Games At Work dot Biz

e452- Before and After

By Michael Rowe | February 5, 2024 - 06:00 |February 4, 2024 Podcast

While Andy is at FOSDEM and Michael M. Is traveling for business, Michael R. Goes deep on his experiences with the new Apple Vision Pro. He explains his history with Apple products, and is excited that the VP of Developer Relations at Apple sent him a note as a launch product app.

He begins with a little back ground on his history of using Apple products, from Macintosh SE, to iPod, all the way to today’s pickup of the Apple Vision Pro. You also get a little history of the Wasted Time app, and all various features and capabilities that were part of the app over the years.

After the history lesson Michael takes you thru his expectations for the Apple Vision Pro, including editing this episode in Ferrite and deploying native Vision Pro code to the device instead of the simulator. After talking about the various reviews and early experience videos, he heads off to the Apple Store for his demo and pickup time.

After a quick review of the in store demo experience, Michael takes you thru a deep dive of his experience with the device after about 2.5 hours of usage. This is not a review, but you will find out which apps worked well in 3D, which did not, and how the persona setup went.

So sit back, follow our links, and enjoy the show!

e451 — Fahrenheit

By Michael Martine | January 29, 2024 - 06:18 |January 28, 2024 Podcast

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Immersive light show experience at the Chicago Botanic Garden Dec 2023 — Picture by Michael Martine, Chicago Botanic Garden, Dec 2023

Published 29 January 2024

Michael, Michael and Andy are back in studio to talk tech. Immersive engagement stories from Microsoft, Disney, Apple and Samsung lead off the topics for this episode.

Staring with Microsoft, now Microsoft Teams supports 3D and VR sessions. Then, the team turns to Disney for a very foundational (heh) innovation. Lanny Smoot, Disney Research Fellow and Imagineer says “Being an Imagineer is using technology in the service of making people happy”. As the inventor of (among many other things) the latest version of the extendable light saber, he is also the inventor of the HoloTile, a surface that allows people to walk on it in any direction without moving across the floor. See the embedded video below – which Disney shared only a few days ago and has already racked up over a million views. The Samsung Galaxy Ring will be available later this year.

Turning to the world of AI, the team discusses Nightshade, an application from the University of Chicago makers of Glaze, discussed in August 2023. This application allows artists and makers to disrupt scraping of their content. Coincidentally and kind of related, food bloggers are also incorporating nightshade (notice the lowercase N, as this is the plant and not the app), in very small white on white text to confuse the scraping done by cooked.wiki. And staying on the AI and food theme, but with one more twist, Michael M shares the announcement video for Hava, which uses visual recognition AI to identify food and present users with insights into diet satiety and satisfaction.

This episode contains a more detailed discussion on the Apple Vision Pro, which if you haven’t yet put in your order for one, they are reportedly sold out. Michael R shares experiences and thoughts in preparing code for the Vision Pro, especially with the enormous number of applications that will function in VisionOS right from the product launch. While people are saying Happy Birthday to the Vision Pro, it should be noted that it is also the Mac’s 40th birthday.

The team rounds out this episode with thanks to Ingenuity, which has flown 72 flights above the martian surface.

What is your favorite immersive experience from the past year? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Article Links

Immersiveness

The Verge article: Microsoft Teams now supports 3D and VR meetings

Microsoft Teams is now on visionOS. At this point, it almost feels like Microsoft is supporting this platform with more native productivity apps than Apple 😅
/via https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-teams/id1113153706
#visionOS

— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) 2024-01-21T00:57:39.415Z

TechCrunch article: Disney offers an elegant solution to VR’s movement problem

The Verge article: Samsung’s smart ring might signal the start of a new wearable era

AI

Cult of Mac article: Nightshade app ‘poisons’ AI models copying your art [Awesome Apps]

Games at Work e427: DeepBarbie Fakery

Alec Muffet Dropsafe blog post: BREAKING: food bloggers are adding nightshade and other poisons to online recipe pages to defeat “cooked.wiki” and other advert/revenue-stripping robots

hava.co

Happy Birthday, Vision Pro! (and Happy 40th to the Mac!)

Mashable article: Apple’s Vision Pro is sold out

GitHub Gist – Counting number of top iPad apps marked as available on visionOS

USA Today article: It’s Apple Macintosh’s 40th birthday: How the historic computer compares with tech today

Space

Ars Technica article: NASA loses, and then recovers, contact with its historic Mars helicopter

Hackaday article: SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FLIGHTS: INGENUITY PERMANENTLY GROUNDED AFTER 72 FLIGHTS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:19 — 48.9MB) | Embed

e450 — Contractual Obligations

By Michael Martine | January 22, 2024 - 06:30 |January 22, 2024 Podcast

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reading glasses in focus on top of a stack of papers representing a detailed contract — Photo by Mari Helin on Unsplash

Published 22 January 2024

Andy and Michael M are back in studio to talk tech. While missing co-host Michael R, Andy and Michael M talk about AI, humanoid robots that make coffee and fold laundry, the uncanny valley, Apple’s Vision Pro, Michael R’s Wasted Time Pro app and take a moment of zen in an emoji garden.

Staring off with some old and new games, Andy and Michael talk about the success of Hogwarts Legacy from WB Games versus the decade of Rockstar published games. Turning to the classics, Andy shares a website that has a series of old Mac game demos, and the co-hosts take a short stroll down memory lane.

After considering a Pascal poster, the pair ponder the relative security of code written by AI agents from a Schneier on Security article. Next is a thorough treatment on humanoid robots – and some discussion on the uncanny valley, as well as the fit for purpose opportunities for advancement on things like wrists and knees that do not need to be fully replicated.

In a bit of “inside baseball”, Michael and Andy talk about a recent article on the shrinking podcast industry, followed by the usual plea to subscribe, like and share.

Then, it’s the moment that everyone’s been waiting for – the chance to order your own Vision Pro, provided of course that your shipping address and locale is in the United States. Michael and Andy give a flyover of a plethora of Vision Pro articles. Among the stories from the past week include promotional videos from Apple, initial reviews, stories about third parties that will and will not support the Vision Pro ecosystem, and the fact that you will have Wasted Time Pro available at the launch of the Vision Pro.

The team wraps up the episode with a moment of zen that wreaks a bit of havoc with the audio recording – Drawing Garden. This web page allows the user to create a garden simply by moving their cursor across the page, replete with sound effects.

What is the first Vision Pro application you would you want to try out? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Article Links

New games, old games

Kotaku article: Hogwarts Legacy Just Broke A 14-Year Games Industry Streak

Classic Macintosh Game Demos

Code, AI, Robots

For Niklaus Wirth, 1934-2024.
Apple's classic Pascal poster, remade as a nice clean vector image. Print at any size with the PDF link.
http://www.danamania.com/print/Apple%20Pascal%20Poster/PascalPosterV3%20A1.pdf

— NanoRaptor (@NanoRaptor) 2024-01-04T20:31:16.603Z

The Register article: RIP: Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth

Schneier on Security article: Code Written with AI Assistants Is Less Secure

The Verge article: BMW’s South Carolina plant is testing humanoid robot workers

TechCrunch article: Elon’s Tesla robot is sort of ‘ok’ at folding laundry in pre-scripted demo

Tell your friends about us (please!)

Semafor article: The incredible shrinking podcast industry

Contractually obligated to discuss

The Verge article: Apple Vision Pro hands-on, again, for the first time

9 to 5 Mac article: Apple Vision Pro: EyeSight, comfort, and more impressions from my latest demo

Bloomberg article: YouTube and Spotify Won’t Launch Apple Vision Pro Apps, Joining Netflix

Wasted Time Pro

iMore article: Apple unveils new App Store feature that will let developers link to alternative payment methods — but it will still take 27% commission

Games at Work e419: A Vision of the Future?

Moment of Zen

Drawing Garden

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:52 — 35.9MB) | Embed

e449 — AI in CES

By Michael Martine | January 15, 2024 - 06:01 |January 14, 2024 Podcast

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futuristic auto control panel with engine stop start button in focus. — Photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash

Published 15 January 2024

Michael, Andy and Michael are back in studio to talk tech – and have a terrific show without the dreaded CESCrud focusing on AI, several human computer interface (HCI) technologies, new AR glasses, and a new metaverse.

This episode starts with a drive by of some of the automotive technology showcased at CES2024. AI seems to have permeated all manner of innovations, including the embedding of generative AI, such as with Volkswagen’s and Mercedes’ Cerence-powered infotainment systems. The co-hosts discuss autonomous garage parking via Valeo’s functionality. They also discuss the importance of opting out of all the data collection and reference the Mozilla Foundation’s privacy review discussed in e444 and e432 last year.

Moving along to new an interesting HCI controllers, the team considers Skyted, a mask-like device that provides the ability to have private conversations anywhere. This reminds the co-hosts of a the Razer Project Hazel which was designed to do the opposite – amplifying the voice of a person wearing an N95 mask so they could be heard and understood. Check the show notes for a link to e304. Another intriguing controller is the MouthPad^, which leverages a tongue-driven interface. Check out the embedded video below. A third example is an arcade game where the VR headset is attached to a gun giving an immersive experience to the player.

Staying with the VR theme, XReal headset announcement at CES had some of the thunder taken away by the Apple Vision Pro announcement last Monday. Astute Games at Work fans will note that the new Acer Swift computer discussed in this segment does in fact sport the Microsoft Copilot key on the keyboard discussed in last week’s episode! Plus, of course, with Acer naming one of their new computers “Predator”, how could the co-hosts ignore it?

The team wraps up the episode with an article about Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One who has teamed up with Futureverse to create Readyverse, a “a dynamic interactive platform of interconnected digital experiences”.

Which of the new HCI innovations would you want to try out? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!