AppleVis Extra 99: Inside the AppleVis Acquisition; A Conversation with Be My Eyes

In this AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville engage in a discussion with Bryan Bashin and Hans Jørgen Wiberg from Be My Eyes about the acquisition of AppleVis. They tackle the tough questions, explore how Be My Eyes came to acquire AppleVis, and share insights into the experiences of the AppleVis Editorial Team before and after the acquisition.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Hello there and welcome to the AppleVis Extra podcast, the first AppleBiz Extra podcast of the new era.

We wondered if we would have another one and we do.

We are so excited.

My name is Dave Nason and I'm joined as so often by Thomas Domville , also known as Anonymous Thomas.

How are you my friends?

Oh boy, that's a loaded question to come in.

How am I doing?

Well, you know, I'm ecstatic, I'm excited.

Gosh, what a whirlwind of emotion and whiplash that we have all gone through, right?

It's been a roller coaster, I think it's fair to say over the last, it hasn't only been a month because it feels like about three years.

Right.

It does feel like it's been going on for years, that's how much impact this has had on us, hasn't it?

It really has.

So I suppose for those who kind of maybe aren't sure, what happens?

And you know, we don't need to go into the absolute weeds, but kind of what happened on a high level in terms of, you know, getting to a point where Appleviz appears to be shutting down.

You know, yeah, let's start from the beginning.

So everybody will be on the same level as we are because we have had a lot of questions, a lot of critiques and I understand because I completely understand, we were in the same boat with you guys.

So what happened, guys?

Let's back up all the way to July.

This is when it all came down, was July 3rd.

I remember that specifically, it's right the day before America's Independence Day.

And we woke up with a bombshell of a news from David and, you know, David mentioned in there, he has talked about the first or thought about it for several months and a lot of people have asked us, we had several months, how come you haven't done anything during that time and to be quite fair to the editorial team is that no, we had zero idea, we had no idea.

It was just like we woke up and this bombshell was set.

And I think I can say it was so dramatic.

I will say that first two days just was a blur because I was still trying to digest and process like what in God's name is that mean for all of us in the community and everything.

But of course, the most important thing out of this whole thing was that David has reached a limit that he spent so much of his personal life into.

And so it was so understandable.

I completely understand where he was coming from.

I completely understand why he made that decision and why we're trying to process all this.

We were trying to figure out as a team what to do.

We had a meeting that weekend that we talked about the team and the steps that we wanted to take.

And during that meeting, David Goodwin was with us and he was very ill at that time.

We had no idea how ill he was, but he understood everything that what we wanted to do or it seemed like it was.

And then two days after that, he just kind of like disappeared from the face of the earth and none of us had any control of the site.

And it was like an airplane with a pilot without a pilot.

And we were just passenger all together, the users and us.

And it turned out that his wife contacted us to let us know that he was put into ICU.

He was in critical condition.

We did not know anything beyond that.

We had no idea why or what his prognosis was or anything.

And I guess we came to later learn that it was so dire that the doctors and nurses did not expect him to live.

That's how bad it was.

And so when we heard about that, again, we went through this process of grief.

And just for David and his family going through this whole process, David woke up from a comatose eight days later and even at that point, he still was not himself.

I think it was even about a week after that before they let him out.

And even at that point, he was still not David.

He still had lingering effects and the expectation was that it will take two or three months for him to recover.

They didn't do not know and still don't know if he will cover fully.

We do know that he lost the sense of his hands and it was just completely painful for him to use his hands.

So that just complicated things so much with that.

And I felt so horrible for him and he still has some lingering effects.

Thankfully, some of the feelings come back, but they're thinking that whatever he had also called permanent nerve damage to his finger.

So not something that we all want to hear.

Gosh, I don't know about you, Dave, but during that month, while we were waiting for Dave to recover and to get some access to the website, we really couldn't make any decision at that point when nobody had any access to anything.

So yeah, we had about a month, but we couldn't reach out to anybody, saying, hey, could you help us here?

And nothing like that, because I don't know about you, Dave, but I spent many nice powerless nights just wide awake, just worrying about everything and what we were going to do.

That's it.

We were worried about David first and foremost, and then also knowing that this website was sitting here and we couldn't make decisions on its future because we didn't know how we would be able to carry out those actions even if we wanted to.

So yeah, it was a very, very difficult few weeks.

And I think when he did, when he did wake up and he's on about recovery, thankfully, but obviously that only served to be in force, his knowledge that he needed to move on from this.

So an announcement at that point, so yeah, it was a tough loop.

Right.

And I know that David does not, he doesn't recall anything during that time.

When we had the meeting, he didn't recall that meeting at all.

He doesn't remember going to the hospital, nothing.

It was that substantial of an impact.

And it took a good full three weeks after that before David was able to be able to give us access to most of the things, not everything, but he started slowly, but surely got things back in order.

And then at that time we felt that it was time to make a decision.

This is where the hard part comes.

And as everybody heard here is that we're all volunteers, almost everybody on this staff has a full-time job, okay?

So you got to understand that as much as we wanted to take AppleViz on ourselves, nobody on the team had any technical know-how and even if we did, those with full-time still love their full-time job and they would be losing their financial livelihood because that was their only paid way to live on their own and things like that.

And so we couldn't do it.

I mean, that was just the bottom line.

We just couldn't do it.

And we had to make a decision at that point to figure out what are we going to do right now?

So at that point we decided that we would put the, David would put his notice out and put everything in read only.

The reason we did that was several fold is that one, again, none of us really had the time like what David did and to be able to keep that open for another month.

And not only that, but David was in no condition still to be able to be able to handle if something were to occur.

So we felt like a stable at the moment, let's just do this.

And you know, David has his farewell.

We thought for ourselves, I'll be honest, there's been times in there.

I thought it was, it was done, it was closed.

We have had so many well-wishes and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the team does too for all the well-wishes and the lows.

And that was so uplifting on a time of, we were just so down, depressed and we were riding the wave with you guys.

We were just as shocked as you guys were.

We were in the boats with you.

It was just a matter of the six of us to figure out what to do at this point.

And I have had so many people step up and wanted to volunteer and help out in every way they can.

And I'm so grateful that those people did, but we just felt like it wasn't that we needed more volunteers.

It was, the question was how do we prevent this to happen ever again?

And even if we had volunteers, you know, we, I couldn't guarantee, we couldn't guarantee that this site will keep going.

And even if we had the technical know-how, what if something happened to them?

We'd be back in the same boat.

So we just felt like there, this is a giant complicated machinery that AppleViz is.

And I think people thought there were some people, hey, I know HTML, I know how to code and it's like, we were so grateful that people do want to do that, but it's so much more than that.

There are so many components and major stuff and we used something called Drupal and there's their learning curve to do that, all that, and we didn't feel like...

It needs to be organized, coordinated and it can't simply be just a couple of volunteers going, I can do a few hours of helping with the technical stuff.

We really knew we needed, if it was going to be rescued, it needed to be very coordinated, very organized to be sustainable.

And it wasn't just a technical know-how, like Dave said, it was who's going to moderate, who was going to make sure everything was going while we were working.

And I refer this as to a couple of people, AppleViz is like a convenience store.

It's open 24-7, to make that convenience store run, it has to be a team of people.

And there's clerks that check people out, there's people that restock things, there's people that clean up things, there's people in the kitchen, kitchen, cooking things.

That is the editorial team and it isn't that one person did everything, it's just that we all had our unique position in that.

And to leave David, that was a major hole and a void that was going to be difficult.

Now I will say that we have had a few potential people that have reached out.

Other than the wonderful Be My Eyes team, I will bring them in in a moment, I thought I'd give recognition to others.

I'm not going to mention their names or the organization, but there have been several folks that have come up and I think that was so awesome.

We saw some glimmer of light, but there were some a lot of unanswered questions and it was going to be tough negotiation because we set a high bar that had to be set before we were satisfied.

And for one reason or another, that didn't get met in one terms or another.

And I think we'll bring, we have Brian Bashan, his vice chair of Be My Eyes and Hans Weiberg, who is the founder of Be My Eyes, coming on shortly and we'll kind of discuss it from their point of view.

But from our point of view, it was also that we really felt Be My Eyes was a really good fit in terms of values and everything, you know, it just, it felt like a good fit from our point of view.

I think it's fair to say.

Right.

And you know, there was, there was about, it was at least two weeks of negotiation as I've been going back and forth talking and making sure that we were on the same boat and making sure that we were the right fit, that they were the right fit for each.

And you know, everything just came to place and it was just becoming more reality, more real and real.

And it's like, Oh my gosh, is this really going to happen?

And they have just literally been over backwards.

And I think what, I think what I think that keeled over the team is that they were willing to pay a couple of members to be on that team to make sure, ensure the stability and maintain what AppleViz has been.

And I think that only helped dramatically.

But so many things fell in place and we had to go through a lot of legality issues.

There were copyright issues that we have had out there that I think it was bigger than a lot of people understand.

This was not something that we could just give a content to anybody else.

Because legally we could have been sued or and other means because those people gave those forms and those guys, those tutorials, those podcasts for AppleViz and AppleViz only.

And yes, the reality is there and it's very real, but we went through the legal issues with them.

We had a lawyer in-house that helped us hammered everything else.

We got paperwork, we got, we were able to transfer power over without any issues.

So we wouldn't have to ever worry about that future because when we hand the torch over to Be My Eyes, we didn't want to be in that boat.

And we also want to make sure that we have such a stable environment.

Yeah, absolutely.

So Be My Eyes for clarity, I suppose they've acquired the brand, the website and the content.

So, from David Good and David, the owner.

So it's all, it's all above board and it's all done correctly.

And that was obviously, you know, an important part.

And in terms of the structure, I suppose what you mentioned paid members and think that's crucial that there are going to be some paid members, but they are still members of the team.

They're still blind people.

So AppleViz is still being run.

There is still continuity.

There's a mix now of paid and volunteers, but it's all, you know, there is continuity there and it is still, you know, AppleViz.com that you knew before and the same people, you know, involve same editorial team, you know, bar David Goodwin himself, nobody has left the editorial team.

We're all still in it.

We're all still super committed.

Definitely.

We're all still super committed, all of us.

We're still together.

We're going to stay here.

And so the next segment that we got coming up, as Dave said, we brought in two folks from the Be My Eyes to face some of the difficult questions that we had for them and hopefully to answer a lot of your questions that you had during this process.

So we are delighted to be joined here on the AppleViz Extra by Brian Bastion and Hans Weiberg from Be My Eyes.

Guys, thanks so much for joining us today.

So great to be here.

I suppose what we want to do is by having this interview, we're delighted to kind of have you guys on to give the Be My Eyes perspective, because we could talk about, you know, what the month has been like from the AppleViz side, but to get you guys perspective as well on, you know, what Be My Eyes is all about and why Be My Eyes wanted to partner with AppleViz.

Can you start by maybe telling us just a bit about Be My Eyes for the uninitiated?

What is Be My Eyes?

What's its background?

Yes, thank you so much and Be My Eyes, this is not really about Be My Eyes.

This is all about AppleViz, but now that you're asking, I'll do it anyway.

And Be My Eyes is an app where you as a blind or low vision person can get visually assistance.

You can do that in a number of different ways.

You can download the Be My Eyes app and tap one button and then we can connect you to a volunteer in a live video call where you can ask pretty much anything in your own language.

Be My Eyes is international.

I'm from Denmark, so I like to get my volunteer in Danish.

So I select Danish and we have 185 different languages you can choose from.

And so that's one way to use Be My Eyes.

You simply make kind of a video call.

And another way that is hugely interesting these days is Be My AI, where you simply open the same app, but go into the Be My AI section and you take a photo and you get a very detailed description back and allow me to brag a little bit.

Right now we are doing one photo, eight seconds around the clock, meaning 88,000 images per day.

That was pretty amazing, I think.

So this has really taken off and people like to do that.

And for Be My Eyes, it's not really important.

You can use one or the other version.

And then of course, Be My Eyes is also the phase where you can get connected to companies like Microsoft and Google, Spotify, LinkedIn, and a number of other companies.

If you have an issue with one of their services or product, then you could call them there.

Support line directly through the Be My Eyes.

So that's kind of a short version of what Be My Eyes is.

I'm blind myself.

Blind is also blind.

So we are part of the community.

Amazing.

And I'd say only half of those 88,000 photos are me.

So I use this app every day.

So I was addicted to say like this.

The app has been a beloved app in the community and even more so over the last year or so.

Oh, no doubt.

It's been phenomenal.

That's some phenomenal facts there that just tells you how huge that is.

So here's the big question a lot of people have to ask you guys.

And so what is the motivation when the reasoning behind Be My Eyes wanted to help out Apple Viz and wanted to do an acquisition of Apple Viz?

What was the catalyst for say that caused this whole thing to work for us?

The motivation was pain and grief.

As Hans said, I'm a blind guy too, and I've used Apple Viz for many, many years.

Every time I got stuck, every time I wanted to see whether there was a way, every time I needed a tutorial or whatever, you know, there is no more authoritative place to go.

And if there's not an app, an answer on Apple Viz, it probably doesn't exist.

So so many of my colleagues, mentors, people who are even more technical than I am would go to Apple Viz and there was such an outcry, like, oh my God, this 14 year project that we've all come to depend on is going away and in weeks.

And I started looking at my phone and seeing how many podcasts I had saved on there and all of that.

So I started asking around, as did so many people in the community, who can save this?

You know, and I did talk to large organizations and other organizations and nobody was really able to actually act or execute on this.

And when I brought it to the leadership of Be My Eyes, everybody understood the importance of this.

And we saw a natural resonance.

I mean, here's a group in Apple Viz, it's all free.

Everything to the consumer is free for Be My Eyes.

We aspire to be international, even far more than we are already with nearly three quarters of a million users, we want to go to five million and still more countries.

Apple Viz could really benefit from even larger audiences.

And then finally, we are blind centered, blind positive in key aspects, blind led, all of us.

And there's a natural sort of high aspiration for quality done by blind people for blind people.

So it was not a hard sell, and then it was just a question of resources and execution.

I wonder if Hans would add to that.

I would like to add that reading the comments was pretty amazing.

And what I really noticed was that so, so many wrote about how they were using Apple Viz in the very beginning of being blind or low vision.

So we also talked about, okay, in order to use Be My Eyes, you need to be able to use your smartphone.

So we better save Apple Viz and keep it around, because otherwise people will not be able to use Be My Eyes, so there's also kind of a self interest in that way.

But being the resource that people go to, not only the people, the blind and low vision, but also the instructors who are getting questions from their clients, so to speak, about how do I do this and so on.

And then they go into Apple Viz and find the answer, and then they can provide that answer to the people they are teaching how to use their smartphone and so on.

So it is hugely important for the whole community that we have a place to go and find this information.

So I totally agree with Brian that it was a very, I think we were pretty much all of us thinking the same thing when we read about it, we've got to do something about this.

And then Brian looked into is somebody else doing anything, and then we kind of got in contact with David Goodwin, and yeah, we had some wonderful conversations where we felt we were very much aligned and so on.

And I'm very honored that we can play a little role in keeping Apple Viz up and running and so on.

So I'm really excited about this.

So yeah.

Yeah, I still remember clearly the first call where we all were on, and I think we fairly quickly established that we were quite well aligned, is that fair to say?

Yeah, it really seems like we're part of that extended, ambitious blind family that just wants to do the best we can.

Absolutely.

And I mean, I did see one or two comments online.

Maybe they'd say, is it a bad thing of us that Apple always needed what they might refer to as outside help, that it's not the blind community helping itself by having this acquisition.

So in fact, Be My Eyes is, I would say that Be My Eyes is, you know, it's founded by a blind person.

Brian, you're a vice chair, you know, you're blind.

So it actually is an organization of the blind as well, although there are sighted people employed there as well, but it is very much based in the community.

I think it would do.

Oh yeah, 10 years, I was going to say 10 years of being responsive.

Yeah, you know, Hans, I don't think people know this, but Hans and a couple others directly answer all of the thousands and thousands of queries, bugs, aspirations, product requests.

So to do that for a decade gives you such a grounding on what blind people want and what are the challenges.

Yeah, it's remarkable that, you know, I even learned new things.

I had no idea that there were those that are blind within the Be My Eyes.

So it's always great to hear that.

And I think that, you know, the community are probably in the same boat, but now that we have learned that we are being led for those in this acquisition that are blind as well.

So, you know, it's always good to be on a roof of a company because some people have some issues thinking that we did go through some negotiations and I'll have you guys explain but some people have some concerns, what kind of a direct line or influence will they have with AppleVis from this point on.

So will there be any guideline from Be My Eyes being on top of what we say and what we do on AppleVis?

You know, as a former journalist, I take editorial independence very seriously.

And after 14 years, AppleVis knows what it's doing.

AppleVis has an ethic and a standard and it's not going to count out to Apple or anybody else.

Its value is its independence.

So we won't be meddling in editorial decisions, going to urging somebody to go easy on this or go hard on that.

We will have no role in that at all.

And as part of that, we retain the entire AppleVis editorial team.

They will continue as before, although with some more stability and support.

So I'm very proud of that.

And I think just as we at Be My Eyes get to follow our own lights in terms of products and services that we think are best for the visual interpretation community, we know that AppleVis has its own light about what to do in the realm of what it does.

And that includes anything like I had specific users asking about what if they want to do criticism against Be My Eyes about them or the app itself?

I love that our tech team at Be My Eyes gets some fresh critiques and new independent questions about it.

It has helped us in the past and the day that a company starts ignoring its customers is a bad day for all.

So we're not afraid of this.

This is normal.

I think that's great to hear, I think, and it's something we definitely discussed quite a lot on our early call, especially, you know, and even, you know, whether it's criticism or Be My Eyes or praise for other apps in a similar area that, you know, Be My Eyes isn't going to try and get in the way of any of that.

And I think that's really important.

And like I say, we've developed a culture and we've developed that way of working over the years as well, and that independence.

So it's fantastic that we get to keep that.

You know, I think criticism and feedbacks, I think that's what makes it stronger.

And I can think that, I know it does for Appleviz, I certainly think it would be for Be My Eyes is that without any criticism, you know something's wrong, right?

It's like nothing's perfect.

So that's how we thrive and make things better.

How do we do this better?

How we do that better, is this better for, you know, and I think that's an awesome answer that Brian has mentioned is that we want you to.

If you do have some thoughts or complaints, then please do because we want to know.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I work in the customer experience field in my day job.

We always say, you know, complaints are actually gold, you know, because that's the place are your customers telling you what they want.

So yeah, definitely very weird.

And one thing I suppose, you know, Be My Eyes is an organization that's built on volunteerism to a large extent.

I mean, is it seven million sighted volunteers now, something like that?

Appleviz obviously hasn't run by volunteers for all these years.

So it's good kind of dynamic there, but there are now going to be paid team members as well.

Can you explain what that's all about?

Why are there, why are the paid team members now?

Yeah.

Well, first a note about the volunteerism, I mean, I have come to learn as I've come to know the Appleviz team, what an extraordinary amount.

This isn't casual volunteering.

I mean, Dave, Thomas, you guys are on the site every day, 365 for years, or I think a decade.

I mean, who does that except somebody who's just like so committed to the field and so committed to excellence?

And you did that all as volunteers forever.

We need now in any organization, we need just to be sure that as Appleviz liaisons with Be My Eyes, there's somebody that we know will be there, that will be accountable to say, all right, what do you need to buy?

What are the services we need to purchase?

How can we maybe be more strategic in growth because we both want growth.

And that's why we wanted to do that.

Also the jobs of say moderation are serious and demanding and sometimes emotional jobs.

We want somebody to stick with it and give the stability that that needs as well.

So we can make sure that the forums and things posted are respectful, but honest.

You know, we will not tolerate personal negativity, hate speech, all of that.

There's been just a small amount of that, just a few people, but that's a, you know, we have been, what's the word, gentlemanly at Be My Eyes and Appleviz, the same thing, we want that to continue.

Yeah, that's good.

I think even Thomas, there's times we need to update the good one for granted, isn't it?

There's been a huge amount of work for no pay, you know, we all contributed what David was doing.

It just couldn't be filled with, you know, with more volunteerism.

We needed this vacuum to be sustainable.

Oh, no doubt is, you know, Brian made a great point.

I really haven't really sat back and thought about the whole thing, but you're right.

I mean, the site's been going on for 14 years and yes, David Goodwin was the majority of what goes on to day to day, but you know, you think about it, the core Appleviz team members that we have now, I think the oldest member we have now is, or I'm sorry, the newest member is actually seven years ago.

So we got Rye anywhere from 14 to seven years, so yeah, it takes loyalty.

I don't know what it is for me, it is definitely loyalty.

This is like something that is huge in my life and I want to keep that on.

It's just something that I love doing and I know each and every team members do too.

So it's great to have a backing like that because a lot of people had some questions about how is this going to help longevity?

How is this going to make sure and ensure that we don't have another incident like this, the Appleviz come down because that was, you know, to all of us, Brian was saying that's grief and pain.

So, you know, the team did too, it was painful for all of us, right?

And how do you guys, or do you know how you will ensure that longevity, obviously pain the members is one direction, but, you know, people have concerns like what happens if something happened to be my eyes and I always say, well, nothing ever came to me, but I'll leave it in your boat, what you guys think?

Well, one way you can guarantee the stability is like we were talking about pain people, you know, everybody at Appleviz has a day job.

So this is in addition to what you do, which is really extraordinary.

Be My Eyes is in a growth phase, you know, although we are absolutely committed not to charging our blind users for the services we provide, we are working to provide accessible customer service for businesses who want to expand their accessibility and the businesses pay us for that.

That's our business model and we've got some dozens of businesses now and we hope to have more.

It's good for businesses, that service, but I don't know if you guys have tried, if you got stuck and used through our app, the Microsoft or Google or any of the major things, but you get remarkably good service because the folks on the other end can see what's going on, can get you out of a jam that might have taken an hour if you just called the general customer service number.

So it's good for us and good for them.

I wonder if Hans wants to add anything here.

No, it's just, I think the biggest difference for Appleviz will be that our tech team will take care of all the boring backend stuff so you can fully concentrate on making good content.

And of course, we cannot guarantee that Be My Eyes will be around forever, but we sure hope so.

And that is, and I very much believe that Be My Eyes and Appleviz is stronger together.

So we have a better chance of surviving for a very long time if we are there both of us.

And if we somehow can add Appleviz into the Be My Eyes app so you as a blind user can easily access Appleviz, I think that would help Be My Eyes and that will also help Appleviz get more daily active users and so on and have a more vital communication and so on.

And also I mentioned before that I'm in Denmark and I speak Danish and I know quite a few people in Denmark is using Appleviz if they can figure English, but hopefully we can somehow down the line, not right now and not when we open the Appleviz again, but later on we will start listening to ideas and so on.

But I hope that we can expand into more languages, maybe using AI or something like that.

But I think there is a lot of things we can do after listening to all the people using Appleviz, and then I think it will grow by itself if we can support people in more ways and so on.

That's really interesting and I mean, Be My Eyes itself was your idea in the very first place all those years ago, over a decade ago.

Do you have ideas on, either of you really, you mentioned languages there, is there any other ideas you have?

Because the word growth has been used a lot over the last week or two since we announced, so obviously we don't want to break what's not broken, you know what I mean, what's working, but there are opportunities for growth I think that you guys see as well.

So what would be the, what are some ideas you think we should be thinking about?

I want to expand a bit on what Hans said about AI.

You know, now it's possible to take all those thousands of hours of podcasts and get the full text of those.

So suddenly that could be available to blind and deafblind people.

And suddenly it's a lot more searchable.

And suddenly with the AI engines, you know, 40 languages, just like Be My AI right now, people in many languages can get the answer from their AI query.

I would love to find a way to make this available to more of the major language groups around the world.

Our challenge is actually going into the global south more and not to the most privileged people in the world, but actually people throughout the world, the people who are maybe on the margins of economics and technology and really need to learn stuff.

Maybe this is their first iPhone.

Maybe this is their first foray into using certain apps.

This is why the growth potential for me.

And I think linking down the line, linking our, say for instance, our app and your website so that if a person is a newbie, they can easily go to AppleViz and into that whole ecosystem there and vice versa.

That is amazing because I hear that nonstop.

I think the number one thing that I hear a lot is the language barrier because, because AppleViz is primarily all English speaking people.

And so it's not, it's limited, it's limiting itself.

And so to hear that from both of you, that would make things leap in bounds for everyone.

And if that could work vice versa either way and have the different languages, that would definitely be mind boggling.

And I love the AI idea about the search because we do get a lot of requests for transcription and things like that.

But, you know, I was thinking about your customer support area you mentioned earlier about Microsoft.

If I've used that in the be my eyes and I was able to ask questions, all AI generated comes back with answers.

And if it still didn't work, you have the option to call a volunteer at Microsoft.

So that concept, if that could be incorporated into AppleViz would be mind boggling just to, you know, enhance that search, be able to get the questions you need quickly.

But yet if you do want to look through different webpages on AppleViz on those topics, you can do so.

That's, that's amazing.

I love that idea.

Yeah.

The first time he said to me in his office at Lighthouse something like, oh, it has been many years since I have learned anything from a sighted person.

Maybe even not meant for the public to say that, but it kind of stuck with me and I have also realized if you really need to learn something about a voiceover, you need to find another blind person who can really teach you this.

And I mean, all the people who are writing the answers on AppleViz, they are capable of teaching you something.

So I know down the line that we can create a platform, whatever, where you can request someone to one-on-one teach you about some specific issue you have.

And I'm positive sure that we have thousands of people out there who would love to spend half an hour, an hour, once in a while teaching a new blind person get into this.

But if we can facilitate that through the existing Aviviz or the existing Be My Eyes app, that would be one of my dreams come true that we can make Be My Eyes into a truly community.

And Aviviz is absolutely a truly community where blind people are helping each other.

But if we can add Be My Eyes in a more technical advanced way into that, that would be absolutely amazing.

I'd love to add that Be My Eyes started off, and it still is a big part of it, it still is a site of people helping blind people.

But now you're talking about blind people helping blind people using our capabilities.

Yeah, we're hoping to just call them volunteers, because there are many, many aspects where blind people can just provide our personal expertise to something, you know, not just tech, you know, cooking methods, travel abilities, all kinds of things.

And why not?

We're all eager to do it.

Well, it's been an amazing moment with both of you on to this special extra to talk about this acquisition of Aviviz, and I appreciate so much for both of you taking the time on here.

Do you guys have any other thoughts or questions before we let you go?

Anything you wanted to tell our listeners?

I just want to say so much thank you for having us on this podcast and for being willing to work with Be My Eyes about this.

And I'm very much looking forward to a closer relationship with you guys.

And hopefully we can learn from each other and so on.

So thank you so much for being willing to partner with us.

Yeah, and I just want to say again, I can't recall the last sustained volunteer effort towards excellence as I am coming to learn from the editorial team at Aviviz.

I mean, you guys relentlessly, without pay, for so long have kept this together and you've built such a passionate community.

And what are we hungering for in this day and age?

We don't want to be disconnected people.

We want to have community.

We actually want to have opinions.

We might have differences of opinions.

That's what being alive is.

And you guys have shepherded that in just such a productive way.

And this library you have of resources is unlike anything else.

If you went to do the same thing on the Android side, where would you go?

It's fragmented and splintered all over the internet.

But for things Apple iOS, there you have it.

And I just have so much respect for what you guys have built.

And it's a great brand association going both ways.

So thank you.

Well, thank you both.

I think I can speak for Dave and everybody on not just the Aviviz team, but for the whole entire community that have relied on Aviviz for so many years.

We are extremely grateful.

You know, it's like a going through a grieving process and there was times that we were angry and then we were just depressed.

And then there was like, we just like gave up and do for you guys to come along and help us wholly revived us.

I mean, I'm not going to, I'll admit that I had some teary eyes just thinking that this was going to be a thing.

And when it happened, I had my moment, it was just like, so heartfelt from you guys and such a strong family that we learned from you and now they incorporate the Appleviz family.

I think from the bottom of our heart, we all thank you as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think you said it all, Thomas.

I think we're all not just relieved, but really, really excited for the new era of Appleviz.

So thanks so much.

Exactly.

Okay, so yeah, huge thanks again to Brian and Hans for joining us.

I think that was really interesting discussion and you know, really good to get their perspectives on the acquisition and the partnership.

Yeah.

What do you think, Thomas?

You know, those were the questions we had and they were hard questions like, what was the real reason?

You know, sometimes you've got to figure out what's your motive?

I mean, why would an app or a software, Be My Eyes, would be even considered to Appleviz?

And they did such a great phenomenal job of answering and that they feel like that we are such a huge resource that we couldn't lose.

And it was a perfect fit for Be My Eyes and they're absolutely right because we would be used as a resource for their users.

And so it kind of goes hands in hands, a lot of questions that we had that we wanted to ask and I hope that those answers were answered for you as well.

My favorite and the things that got me excited was hearing of their excitement and enjoyment of being able to be part of Appleviz family.

And the ideas of what just floored me was, as I mentioned before, was the language barrier.

And we have always had people that wanted to take Appleviz and make it into their own native speaking language, whatever that might be.

And we just couldn't because that was David's branding and whatnot.

But we know the pain and what that must be.

If we could make a Spanish speaking Appleviz or Arabic speaking or French or whatever that language might be, just to hear from them, some of the ideas just flowing out there just kind of blew my mind.

In fact, the previous one people have talked about that it might have been something that's very resource intensive or it'd be something that almost the Spanish version will be almost like a different website where everybody's doing different things.

Whereas the technology that's coming now is like we could all be sharing one website and I'm reading the same article in English and somebody else is reading it in Arabic.

It's crazy.

Isn't that crazy?

So when they started coming out with things like that, that we wouldn't have to have all these separate Appleviz in those languages, but we have one single source.

And having the AI generate the language that they want, it's just mind boggling.

Those guys are the AI guys and they know what they're doing.

And I love the idea of being able to use AI search engine just for apps.

I would say though, we don't want to over promise and under deliver.

That's always a dangerous thing.

So we're not saying, hey, we're relaunching on the 9th of September with all this new stuff.

We're relaunching the same site that closed down on the 27th of July.

What we're talking about there is potential, you know, as technology goes the way we think it's going, as developments go the way we think we're going.

And just the shows that Be My Eyes have ambition, you know, as much as we have editorial independence and we'll continue to have that and they'll work with us.

They will work with us on, hey, we have an idea, we'd love to bring this into different languages.

We think you can help us do that or we want to, you know, utilize AI in search, can you help us do that?

And they are excited to help us with those kinds of ideas.

And if people have other ideas, we will want to hear them.

Right.

You're absolutely right.

We do need to make that clear.

And I thank you, Dave, for that, that this is not going to be what you're going to see on the 9th by any means.

And this is not something that you're going to see in a couple of months.

This is down the road.

If that's a possibility, those are the ideas that they've had and they want to incorporate with us.

But nonetheless, some of the ideas that's just flowing from their creativity minds, it's just mind boggling, just little things like that.

Some of the other questions I have heard from other users out there, will AppleViz stay as an Apple oriented site?

Yes.

AppleViz will always be Apple.

And that means the guide, tutorials, all the podcasts will always be Apple.

Now does that mean that we will ever expand that?

Well, you know, it's hard to say at this point.

I mean, no, I'm not going to say it's not out of the question that we might have a separate site for DroidViz.

It's just nothing but Android that will have something similar to AppleViz.

But those are just thoughts and creativity that we're thinking about going beyond that.

But AppleViz will remain AppleViz.

Yeah.

I think it's a never say never, but yeah, we'll play it there, we'll be easy.

As well as Beamer House themselves, they're on a lot of platforms around Android on Windows.

And they are, they speak a lot as well about inclusion, you know, internationally, again, we spoke with the languages, but they also speak about, you know, they mentioned the Global South.

I can't remember if it was Brian or Hans, but you know, a lot of people in the Global South are much more likely to be on Android.

So again, you know, that's probably another motivation for their side of why they want to kind of think, can AppleViz go beyond this, but again, we're not going to try one before we will.

Exactly.

You know, David's right, is that Beamer Eyes is not just exclusive to Apple and their iPhone products.

This is also, we now have Beamer Eyes for the Windows platform.

And we also have Beamer Eyes for Android platform.

And so AppleViz is just one piece of the many puzzles that they're thinking about and wanting to make a complete equal level for everyone to make in a one-stop shop.

So they have their resources, hey, if you want Apple, come over here.

If you want this, you want to go over here, da, da, da, da.

And I think they know that.

And they obviously, we obviously have some language barriers as well.

Unfortunately, everybody on their team does speak English, but that's not their native tongue, which is great to hear because we want to be able to break that barrier.

But gosh, so many things we don't know what to expect.

Right now we're focusing on getting everything back in line and making sure that everything is functioning the way it used to be before we opened up on the 9th.

So on the 9th, when it reopened, it should be the old AppleViz as you know it.

So that means that it will continue like we just had a one month hiccup, really.

So we have not changed our SSVs.

Everything you subscribe to before will still be there.

So nothing you have to move or change.

All the conscience are there, apps, everything will be there.

Nothing has been removed or excluded.

So we will make sure that we have a smooth opening and hopefully we will be able to expand AppleViz and introduce some new things in the coming months and or years.

Especially the years is their ideas, you know, there's some ideas we have thrown around with the team itself that we would like to do that wouldn't be such a earth shattering thing.

But we just feel like we just want to keep growing.

And I know we have had people that loved our new non-Apple topic section and there's people that don't.

They feel like it's encroaching on an Apple ideology that we originally started.

And I get that.

I completely understand.

But I think that as long as we keep that as a arm only, I think there's no harm in that as we all are living in multi-devices platforms this day.

So I think Apple is going to be our core thinking and will still always be, but we'll still have those non-Apple related topics.

I don't think we'll expand on the categories of that.

I don't think we need to, because I think then it just kind of fragments and it gets a little bit too big to manage.

I think what we have is perfect.

Step one, get back on the road and then we can start thinking beyond that.

I would say as well, you mentioned everything is there as before, which is great.

On social, we're still on Facebook.

We're still on TwitterX, whatever you want to call it.

We are on Mastodon, but we are now.

We did have to set up a new Mastodon account.

So if you want to follow us on Mastodon, it is appleviz at mastodon.online, appleviz at mastodon.online.

But I think all our other socials are as before, correct?

Thank you, Dave.

Yeah, just in short, we had to do that.

We didn't want to, but during that time we were down, there were some things that kind of lapsed and expired in payments and things like that.

And unfortunately, that was one of them was keeping the old Mastodon account, but we were, they were not able to recover it and nor we would be able to bring it back up the way it was.

So we decided to just create a new account.

So make sure you follow the old ones though.

And the word payments just jogged my mind to say again, so much thanks to every single person who has ever donated to Club Appleviz.

Club Appleviz for now at least is, has ended and you know, nobody will be getting charged any further subscriptions, but you know, if you have any, any difficulties around that reach out to the team, but that should all be, be sorted for you anyway.

But yeah, thank you to everybody who did help us keep the lights on over the past 14 years.

No, never would have got this far without you.

Absolutely.

Thank you everybody out there that have donated one time or another to Appleviz cause.

And as Dave said, it wouldn't have been possible without you guys.

And now we don't have to worry about that.

The wonderful Be My's has taken over financially and I really think this is a great future.

I think this is a huge kind of a dynamo acquisition together.

I think it's perfect and it just, I feel great about it guys, because there was a while there I didn't feel great about a lot of the things that we thought we could do or realistically do.

So I think Be My's for the bottom of my heart again, if it wasn't for them, I don't think Appleviz will be here today.

Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

So yeah, so, so positive and so looking forward to it and guys we'll, we'll see you all on the 9th of September.

We will have lots of content that day, so I think it's fair today and over for the coming weeks with the iSong event that day, releasing new iSongs and all that, all that new hardware.

Coming through September, lots of content about iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia and all the stuff you expect from Appleviz in September.

We'll all be flooding your, flooding your podcast feeds and we'll be all on the website and hopefully the community will be there as they were before to discuss it all and help each other get to grips with all the new stuff.

Exactly.

Thank you for your patience and thank you for trusting the editorial team to be able to move this on.

So thank you so much.

Thanks so much and we'll see you soon.

Bye bye.