a car, like a driver accepts and it says 8 minutes. I’m like, no, it’s not, cancel. I’m sorry, not good enough. Like, I’m sorry, I’d prefer to walk than have you Cancer, did

[00:02:52] Stephen Fenech: you

[00:02:52] Trevor Long: walk?

[00:02:53] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, wherever I could. I love walking in New York. It’s a great place to walk.

[00:02:56] Trevor Long: I said to my doctor this week, I told her I’d lost a bit of weight and she goes, you did a lot of walking. I went, yeah, unusually a lot. Yeah. So that’s why. That’s what did it. I’m not an idiot. I know how it works, love.

[00:03:08] Stephen Fenech: It’s only Wednesday. I’ve already done 13 Ks of walking already this week.

[00:03:13] Trevor Long: Geez, that’s going to do it for

[00:03:15] Stephen Fenech: me. And then Friday I’ll do more. Yeah, I’ll walk with the boys.

[00:03:18] Trevor Long: The boys on a Friday, the man walk.

[00:03:20] Stephen Fenech: The man walk to South Perth High School. Is there a man walk in our suburb? Man Walk.

[00:03:23] Trevor Long: They get on Facebook and they take photos of themselves.

[00:03:25] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s great.

[00:03:25] Trevor Long: I’m like, I’d join you, but you take too many photos.

[00:03:27] Stephen Fenech: They had a— well, it’s only past players that can do it anyway, so you’re not welcome.

[00:03:31] Trevor Long: I’m talking about the people around here.

[00:03:32] Stephen Fenech: Oh, sorry. Yeah, the Man Walk.

[00:03:34] Trevor Long: Look at this bloke, you are not welcome.

[00:03:36] Stephen Fenech: The one time that they did it, they did a live cross from the Man Walk. I was in San Francisco, or that was in Berlin, I think I was in. Anyway, it was to— because for Jai Arrow’s last game. And I was in Berlin and they did a live cross from the club at that time. So all the boys were there except me. I was thinking, ah, missed out.

[00:03:58] Trevor Long: Sucked in.

[00:03:59] Stephen Fenech: Missed out. Yeah. But shout out to the boys. I don’t think they listen, but they know that I’m aware of my work in tech and my travel and all that.

[00:04:08] Trevor Long: It’s, and this is gonna sound funny to people who are regular listeners and thing, but it’s often surprising when you realize someone listens. I think the one that I am not surprised by anymore is Justine from Samsung. She talks about what we talk about here. So shout out to Justine.

[00:04:23] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, JT. We love you.

[00:04:25] Trevor Long: And then the other yesterday, I won’t name names, but you’ll know who I’m talking about. Someone that just left a big social media company is now at an AI company.

[00:04:33] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:04:36] Trevor Long: So he emailed me and said, how are you going with this? XYZ. And then I hadn’t, like, I didn’t see it. And so like 20 minutes later, I was about to reply and he goes, don’t worry, I just heard the start of your podcast because I talked about it on the EFTN podcast. And I thought, oh, okay, that’s pretty cool.

[00:04:51] Stephen Fenech: That’s one listener you got.

[00:04:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, I’ll take one. I’ll take everyone I can.

[00:04:54] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely, mate. Yeah, I’m the same.

[00:04:56] Trevor Long: I don’t, yeah, I think people sometimes think that, you know, it’s huge numbers and it’s, uh, it’s, but, but it’s still lovely to hear. Of course, you know, you know what, it really is.

[00:05:06] Stephen Fenech: Of all the podcasts we do, and we do a lot I get most feedback about the movie podcast.

[00:05:12] Trevor Long: Right.

[00:05:12] Stephen Fenech: So the movies, people say, I love your movie podcast because I think movies, we’ve got more in common with movies than we do with tech. Yeah. Like, say someone who listens to the movie podcast might not be a tech person.

[00:05:26] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:05:26] Stephen Fenech: So it’s got a, I think it’s got a wider appeal. And yeah, also it’s been ranking as well. I tweeted because last week we did Gladiator. So get onto that, guys. And I tweeted it. And I added Russell Crowe and I’m thinking, oh, would it be good if you retweeted it? But I don’t think he’s on the platform anymore. But you know how many people piled on to that tweet? Like I had like 100 likes and people replying and saying how great the movie is and all that. It was really good. Yeah,

[00:05:53] Trevor Long: it’s where we struggle. We’ve admitted this before. We struggle with promotion of these shows. So anyway, kids are back to school. So our social media clipper team is back. It’s back ready to engage.

[00:06:04] Stephen Fenech: What are you paying, jelly beans? What do you do, mate?

[00:06:06] Trevor Long: They get cash.

[00:06:07] Stephen Fenech: Oh geez. Oh, cash. They get paid taxes.

[00:06:09] Trevor Long: Well, they’re too young for taxes.

[00:06:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. You can pay cash money off the books.

[00:06:13] Trevor Long: No, no, on the books. They’re on the books as employees.

[00:06:16] Stephen Fenech: Get them off the books and give them more.

[00:06:18] Trevor Long: No. Get them on the books and then claim more.

[00:06:21] Stephen Fenech: Come on, mate. Walk, mate. You gotta pay cash, mate. And you say cash, no.

[00:06:25] Trevor Long: There’s no cash.

[00:06:27] Stephen Fenech: Dad! Harry say, I don’t have any cash. And you go, no, it’s here. No cash, mate.

[00:06:32] Trevor Long: I told you Harry’s the king of the write-off. He’s like, how can we write this off?

[00:06:35] Stephen Fenech: Well, he had a lot of practice during your trip, eh? Yeah. He goes, oh, Dad, is this a write-off?

[00:06:41] Trevor Long: And I’d be like, well, let’s have a conversation, let’s have a meeting, let’s have a Trevor Long media meeting about how you’d market yourself in America. And we look at all the billboards and we say, if we did, if we had half the number of billboards as any one insurance lawyer, we’d be number one tech site in the world.

[00:06:57] Stephen Fenech: You’d be doing all right.

[00:06:58] Trevor Long: So yeah, no, we’re fine.

[00:07:00] Stephen Fenech: That’s funny.

[00:07:01] Trevor Long: Anyway, I don’t know how we got into any of that.

[00:07:02] Stephen Fenech: Young entrepreneur in the making, mate.

[00:07:03] Trevor Long: I think he could be. There was a bit of nous there that was like, hang on a minute, that was actually pretty savvy. Your idea just then was a really good take. So

[00:07:11] Stephen Fenech: that’s great encouragement, mate, which leads us to our other movie, Little Miss Sunshine. Of course, yeah, which is all about, you know, a family and they’ve got goals and winning, losing. It’s all great themes in the film. Check it out. Best movies you’ve never seen.

[00:07:26] Trevor Long: Good promo, Stephen.

[00:07:27] Stephen Fenech: There you go. Clip that up,

[00:07:30] Trevor Long: Harry. Clip that. He won’t because Opus Clip needs to clip it before he—

[00:07:34] Stephen Fenech: that’s all good.

[00:07:35] Trevor Long: There’s a series of—

[00:07:36] Stephen Fenech: I know how it works, mate. Yeah, yeah, I know how the sausage is made, as they say. Again, if we had millions

[00:07:42] Trevor Long: $100, there’d be someone sitting here making notes.

[00:07:44] Stephen Fenech: Which reminds me, live, live change to the, uh, to the rundown. Oh, it’s happening. Uh, Social Reckoning we need to talk about as well.

[00:07:51] Trevor Long: Let’s put it in the middle. Social Reckoning. Put it right down. You write it down right there while I press Social Reckoning.

[00:07:56] Stephen Fenech: Which in between, I was, I was Trev’s plus one because, uh, Sony never seen fit to invite me. But, uh, Trevor got invited and he took me.

[00:08:04] Trevor Long: Okay, well, we’ll talk about that right here today. On Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:08:11] VOICE OVER: Welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech. Not a bad price. With Trevor Long from eftm.com. Really handy device. And Stephen Fenech from techguide.com.au.

[00:08:22] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Episode 754. Wow, one week off 755.

[00:08:27] Stephen Fenech: Oh, I think that says social reckoning. Does that say social?

[00:08:29] Trevor Long: I’ll work out what— it doesn’t at all. I’d love to show people but I haven’t turned up.

[00:08:32] Stephen Fenech: Social something.

[00:08:34] Trevor Long: It says Social Vionivoc.

[00:08:38] Stephen Fenech: It’s doctor’s handwriting.

[00:08:41] Trevor Long: You know what, now that I piece each letter together, I can see reckoning.

[00:08:45] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:08:45] Trevor Long: But there’s no way without the word social, there’s no way anyone else would know what it says.

[00:08:48] Stephen Fenech: It’s an intelligence test and you failed. That’s all right.

[00:08:50] Trevor Long: I think it might’ve been you that failed. Episode 754. Thanks to the great people at JBL for your home audio and portable audio needs. And of course, Arlo for your home security needs. We’re gonna talk about Arlo and JBL throughout the show, but we’re also gonna tell you a little bit more about a new Arlo camera, which I’ve just installed at my place, and it’s a cracker. But first, Stephen, it’s Wednesday as we record, Thursday as you listen, so yesterday as you listen, Apple, as predicted last week, had an event this week. They didn’t have an event, they had an announcement on the internet. That’s how they put it in the press release. They did have a little event in New York called Welcome Home. Basically just a room showcasing the products to influencers and whatnot. So I’m going to do what I did on EFTV. I’m going to bury the lead here. I’m going to talk about the two refurbished products.

[00:09:40] Stephen Fenech: So there were how many? 1, 2, 3 new products?

[00:09:43] Trevor Long: 3. 3. And the— well, 3 new products and a bunch of accessories.

[00:09:45] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:09:46] Trevor Long: Apple TV first, right? So Apple TV hasn’t been updated in 3 and a half, 4 years, right?

[00:09:51] Stephen Fenech: A while.

[00:09:52] Trevor Long: But to be honest, it didn’t need much, right? So yeah. I, on Sunday, we had Arnie Schell around, so there was a bit of drama there because I wanted the big screen TV for Bathurst and the baseball.

[00:10:03] Stephen Fenech: Look out.

[00:10:03] Trevor Long: She wanted to watch Pollyanna, and so we pulled out the iPad for that, put it in the headphones, no dramas. Anyway, so I had Bathurst up and then I went, oh, let’s split screen it. So I went to the Apple TV and I put up KO. And honestly, if you’re a KO subscriber and you really love sport, you need to buy an Apple TV because it is the greatest way to watch sports.

[00:10:22] Stephen Fenech: So it’s separate to the app?

[00:10:23] Trevor Long: You can have 4 screens of sport going on the Kayo app in Apple TV.

[00:10:28] Stephen Fenech: Great demonstration of why having the physical Apple TV is necessary if you’re a sports fan, because yeah, you can get the Apple TV on your, on your smart TV.

[00:10:38] Trevor Long: Yeah. And you can’t get it on a bunch of other TVs. But the thing about Kayo as an app is it, because the Apple TV is a closed box, Kayo can build the app. They know the processor, they know the power, they know everything. Whereas when you build a TV app, you don’t know if you build a TV app for LG, you don’t know that you know, this app’s going to work on all of them up and down the range. So it reminded me on the weekend just how good the Apple TV is. And I thought to myself, why update it, right? Yeah. And really, they— in talking about the updates, there’s nothing much new other than Siri AI.

[00:11:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Oh, new processor too. Yeah, but faster.

[00:11:13] Trevor Long: It’s not like it’s 8K or something, you know what I mean? It’s not doing anything any differently.

[00:11:17] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think the last 4K, uh, last time they updated it was more about the quality of the, of the movies and being able to have, you know, things like that. Yes, this time I’m reading eagerly to see what improvements there, and there were, that was, there was none on that side. Siri AI, Apple intelligence, and the fact you could set up, you know, surround sound systems with some other products we’re going to talk about. But that was basically it, wasn’t it? Or that, that was the theme with Siri AI across all these new devices.

[00:11:47] Trevor Long: 100%. And, and with this device and the HomePod Mini, which we’ll talk about, it’s a really interesting thing because Siri AI is no good unless you’ve got an iPhone with Apple intelligence as well.

[00:11:58] Stephen Fenech: You need to have a point of reference.

[00:11:59] Trevor Long: Now Siri AI on its own without— so let’s say you have an Apple TV device and you’re an Android family.

[00:12:05] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:12:06] Trevor Long: I get it, you want the best streaming, and it would be the best streaming box out there, right? Yep. But you can still get Siri AI. What you’re going to get is, is better conversational AI, like who’s in this show, um, when was this filmed, who’s the director of this, what

[00:12:19] Stephen Fenech: was the movie that Joe recommended to me last week.

[00:12:22] Trevor Long: No, you can’t do that unless you’re in the Apple ecosystem. So without the ecosystem, it’s still a smarter Apple TV than ever, right? So you can ask questions, you can ask it. Yeah, you could just say, hey, I’m thinking about watching a, you know, a rom-com from the ’90s. Yeah, Hugh Grant’s a bit— I’m a big fan of Hugh Grant. What can you suggest? And it might do that, right?

[00:12:39] Stephen Fenech: It’ll give you Notting Hill or Love Actually.

[00:12:40] Trevor Long: Well, that’s exactly where my head went, right? So, so that’s, that’s good. But really, that’s not— you shouldn’t buy it if you’re that person. Yeah. If you’ve got the Apple ecosystem and you’ve got an iPhone 16, 17, 18, you’ve got the latest iPads.

[00:12:54] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:12:55] Trevor Long: Then you’ve built personal intelligence out, you know. So you start to get that thing, and that’s exactly where— yeah, when, when you’re sitting there and you choose your profile, because when you sit at your Apple TV, you can choose to have 6

[00:13:05] Stephen Fenech: profiles.

[00:13:07] Trevor Long: Um, so I sit down, I go, it’s me, and I say to Siri, you know, what was that, what was that movie Stephen said I should watch? Yeah, it’ll look through my personal—

[00:13:14] Stephen Fenech: that sequence will pop up.

[00:13:16] Trevor Long: I don’t know how it works, man, because, uh, because it looks through your messages. No, but the personal context lives on your phone. And so is it when I make the request? Yes, but Where’s it happen?

[00:13:25] Stephen Fenech: iCloud. iCloud privacy. There’s an extra iCloud section.

[00:13:29] Trevor Long: When you ask the Apple TV, what’s the message that I— the data about my personal profile lives on my iPhone. Yep. It never leaves your phone. So at what point? So my question when we get to ask Apple about this is, if my phone is off and all my Apple devices are off and I ask a personal context question, how does it know the answer?

[00:13:51] Stephen Fenech: ICloud Plus Private.

[00:13:53] Trevor Long: Yeah, but you don’t, you don’t store your personal contacts in the cloud.

[00:13:56] Stephen Fenech: In this instance, I’m trying— one of the products that mentioned, I don’t know if it was Apple TV, one of it mentioned there was a personal— there’s iCloud Plus Privacy. Privacy. Yeah. So that could— that it can get your context across devices.

[00:14:11] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:14:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s how I understood it. But, um, I’m pretty sure it’s either— I think the HomePod Mini Or maybe even the Home, the other product we were talking about. It was— it’s definitely part of that so that you can, you can understand across all of your devices.

[00:14:27] Trevor Long: So this is what I need to investigate and learn is so the personal context that lives on my phone is going to be now put into the private cloud and I’m fine with that. I’m very happy with Apple’s privacy settings. No dramas at all. Yeah. And then these devices are going to be able to do it and it’s awesome. But in all honesty, I’m not rushing out to buy this. The Apple TV?

[00:14:46] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s not a massive— the one I’ve got is excellent. Yeah, I think unless, unless you want to be really conversational and really get the recommendations and be up to date with that, I think that’s cool to be able to say, you know what,

[00:14:58] Trevor Long: show me a bunch more movies

[00:14:59] Stephen Fenech: with this

[00:15:00] Trevor Long: actor in it.

[00:15:00] Stephen Fenech: I think, yeah, the processor, you might not notice the improvement. They reckon it’s faster than the previous generation. But also you’ve got to remember, Apple TV is also good for gaming. I mean, the gaming arcade, you can hook up a controller.

[00:15:11] Trevor Long: No one’s doing it.

[00:15:12] Stephen Fenech: Also too, Apple Fitness Plus is another way you can access through, through the Apple TV.

[00:15:18] Trevor Long: You can do that already on the current one. Yeah, my point is, what’s the selling point for this thing?

[00:15:23] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, other than personal functions. I think faster Siri AI. Yeah, faster and Siri AI and Apple Intelligence. That’s— it’s just, it’s another piece of the puzzle, piece of the ecosystem.

[00:15:34] Trevor Long: Do you think there’s a problem we’ve uncovered here with the nomenclature of Apple’s AI, which is it used to be just Apple Intelligence and now it’s essentially called Siri AI, right? Yeah. And there is an instance, there is a circumstance here where someone is not at all an iPhone user and buys an Apple TV. What is Siri AI? It’s a very different thing to someone who lives and breathes iPhone, Mac. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it’s a very different thing.

[00:15:56] Stephen Fenech: It is. Yeah. So yeah, well, it’s, it’s new. That’s, that’s the, that’s the only new feature that they can guarantee for this thing.

[00:16:04] Trevor Long: Yeah, for $449.

[00:16:06] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think that’s an okay price. That’s not too bad. Yeah, but, um, I think though, it’s, it’s, if you’ve already got an Apple TV, then you’re probably not going to buy this because there’s not much difference. You won’t have Siri AI. That’s the only downside. You’ll still be able to— the basic functionality will still be the same. Yeah, but if you want to be up to date, then you’ve got to go the new Apple TV 4K.

[00:16:32] Trevor Long: All right, so the next product is the HomePod Mini, which gets its first update in 6 years.

[00:16:36] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s been a while, eh?

[00:16:38] Trevor Long: Uh, comes in—

[00:16:39] Stephen Fenech: wait so long to do that.

[00:16:40] Trevor Long: Well, what’s What’s to change?

[00:16:41] Stephen Fenech: Has it been— were you aware of the— I know they were still selling it, but it’s not like it’s an iPhone breaking the doors down, is it?

[00:16:48] Trevor Long: No, because it’s rubbish in terms of its smarts. Brilliant in terms of sound quality, but you know, Siri—

[00:16:54] Stephen Fenech: but now

[00:16:55] Trevor Long: can just play music. So green, blue, pink, light pink, black, and a white. Yeah, I really like the blue. It’s beautiful. Um, I think we’ll miss the orange and the yellow and the red, but anyway, that’s for them. But again, this is the same

[00:17:08] Stephen Fenech: Oh, so they’ve discontinued those colors. Well, that orange— yeah, okay.

[00:17:11] Trevor Long: This is the same HomePod Mini, brilliant sound, all those things, but now with

[00:17:15] Stephen Fenech: a little display on top.

[00:17:16] Trevor Long: It’s not a display, it’s like a light. It’s still a light, but it will now light up in a more, uh, color to match what it’s playing. So the album art color will kind of resonate there. So I would have just put a bloody screen on the thing, for Christ’s sake.

[00:17:31] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, that’s for another product, isn’t it?

[00:17:33] Trevor Long: I understand, but just for, just for album art.

[00:17:35] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I’m just trying to look for the iCloud reference.

[00:17:38] Trevor Long: All right, so again, there’s some, there’s some, they’ve improved things like Handoff to your devices and things like that. But critically, if you’re someone that lives and breathes iPhone, this is the smart speaker for you because you can say, uh, you know, ask Siri, uh, you know, to remind me to do this, and it’s just going to be on your phone. Ask it about some message that was sent. You know, you could be walking out the door and go, oh Siri, what was the things Amanda told me to buy at the shops? Yeah, because it’s not a shopping list. It wasn’t. It was just a text message.

[00:18:07] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:18:08] Trevor Long: Now the biggest failure here for Siri AI at this point in my life is we need apps, third-party apps to start integrating the model, whatever they call it, the kit.

[00:18:20] Stephen Fenech: Well, they were talking about that.

[00:18:21] Trevor Long: Yeah, no, but they rave about— they rave about some apps. WhatsApp isn’t talking about integrating Apple’s— of course, Apple’s kit because that they don’t want to do it.

[00:18:31] Stephen Fenech: They want you to use Messages. Yeah,

[00:18:33] Trevor Long: no, but I want to use— you know, that’s not— Apple’s happy for WhatsApp to integrate into the personal context. Okay, but WhatsApp’s not doing it.

[00:18:42] Stephen Fenech: Ah, they’re not playing ball.

[00:18:43] Trevor Long: Yeah, like, we need all the apps to be doing it. Yeah, otherwise a lot of my personal context is going to come through WhatsApp, folks. I’m sorry, that’s the way it works. I use that more than anything else.

[00:18:53] Stephen Fenech: Fair enough. And, uh, $229, I reckon, not a good price, not a bad price.

[00:18:58] Trevor Long: What about price?

[00:18:59] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:19:00] Trevor Long: So trying to get a new quote on the intro.

[00:19:02] Stephen Fenech: Maybe we have to re-record it. But no, that’s a good price. I think it’s about time is what I said when I reacted to the other product, which is the Home View. I remember I got up early. I said to Joe last night, look, I’m going to either stay up late or get up really early to cover Apple stuff. And And she woke up this morning, she goes, oh, so what do they announce? I said, oh, they’ve got the Home View. And she goes, oh, so it’s like an Alexa. Yeah, the exact way I said. Yeah, exactly right, it’s like Alexa. Yeah, yeah, screen, that’s smart speaker.

[00:19:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s— I’m going to say it’s a better looking, uh,

[00:19:38] Stephen Fenech: oh yeah, design.

[00:19:39] Trevor Long: It goes back to the G4 iMac, you know, they’ve got a little dome with a little, little, little, uh, little metal, uh, pole for the screen to sit on. Yeah, it’s a, you know, 1:1 ratio design.

[00:19:50] Stephen Fenech: Beautiful, typical Apple design, square screen.

[00:19:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, square, 1:1 ratio screen with rounded edges, like it’s, it’s 4

[00:19:55] Stephen Fenech: $249, I reckon good

[00:19:56] Trevor Long: value.

[00:19:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think the price is pretty good. Sharp price.

[00:20:00] Trevor Long: And the wall-mounted one, I go, oh, that’s me. I may

[00:20:02] Stephen Fenech: get my brother-in-law

[00:20:03] Trevor Long: to

[00:20:03] Stephen Fenech: install the wall-mounted one. Like, there’s the desktop one which has the little dome-shaped speaker. So is the wall-mounted one just the screen, or is it like a thicker screen?

[00:20:12] Trevor Long: No, it looks like it’s just the screen. Yeah, I think it’s just the screen. Maybe it’ll have a little microphone in it so that you can address it in that sense.

[00:20:19] Stephen Fenech: Maybe it’s 7-inch screen, Liquid Retina. So yeah, it can be on a desktop or fixed to a wall using a mount. Uses the same Face ID as well as your phone.

[00:20:32] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:20:32] Stephen Fenech: So it can identify 6 different users.

[00:20:35] Trevor Long: Yeah. So when you walk up to it and you address it, it knows who you are. It

[00:20:38] Stephen Fenech: knows exactly who you are. Yep. Each person has their own personal home screen. So you’ve got your own little widgets like your phone, like your phone home screen. You’ve got your own little widgets and stuff arranged.

[00:20:46] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:20:47] Stephen Fenech: Which I think is pretty smart. But I think another part that they were talking about, um, the Siri AI, Apple intelligence, but they’re also talking up the smarts, the smart home side of things. Oh, very much. Which you’ve got to agree, they’ve been sadly lacking in that part, right, where to control devices.

[00:21:05] Trevor Long: So look, I don’t agree entirely because Apple HomeKit in my mind is probably the best smart home system of them all. It’s just that the way Apple works and I don’t know this for sure, but as I understand it, if you buy a— build a case as a case maker and you want to say it’s made for iPhone, you have to license the button made for iPhone or, you know, those kind of things, right? And it’s the same with HomeKit. If you want your smart home product to be HomeKit compatible, you have to— you have to go through their certification process to say it does meet all their standards, which is why it’s such a good system. And then you have to license it to be HomeKit, right? So for example, we installed new blinds at our place. Works beautifully with Google and Alexa, so we can command them up and down. They won’t work with HomeKit. There’s no HomeKit compatibility because that blind company is not going to bother trying to go through that process, right? They can tell people they’re smart and they can sell them. So that’s— I think that’s been a stumbling block for them. But they, they’re moving this system into Matter and Threads and all that kind of stuff to make it work better.

[00:22:03] Stephen Fenech: That’s what needs to happen.

[00:22:04] Trevor Long: Uh, you know, we’re going to see them turn around. But why did they need to announce this range of products with LG and Schneider and stuff?

[00:22:13] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think to fill out that, to fill out the portfolio. So LG, I think, what have they got, like doorbells and other things and doorbells, a door lock, but not, not for Australia.

[00:22:24] Trevor Long: I was just going to say, to be clear, there’s no announcement that’s going to come to Australia.

[00:22:27] Stephen Fenech: No Australian announcement at all yet. We could be wrong, but at the moment it’s just purely for the US audience.

[00:22:33] Trevor Long: I will check. I have asked the question. I don’t believe I’ve received a response. Yeah, no, I have not.

[00:22:39] Stephen Fenech: And here we go with a supported iCloud Plus subscription. HomeView will work with compatible cameras to provide other features like end-to-end encrypted recognition of people, pets, and packages. Okay, that’s what that’s for.

[00:22:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, the iCloud Plus is about storing video and stuff like that.

[00:22:56] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, subscription, it’s a subscription service to have those, because I think they announced that a couple of OSs ago.

[00:23:03] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah,

[00:23:05] Stephen Fenech: yeah. So basically gave it like this, like the Arlo secure.

[00:23:07] Trevor Long: It’s the cloud. And you know, I saw an ad for Ring, I think, on like I was watching the MLB and it was an American ad, but you know, they’ve got the same little pop-ups telling you that there’s a person with a brown package and you know, it’s, it’s AI on the, on the videos. But the thing is that stuff takes processing power and that’s why it’s a subscription with Arlo. That’s why it works that way. So that’s why it’s a subscription. You get the Home Plus

[00:23:29] Stephen Fenech: and the partnership LG Electronics. So smart home cameras, thermostats, locks. Schneider Electric is the other company. Yeah, but that’s again in the press release it said US only at this point. Yes. And even too, by the way, with the HomePod Mini, HomePod Mini 2, Siri AI not available at launch. It’s a future software update where that’ll be applied,

[00:23:53] Trevor Long: right?

[00:23:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. So they said it in the press release, not available. It’ll be a future update to get Siri AI working on HomePod Mini 2.

[00:24:03] Trevor Long: I hope they don’t lag that out too long because they’re starting to get a reputation for announcing things they’re not delivering.

[00:24:07] Stephen Fenech: Me too. Well, I think that the— I’d say it won’t be— it’ll be like a couple of months before it’s ready, I think, to sort of to go in line with other future announcements perhaps. I don’t know. But yeah, that was one point that I sort of— that stood out for me that it wasn’t going to be available at time of— so you can buy it, but it won’t have that feature for maybe a month or two after.

[00:24:30] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s just crazy. Yeah. But look, HomeView, Looks beautiful.

[00:24:34] Stephen Fenech: It’s great. Yeah. What color? What’s your color?

[00:24:37] Trevor Long: I just get the silver. Who gives a rat’s— like, you’re not going to see the thing much. Like, it’s— he’s looking at the screen more than anything else. But look, here’s the thing. I think others would argue this is insane thing to say, but I think they’ve spent an extraordinarily good amount of time on design. Yeah, software design, of course. The number of clocks and options. So they said this thing will do 500 nits of brightness down to 0.5 or something.

[00:25:00] Stephen Fenech: So they can be a bedside table. Yes, that’s right.

[00:25:02] Trevor Long: See, my phone in standby mode is my bedside clock, right? You just lean across and you see it and it’s not bright in your eyes or anything anymore. That, I mean, geez. Oh, here’s my—

[00:25:11] Stephen Fenech: where would you put this though? Where would you put it? I’d put it in my office.

[00:25:15] Trevor Long: Uh, so there’s a, there’s a spot when you walk into our house and you’re in the kitchen, uh, the wall, the wall that’s kind of, uh, if you’re leaving the kitchen, there’s a wall there which has got a clock on it and power switches. We could easily put power in there. I’d put that there,

[00:25:30] Stephen Fenech: wall mounted.

[00:25:31] Trevor Long: Yes. I’d have a warm out of one of these every day of the week. Yes.

[00:25:35] Stephen Fenech: But otherwise, the desktop one.

[00:25:37] Trevor Long: Yeah. I mean, I’d put the desktop one.

[00:25:39] Stephen Fenech: It’d sit nicer, I think, in your home.

[00:25:40] Trevor Long: Challenges, man. I don’t think at this point we can replace Alexa with—

[00:25:44] Stephen Fenech: well, that’s the other thing I was going to bring up.

[00:25:46] Trevor Long: We’re too deep.

[00:25:46] Stephen Fenech: We’re so— we, we’re a deep Alexa family and everyone’s iPhone users though as well. So this wouldn’t be too hard to use as well as if not, I don’t think it’ll replace it, but I need to

[00:25:59] Trevor Long: start again on my Apple Home for a start. It’s too much same devices that don’t work.

[00:26:04] Stephen Fenech: So I get a message sometimes saying, oh, this thing’s not responding. I don’t think I’ve looked at that for 3 years.

[00:26:08] Trevor Long: I haven’t had that for 3 years. What are you talking about? Our door lock is brilliant because Harry’s watching Ted Lasso on the 100-inch Hisense TV and he’s watching on Apple TV and it says Trevor, unlock the door. And so as you open the door, he goes, hi, Dad. So he knows who it is. So there’s some cool stuff we’ve got, but they’ve got a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work with it. And explaining to my wife, yeah, like, I want to get Amanda into the world of asking Alexa to put the blinds up and down, things like that. But telling her that it’ll only work on Alexa and not work on Siri is going to really drive her insane.

[00:26:38] Stephen Fenech: Split the family, mate.

[00:26:40] Trevor Long: And that’s a challenge for them. So I don’t think I’ll use it as a smart home thing more than I’ll just use it as a maybe an organizer. So showing diary entries, notes, Yeah, you know, I like the idea in the— on EFTM, in the shot I’ve got of the wall-mounted version. Yeah, there’s a big button. How could it be? It’d be fairly— come this big in real life that says door lock. And so if you could press that, that’s a touchscreen too.

[00:27:02] Stephen Fenech: Is it a touchscreen?

[00:27:03] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah, it has to be, surely.

[00:27:04] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Did they confirm that?

[00:27:06] Trevor Long: Oh my God,

[00:27:07] Stephen Fenech: it has to be a touchscreen.

[00:27:08] Trevor Long: It has to be. Yeah, you’re right though. I don’t think it’s written.

[00:27:10] Stephen Fenech: Do they specify that it’s a touchscreen? That it has to set a Retina display, which you’d assume is touch sensitive.

[00:27:15] Trevor Long: Uh, if it’s It’s not. Yeah, wild times. So I love the idea of going, oh, click that, you know, or garage door is open and stuff like that.

[00:27:23] Stephen Fenech: So, well, yeah, I think, I don’t know whether this is like, you know, you know, in a couple, in a week or so we’re going to see the iPhone Duo. Yeah.

[00:27:30] Trevor Long: And

[00:27:30] Stephen Fenech: so the

[00:27:30] Trevor Long: exact pre-orders going on tomorrow.

[00:27:32] Stephen Fenech: That’s right. But what I’m saying about the Duo is that people are going to buy that, that haven’t had a folding phone before. Yeah. They’re new Apple customers. I know where you’re going. First folding phone. Yep. Do you think that people who see this are going to go— that maybe already own a smart speaker— are going to throw the old one out and buy that instead? Or do you think there are enough people out there who don’t have a smart speaker of any description and this is going to be their first one?

[00:27:58] Trevor Long: Yes, to the latter. I don’t see many people— if you’re in the Alexa ecosystem to the point where you have one or more screen devices, I don’t see you converting. Yeah. If you’re in the Google world, you’re going to convert instantly because they’ve just given up the ghost basically. Well, have, like, there’s very little happening.

[00:28:16] Stephen Fenech: Gemini is on the home speaker now too.

[00:28:18] Trevor Long: I know, but it’s, you know, it’s not like it’s setting the world alight.

[00:28:20] Stephen Fenech: Not really. They’re a bit backward in coming forward.

[00:28:23] Trevor Long: I think what we need to see is how this plays out from the ecosystem perspective. So for example, I don’t want to have to buy a new doorbell like from Apple. What other doorbells are going to work natively with this? So when the, when the someone presses the doorbell, you know, like if you’ve got a SmartThings and you’ve got a Samsung fridge with the, you know, Family Hub, yep, and someone presses a smart doorbell from Ring or Arlo, it comes up on the bloody fridge right away. So Apple needs to do the same thing. It has to be open in that sense that a Ring, an Arlo, maybe a Uniden, whatever, they’ve all got to work.

[00:28:57] Stephen Fenech: All those— well, isn’t it Schneider and LG? They’ve got a whole range that includes similar products like that.

[00:29:01] Trevor Long: Yes, but what I’m saying, you can’t just be those.

[00:29:03] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, of course not. No, even if, mate, even if we were—

[00:29:06] Trevor Long: but even if we we’re seeing the Schneider and LG stuff here, it can’t just be those. No, it has to be broader.

[00:29:12] Stephen Fenech: I’ll give you, I’ll give you a red-hot tip here. It won’t be Ring because Amazon owns them.

[00:29:18] Trevor Long: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think Amazon’s not stupid, mate.

[00:29:21] Stephen Fenech: They’re Alexa-friendly. Yeah, won’t be Ring. Amazon owns Ring. You think they’re gonna, they’re gonna go play with the opposition? Oh mate, I doubt it very much that Ring will get involved with this.. And you name it, there’s many other products that maybe have already conflicts. You know, there’s some conflict there. So yeah, I can’t see if you’re a Ring user. I don’t, don’t hold your breath to see Ring as part of the HomeView ecosystem and stick loyal to Amazon.

[00:29:51] Trevor Long: I just did a search. Arlo cameras work on the HomeKit system if you’ve got a base station.

[00:29:57] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:29:57] Trevor Long: So if you’ve only put in a base station, if you’ve only put in the essential products and connected direct to Wi-Fi, right, they won’t work. But if you’ve got a base station,

[00:30:04] Stephen Fenech: it’ll recognize the base station.

[00:30:06] Trevor Long: Yeah, because I know our Arlo camera is definitely— I’ll

[00:30:07] Stephen Fenech: get a base station

[00:30:08] Trevor Long: because it’s one of those things when I open up the Apple Home app, I’m like, oh my God, which cameras are you trying to show me here? I’m not even sure.

[00:30:14] Stephen Fenech: I paired them 6 years ago and forgot about it because I’ve had this. They’re long gone.

[00:30:18] Trevor Long: The mouse cams don’t exist right now. But see, look, all these cameras here on my, on my Arlo in the Apple Home. So they kind of there, but I don’t know whether they’re connected correctly anymore and stuff like

[00:30:29] Stephen Fenech: that. But isn’t it that Apple just put that extra line?

[00:30:31] Trevor Long: They are. See, they are. Look, there’s one there showing up. So some do. It’ll be interesting to see which ones.

[00:30:36] Stephen Fenech: Because you’ve already set them up with the base station already.

[00:30:38] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:30:38] Stephen Fenech: So they’re going to be okay.

[00:30:39] Trevor Long: Yeah. So it’s going to be really interesting to see which cameras do appear. It’s so just so you know, I’m scrolling down on, on the HomeKit, on the HomeKit and all the most recent ones are ones that are showing up. So my backyard, my front door, my foyer, the garage and yeah, they’re all there. But the top ones are probably cameras that, you know, either don’t exist or they’re quite old. They might be aged to them too.

[00:31:01] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:31:02] Trevor Long: So yeah, I mean, it’s going to be really fascinating to see what works with this thing because unfortunately for Apple, what they probably don’t realize is the Home View itself is not enough.

[00:31:13] Stephen Fenech: No, it’s got to be.

[00:31:14] Trevor Long: It’s got to be.

[00:31:15] Stephen Fenech: You don’t have an iPhone or an Apple ID, or if you’re not in the family, this is just a pretty speaker with Bluetooth speaker.

[00:31:25] Trevor Long: And also I’m not even sure it’s going to be the best speaker.

[00:31:27] Stephen Fenech: Well,

[00:31:28] Trevor Long: so if you buy sound quality, yeah, right, would you not be better with just a HomePod Mini?

[00:31:33] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, if it’s just for music, absolutely. But I think, see, I, I think Apple is like 5 years too late with this product.

[00:31:40] Trevor Long: I don’t think they’re too late. I don’t think this ecosystem, this world has, has—

[00:31:43] Stephen Fenech: should have been— they should have released a similar product to this.

[00:31:46] Trevor Long: I agree,

[00:31:47] Stephen Fenech: years

[00:31:47] Trevor Long: ago. I agree. And here’s where Amanda’s going to love—

[00:31:49] Stephen Fenech: Alexa’s got the jump on them.

[00:31:51] Trevor Long: I set up the Laser Digital Calendar, right?

[00:31:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:31:54] Trevor Long: And she went, it’s great, but it’s not what I want there because she just wants the time. So she just wants a big thing that shows the time. So she can glance away.

[00:32:02] Stephen Fenech: Just a clock.

[00:32:03] Trevor Long: You’re in the kitchen, you wanna glance and see the time. Right. Right? And it’s fine to have the calendar and swipe it and stuff. But so what she’ll love about this, and that’s why I wanna put it on that wall is she’ll love that it’ll just have the time. But if she wants to, she can, well, we hope she can swipe, but she can ask it different things, you know, set alarm, set timers. Like the kitchen is the perfect place for smart lighting.

[00:32:21] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, true.

[00:32:22] Trevor Long: Set a timer for the eggs, set a timer for the pasta. You know, all those things.

[00:32:26] Stephen Fenech: Convert this recipe into instructions and yeah,

[00:32:28] Trevor Long: yeah, yeah. FaceTime, you know, you can FaceTime from this.

[00:32:31] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s true too. Yeah, that’s true. And play obviously your Apple Music and all that as well. Are you an Apple Music guy?

[00:32:36] Trevor Long: No, I’m Spotify.

[00:32:36] Stephen Fenech: You’re a Spotify?

[00:32:37] Trevor Long: I’ve got an Apple Music account, but I don’t use it.

[00:32:38] Stephen Fenech: I’m all in on Apple Music.

[00:32:40] Trevor Long: I used it the other day to test out the Beats headphones. I like to find some spatial music, so I went straight into the spatial kind of section of Apple Music.

[00:32:48] Stephen Fenech: They’re nice, those headphones. They’re very nice.

[00:32:50] Trevor Long: Yeah, we might talk about them next week.

[00:32:51] Stephen Fenech: Modular ones.

[00:32:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, really, really nice sound. Yeah, yeah. Pretty cool. And there is a lot— like, I didn’t— I think I was playing Sonos. I

[00:32:57] Stephen Fenech: got the Sonos new

[00:32:58] Trevor Long: headphone, the Michael Jackson album in spatial, and it’s like, this is— wow, pretty good, pretty darn good.

[00:33:04] Stephen Fenech: That’s nice. Well, these have spatial audio too, they claim, the, uh, the, these, the speakers. Don’t know how well they’re gonna work, but that’s what we’re gonna test today.

[00:33:12] Trevor Long: Now, time-wise, most of them go on pre-orders this week. I think one of them is available.

[00:33:16] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, the, uh, Apple TV is October 30th, or is it— what was it?

[00:33:21] Trevor Long: It’s the HomePod Mini’s first.

[00:33:22] Stephen Fenech: HomePod Mini’s October 30, and then it’s November 30th, the others.

[00:33:26] Trevor Long: Yeah, so a bit of time.

[00:33:27] Stephen Fenech: $449 too for the Mini, the Home View, and for the Apple TV, and $229 for the HomePod Mini 2.

[00:33:34] Trevor Long: Not a bad—

[00:33:34] Stephen Fenech: but even at $449, the Home View, I think that’s pretty good. It’s

[00:33:37] Trevor Long: pretty good. Could have been a lot.

[00:33:38] Stephen Fenech: I’m really curious to see the scale, like the size of it. You know how you see the pictures of it, and until you see it in the flesh, I don’t think there are any photos there to sort of give it any kind of scale context. So I reckon it’s going to be smaller than—

[00:33:50] Trevor Long: I think it’s a lot smaller. What’s the size?

[00:33:52] Stephen Fenech: It’s 7-inch screen. That’s only this big. So we’re talking—

[00:33:56] Trevor Long: hang on, yeah, like when you open up a Samsung Galaxy Fold 8.

[00:34:01] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, how big is this? That’s 6.5 inches. Yeah, so it’s not going to be much bigger than that.

[00:34:06] Trevor Long: It is, you’re right.

[00:34:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s going to be a lot smaller than you think.

[00:34:09] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s interesting.

[00:34:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, no, no scale.

[00:34:12] Trevor Long: Yeah, 449.

[00:34:13] Stephen Fenech: Put your hand next to a little normal thing.

[00:34:18] Trevor Long: I’m leaving that alone.

[00:34:20] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I reckon, yeah, it’s going to be— I think people are going, oh, it’s smaller than I thought. That are going to be the first impression. I’m

[00:34:25] Trevor Long: also going to leave that alone.

[00:34:26] Stephen Fenech: Uh, that’s what, that’s what

[00:34:27] Trevor Long: she’s going to say. If you want to see photos of Apple’s new Apple TV, which looks exactly the same, the HomePod Mini, which looks exactly the same, but you want to see the first time you see the Home View from Apple, uh, go to techguide.com.au and eftm.com.

[00:34:40] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:34:44] Stephen Fenech: Two Blokes Talking Tech is proudly supported by Arlo. They’re a great mate. We’re going to talk about a new Arlo camera, uh, solar power camera. We’re going to leave that for a little bit later, but at the moment, uh, for now I want to talk about their entire range, their Essential range, which, uh, you, you’re able to get into the cameras from Arlo for under $100. Uh, there’s even pan and tilt indoor cameras that are down— am I looking at the right site here? Yes, it is. $25. By the way, I noticed that at Aldi last week they had their, the Arlo Essential Indoor 3-packs for $49.99, I believe, for 3 cameras. So, uh, you get into that one. So yeah, you can get started for quite a low price and then build on the system. And then if you add an Arlo Secure Plan, which I just renewed mine for another year, that allows you then to get those smart, smart notifications. Really adds a lot of value and other features to the camera setup. So yeah, it is really easy to get started. You can, as I said, get started for under $100. All the new cameras too are dual band as well, so really easy to connect to your Wi-Fi. No, no hunting around for the 2.4 GHz network, if you know what that is. You can connect it a lot easier and then be able to have that added peace of mind knowing that you are monitoring and improving the security at your place, at your office, at your holiday house. Wherever you want to install these, you’re going to get a great view of what’s happening. And the, uh, the The new pan and tilt cameras also give you a chance to have a much wider coverage area as well. As soon as they notice movement, they actually track the movement. Can be manually controlled through the app to sort of scan around the, uh, the area, and, and you’ll still get all those notifications as well. Check them out for yourself, arlo.com.

[00:36:34] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[00:36:39] Trevor Long: When I feel like it.

[00:36:40] Stephen Fenech: It’s actually au.arlo.com. I just normally say arlo.com and it takes you to the Australian website anyway. So arlo.com.

[00:36:46] Trevor Long: Okay, fair enough. Um, now while I was away, I took time out of my Disney adventure to write an article about some headphones.

[00:36:57] Stephen Fenech: Yep,

[00:36:57] Trevor Long: because I can’t wait to use them. Bose announced brand new wired noise-canceling headphones. Now I can remember, I used to, probably 8 years ago. Yeah, these were my go-to. They were the QC20s, I think they were called.

[00:37:12] Stephen Fenech: They tried 20 years ago.

[00:37:14] Trevor Long: No, but I’m saying 8 years ago when I was traveling, it had a

[00:37:17] Stephen Fenech: big little module

[00:37:18] Trevor Long: on there, a little module on the end that where you would charge like 6 hours battery life.

[00:37:22] Stephen Fenech: I had a really nice little pouch. I had

[00:37:24] Trevor Long: the same pouch, um, great headphones. And, and, you know, then we got over-ears and all the stuff, but I still use them when traveling because they’re great for when you’re sleeping. They don’t fall out and you don’t lose them, right? And so they’ve released wired noise-canceling headphones, which are essentially the new version of these that are $170. Wow. Like, that’s a crazy good price for Bose sound and Bose noise-canceling, right? Yeah. But the reason is because it doesn’t need the little battery. They’ve got permanent noise-canceling because they’re plugged into USB-C drawing power, USB-C drawing audio. Mate, it’s the perfect product.

[00:37:56] Stephen Fenech: So USB-C, not a 3.5mm cable? No, USB-C. USB-C. Yeah. Interesting.

[00:38:00] Trevor Long: So that you don’t need to charge it

[00:38:03] Stephen Fenech: back. Audio purists would be looking down their nose at that one because they expect a 3.5mm, and they would go to the trouble of getting an adapter for the 3.5mm cable.

[00:38:12] Trevor Long: But why wouldn’t you want the digital output of the audio?

[00:38:15] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think the

[00:38:16] Trevor Long: audio purists want the clearest.

[00:38:18] Stephen Fenech: And 3.5mm is for them to maybe not use it on other products of their other audio products as well. USB-C, if it’s native USB-C, they’re gonna have to buy an adapter then to use it on like their stereo.

[00:38:30] Trevor Long: Stereo isn’t on anything else. These are used on a plane. For tablets and phones. Okay, that’s all these are for. These will be the number one selling product at airports.

[00:38:40] Stephen Fenech: You think so?

[00:38:41] Trevor Long: No question. Yeah, $170. Yeah, that’s almost the cheapest noise-canceling you can get.

[00:38:47] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s amazing. And they’re a lot cheaper. They’re a lot cheaper today than they were years ago.

[00:38:53] Trevor Long: Well, yeah, and again, years ago—

[00:38:54] Stephen Fenech: new back then—

[00:38:55] Trevor Long: years ago they had a bit more technology in them, didn’t they? They had, you know, the whole— they had the battery in them. Yeah. And that, that’s the big thing. You don’t need a battery on these things.

[00:39:05] Stephen Fenech: It draws through the USB-C.

[00:39:06] Trevor Long: They come in like 3 different colors as well. It’s perfect.

[00:39:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I don’t remember receiving them to review. I got the headphones. I got the QC2s, the new— the over-ear headphones. Yeah. But I think, you know, it’s everything old is new again. Yeah. You know, your cables. And you’ll notice, I think this is a reaction to sort of Gen Zers and millennials going back sort of to cables. Have you noticed that?

[00:39:30] Trevor Long: Yeah, mate.

[00:39:30] Stephen Fenech: There’s a lot of people rocking cables again.

[00:39:32] Trevor Long: It’s the people walking around doing Instagram talking into their cable like this. It’s like, come on.

[00:39:37] Stephen Fenech: But haven’t you noticed there is a real movement back to a cable? There is, 100%. Yeah. So it’s, I think, going to be, yeah, a popular one. How much are they? $100 and what?

[00:39:45] Trevor Long: $170.

[00:39:46] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:39:47] Trevor Long: $169.95.

[00:39:48] Stephen Fenech: Wow. That’s pretty good. And you was using USB-C, of course, because they draw the power. See, the 3.5mm, that’s another reason why they didn’t have the 3.5mm, because it’s not going to draw power. Yeah.

[00:39:58] Trevor Long: From— I don’t know if it’s only— if it’s only—

[00:40:00] Stephen Fenech: no, they’re normal. Oh, because it can’t do it.

[00:40:02] Trevor Long: It’s only 3.5. It needs a battery to do noise cancellation. These are now unlimited noise cancelling hours.

[00:40:10] Stephen Fenech: Pretty good, pretty good.

[00:40:11] Trevor Long: You can fly to Europe and back 3 times and never charge them because they never need charging.

[00:40:15] Stephen Fenech: It’s just going to smash your iPad battery.

[00:40:18] Trevor Long: These are going to be— no, but it won’t be that. It won’t be too bad. Yeah, it will be interesting to test that. Yeah, but I would argue The battery life of an iPad to push out enough power to noise cancel and audio.

[00:40:29] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:40:29] Trevor Long: Is probably the same as pushing out Bluetooth.

[00:40:32] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, true. Audio. Yeah, true. Get that. Well, because that uses battery too. What, the Bluetooth connection? That’s right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I see.

[00:40:39] Trevor Long: I’m telling you.

[00:40:40] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:40:40] Trevor Long: Hotcakes.

[00:40:41] Stephen Fenech: I might ask a pair of these to review.

[00:40:42] Trevor Long: They will sell like hotcakes.

[00:40:44] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:40:44] Trevor Long: In airports.

[00:40:45] Stephen Fenech: Well, while we’re talking about earphones, I mentioned these on the Tech Guy podcast, but I’ve got to say, read my review on the AirPods 5.

[00:40:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, right.

[00:40:52] Stephen Fenech: They are phenomenal.

[00:40:53] Trevor Long: When we met up in the city last week, which we’ll get to, you were like, these are Unbelievable.

[00:40:56] Stephen Fenech: They were phenomenal. Yeah, they are phenomenal. Yeah, so good. The active noise cancellation in them, and these are open ear headphones, earphones. Yep. Amazing.

[00:41:06] Trevor Long: Amazing. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, they’re open.

[00:41:08] Stephen Fenech: They’re not, they’re not silicone tips in it. And I know people are worried, oh, they’re going to fall out of my ears, but you know what, try them. If that’s the only reason you’re not going to listen to them, then you might be making a big mistake.

[00:41:17] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s a good point. Yeah, full review of the AirPods 5 at techguide.com.au, and you can see the photos of the Bose Wired Noise Cancelling up at eftm.com.

[00:41:27] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:41:31] Trevor Long: Well, thanks for being my date last week, Stephen.

[00:41:34] Stephen Fenech: Your plus one, I prefer to say, mate.

[00:41:35] Trevor Long: Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry.

[00:41:37] Stephen Fenech: Plus one.

[00:41:37] Trevor Long: Didn’t think that was an issue. Yeah, we went to the movies.

[00:41:40] Stephen Fenech: I’m the movie head and I dragged Trev kicking and screaming into a movie podcast. Oh, not kicking and screaming, but he’s now a movie person. And he gets the invitation.

[00:41:50] Trevor Long: It’s unbelievable.

[00:41:51] Stephen Fenech: To The Social Reckoning.

[00:41:52] Trevor Long: The Social Reckoning. So the follow-up, as best described.

[00:41:56] Stephen Fenech: It’s not a sequel though.

[00:41:57] Trevor Long: No, it’s not a sequel. That’s why I say follow-up. Yeah. To The Social Network of what, 15 years ago? Was that

[00:42:02] Stephen Fenech: 2010?

[00:42:03] Trevor Long: 2010. Yeah. So about 15 years ago.

[00:42:05] Stephen Fenech: Brilliant movie. That is a favorite film.

[00:42:07] Trevor Long: That’s an early— which we’ve done on Best Movies. You have to scroll back a bit.

[00:42:11] Stephen Fenech: Covered it like a tarpaulin.

[00:42:12] Trevor Long: Tarpaulin. So I didn’t know what to expect going into this other than the, the, the The trailer looks good. Yeah, I’m a big fan of the cast, both Jeremys. One Jeremy from Succession and one Jeremy from The Bear.

[00:42:28] Stephen Fenech: Jeremy Allen White.

[00:42:30] Trevor Long: Jeremy Allen White played a journo from the Wall Street Journal and Jeremy—

[00:42:37] Stephen Fenech: Jeff Horowitz he played—

[00:42:38] Trevor Long: played Mark Zuckerberg.

[00:42:40] Stephen Fenech: And Mikey Madison, who, which is a woman, played, what’s her name, Frances Haugen. Yeah.

[00:42:47] Trevor Long: And so basically, you know, the story is of a very specific period in time when she whistle— whistle blew about the amount of information Facebook had about how its algorithm was influencing people down rabbit holes. It’s the best way I’d describe it.

[00:43:00] Stephen Fenech: And, and a lot of the time, high percentage of the time, 64% of the time, directing them to hate groups.

[00:43:06] Trevor Long: And it was a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal in 2021 called the Facebook Files.

[00:43:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:43:12] Trevor Long: Uh, and so the movie is is the, you know, dramatization of that. But as I understand it, a lot of effort went into the legal part of this to make sure that actually it is an accurate story. Yeah, so it was. So that they, they can’t get sued by Facebook for doing the movie, right?

[00:43:27] Stephen Fenech: Of course.

[00:43:27] Trevor Long: So you can kind of go into it going it’s a bit of a biopic of, of Zuckerberg through a period, or a bit of a documentary of this Facebook Files.

[00:43:34] Stephen Fenech: Social Network was kind of the birth of Facebook and the, you know, the legal challenges around this ownership

[00:43:40] Trevor Long: and foundation.

[00:43:41] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, this is more about about them trying to stay relevant and have the algorithm, because they were, remember they had a board meeting about, you know, we’re worried about, you know, people, our engagement is dropping and we’re going to lose revenue. And so they decided to supercharge the algorithm and the result is, and this Francis who was working in there, what is it? Their civil, the civil,

[00:44:04] Trevor Long: oh, I can’t figure out what it was called.

[00:44:05] Stephen Fenech: I wrote it in the review. She had dramas with it and she was basically told, you know what, just shut up, just do your job, toe the line. That was sort of the feeling.

[00:44:15] Trevor Long: She tried to raise these concerns several times, but in the end—

[00:44:18] Stephen Fenech: Raise it at the next meeting. And she said, that’s 3 months away. So she was— they weren’t very receptive to her concerns. She was in the Civic Integrity Team.

[00:44:26] Trevor Long: Civic Integrity Team. Yeah, mate, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[00:44:29] Stephen Fenech: I agree. Yeah, I loved it too.

[00:44:30] Trevor Long: It was about an hour 40 or hour 50, I think.

[00:44:32] Stephen Fenech: Hour 50 it was. And yeah, typical Aaron Sorkin script. It was really good. Yeah, great dialogue and sort of as I described it, sort sort of the rat-a-tat-tat sort of really great sections and surprisingly great appearance by Bill Burr.

[00:44:48] Trevor Long: Yeah, mate, I thought he stood out.

[00:44:50] Stephen Fenech: I think so too. And his line— well, Bill Burr played a guy named Charlie. You don’t know if he’s real, really get much of a former investor/advisor in Zuckerberg’s ear during this what would appear to be a practice session for a future Senate hearing.

[00:45:05] Trevor Long: But what I took from it was he was a former investor who’d gotten out of Facebook in terms of sold out and therefore didn’t make the billions, but was early on very much a confidant to Zuckerberg so that Zuckerberg would rely on him. And they drifted apart. He’d written this hit piece article, opinion piece. So they drifted apart. So he wasn’t a big— Zuckerberg wasn’t a big fan of him anymore, but he still, I think, respected him enough to have him allowed to stay in this room. But mate, Burr played him really well.

[00:45:31] Stephen Fenech: He did a great job. And his— the B in his bonnet was that there’s no fact-checking of political ads. And, and, you know, Zuckerberg’s reply is, I’m a, I’m a fan of free speech. Yes, we, we, whatever, we sort of, we’re, we’re not going to stop free speech. And the quote that, that Bill Burr’s character Charlie says, and I wrote it down verbatim, he says, you’re like a crossing guard standing out front of a school and you’re not doing anything with your arms, so the cars are just plowing down the children because it’s a democracy. Yeah, that was basically his argument. He goes, you gotta do something.

[00:46:05] Trevor Long: And you know what, I, I love that character. Little— I— Burr played it beautifully. Yeah, he did a good job. He played it really well because it is— it’s actually— forget all the other stuff that comes up in this about the algorithm. Yeah, mate, the biggest problem with Facebook is the crap content.

[00:46:21] Stephen Fenech: Exactly.

[00:46:21] Trevor Long: The fact that it’s all,

[00:46:22] Stephen Fenech: well,

[00:46:23] Trevor Long: so crap.

[00:46:24] Stephen Fenech: We were talking about this the other night, John Stanley and I, on on the 2GB, and he was showing me an example of like, he looked up golf balls, the example, and he said, look here, imagine getting a golf ball with your team logo on it. So he typed that into a search engine, and then every second ad on Facebook was an AI ad about the golf balls leading to these websites where you’re thinking, what, where, there’s no mention of the golf balls. You type them in a normal browser and mate, Obviously some of them are like, they’re scams. Scams, yeah. And yet they’re still there.

[00:47:02] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:47:02] Stephen Fenech: Like how many times have we heard scams that have been on there for 2 years?

[00:47:05] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:47:05] Stephen Fenech: So like they’re not doing much about that either. No. And they even stopped fact-checking. Remember at the end of the movie they showed, you know, the 3 weeks after that hearing, they changed their name to Meta. So they were called Facebook at the time, changed their name to Meta. And they said they stopped fact-checking altogether for political campaigns and anything that they got their normal checkers for nudity and all that sort of stuff, but fact-checking, they stopped. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, and I like the fact too, how, do you remember the very first scene of the movie was that woman sort of going crazy on the cops at the start? Yeah. And how Frances says to me—

[00:47:42] Trevor Long: I like the way they created that.

[00:47:44] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:47:44] Trevor Long: She

[00:47:44] Stephen Fenech: says, “I know this woman, I went to see this.”

[00:47:46] Trevor Long: So you needed something to hang onto to understand why she was so passionate about this algorithm driving people from one place to an extreme. Sort of radicalized people.

[00:47:55] Stephen Fenech: People. Yes. And in this instance, this woman sort of raving at these police, a policeman, a policewoman. Yeah.

[00:48:03] Trevor Long: And she’s gonna say, I know her.

[00:48:05] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:48:05] Trevor Long: And if I see a video of you, I’ll be like, that’s Stephen, that’s what he does.

[00:48:09] Stephen Fenech: But did she say, didn’t she say she went to college or something with her and she was really smart? And yeah, how did she—

[00:48:13] Trevor Long: so that bit is, I believe, quite overdramatized to create the underlying storyline of that. But it’s still broadly true that she had a friend in that situation, like radicalized.

[00:48:23] Stephen Fenech: Well, it gave her some another reason to speak up about it. Yeah. And rather than just let the whole parade go by.

[00:48:33] Trevor Long: Great movie, enjoyed it, really did.

[00:48:35] Stephen Fenech: I agree, I’d watch it again.

[00:48:37] Trevor Long: All right, well, it’s probably still in theaters, is it?

[00:48:39] Stephen Fenech: It is.

[00:48:39] Trevor Long: Go and see it, folks. The Social Reckoning, one of Aaron Sorkin’s best. Is it award-worthy?

[00:48:45] Stephen Fenech: I reckon might jag the odd— maybe, maybe, yeah, perhaps screenplay nom, maybe. Maybe a supporting, supporting actor. Yeah. Mikey Madison, well, she’s already won an Oscar. Oscar, Mikey Madison.

[00:48:55] Trevor Long: Who’s the lead character in this?

[00:48:57] Stephen Fenech: Well, I reckon Mikey Madison. Yeah, right. The two stars would be Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White. So Zuckerberg would be a supporting character, right? He’d be supporting actor. He might get a supporting actor nod.

[00:49:08] Trevor Long: Could be, maybe. It’s a very short piece.

[00:49:10] Stephen Fenech: Well, there’s been shorter. There’s been shorter that’s won Oscars. Yeah, yeah. So you never know. Imagine Bill Burr winning an Oscar. Crazy. What good material for his stage shows, hey? Great material for his comedy.

[00:49:21] Trevor Long: That’d be huge. All right. We both write reviews, techguide.com.au and eftm.com.

[00:49:27] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[00:49:35] Trevor Long: I installed— is it me?

[00:49:37] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:49:37] Trevor Long: You pointed at me.

[00:49:38] Stephen Fenech: It’s you.

[00:49:38] Trevor Long: I’m like, what’s going on here?

[00:49:39] Stephen Fenech: It’s you.

[00:49:39] Trevor Long: You’re about to lean in. So I installed the new Arlo Essential Solar camera on the weekend. So I say this cautiously because I always say, listen, I know it’s not actually what you’re meant to do and I don’t encourage you to do it, but I have a camera on my telegraph pole at the front of my house because I don’t own the pole, Ausgrid do. I don’t give a rat’s. Every time someone from Ausgrid says, mate, take the camera off, I go, yeah, no worries, mate.

[00:50:04] Stephen Fenech: Oh, you’ve been told?

[00:50:06] Trevor Long: Yeah, he’s not going to come back. When’s he coming back? You know, it’s just a great—

[00:50:10] Stephen Fenech: So long lives.

[00:50:10] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s a great— because it’s a shot of my house so you can see the whole house. Yeah. And it’s like, are you

[00:50:16] Stephen Fenech: And your Wi-Fi gets to it or is it 4G?

[00:50:18] Trevor Long: Yeah. So it’s for me, it’s an example of how these cameras are truly wire-free. Yeah. And it’s an example of how good my Wi-Fi is. Right.

[00:50:24] Stephen Fenech: And your solar.

[00:50:25] Trevor Long: And now so before that camera out there was a— I had a lot— one of the large battery versions of like the Ultra.

[00:50:31] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:50:32] Trevor Long: And so I took that down and I put the Essential Solar up there. Now this is a wildly different camera to anything Arlo’s done before.

[00:50:39] Stephen Fenech: It’s different shape and everything.

[00:50:40] Trevor Long: Flat shape. It’s like It’s a big wide thing. It’s got 3 tripod mounts on the back so you could choose where you want to do it. Do you want to have it on which end or in the middle? So I just put on the middle with the solar pointing up rather than to one particular side.

[00:50:51] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, the solar’s got to face the sun.

[00:50:52] Trevor Long: No, but it can face— it could be on the side and get the whole afternoon sun.

[00:50:55] Stephen Fenech: The point is though, the solar panel’s integrated into the camera. It’s not a separate thing.

[00:50:59] Trevor Long: Not a separate thing, which is not new. Swann’s done this. I’ve seen them with the— with the Eufy, I think they’ve done it as well.

[00:51:04] Stephen Fenech: With the floodlight too, like this.

[00:51:06] Trevor Long: But for Arlo to go, okay, we’re we know this is a thing, people putting these solar panels up. And look, I would say Amanda won’t let me put another solar panel next to a camera. She doesn’t want that. Yeah. So this is perfect because it means you can get the benefit.

[00:51:18] Stephen Fenech: Not a bad size either. It’s not too big, it’s not too small. It’s good, good size.

[00:51:21] Trevor Long: I love it. Yeah. Now I will say it’s probably as an Essential and not the Ultra, I think. Yeah, it doesn’t

[00:51:27] Stephen Fenech: have

[00:51:27] Trevor Long: resolution, doesn’t have quite the range. I think it’s a little bit more—

[00:51:30] Stephen Fenech: 130-degree field of view,

[00:51:33] Trevor Long: right? Yep. I need to do some work. So in my current review would be I’m not getting enough power, right? So I think I’ve got it set. You’re not enough sunlight. Detect too much.

[00:51:42] Stephen Fenech: Apparently it needs 2 hours of sun a day, right? And then with a fully charged, you know, it’s got like a 15,000 milliamp-hour battery on it,

[00:51:50] Trevor Long: right?

[00:51:50] Stephen Fenech: Which is like 4 times, 3 times your phone.

[00:51:53] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:51:53] Stephen Fenech: On a full battery can run for 6 months without any sunlight. Hmm.

[00:51:57] Trevor Long: Yeah. Interesting.

[00:51:58] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:51:58] Trevor Long: So I, you know, and the other thing I didn’t do because I rushed it I put it straight up, so I need to charge it fully. That’s what I’ve done. I haven’t charged it fully before.

[00:52:06] Stephen Fenech: Charge it up before.

[00:52:07] Trevor Long: In my head I went, it’s just going to, it’s going to be like any other camera. It’s going to just keep itself going. So yeah, I’ve got to fully charge it before I, before I put it up again. But mate, it’s just a great view. It’s a great simple thing. Yeah, it’s a great demonstration that your camera is just one thing, solar and camera included. It’s perfect.

[00:52:21] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s great. It’s only $189 too, which is a great price also.

[00:52:26] Trevor Long: Oh yeah. What was that? $189? Not a bad price. That’s the fifth time you’ve said that.

[00:52:29] Stephen Fenech: Another one. And it is, yeah, $189. And works IP65 weather resistant, 2K resolution, 130-degree field of view, dual-band Wi-Fi too. So you don’t need to just search for the 2.4. Yeah, it’ll go dual band. And also has the color night vision and also the white LED spotlight, like the other cameras do.

[00:52:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah. No, it’s a good, good little unit and a great price.

[00:52:55] Stephen Fenech: Not a bad price.

[00:52:57] Trevor Long: Is that the theme of this show?

[00:52:59] Stephen Fenech: I think so.

[00:52:59] Trevor Long: Someone remind me, that should be the title of the show.

[00:53:01] Stephen Fenech: Not a bad price. Not a

[00:53:02] Trevor Long: bad price.

[00:53:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:53:03] Trevor Long: All right. You can read more about that at techguide.com.au and eftm.com.

[00:53:07] VOICE OVER: Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:53:14] Trevor Long: Thanks to the legends at JBL. And you need to check out the new JBL Cove. This is whole home audio the easy way. So every room in your home can have a different Cove speaker. They’ve got the compact, M1, the portable P1, the 3D room-filling home speaker called the X1, and then there’s the Bar Mark II bundle, which basically you can pair an M1 or P1 speakers with the JBL Mark II soundbars for fully immersive sound.

[00:53:41] Stephen Fenech: Good. Which I heard these, and you know what, amazing sound. Yeah, and I’m fussy with my sound, as you know.

[00:53:47] Trevor Long: He is fussy with his sound.

[00:53:48] Stephen Fenech: Very, very good for the money.

[00:53:50] Trevor Long: So these will all pair with the Bar Mark II Series Plus. Each individual speaker can be set up. You don’t have to buy a whole series. You can buy one and put it in a room and it’s just great sound and build your way from there. It’s kind of like what we talk about with security cameras. Just get one to get yourself in and move yourself through. The JBL One app is actually a really brilliant way to set up any speaker in the JBL range. It’s got a button there that allows you to just press so the music follows with just a press. So you can follow you around the room. It’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth streaming. It is Auracast compatible and has Alexa voice control too. Yeah. So it is a genius all-of-home Wi-Fi speaker solution that gives you sound in every room. And remember, it doesn’t have to be the same sound. So yes, you can play You’re the Voice in every room, but if you wanted to, you could play You’re the Voice in every room except Victoria’s, and she can play Tay Tay. So that’s completely allowed. Or you can just pick 2 rooms to play music, plus stereo pairs, all that kind of stuff. Yes, it’s a—

[00:54:48] Stephen Fenech: it’s all really fun and fantastic.

[00:54:50] Trevor Long: No, not at all.

[00:54:51] Stephen Fenech: Not as big as you.

[00:54:52] Trevor Long: No, I think, I think when we were dating, her words were because of her music taste and my music taste, we had fundamental differences.

[00:54:59] Stephen Fenech: Oh, wow. And you’re still married?

[00:55:02] Trevor Long: Yeah, we still got married. True. And we’re still married. Anyway, you can find out more by simply going to jbl.com.au.

[00:55:09] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:55:13] Trevor Long: I mean, I can read your writing. And I just feel like

[00:55:18] Stephen Fenech: you can’t read

[00:55:18] Trevor Long: that. I mean, is that a private feed conversation?

[00:55:21] Stephen Fenech: Maybe. Okay, you know what, good idea. Let’s keep it for the private feed.

[00:55:24] Trevor Long: We’re gonna skip down and go to the next one.

[00:55:26] Stephen Fenech: So this means you’ve got to listen to the private feed to find out what we were talking about. What was only going to reveal it in the private feed.

[00:55:33] Trevor Long: What was so alarming on here, apart from Stephen’s poor handwriting with the social reckoning, that I thought, you know what, let’s do that one without the kiddies. Good call. Okay, if Uncle Tread’s going to say the F word, we can talk about that. That’s the best hook for the private feed.

[00:55:47] Stephen Fenech: Is it ever? Wow.

[00:55:48] Trevor Long: I want the private feed to be bigger.

[00:55:49] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, me too.

[00:55:50] Trevor Long: Now a question for you, and maybe this is one for the regular private listeners as well to tell us, but the private feed is unlisted on YouTube.

[00:56:00] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, ’cause you gotta go through this.

[00:56:02] Trevor Long: You gotta go through this feed to find it.

[00:56:03] Stephen Fenech: So look below.

[00:56:04] Trevor Long: What would happen if we opened it? To our careers, I think.

[00:56:09] Stephen Fenech: Nothing. I think we’ll be fine. Fine.

[00:56:11] Trevor Long: You think so?

[00:56:11] Stephen Fenech: Well, you know what? I think maybe open it up, see what happens. See what happens. Just, yeah, what do you call it? It’s the two blokes off the hook. Private. It’s the private feed.

[00:56:24] Trevor Long: Yeah. Maybe I need— maybe

[00:56:26] Stephen Fenech: adults only.

[00:56:27] Trevor Long: If we were to do that, I think we need an intro that says, you know, like just a blank screen that says, the two blokes are great mates. This is them unhinged, unfiltered.

[00:56:37] Stephen Fenech: Loose.

[00:56:38] Trevor Long: Not for kids.

[00:56:39] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, okay.

[00:56:40] Trevor Long: I think it needs that preamble. You

[00:56:42] Stephen Fenech: need to workshop that. All right,

[00:56:44] Trevor Long: well,

[00:56:44] Stephen Fenech: let’s talk to our many producers. Okay, you everyone hear that? Write that down!

[00:56:50] Trevor Long: Which is how Carl Sandilands talks to his producers and still talks about them as he’s a great boss, but geez, he can yell. Greg Norman hit the news this week.

[00:57:01] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:57:02] Trevor Long: I’m going to find the tweet because he’s apparently on Twitter. Was it on Twitter he did it?

[00:57:05] Stephen Fenech: It was on Oh, it was all over the place. It was on Facebook as well.

[00:57:08] Trevor Long: Oh, okay. No, it wasn’t on Twitter. He did not tweet. So maybe Facebook, maybe it was on Facebook. Yeah, let me, let me find it. Greg Norman basically, uh, was delayed on a Qantas flight, uh,

[00:57:18] Stephen Fenech: several

[00:57:18] Trevor Long: hours, and, and just said he was

[00:57:21] Stephen Fenech: going Sydney to, uh, Dallas.

[00:57:22] Trevor Long: He was flying home to Dallas.

[00:57:25] Stephen Fenech: Uh, so he lives now Dallas.

[00:57:26] Trevor Long: Well, time flying home for America. Oh yeah, well, you’d go to Dallas to get to Florida. That’d be the quickest thing because then the next the next flight is shorter, right?

[00:57:34] Stephen Fenech: So you take the next little hop.

[00:57:36] Trevor Long: That’s probably why you would do it that way. Anyway, so he gets onto Facebook and goes, you know what, I’m just going to unleash on these people. I’ve had a gutful of Qantas. Now

[00:57:45] Stephen Fenech: you’ve got the actual thing now?

[00:57:46] Trevor Long: No, I’m still loading and logging. I’m logging in. Here it is. I haven’t got the actual one, but I’ve got the Daily Telegraph. I’ve got it now. Shark Greg Norman, it is. It’s on Instagram.

[00:57:55] Stephen Fenech: Insta.

[00:57:56] Trevor Long: Instagram. Shark_Greg_Norman. Greg Norman, Shark_Greg Norman, because I don’t want to read from the Daily Telegraph wherever I can avoid it. Uh, okay, so the context here is he used to be like the face of Qantas in ads.

[00:58:11] Stephen Fenech: He was an ambassador and stuff. Well, they were a sponsor of his when he was a pro.

[00:58:14] Trevor Long: Yeah, so he gets on 3 days ago and says, I’ve always tried to support my national airline Qantas. Editorial comment from me: they’re not the national airline. What does that mean? There’s no There’s, there’s no— it’s such a stupid thing we call them. They’re a public company, they’re not linked to the government, they’re just a bloody airline. They’re an Australian airline. Anyway, he goes on to say, sadly, their reputation of the never-on-time airline, or the ones I’m on this time, Sydney to Dallas, circa 3 hours late departing, um, plus an hour to get one bag in Dallas, has me looking elsewhere. Maybe Emirates, longer but more reliable, Wi-Fi, comfort, caring. This bloke can’t speak English. I’m reading this verbatim.

[00:58:55] Stephen Fenech: Maybe he’s experienced with Live Golf. Yeah, he said that went well. Yeah, so he wants to go back to, to the Middle East again.

[00:59:01] Trevor Long: Too bad, as Qantas was one of the top 3 airlines in the world for great travel experience. Alas, no more. Hashtag what happened? Profit before customer caring, reputation and service. And not to have Wi-Fi in this day and age with the cost in the ticket is insane. Dated ground staff, excellent. Qantas admin, get to work and put the pride back in the spirit of Australia and be the world leader in your industry again.

[00:59:23] Stephen Fenech: Well, you know, it echoes similar things to what you’ve said about Qantas, about them not having Wi-Fi.

[00:59:29] Trevor Long: I think it’s a disgrace.

[00:59:30] Stephen Fenech: On these national flights.

[00:59:30] Trevor Long: They’ve got it on the 787s now. Only in the last few months is that complete. They are starting— Qantas apparently replied at some point and said, yeah, it’s coming to the A380s, we’re starting to roll it out. But

[00:59:39] Stephen Fenech: it’s on the 787s, you reckon?

[00:59:41] Trevor Long: It’s done on the 787s. Yes. Yeah. So it’s complete now on the 787s. Starlink? No, this is the thing. They’re not even rolling out Starlink. They’re rolling out crap. Come

[00:59:49] Stephen Fenech: on,

[00:59:50] Trevor Long: they’re rolling out the worst. That’s like saying in 2026, you know what, I’m going to put some ADSL in at home when you know that NBN exists.

[00:59:58] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, what are you doing?

[00:59:59] Trevor Long: So then they had— so they— let’s say they started their 787 rollout, then they, then they realized Starlink existed. Don’t, don’t, don’t start the rollout on the A380 until you’ve got Starlink deal done. Now there could be a million reasons why they don’t do Starlink, but I’m telling you It’s the best service on the planet in a plane. Absolutely. Amazon will be just as good when it launches, I’m sure. But he makes a great point, yeah, not to have it on the A380, which is ridiculous, you know, such an icon of the skies, is crazy.

[01:00:30] Stephen Fenech: Aren’t Qantas sort of slowly phasing them out?

[01:00:32] Trevor Long: Yes, they’re going to disappear within like 10 years. They’ll be gone, replaced by the A350-1000s. Yeah, which there’s no talk of them getting Starlink either. But, you know, I think whinging, whinging about being 3 hours late mate.

[01:00:42] Stephen Fenech: That’s a bit harsh because someone commented, I forget where I heard this, they said, they said, oh, Qantas are putting safety before convenience or something like that. I’m thinking, hello, I’d like safety to be first. That’s gotta be, surely. Someone said, oh no, they’re prioritizing safety over other factors. I mean, hello, I want that to be number one.

[01:01:01] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah. I don’t care if it’s the windscreen wiper blade or the tire, if it needs to be fixed, fix it.

[01:01:08] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, absolutely right. But

[01:01:10] Trevor Long: 3 hours is not bad. It’s not unusual. It’s not common though. So I think it’s a bit harsh. What he should have done was just make the point about Wi-Fi.

[01:01:18] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[01:01:18] Trevor Long: because that’s a valid point. Well, waiting an hour for your bags.

[01:01:21] Stephen Fenech: Well, his number one gripe was because they were late.

[01:01:24] Trevor Long: Join the club.

[01:01:25] Stephen Fenech: Then he piled on with the no Wi-Fi and sort of really then went to town on them a bit.

[01:01:30] Trevor Long: Yeah, look what I was

[01:01:31] Stephen Fenech: talking about. It was on the radio, heard it everywhere.

[01:01:32] Trevor Long: Hashtag I stand with

[01:01:35] Stephen Fenech: Greg. Yeah,

[01:01:35] Trevor Long: just on the basic principle of customer service matters and you’ve got to have Wi-Fi, right? Now, this is an all-airline thing, and I fly a lot, and we flew a lot domestically just in America. And my number one thing is— and when Stig and I were in Europe, so we have a great app which gives us notifications of different things, you know, tells you what gate changes and all that kind of stuff. We were waiting for an Emirates flight— sorry, a Qatar flight. It must have been in Qatar. Yeah, so it was the domestic part, it was Qatar to Berlin. So we’d made it all— that’s a beautiful airline, they do great things. And we’re all— everyone’s at the gate, and we get to the gate 10 minutes before boarding because I’m done with the lounge. Was

[01:02:13] Stephen Fenech: I with you?

[01:02:15] Trevor Long: And, um, and we, we know that it’s delayed, so the plane’s there, but we can already see in our app that it’s going to be delayed. Oh, right. And I’m thinking, we said to one of the airport guys, he goes, yeah, we just, we just got word, we’re going to announce it in a minute. I’m like, mate, they didn’t announce anything. Yeah, they just kept people waiting. Guys, over-communicate. Yeah, people love information.

[01:02:38] Stephen Fenech: Exactly right,

[01:02:38] Trevor Long: they love

[01:02:38] Stephen Fenech: it.

[01:02:39] Trevor Long: Yeah, you gotta love information. Yeah, just say, listen guys, uh, the crew isn’t here. Hey guys, uh, everyone’s on, the crew’s on board the plane, but they’ve, they’ve just got a couple of warning lights they want to get the engineers to check. We’re going to do that now, it should take 20 minutes. Yeah, there is a chance, by the way, that if “Hey, this is bad. We’ll have to bring another plane around. That could delay things. We’ll let you know when that happens.” Just overcommunicate.

[01:02:59] Stephen Fenech: Keep us up to date. Absolutely. Such an easy thing to do. So not every airline does that.

[01:03:03] Trevor Long: We don’t know why they were 3 hours late. We don’t know whether they announced that every 2 minutes in the airport. He might’ve missed that in the first class lounge or the Chairman’s Club, which he’s probably not now a part of. But you know, I don’t know it’s a good look for a super celebrity like that to go ranting.

[01:03:17] Stephen Fenech: Well, you know what? I’m glad he did because it got us, got people talking.

[01:03:23] Trevor Long: Yeah,

[01:03:23] Stephen Fenech: it got people talking and it made the news. We’re talking about it here. So it’s, I think, a bit of a reality check for Qantas.

[01:03:31] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[01:03:31] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[01:03:31] Trevor Long: Well, let’s see if they— well, they can’t change anything.

[01:03:33] Stephen Fenech: Well, it’s a competitive market, mate, out there. So Qantas fares aren’t exactly cheap. No. So for the money you’d expect to get— well, you know, obviously safety is important, but you’d expect to get those other bells and whistles like Wi-Fi.

[01:03:45] Trevor Long: The only reason we’re flying Qantas to CES is because I thought for once I’ll give the boys a slightly shorter trip and we’ll go straight into Vegas. Direct, right? Yeah, yeah. So we’re flying direct, but we’re on a 787, so there’ll be Wi-Fi. Yeah. So we’re— I’m okay with that, but not starting when we get— but I don’t care, I’m not too stressed about that. I just want to be able to check my emails and scroll a bit, whatever, you know. I’m not too stressed about it if it can’t— push comes to shove. But we get opportunities to fly places all the time, right? And often they will say, what are your flight preferences? I’ve never put Qantas at the top of that list.

[01:04:14] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got to say, mate, I’ve dropped— I’m Qantas Platinum still and was, was like Qantas was my go-to, but mate, they’ve dropped way down the list. They’re not in consideration. Even CES, I’m not going to— I used to go Qantas, last 2 years I haven’t.

[01:04:29] Trevor Long: Yeah. I just think that you pick a bird, and in this case I’m pretty strong on United. And yeah, it’s not perfect.

[01:04:36] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[01:04:37] Trevor Long: Not at all.

[01:04:37] Stephen Fenech: What was attractive to me knowing if I was going to fly Qantas was the first class lounge in Sydney. So you know you’re going to get a good feed before you get on the plane. That doesn’t really come into calculations now.

[01:04:50] Trevor Long: The term status is a funny one because you need status credits to earn status. It’s like literally built into the term. I’m egotistic, I love having status. Yeah, totally happy to admit that. Part of that is I like to be at the front of the queue and all that stuff. But we flew multiple domestic flights with the family and my status with United meant that we were first on the plane. Australian, we could take as basically as many bags as we wanted. There was not an issue. ‘Cause there was one point—

[01:05:16] Stephen Fenech: Your Premier 1K?

[01:05:17] Trevor Long: No, Global Services.

[01:05:18] Stephen Fenech: Global, geez.

[01:05:19] Trevor Long: Right? And so mate, I applied for upgrades and got all but one of them for the family. So that Jackson and Amanda’s dad flew business all the way there and back, which was a great relief ’cause they really needed to. They’re both tall and whatever. So it matters. When you’re a regular traveler, it does matter. If you are not a frequent traveler, frankly, there’s no point joining the frequent traveler. Frequent Flyer programs unless you’re doing it on the credit cards to earn the points to buy the tickets, right? People that do it through credit card to buy tickets, I get that, cool. But for status and things, it’s only really beneficial for regular flyers. So you’re someone, so I’m gonna go to Korea for 2.5 days, mate, I’m going carry-on only. Like that’s obviously carry-on only. Now I don’t have status with that airline, but I’ll be in business. So I know that I’ll be able to get on early and I’ll get an overhead locker. But I said to Amanda with our last domestic I said, babe, we’ve booked. So we had 3 carry-on suitcases and 6 full-size ones, right? And I said, babe, we’re gonna check them all because the flight’s full. I could see on the app it was full and I don’t want us to be having that drama. But I said to her, I said, when Amanda’s a bit of a, if someone comes and says, oh, listen, you need to do this, she’d be like, oh, okay, sorry. And I said, babe, just so you know.

[01:06:29] Stephen Fenech: Hey, hey, you’re not like that.

[01:06:30] Trevor Long: We have sacrificed, we have checked in our bags. So that we have small backpacks for ourselves and we’re putting them up above us where they belong, right? If a lady comes along and says, “No, I gotta put someone’s thing up there,” I will say, “Listen, I just checked 3 bags to stop this from being a problem. See that bloke that just walked down there with big suitcase and a big backpack? Go and talk to him,” right? So that idea of us having that comfort was all

[01:06:56] Stephen Fenech: the world. Well, I think American Airlines, the US airlines are all about have one bag one you put above you and one in front of your feet. And

[01:07:04] Trevor Long: so I was gonna argue that case, but they didn’t. In the end, we were fine. There was no problems. But the reason we avoided that was because of my status. We were first on the plane. Of course, mate. And so we just packed the thing with our stuff. It’s all good. Anyway, Greg, I stand with you. Good on you, Greg. Everyone should have Wi-Fi. Stephen, that’s a wrap for this week. That is a wrap, yes. Can’t wait for you all to be listening and watching to the Private Feed. If you’re on YouTube, YouTube, click the description below and click the button. Enjoy it. I don’t know if you’re on your TV, I don’t think you can do that. That’s the challenge. That’s why I’ve been thinking about the feed, because people that watch it on their TV—

[01:07:36] Stephen Fenech: so can’t— is it in the description on TV as well?

[01:07:38] Trevor Long: I don’t think— I don’t think you can click links in the description. What? Let’s check in a minute and find out. Not in a minute, we’ll check later.

[01:07:44] Stephen Fenech: Check another time.

[01:07:44] Trevor Long: Check another time. All right, Stephen, see you next week.

[01:07:46] VOICE OVER: Ciao. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long. And Stephen Fenech.

[01:07:57] Trevor Long: You want a wife?