303 - AirNoses Pro 3 👃🐽👃
innovating on Apple's behalf
Hey there, !
I have jumped feet first into the Apple ecosystem - first the iPhone, now the AirPods Pro 3.
And by gods they are good!
The highlights:
- The Active Noise Canceling (ANC) is really freakin' good. Almost too good in some aspects - you can literally tune out EVERYTHING in your surroundings. I was walking around my neighbourhood and didn't realise there was a helicopter flying up above until I saw people pointing at it in the park. My airplane trip back home was super nice to be able to silence some of the screaming babies while I slept on a red eye - I had a great sleep :D
- The translation is superb. I tried this with a friend of mine who speaks fluent French, and it's pretty good! Because of the ANC, you have someone speaking in your ear like a translator as it comes through, and as soon as you say stuff, it translates it back on the app for them to read. The experience is very seamless - almost like we've reversed what happened at the Tower of Babel; look out, God!
- The fit is quite nice as well - as opposed to some of the previous earbuds I've used (Sony WF1000XM3 and Nura TruePods), I had them in for a full working day (about 8 hours) and had absolutely no issues with them making my ears hurt or being tired. They seem secure enough for my uses!
So that's the quick review of the AirPods, but most importantly I thought a lot about what it represented - these are rapidly becoming controllable ears for me.
I mean, think about it - if you're able to quiet down everything around you on command, if you're able to hear and listen to any language...these are just like Ears 2.0! The next thing you know you'll be able to hone in and focus on people's conversations from super far away and BANG you're a spy now.
But the larger thought was - well, what if we could make other senses controllable?
Like, your vision, for example. We have glasses that literally correct your vision, so, okay we're kind of there. But why can't I zoom my sight? Why can't I put filters on the world how I want to with just my one set of glasses or contacts? I don't necessarily need a computer, but why can't I super-enhance my vision?? (Though technically I can already turn off my sense of sight by...closing my eyes lol).
Or, your sense of smell!! This one I think is a winner - if we could control our sense of smell through our nose, how cool would that be?!
- Filter out bad smells around us if we're in a location that has a lot of sweat, or BO, or for people who work in very smelly places (landfills, sewers, rubbish etc.)
- Be able to smell whatever we want to, whenever we want to; yesterday, after the rain, the petrichor (smell after the rain) was so delightful - why can't I smell that all the time? Or even just 'fresh air' which also has its own distinctive smell?
- Limit allergens as much as possible - bro, if I had this I would probably love Spring again because by gods hayfever is so debilitating in Melbourne
- Imagine the analytics as well - how much oxygen are you breathing, do you have sleep apnea, do you get enough oxygen during the day, how much CO2 and microparticles are you ingesting etc. etc. just absolutely OPTIMISING your air intake. It could tell you if there was carbon monoxide or other gases in your area too!!
- I reckon it would be fun to be able to 'sample' perfumes from ads as well - and businesses would LOVE to have smell accompany their marketing. Open up a whole new niche of smell marketing! (gah, it always become capitalist doesn't it)
Anyway, I know that senses are there for a reason to actually alert you to danger and be more aware of your surroundings etc etc. but still!
Welcome to innovation! Thanks Apple, I'll take my cut.
Chat soon :)
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📋Today's Question
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Flowers Vasette - a beautiful florist that has some really cool arrangements! Recommended by my friend Soph, they're definitely pricey, but for a good reason - they're so much more unique (at least, from what I could see!). I don't buy flowers often, but I know I'll wanna go here again :D
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Prawn and Zucchini is a really cool pizza topping I guess? I'm out of recommendations this week LOL maybe more next week
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AI and Home-Cooked Software - it's nice to have tools for the masses, right? But as with anything, there are always tradeoffs.
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Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games - someone's set up a benchmark of actual human things that robots should be able to do to show they actually be general purpose!
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Boring is good - what do you reckon AI will look like when it's boring?