OpenClaw is actually growing faster than ever. And I think what this means is that the world of agents is just expanding. I mean, I always tell everyone that it's kind of like we're in 1982, 1983 in the personal computer, and the Mac hasn't been invented yet. Everyone's creating new computers, trying to make a computer that's more usable for everyone, racing towards can there be a consumer version, because the big prize is an agent that everybody in the world uses. When you hear someone like Altman who now says once a day on some platform, podcast or conference, we need to slow down the pace, you're like, 'Okay, I think that's good.'
And the people that were here in the valley were here to like just be creative and build cool stuff. And I can't say that for everyone that's here right now.
Somewhat the early 2010s, like people in tech were making things because whatever they were working on was awesome because they sort of loved the creative endeavor of it. And that has changed. There is a lot of people making things in the valley not just to make money.
More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the text. That's when we get more or less. Put it all right to the test. More or less.
Well, hello friends, specifically Morin since you're the only one here. Welcome to more or less. How's everyone doing this week?
Hey Jess, it's a good week. Football kicked off.
Football, are you in any fantasy football leagues? The Information has started one and I'm not ready to participate, but I'm almost ready.
I usually do, but this year I skipped it, so I would be open to joining one if you want to invite me.
Oh, no. I don't have the bandwidth for that. But maybe in the future. Agents doing fantasy football yet. Is this a thing?
I did create a WhatsApp group for the fourth grade cross country team this week. That was my sports organizing.
What if all of us just like had our agent join together in a fantasy football league and make their most informed choices and like argue each week?
That would be kind of interesting.
What happens when all the AIs just win all of the fantasy football leagues?
You know what, Dave? I'm going to assign that story and we will find out. I like that story.
There probably are real agents in these leagues right now. If any of you listeners out there are in a fantasy football league, I would not trust your tech friends that are in this league with you. Instinct, Muse, OpenClaw, they're all over this.
Well, yeah. Speaking of agents, I just did, for all parents out there that have ever had this experience, I feel like I pulled off the triple, you know, lots or whatever because I managed to get the primo parent teacher conference slots in the first 30 seconds of parent teacher signup opening and it's taken me five years to perfect my technique and bam, bam, bam, mic drop.
Something else an agent could have done for you, Jess. You're living in the manual archaic days right now.
No, there's no way an agent could duck the number of login in the Byzantine system.
Oh, I disagree. Let's come back to this next semester and see like six months from now.
Okay. I can't wait to ask school support help. I'm still trying to get a whimost stop. So, but anyway, I feel good about that. And then I also feel good. I managed what at the end of this episode, we'll cover what's happening in the wide world with tennis because it's very important. But in the middle of a meeting yesterday, I got an email that said that the BNP Paribas Indian Wells tickets were open.
What does that mean? That was a lot of letters.
This basically means you're going to be 10 minutes late to your next meeting and you refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh. And there are other ways to get tickets, but being the delicate flower that I am and the fact that my children don't usually like 100 degree heat, I need my tickets in a very special spot.
You need the shade. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you all now because I just stopped them.
Yeah, that does seem to be the thing on tennis things. It's like if you get stuck in the sun, it must be miserable.
Same with the 49ers games. There's a specific section 117 to 120 run, row T or higher is maximum shade. I enjoy taking a lot of people to this tennis tournament, so I buy a lot of tickets. I had two laptops and four browsers to defy the bot detection. It was all me, though. No bots. I got all the seats I wanted.
I feel like that's fine. But I know. I just feel like that was a lot of wasted energy for you, Jess.
Yeah, the agents can do all this for you now, Jess.
But now I know I don't have to check. You know, it's just very satisfying. And I need those exact seats. So anyway, one internet over here as a human. But guys, it's been a busy week. We have a lot to talk about. We've got Apple, we've got agents, we've got Doom, we've got Gloom. I want to start with Apple. You know, here I am yesterday trying to convince the internet I'm not a bot, mildly running a news organization for those 10 minutes and many other things and my mother texts me should I get the new iPhone and I'm like good lord here she is probably just pressing buy on this thing right so Dave bring us inside was this Tim Cook's first Apple big hardware unveil as CEO what was it like?
Yes, it is Tim Cook's first keynote at the helm.
Can we call them keynotes? They just record videos and show them to people.
Yeah, it's not really a keynote anymore.
Which Apple's audience is many billions of people in every country in the world. So I get it. They got to do this thing on day one in every language. And so yeah, I mean it was a great day at Steve Jobs Theater. People were in good spirits. And the big news is the launch of the iPhone Duo, which interestingly I was watching the video and I was very skeptical. I've had one of these folding phones before. I had the Google Pixel because I was really interested in it as mostly actually I carried it to read on because I liked the format for reading and it never made it to become my primary device and I ultimately ended up stopping using it. And so when I was watching the video, I was very skeptical particularly of the size. In my brain, I thought that it was, you know, two of these.
It's much smaller once you hold it in your hands. The best way to think about it is if you were to cut the bottom and the top off of your iPhone, it's that big.
Like an inch off the top and an inch off the bottom.
Yeah. And then it's as thin as the iPhone.
I don't think my fingers can reach that far. Also, will this fit in a woman's jean pocket? Because I only store my phones in pockets.
Oh, not in my jeans. Not in my jeans, spread. No way.
The answer to all of these questions is yes.
Did you see this thing happening where everyone was talking about how Apple used AI on the fingers cuz like there's no way the fingers could be that long holding the phone in the ad. Guys, we know an Apple iPhone hand model. We do. And she does not have long fingers.
Shout out to Jessica Sitig.
We are gonna ask her what she thinks of whether she could have hand modeled the Duo.
I think the hand model problem is probably just the camera tricks. Like it's probably just the type of lens that was used to shoot it. But that was the first thing that I was thinking about is this thing's going to be too big and I'm going to hate it. Once I had it in my hands, I was immediately won over. It's the perfect size for what it is.
What is it? Is it a primary device? Yes, cuz most people don't have two phones plugged to the...
Yes, it's a primary device. The screen when you open it is hard to describe in pictures or even with words. Like the quality of the surface, it almost feels like paper. It's more like a Kindle but even better, if that's possible to describe. The quality of the screen is so good that your hands are like I've never felt anything like this.
That the camera isn't there. And basically I carry my phone for the camera, right? What's the camera specs?
The camera is pretty good. They have two extremely high quality cameras. We'll have to look up the specs. I mean, I've been carrying the iPhone Air all summer. Yeah, Brit, what are the specs on it?
I think it's 48 megapixels. I watched the whole video.
It's a great camera. It's much better. You know, I've been carrying the iPhone Air all summer. I switched to the iPhone Air and I'm absolutely in love with it. But the main problem with it is that it does not have the wide-angle camera. I actually missed the wide-angle camera more than I missed the zoom camera. And this one has, I believe, both wide angle and normal camera. And I do not think it has the zoom. The zoom is reserved for the pro. You know, that kind of stuff is pro camera work. So,
Okay. So, you're sold. You're buying.
I really think that this is truly great product design. This is classic example of Apple taking something that's a known product and then doing the Apple thing to it. They really solved a lot of key problems. One, they had to make the OS, they had to redesign the navigation of the OS to fit this new form factor, and it was really well done when I held it in person. They did some really thoughtful things with how you can set it on the table in folded mode and you can watch movies, can use the keyboard like a little miniature laptop, you can flip it over and make it an alarm clock and it glows when you wake up in the morning. They were really thoughtful about this form factor being foldable.
Oh, $3,000. The glow in the morning. That's going to convince me. It's $2,000, isn't it?
My favorite feature is that there's like kid use. So, when you're trying to get a photo of your toddler, you can play like Snoopy or something and say like, 'Look at me over here.' And so, it gets their eyes to look at the camera.
So, more ways to manipulate our children. Okay.
Or you can turn that on and show it to person you're taking the photo with, and they can see the framing of the photo while you're taking the photo, which is kind of a cool idea. It's a really interesting device. I mean, I think it does exist somewhere between a phone and an iPad. I think it's kind of more computer than phone for what it's worth. And it's Yeah, it may not be for everybody, but I do think that a lot of people are going to get this thing.
Brit, what about you? Are you going to switch? You going to try?
Well, I need Yeah, the hand thing is real and the jean pocket is real. I'm not a purse girl. I'm a pocket girl. It needs to fit.
Have you heard of a fanny pack? There's a middle ground. Just saying.
I don't think I can carry a fanny pack every day.
It's $2,000. And if you want the like 2TB version, it's $3,000.
The Pro is getting up there, though.
No, it's $11.99 for the Pro. This is like more expensive than a MacBook. It's crazy. I got a new studio display last week for like 1,500. So, this is like two studio displays that can fit in my pocket. So, I think that price was going to deter a lot of people. But I do think the novelty will create a lot of buzz, especially for the early adopter types. And if you think about it, it's like an iPad and an iPhone priced together in one. That's kind of how I'm trying to think about it.
No, you can make a keyboard when you fold it like a mini. It's like a mini computer, but it's going to need a bunch of new accessories. All of the like Apple accessories products need to change. The other whisper that I heard was that the markets in Asia, this is the favorite form factor.
The why is missing here, right? Like because obviously these phones have existed, people use them, people have a lot of phone preferences, but for Apple to enter this category that they have to be they have to see a big opportunity or be afraid of something.
I think the opportunity is China. My understanding is that China this is the favorite form factor and it has been for a long time. Like Samsung did their folded phone like many years ago.
I went in skeptical and I'm telling you when you get this thing in your hands you're going to consider it.
Okay. What about the watch or the AirPods? I was less excited about AirPods maybe a little bit more about the watch. It seems like the TLDR of the watch from what I gather. It's basically now competing directly with Oura and Whoop and all the other fitness trackers. It does your like readiness score, your sleep score, your HRV, all the things. It has longer battery yada yada yada. Aren't we like scored up the wazoo?
I know, but a lot of people are buying all the rings and wristbands still. So, Apple, I think, is trying to say we could do it all in one.
They're going to do your longevity score now. They're going to use all of your data from all of these different things.
The most bullshit number.
Well, can they tell me my biological age and how fast I'm aging? 0.85 years.
Guys, today I feel 43 and a half, you know.
But it doesn't have my blood yet. I still want to compete with Sam on this because I do think I'm gonna age slower than Sam.
It's so sad that Sam's pounding the pavement slash visiting the US Open in New York right now. There's actually a really important nuance that a lot of people missed and for one some reason the internet at least the Twitter verse was not paying attention to this which is the watch has a software change which is very interesting that they call audio intelligence which is that the watch is now listening to all of your conversations all day long and transcribing them for you. It doesn't record audio. It doesn't differentiate speakers. They pitched it as a memory device, which for people like me, I have really terrible rote memory because of my brain type. And so when I was reading that or watching this, I was like, 'Wow, that's a really thoughtful feature. I'm worried about businesses like Granola because Apple just basically put Granola into the Apple Watch running 24/7 and did it at higher level of privacy than Granola. And so that's an interesting positioning thing.'
Well, how can I bring up something I forgot about from yesterday if they aren't storing?
It's storing the transcripts with no names and no audio, which I believe is what follows the law, right? And so it transcribes it and then leaves it as text. So you still have the text for it.
Can I MCP that into my agent?
We're building something for more privacy and then we're trying to strip out all the privacy for the maximum utility. I'm just pointing out that's what's happening.
Well, here's the thing. I'm going to MCP it into my agent. My agent has my calendar info. It's going to be like, 'Oh, yeah. You were meeting with blah blah blah when he said this thing yesterday.' So, then I'll be able to connect the dots. So, even though Apple's not storing the audio, I'm still able to...
I actually asked Sam to direct my bot to do something that he told me he wouldn't do out of privacy. So, we found the one thing that Sam was like, 'What was it? Probably wouldn't do that.' It was to read my Gmail. I don't know.
Oh, that's like a lot of people do that.
I know. Oh, I didn't think that that would be a huge... Anyway, shows everyone's sort of mildly inconsistent. Okay, guys, let's wrap Apple. Last points on Apple.
I think this is just an interesting positioning point, Jess, that this is new territory for Apple to be proposing that a device listens all day.
What is the billboard going to say? Like, don't worry, it's iPhone with like big ears and an X through it. Like, I don't know. I think it has to do with future plans and that the more of these devices, whether you've got other ones in the home or glasses on your face, like to actually make sense of the world with AI, you need to have them turned on, right? I think this is sort of the beginning of Apple moving into always on AI processing because they're in a great position to do this. Is this a shot across the bow from OpenAI who has hardware ambitions for pucks that are going to sit on our desks? Perhaps.
Oh, I don't know. I actually hadn't thought of that. Maybe.
I think so. But there's also all the rings and necklaces that are always listening and all of that stuff.
It's more of a shot across the bow to OpenAI, to Meta with the glasses, all these kinds of things. Like this is a really nuanced privacy thing that we're moving towards, right? And everybody in Silicon Valley uses Granola, but most of the people in the world do not. And so there's like this interesting territory here.
Yeah. Well, definitely. And also the number of times AI was mentioned across... I mean clearly the Apple marketing team has changed their positioning on...
They want all of these things to be AI devices, which they are in many ways.
To their credit, they've got great silicon. You know, Apple Silicon is of the best, if not the best, on the inference side of the house.
Do you think any podcast talks as much about Apple Silicon as this podcast?
Let's just rebrand ourselves to the Apple Silicon podcast.
Oh, we should talk about our new branding at the end. Okay, I'm going to move us on to other AI topics. But I love that debrief, Dave. I'm going to love it. Okay, so anyone used Muse? Meta's done a lot in AI. They've been through different models. Lived through different teams. They launched this week their next big play at a personal agent. Seems to me Dave, they're coming a little bit for the OpenClaw world with this. It's called Muse. I've used it a bit. Anyone got any feedback?
Yeah, it's funny. I downloaded it and then the first question I asked it was, 'What do you know about me?' And it...
That's what I asked mine, too. I was like expecting as a Facebook that it got nothing. It knew nothing.
Don't you literally know me for 20 years, Muse? Look at all my Facebook and Instagram data and WhatsApp.
Muse knows you know where I ate in college. But yes.
Yeah. I went even further and I said, 'Read all of my Instagram posts and tell me about me.' And then it's like, 'I'm sorry, I can't do that.' I'm like, 'It's they're my posts. Like, why can't you do that?' And then it's like, 'Okay, I will try.' And so it goes and tries to read all of my Instagram posts and it comes back and it says I cannot read the photos but I can read text description of your photos.
All jokes aside though I do have to give Meta props. They've shipped a new product and it's been a while since they've done this and so I just think props to Meta for getting a new agent product out the door. It's a great start. And there are some nuances. Like I love the actual avatar.
The animations that they did around how the agents are thinking is really thoughtful product design. I don't know. I think the product it's not clear to me what purpose you know this agent versus any other agent has. We all or whether or not consumers are going to really get into it. I think that's like actually the question of the next 5 years. But Meta's got a great product team. So we'll see where it goes.
What's so interesting about it is like Meta's doing exactly what Meta probably, I would argue, should be doing, but is also they're picking their lane, which is can we build like a pretty good product, but that can be used both because we can push it to people, hello Threads, bigger than X, and also bring not just the sort of ChatGPT version of AI, but the more agentic version to more people.
Yeah, totally. Does it have to be as fully featured as everything else that a power user is going to do? No. Is it going to have to be great? Yes. It's free. I mean, like, so I'm like, okay, eventually the investors are going to wonder...
Is it free? It actually I thought it had a subscription.
No, it's going to be paid.
Yeah, it'll probably be premium. I mean, obviously the ads are going to roll through cuz Meta runs that. I think all the details haven't been hammered out, but I'm a thousand percent confident that the strategy is to get free as far as possible and then ultimately have ways to get paid.
Yeah. I mean, their business model supports that, right? Like they're actually in the best position of all. They've got a great advertising network.
I think Google is actually... Well, let's come back to Google. What's Google got for me here? Here's let me give me my quick take on Muse. Fine. Yes. Agree with Dave. I think for the normies out there, it's nice that there's this thing on the sidebar called ideas and goals and like ways to get started. I think a lot of people that have never used AI are just like, what is this? Help me with a task. So, that's great. The UI is good. I don't think the content it's giving back to me is great yet, but fine. Good start. Second point, this is like the total agent harness war. I mean, in the last two weeks, it's been like Instinct and Grokbot and Muse and like everything else. So, I'm just like, how many is too many, guys? And like, where is this all going to net out?
But I think they're going after different parts of the... I am not as familiar... I'm not trying Instinct and I'm...
You haven't trialed Instinct? That's what everyone's talking about.
No, because I'm not a VC. I mean, this feels like Superhuman all the 10 years ago. But like...
Yeah, there's no way I'm giving Instinct my email. But also, I'm not anti-Instinct. I just haven't used it.
But like, have you used Grokbot?
Kind of guys, I also built my own clawed codes, right?
Okay. Well, I use all of these.
No, but my point is, I want to pick up on your point, which we are seeing this war, but we're in the phase of the war where not everyone's going to go after the same market with the same feature set. So, I actually think Muse has like a different intended audience than like Instinct, at least at this phase.
I don't know, Dave. I actually disagree with that. I don't know. I think they're all going after like the masses. And then there's Town and there's OpenClaw and there's Hermes. What is Instinct's business model?
So, Jess, this is why Meta has such an advantage.
You don't know about Hermes?
No, guys, I don't know about Hermes.
The Information writes about it. Dave, it raised at like $1.5 billion dollars just like all the others. They're all valued somewhere between one and five billion. And then you've got Muse from Meta on top. I'm waiting. And then you got Grokbot from XAI/cursor SpaceX whatever. Then I'm waiting for Google's to drop because I think once Google's dropped, it's game over for me at least. I'm moving everything to Google. But okay, so Brit, why? And I'm interviewing Corey in I don't know, two weeks or something. But why hasn't Google gone fully agentic here? Because I'm spending a lot of time getting my agents to talk to Google.
Here's why. Let me tell you why Google hasn't played here. First of all, Google has done a bunch of stuff agentically in all the products themselves.
Yeah, some steps. Some steps. Yeah.
I think Google is building a harness. I don't know this. This is what I would imagine. They have to be building a harness that spans... I think in IO they showed something that I'm still waiting. But something in the form factor of like a Muse or a Grokbot or OpenClaw like in its own application that connects all these things together but and this is key for Google does it securely safely like figures out what the limitations are for data breaches. Like it's a huge company and has to make sure it's protecting its users. That's why by the way I will trust it. It already has my email. It already has all my stuff. So I'm excited to move over to it. We'll just trust it cuz we've already trusted it. So any vulnerabilities we're already exposed to.
No. Yeah. Of course. I follow this.
