2024 Tech I'm Ready For!

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- New intro.

And there's new tech coming.

I mean, there's always new tech coming,

but what better time to lay it all out

than the beginning of the year

for some of the best stuff we're expecting for 2024?

Now, there was plenty of great tech in 2023:

From smartphones to cameras to VR stuff

to computers and headphones, a bunch of good EVs,

and a bunch of even better EV promises.

But 2024 is looking up.

So these are, to me,

the most interesting new bits of tech stuff

that we can look forward to for this upcoming year.

Actually, right at the beginning of every year

is CES in January, where it's out in Las Vegas.

This year, again, I will not be there in person,

but I will have my eyes on it,

and I will be seeing if there's anything interesting

that sort of bubbles up above the rest of the noise.

I can always count on you guys

to send me that stuff on Twitter if you see anything.

But then also, typically kicking off every year with a bang

is a January Samsung event.

So we're expecting S24 reveal stuff pretty soon.

Also, based on the leaks,

it looks like S24 family is gonna look very similar to S23.

So it'll be curious to see what stuff

they actually do change.

But that's another January thing.

We're about to get that soon.

But the big headliner that appears to be

right around the corner, it feels like, is Apple Vision Pro.

This feels like maybe the most unprecedented Apple launch

in a long time, certainly in my career online.

Just because, you know, love 'em, hate 'em,

Apple is one of the biggest tech companies in the world,

and them doing such a weird launch like this

is pretty fascinating.

So they've shown it on stage,

they did that announcement video.

And they announced it months ahead of time,

but they have not shown a single Apple employee

or executive wearing it even once.

And they've let people actually test this thing out,

including myself many times,

but nobody has been allowed to film themself

using it at all.

And just in general,

there's still a lot of unanswered questions

about how it's going to work,

what it's going to be really good at,

what you're going to want to use it for.

Are you going to have to go into an Apple store

to get custom fit

to actually be able to buy one of these things?

It's just shaping up to be one of the most interesting

new products in a long time.

Now, it's super expensive.

We all know that. 3,500 bucks.

So it's, for sure, not for everyone.

Most people I know don't even plan on getting one,

but it is for those early adopters

who are curious about the VR stuff.

And those who do,

I already know will be very impressed by the pass-through,

which is incredible.

By the immersion and the resolution, which is really good.

By the eye tracking, which is borderline magical.

But also, it feels like it's going to be hard to review

because it doesn't really compete against

any of the other VR headsets.

Like, it is much more expensive than any of the others.

So it doesn't compete against them,

but then also, it feels like, okay, that means

it has no competition, which is kind of weird, too.

It's just, it's fascinating.

I will say if you wanna go back

and watch my initial impressions

after I first tried Apple Vision Pro

the day it got announced, I will link that video below.

That's one thing, you know,

I think this headset is going to be

technically impressive to the people that try it.

But the other half of the story that's completely unwritten

is, what apps are gonna come out for it?

What are the killer features

and the use cases going to turn out to be

that it turns out Apple Vision Pro is really good at?

I had his vision of, like, wearing it on the airplane

and watching a movie,

wearing the headset for a four-hour flight,

but it's also so heavy,

that I don't know if I'd wanna wear it for that long?

And will the battery actually last that long?

There's so many questions, not a lot of answers yet,

so looking forward to that for this year.

But you know what I have almost no doubt about?

I'm calling it now, remember the word "multimodal."

Just for 2024,

this is going to be the year of multimodal AI.

See, we've seen so much of the focus on AI

for these past couple years.

Or, the past two years or so, it feels like a long time.

But it's mainly just been these chatbots, right?

Where they're trained on all this information,

and then you give it a text prompt,

and it gives you a text answer.

So it could generate, you know, some new interesting prompts

or it can summarize something for you

or it can sort of spit out something creative.

But it's text in, text out.

But we are right now at the beginning of starting to see

what's called multimodal AI, which all that really means

is it's more than one different type of medium

input into this AI system.

So it'll be able to understand text or audio

or images or video

and be able to work with that and still give you an output.

So Google got in trouble a couple of days ago

because they faked a video.

And it's still on their YouTube channel.

It's a six-minute video of them

asking their new multimodal Gemini Ultra AI model

a bunch of different questions in a row

about, you know, stuff it sees being put on a table,

drawings.

You know, this guy puts objects in the frame, et cetera,

and it's very conversational about all this stuff.

(cups scraping)

- [Gemini] The cup to the left.

- [Demonstrator] Nice!

- So that was fake.

Or, at least, heavily edited.

But I honestly didn't really care.

The idea, to me, of it actually being that advanced,

it never crossed my mind

that that could be actually realtime.

But the idea,

the idea of being able to feed

your virtual assistant anything,

that, to me, is the leveling up of this AI

that we've been hoping for.

Just being able to give it whatever's in front of you.

Just be able to show it something or type out text

or read it something or whatever,

and all of that still works?

I'm excited for eventually having

a multimodal Google Assistant, whenever that happens.

I also even did a Short recently

about the Meta AI smart glasses.

They have a camera on the front,

but they also have an AI model

in the glasses themselves, in the computer.

And that AI model is now, in an early access program,

multimodal, and so you can look at stuff with the glasses,

and it'll be able to help you with it.

Look, all I'm saying is multimodal AI.

Just remember that word for now.

And that's not even counting all the rest of the stuff

AI is genuinely useful for

that's not even consumer-facing,

from finding patterns in immense amounts of data

to be able to better predict and control wildfires

or to be able to invent new materials or cure diseases.

What a world we live in.

- We truly live in an age of wonders.

- Now, new hardware is always fun, right?

You know, new phones, new tablets,

new computers, all that stuff.

You wanna know something interesting, though,

about last year?

Not a single new iPad was released in 2023.

Makes you think.

Now, the thing about the iPad

is Apple does tend to make a couple occasional,

like, amazing hardware changes to the iPad Pro.

I think the iPad Pro is genuinely one

of the most impressive pieces of hardware tech

that I've ever used.

And then they do that every year or two,

but then at the end of the day you use it,

and it's still an iPad.

So I say this with some hesitation,

but I am actually really looking forward

to seeing the rumored new OLED iPad Pro

in 2024.

That's something we've heard that we might get for a while.

We already have an OLED S8 Ultra.

That tablet is amazing looking,

and I wanna see a super bright OLED display on an iPad.

We'll see if that shows up soon.

But one more interesting design change

we're actually expecting with Apple,

is actually the Watch 10,

the Series 10 10th generation Apple Watch.

All signs are pointing towards

a truly redesigned Apple Watch

for the first time really ever

in this year's Apple Watch 10.

Now, I mean, let's be real:

Apple Watch has looked kind of the same for a long time.

Yes, the Ultra is a little different.

It's a little bigger, a little flatter on the front.

But the Series 9 looks just like a Series 8,

which looks just like a Series 7, Series 6, Series 5.

So they're all the same shape,

other than basically the bezel getting a little bit thinner.

Now, change for the sake of change

isn't really useful on its face,

but I just think the Apple Watch

feels like it actually could use a fresh coat of paint,

just a little design, a little refresh to get up to date

with the Galaxy Watches of the world.

Nice circles. I think it would look nice.

Also, have you heard that the Apple Watch

is, like, dangerously close to being banned in the US?

Which is a whole separate story

maybe worth a whole separate video.

We'll stay tuned on that.

Oh, and RCS on the iPhone.

I'm excited for RCS

to finally come to the iPhone sometime in 2024.

They haven't said when, but Apple's committed to it.

I usually don't root for tech to die,

but I do think it's time to be done with SMS forever.

So, welcome on board.

Now, this one's more general,

but I am actually hoping this year

for some actually interesting smartphones.

I'll put it that way.

Because obviously,

this is probably a little bit of a crazy ask

because smartphones are clearly mature,

and they all are kind of looking the same,

and they improve a little bit every year.

Even the folding ones now

are kind of looking the same as they did the year before.

But I think this is a good ripe time

for a new, maybe mid-range.

It's not gonna be the flagship, the big hitters,

but maybe a mid-range smartphone

to really try something crazy new.

It might be a crazy risky thing, might not happen,

but I'm hoping that we do get

to see something like that in 2024.

And then, also, I've said this before,

but every single year for the next probably 15 years

is going to be the most interesting year

for electric cars yet,

and I don't think 2024 is any exception to that rule.

And, you know, we've got a bunch of really solid EVs

already out there in the world, right?

The most popular new car in the world is an EV,

and there's already some really good ones in North America.

Also, the NACS port has very quickly

gotten a ton of commitments

from pretty much everyone making electric cars.

So basically, Tesla Superchargers

will be available to way more electric cars.

Great.

Now, this year coming up, we already have

Tesla Cybertrucks starting to hit the streets.

That's pretty crazy.

We are also definitely expecting a Model 3

and Model Y refresh very soon, imminently.

I mean, the Model 3 refresh is already out there.

It's shipping in Europe and Asia,

and I think it'll be in the US pretty soon.

Now, stay tuned to the Auto Focus channel

for a look at those.

We also just got a crazy Porsche Taycan refresh

drop a crazy Nurburgring lap time.

So that looks to be a competitor to the Model S Plaid

at the very high end.

But also there should be way more

hopefully more affordable EVs

coming out over the next couple of years.

So all of this,

plus some hybrids that are somewhere in between

for people not ready to go fully electric,

that should all be the most interesting year yet

for Auto Focus stuff.

So I'm excited for that.

And then, of course, there's lots of other tech

that I am hoping to see take strides forward this year.

But also, I wanted to cap this off with some of the videos

that I'm most looking forward to here this year.

So last year, there were 70-plus new videos on this channel,

which were super fun.

And I have this, like, threshold

for what I consider like a certified banger.

Like, when a video...

When people approached me in real life

mentioning one of these videos,

there were a couple that really bubbled to the top,

and those were the Tesla Solar Roof video.

The Tesla Cybertruck, actually.

Apple Vision Pro, for sure.

And the Formula 1 explain video.

Those all popped off.

I really enjoyed the Formula 1 explain video, though,

because obviously, that sport is incredibly high-tech.

But I also think, low-key, there is a lot of other tech

in a lot of other sports that's worth highlighting

that I think would be super fun to make videos about.

Now, some of it is in the sport itself.

Some of it is in the training for the sport,

you might be surprised by.

Some of it is in the broadcast.

Like, you already know about those highlight moments.

Tennis match, you see the ball, the slow-mo camera,

and it hits just, like, on the line,

and you get that replay instantly.

The line of scrimmage in football.

The pitch count and the strike zone in baseball.

There's tons of stuff like that.

My point is I'm probably making sports tech videos in 2024

because I've had a lot of fun with those,

and I happen to be very interested in that.

But then I also wanna do more collaborations in general.

I've had a lot of fun with the "Waveform" podcast.

Which if you haven't already subscribed there,

link below, get subscribed.

But we have guests on there all the time,

which are really fun.

And it highlights how much you can learn

from having conversations with people.

I think my creator conversations are some of my favorites.

But also, just in general

collaborations with people on YouTube.

So if y'all have suggestions for people,

for channels you'd like to see us collaborate with,

definitely leave a comment below

because that's on the high list for me.

And then, there's a few

top-secret projects we've been working on

over here for a while

that are finally going to launch in 2024.

You'll know 'em when you see 'em.

There'll be huge announcements.

Stay tuned here, on Twitter,

and everywhere else for that stuff.

I've included Easter eggs to the two biggest ones

in this video.

They're subtle, but once they're announced, you'll know.

So, yeah, look forward to all that stuff

for the new calendar year.

I'm gonna wrap it up here.

Thanks for watching.

See you in 2024.

Like, starting now.

Peace.