EP282 - Andy Mage & The Apple Vision Pro

it's going to be fascinating to hear some youth pastors actually have to get up there and talk

about it. Like, I'm scared of having that talk, and yet I'm also kind of looking forward to it

because I have a lot of things to say about it. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church,

but more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible

digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church

operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all

of this? Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like

yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Episode 282 of the Church Digital Podcast. 282, Andy Bage coming up right around the corner. But

before we get there, we've got a new part of the intro that I'm excited to share with you,

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Okay, let's get into this Andy Mage thing. So we're going to talk about the Apple Vision Pro today. Just kidding. Yeah, maybe a small device. Maybe you've heard of it. $3,500.

Apple sells 200,000 of them within the first week or so, something like that. This is a huge device release. One that I've been waiting for vocally for many, many years.

But let me tell you, I'm self-confessed here. I'm a huge Apple fan. When the first version of the iPhone came out, I showed up at the mall at Wellington Green in West Palm Beach, Florida, at 3 a.m. to pick up that bad boy and stood in line for hours.

I was number seven to get the iPhone at the little Apple store. Actually, a huge Apple store at Mall at Wellington Green for that. That's so many years ago.

But, you know, I see the price tag for $3,500 on this one for the Apple Vision Pro. And I decided to, you know, I got to wait. I'm a pastor.

That's like, you know, way more than I've got to spend on this device. But I am so curious about what it's going to be.

And I'm so hopeful for the augmented reality, for the virtual reality, for the XR, the mixed reality that's going to come out of this device, what it's going to do for the workplace, what it's going to do for community.

Like, there is so much potential. And I would dare suggest there's so much writing on this, on the future when Apple, you know, I trust Apple a lot more than I trust Facebook.

So I really but I haven't been able to touch this thing. And that's where Andy Mage comes into place in a meeting with Andy Mage, by the way, operations director for the church digital producer here of the church digital podcast.

And Andy just drops a nugget. He's like, oh, yeah, I got to play with an Apple Pro Max for Apple Provision Pro for a couple of days or something like that, he said.

And, you know, after my mouth dropped, jaw hit the floor, I said to him, hey, let's jump on a podcast.

Let's have a conversation because I want to know all about this thing, what you're experiencing, what you're feeling.

What do you think we're hitting? So we did. We jumped on a podcast and here we are.

Episode 282 launching right now. We talk Apple Vision Pro. We talk we talk some other stuff.

Stick around. We kind of toy with some other things down the road. But 282 is great.

And so here you go. Episode 282, Apple Vision Pro. I did it again.

Apple Vision Pro. That's right. Apple Vision Pro and Andy Mage here on the church digital podcast.

All right. Andy Mage joining us here on the church digital podcast.

I'd say something awkward like, how are you doing, Andy?

Except, you know, I've talked to you maybe three or four times already today.

So not much of a surprise. But for the listening audience, how are you doing, Andy?

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

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

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

So, you know, Andy Mage is no stranger to the church digital or the podcast operations director for the church digital.

He's currently the producer of the church digital podcast is the editing on the backside.

In addition to that, he is featured on from text to testimony.

He's featured and producing on hybrid disciple.

What else are you doing right now? Is that it? Are you just two shows?

Well, no, actually, we were recording and releasing something brand new with your friend of mine, John Pyle,

calling called Common Religion, where we're actually taking deep dives into movies

and looking at kind of the lingua franca, the common language that people speak.

We're revealing a lot of the spirituality behind things without actually talking about Christianity,

which is very cool.

And also, John is just a wizard. He's like he's essentially one of those tops that you can just kind of pull the string

and I can just interview him about something and then let him go for 45 minutes.

And he's perfectly fine just being himself.

So that's going to be dropping mid, you know, within the next couple of weeks or so.

Don't want to date or timestamp this or anything like that.

On top of that, I'm also the creative pastor for Lux Digital Church.

And so we're doing a whole lot of stuff over there as well.

So I just I feel like most of my days I was having 20.

I was having lunch with my grandmother who's down from Michigan.

And she was like, how's the how's the new gig?

And I said, cool. I sit in front of cameras and talk to them most of the day.

And I love it. I think it's it's fascinating.

My lower back gets sore. I've got it. I'm getting old.

I got to like get up and stretch around. I think I may have a disc.

You know, it's it's you know, you're old when you're talking about like discs that may be out of place.

The best thing that happened to my work and the best thing that happened to my work environment was the standing desk, the electric standing desk.

And so I usually stand all morning. I'll work out in the morning and I'll stand and I'll have coffee.

And then by afternoon, I'll sit for like two or three hours.

So you might you might want to look into one of those.

I'll I'll I'll check that out. But really good.

So let's let's lean into this. By the way, John Pyle's podcast.

I think he did one or two episodes on the poltergeist was freaking incredible.

And so I think he talked about this podcast on his show.

So I can't wait to to explore that.

But we can talk about John Pyle, Russian spam bot a later time.

Instead, I want to lean into this new device that you happen to get your hands on the Apple Vision Pro Vision Pro Max.

What is this thing actually called? I'm going to like date myself here.

So if you are following the marketing guide, as us kind of quasi Apple nerds do, it is the Apple Vision Pro running Vision OS.

And it is out as of right now. It's been out for less than a week as we're speaking.

So this device out less than a week costs about thirty five hundred dollars, which is maybe thirty thousand dollars more than I was willing to throw down on the device.

So I'm praying for the thousand dollar, five hundred dollar option to come sooner than later.

And, you know, what's interesting is that, you know, I've seen Instagram.

I've seen like friends that have it at the Apple store wearing it.

I guess Apple's got displays of it now in different spots or doing roadshows or whatever with it.

You know, I've seen the guys that are wearing the devices walking around New York City and, you know, whatever, being stupid, driving, trying to make that work.

But I don't know anybody that's actually like had one or put one on specifically until I was in a meeting the other day.

And Andy told me, oh, yeah, I had one on one of his friends and it happened to use it for for a period of time.

And of course, I was like, well, I want to know what's going on.

So, dude, you got you had your hands and you actually wore an Apple, Apple Pro, Apple Vision Pro.

Talk to us a little bit about that.

It is. So first off, I think I need to give a little bit of a background.

I am mostly kind of an Apple nerd.

I have it's just kind of been a thing for the last probably 10 or 15 years of my life.

I am extremely interested in what Apple does.

I'm not I wouldn't I'm I'm kind of a fanboy, although I also PC game and, you know, I like Android phones and all that.

But but Apple in particular always has this this thing.

They have this design ethos.

And, yeah, everyone makes fun of them.

And they talk about, oh, you're a sheep and, you know, you're the you're you're a follower and all that.

And that might be true.

But there's a thing that happens when you get an Apple product in your hand.

And it's and it's something that Steve Jobs actually had in his design DNA.

And I don't think I don't revere him as like, you know, King Jobs and all these other things.

But one of the things that he did impart into particularly tech was the idea that when you peel something off,

like when you peel off the cover of something, he and Johnny Ive had this had this this mantra that you want you want to add you want the inside to look as beautiful as the outside.

And that led to a lot of things happening with Apple, particularly around the turn of the century,

maybe a little bit before, you know, late late 90s ish, right when he came back from being at Next.

He was you know, he started Apple and then got summarily dismissed from there.

And then fired.

Yeah, fired.

And then Apple bought Pixar ish kind of I mean, there's a whole long story.

He came back and one of the one of the design principles that he said was the inside needs to be as beautiful as the outside and he hired engineers and he hired people to do all that.

So fast forward about 30 years, we've gone through, you know, 17 different iterations of the iPhone, I think 18 different iterations of the iPhone.

We've gone through nine or 10 different iterations of the iPad, we've got the Apple Watch, like 1000 things, 1000 different versions of them, MacBook Pros at the wazoo.

And I love all of these things, not because of not because of the hardware, necessarily, because it's not the strongest hardware.

It just everything just does kind of seamlessly fit together.

And it's a it's a miracle how the inside of the hardware mimics the inside of the software and how everything just is beautiful.

Like you pull open a MacBook Pro and it's beautiful.

It speaks to me.

And so when they started talking about the Apple Vision Pro back at WWDC of 2023, I I'm not like necessarily a VR guy.

I have a I have a Quest 2.

I played around with a Quest 3.

I think you have a Quest 2 like sitting behind you as well and one of your displays VR is it's it's OK.

Like it's not it's not like a it's not a life's journey for me.

I'm not like, you know, Stu, who we love Stu, by the way, here at the Church Digital, but not like him.

Like I'm not I'm not I'm not seeking to install churches in VR.

Just I kind of like playing Beat Saber and I like hanging out and shooting things.

Well, WWDC 2023 rolls around and they introduced the Apple Vision Pro.

And I was I was intrigued more so because I thought it looked ridiculous, looked like a big pair of glass ski goggles.

And I was like, oh, I find you.

There's no controllers.

Gaming is going to be kind of tough on this whole thing.

And then more and more reviews started coming out of it.

And particularly within the last two or three weeks, the zeitgeist has been high on this thing.

And it's it got in the hands of some notable tech reviewers, some guys that I follow in particular, Marcus Marquez Brownlee, MKBHD on YouTube.

He's he's brilliant.

Like, you know, a lot of people think he's dumbed down all of his reviews.

No, no.

This is like the first Apple product he's been excited about in years.

And then, you know, guys like Casey Neistat are putting this thing on a walking through New York.

And I'm like, huh, this is fascinating.

I want to get my hands on one.

And so, yes, you're right.

I had a friend who allowed me to use it for at length.

And I must say it is everything that you would think an Apple product would be.

It is beautiful.

It really it is a work of art.

The way that the curved glass on the outside feels the weight, even it's made of, you know, there's plastic interior.

But the glass on the outside, the way it cups around your eyes and your head, you know, it could be uncomfortable at first.

But then you size it right and you get the right light seal and you get the right everything.

And it just clicks.

You know, it's just one of the things that just clicks.

And it's the weight of it is kind of weird.

And, you know, there's a battery pack that you got to put in your in your in your pant in your pocket, not in your pants, in your pocket.

And, you know, it's it's weird.

Right.

But then you start to use it and you go, this is fascinating.

It's not it's not the best product in the world.

It's I don't think it's the best.

It's probably the best VR display out there from what I've used.

It's definitely not a product that I would want to use for longer than 45 minutes to an hour.

Honestly, it's kind of a pain in the butt.

You do have to put a battery bank in your pocket.

You do have it.

It does get a little heavy if you if you don't have it pushed on your face properly.

And we can talk more about controls and about the whole thing in just a little bit.

But but the the core conceit of what the Apple Vision Pro is, is that it's essentially a gigantic wearable iPad for your face.

And it's fascinating to me.

That's that's incredible.

Like the the fact that they were able to to pull together that seamlessness that you're describing, how the Apple hardware and the software works together on version one.

I was really nervous and I didn't want to drop thirty five hundred on on V1, knowing that V2, you know, they'd work out the kinks and the bugs towards that.

But this this sounds great.

Now, I do want to get into, you know, let's let's get into like Apple software, what comes with it, like is there, you know, I know you can do FaceTime and you and I had a conversation about FaceTime, about what that looks like with with the headset, the augmented reality approach that it's taking.

And but maybe start to dig into maybe some of the basic functionalities that comes with it out of the box.

Yeah, this is not a review, by the way, because I have not had any time to do a review.

I'd love to become a tech reviewer at some point because I'm just I'm kind of a tech nerd along with all this stuff.

But when the first thing you put it on, oh, you're a nerd.

I mean, yeah, you're you're not wrong there.

Truth. Yeah.

Yeah. But so are you.

And it's OK. Like we're in we're in comfortable space here.

The second you put it on, it wants to scan your eyes because it's all based on eye tracking.

It's called, you know, there's there's a thing called foveated rendering in there where it's following your eyes and it's rendering out the pixels that your eyes are following more than the pixels that are in your in your periphery.

And it does that for processing reasons.

But it also actually if you think about the way that your eyes work when you're focusing on something in front of you, everything kind of blurs off to the side.

And that's a processing power of your brain thing as well.

It's it's it's kind of cool how it mimics it scans your eyes.

It then uses your eyes as kind of your face ID.

It is retina ID, I think is what it's called.

Eye ID, something along those lines, which is pretty cool.

So it does all of those things.

And then the way it wants you to control is just simply using your hand and you use your hand.

And when you want to do something, you look at it and then you pinch your fingers together.

And the first couple of times you do it, you're like, this is stupid.

I look I must look ridiculous.

And then you start to get the hang of it and you start to pinch and grab a grab a safari page and toss that safari page up and it scrolls and it's seamless scrolling.

You know, it's got I think it's 120, 120 hertz refresh.

So there's no like weird jelly scrolling.

You don't feel queasy or anything like that.

And you pinch and you push things.

Or if you want to like you want to move a volume slider up and down, you you look at it, you pinch it and you just move it left and right.

And the way it works, again, is fascinating because you go, this is probably not the most efficient way of doing it.

Like the meta, the meta quest, the Oculus quest, whatever it's called, the meta quest two and three have hand controllers.

You know, pretty much every VR headset has hand some sort of controller you put in your hand.

And it's very accurate.

And like I wouldn't want a game or play Beat Saber or anything like that with my hands because I feel like it would be very unwieldy.

But when you're just doing productivity stuff, like when you sit down and you put the goggles on and you look at your Mac and it tells you, hey, I want to mirror your Mac screen.

And then you pull your Mac screen up in front of you and you've all of a sudden has this huge 4K screen in front of you.

And then you click the little button, which allows you to get immersive or not immersive.

You click the little crown and a couple of apps pop up and you say, all right, I want my I want another Safari window over here.

And then I want my Apple Music window over here.

Oh, I want to put my messages window up there.

And maybe I want to be in the desert at some point.

You turn the thing and then you're completely enveloped in the desert somewhere.

You hear like the wind whistling and kind of this ambient thing.

And I'm now staring at my Mac.

My my I have two monitors here, but I'm staring at the biggest monitor that I have and I can move that thing back and forth and left and right and up and down.

And I'm getting my messages over here and I'm listening to Apple Music through the spatial headphones and I'm doing.

I have another Safari window if I want it over here.

And it's extremely extravagant and it's it's a it's a it's a masterpiece of interoperability because literally now I'm operating my Mac with my keyboard and my trackpad and my mouse, but I'm also operating the Vision Pro.

And then I spin that button again and then I'm looking at my office again and I'm looking at my lights and my camera and I will adjust something here and then I'll spin the thing, the digital crown again and then I'm back in the desert.

And again, the way it all works is fascinating.

And the biggest takeaway that I had from that is it's extremely easy to get lost in what you're doing because of the immersiveness of it is the field of view bad.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, it literally feels like you're just wearing goggles.

And for those watching on YouTube, like I'm holding my hands over my eyes and that's about the field of view.

It's a they call binocular view.

Like that's what it feels like you're you're you're in a bunch of binoculars.

And is it worth three to thirty five hundred dollars?

No, absolutely not.

Like not at least not for me and not for Jeff.

Like we're we're pastors.

We don't have a whole ton of money.

It's not worth it for us.

But, you know, for somebody that's going to be flying on an airplane that wants to work in perfect privacy with their laptop or who wants to watch a movie like an immersive movie on an airplane or something.

Absolutely.

If they have the money.

Absolutely.

Go for it.

Now, have you ever done any work productivity devices other than Apple's or this was kind of like your first stab in.

In the virtual type stuff.

I've done virtual desktop stuff with the MetaQuest 2 via a link cable to my PC.

It doesn't work with Mac yet.

I mean, it kind of does, but it's it's bad.

But I've done it with my PC and it's it's weird.

Like so I after after we were done with the Vision Pro and I gave it back to the friend and all that.

I put my MetaQuest on and it was it was essentially like what happened when like you got done watching a flat screen TV for the first time and then you went back to your old CRT monitor or like that big gigantic wooden cabinet to play Nintendo.

And you just saw how big and nasty and gross the pixels were.

It was essentially like that.

Like it felt like I was stepping back in time when I put that thing on it.

The MetaQuest 2 is very, very bad at remote desktop stuff, but it's also a five year old product or a six year old product or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Well, there I mean, at some levels are even phasing out to two at this point.

I know the three is my two is actually broken.

What I've got behind me is actually a one, which is, you know, DOA at this point, legacy it out.

But the two is the got got broken.

I think my son dropped it.

I'm not actually sure how it broke, but it just magically broke one day.

And then I didn't get real upset.

But and then the three I've I'll probably honestly I'll probably end up buying the three just because I want a VR headset.

And I well, Apple is just just a little out of range, I believe, for now.

But, you know, with the two, I really didn't ever get into much augmented reality type stuff.

You know, like the the meta, the one and the two on the MetaQuest is it closes off reality and it creates its own.

And so like you're playing Beat Saber and doing that.

You're you're going into worlds like VR chat or rec room completely independent.

You know, it's interesting.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here.

I actually spoke last night for a Canadian Bible school.

This was fascinating to me.

It was was like college Bible school up in Canada, somewhere way up north.

I can't I don't remember the name of the school.

I don't remember the name of the where it was at.

But I asked in the class, I said, hey, how many of you have ever put on a headset?

Ninety percent of these kids put on a headset.

I couldn't believe the ratio.

Like, I don't know if there's more Canadians in using virtual reality than Americans, but like it's just just a pure ratio of kids are like, yeah, I've used I use virtual reality.

I was like, tell me some of the stories.

What are you guys doing?

Where are you going?

And everybody's using like Beat Saber for it for like cardio, but and some other stuff, too.

Does that does the.

The augmented reality aspects of what Apple's done seems to be really impressive to me, like to me, I get more excited about augmented and virtual virtual, I think, is really going to hit its lid because it blinds people to reality.

People don't want to be blinded to the physical reality.

They want to make it better.

They want to add on top of it.

And so to me, I was really curious what that experience was, seeing things added to the physical reality.

Like what were some tangible things Apple's doing right now to augment the physical reality around us?

I think it's that's actually the most fascinating thing is the reaction that people had to the initial VR wave that was back in what 2012 2013 when Parker What's-His-Face released the first Oculus and then the whole thing kind of blew up.

That that that was very much we're closing you off, you're living in this world, you're doing this whole thing.

And I think what people started to realize is that I can't do that for very long.

Like innately, I can't be closed off, I can go I can go sit in my mom's basement and play video games for a while.

But even then, like I have that I have spatial awareness that that people are around me.

And I remember the Quest 2 had, they call it pass through, it had pass through, but it was really grainy and kind of black and white.

And like mine doesn't work very well anymore.

Oh, yeah, it was horrible.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, you couldn't read your phone.

The most interesting thing that they did with this is, you're absolutely right, the augmented reality, they call it XR or something like that, extra reality, but essentially it's augmented reality.

A couple, it's not perfect.

It's definitely not perfect.

The cameras on the thing are not nearly bright enough.

And so if you're in, like in the areas that I was using it, it was kind of dark.

And it, and you know what happens when you turn up the ISO of a camera in a dark room, it gets grainy, it gets real noisy and artifact-y.

I could, I tried to pull up my phone and read it and I could sometimes read it, but there's a weird sort of spatial bending that's happening.

And, and so I, I'm like trying to interact with my phone or trying to interact with my watch and, you know, it was, it was fine.

It was passable.

The, the thing really though, that is really interesting is that you can, so outside of the Mac pass through, which we can talk to, I'd talk about ad nauseum.

I think that's one of the biggest features, one of the biggest selling features here is that when you pull up an app.

So let's say, you know, Joanna Stern from the wall street journal, she's brilliant reviewer.

She reviewed where she was cooking with this thing, which I think is, seems terrible.

Uh, she was cooking with this thing and she set a timer over a pot and then put it there.

And then she set a timer over another pot and put it there.

And so she was watching these timers over these pots and they were different times and she was able to grab the one when it was up and watch the other one.

And I thought that was like, Oh, that's pretty cool.

And so I was at, I was, I was kind of demoing this thing and I was walking around with it.

And, uh, I put, um, I've been watching the show called slow horses on Apple TV plus great show.

Highly recommend it.

Uh, it's this like mystery spy thriller.

And so I pulled it up and I pushed it, I was out in my kind of my kitchen area and I pushed it out into the dining room, pushed like the theater out into the dining room and it was just sitting there.

And so the literal image of the video, like the move, the, the video itself, like it, think of like cinema screen.

I did it.

You pinch the bottom.

There's like a little line that comes up almost like at the bottom of your iPhone where you get that little line there.

Uh, you look at that line, you grab that line and you just push it or pull it depending on where you want.

Or move it left and right.

And so I, it was too close.

And so I grabbed it and this was all like, I didn't think about this.

I just did it.

I grabbed it.

I picked it up and I pushed it backwards.

And so now I'm looking out at my Island where our sink is and I'm doing dishes and I'm watching the show that is back by our dining room table.

And I thought, that's pretty cool.

And then I walked over to like, go put some dishes away and the thing stayed there.

And I turned my head and because of spatial audio, I, it, it felt like I could hear like the whole thing was turning.

Like I could hear it from where it was coming from, which was like, okay, that's also cool.

So I put the dishes away.

I crouched down, put some dishes down and then stood back up and turned back around.

And it was still there, had not moved.

Like there was not a glitch.

It was still playing at 60 frames a second at, or 24 frames a second or whatever it was.

And then I, I was like, I wanted to try something.

And so I opened a couple other windows.

And so I put like an Apple music window kind of off to the side.

I put it like out in our living room and it was just kind of floating there doing its thing.

It wasn't playing.

It's just, I wanted to see what happened.

Put my messages like off in the hallway and I walked over to them.

I walked literally up to the screen where slow horses was playing.

And then I turned and I walked probably 20 feet over to where the messages app was.

And I typed in there.

I kind of, I, you know, you can hand dictate or, you know, you can poke your finger in there or do some other stuff.

And then I turned around and I walked back over to Apple music.

And, and it was just this, like, these things are floating in space.

Nobody else sees them.

I do.

I have this augmented reality here where I am the master of this universe.

And it was, and it was mind blowing the way, and this is again, the interoperability.

It was mind blowing the way that all of Apple services just knew what to do.

They had me signed in.

They knew exactly where I had left off in, in the show on my iPad.

When I was on the Peloton earlier, they knew all of my messages.

They knew who I was talking to and they knew where I was in my last Apple music playlist.

Like it was, it was mind blowing Jeff.

And like for $3,500 again, I keep going back to that.

Like the price is too much, but maybe for a thousand dollars.

Well, I mean, in what you're even describing, you don't, you don't need a TV anymore because

you, everything that's online and Apple store is now available through, through the headset.

And so that $1,500 you're going to spend on a Samsung, well, you're probably not going

to spend that much on a Samsung, but the point being is all of a sudden you start to throw

some other devices in.

Now that quantifies or that multiplies very quickly as I've got a family of four wife and

two kids.

And so, you know, now I'm, I'm spending 3,500 times four.

So we all can watch, you know, I don't, I don't know what just came out.

Oh, we just watched the Marvels last night.

And so, so we all can watch the, you know, the Marvels on Disney plus, um, and you know,

and there's, um, that's, that's a real, it's $14,000 worth of, of Apple glass, uh, to, uh,

to make, to make that happen.

And that's, that's well beyond the pastor's budgets, um, along with, with others.

But that's, that's a, um, you know, I got to believe that this is step one of, of a multiple

step plan on Apple's part.

So I'm excited to, to see what's, what's coming from this.

Did you actually, you know, one of the things that when we talk about, you know, Stuart talks

so much about this church and virtual reality, it's, it's communication, it's, it's building

relationships, friendships, it's, you know, sitting around the campfire, got, um, um, all

space, God bless it, or, you know, hanging out in, in rec room at, at a, at a coffee house

or, uh, going to a bar at VR chat.

Um, but it's, it's relationships, it's, it's dialoguing with that.

I was actually surprised, uh, Apple hasn't, didn't release any, any virtual community aspects

in this device or nothing that, that I know of.

Um, is, is there any community built into version one of this?

Like what, what are the communication tools that are available for the vision pro?

That's a, that's a great question.

And honestly, it's something I think they're getting dinged on a little bit.

Um, they, Apple has repeatedly rebuffed the chance to build some sort of quote unquote social

network that they could have done.

I think I personally, I think they might see it as a little below them, which is what was

the iTunes one that was around.

Yeah.

There was iTunes connect or iTunes share.

Um, oh my gosh, that was horrible.

It was horrible.

Yeah.

It was essentially a glorified comment.

A blog post comment is what it was.

Um, right.

And tied to whatever was coming off of iTunes.

Yeah.

But go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I'm fine.

No, no, no.

And that, like that, that's what I mean.

Like I, I, they tried and they got, it was bad.

And I think they kind of see that as that's what Facebook does.

And that's what, you remember Google tried Google one, no Google plus, I think, uh,

Google plus, yeah, whatever their circles were and they tried it and they killed it.

Cause Google just kills things randomly.

Uh, also Google plus was bad, but you know, that's what Facebook does.

That's what Twitter does or X or whatever we're calling it.

That's what, you know, Mastodon and all those do.

Um, that's what, that's what those things do.

That's not what Apple does.

We are above that.

We are a, uh, software as a service company and all, you know, like that type.

And whatever that's elitism.

And I, that's the part of Apple that I absolutely hate.

And that's the, that's the part that people really glom onto, which I get past that.

But the, the, the, the communication piece that's built into it is, uh, twofold.

Number one, you create this thing called a persona.

Uh, it's still in beta.

I didn't really, I, when I had it, I didn't have it for mine.

The one that I had for too long.

Um, I had it enough to create a persona and it, it's essentially creating a, um, like a

memoji of you.

Uh, and everybody knows emoji from, memoji from their phone, except it, it's a little more

lifelike.

Uh, it feels a little bit more real.

And, and, you know, Apple, Apple's fascinating the way that they do tech, uh, more so than like

Microsoft who throws a bunch of stuff at the wall and says like, okay, businesses pick

something.

Gamers pick something, Xbox pick something.

And like, they're kind of, and we can talk, we can talk tech news all we want, but like

they're reaping the benefit or the rewards of that in the business sector, but also in

the gaming sector, they're losing big time because they just threw a bunch of crap at

the wall and Sony had like a focused thing.

So that's gaming.

Apple kind of does the same thing that Sony has been doing.

Like, yeah, we might get beat in this quarter or we, we, we, we might be getting this product,

uh, beaten in this product cycle, but over time, all of the things that we learned, we're

going to implement them.

Apple did Memoji.

They did the AR VR stuff 10, you know, eight years ago with our LIDAR scans, scanners and

their iPads, you know, they've built all of these things on top of each other.

And now we have this amazing weird piece of glass that you put on your head.

And inside of that, you have these personas that are built on Memoji technology that move

with your face and they, they respond to your eyes.

They respond to your facial features, but they don't have realistic hair.

And so the hair just kind of feels like Lego hair.

Uh, your beard doesn't move.

Like you're, uh, you, you're wearing the same shirt.

It's essentially from like your collarbone up, if you can think of it, maybe a little bit

lower.

Um, and so you're always wearing the same shirt forever.

And unless you redo your persona, which I guess you can do, I've not, I didn't get a chance

to do that.

Um, and it's, it looks a little kind of uncanny Valley.

Like you, you definitely look like one of the animatronics from Disney at that point.

Um, so there's all those things happening there.

And then when you want to FaceTime somebody in a, they're on their phone, they, they see

your persona.

They don't see you because obviously that's like got an Ironman visor thing happening.

Uh, that'd be way too close.

They don't see, they see your persona and you can see this actual entire person, which is

cool.

So there's, there's that built into it.

There's also, you know, your iMessage and your regular texting that are built in.

Um, Microsoft just released teams for Apple vision pro.

Uh, I haven't seen how it works yet.

Um, that zoom is working on something as well.

You know, if you think about it, it's really a productivity and entertainment thing.

It's not necessarily a community focused thing just yet.

Uh, you know, rec room is not available yet.

Um, Apple was talking about game.

Somebody released something called game room, I think is what it's called.

And it's trying to be rec room, but it's going to be extremely difficult because Apple doesn't

really let you do anything with the personas.

Like they don't, you know, pornography is one of the biggest things in the world.

And Apple, I think is afraid that they're going to use, they're going to have their personas

doing things that are, you know, not what Apple wants their personas to be doing.

And so I just, I think that's probably if I could read into it a little bit.

Um, and then the regular communication tools of Safari and email and all of that stuff.

Again, very version one right now.

Yeah.

It'll be, it'll be interesting.

The, the community aspects of it, um, uh, or whether Apple actually does it.

It was funny.

I remember when, uh, when all space VR shut down, um, Stu was, was actually really pushing.

And he said this several times also that he thought Apple was going to acquire all space

and integrate that into, um, to, to the headset.

Um, I, you know, I've, whether it's a social media network or a community or whatever, I, I,

I think Apple's missing something here in, in the community aspect.

Several people I've heard Mark, uh, lament about the lack of, of controllers really for

gaming and making that.

Um, and so if, if Apple's not going to step into the space, man, I, I believe it's, uh,

an opportunity for third party.

Uh, you know, and, and as Apple gets more comfortable with, with opening up their SDK

software development kits and, um, and, and allowing more, uh, functionality, you know,

I think we're going to, to see some big winners, you know, step into the space and, and, and

come start to develop some things.

I, I just, to have that much productivity without community, like even, I mean, even Microsoft

Teams gives you community aspects within the workplace.

Um, you know, we, we, you know, you and I, Andy today, earlier today, we were just talking

with, um, um, Barbara, uh, Carnero, a word revolution who was on the podcast last week.

And she's talking about virtual offices and, and, and ways to connect.

And she's, I mean, we're on a zoom call and she's got like her, her agency team that's

on with her.

And there's like several continents involved in the conversation and they're not missing

a beat working together because they're, they're, they're working together virtually.

And so even if it's just within the workplace environment, like having some sort of a, of

a community, community communications, um, engagement tool is going to have to be necessary.

And, um, you know, we can talk about the, the wins and the losses of FaceTime, but there's,

there's a lot more opportunities I think open right now.

The, the, the quest pro I think was built on that.

So like 2021, 2022 meta did the quest pro and then, so they did the quest two and then

the quest pro and then the quest three.

And I remember the quest pro, like the thing that turned me off about it, uh, a, it was

like a thousand dollars and I was like, I'm not paying a thousand dollars for something

that I don't, it's not gaming focused, but I think they had in their head, like it was

going to be a lot of what Barbara's team, Barbara's team was talking about.

You know, I think, I think in their head, they were thinking, well, corporations are

going to buy these with the, you know, corporations with those crappy open office plans, which

everybody seems to hate.

Uh, you're going to put your headset on, you're going to wear your headset for eight hours

a day, minus a lunch break or whatever you want to go to the bathroom.

And then you're going to be able to virtually connect with people in other offices all across

the world.

And I think they thought that was what was going to happen.

And I don't, I have never seen any success stories about that.

Actually, the only success stories I've seen about community like that has been from two

places, it's been from churches and it's been from like discord servers that are actually

doing the things.

And I think that right there is a testament to Christians kind of just taking the space

and going like, yeah, people are here.

We're going to go there.

Well, in, in understanding the role of community and the necessity of it, um, we've, we've talked

so much about that, even as of late, that, that the content that shows the, the, the relationships

that we have, the people that we meet, like in order to, to really engage in the dialogue

and build those relationships, it's got to be done in community.

Yep.

Um, you know, which is why I'm really, I mean, Apple released a 30, honestly, Apple released

a 3,500 device.

Yay.

Um, Apple hasn't released a new device in a decade, not for a decade.

I've been saying they got to come out with something.

They got to come out with something.

They got to, they got to get into the space.

Yep.

And, and, and I, and I think they did a great first step.

Um, when I look at what digital church, when I look at virtual reality churches and what

DJ Soto's doing and what Stu's doing and, and, and many of the others that, that have been

exploring, uh, the pollings, Jason pollings as well.

Um, you know, there's Apple, I don't think delivered what I was expecting.

Really?

Um, and, and that's, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm a little disappointed.

Now, I think that Apple leans more into meta and to augmented than virtual.

And so if I'm looking at it with the lens of virtual of what, you know, guys like VR

Tiger are doing, where they're building these massive virtual reality worlds that are recreating

biblical context, I'm literally walking the tabernacle, listening to VR Tiger preach his

sermon on the tabernacle and, oh, look over there, a cow just got his head cut off.

Like, you know, that is not what's happened.

That's believe me.

That is not exaggeration.

Thank you.

VR Tiger's a listener to this VR Tiger.

I love you, man.

Um, but, um, the, we're, we're, we're not, I'm not, I'm not getting that from the Apple

device.

Like, I mean, maybe, and, and I don't want to speak ill of anything that we just heard.

Um, I, I think that the virtual reality concepts that we were doing at some level, I think that's

like one-on-one.

I think that's elementary.

I think that's, um, I think that's the start.

It's phase one, be less insultive.

It's phase one to it.

Um, I mean, even when we started this conversation, we were, you, you were talking about how you

put that headset on and the, the old quest and it blocks you from reality.

And there's only so long you can be that way.

Even if you're downstairs playing in your mom's basement gaming, you're still has spatial

awareness of what's going on around you.

I really do believe, and I've gotten, I remember I did, I did a podcast with Nils Smith on this

and, uh, and he and I got into an argument.

I couldn't believe it.

Um, I really do believe that augmented reality is going to be the bigger, bigger player long

term, not just for the church, but in general than virtual.

Um, I think virtual is nice.

Uh, I think that virtual will have a place, but the ability to, to supplement what's happening,

um, on your phones ends reality to put virtual, to put augmented reality in these pair of glasses

that I'm holding in my hand, put it down and then have that augmented piece on top of it.

Um, and when I look at the church, what I see for augmented reality, I see it tearing down

borders and barriers like at, we've got to get beyond this, this persona piece where, um,

I'm talking to a semi real version of whoever's wearing the headset on the other end.

And we've got, you know, some of the stuff that Facebook was promising and Facebook promised

all sorts of stuff Zuckerberg did in that video, but some of the stuff, some of his vision for

it wasn't, you know, fake.

It was real hologram person.

I'm sitting, you know, I'm, I'm traveling, I'm in California, my wife's in Miami, I'm sitting

at Starbucks and I'm watching a hologram version of her in the seat across from me, have this

conversation.

Um, like we need to see augmented reality tear down the borders.

That's where we're going.

Tear down the boundaries.

Um, I can remember I had a conversation with, um, I'm not going to say who it was because

I just remembered who it was.

I had a conversation with, um, uh, a very popular pastor who was talking about virtual reality

church and, um, I'm sorry, about churches in virtual reality, like doing ministry in virtual

reality.

And, uh, and he said to me, Jeff, it's, this is exact words, Jeff, it's 65% there.

Like, and literally he's describing the efficacy.

He's like, if I'm looking at that avatar, I'm not actually seeing the person's facial reactions.

I'm not seeing their movement.

I'm not seeing their skin.

I'm not seeing who they are.

And so you're asking me as a pastor to, to build relationships with people that I can't

like read body language to.

Um, and so what he equated it to was, was 65%.

Um, I, I gotta hope, and maybe this is me, you know, pipe dream here.

Um, I gotta believe that Apple and the technology that they're leveraging, uh, as they're continuing

to build out a more, a more augmented reality, uh, is going to be able to finish off that

35%.

Well, think about, I mean, yes, I, I would agree with you.

I also, the, the, the core conceit of what augmented reality is, is I am splitting the

difference, right?

I am, I'm splitting the difference of what virtual reality can give me, which is a completely

different world to mine.

It's escapism.

It's just, it is the, it is the core of escapism.

And then augmented reality is that sort of, I'm the God of this universe and I can do anything

I want.

It's a power fantasy, essentially.

And where it gets tricky is that you, we're, we don't have the tech for it right now.

Obviously, like we're, Apple's trying and their meta is going to try and, you know, uh, steam

is going to try with their new index and all sorts of stuff is going to happen where, where

it starts to get a little scary is that when you are a God of your own universe, you start

to not pay attention to the other things around you.

For example, in the state of California, when you buy a vision pro and you drive around

in your Tesla, which has autopilot on, and you're playing with your vision pro, that is,

I mean, they were doing it for clicks and it, and it's funny.

It's also, they're going to get arrested for it or at least ticketed because now it's a

misdemeanor.

You're not allowed to drive with screens in your front seat, uh, looking, you know, operating

screens in your front seat, excuse me.

So there's that part, but, but, but the, the people that are now going to be doing things

with that type of thing are not going to be paying attention to anything.

And I, and I look at Casey Neistat, love Casey Neistat as a videographer, as a filmmaker,

as a vlogger, the guy is inspirational.

He's like old school YouTube.

This is my guy.

Right.

And I've been following him for a hundred thousand years.

He got a vision pro.

And the first thing he did was he FaceTimed his friend and said, Hey, we're going to go

make a review of this out in the street.

It was like, okay, cool.

And so the guy's just wandering around, uh, New York city, uh, it's tethered to his phone

and he's just doing the whole thing.

And I thought, okay, this is clever.

He's skateboarding.

He's doing the thing.

People are asking him about it.

He's having really kind of heartfelt conversations with people.

And then he's coming out of the subway into times square and he stops in the middle

of the freaking steps to respond to a text message.

And I lost it right there.

And I was like, listen, if somebody in front of me stops to respond to a text message, when

I can't see a phone in front of them, like if they're just walking with both hands, like

I'm not, I, you know, usually if you see somebody looking down at their phone, you know, like,

okay, I got to pay attention to that person.

If that person just stops because a text message popped up in their eyes, I'm going to drill

them and I'm not going to feel bad about it.

And if that person, you know, Casey's now thinking I'm the God of my universe.

I can just take over New York city and respond to a text message.

That's dangerous to me.

And I, the church has a part to play in that.

Like they, they really do.

Uh, I, I, I think that, that we can start to speak into those things a little bit.

Um, and it's going to, it's going to be fascinating in five or 10 years when we do have, you know,

Google glass was awful, but when it was, it was thin at least, and it was lightweight.

And when we do have things like Google glass that are actually pro projecting things in

front of us that we can interact with, not just screens, but interactive things like augmented

reality, it's going to be fascinating to hear some youth pastors actually have to get up there

and talk about it.

Like I, I, I, I'm scared of having that talk and yet I'm also kind of looking forward to

it because I have a lot of things to say about, you know, the reality is, uh, I think business

insider was reporting, um, uh, Apple VP of business saying that, uh, iOS devices are dead.

In, in, in 10 years, the, the phones and the iPads that we carry around are going to be replaced

by, uh, vision OS.

And so, um, it's going to be a very, uh, different reality in, in, in, over the next five or 10 years

as, uh, as the technology improves, as, as, uh, the, the hardware and software gets more developed

and, and as there's more cultural acceptance, that's really interesting.

Like the guy stopping in the middle of the, the stairway in New York city.

Um, I don't know that I, I react as strongly as you did, but I, I would totally be the guy

just like, you know, ramming them and, and, you know, for our friends that actually live

in New York city, the guy walks around with a $3,500 thing strapped to his head and nobody

stole it like that.

I, it's just as surprising to me.

I don't know.

He had a camera crew with him to protect him.

Okay.

Okay.

There's that.

He had a couple of bouncers, I guess, protecting security guards along the way.

Okay, good.

Um, awesome, man.

Any other, any other thoughts or insights on the device?

Uh, I mean, you, you, you talked a little bit about the dream of not having to buy a TV

and instead everybody buys an Apple vision, kind of like ready player one type stuff.

And I, I'm excited.

So I talked, I talked negative about AR, but like sign me up for Apple contact lens, whatever's

like, I'll pop those things in.

I wear contacts regularly.

I'm like almost legally blind without my contacts.

I will wear Apple contacts, scan my eyes, take my brainwaves, whatever you have to do.

Like if I can just interact with the world like that.

Yes, please.

Um, but the, the thing that is really cool going back to talking about your family wearing

these is, you know, with phones, typically what families do with phones is somebody will

get the latest and greatest and then they'll hand it down to their kid or to their wife

or to, you know, some of their grandmother or somebody.

And, you know, there's usually two or three generations of phones in families right now.

It's just a, it's kind of an interesting thing.

That's a phenomenon that's happened in the last seven or eight years.

And that's going to be happening with the Apple vision pro, you know, Timmy, the 14 year

old or Jimmy Lipper, you know, whomever the 14 year old is going to get dad's old Apple

vision pro because dad's going to get the new Apple vision pro three.

Uh, and he's going to wear it and then they're all going to be able to lock up together and

they're all going to be able to position their own movie watching the same movie synced up

because that's actually a feature in, it's called share play in, uh, iMessage right now.

You can actually watch a movie with somebody through iMessage.

You guys, you, one person controls it, they start the movie and then you guys can both watch

it.

It's fascinating.

So that, that technology is there.

Uh, I mean, it's, it's just sync over the internet.

So there's that happening and that's fascinating, but how does the church respond again, back

to the further, um, the further, what's the word I'm looking for insulation of families

and of people pulling, you know, giving them yet another reason to not actually do things

in church or, you know, attend online church.

That's great, but also have 14 other windows up around them doing 14 other things.

You know, the human brain cannot physically, cannot concentrate on more than one thing at

a time.

It can try to, you can listen to things, but you are not concentrating on them.

And, and part of being a churchgoer, part of being a Christian is we need to concentrate

on God's will.

We need to concentrate on his word.

We need to concentrate on what he is saying to us at a specific time.

And it's going to be fascinating how the church is able to do that as well.

And I, I, I don't think we're fighting a losing battle.

I just think we're on the cutting edge of yet another cultural battle that if we're

not ready for as pastors and leaders and mentors and designers and all this, we're going to

lose.

And I don't want to lose.

I want to win.

Well, yeah.

I mean, and that's gen a, um, gen alpha and, you know, whatever the next generation is

coming along, who's going to be far more comfortable, um, utilizing this technology.

And, and yeah, I mean, I can focus on God and have 14 other windows open as opposed to,

you know, Xers.

You're an Xer, aren't you?

Well, I'm a millennial.

Are you a millennial?

Yeah.

You're a millennial.

Um, so I'm an Xer.

Um, and so, you know, the Xers and the millennials are like, get off my lawn and I'll, I'll shake

my cane at them.

And, uh, it'll be, it'll be beautiful.

Actually, I'll probably be fighting for them.

I'm like, just listen to them.

They said, they, they know what they're doing.

Give me a shot.

Um, but no, I, I, I think that's, um, I think the next decade is going to be really

interesting.

You know what?

I got you here.

And so we're going to, we're going to shift into a bonus question.

Yeah.

Uh, because Apple, Apple released, uh, vision pro.

And so that's treated, which was a big deal.

Um, there was another big deal that, that is maybe in this metaverse type stuff that happened

yesterday.

Maybe, you know, this Disney invested 1.5 billion.

That's with a B billion dollars into Epic, which is the company that makes Fortnite.

Um, you know, I would love to just pick your brain here.

Maybe five minutes what's going on in that space.

It's scary.

Uh, so Epic, Epic has like the biggest game in the world for the last, what, eight or 10

years called Fortnite.

Perhaps you've heard of it.

It's a little, little game where you punch trees, uh, and then you shoot a little game.

Yeah.

It's a, it is, it is essentially turned into, uh, and, and the, the funny thing is if you

ever want to really laugh a little bit, go back and read the creation story of how Fortnite

saved the world and then Fortnite, the battle Royale came about Fortnite was saved.

The world was supposed to be the survival game.

And somebody just added a couple of designers added the battle Royale into it just for fun.

And it became the biggest thing ever.

I play Fortnite occasionally.

I'm sure you do.

I'm sure everybody that in the world has played Fortnite at some point with the Disney thing.

What happened was they, um, Disney had a really booming quarter and I, and it, and it took

a bunch of people by surprise, I think, because Disney has not had really good quarters lately,

which is shocking to me that Disney is talking about being bought by Apple and selling a bunch

of shares and getting rid of their CEO and doing all the things.

And, you know, Bob Iger stepped back in two and a half years ago, coming right out of the

pandemic three years ago, coming right out of the pandemic.

And he said, okay, we're going to be strong.

Like we're going to, we're going to, we're going to present a strong front.

We are going to double down on the, the things that we have.

We're going to get rid of some of the things we don't have, which is why you're hearing

that ESPN might be being sold as well.

They're selling off properties that they think might be useful elsewhere and they're really

getting to the core of what they do.

And that is character based, um, characters, essentially character based characters.

That's a, that's a, that's a double weird thing.

What Fortnite, what Fortnite does and they have done so well is that they license different

characters.

So they license, uh, Dr. Strange, they license all these Marvel characters.

They license, uh, the guy from Halo, you know, uh, uh, John Spartan, uh, uh, they, they

license, um, different, they license hot dogs and they license all sorts of things.

And then they also license things like Lego.

And so there is a now Lego Fortnite out, which is actually pretty good.

It's this completely standalone thing.

You play Legos and you build things kind of like Minecraft.

And then you just shoot each other inside the Lego world.

My 14 year old plays it with his friends online.

He loves it.

He's having a great time.

So Disney saw that and went, Oh, cool.

We had a good quarter.

We've got a bunch of money to throw around.

Let's, uh, let's figure out how we can make this a little bit more successful.

Epic had already licensed out a bunch of, again, Marvel and a bunch of Disney stuff already.

And Epic said, okay, here's some, here's some stock.

And I think they bought something like 25%, 24% of their, essentially like a very large chunk,

a very large voting interest of Epic.

And Epic now is owned by a couple of really huge companies.

Uh, Epic is owned by, uh, Tim Schafer himself, like the owner.

I think he's got 50 something, 49%, maybe 50% of the company.

And then right behind that is this company called Tencent and Tencent.

If you know anything about Tencent, they are a Chinese publisher that license every freaking

game under the sun.

They have, they have so many properties.

Like if you, if you want to get a kick out of it, find a game that is just released or

that has been released in the last five years and start to dig down into the actual publisher.

Chances are Tencent owns at least a percentage share of that publisher.

They are printing money in China right now.

And so Tencent owns this.

And now Disney is getting into essentially getting into bed with them.

Uh, I'm, I'm equal parts scared and also excited to see what they do because Disney now can

start putting Fortnite things in its park.

They can have Fortnite representations in their parks.

They can have Fortnite movies on Disney plus they can have Fortnite, you know, action figures

that are coming out in Disney parks and in the Disney store and things like this is insane

to me, the world that we are living in right now.

Wow.

It's interesting.

I, I, I wasn't going there at all.

I was thinking more that, that they were developing.

Disney was moving towards developing a, a metaverse, uh, with all these worlds infused

with, with Fortnite technology, but you're even getting into, into licensing.

Um, that's really interesting.

You talk about the, the VR and the metaverse side of it.

Uh, Fortnite's already been doing that.

Fortnite holds concerts in here.

You know, I think Lady Gaga was in there.

I want to say Taylor, maybe not Taylor Swift, maybe not somebody as large as that.

I know, um, uh, was Drake in there as well?

Um, there was, there was a number of people that have had concerts in Fortnite and essentially

you just show up and you go and do the thing.

I, I think I, I, I'm surprised they haven't done a VR thing yet.

I think there's the thinking there that when they do it, uh, they now have the backing

of Disney and Tencent.

They want to release their own headset.

That would be, if I'm reading the tea leaves a little bit, they want to release their own

headset.

They want to have the Epic, uh, the Epic quest 17 or whatever, you know, or let, you know,

whatever they're going to call it, the Epic hammer one.

And it's all part of the Epic game store, which they have their own game store.

They have their own publishing arm.

Uh, they want to have all of their own kind of properties tied up into this.

Because if you, again, you trace the money back to all of these things, Disney now can

license the things that it puts in there.

So imagine the only way you can watch Disney plus is if you buy the Epic hammer one headset.

Now you get spatial video from Disney that is now supported in China and Disney has now

taken over the world yet again.

Of course they did.

It's Disney.

Um, it's, it's, it's what they do.

And now that Bob Biger's back, man, just great things, uh, are going to continue on.

I, I, I, I think his, his eye for things is, is, um, is very good from a leadership perspective.

And at least down here in, in Miami, I know we, we love, uh, we love the mouse degree.

So hopefully, hopefully going to go visit in 24.

I haven't, I haven't done trying yet.

So like, that's the, that's the thing we're looking forward to.

It's awesome.

Anyway, man, this has been a great podcast.

We kind of, kind of danced around some things with the, with the vision pro.

Um, I just really wanted to talk to you about the Disney stuff.

So why not do that on, on, on the podcast as well?

But Hey, as, as we're, as we're landing the plane here, um, Andy Mage, operations director

of the church digital and podcast, uh, host and producer of, Oh, so many you're do you're

like, you're like the digital church version of Disney.

I'm just saying, but, um, any, uh, put, put that out there and man, any closing thoughts,

man?

No, I'm, I am excited to see the next five or 10 years of tech.

Uh, again, being a tech enthusiast, it's just a, it's a real cool time, uh, to, to be doing

things that things were getting stale there for a little bit with phones, kind of an iPads

and tablets.

And then the last two or three years, there's really been a Renaissance coming out of COVID.

There was almost like a slinge slingshot effect happening.

Uh, everyone sat on their hands for a little bit too long and then wanted to drive products

forward.

So I'm super excited to see where it goes.

And more than that, I'm super excited to see again, going back to my previous statement,

I don't want to lose as the church.

I want to win as the church.

And so I want to, I want to figure out how we as the church can be using all of these new

tools.

Definitely.

And completely.

And so, yeah, we don't have to be excited about Apple adding a fourth camera lens to the

iPhone, like there's other things that we can, uh, be, be talking about, which is, which

is a great thing.

But Hey, thanks for jumping on the podcast to Andy.

So, uh, for Andy, this is Jeff at the church digital.

Thanks for jumping here on the show.

We'll see you next time.

Y'all have a good one.

Bye.