OpenAI Drama, Microsoft Shift, and Retro Tech Appeal

Ryan Purvis: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Digital Workspace Works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host, supported by our producer, Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field, stories from the front lines, the problems they face and how they solve them, the areas they're focused on from technology, people, and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts for the Digital Workspace inner workings.

Heather Bicknell: How are you?

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. Not too bad. Yeah. All good. All good. It's it's been a very chaotic week. How's yours been?

Heather Bicknell: Yeah. I mean, it's a short week here, so.

Ryan Purvis: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You guys have your two holidays now, hey?

Heather Bicknell: Yeah. And then been following the OpenAI story over the last few days. Have you been following the news on that one?

Ryan Purvis: I wouldn't say following. I mean, I've kind of. You know, watch the odd little thing here or a little thing there. But when I say I don't care, I shouldn't be that flippant about it. [00:01:00] But yeah, it just it just feels like one of those. Orchestrated things. That's good. you know, if it was almost any other company in the world, no one would care.

Ryan Purvis: But because it's chat GDP, it's like escalated. Or you'd care for like half an hour, but you wouldn't, you know, it almost looks like a bunch of people had a couldn't sort themselves out. So they find one of them. That's what it looks like. And I don't know what the real story is.

Heather Bicknell: Yeah, well, then they're all going over to Microsoft now. I don't know if you catch that piece where yeah,

Ryan Purvis: I mean, well, I mean, yeah, so I mean, I know that stuff. So let me be a bit more serious about it. So, so what I, what I read initially, which, which is probably the truth is that there's always been this issue and the underlying issue where it's supposed to be a, an open source non commercial business that gets funding to build stuff to make the world better but it's not supposed to make a, not supposed to make a profit out of it.

Ryan Purvis: And as much as that was the plan or intentions that's not been really the plan. There's always been a mode to switch to become a commercial entity [00:02:00] at some point. And I think that's where the, the value clash has come in somewhere and whoever it is. Driving whichever agenda. I don't know.

Ryan Purvis: I mean, that's the part that's hard to figure out. Has caused this this exit and that the exit has ended up with a whole bunch of people going to Microsoft is not surprising because Microsoft is probably the biggest financer at the moment. I mean, they put 10 billion in.

Heather Bicknell: Yeah, it's hard to beat that.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. And I mean, and let's be honest, you know, if they wanted to just hire a whole bunch of people, they got enough money in the bank to pay. Whatever salary they like, there's no, you know, and if such is making the call because he wants to, you could do it, you know, quite quickly. But who's to say it wasn't already a Microsoft business?

Ryan Purvis: You know that, you know, that's kind of the hilarious part is, well, you know, didn't you? Didn't they fund everything? Don't they drive a lot of the R& D anyway? Isn't everything hosted in Azure data centers? Most of it. So, you know, people saying that they can go work for Microsoft is like saying, well, just give you a new badge.

Ryan Purvis: And I'll come [00:03:00] work, you know, so you can still do the same gig, the same job, you know because Microsoft, Microsoft, as an investor, we'd have access to all the source code. So,

Heather Bicknell: yeah, I think they're like 49 percent of the company. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. It's kind of hilarious in that respect. I wouldn't be surprised if, and I'm not going to say it'll happen immediately.

Ryan Purvis: But in a period of time, open AI will just become less and less the brand and become more and more of the Azure thing. That's just, that's, but that was gonna happen anyway. I think that, you know, anyone who didn't think it was gonna happen kind of has missed the movie. Because it's, you know, it's what always happens.

Ryan Purvis: IBM did it for years.

Heather Bicknell: Speaking of, did you, have you seen the BlackBerry movie?

Ryan Purvis: No, the BlackBerry movie?

Heather Bicknell: Yeah, I think it's fairly new. I watched it on the plane a couple of weeks ago. It is, I really recommend it because there's like big power moves just reminded me of some of the moments in the BlackBerry story, like when they were.

Heather Bicknell: They had this like telecoms problem. I forget [00:04:00] the exact problem. I think they were trying to like shrink the data packets or, or they were trying to reprogram the Verizon towers to, I can't quite remember what technical problem they were going to solve, but they realized the engineers they had started with and bootstrapped with didn't have that expertise.

Heather Bicknell: So they were going out and poaching from Google and Microsoft and, like all the big tech and video game companies to find these like niche experts which is like part of what eventually got them in some hot water because they were doing some funny business with the contracts. But, yeah, anyway, incredible movie, and I can't wait to watch the open AI Microsoft story one day, should it be I don't know if I'll ever get to see that one because, you know, Blackberry, I think obviously kind of losing it's not, not being a big time company anymore means that we get to see behind the curtain, probably a little bit more.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, I

Ryan Purvis: am. I haven't. I haven't seen it, but it's definitely what I would want to look at. Because if I [00:05:00] remember correctly they bought Nokia. Oh, sorry, man. You have a blackberry. I was thinking about Nokia as you were talking. That's why I was trying to rationalize in my head. No, I'll have to, I'll have to go reset my brain on that one now, because I was, because I was thinking about Microsoft buying Nokia and basically just switching it off.

Ryan Purvis: Which was really the worst thing they could have done. But that's not the same thing.

Heather Bicknell: Oh, there's

Heather Bicknell: the Microsoft phone. That's a whole other, or the windows phone. What

Heather Bicknell: was it called?

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was kind of where I was going. it was like the whole, Microsoft phone piece, which they really missed the opportunity to, to establish themselves in that market.

Ryan Purvis: You know, because it was really at that point, Blackberry, sorry, it wasn't Blackberry, it was, it was Android and iOS that were established themselves. Blackberry was still in there, but it really owned the enterprise market because no one really believed that the iOS stuff was secure enough because you couldn't put anything else on there because of obviously the proprietary lockdown that they have.

Ryan Purvis: I remember when I was a J. P. Mormon, you know, to get it to get an apple phone [00:06:00] instead of a blackberry was a huge achievement, like for the bureaucracy and the red tape and whatever, and most guys actually just bought a personal one and we use the product called Good. Which was a secure email client but I mean, going back to sort of the Blackberry, I mean, I, and I had a Blackberry for the whole time I was at JPMorgan.

Ryan Purvis: I actually think it was one of the reasons I was so depressed. Cause it was just a terrible device. I don't, I don't get the, a lot of people say, Oh, but you have a keyboard. That was the best part. I was like, yeah, but you couldn't do anything else. You know, you, you couldn't listen to music. You couldn't watch movies.

Ryan Purvis: You could, you know, the iPhone one, two, and three. Even in those days, it was a great experience device, you know, I couldn't listen to podcasts. I tried to carry another device to listen to podcasts because the BlackBerry was just so locked down and so, so functional that it wasn't, it wasn't a great experience.

Ryan Purvis: So

Heather Bicknell: did you have, or did you deploy that kind of final BlackBerry version where they ripped off the iPhone and it was a screen? I forget what it's called, but that's part of the movie. culminates.

Ryan Purvis: [00:07:00] No, no, no. I had, I think I had a curve too. I think that was the last one I had. And I, and I think I left JVNC to go to JLL at that time.

Ryan Purvis: And I mean, and I literally, the minute I left, I got, I got on my phone.

Heather Bicknell: You need to watch this movie. I think you have a whole different appreciation for it.

Ryan Purvis: No, no, no,

Ryan Purvis: don't get me wrong. I mean, I always respected what they did and always respected the tech and stuff. Like I kept saying to my boss at the time, I think, or someone.

Ryan Purvis: For what I do, I'm sending emails internally. I'm not a trader. I'm not a banker. You know, I am, I'm talking about, you know, building an internal tool. it's not a security related thing. To that extent, like I'm not, dealing with client data. I'm not dealing, you know, any of that sort of stuff.

Ryan Purvis: So I should have had that because we had this protected app, you know, good. We, we should have been able to just have our personal device. And do it and use it. And I mean, they relaxed a little bit over time and I think just became a, like a trust and a confidence thing around the, the platforms. You know, if you think back to those days, I mean, you had BlackBerry, Android didn't [00:08:00] exist yet.

Ryan Purvis: iOS had just come out. So you had the iPhone one, one and a half, I think was the second one. And then the first Android sort of coming out. And at that point you had Microsoft phone, which I actually used a Microsoft phone for about, I got given one, actually I had one for about eight months that I played with.

Ryan Purvis: And it was actually very quirky. I'm trying to remember, like, there was little things that they did differently. Like, they really used the gesturing thing a lot. So you could, like, swipe up, swipe down, left, right. And those were tiles. Like, very much like the Windows 8.

Heather Bicknell: Windows 8, yeah. My boyfriend had one, so I remember.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, so it was that, and that was on Nokia. But I remember, , I think I had the iPhone at the same time. And the iPhone was just so much simpler to use. And I was trying to work out where Microsoft was going, even at that point, like, where are you going to go with this phone? Like, this, this phone is just not intuitive, by any means.

Heather Bicknell: People hated Windows 8 too, so it's kind of like doubling down on another thing that people couldn't get into.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, well, look, I never used Windows 8, thank God. I think I looked at it for one day. And I was like, no, I'll stay in Windows seven. And [00:09:00] Windows seven still to this day, I think, is the best operating system.

Ryan Purvis: Just fundamentally the best one. I bought my son a laptop now with Windows 10 on Windows 11. I'm actually scared to open it. the anxiety that I've got coursing through my body when I think of working on Windows again. So, so yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting prospect because, you know, all his, all his school stuff is all browser based, but he's really into a game called Farm Simulator.

Ryan Purvis: And he watches this kid and his dad play it on YouTube for hours. I say hours, he watches like half an hour because he's on strict limits. But You know, the, the thing that, fascinates me is it's supposed to be a farm simulator, but they don't do any farming. They basically drive around this 3D realm and they just pull up to like locations and find new cars to go and drive.

Ryan Purvis: There's like no farming at all. It's just the most bizarre. I mean, I sat with them the one Saturday watching and I was like so CJ, do they ever actually farm? And he's like, no, they find this car, then they, then they try and ramp it and like, you can ramp and crash and you never get [00:10:00] it. You never destroy the vehicle.

Ryan Purvis: So, you know, you just keep on going and going and going. And yeah, it's just a weird, a weird thing. Anyway, we digress, but I just thought it was quite a quite a funny scenario.

Heather Bicknell: I think I've seen some clips of that. I think there's different simulators, but yeah. That's funny. Well, so that's the, I guess that's the tech drama, the tech tea today. That's what everyone's been talking about. It's always, it's, it's so funny because I feel like the what everyone's been talking about has just been generative AI, a lot of which centers around open GPT.

Heather Bicknell: So this is like a new thing to talk about, but it's still about them. So it's definitely still feels like the center of the universe right now. At least in, you know, tech.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, and I think there's a I mean, that's why, that's why I say I think it's exploded because, you know, everyone's talking about ChatDB almost every day still.

Ryan Purvis: I mean, you could, and there's, hundreds of tools out there. I mean, I wonder how many of these tools are really unique, as opposed to just white labels of, the ChatsDB stuff. Because, you know, even when we were looking to incorporate it in our product I looked at a few other ones. And when [00:11:00] I started really looking at them, I was like, but this is actually not much different.

Ryan Purvis: And the price is going to be much more expensive because they don't have the The backing to carry on and you start making the decision like which ai should I back because which I will survive But we'll survive for long enough us to do a bit But in the end it becomes just a service for us. We just you know, we pass the stuff we want We get the answer back.

Ryan Purvis: So it is a bit of a black box in some respects, but you know You you kind of want that because you don't really want to Like, especially as a startup, you don't really want to invest a hell of a lot in the technology if it's already becoming commonplace. Like a recommendation service.

Ryan Purvis: There's, there's no need to go and build a recommendation service because Microsoft provides a really good one. And you can tailor and customize it and all the rest of it. So there's no need to build one of those. But the stuff we've built, we have built some stuff that I haven't seen a good one of.

Ryan Purvis: So, you know, in that respect, I think we've made a good decision.

[But]

Ryan Purvis: In 10 years time, even less probably, a lot of the [00:12:00] stuff that you'd go build from scratch will probably exist because it'll just be, it'll just be generated. mean, what, what's what's happening on the Northern side of the, of the pond? Are you seeing much activity on, any self driving cars around or anything like

Ryan Purvis: that?

Heather Bicknell: Well, the city I live in actually has a self driving like test area on campus. So it is a thing here. There's like a community around it, and I think there are a couple that.

Heather Bicknell: Roam the streets, but they might still have a, a person in them. So they're around not a huge thing.

Heather Bicknell: I can't not sure what else is just kind of going on. I think things are slowing down a little bit generally, or it's getting into the holidays or just in the holidays for the rest of the year. I can't believe. How things have flown this year, still kind of feels like we just started, but here we are.

Ryan Purvis: It definitely has gone quick this year. I mean, we've noticed that from my wife's been in South Africa now for three weeks and even that's gone quickly. Like when she, from when she left, it was like, [00:13:00] Oh, well, you know, be mine for two weeks. It's gonna be so long, but it's actually gone so quickly.

Ryan Purvis: Now she's, coming back now this weekend. And I mean, then we're into December, like it's not even, not even blinking in December, which is just crazy.

Heather Bicknell: Yeah.

Ryan Purvis: I wonder what the gadget of choice would be for Christmas.

Heather Bicknell: Hmm.

Heather Bicknell: That's a good question. I mean, I don't think I've seen anything really radically different. I'm sure someone like Wired or The Verge has a list out there. Latest, latest phones, latest watches.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, but do you, I mean, I mean, I don't know what your feelings are, but like for me to go buy another phone right now, I just, I don't need one.

Ryan Purvis: I mean, the only thing I'm really interested in is getting rid of all my different cables. So, I don't even know if the iPhone 15 has got the USB C on it. I meant to look at that actually the other day.

Heather Bicknell: Yeah, I'm not sure.

Ryan Purvis: Let's see what it says. Because, I mean, my phone's fine. I mean, the battery's not great, but I'm at home all the time.

Ryan Purvis: You know, so it's just going to really survive. Like when I go to gym and back, I'll go for a walk, like I walk to the high street or something like that. But you know, that's, I mean, I definitely notice like [00:14:00] if I go out during the day, like I take the kids out and I was in the weekends, my battery's dead.

Ryan Purvis: If I don't charge it in the car while we're driving, it's like, we still like, it's like 50 percent by two hours later. Okay. Yes. I'll use it while I'm at gym to listen to music and stuff, but it really doesn't last. So you're constantly charging it. But other than that, the phone still works, you know, fairly quickly.

Heather Bicknell: Battery replacements aren't that expensive, I don't think, if you just wanted to do, well,

Ryan Purvis: just do a battery upgrade?

Heather Bicknell: yeah,

Ryan Purvis: well, you see, that's, yeah, because that's the thing, is it, I mean, if you, because I was thinking about replacing, because I get an upgrade every, every year on my contract, and then I was thinking, well, now, if I go ahead and change the phone, then I'm going to have to go and change all my adapters, so I've got like this cute quad lock that I use in the front of my desk, and and, and that, you know, it's helpful because I can just put the phone in front of me on its on its side.

Ryan Purvis: And now if you got this, if you got on its side and you lock the screen, then you got a display, it'll give you the, your calendar. You can see your agenda, which I find quite useful because I don't have to go and find Outlook and open Outlook to have a look. [00:15:00] But yeah, okay. So this, so this new one has got the USB C, so that's probably the only reason I'd upgrade, which is such a stupid thing, but that's probably

Ryan Purvis: the only reason.

Heather Bicknell: Phones are all the same anymore that I kind of, the Blackberry movie gave me a little bit of nostalgia for that form factor difference.

Ryan Purvis: Well, well that, yeah, cause that was the thing is that you really you know, you were upgrading cause you wanted whatever it was, you know, it had better, okay, obviously it's better chip still.

Ryan Purvis: That's still, they still coming in and all that stuff, but like, there was that thing that you needed. There was NFC, there was you know, where they went away from having the headphone jack making them waterproof water resistant. You know, there's more AI stuff built in on the edge now, which is obviously relevant, but you know, I don't think there's much difference between my 13 and the 15 from that point of view, like that.

Ryan Purvis: I would actually care, you know, unless this unless you're going to have the what do you call that? The, headset

Heather Bicknell: The Maxis,

Heather Bicknell: the AirPod Max, or the

Ryan Purvis: Apple, the Apple AR, AR VR headset.

Heather Bicknell: Oh

Heather Bicknell: Vision Pro.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, so, so that might rely on a better phone, [00:16:00] but again, do you really need it? So, I mean, it's just, yeah, I mean, I know you can get a plan with Apple where you pay, I think it's 60 pounds a month or 50 pounds a month, and you can just replace your phone at any time.

Ryan Purvis: Let's get the new one, just trade in. Which sounds like not a bad deal, but actually if you do the math, it's a pretty bad deal for you. But it's, if you're one of those people that always has to have the latest phone. Then, yeah, it makes it makes sense. But that's more of it. It's not a need. That's a that's a want.

Heather Bicknell: No,

Heather Bicknell: for sure. I think last time we spoke, you said something about Apple devices. They last a long time, but when they fail, they sort of fail quickly and spectacularly. So that that rings true for my experience. And I think it's happening to my laptop and I don't want to admit it because I just don't want to. Go out and do the research and get a new one for it. I mean, and it'll be mostly the same, but just a newer experience.

Ryan Purvis: Well, look, I mean, so, I mean, I had the when you were in South Africa, last time I bought the MacBook Air M1's, my wife [00:17:00] and I, and at that stage, I had a MacBook Pro as well.

Ryan Purvis: that work gave me. So I didn't need the MacBook Air, so I got rid of it. And then when I left them and I needed a computer, I just used my wife's one because she wasn't using it. She's still not using it, just sit on her desk. But I noticed very quickly that the M1 Air was not good enough. Like for what I do.

Ryan Purvis: So I had to take the, plunge and buy the, the M two Pro. But I haven't looked back, to be honest. My biggest issue right now is screen real estate. So I really want to get like one of those nice curvy screens that fills the whole thing. 'cause right now I've got two of them between my and my laptops in the middle.

Ryan Purvis: And it's fine. It works. But I've had to because of the width of the arms that I've got for the screens, I can't I could just fit the MacBook Pro in the middle, but it's not good. Like you can't get the angles right and the screens don't flow. So I had to turn one screen screen vertical and the other screen horizontal, which is fine.

Ryan Purvis: Generally, especially looking at like a long web page. But what I find with this is where Windows has got a [00:18:00] plus on on Mac and even with some of the apps I've got to try and mimic this. When you drag something on Windows into a screen and it locks in and it docks and then it fills the screen, it does that so well.

Ryan Purvis: We used it, so I don't know if it still does. But when you do it on a Mac, and I use it, I'm using an app called Magnet, and I drag something, it gets confused. It doesn't know where to actually put the block. So all I want to do is take my, like I've got Teams now, I want to drag it across to my, my vertical screen, hit on the top, and then expand to fill the whole thing.

Ryan Purvis: But I've got to fiddle with it every time. And then if I'm using like Outlook, for example, and Outlook it just. Blows my mind. If I drag Outlook into my vertical screen, it will not lock and dock to that corner. I get like half of it in the vertical and the other half on my actual laptop screen.

Ryan Purvis: So you can't actually use it because it doesn't know how to, the way they've built it, it's almost like they've hard coded the width of things inside the windows. You can't change them. So I'm stuck having to put Outlook on one of my bigger [00:19:00] screens. And what I really want from Outlook is to look at my mail.

Ryan Purvis: So I end up using the Mac mail as well. That creates a synchronization issue. So it's just those little things that you think you could, you know, what all it ends up is you keep buying more stuff. Yeah, so more usability issues. So I'm resisting. And I'm trying to do other things. I'm trying to use my iPad for email sometimes.

Ryan Purvis: And that's why they're having the phone in front of me is actually quite useful because I could turn it really quick and I can see my agenda and then I kind of ignore my email till I'm bored. I've run out of steam and then I need to do something. Something else to change the pace and then I go through email.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, you know, works.

Heather Bicknell: I'm just imagining your, your setup here with all of the various devices.

Heather Bicknell: Inspector gadget,

Ryan Purvis: you know, I think, I think some of this is boredom, like, I wouldn't

Ryan Purvis: say boredom, but like, you know, we're so busy with work stuff, like whatever, that you almost need, you need a distraction. So you start inventing problems to solve, to avoid doing the piece of work you have to do.

Heather Bicknell: It's [00:20:00] like, ah, I need to optimize my workspace.

Heather Bicknell: Yeah.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. So, you know, I put up whiteboards, now I need you know, whatever else it is. But it's quite funny with all the tools that I have digitally, I still go back to a whiteboard and a pen and paper.

Heather Bicknell: I feel that I have a pen and paper next to me. Now got to take notes and it's time though. Yeah. I'm sure you need to go. Bye.

Ryan Purvis: Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Beckner is our producer editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode, please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes at the Google Play Store.

Ryan Purvis: Follow us on Twitter at the Dww Podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website, www.digitalworkspace.works. Please also visit our website, www.digitalworkspace.works. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.