The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 758 Digital Literacy, Digital Readiness, the future for kids?

TBTT #758 – Digital Literacy, Digital Readiness, the future for kids?

Podcast: Two Blokes Talking Tech
Date: 12 November 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long & Stephen Fenech

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[00:00:00] Trevor Long: That you, Stephen?

[00:00:01] Stephen Fenech: Hello.

[00:00:01] Trevor Long: Welcome.

[00:00:04] Stephen Fenech: Great to be here again. My glasses are not— Oh,

[00:00:06] Trevor Long: there’s been drama. He had his dramas in his glasses in his pocket. We were driving a car, he pulled them out and he smashed them.

[00:00:14] Stephen Fenech: Not smashed, they’re just the lens fell out. But

[00:00:17] Trevor Long: is there meant to be a screw between those two frames holding it in? That’s what it is. Well, on the other side, I need glasses. I was just going to say, I think I need to put my— Can I have a look? Let me inspect. Yeah, so you’re a screw loose.

[00:00:30] Stephen Fenech: That’s not the first time that’s been said about me.

[00:00:31] Trevor Long: Yeah, so

[00:00:32] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got a screw loose. I have to go take it back and get it— get a screw put in.

[00:00:37] Trevor Long: It might be a screw, I don’t know. It’s weird. Yeah, anyway,

[00:00:40] Stephen Fenech: they’re working for now.

[00:00:41] Trevor Long: Just get new ones. You’re doing—

[00:00:42] Stephen Fenech: these are new ones.

[00:00:44] Trevor Long: What

[00:00:44] Stephen Fenech: about— have a few months.

[00:00:45] Trevor Long: I’ve got 5 pairs.

[00:00:48] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I only get them 2 at a time. I get 2 at a time.

[00:00:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, so like I’ve got enough, ’cause over the years I bought a new one and I thought I’d lost them all, but I found them all then. And so now I’ve lined them up and I’m gonna go to the optometrist and I say, listen, I don’t wanna buy anything. I just want you to—

[00:01:05] Stephen Fenech: I’ve just got the frame, just change the lenses.

[00:01:07] Trevor Long: Well, so on a couple of them, I’ve just lost the little—

[00:01:09] Stephen Fenech: There was one in the car. There was one of them in the Aura. It’s in the cup holder, you’ll find it.

[00:01:15] Trevor Long: No, I think it’s broke. I think it’s the broken one.

[00:01:17] Stephen Fenech: Oh, ’cause I remember it was on the seat. It was on the passenger seat. I’m thinking, what the hell’s Trevor been up to with his glasses here?

[00:01:22] Trevor Long: And I put it in the cup holder. But see, like these ones, this is real good talk here. But these ones have just a tiny smudge on the lower part, which is the bit that lets me read. And I don’t like a single mark or smudge. It frustrates me. And so what I wanna do is pull all the lenses out. And I’m just gonna say, find me the 3 best set of frames. ‘Cause some of them are really old and they just don’t. So find me the 3 best frames, put the 3 best set of lenses in, brand new.

[00:01:51] Stephen Fenech: So your existing frames, you mean?

[00:01:52] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:01:52] Stephen Fenech: The ones you already have?

[00:01:53] Trevor Long: I’ve got 5 frames.

[00:01:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s a good idea.

[00:01:55] Trevor Long: Let’s say 2 of them are written off now. So they’re gonna go to God, but the other 3, they’re good.

[00:02:01] Stephen Fenech: Go to God.

[00:02:01] Trevor Long: And then I’ll probably order some new lenses for a couple ’cause they’re scratched, but that’s it. I’m not ordering all new glasses and everything.

[00:02:07] Stephen Fenech: That or get an operation, get lens replacement operation.

[00:02:10] Trevor Long: No, it’s not possible for me at this point. Why? No, it’s not a thing.

[00:02:14] Stephen Fenech: Oh, it’s not?

[00:02:15] Trevor Long: Whatever I suffer from, they told me it wasn’t possible.

[00:02:17] Stephen Fenech: No, no, if you suffer cataracts, you can get it as like a—

[00:02:19] Trevor Long: I don’t have cataracts. Yeah, I know, but you can then,

[00:02:22] Stephen Fenech: If you choose to do it as elective surgery, you can, it’s different now.

[00:02:27] Trevor Long: Well, they told me there was nothing you could do surgically. I said, listen, what do I need to pay to get this fixed so I don’t wear glasses?

[00:02:33] Stephen Fenech: Oh, so there’s nothing you can do.

[00:02:35] Trevor Long: And they said no. Yeah.

[00:02:35] Stephen Fenech: That’s interesting.

[00:02:36] Trevor Long: I think it’s ’cause I’m so young. No?

[00:02:40] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, maybe that could be it. Keep telling yourself.

[00:02:42] Trevor Long: You were offered surgery ’cause you’re old. They’re like, ah, give me a hip replacement while he’s there.

[00:02:45] Stephen Fenech: No, they didn’t offer me anything. I’m just saying that.

[00:02:47] Trevor Long: Give him a hip replacement and a knee replacement while he’s there.

[00:02:50] Stephen Fenech: I’m good. You sure? I’ll need a knee replacement, both of them eventually, but not right now. Because

[00:02:54] Trevor Long: they are a bit wonky.

[00:02:56] Stephen Fenech: Well, they have been all my life, mate. Have they? Yeah.

[00:02:58] Trevor Long: Really? That’s not a football thing?

[00:02:59] Stephen Fenech: No, don’t think so.

[00:03:01] Trevor Long: Really?

[00:03:03] Stephen Fenech: Anyway, my knees, yeah, I remember having problems before. Remember before we went to Europe a couple of years ago and it got to, my knee was really painful. And then by the time I saw a doctor and then he referred me to the specialist, by the time that I got to the specialist, which was like weeks later, pain was gone. I’m thinking, mate, I kept that appointment. I said, but you know what? I’m feeling perfectly okay now. And he said, that’s good. The longer you stay away from me, the better. He goes, but you will eventually need a knee replacement.

[00:03:29] Trevor Long: And I will invoice you for today’s consultation.

[00:03:30] Stephen Fenech: Of course.

[00:03:31] Trevor Long: They don’t miss you.

[00:03:32] Stephen Fenech: He was the same doctor who did my mother’s recent knee replacement.

[00:03:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, right. Yeah.

[00:03:37] Stephen Fenech: How’s she going? She’s going great. Yeah. She’s up and about.

[00:03:39] Trevor Long: Sprinting around Marooba again.

[00:03:40] Stephen Fenech: No, not quite. Getting there. Getting there. She’ll be hot. You’ll be doing laps of East Gardens really soon.

[00:03:46] Trevor Long: Very good. How’s little Jack?

[00:03:49] Stephen Fenech: Jack is 5 weeks old already, 5 months old already, I should say. 5 months. Yeah, he’s— Hayley shared a really cool little video of him laughing, him like cracking up laughing. It’s really, really— what a beautiful little video.

[00:04:02] Trevor Long: That is the greatest.

[00:04:03] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, he’s growing up, mate. He’s like a bean sprout. He’s getting bigger.

[00:04:06] Trevor Long: Like a bean sprout. He’s a big bean sprout.

[00:04:09] Stephen Fenech: Yep. Big unit.

[00:04:10] Trevor Long: He’s got the Fenech gene there.

[00:04:11] Stephen Fenech: Has he what? Yeah.

[00:04:13] Trevor Long: His dad’s big too. Like his dad’s a tall bloke.

[00:04:15] Stephen Fenech: His father’s, yeah, he’s 6 foot 4, he’s our man. And like I’m not short either. So he’s got it in on my side of the family. We’re pretty tall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big boy, but happy young, happy little champion he is.

[00:04:25] Trevor Long: And just to put everyone at ease, how’s the new car?

[00:04:29] Stephen Fenech: Car’s great. Yeah, really good. I, the range is phenomenal. I’ve only charged it once in 2 weeks that I’ve had it and yeah, loving it. But I’ve gotta be, ’cause we get a car to drive every week, right? So I’m thinking, which car do I drive today? Which one do I wanna drive?

[00:04:45] Trevor Long: I pull in the driveway and I see the Cooper sitting there ’cause Jackson’s home. And I go, you know what? I go inside, I go, “Jacko, tomorrow take the Mazda. I’m driving the Cooper.” ‘Cause it’s like, mate, I just, you know.

[00:04:56] Stephen Fenech: No, I love it. No, it’s good. I think I shared with you, remember I got TikTok in my car. And I think your reply was, “That’s a handy feature to have in your car.” I think it’s meant for like, I’ve got Disney+ and YouTube. It’s like my Tesla. It’s all this stuff I can watch in there. Obviously when you’re

[00:05:11] Trevor Long: parked, I honestly, yeah, I guess on a long drive I might sit in the car while it charges, but everywhere else I’m, I’m out charging. Yeah. So I just never have

[00:05:21] Stephen Fenech: seen the passenger, you know, I’ve got a screen going all the way across. The passenger’s got a screen that doesn’t work unless someone’s sitting in the seat. So the driver can’t touch it and have another screen. There’s got to be weight in the seat for you to free your upright.

[00:05:36] Trevor Long: So you’ve been putting a big heavy backpack in there, have you?

[00:05:37] Stephen Fenech: I’ve tried a couple of times, that still wasn’t enough. That still wasn’t enough.

[00:05:41] Trevor Long: All right, well, speaking of electric cars, we’d love you to listen to the Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars. This week we reviewed the Chery e5, and next Monday’s episode features the Honda Australia CEO. So we’ll talk to him about one of their funky little cars, which is all electric. That is, uh, that is to come. And this week’s movie,

[00:06:03] Stephen Fenech: Stephen, is The Sting, starring Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford. A classic, 1973. You

[00:06:10] Trevor Long: heard it right, folks, Doc Hudson comes back to, to the best movies you’ve never seen.

[00:06:16] Stephen Fenech: Doc Hudson.

[00:06:17] Trevor Long: Doc Hudson, Paul Newman. Oh, Cars movie.

[00:06:20] Stephen Fenech: Cars, yeah. He has got a great voice, I’ve got to say. His voice is really good.

[00:06:23] Trevor Long: It’s funny, and I didn’t mention this in the movie, but, um, because Harry was in another room. I expected Harry would twig.

[00:06:30] Stephen Fenech: Oh, but I didn’t. He never picked up the voice.

[00:06:32] Trevor Long: It wasn’t quite as gravelly as 2004-05 Paul Newman. I think he got a bit gravelier.

[00:06:38] Stephen Fenech: So,

[00:06:39] Trevor Long: and maybe he put that

[00:06:40] Stephen Fenech: voice on, but he has got a really cool, really good voice. He’s got a great voice.

[00:06:44] Trevor Long: Speaking of great voices,

[00:06:48] VOICE OVER: welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech. Not a bad price with Trevor Long from eftm.com.

[00:06:53] VOICE OVER: Really handy device.

[00:06:55] VOICE OVER: And Stephen Fenech from techguide.com.au.

[00:06:59] Trevor Long: Episode 758 of Two Blokes Talking Tech. Hey, bloody road. Um, thanks to the great people at Arlo for your home security needs. They’ve got you covered. So whether you want to expand your home security systems or get your first one, get yourself an Arlo and discover what more they can do for you. And Stephen will tell you more about them shortly. And of course, JBL, um, they, uh, we’ve got the wrong screen up, I’ve just realized. Look at that.

[00:07:24] Stephen Fenech: There you go.

[00:07:25] Trevor Long: We were promoting, we were promoting the movie show. Everyone’s been watching going, what’s going on with that screen? They’ve never seen it before because we never published an episode.

[00:07:35] Stephen Fenech: Well, not a video. Yeah, right.

[00:07:37] Trevor Long: Well, I think we did record one and then it got flagged. So it was all of Stephen’s audio clips that it got done. Anyway, thanks to the great people at Arlo and JBL, JBL with all your audio needs, whether it’s headphones, Bluetooth speakers, party speakers, concert speakers, whatever you need, JBL have got you covered. We’ll tell you about them shortly. We’ve got a bit to get through today, but there’s a topic of general news concern and also societal concern, and it’s called digital readiness. And there’s an article at techguide.com today if you want to read where this has all come from. But it’s a fascinating one, Stephen, because it’s trying to understand firstly when kids are ready for digital devices and how maybe unprepared parents are for that or how much they overestimate their kids’ readiness for such things?

[00:08:26] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think the first— I don’t know, everyone’s different, right? Parents and kids. What’s the right age? How many times have you been asked, what’s the right age to give a smartphone to a child? Who knows?

[00:08:35] Trevor Long: What’s your default answer?

[00:08:36] Stephen Fenech: What’s the long answer? Well, my default answer is, you know, kid who’s about to start high school. High school. Yeah. High school age.

[00:08:42] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:08:42] Stephen Fenech: But that’s not the same for everyone, right? This child might be, you know, might be a latchkey kid. You know, you’ve got to go home on your own. You’re not after primary school or whatever. And so there’s different circumstances. That can determine that. But normally too, we’re coming up to Christmas and this is a time when parents gift their, I know I did it for my kids.

[00:09:00] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:09:01] Stephen Fenech: They gift their first smartphone to the child around this time.

[00:09:04] Trevor Long: Right.

[00:09:05] Stephen Fenech: And so this new research from the Digital Readiness Lab says that 2 in 3 parents say their child is ready for their first device. But then when they see the different things in this digital readiness assessment, A lot of them change their tune. Now, the 3 things to look out for, the 3 capabilities: self-regulation. So are you able to manage your attention limits and your emotions around your device? So when it’s time to get off it, can you do that?

[00:09:34] Trevor Long: Wow, I mean, that’s a big call for a parent to be able to work out.

[00:09:37] Stephen Fenech: Well, they may have had practice, you know, they might have had an iPad, you know, they’ve got screen time already, so they kind of know. The other one is critical judgment. So being able to recognize advertising and judge information, knowing what to do when something doesn’t feel right. This is a bit odd.

[00:09:55] Trevor Long: There’s plenty of, plenty of adults who don’t, who don’t, don’t possess that skill.

[00:10:01] Stephen Fenech: And the other one is seeking help. So it’s, would you turn to a trusted adult when you’re upset or confused or feel unsafe?

[00:10:12] Trevor Long: Yeah, right. So they’re saying you want to pass those tests before getting a device.

[00:10:16] Stephen Fenech: If you can assess your child being able to handle those 3 things, then they’re ready for a smartphone. If they’re a bit lacking in 1 or 2 or 3 of them, then might be time to wait or to teach them to say, listen, if ever you’re feeling uncomfortable, you come to us. But I’m sure they would have had that conversation by now if they want an iPad or playing online games.

[00:10:37] Trevor Long: They’ve definitely had the conversation. The kids have been nagging them. We know that, don’t we? Because they went into a lot of detail here. 74% of parents surveyed are planning a device this Christmas, as you say. 66.3% rate their child as mostly or completely ready for a device.

[00:10:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, and I think, as I said before, I think a lot of parents just decide that on age, and yet they might be right. They’re reaching out, they’re 12, 13, and they’re able to handle a bit more responsibility. They might have maybe, you know, played around on mum and dad’s phone, you know. So I think it’s, it’s one of those things where you— it’s kind of like you, you’re sending them out on their own with a device. So it’s like, you know, you can learn how to fly a plane with the instructor. It’s easy when the instructor’s next to Yeah, but when it’s time for your solo flight, that’s the real test.

[00:11:23] Trevor Long: The one that’s more worrying though is 43.8% of parents weighing up a device expect to work out the rules on the day.

[00:11:29] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s tough.

[00:11:30] Trevor Long: Yeah, I’ve got to tell you folks, if you don’t have rules in place at the moment you hand over that device, don’t work it out after they’ve unboxed it.

[00:11:38] Stephen Fenech: You can’t do it on the run. You’re right.

[00:11:40] Trevor Long: I’ve always said, and it’s what we do with our kids, was you get them to sign a contract, digital contract.

[00:11:44] Stephen Fenech: Can you find them online? I’m sure you could.

[00:11:46] Trevor Long: I’m pretty sure I published mine at the FTM somewhere. And you know what, it’s, it’s, here’s the thing, I think we’ve referred to it maybe twice with each child and I’ve never dragged it out. Like, it’s that whole, hang on, like Victoria will sit in her room in the afternoon after school with a device on her phone. Oh, and I’m like, against the rules, that’s against the rules, right? But then the door’s open and I can hear her talking to friends. I’m like, I don’t want that downstairs. So I’m cool with that, right? Okay, but if she was unresponsive, not talking to us and was problematic for a time, that would be the first thing I’d say, okay, listen, until you pull your weight or whatever the thing we’re trying to solve is, I’m sorry, but let’s go back to basics here. And we’d restate that rule. So it allows you to reset and go, ’cause you always broaden the boundaries for kids, don’t you reckon? Like you have a rule and then you let it kind of grow, evolve. And then you pull it back.

[00:12:42] Stephen Fenech: They get more responsibility.

[00:12:43] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s that give them a bit of extra rope, that’s what you’re doing. You’ve got to wind it back in. And if you don’t have the measure of the rope, i.e., digital contract or a set of rules and agreement, how do you ever pull it back in?

[00:12:54] Stephen Fenech: Exactly right. You need to have some sort of framework in place, don’t you? Like, it’s— and again, it’s another challenge for parenting, right? This is, you know, when we were young, our parents never needed to regulate a device for us. And even for my kids, my kids are in their mid-20s to early 30s, and And the phones they had, they were already, by the time there were phones that were suitable for them, they were pretty much, they were kind of already in high school when they got their phone. So I don’t know, I never had any dramas with them and sort of limiting them to what they needed to do. But if you’re a parent who’s got kids and the kids love being on their devices and which kid doesn’t, right? It’s, you’ve really got to, it’s as much as it’s your responsibility to feed and clothe and shelter your child, it’s also your responsibility to make sure they’re digitally safe as well.

[00:13:49] Trevor Long: Yeah, and the thing is, you could argue, many, many do, “Argh, there’s so much on it, so much extra.” But listen, you used to have to make sure they were back for dinner. You used to have to make sure you knew where they were going. And that’s just different today. Some kids do go for a ride with their mates. Some kids don’t. Some kids wanna game with their mates. Some kids wanna text their mates or call their mates. So it’s all different for everyone. The interesting thing here is that, and again in this survey, 95.1% expect parental controls to be on the device. Here’s the one that worried me though. 41% of people, 42%, would like guidance from the shop or phone company about how to use digital readiness when they buy. Like, what are you expecting?

[00:14:26] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, they expect a tutorial on that.

[00:14:28] Trevor Long: But

[00:14:28] Stephen Fenech: wow, look, the parental controls— and again, you’ve got more experience on this than me— but I believe they’re pretty intuitive and they’re obviously meant to be easy to operate.

[00:14:37] Trevor Long: As long as you choose it. And you would see this now, you set up a device, especially Android devices, and halfway through it says, is it for a child or for yourself? If you don’t choose child, then you’re walking away from the potential controls that will exist. It’s really that simple. So you’ve got to make the choice as a parent.

[00:14:54] Stephen Fenech: But the problem too for parents is that, oh, you know, I’m not tech savvy, I don’t know how to do it. I think that it’s one of those things where, you know, you need— unless you don’t know how to do something unless you— until you do it. Absolutely right. You’ve got to do it.

[00:15:09] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:15:09] Stephen Fenech: And so You’re learning with your child basically here. So if you’re, if you’re going to go through these parental controls, then you really need to know that by taking the time to do that and establishing that at the get-go, that’s going to benefit you long term. The other thing I want to say is that the other problem for parents here is that is the especially coming from the child is the pressure for them to get a device. Yes. Oh, you know, my friends have got one. And so that was always something that I used to hear. Well, my kids’ friends had phones when they were 10. I’m thinking, well, that’s their problem. That’s their parents’ decision, not mine. So that’s the other pressure I think the parents have to deal with. And a lot of them, let’s face it, a lot of them cave. They go, okay, here you go then.

[00:15:55] Trevor Long: And they just hand it over.

[00:15:56] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:15:58] Trevor Long: And a lot of them are asking the kids to help them set up the parental controls. Guys, what are we doing? Okay. That’s not gonna work out. But it’s interesting because it’s an interesting time for that data to come out and for that research to come out because there was an announcement and this is very New South Wales-centric, but I think people across Australia will understand this. The New South Wales government announced that they were essentially making it, ruling out the BYO device plan for primary school-aged kids. So public schools, public schools in New South Wales can no longer require kids to have a device brought to school.

[00:16:30] Stephen Fenech: So primary school kids, are we talking laptops or iPads or both?

[00:16:33] Trevor Long: It just says device. Either or. Just says device, right? But it’s fascinating to me because, and again, I’ve got a one-of-one experience here with 3 different kids at the same schools, but our primary school, never asked them to bring a device. There was laptops available. They supplied. No, they had two classrooms worth of laptops, you know, so when the teacher wanted to do some STEM stuff, they’d book the laptops and they’d bring them into the classroom and all that kind of stuff. And so I was kind of like, hang on a minute, this feels like the weirdest announcement because it’s not required. You were never forced to do it. It’s not required across all New South Wales schools. Now, I had a lot of people correct me and say, look, we did have to buy them a laptop. Some say, I wish I didn’t have to. A lot of people said that their schools required ‘Oh, and I said I’d never heard of that.’ And they go, ‘We— I was able to rent it,’ and stuff like that. So I understand it’s probably a percentage like 10% of schools. It’s a very small percentage, but it was a weird announcement for me for them to go so hard on this when it’s not all public schools. It’s like, if you, if you saw that announcement without primary school kids in the last 10 years, you’d be like, ‘Oh, bloody good, yeah, we don’t need devices.’ But I don’t want to break it to you, most kids aren’t asking asked to bring laptops to school. And secondly, my bigger problem is there’s also this push to move NAPLAN back to pen and paper.

[00:17:47] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, which they’re gonna do, aren’t they, in 2028?

[00:17:50] Trevor Long: Great, mate. At what point do kids start to learn to use a computer?

[00:17:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[00:17:55] Trevor Long: at what point? Like, they’re not allowed to do exams on computers. Leaving aside a child with a diagnosis of dyslexia or dysgraphia or any other thing that makes it very hard for them to use pen and paper, something we now know that exists in kids, those kids should be enabled to use laptops. It’s not even impossible for that to happen, right? But leaving that aside, why are we not using computers more in schools? Because it’s what they’re gonna use in the real world.

[00:18:20] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think I understand though that one of the reasons was that they were a distraction. They were more— I know, yes, it’s fun to learn with these digital devices, but they’re also a distraction from the real work. And so I think Mins was saying, we’d rather have your head in a book than in a computer.

[00:18:37] Trevor Long: Well, kids’ heads aren’t gonna go suddenly into books, and if they’re in a textbook, then are they learning well? Are they making notes correctly? Like, for some for some kids, the digital experience is the right experience for them to learn. And by the way, if a kid has a laptop on their desk and they’re distracted, why can’t the teacher just come up and slap them in the head and say, “Oi!” Yeah, they can’t slap them in the head anymore.

[00:18:57] Stephen Fenech: But you do agree though, it can be a distraction for some students. 100%.

[00:19:01] Trevor Long: But that’s where we need discipline.

[00:19:03] Stephen Fenech: And so can not having a screen and just talking to your mate and talking about—

[00:19:07] Trevor Long: Passing notes to the good-looking girl across the table as you used to do.

[00:19:11] Stephen Fenech: Hey, oh, we’re doing all boys school, mate. Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

[00:19:14] Trevor Long: Some of them might be girls now.

[00:19:16] Stephen Fenech: I don’t know. No, we’re doing all boys school, buddy.

[00:19:19] Trevor Long: I’m just saying that, you know, your next school reunion, they might not all be boys.

[00:19:23] Stephen Fenech: Anyway, I think what we’re trying to say here is that distractions exist. Yeah, and distractions have always existed, always. No matter before computers, distractions existed as well. But

[00:19:35] Trevor Long: it might have been a plane flying out the window. But why? And I know it’s more work for book teachers and all that kind of stuff. But that’s, that’s part of resourcing. Yeah. And also, like, go back to Kevin Rudd— weren’t we providing a laptop for every child? Never happened. It never happened. Yeah, like, it’s, it’s insane how much of a circle this debate about kids and laptops is.

[00:19:55] Stephen Fenech: At one point, laptops for everyone was, oh wow, what a, what an initiative, and now they want books again.

[00:20:00] Trevor Long: I, um, I, I don’t care about admitting this very publicly. Harry Harry had an assignment. He was doing engineering and they had to design a house. It was very specific. Had to be like on a hill or something like this. Anyway, so I, and I love architecture and stuff. So I said, let’s muck around with this. He showed me his drawings. It was all cool. Once he said, I’ve submitted it, it’s done. I said, oh, that’s awesome. So you finished, you signed off. Good. I said, now can you send me a picture of all of them? So send me all the drawings. And I sent it into ChatGPT, into Claude, and I said, Claude, turn these drawings into proper architectural designs and do elevations front, rear, and side. It did an unbelievable job. It was so cool. Wow. And then I said, while you’re there, do a 3D walkthrough. So I made a game that he could just, you know, unbelievable, right? And so Harry’s like, oh, can you send me the code and the command? And so I sent it to him anyway. So he’s using Claude and it runs out of his credits. And I said, you gotta wait for the next day or something. And I said, what else are you using Claude for? I didn’t know he had it. And he goes, oh, I get it to make flashcards for quizzes for when I’m studying. Smart. So I went, okay, that’s a good use of AI. And then it comes back and it’s kicked him out because it’s detected he’s a child. So because he said so many times, I’ve got this year 9 exam, or, you know, this is my— it kicked him out. So I said, mate, bring it over here, I’ll face verify it. I don’t care. It’s like social media. I’m letting you in. And last night I said, here’s my credit card. I want you to have the full— I want you to have no— not limit, no limit, but I want you to have much more credits on board because I’ve seen the way he’s using it. And I said to him, I said, but ‘But we have an understanding here, buddy, that you’re not telling it your assignment and getting it to spit it out.’ He goes, ‘No, I ask it for dot points on something.’ Yeah. ‘And then I write the rest, or I ask it for flashcards of an assignment.’ Mate, last night, there’s a thing called Canvas that the kids use, like it’s where the teachers post, you know, what their assignments are and things like that. So it’s like the repository of the classroom’s information. He linked his Canvas to his Claude and said, ‘Hey Claude, in my Canvas, read my science assignment and do me flashcards for study.’ study. So it’s basically gone to the bookwork and it’s creating flashcards for him to do the study with.

[00:22:06] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:22:07] Trevor Long: I’m like, mate, bravo, get into it. Like, that is what you want. And I said, listen, I want you to know I do not ask Claude to write things for me, but almost to the day, I would say at least 50% of everything I write now, whether it’s a long email that’s going to go publicly or it’s an article that I’ve just kind of waffled off the head, or if I’ve used like Whisperflow, like dictated it. And I struggle to read back my own stuff and see the mistakes. Mistakes in dictation. So I say, I dictated this, are there any mistakes that I’ve made? It’ll go, there’s a dictation error here, you might want to check that and this and that. So I don’t say fix it for me and show me, I say list all the changes, because sometimes I don’t agree with its changes. Yeah, like that is how I write online.

[00:22:49] Stephen Fenech: Bad luck. The Microsoft Word spell check too, that often comes up with some suggestions that I reject.

[00:22:57] Trevor Long: Yeah,

[00:22:57] Stephen Fenech: yeah.

[00:22:58] Trevor Long: And oh mate, so So I’m just sitting here going, so Harry’s going into Year 10. Oh, Year 10 already? Geez. Mate, yeah, remember this podcast is older than him. This podcast is going into Year 11, mate. We’re doing the HSC in 2 years, buddy.

[00:23:11] Stephen Fenech: Oh my God.

[00:23:13] Trevor Long: So like, if there’s so much good and potential in it, and again, you’ve got to be a present parent for this to work because if you just said, yeah, use my AI account, your kid’s going to Yeah, it’s gonna totally use it. But it’s, see, for me, Harry’s Claude is like Harry’s WhatsApp. I’m entitled, under our digital contract, I’m entitled to go, give me your phone, buddy. Password’s changed, what’s the password? Type it in. And he’d go, what are you doing? I’m just looking, buddy. I’m just looking what’s doing on your phone. And I’m allowed to look at his phone, I’m allowed to look at his WhatsApp. That’s my rules, right? Same with his laptop. I’m allowed to look at his Claude history and go, what are you asking it? What are you wanting it to do for you? That’s all you need to do actually as a parent is hop up a little bit every now and then and make sure that they’re not abusing. But how many—

[00:23:56] Stephen Fenech: I know there’s a lot of parents who that’d be a tough thing for them to do, mate. You know, let me look at your phone. There’d be parents who’d be a bit reluctant to do, to be that parent.

[00:24:06] Trevor Long: Well, that’s not parenting.

[00:24:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Well, and yeah, the, the, I think maybe in their own mind they’re thinking, well, do I trust my child or not trust my child? Like back in our day, is it a trusting?

[00:24:17] Trevor Long: If someone If someone, I’m trying to think of the example, if someone rang your home every third night and said, is Stephen there?

[00:24:25] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:24:26] Trevor Long: Doris is like, Stephen! And you come to the phone, you’d have a chinwag. After 2 weeks of this same person calling, Doris would go, who’s that? Who is that? Yeah. Wouldn’t she?

[00:24:34] Stephen Fenech: And I’d say, it’s a girl.

[00:24:35] Trevor Long: Yeah. And then she’d let it go. And then after another week, she’d be like, what’s her name? Like, she’d just nip away at it, right? That’s the same. You’re not there every minute looking at every message. It’s like a once a month thing. Basically, you do it so they know that it can be done. Yeah, it’s the same reason we have rules on the roads. There’s speed cameras here and there. Yeah, because we need to be reminded now and then that there are rules.

[00:24:58] Stephen Fenech: But in the parental controls, how much— like, you can control what apps they’re using and time, and at that time you can’t actually see message conversations and various things.

[00:25:08] Trevor Long: No, but, um, so Instagram— we’ll go back to our social media debate, which I’ve heard many, many times. Um, Instagram will tell you new people they have started having DMs with. I won’t show you the messages You’re right.

[00:25:19] Stephen Fenech: But, and you say, who’s this person?

[00:25:20] Trevor Long: Yeah, you can go, hang on, give me your phone. You’ve started messaging someone new. I want to read the messages.

[00:25:24] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, right.

[00:25:24] Trevor Long: Okay. Yeah. But you know,

[00:25:27] Stephen Fenech: but you know what, the, the, you know, the, the, the sorry thing about the sad thing is that not every parent is, is up, up with that.

[00:25:34] Trevor Long: I know, but we’re talking about digital.

[00:25:36] Stephen Fenech: It’s work. That’s work for a parent.

[00:25:38] Trevor Long: I don’t think this survey looked at the parents enough. Yeah. Are parents digitally ready? So that’s the real question is, are parents, are schools, they’re not

[00:25:48] Stephen Fenech: in the—

[00:25:48] Trevor Long: are our education system digitally ready? Yeah. And so my fear is that we get 10 years down the road and we realize we made a mistake. If we’ve got the Prime Minister and everyone standing up making AI assertions and regulations and wanting to be a leader in the world in AI and all this kind of stuff, why aren’t we learning that And so, look, I’m not suggesting Harry’s gonna be a computer scientist. Kid still wants to be a pilot, right? But if he is able to, at this early stage, realize that AI could help him with something he struggles with, which is studying and writing, so writing notes and all that kind of stuff, if it can help him with that, but help him study and learn and remember.

[00:26:29] Stephen Fenech: Could be like another teacher for him.

[00:26:30] Trevor Long: That’s what I said, mate, it’s another tutor. You’ve got a tutor for your English, I think it is. I want you to have a tutor for everything. If we’re not thinking about that,

[00:26:38] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:26:38] Trevor Long: And the thing is, I mean, I’m not suggesting this is the basic principle, but if there’s 100 kids in Harry’s year and only 10 of them are using AI, those 10 are steps ahead of the other 90 in 5 years. Yeah. When someone says, how do you use AI? And they go, I do this, this, and this.

[00:26:55] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:26:56] Trevor Long: The very fact that Harry knew how to connect something to AI meant that he’s now— he can think ahead of that. And, you know, in university it might check his emails. And so I’ve got a— I’ve updated one of my AI things and every day I get a rundown of things that I might have missed or have let slip in my emails. And at the bottom it says, you have no upcoming embargoes in the next 48 hours. Now that’s something I’ve struggled with for years. You agree to, you sign an NDA, you agree to something, and then some companies are on your case going, what are you doing about the embargo, right? Other companies, it’s like, did I put the embargo in my diary? Have I forgotten it? So I’m gonna get reminded about that every day.

[00:27:34] Stephen Fenech: It’s in red above the top of the press release or whatever, right?

[00:27:37] Trevor Long: Yeah, but to be reminded of that, like to be reminded of something that I can do, because I, I’m not going to do something that’s under embargo until the day or two before it’s— the embargo releases. I’m not doing it a week out. Yeah, so my thing is going to remind me that don’t forget you agreed an embargo on XYZ and you can now publish that. That’s really useful to me. Same might apply to Harry at uni with assignments or delivery dates, due dates. Yeah. I just fear that it’s good— my getting back to the Chris Minns, Pru Carr thing— I fear it’s great politics.

[00:28:09] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[00:28:10] Trevor Long: the optics of it are excellent. We’re taking laptops, we’re saving parents money. Pru Carr said $1,500 a year. No parent is buying a laptop every year. That’s stupid.

[00:28:21] Stephen Fenech: You’re spending that much money?

[00:28:23] Trevor Long: No, you can be— if you spent $1,500 on a primary school laptop, you’re an idiot. Okay, $800 plenty for a primary school laptop, right? And you don’t buy them every year. Yeah. And now you don’t have to buy them. So yes, they’re saving a few parents money, but not all parents. And secondly, it’s just, it’s a great thing to say because the voting, the older voting public go, “Oh, good on ’em. That’s excellent, I’m gonna vote.” But what are we neglecting from the future?

[00:28:50] Stephen Fenech: No, it’s true.

[00:28:51] Trevor Long: By going back to pen and paper.

[00:28:53] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s what struck me, thinking we’re going backwards. It seems, that seemed like a backward move to me. A waitress doesn’t even use pen and

[00:28:59] Trevor Long: paper anymore. They’ve got iPads, do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, what jobs use pen and paper?

[00:29:04] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, not many.

[00:29:07] Trevor Long: I suppose some would. Think about a legal assistant whose job is to make notes in a meeting. Not only are you redundant, but get— that lawyer should get themselves a Plaudr or a Pocket AI, and that’s the notes, right?

[00:29:18] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:29:19] Trevor Long: Even Apple has that feature coming. Like, it’s, it’s not rocket science. Who’s making notes anymore? Who’s using one of these?

[00:29:25] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[00:29:26] Trevor Long: puff, must every week. We do. For a scribble.

[00:29:28] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. I know some people, whatever they’re comfortable with.

[00:29:31] Trevor Long: No, but what percentage of jobs are using pen and paper? Not many.

[00:29:34] Stephen Fenech: I have no idea. Yeah, it’d be pretty low.

[00:29:36] Trevor Long: It’d be very low.

[00:29:37] Stephen Fenech: I just think we need you, like you mentioned with AI and how used properly, then great. It’s the same with the smartphones, same with the iPads, laptops, used properly in the right way, then they’re gonna help us. What did Steve Jobs call ’em? The bicycle for the mind. They’re gonna help a lot.

[00:29:56] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:29:57] Stephen Fenech: If they’re gonna be a distraction, then that’s, that’s up to the individual. They’re not a distraction for everyone. Then those individuals need to be spoken to, I guess.

[00:30:06] Trevor Long: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my basic point is I, I respect computers as a learning tool.

[00:30:13] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:30:14] Trevor Long: Because of the power of them. I understand the complexity of the classroom with them in it for both attention reasons and and every other reason.

[00:30:22] Stephen Fenech: But yeah, but isn’t it putting it off? But I think we’re all, yes. It’s just putting it off till later. ‘Cause eventually you’re gonna have to know, you’re gonna have to work on a computer and whatever. Is it just putting that, just making it later on that you have to suddenly adapt to it?

[00:30:37] Trevor Long: Yeah, that’s the problem. Like we should be preparing kids.

[00:30:41] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, definitely. For the world. And I think, yeah, I think, and in the way with the digital readiness and sort of the explanations about how done the right way, you sort of grow up knowing the rules. And you grow up knowing that this is a tool, it’s not gonna do your work for you, it’s gonna help you do your work. What’s wrong with that?

[00:30:59] Trevor Long: That’s my point. I think it’s a problem that may create a headache in the years ahead. By that time, we’ll just be two old retired blokes talking live podcast in our nursing home. They’ll be like, Stephen and Trevor are gonna, well over lunch Stephen and Trevor are gonna sit in the corner Talk about the good old days. Stephen’s going to tell a story about watching Steve Jobs. Trevor’s going to tell a story about, I don’t know what, interviewing Sachin Tendulkar or some rubbish. They’re just going to tell stories from the yesteryear.

[00:31:30] Stephen Fenech: Definitely.

[00:31:31] Trevor Long: Do you think we should publish that in the future?

[00:31:33] Stephen Fenech: I think it’d be good. Yeah. Be a nice little retrospective.

[00:31:36] Trevor Long: By then though, the defamation issues will be strong. So we probably have to vet the people that are in the nursing home. Baby, make sure they’re not leaks.

[00:31:48] Stephen Fenech: Someone’s going to be there to— they might get offended on what we say.

[00:31:51] Trevor Long: You never, never know.

[00:31:51] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:31:52] Trevor Long: All right. Digital Readiness. The data on all that is up at techguide.com.au.

[00:31:58] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[00:32:05] Stephen Fenech: Two Blokes Talking Tech is proudly supported by our great mates at Arlo and They’ve just released their new solar-powered camera. This is, uh, the new device that’s available now, and it has the, the— it’s called the Essential Solar Security Camera, and the solar panel is built in. So position this, it needs a couple of hours of sun a day, and it’ll charge up the battery, and it’ll be kind of a set-and-forget solution because once this is fully charged, I don’t think it needs, needs sunlight for 6 months. So Once you have that in place, and again, it’s like a normal Arlo camera, has the 2K resolution, can give you the same notifications as any other camera. The thing with this one is that you’re going to be charging the battery a lot less, if at all. You probably won’t need to get up a ladder and change the battery and recharge this at all. It does have that integrated solar panel to do that, and it can be integrated into an existing Arlo system, or you want to start from scratch and include this as well. It does also can fit into a Secure Plan. So if you do decide to get the Secure Plan, you 30 days of cloud storage for all your videos on all your cameras and all the smart notifications as well. And the Arlo Essential solar camera can do that.

[00:33:20] Trevor Long: I just checked mine, yeah, 96% battery, and it’s been on the house for a month and a half. There you go, pretty good.

[00:33:26] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, so check it out, it’s only $189 too, it’s pretty great value, affordable. So yeah, that’s part of one of the many great Arlo cameras available. You can check it all out at arlo.com.

[00:33:36] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Steve Stephen Fenech.

[00:33:41] Trevor Long: Well, Apple’s made some fleeting claims this week. I think—

[00:33:47] Stephen Fenech: fleeting claims—

[00:33:48] Trevor Long: fleeting, I don’t know what that word means, but anyway, they’ve made some claims this week around the iPhone Duo, and it’s fascinating because I think it accepts that pretty much everyone’s reviews and every owner since has made the point that it’s kind of lacking a little in the app sense, right? We knew this from day one, and They’ve made some claims here which I want to talk about. They went on the record, you know, this is, which is quite a big deal for Apple if we’re honest. Susan Prescott, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations, said it’s been a wonderful, it’s been wonderful to see how quickly developers have embraced iPhone Duo. We’re grateful for the creativity and innovation. Today there are well over 100,000 apps built for iPhone Duo.

[00:34:28] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, built for, that includes existing apps that have been adapted, doesn’t Yes, but that doesn’t mean it also specifically for—

[00:34:35] Trevor Long: do we just— let’s just remember the 3 types of apps, okay? There’s what they call iOS 26 apps, so they’re apps that don’t look at all good on a Duo. Then there’s iOS 27 apps which stretch broadly to the, to this, to the width of the screen but don’t use the full sidebars and, and kind of top bar on different orientations. And then there’s iOS 27.1 apps which change the menus and move it all around. It’s properly like beautifully configured, right? The 100,000 is the middle category. It’s ones that just stretch properly. So like today, and I put screenshots up, Kayo, still crap. Uber Eats, still crap. LinkedIn, still crap. Like old iOS 26 apps, they need to be updated. Google apps like Google Photos, Google Chrome, they’re not using the sidebar properly. There’s still a huge black bar down the side or the top of the screen.

[00:35:29] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Google’s been pretty late to the party, haven’t they?

[00:35:31] Trevor Long: Yeah, Reddit, same.

[00:35:32] Stephen Fenech: Gmail’s still not adapted.

[00:35:34] Trevor Long: But then there are plenty that are properly iOS 27.1, so Duo made. Even myGov. Like I looked at myGov and it’s an ugly app, but they’ve moved the menu. They’ve done it. Macquarie Bank is the only bank I could find that’s done it. CommBank and ANZ certainly haven’t.

[00:35:49] Stephen Fenech: Microsoft has looked after their Word and Outlook.

[00:35:51] Trevor Long: Arlo. Beautiful app.

[00:35:52] Stephen Fenech: Arlo is great.

[00:35:53] Trevor Long: Oh mate, how good is it? You see so many of the cameras in one go. I downloaded a really cool calendar app called Timepage that’s built for Duo. TikTok looks really good on Duo, especially if you open up the comments of a video you’re going sideways and you scroll, you just see the comments for every video. It’s a good way to fill the screen.

[00:36:12] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, I’m just, I’m just looking. I literally just hit update on my app.

[00:36:15] Trevor Long: I’ll see how many there are. I’ve been doing that pretty religiously. So

[00:36:18] Stephen Fenech: there was today, there was about 14. Wow. Including, uh, the Amazon Kindle app. I don’t know whether that’s just for Duo though. See, a lot of them are just bug fixes.

[00:36:30] Trevor Long: See, I’ve got 5. Disney Plus, Google Chrome. I’ll check it.

[00:36:33] Stephen Fenech: But Disney Plus, yeah, there’s many

[00:36:34] Trevor Long: gamers. Live 360 and Whisperfly. Google Chrome.

[00:36:37] Stephen Fenech: Chrome.

[00:36:38] Trevor Long: Yeah, so I’m going to update that, but I bet you any money it’s still— so they’ve, they’ve been a Google Chrome update, I reckon, 5 times since I’ve had the Duo. Yeah, and none of them have actually made it Duo compatible. See, still a black bar on the screen down the side.

[00:36:53] Stephen Fenech: Right. Yeah, whereas Facebook’s there. That’s— that was updated from day one, real early.

[00:36:57] Trevor Long: Yeah, so was Instagram.

[00:36:58] Stephen Fenech: So it was Insta. Yeah, right.

[00:37:00] Trevor Long: So I respect the fact that Apple’s trying to make it very clear that it’s going okay, but it’s still not perfect. It’s a long way off.

[00:37:09] Stephen Fenech: Long way to go.

[00:37:11] Trevor Long: There was an announcement from realestate.com.au that they had customized their app for Duo specifically, right? And they said in their release over 5,000 people had installed it already. Now that’s an interesting number because this is an Australian-only app really. Well, who’s looking at realestate.com.au anywhere else, right? The number of people with realestate.com.au, what percentage of people with iPhones would have realestate.com.au? Of the AU, you reckon?

[00:37:35] Stephen Fenech: I’d say a high percentage.

[00:37:37] Trevor Long: I don’t think so. There’s no way my son does or my daughter.

[00:37:40] Stephen Fenech: I suppose so. Yeah, right. Maybe if you’re over like 25 or something, you might have it on.

[00:37:44] Trevor Long: Yeah. Unless you’re in the market.

[00:37:46] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, true.

[00:37:46] Trevor Long: I think it’s 30% of people.

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

[00:37:49] Trevor Long: I think 30% of people. That’s pretty high. I think that’s a high number. Okay. So if it’s 30% of people, then so

[00:37:55] Stephen Fenech: 5,000.

[00:37:56] Trevor Long: 5,000.

[00:37:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. So 30%. So times that by 2.5. So you’ll tell talking, there’s only been 12,000 people that—

[00:38:04] Trevor Long: I don’t know what the 2.5% is, if I’m honest. Oh, 30%. Anyway, it doesn’t suggest there’s a million Duos in the market in Australia.

[00:38:13] Stephen Fenech: Definitely not.

[00:38:14] Trevor Long: But it suggests that that early run is what Apple’s trying to catch up to there. I think they’re trying to make it clear that it’s continuing, it’s bubbling away.

[00:38:23] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, but look, I’ve always said since I’ve had the Duo, the advantage Apple has over Android is the fact that it’s their software. And developers— say you’re an Android developer, you’re developing for hundreds of phones, some phone aspect ratios, some different. That’s right. Whereas you’re an iPhone developer, then there are specific ones that you can develop for. And I think it’s, it’s the fact that Apple’s made it easier for them to develop their apps and improve them and update them to suit this new form factor, that just again plays into Apple’s hands the strength that they’ve got with having the software hardware working together.

[00:39:03] Trevor Long: I saw a message, I think it was on Threads actually, and it, and it was someone saying, uh, we’ve had a lot of questions about our Android app based on the iPhone Duo app. Well, here’s an update on that, right? And it might have even been Threads, to be honest. But, and I thought to myself, so after the iPhone comes out, you build a foldable app, Android is suddenly waking up to it, and then you go backwards and let Android users know? Do you know what I mean? Like, this is the problem Samsung made some great devices. Yeah, but I don’t believe the app community came anywhere near building the kind of adjustments to their apps that they have.

[00:39:36] Stephen Fenech: I said this all the time, Samsung don’t own Google, they don’t own Android, they don’t own it.

[00:39:40] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:39:41] Stephen Fenech: And just like Oppo and, and other phone brands don’t— Motorola, they don’t own it either. So the developer, developer community, it’s a you know, they’re serving a lot of masters here. There were all the different form factors and aspect ratios and all that. Whereas Apple is sort of a bit more funneled and finite. Developers have got, I think it’s easier to manage their apps on iOS than it is on Android.

[00:40:08] Trevor Long: I just, I mean, I think for me, the point of this conversation for me was to let people know that if you read that 100,000 apps have been made for Duo, it’s not really made for Duo. They’re just compatible.

[00:40:18] Stephen Fenech: They work on the Duo, yeah.

[00:40:18] Trevor Long: But they don’t all work perfectly. That’s, I think Apple’s got to be careful they don’t get too excited about this number because it’s not 100,000 apps that are truly Duo 27.1 ready.

[00:40:32] Stephen Fenech: There’s still work to do, no doubt. There’d be a lot less about it. Yeah, but some big apps like Uber updated. Uber, nothing, no movement at all.

[00:40:39] Trevor Long: No. Yeah. Whereas Life360 did a great update. Makes it really easy to use the map and stuff like that.

[00:40:44] Stephen Fenech: Zoom have updated. Zoom app’s really good.

[00:40:46] Trevor Long: I’ve used Zoom on it.

[00:40:48] Stephen Fenech: It works. They’ve got it the full stretch.

[00:40:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, just let’s talk about the phone for a minute because we’ve had it now for a little while. I mean, I think I am opening it more than I ever did any other Fold.

[00:40:59] Stephen Fenech: Oh, there you go.

[00:41:00] Trevor Long: Yeah, so if I’m doom scrolling before bed or just to chill in the afternoon, I’m opening and going big screen,

[00:41:06] Stephen Fenech: same deal,

[00:41:07] Trevor Long: big vertical screen. I’m going, um,

[00:41:09] Stephen Fenech: I think, yeah,

[00:41:10] Trevor Long: if I’m reading emails and stuff and I know that I’m going to be in a couple of emails, I’m going to open up. Yeah,

[00:41:16] Stephen Fenech: did you know, so when you look at your emails, do you look at it landscape or long ways portrait?

[00:41:21] Trevor Long: If I’m just trying to go through the inbox, I’m doing it landscape so I can just see the menu down the side.

[00:41:26] Stephen Fenech: Did you know that little feature with the keyboard? What happens when you crack the screen a bit? It kind of separates it.

[00:41:31] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah. But I saw like they demonstrated that. So what we’re talking about here is you can obviously have it closed, you can have it fully open, but you can also have it in like a, like a half-read book, right?

[00:41:39] Stephen Fenech: And then the keyboard goes to either side.

[00:41:41] Trevor Long: Who the hell is ever holding a phone like this?

[00:41:44] Stephen Fenech: I love that. It’s a bit more comfortable to type.

[00:41:46] Trevor Long: Really?

[00:41:47] Stephen Fenech: If you got like— if you speak— because your thumbs are right underneath it.

[00:41:49] Trevor Long: I see.

[00:41:50] Stephen Fenech: Right above it.

[00:41:51] Trevor Long: I see. Very little need for this.

[00:41:53] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Have you noticed too there’s less, uh, reporting of screen hinge problems now? I mean, initially there was an issue.

[00:42:01] Trevor Long: They’re still out there. I’ve still seen new screens. I’ve seen more videos now of it happening. Like someone’s like, oh, let me show you my junk. Oh, and iFixit released a really good video animation of what was going wrong.

[00:42:14] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think I saw that.

[00:42:15] Trevor Long: It was excellent and it really showed the point and the point of breakage, which we already know now.

[00:42:20] Stephen Fenech: Because that’s one thing was it was consistently that same spot.

[00:42:25] Trevor Long: It’s one part.

[00:42:25] Stephen Fenech: Yep. Which was, well, I think we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. That’s good news for Apple. Imagine it was happening all over the place. Yeah. Thinking, geez.

[00:42:33] Trevor Long: It’s one.

[00:42:34] Stephen Fenech: It’s because it’s localized. They know exactly what the problem is.

[00:42:37] Trevor Long: One part, which probably has already been over-engineered to be stronger. Definitely. And now, like, actually, if you’re getting a phone in January, you’re getting a better phone. Like, it’s more durable. And the other thing to say is CNET’s little folding test is still going on. It’s like 400,000 folds now just

[00:42:53] Stephen Fenech: on that. Have you noticed something?

[00:42:55] Trevor Long: What?

[00:42:56] Stephen Fenech: Is your crease more visible?

[00:42:58] Trevor Long: No, I don’t think so. I mean, it just depends how you look at it.

[00:43:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know whether it’s because I know where to look or what, but the crease seems to be slightly more visible.

[00:43:12] Trevor Long: Yeah, I don’t notice it.

[00:43:13] Stephen Fenech: Look at my phone.

[00:43:15] Trevor Long: Yeah, I’m not seeing it as much as— it depends on the light. Depends on the light.

[00:43:20] Stephen Fenech: Well, I find fascinating. There’s been other chatter about that as well.

[00:43:23] Trevor Long: I find hatred for the nano texture a weird thing. So many online is, I wouldn’t— like on my iPad mini video video, uh, there was just this whole argument from the commenters going, yeah, no, I wouldn’t get Nanotexture, I took it back. I’m like, I, with the greatest respect to the wonderful Apple loan program, which means that we can have devices— we’re going to tell you about the MacBooks in a minute— but I love the fact that they just sent me this to review. But yeah, I’m going to send it back and say I’m happy to keep using a similar model, but I need Nanotexture.

[00:43:53] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, this isn’t available with Nanotexture, is it? Is it? Yeah. I thought you could only get it 100% ProLED. Yeah. Really?

[00:44:01] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:44:03] Stephen Fenech: Because, yeah, I’ve— I’m a Nanotexture fan, but I know there’s one bloke on socials, on Instagram, really hammering into Apple a bit.

[00:44:14] Trevor Long: What do you mean?

[00:44:15] Stephen Fenech: You know, just talking, highlighting all the bad things, the things that reviewers have been saying about the Duo and the Nanotexture. He had them side by side and he said, oh, look, why would you want to dull this screen down? Like he said, the richness of the picture is— that takes a slight bit of a hit.

[00:44:31] Trevor Long: $225 for the Nano Texture display on these, on the 14-inch anyway. I hear that, and I think side by side you can see the difference between the color, but the advantage to it in 99% of light conditions,

[00:44:47] Stephen Fenech: yeah,

[00:44:47] Trevor Long: is a no-brainer. That’s pretty good, you know, whether you’re sitting in a hotel room and there’s downlights or whatever. Like right now, I put that down, I can see the studio lights here. Oh man. So, mate, there’s not a time when I don’t wish for the nano texture on it.

[00:45:00] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I thought ProLED never had that. No, it does. It does. It is available.

[00:45:03] Trevor Long: Definitely an option.

[00:45:04] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s what we use it, folks.

[00:45:06] Trevor Long: Let’s talk ProLED then. ProLED XDR, which is just Apple’s way of saying it’s an OLED screen for the first time. They can’t just say OLED, they’ve got to call it something fancy.

[00:45:16] Stephen Fenech: Now, be honest, mate, you’ve had a bit longer than me. I’ve only had it a couple of days. And I’m still getting used to the fact that that’s a touchscreen.

[00:45:23] Trevor Long: I’m not touching it at all.

[00:45:24] Stephen Fenech: Really? At all.

[00:45:26] Trevor Long: I can’t remember the last time I touched it was for my review.

[00:45:29] Stephen Fenech: I’m just touching it now just to close a little tab on Safari and see how the menus are pretty spaced apart. Yeah.

[00:45:38] Trevor Long: Which is cool. But,

[00:45:39] Stephen Fenech: but so if I hover it up there with my mouse, will that look different?

[00:45:42] Trevor Long: No, it should be like a normal, on a normal Mac, it’s smaller. So it’s smaller if you use the mouse pointer. Center and it’s bigger if you use your finger.

[00:45:48] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, there it is. It is bigger. Yeah. Wow.

[00:45:50] Trevor Long: It knows. Right. Which is awesome. It’s cool. But mate, the touchpad, if you’re a ingrained Mac user, right? You know, the 3 fingers up, the 3 fingers swipe into, you know, all these kind of gestures and work as well. I’m on a website. I can scroll it just with 2 fingers, right? I can do all those things. Like, what am I, mate? I don’t need the touchscreen. I’m buying this for the OLED.

[00:46:15] Stephen Fenech: There’s the famous Steve Jobs quote about why would you have a vertical touchscreen? Your arm’s going to fall off.

[00:46:23] Trevor Long: The advantage of this device is the OLED screen and it’s beautiful.

[00:46:27] Stephen Fenech: But the other thing too, like see what I’m doing right now? See how my hand is sort of resting? And over here, you can scroll. It’s easy scroll.

[00:46:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, but okay, I’m scrolling now. My hand’s just resting on the touchpad.

[00:46:39] Stephen Fenech: It just gives you another option.

[00:46:41] Trevor Long: I don’t need another option for—

[00:46:42] Stephen Fenech: to have options, man.

[00:46:44] Trevor Long: I’m not using the touch— I’m not using touch.

[00:46:47] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that isn’t a bad way to scroll or like a long document or something. Rather than you have it to be here, you can just be— have your hand actually on the screen and just go up and down really easily.

[00:46:57] Trevor Long: I’m not doing it. I’ve never done it on Windows laptops. Yeah, and I don’t see me starting now.

[00:47:02] Stephen Fenech: But I think too, that again, it’s kind of, you don’t know it, you don’t know it until someone comes up with a really cool way of using touch. Yeah. You know, the examples I’ve seen is obviously for the, you know, when you’re video editing, picture editing, you can really sort of literally touch your content and get things done pretty quickly, instantly, rather than having to sort of use the trackpad of the mouse to try to achieve it.

[00:47:28] Trevor Long: Yeah, I think the power of the Apple trackpad is such that it’s, it’s unnecessary to do anything else.

[00:47:34] Stephen Fenech: It’s quite large to begin with, but we’ve both got the 16-inch models here. It’s pretty big, but that is still like— yes, I can, I can swipe from one side of the screen to the other without even lifting my finger, so it’s still pretty good. But,

[00:47:49] Trevor Long: and you can two-finger scroll, you can do all the normal things. So what’s the touchscreen giving you? That’s, that’s my challenge, and that has been my challenge for the last two weeks is I’m not needing for it. But offsetting that is, I’m like, okay, so what portion of the additional cost of this device is OLED and what portion is touchscreen? Because I’ll happily pay the OLED price. That’s who’s buying this, people who want the OLED. Absolutely.

[00:48:10] Stephen Fenech: The reference monitor. But they’re not going to give you that option either. It’s going to— it’s OLED, that’s touchscreen or nothing. So it’s— do you think eventually they’ll have an OLED non-touchscreen MacBook?

[00:48:19] Trevor Long: I, I feel like that’s to come now that they’ve— now that they’re calling it, um,

[00:48:25] Stephen Fenech: ProLED.

[00:48:25] Trevor Long: Well, the reference monitor thing is what I think is there. I wonder whether— but how do you call— here’s the thing, here’s how they’ve shot themselves in the foot. MacBook Pro with ProLED XDR, none of that says touch.

[00:48:39] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[00:48:39] Trevor Long: so how do you incorporate ProLED XDR into another device that doesn’t have touch?

[00:48:45] Stephen Fenech: It’ll be OLED XDR, not ProLED.

[00:48:48] Trevor Long: So you think— yeah, right, ProLED.

[00:48:49] Stephen Fenech: Pro would be the touch one, OLED will be the non-touch one.

[00:48:53] Trevor Long: Because I think

[00:48:53] Stephen Fenech: that’s how you differentiate it.

[00:48:55] Trevor Long: Yeah, I mean, unless the price difference is so much that they can’t, they can’t do it. But

[00:48:58] Stephen Fenech: yeah, you’re right, they didn’t use the word touch at all.

[00:49:00] Trevor Long: No.

[00:49:01] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[00:49:01] Trevor Long: not at all. And, uh, you know, you’ve got a 14-inch here, it’s $4,500. Yeah, I mean, if you’ve got Pro-level money, you’re just going to buy this.

[00:49:10] Stephen Fenech: And I, I like the Dynamic Island too. That’s pretty good. You can apparently swipe down and

[00:49:15] Trevor Long: to

[00:49:15] Stephen Fenech: get Siri,

[00:49:16] Trevor Long: you know. I rarely play music on my laptop, so I’m not seeing them now playing stuff.

[00:49:20] Stephen Fenech: Like, I did an AirDrop before and it came up there.

[00:49:23] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:49:23] Stephen Fenech: And I couldn’t get rid of it. I had to actually click Show in Finder to get rid of it.

[00:49:28] Trevor Long: Right.

[00:49:29] Stephen Fenech: You know what I mean? Like, you know, when it’s in the corner, you just hit the cross at the top of the notification. See you later. I couldn’t find that exit on that one.

[00:49:36] Trevor Long: Yeah. Anyway, look, it’s a great— it’s a great device. I’m enjoying it for its power and the beauty of the OLED. I’m not doing it for the touch. Not that I don’t like the touch, I just don’t need it. So be it.

[00:49:47] Stephen Fenech: Well, these are the ones that have the Mac, the M5 Pro and M5 Max, is that right?

[00:49:51] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:49:53] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. What have you got in yours? Oh, M5 Pro. M5 Pro. You got M5 Max for sure.

[00:50:00] Trevor Long: M5 Max, 36 gigabytes of memory.

[00:50:04] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got 48 gigabytes of memory and a 1 terabyte hard drive. How do you like that? I’ve got

[00:50:16] Trevor Long: more,

[00:50:17] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got more unified memory.

[00:50:19] Trevor Long: I’ve got more grunt. Yeah, what’s the— let me just check though. When you go Pro versus Max, the standard, where does it tell you about memory?

[00:50:32] Stephen Fenech: You need to go up here, more info. And then here, memory.

[00:50:37] Trevor Long: No, no, I’m on the shop. I’m trying to work out what the difference is and when you choose that, when you choose memory versus, uh, oh, customizations, because you’ve got to choose it. Sorry, just bear with us, folks.

[00:50:48] Stephen Fenech: Great podcasting, this.

[00:50:50] Trevor Long: So 36, so I’m on the 14-inch.

[00:50:53] Stephen Fenech: And your logo is a lot brighter than mine. My brightness is— oh, it’s— I’ve got an adaptive, it goes up and down.

[00:51:00] Trevor Long: Turn that off.

[00:51:01] Stephen Fenech: It goes goes up and down.

[00:51:01] Trevor Long: I turn that off. Really?

[00:51:04] Stephen Fenech: Yep. But who’s going to see it, mate? No one’s seeing it except other people. It’s what my dad used to say. Oh, I want to get new wheels for my car. He goes, why? You don’t see them.

[00:51:13] Trevor Long: Is

[00:51:14] Stephen Fenech: that a fair call or what? It’s like the Apple logo. You don’t see it unless you look in front of a mirror.

[00:51:20] Trevor Long: I can’t. I need my screen bright. It frustrates me so much. Amanda goes, oh, can you help me with this on the laptop? I’m like, turn the screen up. I can’t see a thing. Oh, why are we turning the screen brightness down? It’s an OLED, man.

[00:51:30] Stephen Fenech: It’s adaptive. Let me go into the settings. Get it happening.

[00:51:33] Trevor Long: All right, well, while you’re doing that, um, I’ll do this.

[00:51:36] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:51:39] Trevor Long: Thanks to the great people at JBL, and they are now creating whole home audio the easy way. This is about filling a single room or your entire home. The JBL Cove gives you the freedom to build the perfect whole home home audio system. So basically controlled via the JBL One app, you set it up and then you can use all your music apps to stream to these speakers. They’re compact home Wi-Fi speakers, the COVID M1, the COVID P1, just a little bit taller, and the COVID X1 is a beastly little unit. And each of those can pair together. You can create stereo pairs, you can create a single room with multiple speakers, you can have a speaker in every room, you can play the same music in one room as every, every other room in the house, or you can play different music in different rooms. It is a great little system that puts JBL right at the forefront of your home with really simple things too. Like, I love the favorites button. So on the top of the COVID is a little heart. You push that and it’ll start your favorite playlist, radio station, or Spotify tap session. So easy. And that, that makes it so easy just to, to get going with your best music and your favorite music. And you can just press and hold to instantly bring music into the room you’re in. It’s such a simple system, and it can even pair with JBL’s soundbar system to create a great entertainment system for your TV as well, all controlled by the one app called JBL One for total sound control. You can check out the full range of JBL Cove speakers right now at jbl.com.au.

[00:53:10] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:53:14] Trevor Long: It’s, uh, it’s 3D printer week. Um, Bambu Labs announced— is it the H3C?

[00:53:19] Stephen Fenech: Yes, dude.

[00:53:20] Trevor Long: Getting it. I have resisted the urge. Like, I’ll be honest, I could afford it right now. Yeah. But I feel like I should be smart. I’m trying to be good, you know? I’m trying to be good. Trying to teach your kids to be good with their money.

[00:53:34] Stephen Fenech: We should have your discipline.

[00:53:36] Trevor Long: But what I did buy, ’cause that’s $3,500. What I did buy is Kmart’s.

[00:53:39] Stephen Fenech: Oh, you bought that?

[00:53:40] Trevor Long: $250 one. It should arrive today actually, if it hasn’t already. No, it hasn’t.

[00:53:43] Stephen Fenech: How much is it? $3,500?

[00:53:45] Trevor Long: $250. $250 for a Kmart 3D printer. Okay, so this is, you know what this is to me? This is just too smart. This is just Kmart smarts, right? They, they’re, their people are on Instagram and TikTok constantly scrolling, right? And they’re in the algorithm of the mums because that’s their primary audience, I would argue. And they’ve seen my wife’s algorithm. My wife sees 3D printing stuff all the time. She sends them to the family group and goes, what about this? What about that? And mate, our printer is going every day. Every day I get home, it’s printing something. Yep. I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and Amanda, because the kids can’t come and Amanda can come, Amanda said to Gemma, who’s getting married, let me make little goodie bags for the kids, you know, something to do on the table. She made, so think of a giraffe about this big, 3D printed, like a cartoon giraffe, about a centimeter thick, but it’s a puzzle.

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

[00:54:31] Trevor Long: So it’s all pulled apart in pieces in a little bag. Yeah. So the kids can use. So we made a puzzle, right? She made these.

[00:54:36] Stephen Fenech: Your wife’s a bigger 3D printer than you,

[00:54:38] Trevor Long: mate. The last time I, I haven’t printed anything since that thing went home, right? Imagine something, I’m going to say 4 centimeters by 4 centimeters square, right? And in it are 9 little boxes that rotate. Oh, tic-tac-toe. It’s either a blank square, an X, or a 0. So you can sit there and without a pen or paper, you can play tic-tac-toe, noughts and crosses. She made those for the kids, just printing stuff. It’s awesome. Like yesterday, I— because I’ve been doing the awards for this year and I’m gonna run out of awards, I won’t have enough for next year. And the other big metal things I’ve got, I’m like, they’re so heavy, I can’t take them anywhere with me. Me. And I— we— one year we took them to CES and handed them out. It’s like 17 kilos of baggage. It’s crazy. So yesterday I got Claude to create a 3D model of my actual award and say, do this as a 3D model. And so now we’re going to print them at home.

[00:55:23] Stephen Fenech: Oh wow.

[00:55:24] Trevor Long: Anyway, leaving that aside, the Kmart people are scrolling through, right? And they’ve gone, this 3D printing thing’s going off. They’ve rung a factory somewhere. They’ve gone, bring in a bloody printer.

[00:55:32] Stephen Fenech: It’s a very simple printer, to be honest too,

[00:55:34] Trevor Long: mate. It’s very simple. And there’s a couple of caveats I want you to know for folks. Yeah, uh, and Daniel noticed this looking through the reader’s manual. It only takes filament spools of 250 grams.

[00:55:44] Stephen Fenech: Oh, so small. A

[00:55:45] Trevor Long: standard one is like a kilo. Yeah, so be real careful. You know, you can’t order

[00:55:50] Stephen Fenech: spools on Amazon, and it’s one color too, with one reel at a time.

[00:55:53] Trevor Long: One color at a time. You’re going to print knickknacks and goodies. You’re not going to print—

[00:55:58] Stephen Fenech: yeah, for $249, like, what do you get?

[00:56:00] Trevor Long: What a great Christmas gift for a I

[00:56:03] Stephen Fenech: think it’s a good first 3D printer for

[00:56:05] Trevor Long: someone, mate, for a primary school or early, um, early high school.

[00:56:09] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Daniel does mention though that, uh, Bambu Labs has, uh, for $50 more, uh, Bambu Labs A1 Mini gets you a lot more options, which,

[00:56:19] Trevor Long: which has the option for multi-filament

[00:56:20] Stephen Fenech: printing.

[00:56:21] Trevor Long: So it just goes to show, if you shop around, you’re actually in a better space.

[00:56:24] Stephen Fenech: But I think 3D printing has really hit its straps now, don’t you think? Yeah, the H3C, mate, that’s—

[00:56:30] Trevor Long: that is 9 filaments in one, and they merge 6 seconds.

[00:56:33] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, they can mix as well.

[00:56:35] Trevor Long: So you have a blue, you don’t need a green, you have a blue and a yellow, it’ll just make green. That’s right. Are you kidding me?

[00:56:40] Stephen Fenech: Well, you know what, I’ve got the Snapmaker U1. Have you got that as well? I’ve already set that up and I’ve printed it, mate. That is quality.

[00:56:46] Trevor Long: Well, I— that really impressive. What the Snapmaker showed was what the H2C, which we’ve got, doesn’t do, which is, you know, hot swapping the entire tool head.

[00:56:54] Stephen Fenech: So there’s 4 different tool heads.

[00:56:56] Trevor Long: Swapping like the needle bit, but it’s not, you know—

[00:56:59] Stephen Fenech: well, the H3C’s got 9 tool heads. Yeah.

[00:57:01] Trevor Long: Which is insane.

[00:57:03] Stephen Fenech: Crazy.

[00:57:04] Trevor Long: It’s so cool.

[00:57:05] Stephen Fenech: I think this Snapmaker can mix colors too.

[00:57:07] Trevor Long: Can

[00:57:07] Stephen Fenech: it? Yeah, I can do that as well. Yeah. You remember that they made it like a parrot, like a parrot. And then, you know, you can only have 4 colors at the same time. Yeah. And it’s— it mixed it. Mixed them in that too.

[00:57:17] Trevor Long: I printed a couple of things and then went, this is good. I like it. But, you know, but it’s— here’s what’s most interesting, though. It’s the ecosystem. It’s the Apple thing, right?

[00:57:25] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:57:25] Trevor Long: So the Snapmaker, not as many prints in the app.

[00:57:28] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:57:28] Trevor Long: Yeah, and I think—

[00:57:29] Stephen Fenech: Have you found the app doesn’t work well on the Duo? I’ll demonstrate.

[00:57:33] Trevor Long: I haven’t used it since the iPhone 17 came out. What are you talking about?

[00:57:37] Stephen Fenech: I’ll demonstrate.

[00:57:38] Trevor Long: So what we’re talking about here is when you’re in the Bambu Labs app, you can pretty much search for anything and someone’s made the design and they’ve uploaded it and so you can print it.

[00:57:44] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely, so I’m getting the Snapmaker app there.

[00:57:46] Trevor Long: Oh, Snapmaker, okay.

[00:57:47] Stephen Fenech: Snapmaker, right? So I open it up.

[00:57:48] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:57:50] Stephen Fenech: It’s gonna make a goose of me now. It used to be blank, it would come up blank all the time.

[00:57:55] Trevor Long: Oh right, so it’s working. But look, the thing is there’s not as much stuff in their app though.

[00:58:00] Stephen Fenech: Bambu Labs has got a much bigger ecosystem.

[00:58:01] Trevor Long: So it requires, it requires you to be a slightly more advanced person to be able to download STL files somewhere and incorporate them manually.

[00:58:07] Stephen Fenech: But I do find there’s a lot of stuff I’ll put on Snapmaker, the file to print it and the pictures taken and you see in the background Bambu Labs. It’s obviously a common file for both printers, right?

[00:58:19] Trevor Long: Yeah, of course. A standard file works on any printer.

[00:58:21] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s got to be STL. STL files.

[00:58:23] Trevor Long: It requires the community to upload them. That’s the problem.

[00:58:26] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I want to learn how to do that off the— off my own bat, like scan something and print it, mate. Can I do that? Is there a website that can do that, dude?

[00:58:34] Trevor Long: Yeah, let me just show you and I’ll explain to people what I’ve done, right? Um, this is yesterday.

[00:58:39] Stephen Fenech: Oh, so you didn’t use Claude?

[00:58:40] Trevor Long: I went downstairs and I took photos of my award, right, from every angle, one of them with a ruler next to it, right? And I said, here’s the logo. I said, make me a 3D thing. And it’s come back with this, this, this document and all these files. And I won’t be able to open on this computer because I don’t have Bamboo Labs. Have you got Bamboo Labs installed on that computer? But when you open them up, what it did was created— so the EFTM Award is a big black award with the, with the logo in it in, in colors protruding. And, and what it did was it said, listen, you’re better off for waste and to save supports, you’re better off printing it in parts and just gluing it together. Oh,

[00:59:14] Stephen Fenech: that’s good.

[00:59:15] Trevor Long: And so it made it so you just snap the pieces in and just them.

[00:59:18] Stephen Fenech: So that’s called having multiple plates. One plate does it all at once. That’s right. Yeah.

[00:59:22] Trevor Long: So, oh, hang on, Bambi Labs is open on this computer. Um, so if I look at this, uh, this part here, look at that. So there’s a part. Can you see that on my screen? Yeah, that’s one of the parts to— okay, to the award. And Claude did it for me. So, mate, and I had Claude do— so I was doing some stuff for Pepe Sayer, the butter guy, and he was trying to make these like, um, for a restaurant to have their logo in butter and they need a silicone mold to pour it in. And so I said, so why don’t we just print the, print what you want the butter to be and then we’ll make silicone molds out of it. So I just got Claude, I said, here’s the logo, da da da da, and it made the 3D print and then we just printed 10 of them, put them in silicone and off it goes. So mate, I know you want to learn how to do it, but

[01:00:03] Stephen Fenech: yeah,

[01:00:04] Trevor Long: if you just want to create something,

[01:00:05] Stephen Fenech: yeah, I suppose

[01:00:05] Trevor Long: so, just create it. Yeah, that’s, that’s what it is. And what I did, I just, I actually said to them, This one, this is— I use Bambu Lab, so it actually created Bambu Lab’s files, right? And then Harry took it and he’s just—

[01:00:16] Stephen Fenech: but what they’ve got in common though is they’re all STL files. It’s like a JPEG.

[01:00:19] Trevor Long: These aren’t, but you could, you could easily set them, make them available for all printers, make them STL files.

[01:00:24] Stephen Fenech: Okay, yeah, sure.

[01:00:25] Trevor Long: Very cool, folks.

[01:00:26] Stephen Fenech: Very nice.

[01:00:27] Trevor Long: Get into 3D printing, it’s fun, and it’s at Kmart for just $250.

[01:00:31] VOICE OVER: Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[01:00:39] Stephen Fenech: Mate, did you ever own a Walkman? Were you, were you too young to have a Walkman?

[01:00:42] Trevor Long: Not a Sony one, but I was, I was a poor child, so I had, you know, like an RCA or ANCO or whatever it was back in the day, you know, like, what do you mean?

[01:00:51] Stephen Fenech: AKAI, I reckon I had.

[01:00:53] Trevor Long: In fact, I think I’ve still got it.

[01:00:55] Stephen Fenech: I had a Sony Walkman, mate.

[01:00:56] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[01:00:57] Stephen Fenech: And the headphones that came with those Walkmans have been re-released by Sony. So the MDR-3R with a USB-C cable instead of a 3.5mm.

[01:01:09] Trevor Long: Perfect.

[01:01:09] Stephen Fenech: And same, same character, same lightness, same open design. Yep. Same blue and orange foam.

[01:01:16] Trevor Long: Yes, except for the Stranger Things edition, which are black.

[01:01:18] Stephen Fenech: Stranger Things, yeah, they’re different. But what a great idea. And this also supports the fact that there is a bit of a movement back towards cables.

[01:01:27] Trevor Long: Oh yeah, remember we talked about it with the Bose, uh, Are they calling them QC20s? Are they calling them something else?

[01:01:33] Stephen Fenech: The noise-canceling ones with cables.

[01:01:35] Trevor Long: Yeah, which are excellent. Yeah, I used them on a flight.

[01:01:37] Stephen Fenech: So you think about that, right? Easy plug and play, literally plug and play. So simple, and no need to charge them. Although, do you charge those ones? Or— no, so that’s just—

[01:01:48] Trevor Long: they don’t need charge because they’re getting power. The noise-canceling— those— so the Sony ones are not noise-canceling, so we’re clear. But my big question I got talking about this on the radio this week was, do they sound better than the the ones back in the day.

[01:01:58] Stephen Fenech: I’d say they would.

[01:01:59] Trevor Long: Let’s be honest, they weren’t very good. They didn’t need to be very good. The other one, they were coming off a cassette.

[01:02:03] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, true. But you know what, that—

[01:02:05] Trevor Long: drivers and speakers have improved so much, I bet, that I would hope these sound good.

[01:02:09] Stephen Fenech: Maybe. But I remember at the time you’re thinking that’s your only reference to good sound, was that.

[01:02:16] Trevor Long: But that’s the problem, is we now have a reference.

[01:02:18] Stephen Fenech: Now we have a reference.

[01:02:19] Trevor Long: And I get it, like Bluetooth, you got to charge them, sometimes they fall out. And it’s just sometimes it’s cool to look like you’re the cable. It’s easier.

[01:02:27] Stephen Fenech: Yeah,

[01:02:27] Trevor Long: why not? And they’re only $90.

[01:02:29] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s great.

[01:02:30] Trevor Long: That’s a steal. Yeah, this is a great Christmas present. In fact, the Kmart 3D printer, great Christmas present.

[01:02:36] Stephen Fenech: Sony headphones, great Christmas present. Wired headphones. Yep. Um, good nostalgia present too.

[01:02:41] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah. And someone said to me on the radio this week, I think it was Tanya and Steve in Newcastle, they said, why is this happening? I said, because old people like me have a nostalgia for something and we have disposable income. Yeah, like if you’re 25, 30 trying to save for a house, you’re not spending $90 on a set of headphones you’re not going to use every day.

[01:02:59] Stephen Fenech: True.

[01:03:00] Trevor Long: But I’m going, I want those because that’s cool.

[01:03:04] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely. Yeah, so I think that’s what it plays into.

[01:03:05] Trevor Long: Nostalgia factor. Yeah, no question.

[01:03:08] Stephen Fenech: And yeah, I hope they should— they fit on my big head back then, they should still fit on my big head now. Just. I don’t think my head’s gotten any bigger. Might have. Don’t think so. Just

[01:03:18] Trevor Long: a bit wider.

[01:03:19] Stephen Fenech: You think so? A little bit. Come on, up here.

[01:03:21] Trevor Long: You know, when Jackson— when Jackson’s 40, you know what they’ll do? They’ll bring out a Nintendo 3DS, cuz that was his thing as a kid. He loved his little Nintendo 3DS. Um, you know, they bring out the Game Boy now, cuz that was what when we were kids. And that’s what’s going to happen. It’s just going to be—

[01:03:36] Stephen Fenech: when we were kids, I was playing for Souths when I had my Game Boy.

[01:03:38] Trevor Long: Well, you’re an old man, so I don’t know what to say to you, man. It is what what it is.

[01:03:42] Stephen Fenech: I used to love my Game Boy.

[01:03:44] Trevor Long: I’ve just got a text message which is a topic for the private feed, so there you go. Stand by for that, folks. The private feed, by the way, I’m trying— the private feed will be, uh, below, just over there in the corner at the end of the, at the end of the show. Oh, it’ll be on the card on the screen.

[01:04:00] Stephen Fenech: Right,

[01:04:01] Trevor Long: right,

[01:04:01] Stephen Fenech: smart.

[01:04:02] Trevor Long: Just point here, right there. It’ll be right here at the end of the show. Here? No, over there. Yep, yep, down there. Over there. So when we’re signing off on the wide shot, we need to point over here, just right here to the— to the— yeah, that’s where the private feed will be to watch. Okay, folks.

[01:04:17] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Danny.

[01:04:18] Trevor Long: Yeah, we’ll get to it.

[01:04:20] Stephen Fenech: I believe you.

[01:04:21] Trevor Long: All right, trust me. All right, Stephen, let’s do it all again next week. I’ll go to the wide shot.

[01:04:25] Stephen Fenech: Out. And Stephen out.

[01:04:26] Trevor Long: Stephen out. And you can watch the private feed right here.

[01:04:30] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Bill Long and Stephen Fenech.