Todd Werth:

Welcome back to React Native Radio Podcast, brought to you by Prison Video Services, Inc. We guarantee our cameras are up 23 hours a day. Episode 3 37, me Quest, the React Native with Marcus Landecker.

Jamon Holmgren:

Hey everybody, I'm jamon. And today on React Native Radio we have a guest, Marcus Landecker. Marcus, please go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners.

Markus Leyendecker:

Hi everyone, I'm Marcus. I've been at Meta for a really long time, been here for nine years.

Jamon Holmgren:

Oh wow. Didn't know it was that long.

Markus Leyendecker:

Yeah, super long and I've been working on all sorts of things at Meta, but for the last few years I've been working on what we're calling developer platform, which is essentially the part of Meta that creates the experiences for developers to build for Quest.

Jamon Holmgren:

That's awesome. How'd you get into tech? What was your journey in a nutshell?

Markus Leyendecker:

So a bit of a funny journey. I initially started my career at a company called Rocket Internet, which was like an internet company in Germany. I'm originally from Germany, FYI. And over there I had a very short stint. It was about a year, and I got really, really frustrated because they essentially tried to do tech without the tech. They tried to sort of compensate for bad tech through just throwing more humans at the problem and hiring lots of interns and stuff like that. I'll give you one sort of little story. We had a food delivery company, like a DoorDash sort of thing, and the way that they allocated the drivers to the restaurants was through someone sitting there and clicking buttons to be like, you go here, you go there. And I was just sitting there being like, this is not the place for me. I need to go. Somewhere. That leverages technology as a differentiator and as a benefit rather than trying to compensate for lack of,

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, I can definitely identify with that feeling and wanting to do things. I don't know, it just feels like the technology's there, why not use it? When I started working at a home builder in 2002 I think it was, and there was a guy who would his whole job and he put long hours in at the office. His whole job was just to transfer information from one spreadsheet to several other spreadsheets. That was his whole job and it wasn't something where you could just maybe make an Excel function or something like that. And since I had been coding since I was 12, I was like, well, maybe I can use VBA visual basic to click a button and have it transfer over the data. And so I did that. I made that script. This was not my job. I was supposed to be doing something else, but I did that. It basically turned a 40 plus hour, probably more like 50 hour a week job into clicking a button and then he would go through and verify that it did its job. So maybe four hours for the whole thing. The good news was he was kind of close to retirement and he didn't want to work that hard and I was like, Ernie, don't tell anyone. Don't tell anybody that. Good. Exactly. He ended up taking on some additional tasks. The bosses were happy. It got done probably more accurately at that point. And yeah, wild.

Markus Leyendecker:

I can still relate to that. This was very similar to my experience with a bit more adrenaline behind it because they had very aggressive growth targets, but I was like, I need to go somewhere where technology's valued. So I tried to go to, I really wanted to go to Meta because I knew that they were cutting edge in everything basically. That was how I got there and then I just loved it and

Jamon Holmgren:

Stayed. Yeah, that's awesome. Very cool. Well, I can't wait to get into our topic. Before we do that quick word about our sponsor, which is my company Infinite Red. Infinite Red is a Premier React native consultancy located fully remote in the us. We're a team of 30 senior plus level React native developers. We actually recently aligned more with industry standards because our senior developers were really more like staff level. I mean, our average experience level is about 15 years, I think, across the consultants, and we've been doing this for just about a decade. If you're looking for React native expertise, hit us up at Infinite Red slash Radio. And don't forget to mention that you heard about us through Marcus's interview on the React Native Radio podcast. Yeah, I'm kind of reliant on meta innovation as well, obviously because built a consultancy all around React native, which comes out of Meta.

Alright, yeah, let's talk about Meta Quest and just kind of ar vr Mr I guess they call it as well for React native. It's not just in general, but let's talk React native. We really want to talk with Rom, who's your colleague there at Meta and about the technical aspects of this. But before we can do that, we really need to talk more about, I mean, most React native developers don't have a headset, don't have a lot of experience with a headset. Maybe they tried an Oculus back in the day or something. This is kind of how I went about it. I haven't really gone deep into ar vr. I'm definitely one of those developers. And so years ago it was an Oculus and it had this, I don't know, it was like a roller coaster

Markus Leyendecker:

Thing. Oh yeah, I remember. That was big.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, it was fun until I got sick, it was like, oh, nauseous. And then later my business partner, Todd Wirth, who's one of the editors of this podcast too, he has a VR setup and there's some really fun games where you're playing Defend the Castle stuff. I forget which one he has, but it's a lot of fun. And so I do have a little bit of experience with that stuff, but I've never built anything for it. I've never spent a lot of time in it. I've just played games here and there. So Marcus, I'm really curious about, I guess the philosophy behind the meta quest where it fits into the market and also what makes VR an interesting form factor for users and developers.

Markus Leyendecker:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean what you're saying is essentially one of the biggest blockers that we have, both in terms of attracting users as well as developers,

We think mixed reality is amazing and most people who use it actually think so too, but you need to go use it in order to experience that for the first time and it changes a lot. So let me give you just a very quick history, like two, three sentences. So in the beginning you had the Oculus devices, which were cable bound. So the downside of those was you had to buy an expensive high-end gaming PC and then hook it up to a cable, and then you had these weird antenna things that were sort of tracking what you were doing via infrared. And then when the Quest came along, that form factor, it was a big change because suddenly everything was in one device and you didn't have to have a PC anymore. Big change. And then from my perspective, the next big change was then enabling hand tracking and pass through because that's when it stopped being about virtual reality and being more about mixed reality. So

Jamon Holmgren:

You

Markus Leyendecker:

Can now, if you have a Quest three or Quest three yes or so, that's our most recent device, you can wear that and you don't need controllers, you can just use your hands, you can wear it around your house. You're not going to bump into walls or your furniture or something because it has this mixed reality. We're calling it internally pass through mode. So you can just see your house and walk around and you can see your house sort of enhanced through mixed reality elements, and that's really a big change. The other thing that's worth mentioning is we essentially have created a platform for other people to create hardware around our operating system, and that's really interesting. So that is, we have some use cases that are fairly unique. We have, for example, virtual reality gaming and who's good at gaming, Xbox for example. So we have a partnership with Microsoft to create an Xbox Quest sort of hybrid device, which is pretty cool.

Or similarly, quest is really interesting as a device for productivity work. So we have a partnership with Lenovo to create a sort of specific productivity device, which is definitely very interesting because they can explore not only different sort of customer bases and branding and stuff, but they can also explore different form factors. So if you think about, for example, for productivity, you want to have a lighter device that you can wear more time while for gaming you really care about performance for example. And those are the sort of differences that a platform can enable. While if we keep making all of the devices, we can't really cater to all the different needs.

Jamon Holmgren:

I can see way long ago when I first started hearing about augmented reality, mixed reality, I thought about having glasses for a mechanic or something where it would actually recognize from a camera what you're looking at on the vehicle and then tag things. This is where it knows kind of the task you're trying to do and it's like, hey, remove this bolt, those types of things. Something like that where it's just sort of an overlay on what you're seeing. But that would need to be a fairly lightweight thing. Obviously you could have it kind of combined with safety glasses at the same time, so maybe they'd have to wear them anyway, and so they're not trying to add something to it, but certainly something like very immersive gaming, you're going to need that performance, you're going to need battery life. If it's battery powered, obviously you're going to need, yeah, I don't know, there's just, oh, absolutely. Higher resolution display, all that

Markus Leyendecker:

Stuff. I think the best way to think about it is really as in the two modes. So you have the mode of fully immersive and that has its appropriate use cases. Like gaming for example, is much better and fully immersive than in mixed. Similarly, a lot of people use head-mounted devices on a plane, so if you think about playing, everything sucks about the experience, everything's terrible, we all know that. So if you can wear something that shuts all of that out and replaces it with something pleasant, that is something that people want. But if you wear something around your house or if you want to use it for just a use case of having a bigger screen to do some coding work, for example, you probably don't need to overlay your entire house with that. You just want one screen and everything else should stay the same.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, totally. But then the fully immersive ones that in the past you wouldn't be able to see your keyboard, you couldn't see in front of you, you couldn't walk around very easily because you might run into things. And so that's sort of the idea behind, you call it pass through,

Markus Leyendecker:

Yeah, correct.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, pass through where you can actually see some representation or potentially fully pass through of your world around you.

Markus Leyendecker:

Yeah, exactly.

Jamon Holmgren:

So obviously this is the React Native Radio podcast and React native traditionally has been more of a 2D library. Where does that come in on VR where I'm thinking 3D, fully immersive type stuff. Are you building stuff in 3D with React Native or is it more like 2D apps within the 3D environment?

Markus Leyendecker:

So it's definitely more about the 2D apps in a 3D environment. And I want to clarify that these are really popular apps. So on Quest, what you can do is you can play immersive experiences, you can do games, you can do 3D meditation, you can do Climb a Mountain, et cetera. You can do all that stuff. But there are a whole bunch of apps that are immensely popular as we're calling them. Panel apps, which are just sort of 2D box. Think about rectangles just sort of similar to a phone or a tablet or even a TV app. So some folks are porting their Android TV builds onto Quest, for example. So these sort of apps, they definitely have their place on our platform and what we're seeing is that people are using these apps for different use cases. So for example, if you think about having an email client, just as a very simple example, nobody needs that in 3D.

That is totally fine as it is. And if you're a developer who makes an email client, people on Quest who already do productivity work, probably want to use their email client there as well. So getting that over there and sort of adapting it a little bit for sizing, for example, because you don't want it as small as a phone on there. You want it bigger and in landscape and stuff like that. But other than that, the needs of a user are very similar. So this is where React native really comes in, where if you have an app that already exists on a different platform and you think it could be useful on Quest, then there is a market here of people who are very hungry for these applications. And we're seeing, just to give you some examples, we have by far, the most popular 2D app that we have is browser sort of expected.

I would say that people are using that time, but people are spending hundreds of millions of hours in that. So this is a big usage pattern that we're seeing and it's no longer just about gaming. The other use cases that we're seeing are stuff like productivity, coding, looking at your computer screen, but making it bigger for example. That's a big use case as well as fitness is a big use case. So I dunno if you've heard of Supernatural for example, which is Oh yeah, so Supernatural is huge. A lot of people are using it, A lot of people are loving it and they're saying, I've never had a fitness experience that I actually liked until I found this one. Right. So yeah,

Jamon Holmgren:

It's designed specifically for the Quest,

Markus Leyendecker:

Correct. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jamon Holmgren:

And the operating system, it's based on Android, but I think isn't it called Horizon, the operating system?

Markus Leyendecker:

So we have an A OSP operating system called Horizon os, which basically has the essential elements of an Android operating system, but obviously it sort of has these very, very specific MR features. So having passed through, having the ability to have immersive experiences and stuff like that so that we built ourselves on top.

Jamon Holmgren:

And can you just take any Android app and run it?

Markus Leyendecker:

Pretty much so I mean I definitely recommend if you have an Android app, like something that you're building yourself, plug in your Quest and just try to run it and see what happens.

Jamon Holmgren:

Just try to run it.

Markus Leyendecker:

Yeah, that's what I would recommend as the first step. It works most of the time, so there are some quirk that you have to resolve and we can talk about that later on how to get started in detail. But essentially they work and you can open them, you can resize them. We have some cool features that you can use to make them sort of automatically a bit more adapted to this setting. So for example, we have this thing called theater mode, which lets you make any app just really big and sort of blur out the rest really handy. If you make a media player app for example, then you can just make a huge and have a cinema screen.

Jamon Holmgren:

That's awesome. Yeah. I want to ask about, the way that I'm hearing you talk about this is a lot of times it's not necessarily that it's a destination app, it's not something that you're going, you're buying a quest and loading it up and this is your whole point of owning it. It's more like you want all these different things, you want all these different apps, games, whatever, and then at the same time you do want access to your email, you want access to a browser, you want access to these different apps. And so that's how I'm kind of seeing it. Do you also see it potentially, I guess, okay, let me actually speculate and then you fill it in. So I do see a Quest headset is much smaller than, I don't know, a 32 inch display. So if you're in a place where space is limited and you want 32 plus inch display in front of you, a Quest would actually work for that. You just strap it on and go, actually, should I also ask, can you do that? Can you just have your computer screen mirrored onto a display in front of you? Is that a possible thing to do?

Markus Leyendecker:

So that's definitely something you can do, right? There are various apps on the store that let you mirror your computer screen. There's even apps that let you mirror your phone screen and for example, if you're watching a video on your phone, you can make a huge inquest and that's kind of cool. There are huge applications of this for people. I mentioned earlier the plane situation, that's cool. I'd much rather watch something on a virtual huge screen than on a tiny eight inch or whatever it is on the plane. So where it

Jamon Holmgren:

Takes five seconds to register every tap.

Markus Leyendecker:

Exactly. That's a big use case or codings is one. I know a bunch of engineers at Meta do this. You have, imagine if you could have multiple things open at once, which is something that actually doesn't, is really hard to replicate in physical life. You could have three screens or you could have five screens, who cares, right? There's no limit that's imposed onto you.

Jamon Holmgren:

You've got my imagination going now thinking of you just have a foldable keyboard, like Bluetooth keyboard and Bluetooth mouse, and that's all you're bringing on the plane along with your headset and you're like, okay, I'm just going to do my thing here. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. I don't know, even with my MacBook Air that I bring along on planes and stuff, if I'm trying to do a little bit the tray, you're like, you're kind of cramped. Yeah, it's not a fun experience. So because you're operating a store of different apps like an app store, I think it's called the Medi Quest store, and there is something called an app lab. Maybe you can tell me about that too. Do you have a review process? Is it similar to Apple App Store, Google Play, and what kind of quality bar are you looking for there? Are you going to reject things that you don't think hit the quality of what you're looking for? Also, is it very similar in terms of they take 15%, 30%, et cetera of purchases, et cetera?

Markus Leyendecker:

Yeah, I'm really, really glad you bring this up because there are a bunch of misconceptions in this space. So we used to have a store and something called App Lab, and the difference was that you had to be hand-selected essentially to be on the store, and if you weren't, then you could publish to App Lab. But what we did a few months ago is we merged those into the same thing and now it's just one store and anybody can publish. We're seeing essentially people from all over the world who make apps. There was one published today. This is a very, very popular behavior now that people just make an app, put it on the store. They obviously have to go through some checks that stores typically go through some quality checks and privacy checks and stuff like that. But essentially this is a total possibility. Now, essentially how it works is very similar to the Play store, the app store, that yes, we take a cut, you can see those details on our website and you don't need to know someone at Meta to pull you a favor in order to be on.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, that's awesome. So I think this is the right time to bring up the thing that is interesting to me. I'm building a game on the side, it's fully 3D, it's a helicopter game combat helicopter game. I've been wanting to build it forever. The title is into the Dawn and what I want to do, because I actually feel like flying, okay, so if you know anything about combat helicopters and Apache in particular, when you turn your head as a pilot or the gunner, if you've selected the right mode, the gun on the front turns with

You. Now that's great if I can make that happen. But the problem is that in a game, like you're flying with the mouse or you're flying with a keyboard or a joystick, and then also nothing's tracking your head. So now how do I make that happen in the game? I have some workarounds, some ways to do it, but I always thought that, wow, okay, head tracking number one, being able to track that and you can aim with your head as you're flying along. But also the 3D world, could I build this game for Meta Quest and release it and have it be a fully 3D world where when you look over the side of your helicopter, it actually looks like it's far down below you like the ground's below you and you see the trees going by you and stuff. I'm actually super excited to try it out.

The question I have though is the game is somewhat demanding. I'm trying to optimize performance as much as possible, and I kind of see it as being sort of, there's two different options here. There's one is that I could build it and release it on the Quest store as an Android app more or less, or I could do it where it's running on your gaming PC and something is connected, it's rendering on your VR goggles of some sort. So I don't know, do you have thoughts on that? How would a game developer think about this stuff aside from React Native?

Markus Leyendecker:

That's a good question. Are you building this currently for another platform or have you started already?

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, I mean I'm about a year into it. I just do it on the side. So I've built it for Mac, windows and Linux. Someone did get it running on a steam deck and that it ran fine. So if it runs fine on a steam deck, that's a good sign, I guess.

Markus Leyendecker:

So I think how you should look at these 2D or panel apps on Quest is really as the starting point. So what I would do if I were a game developer, what I would do is I would try to get on the store on the Quest store and get my product in the hands of users to see if there is any demand, if they like it, et cetera. So this is sort of the typical behavior we see where someone takes an existing app that's made for a screen and puts it on the store with usually some smaller modifications. For example, you would want support our controllers, stuff like that. Which by the way, we all have fancy APIs for that. You can use this sort of stuff. I think maybe another cool API to co out as pass through, which is you can actually leverage imagery that the cameras are capturing.

You can use that in your app as well. But I think in general, the behavior that we're seeing is that people put something on the store and then what they usually do is they really proactively solicit feedback. So since I'm a little bit obsessed with this, everyone who submits an app to the store, I go to their website and check them out. And what a lot of them are doing is they have a link to Discord to give very specific feedback on that app. And that's tremendously useful if you have 17 users on your app or whatever and you want to get to more. So they all do that and I message many of them on Discord as well. That's awesome. I love that. What I would encourage people to do is really lean into that. So don't build a super fancy 3D thing that takes you a year to build, but rather put it on the store, see what it runs, see what modifications you need to make and get feedback and then go from there. And we have really cool additional avenues that you can explore once you have something on the store. So for example, you can add 3D elements as you mentioned. You can look into our other development paths that may be interesting for you. So we're really big on Unity and unreal and that sort of stuff. So look into that. But I would say rather than doing a lot of upfront work and then releasing it in a big bang with work with your audience, that would be my advice.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, I think that's really good advice when you're getting started. I'm curious about maybe a developer that already has something built in, let's just say Unity, they have something built in Unity, but you said that you are big on Unity, so it supports Unity, supports like the Quest. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that's awesome. Yeah, very cool. I'm not using Unity. I'm using actually Gado, which is an open source one. I think they have something for this.

Markus Leyendecker:

I'll, we have a bunch of Gado apps on the store as well. Oh, awesome. Totally. In general, try for treat us like an Android phone. That would be my

Suggestion. When you have your project, then you plug in your phone and you sort of side load that project to see what it's like on the phone, do the same thing with a Quest. That would be literally my advice. It might not work, but you'll figure it out and you'll figure out the little things. And we've written pretty extensive documentation on the things that may go wrong. So to just help you get over that hump. And then from there, it's all fun if you can make your app run on Quest, I think it's a really exciting milestone. And from my perspective, games definitely have potential in 3D, but I haven't seen a good 2D game yet. I'd actually love to see one, there's a big use case here. I want to play Tower Defense or a sort of hand crush puzzle thing, that sort of thing. I want to play that as well in my quest, which I sit on the couch, put it in mixed reality, sort of pass through mode and just spend some time. That could be very fun.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, I can totally see that. That's a lot of fun. So we'll be talking a lot more about the React native specifics when we talk with Rom, but there is a reason you're targeting React native developers. I think this is my conception, is that it both lowers the bar for people to the barrier to entry. You don't have to learn a whole new language APIs and SDKs and have everything set up completely differently and stuff. But it also allows people who have already built an iOS and Android app with React native to just sort of add another target and then of course add maybe some platform specific things that might work well for mr. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And of course I don't have any inside knowledge, but the sense I'm getting from outside of Meta is that this is a priority and this is something that Meta is putting a lot of effort behind, wants to make it a really good experience, wants to make it not only for users but for developers as well.

And that React native, I mean shoot a lot of the optimizations for React Native. I have heard a little bit here and there that some of those optimizations are even specifically for the Quest. It's like, hey, we need this for the Quest. It needs to run really well on a more limited device because it's on your head. And of course that helps everything because it helps if it's better performing for this situation, it'll also perform better on a phone, on desktop, anywhere else. So yeah, that's kind of how I see React Native's role within the Quest ecosystem.

Markus Leyendecker:

I think that's a good understanding. So I want to address two points. The first is why this platform matters to you. To me it's very simple. Do you believe we're going to stare at tiny rectangles in our hands and all get a hunched back in the next 10 years? Do you think that's reality? I personally don't think so. And I would get on the bandwagon of the smart developers who are looking into what that future looks like, and that I think is pretty cool as a thing to learn about as a thing to position oneself well for that future. And that to me it is really huge. The other thing I want to address is React native. So I mean obviously we care about React native just because we're meta, right? So I think that's a big point, but I think you point out correctly that the React native actually has some huge advantages over other things when it comes to Quest because it lets you take an existing app that you've built for something else and just put it on Quest.

It is not that complex. You can literally define it as a target and you're done. And some of the things by React native, such as abstracting away, certain dependencies of the specific platforms and stuff come in really handy here because this is another platform. So that's just it. And yeah, there'll be some quirks that you have to sort through, check out our documentation on that, but they're not that complicated. Some of them are, make it bigger. It's sort of a natural thing. You want to have it in landscape format, but if you built your app well in a responsive design, that should also not be a huge deal. So I think that's cool. I think you got it. That's the whole point. Maybe the last thing I would say is think about the apps that already exist on other screens that would make a lot of sense to also have on a quest. So our store is fairly new or it has been opened up fairly recently and therefore there's a lot of white space. So there are a lot of apps that exist that could make a lot of sense. Just as an example, someone launched an app today that's an alarm. That's like computer science project on the weekend, right?

Right, totally. It's not a big deal, but there was no alarm so far. So I'm actually very thankful to that developer for building that. Right. So, oh,

Jamon Holmgren:

I would need that because a lot of times I'll go set a sprinkler going on my lawn or something and I need to set an alarm to go shut it off. If I'm in vr, I'm going to totally lose track of time. Right, exactly.

Markus Leyendecker:

Or another one is I really like this one. It's called spatial phone where you can see your phone screen in VR or an mr and you can also control your phone, which is pretty cool. So it's like a pull on remote desktop. So what people do is they open a video on their phone, but just put on their device and then watch it in really huge, and that's it. That's the only thing it does for them, but super useful. So I think there is a lot of space for developers to be creative to start with what they have and then make it unique and special to the form factor.

Jamon Holmgren:

Does it have picture and picture? Could you have a little video in one corner of your view and then do something else too? I do that quite a bit when I'm, I'll have a podcast going that maybe I want to look at once in a while. But

Markus Leyendecker:

Yes, absolutely. We have that capability. So we call that multitasking and you can have

Two, three things open at the same time. And these are useful. They're very useful scenarios like have browser open and watch a video at the same time or play a game and have your alarm on the side, stuff like that. But I'll give you the ultimate use case, which is washing dishes. That's my favorite one. So you can put on your quest, put it in full, pass through so you can see what's going on outside, and then just watch a podcast while you're doing right, open up your YouTube app and that's pretty cool. Just do that at the same time pretty, and you just sort of beam that to your kitchen wall or whatever. That's it. And you can just do two things at the same time. This way

Jamon Holmgren:

You feel productive while you're Exactly, while you're, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's cool. So we're running out of time. I know we do have another episode coming hopefully fairly soon after this one where we're going to be talking with Rom about more of the technical details. How do you make a React native app for this, but if people want to jump the gun and get going, where would people go? Should they go to the docs? Is there a starter kit? Is there a tutorial you'd recommend? Where do you think they should go?

Markus Leyendecker:

I would say the first thing you have to do is you have to get your hands on a quest. So

We have a bunch of tooling in place that lets you sort of cast what's going on on your Quest onto your computer, which will definitely be super helpful in the development process, but you need to experience this one time in order to figure out how your app would adapt. So just to make it clear, quest is very accessible. It's $299 I believe. So this is not something that should stop you from trying it out hopefully. And in terms of getting started, my team has created some really awesome documentation, which you can find on developers.me.com, and there's a section that we called Android apps, and there's another section which we haven't talked about, but I'm sure you can chat about with Ram maybe in the follow-up episode, which is called Web, which I would also recommend to check out. So in web, I mean we obviously support React on Web, so there's an interesting way that people could also get started in a sort of even lighter way so they could build a React website, sort of tell people to use that on a quest, see what that's like, and then move into app development. That could be interesting. Other than that, we support Expo, so that's cool.

Jamon Holmgren:

Oh, that's awesome.

Markus Leyendecker:

Yeah, or maybe the other way around Expo supports us. I think maybe the better framing and as I said, treat it like a phone. Just send your app there and try it out and from there you'll recognize yourself what the important changes are that you should make.

Jamon Holmgren:

Honestly, I'm already, as you're talking, I'm browsing through the store. I'm definitely buying one. I'm just trying to decide whether I want to get the three s, which is slightly, I don't know, I guess I don't really know quite the differences, but it's a little cheaper. Or the three, not necessarily because I mean I would probably just get the three normally, but because especially for building apps and maybe games, I want to get sort of the lighter weight one, the cheaper ones so that I can test it and make sure it works well on that. Then I know it'd work well on the better one. But yeah, I'm definitely getting one. This sounds amazing.

Markus Leyendecker:

Glad to hear, glad to hear. I mean, if you need buying advice, there is a lot of super fans on Reddit that will

Jamon Holmgren:

Definitely

Markus Leyendecker:

Help you make the correct decision for your unique needs.

Jamon Holmgren:

Okay, I'll head over there.

Markus Leyendecker:

One thing to call out is we have a very strong fan base, so I think this is worth highlighting because I think what you shouldn't underestimate is how many people there are that you could talk about this with. So there are people making apps, there are people making games, there are people who just love using their quest and playing the games. So don't underestimate that. Reddit for that is a good place to start. YouTube is a good place to start. There's a bunch of discords with fans, like these are things that you should check out if you're interested in this platform.

Jamon Holmgren:

Fantastic. Well, Marcus, this has been fantastic to have you on and really, I don't know. Yeah, you've got me excited about this. I definitely want to want to try it out. If people want to get in touch with you, you say you jump into Discords and stuff. Is there anywhere that you're more accessible if people have questions about this sort of thing?

Markus Leyendecker:

Probably most accessible on LinkedIn, which I'm sure we can add a link to in the show notes.

Jamon Holmgren:

Yeah, we'll do that.

Markus Leyendecker:

That's probably the best one for me. Awesome.

Jamon Holmgren:

Okay. Well if you want to nerd out more about this, we do also have our own Slack community, community, infinite Red. There are, I don't know, something like 8,000 React native developers in there. And you can always hit me up on Twitter at jamon holmgren or on Blue Sky at jamon dev. And our React native radio handle is at React native r dio. Thanks Marcus, really appreciate it. And for our audience, thank you for being a part of this. Please do go give us a rating on the various podcast apps. We never remember to ask for this, and so we don't have as many ratings as we should. We're a fairly, I don't know, we're like top 3% podcast in the world, top 5% podcast. And even with that, we don't have as many ratings as we should. So really appreciate that. We see you all next time.

Jed Bartausky:

As always, thanks to our editor, Todd Werth, our assistant editor, Jed Bartausky, our marketing and episode release coordinator, Justin Huskey and our guest coordinator, Mazen Chami. Our producers and hosts are Jamon Holmgren, Robin Hines and Mazen Chami. Thanks to our sponsor, Infinite Red. Check us out at infinite.red/radio. A special thanks to all of you listening today. Make sure to subscribe to React Native Radio on all the major podcasting platforms.