The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 747 – Is retail in trouble? And should Trev have done what he did with AI?

Two Blokes Talking Tech
Episode 747 — “Is retail in trouble? And should Trev have done what he did with AI?”
Published: 27 August 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long (eftm.com) & Stephen Fenech (techguide.com.au)

[00:00:00] Trevor Long: Sit up straight, to attention.

[00:00:02] Stephen Fenech: It’s like what am I in school again?

[00:00:04] Trevor Long: Yep, that’s exactly right.

[00:00:05] Stephen Fenech: Sit up straight, Fenech.

[00:00:06] Trevor Long: Oh, did you get in trouble?

[00:00:09] Stephen Fenech: Not usually. The only time the teachers— like, I remember I was waiting. I still remember this day. I remember I was waiting for the bus and I had my hands in my pockets, and Mr. Leary came up and he said, he goes, Fenech, get your hands out of your pockets, you look like you’re playing with yourself.

[00:00:29] Trevor Long: No.

[00:00:30] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m not doing anything wrong.

[00:00:32] Trevor Long: Yeah. And what age are you at this point? What year?

[00:00:34] Stephen Fenech: I was in probably year 8 or 9, I think.

[00:00:37] Trevor Long: So you were talking back to teachers in year 8?

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

[00:00:40] Trevor Long: Talking back.

[00:00:41] Stephen Fenech: Well, man, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

[00:00:42] Trevor Long: And he is as well. Also, where were you?

[00:00:44] Stephen Fenech: Outside the school grounds waiting for the bus. So I said, I’m not in school. I said, I’m outside of school now.

[00:00:50] Trevor Long: I was driving Eastern friggin suburbs. Remember the other day we had to go to the Eastern suburbs for an event? Hello. That’s where I live.

[00:00:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, no, the proper Eastern suburbs.

[00:00:59] Trevor Long: The snooty people up at Ball Clues, right? So I’m driving around because I was there early. So I drove around the block a couple of times and, or maybe it was on the highway as I was going through and there was these kids walk, schoolgirls, private school, clearly walking across the road. And as they were walking into the school, there was a teacher there who’d stopped them. She’s like, stop. And she’d look them up. I’m like, are you checking them as they walk in?

[00:01:23] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. What a wanker. Yeah.

[00:01:25] Trevor Long: Well, seriously.

[00:01:26] Stephen Fenech: That’s, look, I was in uniform and I swear a tie to school and everything. It was all, you know.

[00:01:33] Trevor Long: Yeah, that’s a Catholic school. Yeah. It’s a level up. Private Catholic school. Private school.

[00:01:36] Stephen Fenech: Well, I was Catholic private school.

[00:01:38] Trevor Long: Yeah, I know, but a proper private school, you know, one of those snooty things is next level when it comes to—

[00:01:44] Stephen Fenech: Well.

[00:01:45] Trevor Long: And also, can we talk about the schools, the boys’ schools that wear those straw hats that are firm? Yeah. Like, what is that doing? Who’s that protecting? Well, the sun protection is bugger all.

[00:01:57] Stephen Fenech: Back in the day it got them bashed, a few of them, I reckon. It’s—

[00:02:00] Trevor Long: Yeah, mate, honestly, it’s tradition. Get them in an Akubra. Do something.

[00:02:06] Stephen Fenech: It’s tradition.

[00:02:06] Trevor Long: What are we wearing?

[00:02:07] Stephen Fenech: I know.

[00:02:08] Trevor Long: It’s embarrassing.

[00:02:09] Stephen Fenech: I know. I worked with a few guys who went to private schools like that and—

[00:02:13] Trevor Long: They wear the hat to work?

[00:02:14] Stephen Fenech: No, they didn’t. But they did hate— They did hate— There was one guy, a bloke I worked with. I won’t name him because his old man was really— He was really senior position in in TV. I think he was one of the TV stations, but I don’t want to name him, but he was a great mate.

[00:02:31] Trevor Long: And cheers, Gid.

[00:02:32] Stephen Fenech: He went to DASH, wasn’t he? Joking. Wasn’t him. But I did see him on the Gold Coast.

[00:02:37] Trevor Long: I did see him.

[00:02:39] Stephen Fenech: And yeah, anyway, he went to and he hated it, but it was the rules. You had to wear it. You had to wear it outside of school.

[00:02:46] Trevor Long: You had to wear it. Maybe it’s a good thing in some way. Maybe it instills something.

[00:02:51] Stephen Fenech: And you said you saw it recently. They’re still doing it.

[00:02:53] Trevor Long: Yeah, I saw them like I don’t know where I was, but these kids walking on— I’m walking here.

[00:02:59] Stephen Fenech: You went to a public school, I see. Did you still have to wear a uniform though?

[00:03:01] Trevor Long: Yeah, but you know, it’s a basic—

[00:03:04] Stephen Fenech: But you know what I’ve got to say, mate? I’ve got to say, I went to like a Catholic school, private, semi-private school where you talk back to teachers and you’re 8. No, I didn’t talk back to teachers. I just defended myself.

[00:03:14] Trevor Long: I think you did.

[00:03:15] Stephen Fenech: The record will show we had pretty strict uniform regs as well. And wearing a uniform every day like that and be like, they’ve been strict about it, I reckon helped me later in life. It really gave me like, I remember when I started work and I used to dress up, you know, and you could tell, you can tell the people at, in your office who didn’t have a real strict uniform policy at school, just the way they dressed.

[00:03:41] Trevor Long: You’re a snob. No, I’m not a snob.

[00:03:42] Stephen Fenech: I’m just thinking, okay.

[00:03:43] Trevor Long: I wear a uniform, look at this, checkers every day.

[00:03:46] Stephen Fenech: Cash man every day.

[00:03:47] Trevor Long: That’s it. I’ll never forget the, you know, early— it was an early Father’s Day and I don’t know whether it was Jackson or one of the others, but they— so they would have been in either preschool or kindy, but, you know, early Father’s Day. And it was like, you know, what do you love about your dad and stuff? And there was a picture you had to draw your dad like it was— there was a line of like the line where you had to color them in. Didn’t color in my shirt, just drew checks. Just drew checks.

[00:04:09] Stephen Fenech: Just got his ruler out and did that.

[00:04:11] Trevor Long: Just drew checks. And it’s like, you know, to this day.

[00:04:14] Stephen Fenech: But I still have Hayley, my daughter, who’s now a mum. I still have a picture she drew of me sitting in my theater wearing a Souths jumper, watching the Souths game, and the bubble out of my mouth saying, “Try time!” She’d watch me watching the footy, and I’ve still got that picture that she drew of me.

[00:04:36] Trevor Long: Yeah. How’s life, Grandpa Steve?

[00:04:38] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s great.

[00:04:38] Trevor Long: Little fella came down last weekend.

[00:04:40] Stephen Fenech: He did. He was down on the weekend. Yeah, boy, I hadn’t seen him for a few weeks in the flesh, but boy, he’s grown.

[00:04:46] Trevor Long: They grow up, mate. He’s a big— You know, And he’s gonna end up being this big.

[00:04:49] Stephen Fenech: I know, yeah, probably bigger than me. His old man’s tall. James is about 6’4″, 6’5″. And Hayley, she’s about Joe’s height. So yeah, but hey, he’s got great genes, mate.

[00:05:01] Trevor Long: I had Ben the work experience kid here the last 2 days. I took him home and in the car I’m like, “I better put the seat back, you’re quite tall.” He goes, “I’m 6’3\”.” Wow. “And you’re in year 10.” Who is this? Ben. Ben from my kids’ school.

[00:05:12] Stephen Fenech: Oh, okay.

[00:05:12] Trevor Long: Came and did work experience the last 2 days, mate. That’s good. Because, you know, and he had to fill out a survey at the end, you know, how many people work here?

[00:05:18] Stephen Fenech: I went, uh, it’s just me, one mate.

[00:05:20] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:05:21] Stephen Fenech: Uh, did he have to watch a couple of episodes of Law and Order during the day, mate, or—

[00:05:25] Trevor Long: It was on for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but no, no, he edited some videos. Oh, that’s— He edited a really cool video because, to be honest, I’m like, what is he going to do? So I thought I was going to have to actually think about content for a bit, which is probably what I need to do, but, you know, grab some headphones to do a review or something. But then in the end, on Monday Flipsy sends me an article for this BMW thing he did in New Zealand, right? Driving the cars on snow and ice. And so he sent me this article. I said, mate, were you meant to do a video for this as well? Like, wasn’t that part of the prearranged obligation? He goes, yeah. He sent it to me and it’s Flipsy for 25 seconds, just Flipsy going, this was cool, I did this thing. And I went, here you go, Ben, this is a video. Yeah, here’s the B-roll. Yeah, which is awesome, right? Make it sick. And I’ve got to be honest, mate. Yeah, sick. Wow. Great video. Absolutely nailed it. Like, for a 16-year-old.

[00:06:13] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:06:13] Trevor Long: Wow. Absolutely nailed it. And so it was perfect because I said, mate, this was on Monday afternoon. I said, this is— this will take you tomorrow. Like, and it did. It took him till like 3 o’clock yesterday. Okay.

[00:06:22] Stephen Fenech: That kept him busy while you were sitting here watching Lord of the Rings.

[00:06:25] Trevor Long: No, no. So what happened? The funniest thing then was we’ve got a movie coming up in some time called Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Yes. Spoiler alert. But it was an hour and a half movie. Yeah. And so at 4 o’clock I hit play. No, 3:30, I hit play. And so, and I took a couple of calls.

[00:06:42] Stephen Fenech: While he was still here?

[00:06:43] Trevor Long: Yeah, while he was here. I said, mate, this is part of my job, just so you know.

[00:06:45] Stephen Fenech: I gotta watch a movie.

[00:06:47] Trevor Long: I kept saying to him, mate, just so you know, this is not a normal workplace.

[00:06:50] Stephen Fenech: This is work.

[00:06:50] Trevor Long: Yeah, this is not a normal workplace because what I’m about to do is watch a movie and that’s my job. Anyway, so it was an hour and a half movie. I thought I can stick, I can fit it in before he goes to— it’s actually Monday afternoon— before I need to take him home at 5 o’clock, you know, because he’s got to work 9 to 5. And he was so he was editing that video and mate, I took a couple of calls during the movie and I couldn’t not because they were important. So I had to pause it a couple of times and then mate, the movie ended at 4:59.

[00:07:13] Stephen Fenech: Boom.

[00:07:14] Trevor Long: And I went, mate, movie’s over. Let’s go.

[00:07:16] Stephen Fenech: So he watched it too or not?

[00:07:17] Trevor Long: No, he was sitting here editing.

[00:07:18] Stephen Fenech: He was still editing.

[00:07:19] Trevor Long: Editing a movie, mate.

[00:07:20] Stephen Fenech: And he’s gone back to school thinking that’s the best job in the world. I want to do, I want a job.

[00:07:25] Trevor Long: Very. I had to keep saying to him, mate, this is not a normal work thing. This is not a normal job. I said to him on the second day when he did a great job of the video. It was a 60-second, mate, no, 1.5-minute video. I said, mate, just so you know, in any other place they would’ve needed that done in half the time, probably less.

[00:07:42] Stephen Fenech: If you’re working at Channel 9 or 7 or something.

[00:07:44] Trevor Long: I didn’t care, but just so you know, you would need to be tighter than that. That’s life.

[00:07:49] Stephen Fenech: So you bagged him?

[00:07:50] Trevor Long: No, I didn’t. I just let him know that over time you gotta get faster. Expectation management.

[00:07:56] Stephen Fenech: And when you drove him home in tears, what was he doing, mate?

[00:07:59] Trevor Long: He was, mate, he was loving it. Couldn’t stop asking questions about YouTube and monetization. Click rates and pay rates.

[00:08:05] Stephen Fenech: You should have had him here during helping us here.

[00:08:07] Trevor Long: He’s not a va— he could only come 2 days. He’s got exams and things. Okay, what would he have helped us with?

[00:08:12] Stephen Fenech: Well, he could have started maybe done some, some things around the office here, mate. What? He could maybe clip up a couple.

[00:08:18] Trevor Long: That’s Harry’s job now.

[00:08:19] Stephen Fenech: Oh, Harry did the clip? Yeah, I saw his comment that he, uh, yeah, he’s got great editing.

[00:08:23] Trevor Long: Great editing. Give yourself a wrap one, aren’t ya?

[00:08:26] Stephen Fenech: It was though, it was great.

[00:08:28] Trevor Long: And you know what, good work, they’re performing okay.

[00:08:30] Stephen Fenech: They are, yeah, I’m sure that.

[00:08:31] Trevor Long: I’m gonna make sure I’m just— yeah, it’ll, it’ll We’re not— once I’m back from holidays, it’s going to be a process.

[00:08:36] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. I think we should do that for the movie show. I’ll start thinking of ideas for the— to promote the movie show. Yeah. With— obviously there won’t be video, but there’ll be—

[00:08:44] Trevor Long: well, you need to start not using the iPad.

[00:08:46] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. To film.

[00:08:48] Trevor Long: Because it’s invisible. Okay. Yeah.

[00:08:51] Stephen Fenech: So you mean just film it just to clip it?

[00:08:52] Trevor Long: We film it every week. Yeah.

[00:08:54] Stephen Fenech: All right.

[00:08:55] Trevor Long: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:08:56] Stephen Fenech: But I’ve just got the iPad in front of me.

[00:08:57] Trevor Long: I just don’t use that version.

[00:08:58] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:08:58] Trevor Long: Yeah. It’s a backup.

[00:09:00] Stephen Fenech: Interesting. So you’re filming me without my knowledge, is that what you’re saying?

[00:09:03] Trevor Long: Mate, the big red light’s on.

[00:09:04] Stephen Fenech: Are you kidding?

[00:09:04] Trevor Long: That’s how you know how long the show is.

[00:09:06] Stephen Fenech: So the cameras are recording as well as the audio?

[00:09:09] Trevor Long: Mate, there’s two. On the move, because I know, look, this bloke honestly, he hits record on one device, I hit record on another.

[00:09:15] Stephen Fenech: Okay, but you’ve just realized. I know that this is, you’re recording this because we put it out on YouTube as well as the English channel.

[00:09:21] Trevor Long: So you’re claiming lack of consent.

[00:09:22] Stephen Fenech: So there’s, you know, I didn’t see a consent form. There was no consent form signing for that.

[00:09:27] Trevor Long: You don’t listen to me ’cause I’ve told you 100 times we could clip this without the audio grabs. This would be great promo. Yeah. But your iPad’s in the way.

[00:09:33] Stephen Fenech: My iPad’s in the way of my face. So my script, my run-through is ruining the shot.

[00:09:38] Trevor Long: Yep. Okay.

[00:09:40] Stephen Fenech: Yep. Noted. All right. We’ve got a bit of time to think about that now, haven’t we?

[00:09:45] Trevor Long: We do.

[00:09:46] Stephen Fenech: Let’s just say we put a few in the kit.

[00:09:48] Trevor Long: We put a few in the kit. I think people know. All right, um, that was a solid lead up, uh, for the YouTubers, uh, 9 minutes and 50-odd seconds.

[00:09:58] Stephen Fenech: Welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:10:00] Trevor Long: Not a bad price.

[00:10:01] Stephen Fenech: With Trevor Long from eftm.com. Really handy device.

[00:10:05] Trevor Long: And Stephen Fenech from techguide.com.au. Great to have your company. Episode 747.

[00:10:11] Stephen Fenech: 747.

[00:10:12] Trevor Long: 747, baby. We’re in the air in a Boeing.

[00:10:15] Stephen Fenech: When we get to 767, It’s another great number.

[00:10:18] Trevor Long: 787 is the one.

[00:10:20] Stephen Fenech: 767.

[00:10:21] Trevor Long: Why?

[00:10:22] Stephen Fenech: That’s my South’s first grade number.

[00:10:23] Trevor Long: That’s your first place.

[00:10:24] Stephen Fenech: That’s my first grade number. South Sydney first grader.

[00:10:27] Trevor Long: I’ll make sure we have some South Sydney paraphernalia on the background or something, you know. Yeah, I’ll forget.

[00:10:32] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got a bit to talk about in the private feed about what South’s—

[00:10:35] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Yeah, that’s great. We’ll get to that. And if you’re watching on YouTube, the link to the private feed is down below.

[00:10:40] Stephen Fenech: You can listen to it right now. You don’t have to wait an extra day.

[00:10:43] Trevor Long: We are gonna get to the show, but because Harry’s now doing the clipping, the system that does that ingests all the YouTube videos. It originally just ingested the, I think, the EV feed. And then I just went, it’s not doing tech. So I just, just do all of them. So Harry logged on last night and he goes, what’s the private feed? I went, just don’t worry about that one, buddy.

[00:10:59] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, cover your ears, mate.

[00:11:00] Trevor Long: I can’t imagine what clips it would come up with out of that. But anyway, it’s one of those things, you know, I don’t expect actually more listeners. I just, I was on the phone to someone when you got here and—

[00:11:12] Stephen Fenech: Yes, you were. And very rudely, you were talking while I was here.

[00:11:15] Trevor Long: Anyway, and he said to me, I know you and Steven have been talking about this, and he was talking about the iPhone from last week. And I thought, there’s no way you’re listening to our podcast. So he’s seen the clip. And so it’s just that whole thing of like, I watch, I see so many podcast clips in my Instagram feed, but how many of them have I watched?

[00:11:31] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, not many. You mean the clip or the actual podcast?

[00:11:36] Trevor Long: The clip. How many have I gone on to actually watch? Very little. But Mark Bouris spoke to Mark Webber this week and I instantly went and watched the whole episode.

[00:11:42] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:11:42] Trevor Long: So it can happen. We appreciate you watching. If you’re watching for the first time, yeah, you’ve got to be— yeah, yeah. Anyway, we do it thanks to the great people at Arlo and Netgear. Arlo, uh, will set you up with the greatest home security devices you can get, as well as some awesome AI built in, which you can get through the Arlo Secure Plan. Stephen will tell you about them shortly. And of course, Netgear, who will hook you up with all your home networking needs. All we ask is that when you’re in the market for home networking or home security, that you look up Arlo and Netgear as a part of that research and consider them for your purchasing decision. Stephen? Yes, speaking of purchasing.

[00:12:16] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:12:17] Trevor Long: I don’t know, there seems to be a bit of a vibe. There was some JB Hi-Fi numbers come out. I don’t follow the stock market and the numbers and all that kind of stuff, but retail sales for July didn’t look great.

[00:12:27] Stephen Fenech: Bit soft, yeah.

[00:12:28] Trevor Long: There’s a bit of speculation that might apply to other retailers as well. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know whether that’s a downturn or whether that’s just savvy shopping or is it a cost of living crisis? ‘Cause I’ve said for some time—

[00:12:41] Stephen Fenech: Bit of both, I reckon.

[00:12:41] Trevor Long: With the greatest of respect to people proporting the cost of living crisis. It’s not something that I’ve witnessed through the changing the way our world has operated. So I still get the same number of phone calls and emails from people wanting advice on buying things. You know what I mean? So it’s not like that’s dropped off. Yeah, so I don’t know. Is there a slump?

[00:13:01] Stephen Fenech: There was a story, there’s been stories published recently and in, well, the most recent one in SmartCompany, they were saying that the results that we are actually prioritizing our spend. We’re not spending less, we’re just becoming a little bit more selective and a little looking for better value on what we spend. So as a result, rather than us going, “Okay, I’m gonna buy that now.” ‘Cause these sales are so huge, like Prime Day we heard and Black Friday is coming up. And these are the times when people are keeping their powder dry, keeping the money in their wallet. Waiting for those periods to spend the same amount of money, but they’re getting more for their dollar.

[00:13:45] Trevor Long: And I think in part, if the retailers are having any form of slump in month on month, year on year, I think they should blame the sales that they engage in. So, mate, think about it. It used to be Boxing Day sales and kind of some pre-Christmas stuff. It used to be stocktake sales. Now you’ve got end of financial year, Prime Day, Black Friday, Boxing Day, Afterpay Day, Click Frenzy. I think there’s another Afterpay Day. I feel like Prime Day happens more than once.

[00:14:17] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, you think though, with all those ones you’ve named, that there’s enough opportunity to spend your money. And yet the start of the new financial year has been a little bit soft where, you know, it’s—

[00:14:27] Trevor Long: No, but see, the start of the new financial year hasn’t had any of those in it. Like there might’ve been a—

[00:14:32] Stephen Fenech: Well, end of financial year, right? Last financial year.

[00:14:34] Trevor Long: That’s exactly, that’s in June, right? So the question is really year on year, how does November stack up? ‘Cause that’s when Black Friday is, right? That’s the real challenge for the stock market is to determine whether or not year on year Black Friday sales are better or worse than the year before.

[00:14:49] Stephen Fenech: Well, the sentiment in the market with the JB report in their July numbers were down.

[00:14:54] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:14:55] Stephen Fenech: And you know, the feeling in the press is that they’re banking on a massive Black Friday pickup.

[00:15:02] Trevor Long: So I think the other part of it is data. And I’m not claiming my data, I’m just saying there’s a lot more of this out there. But if you look at the EFTMTV Buyers Guide, right? And you go, okay, I’m looking at an 85-inch TV and I’m gonna look at here Samsung, just random. Completely random, RGB 85-inch R85H, right? That is a, it’s got an RRP of $5,000. And it’s currently $4,995, right? So it’s at RRP basically. But I can tell you that in the last, since April, it’s been as low as $3,466. Wow. So if people have this data, why would you spend $5,000 when you know at some point it’s been $3,500, therefore you’ve gotta be able to get it for at least $4,000. And let’s be clear, and I think this is something people don’t understand. When these sales happen, it’s not when you see a TV on discount, it’s not JB Hi-Fi going, you know what, we’ll sell it for less and we’ll make less money. It’s JB Hi-Fi going, hey, Samsung, yeah, you need to give it to us for less. So the retailers, if they get a margin, I don’t know what the numbers are. Let’s say they have a 20% margin. It’s more, but let’s say they have a 20% margin on a TV. They’re still going to have a 20% margin in Black Friday. Of course, even though— so it’s the, it’s the vendor, the company that cops the hit. And so So right now you couldn’t walk into JB and go, “It was $3,500 a couple of months ago, give it to me for that now.” They don’t have that ability. They’ve got a bit of leeway room, a bit of room to move. But my point is that if you know so much now about how prices have fluctuated of a particular product, is it possible that people are waiting out for Black Friday to go, “Well, that’s how much this is gonna be, I’m mad to buy it now.” Well, I think that that’s the case.

[00:16:43] Stephen Fenech: And we saw an example of it. We spoke last week about us spending money on smartphones. Remember the FOADS Telstra?

[00:16:50] Trevor Long: Site research.

[00:16:52] Stephen Fenech: And what I took out of that research was that people had already bought new iPhones ahead of the 18 launch in a few weeks, knowing that they know that the 18 is gonna be more expensive. They’ve decided, you know what, I’m buying it now.

[00:17:05] Trevor Long: They got ahead of it.

[00:17:06] Stephen Fenech: So rather than waiting and buying a more expensive, incrementally better phone, they’re gonna buy, spend their money now. Like the set, I think JB and they’re offering like $200 off the price. If you look in the, in the, you know, Harvey’s, JB, they’re all selling out of their 17s and that’s still playing out. So that was a big part of those figures that people decided, well, and it’s an example of what we’re talking about. I wanna get better value for my money. So I’m gonna spend it now, get more for my money than having to spend more for basically the same product.

[00:17:39] Trevor Long: I think we’re saying shoppers are savvy.

[00:17:41] Stephen Fenech: That’s it.

[00:17:41] Trevor Long: More savvy today than ever.

[00:17:43] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely.

[00:17:43] Trevor Long: Better educated than ever. Yeah. And you know, because of the stock market, you know, Tim Cook, if Tim Cook hadn’t have said to people, oh, prices are gonna go up. People wouldn’t have had that initial expectation. And that also paints the picture for September.

[00:17:56] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:17:56] Trevor Long: So—

[00:17:57] Stephen Fenech: Well, I don’t think, I think they could not have, they had to have given that information. I don’t think it would’ve been appropriate for them to just suddenly drop higher prices without some kind of warning.

[00:18:09] Trevor Long: They needed context. And the point was they needed—

[00:18:11] Stephen Fenech: They needed to set expectations.

[00:18:13] Trevor Long: They could have just come out on the day of the prices and said they’ve gone up because of this. But it was actually smart to say, this is gonna happen. So it’s a precursor.

[00:18:21] Stephen Fenech: Preparing the market.

[00:18:22] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Stephen Fenech: And like we’ve already seen, Samsung’s already released their fold range, slightly more expensive, not as much as we thought it would be.

[00:18:29] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:18:29] Stephen Fenech: But yeah, it’s really the ball’s in Apple’s court. But just on Apple, quick side note, Tim Cook’s finishing up at Apple.

[00:18:35] Trevor Long: This will be the last podcast he listens to as CEO.

[00:18:38] Stephen Fenech: That’s right.

[00:18:40] Trevor Long: Mate, Tim, it’s been great to have your company here on Two Blokes Talking Tech as a listener.

[00:18:43] Stephen Fenech: We invited you, but you never took us up.

[00:18:45] Trevor Long: Look, you’re trying to keep a low profile as a listener and we get that, but we appreciate you listening for 700 and 147 episodes. It’s been a blast. And we look forward to you passing the subscription, the Apple Podcast straight over to John Turnus, who will in turn listen along. Tim, now’s the time to join the private feed. That’s some wild stuff, my man.

[00:19:05] Stephen Fenech: Well, he’s just had— well, it’s funny, right? Because we’ve been doing this for over 15 years into our 16th year. Yeah, he became CEO, I think. So we started February 11. He became CEO in, I think, September, August 2011. It was just his 15th anniversary just gone by.

[00:19:23] Trevor Long: Yeah, so, uh, our, our podcast has lasted longer than Tim Cook’s tenure as Apple CEO.

[00:19:30] Stephen Fenech: Wow, there you go. And, uh, and we both met him. Trevor had a really nice, uh, out-of-focus photo that I took of him.

[00:19:36] Trevor Long: Yep, we did, at the iPad Mini launch at the California Theatre in San Jose in 2012.

[00:19:43] Stephen Fenech: Was it 2012?

[00:19:44] Trevor Long: October 2012. Okay, there you go, my second Apple event.

[00:19:47] Stephen Fenech: There you have it.

[00:19:49] Trevor Long: Yeah. And thanks for that photo, Steve.

[00:19:50] Stephen Fenech: Did you AI?

[00:19:51] Trevor Long: No, because thankfully I’ve met him since and Stig’s taken a better photo.

[00:19:56] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I had a couple more selfies with him over the years myself.

[00:19:58] Trevor Long: So yeah, you are a pest like that. Loves a celebrity selfie. Yeah.

[00:20:03] Stephen Fenech: He told people that he had a selfie with me actually is what he said.

[00:20:06] Trevor Long: Yeah, no, that’s what he wrote in these Apple reviews. If you go through the iTunes reviews, folks, you’ll find Tim Cook’s there. Yeah. Don’t go through the reviews. Highlight of my life was having a photo with Steve McKenna and getting Stephen French written up on the screen.

[00:20:19] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, he got me back. He is, I’ll show this bloke. I’ll show this bloke.

[00:20:22] Trevor Long: He was getting you back for the out-of-focus photo.

[00:20:24] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, maybe.

[00:20:24] Trevor Long: But you know, it is, mate. It’s 15 years is a very long time to lead the biggest company in the world. Absolutely. And all eyes are now on September because John Ternus has got a whole new world ahead of him. And we’ll talk later about some new Apple products.

[00:20:39] Stephen Fenech: Talk about hitting the ground running. He’s in the job a week as CEO and they’ve got a massive, probably we discussed probably the biggest iPhone launch in the company’s history. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

[00:20:51] Trevor Long: I think by the time you’re listening to this podcast, the date will be announced.

[00:20:55] Stephen Fenech: Okay, yeah, right.

[00:20:56] Trevor Long: Yeah. Okay. I just went by all the previous years. So we believe— It’s come on the 27th, yeah.

[00:21:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, we believe though that the launch date will be Wednesday the 10th US, Wednesday the 9th US time, is it the 9th?

[00:21:08] Trevor Long: Morning of the 10th.

[00:21:09] Stephen Fenech: Morning of the 10th.

[00:21:09] Trevor Long: Italian time.

[00:21:10] Stephen Fenech: Thursday Australian time.

[00:21:11] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:21:11] Stephen Fenech: Like 3:00 AM.

[00:21:12] Trevor Long: Just everyone, mark ’em and everyone’s, they’re just saying ’cause Apple loves to give people a day off on a public holiday.

[00:21:17] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s Labor Day in America.

[00:21:18] Trevor Long: And not make them travel.

[00:21:19] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, okay.

[00:21:20] Trevor Long: Whatever. Strange reason, but it is what it is.

[00:21:23] Stephen Fenech: Stuffing up your travel plans, is it, mate?

[00:21:25] Trevor Long: It could do, it could do. I have some contingencies.

[00:21:28] Stephen Fenech: If you get invited.

[00:21:29] Trevor Long: Yeah, true. If I don’t get invited, I’m in some real problems. Just cash flow-wise, I’m not really in a position to just suddenly buy a trip from Europe to America and then America back. Mate. Give me a couple of months, I’ll be flying, but just not right now. So yeah, anyway, that’s good times. Anyway, retail sales.

[00:21:48] Stephen Fenech: I think too, like, you know, people are waiting for, these sales events for things to pick up. But I’m pretty sure that around these times where Apple release a new device and they got new— we’re going to talk about new Macs they’ve got as well. At the same time, is that not lift all boats, mate?

[00:22:04] Trevor Long: A rising tide lifts all boats, I get that. But we have to acknowledge, and if you’re a retailer not acknowledging, that technology has almost entirely reached a plateau. Like, TVs are bloody great, And while they’re better this year than ever, it’s still a big leap to buy a new TV just because there’s new technology, right? Technology— people say stuff these days is built to— what do they say— to die. What’s it called?

[00:22:30] Stephen Fenech: Planned obsolescence.

[00:22:30] Trevor Long: Planned obsolescence, right? I don’t believe that for a second, personally.

[00:22:33] Stephen Fenech: I don’t believe it either.

[00:22:34] Trevor Long: I think if you look at Samsung supporting their phones for 7 years plus, if you look at, you know, TVs are lasting 5 to 7 years, I mean—

[00:22:41] Stephen Fenech: and now they let you update update for how many years now? Even TVs have got— is it 5 years?

[00:22:47] Trevor Long: 4 software upgrades, right?

[00:22:48] Stephen Fenech: So you can get—

[00:22:48] Trevor Long: so I don’t believe in the planned obsolescence truly exists. I just think that people have now realized that, you know, it’s pretty good as it is.

[00:22:56] Stephen Fenech: I believe.

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

[00:22:57] Stephen Fenech: You know what I think?

[00:22:58] Trevor Long: Excuse me.

[00:22:59] Stephen Fenech: Retail, I reckon, is waiting for the next big thing. Where’s the next big innovation going to be? Is it foldable smartphones?

[00:23:08] Trevor Long: I don’t think it is.

[00:23:09] Stephen Fenech: But I think, I reckon the, so the headroom for improvement and innovation, I reckon is in the appliance space. Like look at smart, look at robot vacuums now.

[00:23:20] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:23:20] Stephen Fenech: They’re everywhere.

[00:23:22] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:23:22] Stephen Fenech: So popular.

[00:23:23] Trevor Long: But actually robot vacuums have pretty much hit their peak of technology now, right? They are so smart. They’re so good at cleaning. We’ve hit that point where any criticism you had of their cleaning ability is actually pretty much gone, right?

[00:23:35] Stephen Fenech: They clean really well.

[00:23:36] Trevor Long: So now it’s actually the replacement cycle point. Now people that have had a robot vacuum for 4 or 5 years now going, oh wow, can mop better, I’ll upgrade, right? And I’ll put the other one upstairs or I’ll give it to my mum or whatever. But now it’s that, we talked about robot lawnmowers a few weeks ago, it’s that expansion of that technology outside of the home. So yeah, I think—

[00:23:54] Stephen Fenech: I reckon that appear, the smart home is gonna be a big growth area, I reckon.

[00:23:59] Trevor Long: Have you been, I need to be cautious ’cause she’s still listening. And I know we talked about Alexa earlier. Oh yeah. Yep, that’s her. Have you been using Alexa Plus? Have we talked about this already? Yeah, but how? My negativity on it? I’m not sure, mate. So I have two routines. You brought up the smart home, so I’m going with it. When I arrive here in this place, I say, hey, A, I’m here, I’m here. And when I leave, I say, hey, A, I’m leaving.

[00:24:26] Stephen Fenech: And then it turns everything off.

[00:24:28] Trevor Long: All these lights turn off. It’s great. It’s unbelievable, right? It doesn’t work anymore. Alexa Plus. Why? Because of Alexa. Because of A Plus. If I say, “Hey, I’m here,” she goes, “Hey, welcome,” because she’s a friendly AI. If I say, “I’m leaving,” she goes, “Have a great night.” I’m like, that doesn’t help me. So I have to say, “Hey, can you run the routine called I’m here?” Really? Yes.

[00:24:52] Stephen Fenech: You can’t then reprogram?

[00:24:53] Trevor Long: No, no, it’s so annoying. And I’ve had a little argument with her. I’ve gone, “Listen, you’re meant to remember this.” Did she answer back? No. Anyway, so the smart home’s great, but this AI thing, I don’t know that I’m ready for it yet. But anyway, well, it’s a good space in retail though, and I get it. It’s a vibe. But don’t you just think that in every single category, like robot mowers is going to be the newest big category and it will do very well this summer. I’ve got no doubt. Pool cleaners as well. See, pool cleaners has been a big category for like Aiper and a few other beat-botton things for several years now. But now that Ecovacs and Mowbot Mowa and Roborock are all in there, right? It’s mainstream because see, the thing that Aiper and others can’t do easily is get into 1,000 retail stores.

[00:25:41] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:25:42] Trevor Long: The thing that, you know, we know the distributor of Ecovacs. Yeah. The thing that, and Mowa, the thing that they can do really easily, just get it out there.

[00:25:49] Stephen Fenech: Get it right.

[00:25:49] Trevor Long: They can just get it into stores because they’ve got the contacts. So you’re going to see robot lawn mowers and robot pool cleaners as a mainstream thing this summer that will lift. That’s the tide that’ll lift the boats.

[00:26:00] Stephen Fenech: Australia is a big market for that too. Like we do have We do live in house, like self-standing.

[00:26:07] Trevor Long: Freestanding homes.

[00:26:08] Stephen Fenech: Freestanding homes and we’ve got backyards too. So massive market for that.

[00:26:13] Trevor Long: So basically we’re saying retail is suffering, but they’re holding out for Black Friday.

[00:26:18] Stephen Fenech: I think it’s, yeah, it’s kind of plateaued at the moment. But yeah, I’d say post-Apple launch and Black Friday coming up, I think it’ll, we’ll find the money again, mate.

[00:26:32] Trevor Long: I wonder if you might actually, ’cause these numbers, like July numbers only come out at the end of July, right? So they would’ve been spending the next few weeks going, what do we do? I wonder if they’re planning a little bit of a September surge, you know, ’cause Black Friday’s not till end of November, right?

[00:26:46] Stephen Fenech: That’s right, a few months to go.

[00:26:47] Trevor Long: So I wonder if JB’s and others are thinking, let’s do a little bit of a September push.

[00:26:51] Stephen Fenech: Isn’t there always a sale? Always a sale. You walk in a JB’s.

[00:26:54] Trevor Long: According to my data, yes. Like it’s, look at the price history on this random TV. Like it’s just up and down. Up and down. Crazy. It’s just constant up and down.

[00:27:02] Stephen Fenech: Don’t you reckon when you walk into JB Hi-Fi, it seems everything’s on sale? They’re really clever how they do that.

[00:27:09] Trevor Long: That’s just their marketing.

[00:27:10] Stephen Fenech: You see these big numbers, you’re thinking it’s like you’ve walked in in the middle of a sale. And that’s what they— not a trick, but that’s how they want you to feel.

[00:27:19] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:27:19] Stephen Fenech: When you’re walking in, you think, oh wow, there’s a bargain to find in here.

[00:27:23] Trevor Long: It’s like going to Amazon. Amazon, it always looks like it’s cheaper. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:27:28] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, but unless you— is that the issue too? Like bricks and mortar retail is—

[00:27:34] Trevor Long: Mate, they’re competing with our ability to get a product in a few hours.

[00:27:38] Stephen Fenech: 5 hours.

[00:27:39] Trevor Long: Yeah, that’s insane.

[00:27:40] Stephen Fenech: That’s the other issue too. Yeah. In fact, I got, you know, you’re still using the Fold 8 and I bought a case on Amazon and it’s got a little stand on the back.

[00:27:50] Trevor Long: See that?

[00:27:51] Stephen Fenech: Oh, you can stand it up when it’s open. It opens this up, you turn it around however you want to arrange it.

[00:27:58] Trevor Long: Well, I like that. I like that mechanism. The sound— do that on the microphone. Oh, a twist. Oh mama, I don’t know why I like that.

[00:28:08] Stephen Fenech: A bit of AMSR.

[00:28:09] Trevor Long: It’s like, you know, it’s like a volume dial that feels like it has clicks in it. Yeah, as opposed to just being a spinning button.

[00:28:16] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I like that one up to 11.

[00:28:18] Trevor Long: And look, mate, I will— I’ll admit every day of the week, it’s just easier to go, is this on Amazon?

[00:28:23] Stephen Fenech: I don’t think— because I don’t think Amazon’s had a down downgraded any sort of bad things, do they? But they don’t appear to be doing too badly.

[00:28:31] Trevor Long: I think they’re doing okay. Yeah, doing very pretty good.

[00:28:34] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I was listening to a podcast, another podcast, sorry, I was stepping out on you, the Smartless one.

[00:28:40] Trevor Long: Smartless, you’re allowed to listen to, you’re just not allowed to appear on other ones.

[00:28:44] Stephen Fenech: Smartless, they interviewed Sandra Bullock.

[00:28:47] Trevor Long: Oh yeah.

[00:28:48] Stephen Fenech: And mate, they—

[00:28:48] Trevor Long: she was— speed—

[00:28:49] Stephen Fenech: she was talking about the net, she lost her husband.

[00:28:51] Trevor Long: Hang on, how have I done?

[00:28:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, no, it’s pretty good. 2 for 2.

[00:28:54] Trevor Long: Hang on, have I got 3 in me? No.

[00:28:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, The Blind Side. She won an Academy Award.

[00:28:58] Trevor Long: I’ve never heard of it.

[00:28:59] Stephen Fenech: But anyway, they’re talking to her and the whole conversation was about how she lost her husband. Her husband died out of ALS. Oh, okay, sorry. And she was talking about how Amazon, and they should clip it, Amazon should clip it. She was saying Amazon’s the best, whatever I needed, I could get it, but also get it quietly. Like she had to buy things for her home, ramps, stuff that her husband needed. ‘Cause she didn’t want anyone else to know even her close friends, all the stuff she needed to look after her husband.

[00:29:28] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:29:29] Stephen Fenech: But the way she was praising Amazon, they should clip that up.

[00:29:35] Trevor Long: We have a good policy now at home that we only open parcels that are labeled for us. ‘Cause everyone now knows how to use it. So you choose who it’s for, like when your shipping address, ’cause like so many times I’ll be like, oh, what’s this? Rip it open. It’s not for me. It’s not something I ordered, but it was addressed to me.

[00:29:49] Stephen Fenech: Oh, right. So like somebody in your family.

[00:29:51] Trevor Long: Oh, the kids buy, like Victoria buys stuff.

[00:29:53] Stephen Fenech: Kids buy Amazon. Yeah, their cards are on there. Their own card.

[00:29:57] Trevor Long: They choose their card. Yeah. So if you like, we’ve all got the one account. Right. So, ’cause it’s Prime and so you’ve gotta be real careful. We’ve talked about the pink Christmas tree and Amanda left it in the shopping basket.

[00:30:06] Stephen Fenech: So I can let Jo, ’cause Jo says, “I’d love to go.” I said, “Well, you’re a Prime member with me.” So I could put her on and she could choose her own credit card or use my credit card.

[00:30:13] Trevor Long: Yeah, she’ll put it anyway. That’s what Amanda does sometimes. But yeah, you can have, I’ve got like 17 delivery addresses, different names and addresses. So like, I’ve gotta travel along here at the office and at home. Great. Well, I’ve got to travel along for here and I travel along for home. And yeah, like you’ve got a bunch to choose from is what I’m saying. And same with payment method. You’ve just got to remember to do that at the end. When you go to checkout, you’ve got to remember to go, okay, so I want to choose, because I’ve accidentally used Jackson’s credit card once for something.

[00:30:38] Stephen Fenech: Oh, Dad.

[00:30:39] Trevor Long: I had to pay him back, the little bugger. And so yeah, you’ve got to make sure it’s going to the right address and the right card. But yeah, all the time.

[00:30:46] Stephen Fenech: Very pleased to hear about that.

[00:30:46] Trevor Long: Mate, I wake up, there’s emails all the time about Amazon.

[00:30:49] Stephen Fenech: Amazon deliveries, really? Yeah. What are some of the stuff your kids buy? Just see if you’re allowed to say.

[00:30:53] Trevor Long: What are they getting? Vivi bought ribbon. So Vivi has this unbelievable ability. She makes, she gets like, they look like skewers and she makes flowers. They look like flowers. They look like, you know, cake flowers when someone makes a flower out of icing. You’re like, that’s amazing. Vivi makes them out of ribbon. Wow. Like, you know, beautiful.

[00:31:13] Stephen Fenech: What for? Why?

[00:31:13] Trevor Long: She makes little bouquets. So if she’s giving a gift to someone, have all these flowers in it. And then like, you know, she’s made one for someone from netball because it’s the last weekend this weekend. She’s got little sticks with chocolate on them and then sticks with flowers. It’s beautiful.

[00:31:24] Stephen Fenech: How thoughtful.

[00:31:25] Trevor Long: Wanda bought a blue tutu so she can wear to the netball this weekend because it’s the grand— it’s the finals weekend. So, you know, she likes to dress up like a crazy lady and embarrass her daughter.

[00:31:34] Stephen Fenech: I thought it might have been for your role-playing.

[00:31:36] Trevor Long: No, you idiot. You are a complete idiot. And I like— Jackson is randomly buying things. Like, I saw a thing— I’ll out him here. Out him heavy.

[00:31:46] Stephen Fenech: Oh no.

[00:31:47] Trevor Long: Because this is definitely him. Jacko Zon. I feel like this was delivered just yesterday.

[00:31:54] Stephen Fenech: Hang on, Jackson.

[00:31:56] Trevor Long: I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what that is. Catan, Catan, 5 to 6 player board game. Ah, you know what is that?

[00:32:03] Stephen Fenech: You know what? I do know what that is.

[00:32:05] Trevor Long: See, shipped to Jackson.

[00:32:06] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it was a, you know, when sort of whenever these things sort of on social media that someone talked about board games and stuff and they just get trendy. Same with happen with books on BookTok. I bought so many books based on what I’ve seen on TikTok, on BookTok. That, but that’s become a trend, trendy game to play again, the Catan game.

[00:32:26] Trevor Long: Yes, I’ve heard of that. If I like, this is how my inbox works, right? If I search for Amazon ordered, so you get an email every time something’s ordered, like I can only scroll back to August the 5th in my first results.

[00:32:40] Stephen Fenech: Wow, that’s how many there’s been.

[00:32:42] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:32:42] Stephen Fenech: And so because it’s your account, all the emails come to you.

[00:32:46] Trevor Long: All the emails come to me, yeah.

[00:32:47] Stephen Fenech: How annoying.

[00:32:47] Trevor Long: Obviously I could turn that off because everyone’s got the app and so the app notifications are better. Right, but you know, anyway, that’s how it is. I do think that Amazon’s power is definitely going to be affecting retail, but if I— my advice to JB’s and Harvey’s is I’m not buying anything of great consequence on Amazon. So I’m not buying a camera or those. I will price check, I’ll, you know, see its availability.

[00:33:11] Stephen Fenech: That’s true. I only buy sort of just— although I bought this case, this was like, yeah, $35 on Amazon.

[00:33:16] Trevor Long: But that’s my point is I know you can sell cases, but save that space case, you know, create an Amazon store for that.

[00:33:22] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, you’re right. I don’t— I only spend like less than $100 on each order. So not very rarely, unless I’m buying heaps of books or something, it goes over $100.

[00:33:29] Trevor Long: I might buy a crazy amount of something, but it’ll be like— but see, it’ll be like the, the something you need. I looked at a tripod yesterday. JB Hi-Fi is not going to have that tripod.

[00:33:39] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:33:40] Trevor Long: And it might be $500 on Amazon, but at least I know when it’s coming, what it is. So you don’t have to go— it’s a different experience, and they’ve just got to accept You get that. What about demographically? Harvey Norman’s still doing very well.

[00:33:51] Stephen Fenech: Do you think retail is down too because people like the refurbished market’s pretty big? Like people instead of buying new devices, they’re buying refurbished devices. Is that sort of another way?

[00:34:01] Trevor Long: I think that market is what it is and doesn’t change much. I think if you’re in the refurbished world, you’re gonna stay in that world.

[00:34:08] Stephen Fenech: But point is though, so that customer may have bought that phone, their previous phone brand new. This time out, they’re, you know, ‘You know what, I don’t need to spend 2 grand on a phone.

[00:34:17] Trevor Long: I’m gonna get a 15 refurbished instead of going a new phone.’ If that is happening, if they could track that or understand that better, my advice to them is you’ve gotta spend more time promoting the lower end. See, and again, inside baseball, but when you get a catalog from JB Hi-Fi or Harvey Norman.

[00:34:34] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, those companies have paid to be in there.

[00:34:36] Trevor Long: Some bloke didn’t choose, this is this week’s specials. Some bloke said, we’re gonna highlight fitness watches this weekend in an insert in the mailboxes around Australia. If you wanna be part of it, you pay us $500,000, you’ll be the feature image. You pay $300,000— I don’t know the numbers, but yeah, that’s pretty solid. It’s that— what you’re getting in a catalog is actually a magazine. It’s an advertising magazine. JB Hi-Fi makes money out of the front page.

[00:34:58] Stephen Fenech: They didn’t put that product on the front page.

[00:35:01] Trevor Long: They didn’t choose a Garmin because it’s better than the Apple Watch. They chose it because Garmin wanted to sell more watches this month, and they chose to chip in and put some of their funds towards that. Yeah, so that’s fine, because what they’re also doing is negotiating deals. So they’re saying you’ve got to not not only chip in to get your place and your space, but you’ve also gotta come up with a good deal.

[00:35:21] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think a lot of people aren’t aware of that, that those catalogs are, you’re right, they’re magazines. People buy, the companies buy the space, buy the positioning and all of that.

[00:35:30] Trevor Long: Mate, Harvey Norman’s Sunday newspaper spreads, there’s 4 pages of beds.

[00:35:35] Stephen Fenech: Isn’t that what they call co-op dollars? So there’s sort of money in the kitty that they contribute and that’s what pays for the advertising?

[00:35:42] Trevor Long: Advertising? I mean, broadly speaking, yes. But again, the featured products are all paying to be there. It’s not like Gerry’s chipping in for the advertising.

[00:35:50] Stephen Fenech: I don’t know how often you pick up a newspaper.

[00:35:53] Trevor Long: Every Saturday, every Sunday.

[00:35:54] Stephen Fenech: Have you noticed how many front page ads there are now?

[00:35:57] Trevor Long: Always, it’s every week.

[00:35:58] Stephen Fenech: Back when I was working at the news, there was never ever an ad on the front page. Now there’s half page ads and they’re thinking, yeah.

[00:36:06] Trevor Long: Well mate, they’ve gotta take the money.

[00:36:07] Stephen Fenech: Of course they do. Of course they do. But yeah, just with back in my day, mate, that was just sacrilege. The front page and back page was like, that was sacred territory.

[00:36:16] Trevor Long: All right, well, hopefully retail picks up because we need a strong industry. We do. But absolutely, we will speculate as to why for some time to come, no doubt. It is what it is. And people are still buying stuff. We know because they’re still asking us for advice.

[00:36:30] Stephen Fenech: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech. Now, have you Do you have a— are you— I’ve got an Oura Ring.

[00:36:40] Trevor Long: You’re not wearing any smart rings? I’ve got one over there.

[00:36:43] Stephen Fenech: I’m wearing the Oura Ring 5, and I’ve reviewed the 4, the ceramic.

[00:36:48] Trevor Long: Yeah, I’ve worn the Samsung, I’ve worn the Kogan, I’ve worn the Oura.

[00:36:51] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, me too.

[00:36:51] Trevor Long: I’ve worn them all.

[00:36:53] Stephen Fenech: Uh, well, I’m currently using the Oura, and this story caught my eye that Oura is actually facing a lawsuit in the US.

[00:37:01] Trevor Long: Really?

[00:37:01] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:37:02] Trevor Long: For what, the burning people’s fingers? What’s happening?

[00:37:04] Stephen Fenech: No, it’s not that. It’s not a safety issue. It’s a, it’s a class action over the accuracy of the device’s sleep tracking feature.

[00:37:14] Trevor Long: What?

[00:37:15] Stephen Fenech: So accuracy— it’s alleged that Oura, the Oura Rings, lack the physical sensors required to directly measure the, the brain activity and rapid eye movement that, that can define sleep stages, um, as being accurate.

[00:37:32] Trevor Long: So they’re saying that when you wake up in the morning, you look at your sleep stages, you know, a deep sleep, light sleep, REM, whatever it is, they’re saying that’s accurate.

[00:37:39] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, the complaint says—

[00:37:40] Trevor Long: I’m saying, yeah, listen, kiddies. Yeah, Uncle Trev’s going to say a bad word. No shit, Sherlock. Yeah, like, it’s not— it’s not— you’re not doing a sleep study.

[00:37:49] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, but you have to—

[00:37:49] Trevor Long: if you want a sleep study, you got to go lie in a bed and be rigged up with wires for a night.

[00:37:54] Stephen Fenech: But the Ring has been marketed as being in— this is their quote— built for accuracy.

[00:38:00] Trevor Long: Oh, okay.

[00:38:02] Stephen Fenech: So, so they’ve called themselves out. The complaint alleges that they, uh, the Rings actually need AI-generated estimates to sort of fill the rest of the information, right?

[00:38:13] Trevor Long: So basically sleep study data from their own research.

[00:38:16] Stephen Fenech: Yep. And the quote is, that’s a coin flip’s chance of being correct.

[00:38:23] Trevor Long: Oh wow, 50/50 is pretty bad.

[00:38:25] Stephen Fenech: The full complaint, this is out of—

[00:38:26] Trevor Long: I’m on their website, it says built for accuracy, designed for your everyday.

[00:38:30] Stephen Fenech: There you have it. So, well, look, yeah, you know what, and look, these lawsuits continue. It’s a class action. There’s a filed in San Francisco.

[00:38:37] Trevor Long: Can I just stop you right there? Who’s filing a lawsuit against a Ring company because it says I had 3 hours light sleep and I think I had 6? Okay, well, I think firstly, how do you prove it?

[00:38:48] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think sort of we’re sort of moving into the territory where this is potentially classed as a medical device, and the accuracy— the people, customers—

[00:38:57] Trevor Long: that’s BS. If you’re saying sleep apnea versus not, that’s a medical device and that requires certification.

[00:39:03] Stephen Fenech: But people are buying this to help make decisions about their health.

[00:39:09] Trevor Long: Well, my— so, and I haven’t done it yet, but I’m meant to be doing it, but I’ll do it in October. You know, compare— I want to compare a cheap ring and an expensive ring, a cheap band and an expensive band, and a cheap watch and another watch. And I already know what the outcome is. I already know that no two of them are going to have the same data. No two of them have the same step data, run data, distance data, sleep data, right? But what I do know What we know is that if you wear an Oura Ring or any other product every single night, you’ll get a sense of, did I sleep more last night than the night before? Do I feel better? So if you do it as a holistic thing, and this is what I always say to people, it’s not gonna answer your problems. If you truly wanna change things, and they’re like, look at me, fatso, why don’t I change things? I don’t know, but I would need to keep a, what you need to do is keep an activity diary of your own, like a written one, and a food diary, and compare that week on week with the data you get from whatever fitness product it is. And then you make decisions about, ah, so I got up early, I went straight to work, I didn’t do the thing that I did on some other days. That had a positive impact or whatever it is.

[00:40:10] Stephen Fenech: But now, well, the strength of it is that the consistency of wearing it, you’re gonna get comparative similarities, right? That’s right. It’s using the same measurements and sensors to give you a consistent view of what you’re doing. What they’re doing. But that’s good to a point. But this lawsuit sort of saying where they’re sort of spitting out all these, this information that is perhaps not reliable, not, not because they’re saying that the complaint says people are making decisions about their health, about their lifestyles based on what the information being provided. So they’re questioning that accuracy. Now, to their credit, to their credit, Aura has responded and said, look, we stand behind our science, our research and our accuracy claims. Unlike other consumer sleep wearables, Oura Ring estimates sleep stages using multiple physiological signals including heart rate, heart rate variability, movement, breathing patterns, and temperature. There is a well-documented and peer-reviewed independent scientific research that sleep stages are associated with distinct measurable reproducible changes in physiology, which is why these signals are reliably used to classify sleep stages. While Oura Ring is not a medical device or a substitute for a clinical sleep study, Oura sleep staging has been validated been compared favorably in multiple studies.

[00:41:32] Trevor Long: Honestly, this just reeks of the American lawyer. Yeah, and you know, you can’t drive 5 meters in the USA without seeing a lawyer.

[00:41:39] Stephen Fenech: There is no similar or any intention of having a similar class action here in Australia.

[00:41:46] Trevor Long: Yeah, because Australians will go, oh, I slept good, oh, you know. Yeah, okay, so the only way you could question your sleep ring is if you wore a second one. Yeah, or if you started wearing an Apple Watch or a Samsung Watch to bed at the same time. Well, I’m doing that.

[00:41:58] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got the, oh, the Mazfit and I’ve got the—

[00:42:02] Trevor Long: And that’s great, but that’s the only way you’ll know if the data is different.

[00:42:06] Stephen Fenech: They’re not alike. There are differences.

[00:42:08] Trevor Long: Of course they’re not. One’s measuring pulses of blood in your finger, the other one’s right here on a vein. And some of them have bigger sensors than others. Like, come on.

[00:42:17] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:42:17] Trevor Long: Like, what do you think is going to happen with these things, you crazy people?

[00:42:20] Stephen Fenech: Well, anyway, I thought it’d be interesting just to point that out, that there is a lawsuit pending. I don’t know how it’s going to go. I don’t think there’s going to be any damages or anything that people could sue for.

[00:42:29] Trevor Long: I think it’ll be thrown out.

[00:42:29] Stephen Fenech: But you know what?

[00:42:30] Trevor Long: I think just for customers, peace of mind.

[00:42:33] Stephen Fenech: Like, I know, and these aren’t cheap rings, these are expensive rings, and they’re a subscription as well. You’ve got to pay to get your own data. Yes, basically.

[00:42:41] Trevor Long: That’s my— so that’s the hate about the Aura.

[00:42:43] Stephen Fenech: Exactly. That, that’s— I think it’s a fair question to say, well, if I’m paying all this money, is it— my point is, do I have something accurate?

[00:42:50] Trevor Long: For, for under $200, you can get a cheap one. It gives you the same information. It’ll be varied without us, without a subscription. What are you paying so much money for these for. It’s absolutely insane.

[00:43:00] Stephen Fenech: I think so. So they’ve built up a brand, you know, there’s kind of— they want to be the Apple of smart rings sort of thing, you know.

[00:43:04] Trevor Long: They built up this brand. I know why. I just want to challenge people to say you don’t need to.

[00:43:10] Stephen Fenech: Here’s my other theory, is that— is this a play from a rival company to sort of bring them back down to earth a bit? Is it? Who has started this lawsuit, this class action of customers?

[00:43:24] Trevor Long: That’s the conspiracy theory.

[00:43:25] Stephen Fenech: But who would have done that? Who would have thought, I’m not happy with my sleep accuracy and I’m going to do something about it. Who would have thought?

[00:43:32] Trevor Long: Don’t name names. I don’t need the lawyers on us, mate.

[00:43:34] Stephen Fenech: Well, now the lawyers are—

[00:43:36] Trevor Long: no, I don’t need lawyers coming at us because you name another brand. We don’t need to talk about who the lawyers are, mate. No Australian’s going to join the court case. You’re an idiot if you even want to. That’s my thoughts. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:43:51] Stephen Fenech: Two Blokes Talking Tech is proudly supported supported by Arlo. And if you’re in the market for security cameras, well, we obviously recommend Arlo’s range, which is very wide and very affordable as well. Very easy to get on, to get started. But once you do have the cameras in place, I think what makes them better products is the Smart Secure Plans. Now, the plans offer many benefits, the first one being, uh, 30 days of cloud storage. Now let me just explain why that is really beneficial. And a lot of companies claim to no subscription required, it’s all on device, and that, that’s, that’s, that’s the difference. Now if it’s on device, that’s one thing, and you know, if someone steals your camera, if your house burns down, God forbid, all of that footage is gone. If it’s cloud stored and if someone does pinch your camera, or God forbid something happens to your house, you still have that footage up in the cloud. So that’s a, that’s the same reason why you should have a cloud storage for your computers and your phones, because you know that if something happens to your device or to your home you’ve got the backup in the cloud. And not only is that gives you peace of mind, but also too, a lot of the features that smart notifications, packages, people, vehicles, animals, you can really tailor this to give you all the information you need when you need it. So check them out. If you do are in the market, you can add to the ecosystem, but also to just, I think, add the security plan to complete that ecosystem. System. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:45:28] Trevor Long: Um, so we don’t have to spend too long on this, but I find it fascinating, some, some of the conversations around AI. And I want to tell you something I did this week, which some people would think is insane, because there’s a conversation about whether or not you should trust AI with your data and all these kind of things. But I spent 5 of my own minutes, and I could have actually got an agent to do this for me, but I didn’t need to because it was very easy to do. I just went to my American Express card and I downloaded like a year and a half’s worth of statements. Then I went to my bank and I downloaded a year and a half of my business statements. And I said to Claude, and I pay for Claude, so theoretically the data’s mine, but honestly don’t come at me, I don’t care if they know my financial information, doesn’t worry me. I said to Claude, hey, here’s everything about my spending as a business for the last couple of years. I want you to find all my subscriptions. I want you to use your smarts to go and find out what they all are. And I want you to tell me in a list what they all are. And by the way, I wouldn’t mind seeing a graph of my financial performance you know, etc. Mate, it came back with a long list of subscriptions. So the number was mind-blowing. Now it did include in subscriptions like things like domain names and web hosting were in there, but, but mate, I, I use a service called Shutterstock for my stock image, image library, right? And I, I remember signing up to it, you know, let’s call it $40 a month or something, and it’s like I get to use 50 images a month. Cool, excellent. It told me I had 3 of them.

[00:46:50] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:46:50] Trevor Long: It’s somewhere along the way. And I remember when it happened, I needed, I needed more than 51 months. I signed up for 10 extra. I didn’t realize I signed up forever. And at some point I’ve signed up for some extra level of something which was costing like $100, or it was like a 2-year plan or something. So I’ve gone and canceled that. I had to pay a cancellation fee on the longer-term thing, but it was actually over the course of a year, it was worth it. It showed me that I was, I was paying for Amazon Music music. I’m like, I get that as part of Prime. Yeah, yeah, but I must have signed up for it on a different account because I did a, did a Today Show segment and I logged in and I just had one thing which was a Today Show playlist which was hosts had picked a song, right? I cancelled that and I, I just went through and I cancelled maybe 6 things.

[00:47:35] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:47:35] Trevor Long: But it also intelligently went, but you know you’re paying for 2 Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions.

[00:47:39] Stephen Fenech: What?

[00:47:40] Trevor Long: I have to because I need enough devices so that Amanda can log in. You can only log on on 2 devices. Complicated. Anyway, but it knew everything. It worked it out perfectly. And it even found things that were clearly annual or just now and then. And it just did this great list. And mate, I feel, I don’t feel like I’ve changed my financial performance because it’s hundreds of dollars.

[00:48:00] Stephen Fenech: You’ve saved money.

[00:48:01] Trevor Long: I’ve saved money. Because what happens to me is, and this is exactly what it found. I’ll, example, Today Show ring and they go, there’s this trend where babies are singing and it’s the person as a baby. And I remember making Karl and Sarah into a baby and I had to use one AI system to create the baby photo and then how to use another AI system to do the voices. Yeah, I signed up for like 3 things just to do a 30-second video on TV, right? Yeah, I’m still paying for those subscriptions and it found those things and I’m like, if I don’t know what it is, I’m canceling it. Yeah. And if I need it or I am using it, I’ll just re-ignite it, right? It was awesome. I felt really good about how I’d done that and now I’ve put that in as knowledge. So I can now at any point I can go back to that thread and go, okay, so just thinking about this. Yes. You know, what do you think about that? It was fascinating because when I said also I wouldn’t mind knowing a part of my thing. It goes, you know, your revenue is sporadic, but your spending is consistent. ‘Cause you know, some—

[00:48:56] Stephen Fenech: ‘Cause the subscriptions are the same every month.

[00:48:58] Trevor Long: Everything I do. No, I’m just talking about the business generally. Like, you know, monthly spending is pretty much the same. But you know, bills get paid in spikes, not by the month. It just happens with quarterly and billing and stuff like that. It was a really interesting observation. And I am honestly—

[00:49:13] Stephen Fenech: That’s a good use of AI.

[00:49:14] Trevor Long: I don’t care if they can now look at my data. Yeah, it’s just such a great use of AI for me.

[00:49:20] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely.

[00:49:21] Trevor Long: As an independent person.

[00:49:22] Stephen Fenech: Isn’t it expanding? You can, you know, the use of AI now that they’re talking about, Google has, they’re releasing, they’ve launched Gemini Enterprise for legal. So Gemini is, they’re bringing specialized AI agents in directly into law firms. And even, I’ve even heard of them being using them in the medical, in medical terms. As well.

[00:49:48] Trevor Long: I need to find—

[00:49:49] Stephen Fenech: How far do we trust AI?

[00:49:51] Trevor Long: There was a story, I heard it on the radio yesterday, but I don’t know how I’ll find it. But essentially there was a court, let’s call it a court of arbitration or some, you know, like not petty claims, but not family court. But there was a court where they had seen a huge spike in the number of applications and they realized that people were just using AI to submit the documents, do all this kind of stuff, and they’ve had to make a ruling that you must disclose certain things about your case beforehand and the use of AI.

[00:50:22] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:50:22] Trevor Long: Because essentially it’s, it’s clogging up the courts.

[00:50:25] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Wow.

[00:50:26] Trevor Long: But I always said from the, from the get-go of AI, you think about, you know, you watch any legal show and they’ve got books of, you know, they’re looking through case law and stuff. It’s the obvious use. Find me a case where a man slammed on the brakes and, you know, like it’s there.

[00:50:40] Stephen Fenech: That’s already available.

[00:50:41] Trevor Long: But what they want is they want to make sure it’s It’s essentially passable as usable in a legal firm because they can’t just get rid of their paralegal.

[00:50:51] Stephen Fenech: Being able to cite it and then find it, that’s the two challenges.

[00:50:54] Trevor Long: But my wife Amanda has used it in medical. She’s taken a photo of like a blood test result and taken a photo and gone, what does this mean?

[00:51:00] Stephen Fenech: Well, I’ve done it too. I remember, I think it was my mum had her knee scan or something. It was some scan, or maybe when my dad was having his dramas. And I’ve said, can you explain this to me in plain English? And it was able to then explain to me, okay, this is what this means. Yeah. You know, they talk in medical speak. I think it was my mum’s scan of her knee and it said, no, basically she’s all right. I was like, okay, why don’t you just say that?

[00:51:25] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:51:26] Stephen Fenech: But sort of the question now is, is this another, it’s another arms race here, another AI arms race where But when it comes to your health, when it comes to the legal and the system and the law, how much are we willing to trust AI?

[00:51:43] Trevor Long: That’s the big question.

[00:51:44] Stephen Fenech: Is it accurate enough?

[00:51:45] Trevor Long: And that’s why I wanna make it very clear.

[00:51:47] Stephen Fenech: Also too, who’s accountable? If AI decides you to do, tells you to do this and it doesn’t work out, then who’s accountable for that?

[00:51:54] Trevor Long: Do you remember years ago I told you that the primary school my kids went to, and maybe even, no, maybe the primary school, but the high school, but they wouldn’t let the kids use Wikipedia Wikipedia. And I’m like, guys, that’s like your modern-day Funk and Wagnall. That’s your— that’s the encyclopedia. Yeah, that’s right. But I said to my— taught my kids, if you’re going to use it, I want you to follow the references and find the source of that knowledge, right? Amanda, like, we’ve got this big family trip and I’m like, I don’t know, is there a Walmart near where we’re staying? Because we’re going to want to go and get food because it’s hard with the Sea Legs and everything. She goes, look, let me ask ChatGPT. Why don’t you just ask Google? Like, why don’t you check Google Maps? Okay. And she goes, no, I do it all the time. I’m like, okay, but are you checking? And she goes, yeah, I always check. She goes, she— so, and And she said like, it’s just been unbelievable to get a big response and understanding information. And then she just triple checks the obvious stuff.

[00:52:39] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:52:40] Trevor Long: I think the message is, it’s unbelievable, use it, but check it. But for me, and that’s why I’m being very clear, I don’t think that many people in the world of tech and security would say what I did was smart to upload so much personal information essentially into an AI. But I’m paying for that AI. So I believe I should have a case of protection on that.

[00:53:00] Stephen Fenech: Is there an understanding of security and privacy within that when you pay to that account?

[00:53:03] Trevor Long: Isn’t there an understanding? Absolutely. But did I go to the trouble of reading that and understanding what, like, am I training it or anything? Do you know, my point is I didn’t check that because I felt the benefit outweighed whatever it would say. Yeah, whatever it would say. Mate, I use AI to build like agreements. So I don’t have a lawyer. So I go, you’ve agreed to pay this much on this date and for me to do these things. And I had a company come back and go, well, their legal team inserted a bunch of stuff, like 2 extra pages of things. And I’m like, I hate contracts, but I like having them. I like having an agreement, but I hate contracts. And so I said, what is this thing asking me to do? And it says, here’s your key risks. They wanna make sure you’ve got $10 million in public liability. Well, that’s fine, I’ve got $20. So it was made, it just felt like I had someone beside me.

[00:53:50] Stephen Fenech: Fair call.

[00:53:50] Trevor Long: And I think I’m willing to forego the risk for the upside.

[00:53:55] Stephen Fenech: For the benefit, absolutely. Absolutely right. But, but it does bring, like, when you’re looking at, say, you know, legal, legal affairs, medical, like medical opinions, like how often you heard, I’m going to get a second opinion.

[00:54:06] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:54:06] Stephen Fenech: Um, so human judgment, how, like, we’re placing less importance on human judgment.

[00:54:13] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:54:13] Stephen Fenech: They are, AI will think, AI smarter, we’ll let it kind of take the weight.

[00:54:18] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:54:18] Stephen Fenech: And yeah, where, where is that leading us in these really crucial pillars of our society, law and medicine.

[00:54:25] Trevor Long: I’d want to know if I was in a court case, if a lawyer said to me, we’re going to run with this precedent, this precedent, I’d say, did you find those using AI? And did you then find the book and check it?

[00:54:34] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah. Because AI makes mistakes. Oh yeah. You know that, I know that.

[00:54:39] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:54:40] Stephen Fenech: What are they called? Hallucinations.

[00:54:41] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:54:41] Stephen Fenech: They’re not always accurate. Yeah. And yeah, you don’t want to be caught out there.

[00:54:46] Trevor Long: 100%. All right, great advice there from the two blokes. If you’re using AI, Do your best. I mean, that’s basically what we’ve said.

[00:54:53] Stephen Fenech: What are the warnings people say? You take this as, this is not financial information. Do you, circumstances may change.

[00:54:58] Trevor Long: Not a doctor.

[00:55:00] Stephen Fenech: Circumstances may change.

[00:55:02] Trevor Long: That’s the end of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, right?

[00:55:03] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, no, yeah. Not a doctor, yeah.

[00:55:06] Trevor Long: Two Blokes Talking Tech. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech. And we do it all thanks to the great people at Netgear, netgear.com.au. If you’re looking for Wi-Fi in your home, Netgear’s got you covered. And there’s so many options on the market. We get that, we understand that, but we believe that a mesh system is the best system for your home. If you’ve got a single device in your home that’s providing the Wi-Fi to the whole family, it’s not doing the best job. Simple as that. But if you’ve got a range of boxes around the home called mesh routers and satellites, it’s going to be amazing. A dome of Wi-Fi over your whole home is what you want from your Wi-Fi system, and that’s what Netgear can offer with its Orbi range of mesh Wi-Fi systems. Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 6E, all the latest is there for you. And you can find out details, you can shop online at netgear.com.au, get the best deal for you and your family’s Wi-Fi. Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech. Ah, Stephen, Apple just dropped some, some stuff last night. New chips, new chips and new computers.

[00:56:10] Stephen Fenech: We’re not talking salt and vinegar. No, we’re talking Apple.

[00:56:13] Trevor Long: I wouldn’t have minded salt and vinegar chip at 11 o’clock last night.

[00:56:16] Stephen Fenech: But, you know, I love salt and vinegar chips. In Smith’s Crisps, salt and vinegar chips.

[00:56:20] Trevor Long: Unbeatable.

[00:56:20] Stephen Fenech: When I was playing for Souths, Smith’s Crisp were our sponsor, so yeah.

[00:56:23] Trevor Long: Oh, there you go.

[00:56:24] Stephen Fenech: Special place in my heart.

[00:56:25] Trevor Long: A new M6. Yep. And a new M5 Ultra. Now those chips, the M6 will appear first in the new Mac Mini, so upgraded Mac Mini, and the M5 Ultra will be in the new, uh, Mac Studio. Look, more power, more performance, better graphics, all those things.

[00:56:41] Stephen Fenech: But the thing interesting— I know, are you going to say what I’m about to say? That the Mac Mini has been a very popular choice for people running their your own Agentic agent on a computer.

[00:56:51] Trevor Long: I was going to talk about the price.

[00:56:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s become— my brother does it. My brother Michael’s got it. He’s got an AI business and he’s running— he’s got a Mac Mini solely to run his agents. Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:01] Trevor Long: So that’s the easiest thing you could possibly do. But so what I did, I counted in the press release the number of times they mentioned AI. Yeah, like it was near— it was under— it was almost 20 in the Mac Mini. It was up to 30 in the Mac Studio. Yeah. So basically they have said— and when they were telling me about it, they’re like, you know, it’s this AI application, this AI thing, And I’m like, gee whiz, you’re saying AI a lot. And that’s why I searched for it in the press release. I couldn’t believe how much they were talking about AI. And they were talking about, I feel like it was a shift, not because of Apple AI or Apple Intelligence or Siri AI, it was a shift in understanding the end user. We’re all using AI. And what they’re doing is they’re realizing there’s businesses like what we just talked about who are worried about AI. And so their plan is, Apple’s strategy here is, if we make the devices good enough to run AI, then businesses can run local LLMs. Yeah, that can run the models and do the things that you want for your business without compromising your data. Basically everything we just talked about, Apple’s trying to make sure you don’t do. But the problem, the thing here is, um, the Mac Studio is the exact same price as it was yesterday. The Mac Mini is $200 more than it was yesterday. Okay, but the Mac Studio is the same, same as it was yesterday, yesterday, right before it was, before the new one was announced. However, um, they are remarkably different in price to what they were when they were first announced. So Mac Mini, it was, uh, I’m gonna say, I’m gonna find in my article, uh, both are a big leap in performance. The Mac Mini launched at $999 2 years ago. It’s at $1,400, it’s now $1,499.

[00:58:31] Stephen Fenech: M4?

[00:58:32] Trevor Long: Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. When it— when the Mac Mini of this shape, yes, it was $500, $450 less, right? The Mac Studio was $800 less a year and a half ago when that was, that was last refreshed.

[00:58:46] Stephen Fenech: That was the— remember we talked about the price rises, iPads, computers, that went up like about like $500.

[00:58:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, well, no, it went up $800 because— so, so to be clear, the, the, the announcement price for the last time Mac was— Mac Studio was upgraded was $800 less, but actually it’s gone up $800 in the last 6 months or 12 months because of these price changes. So the overnight change, so the model-to-model retail change is only— it’s zero for the Studio and $200 for the Mac Mini. Mac Mini. But if we want to understand the impact of this AI memory shortage issue, it’s $800 at the top end because that’s what the Mac Studio’s gone up.

[00:59:23] Stephen Fenech: And there’s a lot of memory in them too. Like, what the, the, the Mac Studio can have, like, how much, how much, uh, I haven’t—

[00:59:31] Trevor Long: no, I’m doing it now, baby. Yeah, let’s go.

[00:59:34] Stephen Fenech: You can have— was it 128GB of unified memory?

[00:59:36] Trevor Long: I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you the full box and dice what you can get. All right, so we’re going to pre-order a Mac Mini with an M5 Ultra Ultra chip. So that’s the new chip which starts at $9,499. This is the Mac Studio, Mac Studio M5 Ultra. Yes, it’s now—

[00:59:52] Stephen Fenech: we’re going to add, starting at $9,000, yeah, with the Ultra.

[00:59:56] Trevor Long: Yes, yes. Then we’re going to add extra 6 cores of GPU and another 16 cores of, uh, sorry, CPU and 16 cores of GPU. So we’re going to add $2,000 for that. Then we’re going to add 256GB of memory.

[01:00:11] Stephen Fenech: So unified memory, is that your storage?

[01:00:13] Trevor Long: This is memory. No, that’s memory. That’s unified memory, right? That’s on the chip.

[01:00:17] Stephen Fenech: 256 gig.

[01:00:18] Trevor Long: 256. Do you want to know how much that added to the price?

[01:00:21] Stephen Fenech: $4,000.

[01:00:21] Trevor Long: $6,000.

[01:00:22] Stephen Fenech: Holy hell.

[01:00:23] Trevor Long: And then how big a hard drive do you want, Stephen?

[01:00:25] Stephen Fenech: What do you— what do you got?

[01:00:26] Trevor Long: You can get a 16 terabyte.

[01:00:28] Stephen Fenech: Let’s go.

[01:00:29] Trevor Long: All right, baby, we’ve added it.

[01:00:30] Stephen Fenech: Let’s go.

[01:00:31] Trevor Long: Uh, I’m not going to get Final Cut Pro because I can’t afford it. I’m not going to get Logic Pro because I can’t afford it because I’m not going to try traded in. Yeah, the final price—

[01:00:40] Stephen Fenech: are you gonna not add a monitor either? So this is just—

[01:00:42] Trevor Long: this is just a box, no keyboard, no mouse, no monitor. You get a power cable and the box. That’s it. $28,699. Wow, doing very well. You know what, when you think about that, you make a Hollywood movie on that. Imagine—

[01:00:56] Stephen Fenech: yeah, exactly right. Imagine you, you’re, you’re a studio or an effects house, you know, special effects.

[01:01:02] Trevor Long: Amazing.

[01:01:02] Stephen Fenech: Your, your ILM or somewhere, that’s nothing. That they’d be— they’ll be thinking, take my money now, let’s go.

[01:01:07] Trevor Long: Do you want to do the same with a Mac Mini? You go for it. So Mac Mini start today at $1,449. $1,449.

[01:01:14] Stephen Fenech: What do you— what is the base?

[01:01:16] Trevor Long: What are the basics? That’s an M6 chip with a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and memory is 16GB.

[01:01:25] Stephen Fenech: 16GB of RAM.

[01:01:27] Trevor Long: So we’re going to add the M5 Pro chip, right? That’s the existing chip that’s been in the MacBook Pro. Yep, that’s not a new chip. Then we’re going to add extra GPU and CPU 8 cores. Beautiful. Then we’re going to add up to 64GB of memory on the chip.

[01:01:41] Stephen Fenech: Because is that the maximum then, 64? Or is that adding?

[01:01:45] Trevor Long: That’s— no, that’s the maximum.

[01:01:46] Stephen Fenech: 64GB. Okay.

[01:01:47] Trevor Long: And we’re going to add an 8TB hard drive. Wow. Okay.

[01:01:51] Stephen Fenech: What was the max? 16TB on the Studio, wasn’t it?

[01:01:54] Trevor Long: I don’t know.

[01:01:54] Stephen Fenech: Crazy, crazy.

[01:01:55] Trevor Long: And we’re going to upgrade to 10Gb Ethernet because why not? Why not?

[01:01:59] Stephen Fenech: Why not?

[01:01:59] Trevor Long: Uh, we’re not going to get Final Cut. We can’t get Logic Pro. Oh no, we’re not going to get Logic Pro and we’re not going to trade in. So drum roll please.

[01:02:06] Stephen Fenech: Yes, you’re looking at $10,000 $10,350 Mac Mini.

[01:02:10] Trevor Long: The Mac Mini here I bought for $4,000. Really? It was— I specced it up because it’s got to run all these screens, right? So it’s one Mac Mini running all these screens.

[01:02:18] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[01:02:19] Trevor Long: Wow. Um, $10,000 for a Mac Mini. That’s— your brother’s gonna buy that, Michael. Yeah, Mikey is gonna buy it. Yeah, yeah, he’s gonna go crazy. He’s gonna AI the crap out of this.

[01:02:28] Stephen Fenech: Oh yeah, he’s doing that already, mate.

[01:02:30] Trevor Long: So there you go. And look, look, it’s here. What I thought My thought was it’s also a separation date. They’re just going, you know what, we’ve got to get this announcement out. We don’t want to announce this in September.

[01:02:39] Stephen Fenech: We don’t want to tread on the iPhone’s toes.

[01:02:42] Trevor Long: The Silicon team are going, why can’t we have 5 minutes of the thing? They’re like, no, we’re not filming in your bloody labs again. We’ve done that. Just wheel out old mate to tell a few journos what it’s like and how good it is and launch it. You know, it’s done. And so that’s it. That’s what they’ve done. It’s headroom. So it’s, you know, 3 weeks away from another announcement, 2 weeks away from another announcement. And, you know, probably 4 weeks away from those going on sale. These go on sale, by the way, on September 22nd.

[01:03:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, which is—

[01:03:08] Trevor Long: so it is actually close to or the same day as like iPhone.

[01:03:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah.

[01:03:12] Trevor Long: So they’ve literally gone, guys, you can’t be in the keynote. Uh, they’ve just, they’ve just said sorry, we can’t be in the keynote, but they’re going to be released the same date as the new iPhone. That’s what we’re allegedly—

[01:03:21] Stephen Fenech: yeah, that’s, that’s what we assume.

[01:03:23] Trevor Long: That’s— is that our assumption? Is it our—

[01:03:24] Stephen Fenech: uh, was that a Friday, the 22nd?

[01:03:26] Trevor Long: I’m going to look it up right now because you obviously haven’t done that research, so I’ll do it for you. No, it’s not. 22nd Tuesday.

[01:03:33] Stephen Fenech: Oh, so we’re saying then the iPhone, the Fold—

[01:03:35] Trevor Long: we’re saying iPhone will be the previous Friday, will be either the 18th or the 25th, likely the 18th.

[01:03:41] Stephen Fenech: I reckon the 25th.

[01:03:42] Trevor Long: By the way, I don’t think the Fold will come to Australia till February.

[01:03:47] Stephen Fenech: What? Says who? Why do you say that?

[01:03:51] Trevor Long: Speculation in the industry. Ah, I got a message from someone. I was saying, oh, I’ll just, uh, look forward to playing with the Fold if it’s announced.

[01:03:58] Stephen Fenech: Sonny Dixon talking here.

[01:03:59] Trevor Long: Man, was he? Yeah, someone in the industry. And, um, yeah, there’s—

[01:04:04] Stephen Fenech: so it’s February?

[01:04:05] Trevor Long: Well, next year. Yeah, think Vision Pro style. Remember that? Remember, just American launch. Wow. Other markets later.

[01:04:11] Stephen Fenech: So they’ll announce it, but you won’t see it.

[01:04:14] Trevor Long: It’ll be available in America.

[01:04:16] Stephen Fenech: Really?

[01:04:16] Trevor Long: In September, October. And you remember there’s been all those other rumors you’ve brought to the show a couple of times where you’re going, oh, it’s going to be delayed and everything. I think that, that talks to production and and other delays. So they’ve just gone, we’ve got constrained amounts, so we’re going to go America only. Wow, isn’t that wild?

[01:04:31] Stephen Fenech: That’s disappointing.

[01:04:32] Trevor Long: Yeah, that’d be wild, really, for a phone not to launch here given how strong their market is in Australia. Be wild.

[01:04:40] Stephen Fenech: I find that hard to believe.

[01:04:43] Trevor Long: I hope it’s not true. Yeah, because I’m, I’m putting all my eggs in getting to carry a Fold around and take some photos and do some stuff with it on my holiday.

[01:04:50] Stephen Fenech: Or maybe the Samsung Fold be carrying around.

[01:04:52] Trevor Long: I think I will be. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:04:54] Stephen Fenech: Anyway, wow.

[01:04:55] Trevor Long: There you go.

[01:04:55] Stephen Fenech: Is that right? Yeah. Because I knew there was, there were rumors about production delays and delay for everyone, not just for other countries. But yeah, so you’re saying that these are delays, real, the delays are real and the constraints.

[01:05:05] Trevor Long: Yeah. So it gives validity to the rumors, America. But the, so this is really interesting to unpack. You go, someone, someone spread a rumor that there was delays in production. Someone hooked onto that and went, the phone is is delayed, but actually the phone’s not delayed. It’s just that they’re constrained by their ability to deliver enough devices, so they’re going to ship it in phases. Wow, that makes sense.

[01:05:27] Stephen Fenech: So back to being— do you remember back in Australia?

[01:05:30] Trevor Long: We had to wait a few, a few weeks.

[01:05:32] Stephen Fenech: We were always tier 1, but now we’re back, maybe back to tier 2.

[01:05:35] Trevor Long: Yeah, we obtained tier 1 status and now here we are. Potentially we could be after the UK and China.

[01:05:40] Stephen Fenech: Well, we will be tier 1 still for the iPhone 18.

[01:05:43] Trevor Long: Oh yeah, Pro and Pro Max.

[01:05:45] Stephen Fenech: We’ll get them actually before— with the time difference, we’ll get there before everyone else, before America. Yeah, but the Fold, you’re saying we might have to wait till potentially next year?

[01:05:55] Trevor Long: Yep.

[01:05:55] Stephen Fenech: Wow. Yeah, that’s massive.

[01:05:57] Trevor Long: Crazy, isn’t it?

[01:05:58] Stephen Fenech: Because, you know, the, the rumors have been that strong. And mate, the launch is going to be massive. And for, for us Aussies to think, well, hang on a minute, I’ve got to wait for 6 months now.

[01:06:08] Trevor Long: Yeah, really.

[01:06:09] Stephen Fenech: Really? You know what, they’ll be thinking, what other Folds can I buy? Samsung, you got to wait here, ours are ready now.

[01:06:15] Trevor Long: Mate, well, that’s the thing. Imagine if that does happen. If you’re Samsung, you change every billboard in the city to don’t wait, yeah, buy Fold.

[01:06:21] Stephen Fenech: Get a Fold now. We’ve got, we’ve got 2 of them, 3 of them to choose from.

[01:06:24] Trevor Long: Yeah, we’ve even got an Ultra, you know. They could, they could really—

[01:06:26] Stephen Fenech: we’ve already released it—

[01:06:28] Trevor Long: they could go nuts.

[01:06:29] Stephen Fenech: They could have a lot of fun with that.

[01:06:31] Trevor Long: Yeah. Wow, super interesting. Interesting. Anyway, 2 Blacks Talking Tech, thank you Arlo, thank you, Nicky. Thank you to everyone for listening to the Queen of the Skies edition.

[01:06:42] Stephen Fenech: 747. 747.

[01:06:44] Trevor Long: 747. I love 747s. It was always good to fly 747. Those days are long gone. Oh, there’s still a Lufthansa. I did it once last week.

[01:06:51] Stephen Fenech: I haven’t flown a 747 for a long time. Back in the day when the old QF, QF11s, QF1 before the A380s, best seat was upstairs, you know, the course, the little— I think there was like 6 rows upstairs in business class. I think row 11, it was upstairs, that had the— it was exit row and aisle seat, mate.

[01:07:11] Trevor Long: That was the best business and exit.

[01:07:13] Stephen Fenech: What a best seat on the plane.

[01:07:15] Trevor Long: Jesus bloody hell.

[01:07:16] Stephen Fenech: But that was on that 747 configuration, mate. Spent many a trip up there.

[01:07:20] Trevor Long: Yeah, there you go. All right, see you next week, buddy.

[01:07:24] Stephen Fenech: Ciao. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.