Top Five Tech

Welcome to Top 5 Tech, my weekly show about what to watch, listen to, read, download,

and something deep every week.

Number one on what to watch.

I mentioned this in the latest episode of Primary Technology, but even if you've never

used an Apple Vision Pro or never seen an immersive landscape in the headset, you should

check out this video.

This is on the Apple Developer YouTube channel, and it shows all the work that goes into creating

these immersive environments.

If you're familiar with some of them, like Mount Hood, it's pretty wild to see the before

and after what they adjusted from the real world.

actually eliminating a road from the immersive

and eliminating some fours too.

But also the instructions they give to app developers

and other companies if they want to make immersive environments.

The tricks they use with textures versus actual footage.

It's just 15 minutes. Highly recommend.

I want to listen to "Version History."

The show from "The Verge" is back

and the episode of this season started with Harmony Remote.

I have a soft spot for Harmony Remote.

I loved Harmony for many years.

Used it as my universal remote.

And honestly, I still kind of.

miss it. I would still probably have a universal remote now. Yes, the Apple TV remote turns on the

receiver and the inputs switch most of the time. But I thought Harmony remotes were great. I even

had the little Harmony Hub and used the app. There's even a third-party utility that you can

have on your Mac to plug it into HomeKit. Anyway, I could nerd out about it. But the Harmony remote,

I'm very nostalgic for it. You should listen to that version history episode.

On what to read, a deep discussion we also had on primary tech was the social media ban that's

happening in the UK. It's still a long way away. It has to go through Parliament.

It might not be till next spring that this ban goes into effect, but those under 18 would

be banned from social networks like X, Instagram, and platforms like YouTube. It falls in this

category. So I wanted to link this article, the Guardian article that actually talks about

how it's been going in Australia. Because if you remember, Australia actually has this

ban in place. It has been going on for months where teenagers are banned from these social

media apps. And this article recounts several families' experiences, both positive and negative.

Just to read it quickly and maybe start developing your own opinion, is this good? Not so good? And

what happens if more of this activity happens here in the States, if you're here or in whatever

country you're in? I want to download, I got a shortcut for you this week, but it's pretty fun

because one, it's called yesterday's sports scores. When you run it, it will look for sports

from the major leagues here in the United States, and it will show you in quick look. And here you

get the little summary of some big moves that happened, scores for all the games. Right now,

but it's a nice little summary of yesterday's sports events all in one place. And on something

deep, there's actually some moves going on in the tech journalism world. So I'm gonna link this

Hollywood Reporter article that came out right as I was recording this episode. But Eater,

The Verge and SB Nation, which were formerly a part of Vox Media, Vox Media sold off the podcast

ad network to the Murdoch's. Well, now The Verge is actually moving to Penske Media. Now I saw

Parker Ortolani on X said this is actually a good move. So I have to do a little more research on

that. But that move is happening. And related Casey Newton, who hosts the hard fork podcast,

which is part of the New York Times, he's actually going to join Kevin Rose, who's leaving the New

York Times to create an independent media company. This feels a little bit like back in the day when

the team at Engadget did this is my next and that actually became The Verge. So gonna be watching

very curious what new media company comes out with all these moves and changes from these different

people and companies. But I'll also point out my Siri AI video, which broke containment really

was super fun. But I'm really bullish on Siri AI. Joanna Stern also had a great video on Siri AI

that just came out today. And I really think people's attitude and feelings towards AI once

they get this personalized Siri AI in their hands this fall, I think it's going to significantly

change people's perception of what AI could be good for and what it does well. So I'm excited

for this fall when Siri AI comes out for everyone. And curious if that needle will move on people's

feelings about AI in general, and once Apple launched

as this, you know, ChatGPT, Claw, Gemini, they're not going to be able to compete on the iPhone

for the same level of access to the data that Apple has, the way they index your messages

in your mail. And so I'm curious, as Anthropic and OpenAI have been more geared towards enterprise

products and solutions like Mythos and Fable, and maybe when Siri AI comes out,

that consumer-level AI that most people outside of our tech bubble find the most useful

might lean more towards Siri AI and those other tools might be more used in the

enterprise and commercial sense. But it remains to be seen. iOS 27 is still a few months away.

Everyone's devices will have to index at least a week or two after it comes out. But stay tuned,

I'll be covering it right here, both in Top 5 Tech on my YouTube channel and in Primary Tech.

And you can get this with all the links in an email newsletter every Friday.

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people. And I appreciate your support there. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.