Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - AirDrop Finally Comes to Android

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

This week, Marques, Andrew, and David talk give a few Black Friday shopping tips before digging right into Android finally getting AirDrop! After that, they spoke about the new Nano Banana image generator from Google, court documents that don't paint Meta in a good light (shocker), and a potential DJI ban! After that, it's all about the hot takes. Enjoy! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Links: Ars Technica - Android AirDrop Wifi Aware BowenYin @ Reddit - Nano Banana Marques Claude - Opus 4.5 announcement Reuters - Meta article Time - Meta article DJI - Potential ban blog post PCWorld - RAM is expensive This episode brought to you by: T-Mobile: https://www.t-mobile.com/switch Music provided by Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana! Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s. You splurged. At T-Mobile, you can get four iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe. Well, it's better than socks.

So, I have to trade in my old phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family. Drama.

Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with... Hey, where are you going? To T-Mobile! Thanks, Oly! The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us.

No trade in needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just $25 bucks a line. With 24-month-bill credits and four eligible port-ins on Estangles. For well-qualified, customers, auto pay plus taxes, fees, and $35 device connection chart. Credits and imbalance do if you pay off earlier. Cancel. Contact us. Finance agreement, $256 gigabytes, $830 required.

Visit T-Mobile.com. I'm pretty sure what they're doing is they are going to put it in all of Android like they always do. Sorry. Why would you air drop it to the computer that runs the soundboard? Sorry. That's actually hilarious that that worked. Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform podcast.

We're a host. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. This week, we have AirDrop on Android. That's the news. That's the whole thing. That's all we're going to talk about for the next hour.

And then maybe we'll have some time at the end for some hot takes. But first, a quick PSA. If you are watching this on the Friday that this episode drops, number one, we are closing in on 500,000 subscribers. And one of our goals on this Wave Forum podcast channel is to hit that by the end of 2025. So if you haven't subscribed yet somehow and you're watching us on the day it drops, do yourself a favor and get subscribed so you don't miss it. And number two, that also means it's Black Friday.

Congrats. You've made it to the biggest holiday shopping day of the year. I heard the subscribing to the podcast was 50% off today. It's as good a day as ever to do it. I heard it was 100% off. Oh. Yeah. Damn.

We really like those deals. It's free? Yeah. Sick. Normally it's a million dollars. So this is a steal. Yeah. But Black Friday PSA, we have some tips.

Chances are you're looking at a bunch of sales right now. And you have to ask yourself a couple questions. Camel, Camel, and Camel. Yeah, pretty much. Is this actually cheaper? Download Camel, Camel, Camel, or some price tracker because it's probably not. Do you actually need it or do you just want it because it's cheaper? And have you had your eye on something, but now you're trying to buy an alternative just because it's on sale?

I think we've all gone down that path before. It's never worth it. Well, just... Yesterday I brought a kettle. What kind of kettle? A tea kettle. Be more specific. It was the alternate to the expensive one, and it was on sale.

Oh, yeah? Have you used it yet? Was it actually on sale? No. But it did have good, probably fake reviews. Yeah, that's huge. I feel like every time I've, like, had my eyes on something, and then its alternative goes on sale, and then I buy that,

I then wind up buying the other thing eventually because I was mad at the decision that I made on buying the thing on sale. That is tough. Which is then just more expensive than it was to do it in the first place. Yeah. Just take five minutes before you buy anything. anything today. Yeah,

it's probably if you actually need it, because if it's $5 cheaper and you didn't buy it already, why are you buying it now? Why are you buying it now? Okay, so let's talk about airdrop on Android because this finally happened. I never thought this day would come,

but apparently they've been working on this for a little bit. Yeah. The update is that last Thursday, we got this random email from Google that was like a link to a blog post that was like, hey guys, by the way, we did it. We've made quick share on Android, starting with pixels, pixel 10.

compatible with AirDrop. And the quote here is, well, you actually asked Google how they did this and they give you a real answer. Because if you read the blog post, it's... They gave him an answer. They said a thing that you can read for us because the blog post didn't really say how they did it. They just said that they did it. Yeah. Well, okay, so they never actually announced how they did it.

However, there is some European Union stuff that Ars Technica wrote an article about that is most likely how they did it. So the Digital Markets Act got put into place recently, which forced Apple to adopt this new standard called Wi-Fi Aware. So the way that Apple has done AirDrop in the past is that it has this protocol called Apple Wireless Direct Link, which is basically uses Bluetooth to find other devices, sets up a little mini-wifi network effectively between you and another iPhone. But it's, again, it's a proprietary protocol. the European Union as part of the Digital Markets Act forced Apple to adopt this other standard that Google has actually had since Android 8.0, which is kind of crazy, and it forced Apple to actually put a bunch of the AirDrop extra little protocol stuff inside of the standard called Wi-Fi Aware. So that was sneakily added to iOS 26. Apple obviously did not

advertise that they switched over to Wi-Fi Aware. Of course not. Obviously. And nobody really made a big deal about it. I was reading that Google probably didn't make a big deal about it because Google has also been kind of trying to repeal the Digital Markets Act because of stuff that it is doing to them that they don't like. However, Wi-Fi Aware is an open standard. So Google, who has supported Wi-Fi Aware for a very long time, basically just updated to the newest version of the standard, which includes Apple's little tidily bits. Official term. Official term. And now you're able to quick share to iPhones. It's a It's kind of weird because it still is called QuickShare on Android and you can, it's still

airdrop on iOS. Yeah. The other kind of strange thing. So crazy seeing Max in here. Now, originally this Ars Technica piece was speculating that it wasn't going to work on Max, but it does. So now you can effectively air drop to any Apple device from a pixel 10. The thing that is interesting is right now it is only available on Pixel 10 series.

A lot of people are upset about this because they were saying like, oh, well, if Google, Google is locking this to Pixel 10s for now. Isn't that just as bad as Apple locking it to iPhones? I'm pretty sure what they're doing is they are going to put it in all of Android like they always do. Sorry. Why would you airdrop it to the computer that runs the soundboard? That's actually hilarious that that worked. So it's on Pixel 10 series right now only.

I think the reason that they're doing this is because Google kind of just dropped this out of nowhere. Oh, my God. It's the same one? No, I did the. No, you, Marquez did it. It's the pie. Oh, I dropped it to you. That's my speakers.

Andrew just pixel dropped me. I'm so sorry, David. The Mountain Dew Baja Blast High. Oh, my God. Okay. Well, I think the reason that they're doing this is because they, you know, own the pixel 10. They use the pixel 10.

They're not, they want to basically prod it on a wider variety of people, right? So they're like, okay, we control the pixel 10. We can take in the data logs if it fails for pixel 10 devices. They don't want to push it to all Android phones, because then that's too big of a swath of people. That's my assumption. But I did ask Google when it happened because, like you said, we got a random email on Thursday that was just casually like,

by the way, guys, you can now, you can now AirDrop. Quick little update. And the quote that they gave me, because I was like, did you work with Apple on this or did you do it solo? They said, we accomplished this through our own implementation. Our implementation was thoroughly vetted by our own privacy and security teams. And we also engaged a third-party security firm to PennTest, situate the solution.

Wow. So, I don't know, people were saying they're going to kill it by the weekend like they did with Beeper, but this seems like it is just a standard that is that they cannot really get around. So, yeah, it is, so now the update is out. Yeah. If you have a pixel 10, you can make sure you're fully updated and go in and open any file, anything you want to do sharing with, hit QuickShare, and you will see.

You got to switch it to everyone for 10 minutes. Yeah. And you will see a bunch of, uh, A bunch of your Macs. I'll do a live demonstration? Oh, yeah, sure. Share something with me? Yeah, let me go share.

All right. We're doing it live. And then quick share. We did it live twice. Yeah. And then I got to look for you. Is it David's M3 Macs? David's PDA.

Oh, let's see. I see Andrew's Mac, Marquez's Mac, Wayform's Mac. I'm just going to do David's. Yeah. You can send it my Mac if you want. All right. Okay. Marquez would like to share a photo, AirDrop.

Mm-hmm. Save to downloads. boom and it's a photo of the sky that i took and the side of a building that mark has took let me do it's your phone before and it's cool because it sends all of the uh metadata and everything yeah it's very good it's awesome yeah don't see your phone for some reason that's weird but yeah i see everybody's computer in here have we tried the other way around have you tried sending something to this pixel i don't think you can do that that's what i wanted to ask you can Rich and I, when this was going on Thursday,

spent like a solid 20 minutes just sending each other things back and forth for now. Okay, so I have, I'm air dropping right now. Oh, here we're. I dismissed it. There it is. Except David's PDA is sending something to me. It's an image open.

It's a Polaroid. It's a film photo. What do you think about that photo, by the way? Right. I think of this photo? Yeah. Looks pretty cool. Is it cooler because an iPhone sent it to you?

That's a photo of. of me, my dad carrying me. Is that you? And the baby in the picture? Just kidding. I generated that with Nana Banana 3. Yikes. Yikes.

Nana Banana Pro. It's bad. It's bad that this is too good. This is so good. It's a problem. Okay, so. The misinformation is going to fly everywhere. We knew this was going to happen.

Nano Banana Pro. This is part of Gemini. It's their newest image generation tool, if you want to call it that. and you can just put your prompt in and it'll just generate an image and it's like photorealistic images now and they're quite good what I noticed because people started tagging me

is if you ask it to generate a YouTube tech reviewer somewhere around half the time it makes someone that looks exactly like me and it'll look like me and it'll say it in KBHD on the thing it's like making it's clearly trained on some sort of YouTube videos and has like a good sense of what this is.

It trained on your YouTube videos. Yeah. There's no denying. Right. And it's Google. So it's like they probably can just decide to do that. But it seems to alternate between me and then like three or four other somewhat like I was going to say Tyler Stallmanish looking, sometimes Andrew looking.

Sometimes you like they'll look like slightly different characters we've seen in the YouTube universe before. And then you'll ask it again for a YouTube reviewer. And it's like, oh, okay, MQBHD, here it is. Yeah. which I thought was interesting. This is why they did not flip out when Chachibati was doing it

because they knew they were working on it too. Yeah. I know. Normally though in the past we've had to be like, oh, what is it stealing from tech? Like remember when we first started seeing the little plant that all tech YouTubers is using? We're like, okay, it's definitely using

YouTube stuff. Yeah. This is just, it's just you. Some of the other ones maybe are a little bit of people, but this is just straight up you. The little profile says MKBHD. Yeah, it just says it. Yeah.

Also only gives you 1.8 million subscribers, so. Nice. Disrespect for you. But, like, this is, yeah. This is messed up. There's no other way to say this, right? This is just you.

What is the generative part of generative AI again? Also, it uses the, it uses the exact same wallpaper from the iPhone 16 pro that it came with. Oh, yeah. I don't know. It just feels like I thought you were supposed to use a wide swath of data to generate something quote unquote new isn't that the argument and like sure this isn't a new scenario but it's just marquez it's yeah it's generating me in different random various

environments with a red camera full logo a Samsung flip and SM7b which it's wrong about because you use in the it's the electric voice is right yeah yeah the interesting but Disney's going to sue them into the ground Disney well I'm waiting for that time yeah I did um I'm going to Disneyland um this is relevant I promise go on I am going to Disneyland thank you I know it's exciting cool it's not I've only been I've been there once before anyway I'm going in late March just for one day before I do this California photography trip and why did I bring that up oh yeah the profile photo the photo of our group photo for the people I'm going with I put a photo

of all of us in the Nana Banana Pro and I said make us all Mickey Mouse and it just did so yeah the copyright is it's out the window these companies do not care anymore I think we're at the point where there is so much of this stuff that companies have just given up because they're like if we're going to win this race we have to not care

yeah so don't ask for permission us for forgiveness nobody's gonna forgive you I promise you we will never forgive you we will never forget so uh what is that never mind i just typed in mkbhd reviewing a horse and hit enter and it just made it your haircut is exactly the same like it's not even horse review the ultimate workhorse it's no it's you a horse and an f1 car it says mkbhd on the camera it's me it's my hair it's the black sweaty sweatshirt and it's it is a horse it used to be like like what things did it get right when most of it is wrong?

And now it's like, what things is it slightly getting wrong? And it's not really getting anything wrong. Yeah. Wow. We just steal it now, folks. We are just stealing. Just a couple days later, I think only like two days later, Anthropic did release their new bestest model, Opus 4.5,

which is apparently extremely good at software engineering and coding. It probably will not make an image of Marquez reviewing an iPhone 16 Pro. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think Claude can generate images at all. Wow. Yeah, that's good, because there is no utility to generating images besides screen people over, so. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's fun for the meme. Like when I, like, when I made that fake polymarket thing for you, David, that was pretty good, right? Are you generated that?

When I was making fake polymarket stuff, I was photoshopping it, like a real man. No, no, I went to, I went to like, I just Googled fake polymarket generator. And then I got a good result. Oh. So yeah, no AI, but still fake. I'm just going to stop. So Claude 4.5 will code really well. Yeah.

That's great. That's great. Are people who code? Yes. I've actually seen two versions of this. I've seen two versions. I've seen one version where people who code are using this out of it and like loving it. Yeah.

And then I've seen one version where they're like, oh, this is kind of just better than me yet. I'm trying to think of how we could respond to this as non-coders that wouldn't make everyone mad at us. And I, it's kind of in the same way that like when we see, uh, Sora making a video and people go, ooh, are YouTubers cooked? It's like, well, it's not that good yet. And that's probably mostly true about a lot of these tools. It's like, it's a good brainstorming tool. It's a good foundational, like, base before you actually build more on top of it, sure,

but it's not taking your job yet, but the trajectory is there. If I'd say the safest statement possible, it would be, I bet you most good coders know how to use it as a tool to help them, but it's not going to replace them. Sure. Yeah, we talked about last week, Google Anti-Gravity, which is something they launched with Gemini 3, which is just an IDE that you can code in, and it can do almost all of it for you. So you just sort of tell it what you want, and then it'll make a checklist. They'll say, these are the things I want to work on. Here's what I did. Do you approve? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And it'll just code you an app. Like, I coded Pina Colocator with it. That's sort of my benchmark that I've started using.

My friends that are like in the industry and software engineers and stuff, they've basically been using these tools to do all the grunt work. And then what's more important for them now and their current roles is like the system design of it all. So they're like trying to figure out which services plug into what. But the actual like coding the API, you just or like running the unit test, you just have like an AI do that. Yeah. So yeah. I don't know.

And with the acceleration that we're at right now, you know, the Will Smith eating spaghetti video was not that long ago. Dang, wait, I should... It's much better now. Soon they'll be like making whole Coca-Cola commercials with it or something. Yeah. See what she did there. Will Smith eating spaghetti. Sorry, I'm doing a Gemini banana thing.

I just tried to, and it said I can help with pictures of people, but I can't depict some public figures. Is there anyone else you'd like to try? And I said, MKBHD, and then just did it. It just made it MKVHD. So... What don't I got it? Why did it just steal my likeness? That's like the purple S-21.

Good burn. It's just like, he ain't no public figure. It did Will Smith for me. What? It did Will Smith for me. Wow. So maybe it has no consistency. I literally also said Will Smith, 80s, spaghetti. It just didn't let me do it.

Wow. Shout out to Will Smith. DJI is possibly getting banned in the United States on December 23rd, unless the U.S. government completes a security audit, which will most likely not happen. under the FY25 NDAA, the Federal Year 25 National Defense Authorization Act, unless the audit is done, it will, DJI will automatically be added to the FCC's covered list, which would effectively ban new DJA products from entering the U.S. New ones.

Yes, but they also probably would not be able to sell within the United States either. Gotcha. And so this at first was like, hasn't this happened 20 times, but that was only for drones, right? sorry we try to run a show here and be professional and you guys I usually muted

yeah I was muted and I unmuted it so that I thought one of you texted me I was like why does this keep happening I keep thinking this has happened already but the differentiator here is this is just all DGI products and previously was just drones right yeah okay yeah so that is kind of like

they do sell a lot more stuff now the Osmo is extremely popular it's so good The Osmo, too. So this is like actually, I mean, yeah, people are going to lose good product from this. And you have a question in here. Yeah. So I'm wondering if this includes Hossabod.

I don't think it will, but I think that DGI is terrified of the U.S. government realizing they own Hossabod. Oh. Yeah. Because don't they do a lot of scientific imaging and glass stuff, too? Like, are they a NASA supplier? I do not know. I do not know that. Zice is like all over the place.

Probably Zice. But yeah, I'm curious about that. So we'll see, considering it's over the holidays that the government would have to do this audit, I don't think they're going to, and they've been talking about banning DJI forever. So I think they're just going to get banned. So if there's any hot DGIE Black Friday sales?

Gobble them up here. Now, honestly, if you want something from them. Forget everything I said before and buy all DGI products. Yeah, so that's fun. They will go to the way of Huawei, I guess. Your X2D Mark 2 is way cooler now because it's contraband as well as a sick camera. It's funny because I don't have the one I bought yet. I just have the one that's the one that's December now apparently.

I hope it's before the 7th. Before the 23rd. Really iffy. Really dicey on that one. Yeah. I have a review unit as right now. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. They sent me one to check out finally. And yeah, it's really dang good. Do you want to talk about how great it is? It's just sick. It's so good. Yeah. It's true.

Truly an incredible. And do you have the 35 to 100 lens as well? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That combo is like, yeah. Did I give my hot take on primes yet? Did I say that here?

Yeah, you did. So many times. Okay. Perfect. This is a great opportunity to run that back. I would, I love that this is a good zoom. I am so happy that this is like the opposite direction of like Hasselblads in the past, which is, you know, fun, very deliberate.

One shot at a time. Yeah. But it really removes like a. big, fun element of using cameras, which is just in the moment shooting, street shoots, random things that happen that you weren't expecting to shoot. And having a zoom and having that camera actually like autofocus well, opens up a whole new possibility of things you can shoot with it and it's great. For me, the big things are like the UI is so good. It's so fast. It has a terabyte of storage built into the camera. You can just connect it to your computer and

transfer all the files really quickly. So good. Yeah. It's, it's, It's pretty incredible camera. It's, yeah. How are we not at a point where a terabyte of storage is in literally? My remote should have a turbo storage built into it. Yeah. What's the hold up here? I'm kind of surprised that more cameras.

I mean, that's the funny thing, too, about the Hasselblot is it doesn't, it doesn't even shoot video at all. So you kind of already know what's the file size you're going to get from whatever people start to shoot with it. So, yeah, terabyte is plenty for photos. It's like 36 megapixels per photo, though. Yeah. I mean, um, megabytes.

But if it was a camera that's capable of video, then maybe, you'd be not as sure, but like also, just like iPads, just like iPads. I can buy a terabyte one if I want or I can buy a lesser storage one if I want. They should just have an A7 with a terabyte built in or an A7 with four terabytes built in for the guy who wants to just shoot all the videos internal and it's fast enough to shoot whatever the highest bit rate 4K video that it shoots. That should just be a product that exists. Yeah.

You're welcome. Very few camera companies are doing this. Like, Lyca in the regular M11 had 64 gigs, which is not that much. when you shoot 60 megapixel photos. The M11P has 256 gigs, which is much better. But basically, no manufacturers are doing this. And I don't know if they're just terrified that eventually the internal NAND will break

and they have to, like, get it replaced or something. I mean, it still has an SD card slot, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess they would still have to repair it. But considering it's super fast. I just want to say that RICO has 53 gigabytes. Oh, does it?

Of internal memory. Okay, so I guess everyone's moving over to it because the GRFR4 is like brand new. So X-106 does not Canon, Sony, yeah. Yeah. We have an idea for a bonus camera episode coming up. Oh.

Hopefully next month. Okay. But we'll see. Oh, right. Yeah. No spoilers. I'll keep shooting, though. In the meantime, I love the camera.

Well, potentially rip DJI. One last thing. Pour one out. That I wanted to mention real quick. Threads just added the ability to add podcast embeds to your profile. That's true. That's good. This is good for us.

It is good for us. It's a very random update. But now if you have a podcast or you just want to, I guess, advertise a podcast that you like. That was my question. Like this one. Yeah, you don't have to verify that you're the one that does it. Yeah, you can just do it. You can just link it anywhere. Yeah.

So you can link a specific episode. You can also link an entire podcast. My one big down, like big annoyance with this is that you have to pick between Spotify, Iheart radio or Apple Podcasts. Like when you click on it or when you add it to your podcast? When you add it to your profile. Oh, it's not an RSS. No. Yes.

This is very annoying because podcasts specifically are transferred over RSS. Yeah. And that is this open, really simple syndication. You don't have to deal with any of those. You should just be able to add the RSS link and then it opens whatever podcast player you use because I use pocketcast. A lot of our listeners use pocketcast. I do too. Yeah.

And also, you know, Spotify is basically the only multi-platform one because literally nobody uses I-heart radio. Why do they even add our heart radio? I have no idea. This is just like the most threads way of implementing this. Like it's open, question mark, but not really. And this is not on Instagram, just threads? Just threads. I wish it could be on Instagram.

So then all the people who steal all our content, we could at least be like, yeah, put the link in your description. So we get some actual views out of it. Yeah. So, I don't know. It's a weird feature. Instead of focusing on this, I would really love if you just completed your Fediverse integration, which you have not done.

Or let us do like anything. Like it would be cool to also put a YouTube channel there. Yeah, I would like that. That's true. Yeah. Good point. Anyway, trivia. The edit on this is going to be wild.

What do you want us to say, Adam? When I wrote this trivia question, when I wrote my first trivia question, I realized I had written the exact same Black Friday trivia question that I had written last year. So we've officially been doing this. so long that it all blends together. But I have a new question, a banger, because I am finally looking into, and get this, retiring,

the 12 mini. I've heard this before. And so I was like, guys, Black Friday's coming up. I should be able to get a cheap iPhone. Turns out, you can't. All of the iPhone Black Friday deals are frankly pitiful unless you sign up for like an $100. a month of Verizon contract. But they weren't always this bad.

And in researching this trivia question, I found a Black Friday deal from 1994 from a retailer that doesn't exist anymore. For the cheapest iPhone? From a retailer that doesn't exist anymore called Comp USA that was offering this. Get ready, guys. Are you ready?

An Apple Performa 630 CD with a 14-inch color CRT monitor and an HP inkjet printer for how much in $194? That's like a lot of things. That's a lot of things. That's many things bundled together. And if, you know, I'll be kind. If you can give this to me in $194 or you can give it to me in September, $25,

because that's the last, that's the last month we have inflation data for. Do we have to signify which one we're guessing? Yes. Oh. Trying to pull a fast one on me. Maybe. Pixel 10 is on sale right now. $200 off.

Oh, and I guess I could finally air drop with it. It's the most pixel thing ever. On Google 5. I think what I saw was from Apple, if you spend like $1,200 on the iPhone 17 Pro, they will give you a $75 gift card after the fact. Nice. Nice. Well, no money saw. AirPods for are $70 right now.

All right. Well, we'll think about this one. answers will be at the end like usual, and we'll be right back. Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana. Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s. You splurged.

At Team Mobile, you can get four iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mama robe. Well, it's better than socks. So I have to trade in my old. phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my

old phone too for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family. Drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with Hey, where are you going? To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe! The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us no trade-in needed when you switch. Plus, four lines for just 25 bucks a line. 24 monthly bill credits and four eligible portends on essentials for well qualified customers photo pay plus taxes fees and 35 dollar device connection chart credits end imbalance do if you pay off earlier cancel contact us finance agreement 256 gigabytes 830 dollars required visit team mobile

dot com all right welcome back for more depressing content we go to ellis today there are hey i'm the sad guy there was a big thing that came out against meta again for the one millionth time but this one's even more depressing than usual so ellis is going to break this down so the one of the yeah so this this happens every now and then like like like Like there's a leak or whatever, and we find out that people at Meta, I'm trying to choose my words very carefully. Don't care. Allegedly. No, it's not that.

No, that's the thing is they find out they do care and they're powerless to stop it. To stop the not caring of other people at the company. Careless people, as they say. Long story short, there is a law firm called Motley Rice. They are suing all the big social media companies. I think it's four of them. I forget which four, but meta is one of them. TikTok is another.

I think it's meta, TikTok, Snapchat, one other one. I don't know. The important thing is that as there's doing on behalf of school districts alleging that these products are really addicting for kids, and obviously they are, and the companies knew that they were addicting and decided not to act on that information. So what happened is there's a bunch of filings, a bunch of discovery. I'm not like a legal person, and a lot of these documents. and pieces of evidence got unsealed.

So we got to see a bunch of internal communications and deposition transcripts and other stuff from this court case that was really illuminating. And before you go read this stuff yourself, just know there's some like, unfortunately, some like kind of dark stuff in here that like we don't really want to talk about

on waveform. It involves like kids being hurt. It's like not what we're interested in. But there were some really funny quotes by meta employees. that I did really, really want to share with a little bit of context. And before I share these quotes, I feel obligated to say that META has already responded to this. And META said, and I'm going to read the exact META spokesperson quote.

We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture. The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, research issues that mattered most and made real changes to protect teens. Most of this filing was from an investigation in 2020, right? It's an ongoing court case that has been going on four years. Some of these depositions were from as old as 2021, I want to say. I don't know when these DMs came out, but they are investigating things that

happened in Meta as far back as 2017, I believe. So there's some things that, you know, are pretty easy to understand that I think we've all heard about before. For example, there was an internal study at Meta called Project Mercury that was meta, hire the company Nielsen that does media research to investigate what the psychological effects of quitting a meta product specifically Facebook were on users. The results were resoundingly, people were happier, less anxious, less lonely, lived better lives when they quit Facebook and meta just sort of killed the entire project and made sure and hid

all the findings and their reason was like oh you know like there's so much there's this narrative in the media that meta products are bad and so um you know if you're going to quit facebook of course you're going to feel better because everyone already believes that meta products are bad which is a crazy argument to make in my opinion but you know it's sort of i guess works um then there were a bunch of stuff that came out of meta staffers sort of being like this nielsen study really does show that you know people are healthier. There's an impact on social comparison. Yeah. Unhappy face emoji was the exact. Yeah, there's an impact on social comparison. Unhappy face emoji was the thing. Another meta staffer wrote, this is like the tobacco industry doing research and knowing

SIGs are bad and then keeping that info to themselves. That is an exact quote. Another user experience researcher wrote, oh my gosh, y'all, IG is a drug. We're basically pushers. Which is a Crazy thing to write about the company that you work for. Another UX researcher was recommending that META released this info to the public and wrote, because our product exploits weaknesses in the human psychology to promote product engagement and time spent, we need to alert people to the effect that the product has on their brain. But we still give it out for free. But we still did not.

It is worth noting that META does not study addiction. they only study problematic use. I don't know exactly what that means, but what they did consider problematic use is, I guess, up to someone. The lawyers. So another thing, I don't know if you remember. So does anyone remember what I don't, I didn't know this code name,

but there's something called Project Daisy where Instagram hid like accounts. Yeah. I was one of the accounts selected to beta test that, and none of my friends were, and I sounded like a crazy person. being like, there's no likes on Instagram anymore. This is really weird.

And the goal of that was to try to make teens feel better because teens were sort of being encouraged to compare themselves to others, which is not easy when you're a teenager. And that got killed because it, you know, affected engagement and growth and time spent in the app. And one of the quotes that came out... I can't even...

This one is so crazy. One of the quotes that came out with someone on the growth team insisting, and this is an exact quote, it's a social comparison app. Ficking get used to it. Incredible. Incredible care for your children. Here's another crazy thing that came out as this.

And I'm just going to read, this is from Time Magazine, I'm just going to read this exactly as Time wrote it. Meta used location data to push notifications to students in what they call school blasts, presumably as part of an attempt to increase youth. engagement during the school day. As one employee allegedly put it, one of the things we need to optimize for is sneaking a look at your phone under your desk in the middle of chemistry. Smiley face. Just fantastic stuff right here. Time has a great article on it. Reuters has a great article on it. And if you're not okay, that's fine. Because just to me, and I'm going to wrap up

this very sad story like this. I feel like there's this narrative that Meta's been pushing that time spent in app is not the most important metric to their business. They've said this sort of roundabout ways that they value other things. And to me, all of these leaks indicate that that does not seem to be the case. That time spent is still the most important way meta makes money off of their products, which I... It's that every company is time spent on.

app because more time spent on that equals more time to sell you things. I'm actually going to push back on that narrative a little bit because of how big, and I cannot believe I'm like, I don't want to sound like I'm defending TikTok. But the TikTok shop really does change that for that platform. I can't remember where I read this, but I've read a bunch of different articles about how the TikTok shop is so huge globally that they're able to make money off of that. and they don't, the ads part of TikTok is not as big a part of their business in the same way meta is structured.

Yeah, but if you're on TikTok for longer, you can get more things on the TikTok shop and make more money. I need to find this research. It was really, it was really clear that while they do want you to stay on TikTok for a long time, what they more prioritize is you sending products to your friend, engaging with products, and not just being on the app all day. Whereas in this meta thing, we found out, like, where, what time? are kids not on the app? Oh, in class. Like, we should optimize the app to get them on the

app in class. Yeah. I guess last thing, I'll push back on that as being one of the main functions of TikTok is when you're kind of done and you hit back to exit the app, it refreshes the feed and tries to hook you on another. Like, ultimately, all of that boils down to. Like, they might prioritize this specific way of making money, but in all of those ways, this is probably why meta says we're not our primary goal isn't time spent on app but it's like they have a primary goal that they put the way that goal gets hit better in every single scenario possible is more time spent on the app i think it's just logical same with youtube to an extent same with everything same with this podcast probably like more time i mean i know you want to spend more time with us because

we but like yeah more time but we will say conclusively if you in class right now. You should. Turn off the podcast. You got plenty of dishes at home. Yeah. Chill. Yeah.

We'll be there later. Don't heard. This is a dish podcast. Anyway, like I said, Meta refutes these claims. They claim they're cherry-picked. This is ongoing litigation. This is all alleged. But I thought it was pretty crazy and I wanted to talk about it this week.

Can I talk about a crazy, more light-hearted article? Absolutely. The headline I read today? Yeah. This is from PC World, and I just thought it, this is very short, but I thought it was too funny. It says, RAM prices are so out of control, stores are selling it at market prices. So basically... As a seafood lover.

This is crazy. So a store in California called Central Computers, and people have also seen something similar like this at microcenters, but they're essentially not pricing RAM at stores right now because of how much the prices are fluctuating. They have to just put up signs that basically. say ask a sales associate or just bring it to the counter and find out catch of the day like we ram is seafood right now because of trying to get compute a farm to table straight compute to table is not cheap these days but um this this just gave me a good laugh laugh it just says like due to a global

shortage of memory chips ram and related components have recently seen an increase in 20 50% they're fluctuating daily um because of this we can't just play fixed prices on certain products at this time. Didn't, correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't Wendy's experiment with this? Oh, they did. Did Wendy's experiment with dynamic pricing? Yeah, I think so.

They basically did like peak pricing. Yeah. First they came for our baconators. It is interesting. In certain commodities, we like gasoline is, like we are okay with market pricing in certain cases, but when it's

certain things, it seems ridiculous that it's market pricing like obviously if you're also this is like I'm pretty sure this is a small company like central computers is probably small enough that they don't have a ton of supply and like a very reliable like inventory supply they they probably have to do something like this where if you're best buy or whatever and you have a ton of of suppliers and you can sort of account for that you probably aren't doing this ridiculous like market pricing thing and you can eat some of the dips in profit but yeah it is fascinating I think they could just price it to a

certain like prices a certain amount higher than they buy it for though right couldn't they just do that it it does seem like central computers is a pretty local chain to the bay area and so yeah they probably don't have scale on their side and they're at the way of their distributor yeah i bet that's one is like it coming in and with not just like demand but also potentially tariffs i'm sure this could be changing literally but how much they pay for it and also if you everyone loves scalping these days i don't know why gary v but like everyone loves to just buy stuff and sell for more expensive because heaven forbid anyone gets a deal. So like if they sell this at a normal price,

I'm sure someone will come in buy everything and then just go resell it and make the money anyways. I'm sorry, I hate scalping so much. I think it's you brought up a really interesting point, Marquez, because like if I'm like, if we're talking about like oysters, you know, something that's, and milk. No, no, I want to do oysters because oysters are something that have like such a short shelf life. Like, you, you are eating them intrinsically, like, within a week or two after they came out of the ground.

You know, you can't stockpile oysters, you know. That's something I'm okay with being market price. A baconator, which was clearly made three and a half years ago and stored in some underground bunker. I like, oh, you could have used the RAM example. We have it right here, but you're like, no, baconator. Ram gets, don't we get a new DDR number, like every year or something like that? I would argue that baconators. DDR5 plus Ultramax.

Anyone on Twitter, if you know, what is made sooner or like what has, what spends longer in storage before being sold? Baconators or sticks of ram? Wendy's is fresh never frozen. Ah. Is that? Allegedly. It's like their whole thing. They probably keep it at 33 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's not frozen. It's not frozen. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not touching you. Never frozen. Never frozen.

That's funny. Yeah. we were thinking we got a fun game coming up in the next segment so why don't we do like a little teaser let's do one of them yeah before we actually get into it yeah so this is our tech hot takes um game yeah marquez is doing his tech hot takes video this week i think it's a lot of fun it's super fun we do it like once a year at this point but harper and i just collected way too many you usually do like five or seven harper and i probably grabbed like 50 so i figured why not bring some over to the pod yeah i like that let's let us talk about it and wine for a little bit um and you can enjoy our

whining so that sold it right yeah so we're gonna we're gonna evaluate these takes and see if they're hot or not and if they're good or not and if we agree with them and if we agree or not so you want to do the first one which pick one pick which one you like the most here let's go top to bottom let's go first all right first hot take from gregory mcfadden apple vision pro is still the most exciting tech product release in the last five years. Okay. So, I would say, I would say, disagree. Well, that's what makes it hot, is it's very easy to disagree with.

But let's go with, if you do agree, how would you justify it? Applevision pros is the most exciting. I'll try and justify it semi-anictotally. Yeah. Look at our, it's already the most viewed video on the MKBHD channel. That's a fact. Yeah. Which means there's maybe the most.

it's maybe the most interesting. It has the most interest. I think exciting is the key word here. Like, I think this is not most successful. This is not most useful. This is not necessarily totally game-changing. But in terms of excite on the internet, it's hard to argue against it. I have a slight counterpoint that we could maybe talk about.

Apple M-Series chips, right, M-1. That is exciting. That's the past five years. it is the past five years because it came on 20 yeah yeah came on 20 so you know I feel like that the M series chips Apple Silicon is the most like it's a lot of all exciting in there I mean it is exciting it's a lot of superlatives it's it's probably their best product is probably their most impactful most improved product yeah it's probably the most powerful product how many tick tockers were baking M5 and series videos

when it came out when the Vision Pro was like the only thing on in like broken outside of the tech space on TikTok when it came out. Like I as someone who is like, y'all are in our niche right now. I was getting completely throttled by a the last generation of Intel MacBook Pros. And I remember when they announced that that M1 MacBook Pro dude, it was like define exciting. It was like every single thing you've ever wanted. Yeah.

Cool. Cause. I don't think any of us are disagreeing. I think in smaller, I think to your point, in smaller communities, there are more exciting products. But if you want to go by total, like, mass, like, I'm trying to think of a product that came out in the last five years that's new that more people know about and no exists. Like, our parents all know about VR headsets now.

Like, all every, you probably don't know anyone who's been sentient for the last five years who hasn't heard of the Applevision Pro, where I think even some of the most popular and and best products from the last five years aren't quite on that level, which is crazy to say. So I think this might be a valid hot take. I'm trying to think of a more exciting tech product to the masses that actually hit.

I'm asking Gemini right now. Most people that bought a MacBook in the last five years chat GBT. Don't know what chip is inside. Chad GBTGBT did come out in 2022. Chad GBT is a tech product. Yeah. Is it exciting to people?

Kind of. That's true. It's more. I don't know about it. Controversial. Mother fucking bird buddy. True. Oh, so Gemini says that chat GPT

is the most exciting new product. That's pretty, Gemini, I said that. That's hilarious. That's really funny. It said that the most exciting hardware product is the Steam Deck. That's not even. You shouldn't have said that

because it doesn't help your first point by being that wrong the second time. Number three says Apple Silicon. Okay. Okay. Number four, it says Applevision Pro. Uh-huh. Number five, it says the maturation of foldable phones.

Foldable. Some people, yeah. Is that that exciting? So it's a summary verdict. Most transformative Chad GPT, most fun, Steam Deck. The Steam Deck, I think, might give Applevision Pro run for its money. I feel like so many people. Are you kidding?

In total generated excitement for humanity. I thought gamers were like so stoked. But that's it. You're keeping. I feel like. Like you guys keep saying, like, this is so cool in this niche right here that goes against everything we're talking about. I would argue outside of the tech bubble, like if you just go up to random people on the street and you said Applevision Pro, they'd be like, oh, that stupid useless thing that nobody has. And you'd say, and what about the Steam deck?

And they'd be like, the way. No, no, no, no. A regular person would be like the Steam deck? A regular person plays video games. A regular person does not care about a $4,000 VR hitter. A regular person knows about that. headset and is like steam deck is that Xbox or PlayStation now I'm pushing back on that I think I don't I don't I think you I did Google search trends what I just did Google search trends um Apple Vision

Pro is about three X the search volume of I don't think there's a single metric maybe I'm wrong although look at this look at this wow this actually shows how badly Vision Pro failed so when Vision Pro first came out screenshot it was stupidly popular but it died immediately and had no search volume until the M5 version came out. Oh, no, no, that's announcement and release. Oh, announcement and release while the M5 version didn't even make a mark. Didn't register the Richter at all. So they like, the search volume for like a week was 3X what Steam Deck has ever been.

However, Steam Deck has continual interest over time. Much, much higher than Vision Pro. I'd take 18 Steam decks before I would buy Vision Pro. I think it's way better of a product. I'm pretty excited. It says, oh, it does say average Steam Deck is way more popular than Manager Pro. That's what it says. Over time.

I guess that's one metric. I'm just trying to think, I'm trying to quantify this as total excitement generated for humanity. And like how many, that's a combination of total exposure and total excitement per person that sees it. By that definition, then, I would go chat GPT over the Applevision Pro. Hmm. Yeah, because it just has hundreds of millions of people every day. The whole economy is moving on Chachibati right now. I think that's it.

That's actually probably the real answer. I want to think of it. I guess I definitely thought more gadget, physical gadget. Exciting means by Oxford languages, causing great enthusiasm and eagerness. In this essay, I will. I wouldn't say that Vision Pro causes enthusiasm. But eagerness maybe? Eagerness in a cheaper version.

Like there's a, yeah, yeah. It is definitely interesting. An exciting breakthrough. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely... I think it's going to be chat GPT. ChatGPT is probably the correct actual answer.

But Greg, that's a good hot take. It's a good hot take. Yeah. All right. We'll take a quick break. We're going to have way more hot takes after the break. I'm excited. But that, of course, means we have time for one more trivia question.

Trivia dude, it's trivia, dude. Before I pass it to my coworker Adam, I just want to say someone potested in the KBHD subreddit, I feel like Ellis would like this video, and it got zero upvotes. I just watch you to know that I watched it and I did like it. What was it about? I don't have a Reddit account, so I can't.

It's about AI overview. It was about AI overview, and it might have also been about hot dogs. It was like two of my interest. It was about all you can eat buffet. That was it. It was an all you can eat buffet. That was not that far off. Yeah, exactly. I got here. So, man,

I feel seen. Thank you. Nice. Okay. Sorry, I'm watching it right now. The AI overview is, it's, they searched all you can eat buffet near me. The overview says you can use online search engines like Google. Can you? I don't know if you can.

I guess you can't. All right. So before the podcast, before we sat down to record, David and I were talking about aluminum OS, which is Google's new project to bring Android and, like, desktop computers. Chrome OS. foremost thank you um but we're not going to talk about that this week because it's just a rumor so it's not a rumor they have a job listing it's a job listing who knows if it'll ever come out like i mean projects it canceled all the time there's also a job listing for the tesla roadster that's true is it really yeah got them shouldn't they have that done by now

that's what i'm saying you're just now hiring after it's done yeah uh so i forget why david made a joke at my expense and i was like okay every question on today's will be about aluminum aluminum aluminum so this question is about aluminum al that's not it but but nice 42 electrons close what is the atomic number of aluminum 42 can I ask a follow-up question depends what it is what is an atomic number it's how many electrons it has protons weight of protons thank you yeah yeah protons which actually is also the electrons the electron number unless it's an ion yeah exactly you knew that you know that you know You know, like, it's a little number on the little box.

Yeah, you know about, like, the periodic tape. Okay, you've seen Breaking Bad, right? All right, well, we'll think about that one, too. We'll be right back. Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana. Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s.

You splurged. At Team Mobile, you can get four. iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe. Well, it's better than socks. So, I have to trade in my old phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family. Drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with Hey, where are you going? To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe! The holidays are better.

T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade it needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just 25 bucks a line. With 24-monthly bill credits and four eligible port-ins on essential for well-qualified customers photo pay plus taxes fees and $35.35 device connection chart credits and imbalance do if you pay off earlier. Cancel. Contact us. Finance agreement, 256 gigabytes, $830 required. Visit T-Mobile.com. All right, welcome back. We got some more hot takes to talk about that didn't quite make it into the MKBHD video, but that are still hot takes that were sent to me when I asked for them. next up we can talk about this one from hey pollock on threads who says user defined customization makes everything worse i pick some of these because they're like man i want to agree with you so

bad but i feel like i i think there's i think there are definitely two sides to this camp there are people who look at whenever apple allows you to customize their home screen more everyone's homescreens get uglier you've noticed that yes like they're They used to all look the same, and they looked fine. Okay, but they also, the options they give you are horrible. They give you, like, tinting now. They give you, like, the ability to put the icons everywhere. They give you widgets.

They start to let you do more stuff. And I've seen some of the worst home screens in the history of the iPhone in the last two years. So there is a valid argument for this, but also it gives you the ability to make everything better. It's hard to ever want to take things away from the user. But I also agree that sometimes I'm like, that's yucky. Look, and I don't like it. Be cringe, be free. That's all, look, look, look, makes everything worse.

It makes everything look worse, absolutely. Yeah. But I would, I would argue that it makes it better. Could you make the argument? I tried liquid glass. Oh, yeah. It's terrible. You can't use it.

That's not user-defined software. It's not custom. Yes, it is. The only thing I just customize is, do you want a glossy or do you want it, like, kind of not that glossier? Yeah, you could change, like, when you do customization, make, like, the glass where they're all see-through and everything. You can't even tell what the icons are. That's from Apple. I wouldn't say that's user defined.

Yeah, I think they're talking about like... That's like Apple's... No, I know. I think they're talking about like Android. No. We're talking about like you get to pick the... Because you're saying basically that Apple's direction is good. No, it's horrible.

Well, that's what I was saying. But the further you stray from a defined aesthetic, the more even worse you can make it. That's a good point. If the base is bad, and then you let people color on top of already bad? The floor is lower. yes exactly the floor drops out from underneath yeah and like the ceiling gets a little higher because you can make it a little better but like how many times have you looked at someone else's home screen on their phone and been like ugh i'm happy every time i look at andrew's phone okay maybe hot take but like we need uhgo stuff you know we need stuff to be ugly you can't appreciate the beauty if you don't know what the ugly and also damn why are you hating on lububo's all the time because they're ugly This is why, okay, I honestly think this was the best one out of everything because it's just like, it is the perfect amount of argumentative.

Labibu's are not user-defined. LeBubububus were defined by a designer who had awful taste. But like, okay, think of, think of a crock, right? A crock is just a blank, horrible-looking shoe. Yeah. Right? If you couldn't add anything to a crock, it would just be like, wow, another ugly shoe, whatever. Yeah, but then you open up user customization to it.

Yeah. How many crocs do you think look better after customization or look objectively worse after you customize them? Worse. They all look worse. Have you seen the Squidward Crock? But they are personal. Agree.

And that's exactly what this is. It's user customized and it's personal and that one person will feel it's better and everyone else will go, we don't talk about my Crock. I don't care what you think about my Crock. It kind of applies. You can tell everyone on this podcast is form over function. Because there are so many people create, like, it's pretty obvious that all the user-defined stuff, even though people make what we subjectively think is ugly, probably works really well for them. And I shouldn't be putting them down.

But here we are on a podcast saying, just look at the screen one more time. Is that really what you want people to see? But they don't see it. You know what else? Only you. Only you. Only you. The user customization we need to get rid of.

Car wraps. No. Highly disagree. I don't know. Highly disagree, especially because when the cyber truck came out and they all just looked like a dumpster refrigerator, you definitely had a higher ceiling from being able to wrap that. The floor, of course, went down. No, the floor went down. I admit it.

No, I have. I've seen lots of, like, gray and black and, like, other regular colored trucks that look better than the stainless steel dumpster that it looks like without the wrap. But how is that different than the iPhone tennis ball phone? Well, like putting a case on your phone, you're saying? No, no, no. Remember during the, when they announced the, I like, customization, they were like, if you love tennis balls so much, you can make your own screen tennis balls. Just like human beings do. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because it wasn't if you, like, it was if the photo of your dog likes tennis balls so much. Is that what it was? It was, it took the color from a dog with a tennis ball in its mouth. And it made them all yellow, which I kind of liked. It looked horrible. It's pretty hilarious. Great. It made them all lemon cello.

I think this is a great take because. You can probably, we can probably all agree that user-defined customization always makes the floor lower. Yes. And sometimes it also makes the ceiling higher. But because the floor always goes lower, you can say, yeah, it's just worse. But I'm also happy for the people living in the basement. Yeah, do what you want. I agree.

Do what you want. Can we all agree that this is a great take because we kind of agree with it, but would never, ever want people to lose customization? I can't publicly endorse that. Yeah, I will never, like, I will. It was pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah. I, especially as like a kid, like, an electronic needed to be customizable for me to enjoy using it.

Yeah. We're all probably sitting here today because we probably customized too close to the sun. You know how much they've taken from us? You know how much they've taken from us? I'm sure like at least 40% of the people listening to this podcast right now got yelled at by their dad because they changed the cursor on their home PC and gave the computer a virus. That's right, yeah. That aeroglass theme on Windows XP went.

so hard. Okay, that's a good one. Well, we got another one from threads. Okay. From J-D-W-A-Y-T. A lot of these are threads because all the ones on Twitter were just, like, crypto's not at its full potential. Yeah.

I made the mistake of asking people to upvote their favorites, which I thought would make, like, the hottest takes go to the top. It actually made the coldest takes go to the top because it had the most people agreeing with it. Oh, yeah. So you had to kind of dig a little bit in threads. There was plenty of, like, just... Ask on Reddit and then sort by controversy.

Exactly. That's the hottest. That's the real way to get the hottest. Okay, so this person on threads says, I don't get why people are so upset that tech companies no longer ship chargers in the box. You do not need to get a new one with every new product. I still have and used the USBC charger from my Nexus 6P. What are you all doing with your old chargers? Yeah, agree. 100% agree. Okay. So this is hot. Hard disagree. I 100% agree with that. Really? Hard disagree. This is hot. Because, at least to me, charging has gotten way better than the last few years, and you need the new charger to take advantage of... The companies that are shipping, like, the 100-watt phones give you 100-watt charger.

Agreed. They do. Well, not even that. The new iPhone doesn't they have new watts? 405 now, so, yeah. If you have the old charger, what's like, what are you going to do? That's actually valid. I think the ones that have changed the most in charging still include the charger. And the ones that have changed the least in charging are like,

you can use your old 6B charger and be fine. Actually, that's true. Yeah. Damn. This, I agree. This is one of those ones where like, I agree with this. It's one of where a company can make a statement saying this is like for the environment in e-waste, which I agree with. But I also think the alternative motive is it's make it's money.

More money for them. And so like I want to agree with it without giving them the credit of thinking this is some. Spinning it. Yeah, like some gift to us. I think every new phone should not come. with the charger, but should have a redeemable code. So if you really need the charger, and if

you need it enough, you'll go out of your way to order it or go to a store and get it, you should be able to get it for free. And then that eliminates all of this debate of that. If I ran a phone company, that's what I would do. But you know what Apple would say? They'd say, we'd have to ship the charger in a box to you, and you know how much

waste that causes? You know how much pollution that creates? But it's for those who need it. You know, Tim Cook? I know you're trying to optimize your pallet sizes by shrinking the size of the phone box but like only 5% of people are going to order that charger it's going to be great i love that with the new apple watch they were like we can add 50% more apple watches per shipment and it's like so you're saying that's for the environment but you're just saying we can sell more app we can save more money i think it's kind of interesting

that uh when you buy music gear or a lot of audio gear it they never come with any like obviously they'll come with power cables but there's no if it has like usbc power. No, no, no, not even. Like, if you buy, like, an audio interface, it won't come with mic cables. Or if you buy a microphone, it'll never come with a mic cable. You know what I mean? You're, like, you're, like, expected to buy that stuff and side. And the reason I say that is because I was thinking about the most mad I've ever gotten unboxing a tech product. And it was when I spent over $1,000 on my Blackmagic Ultra Studio 4K. And it didn't come with a Thunderbolt cable. I recently did that. Holy. Oh, you bought a Blackmagic Ultra Studio 4K?

So similarly, I was having issues with. my Apollo twin with the old Thunderbolt 2 at home and I finally upgraded and I spent $900 on an Apollo twin with the new Thunderbolt and I opened it and there was no Thunderbolt cable. What the fuck? And I was like thank God I have a Thunderbolt cable right now. And Thunderball cables are expensive. It made me so mad. Dude I say yeah but then it's funny it's like I've never bought a mic had been like why no XLR cable and frankly I wouldn't trust to include I feel I think that's exactly where the distinction is though because there are certain products that are expected to work out of the box and there are certain products

where everyone buying them is expected to customize it to their liking in some way and you let them like a microphone if you're buying a nice expensive xLR microphone that's the exact type of person who knows which USB which xLR cable which yeah they have their brands they like or in length like if i get an sm7b and it comes with a three foot cable it's like yeah there's a 90% chance that cable is now waste. Do the Gameboy color come with double-upters? Because since XLR cables have Jack and

pin or pin and hole different, like you can daisy chain them together. So. Would you, is that what you would do if you then needed to buy a longer cable afterwards? Because like, we have daisy chain cables in here. Yeah, but. Yeah. And if you're getting mad at me

about grounding or whatever, then you know that you know that email. You're too smart for this question. Did the Game Boy color come with batteries, like double-A batteries? I think so. Because a lot of products that you buy that take batteries, which is not that many because most of them are rechargeable now, come with like generic, you know, Amazon brand or whatever. That's fine, though, because that's expected to work out of the box. Well, if it didn't come with batteries, though, in like 1995 or that would be bad.

I agree that people shouldn't be upset about not getting a charger. But I do think if you're buying a peripheral, a $1,000 plus peripheral, and it doesn't come with a thunderbolt cable. Yeah, that's different. That's, that's ridiculous. We all have a million chargers, but we don't all have a million Thunderbolt cables. Fair enough. So still be mad at all the companies for pretending. My mom has one charger.

Jess, my fiance, has one charger. How? We have 600. Regular people do not just have chargers lying around. Like, they take them with them from place to place. But regular people in the U.S. generally because of how carrier systems work, upgrade their phone every two years.

So in the life cycle, even in an Apple life cycle right now, most people have a USBC charger already. Yeah. So like you, I would argue regular people have a USBC cable. Also, one. Counterpoint.

Yeah, and that's all you need. I could not find a lightning cable in this office this morning. That's because I threw them all that. Really? Why would be lightning cables? The track type. That's...

Oh. Yeah, I'll throw those out too. Also, also... Me and Max. That's lightning? Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. I would say that I agree with it. I'm not sure that it's super hot, but I do agree with it. I think it's fair. Yeah. All right. Another take from Ross Hahn underscore 1 on threads. We don't need a third camera in phones 90% of the time.

Disagree. First of all, I think it's a cop out to say 90%. I think you got to own this hot take and be like, we don't need a third camera. But, okay, he says we don't need a third camera 90% of the time. Why do you disagree? Because sometimes I need long, sometimes I need wide, sometimes I need regular. 90% of the time, do you need all three? Yeah, I think so.

Marquez, commit on your... Yeah, I think, I agree with this take on my... I... Yeah, Mr. Zoom lens. I would say the 90% is pretty accurate. I was... I also recently, by the time you watched this, was working on my what's on my phone video, and I'm a two-phone person.

On my right pocket, I have my main phone. it's an Android phone. And on my left pocket, I have my secondary phone, and it's an iPhone. And for months, I've been trying to make the iPhone air my secondary phone.

Really? Months I've been trying to do this. And the two things that always hold it back are the camera and the battery. I can overcome the battery because I'm maining the other phone. I can't overcome the lack of an ultra-wide and a telephoto.

I just can't. It's impossible. And the 1 plus 15 on maining also has a pretty bad camera, so I'm just without good cameras and that's just too much for me. You're apparently not alone because the reason that they are shifting

production away from the iPhone air is because the lack of the second camera is making people not want to buy it. Yeah. I think more than the battery. Wait, I thought you got nine cameras with the iPhone air. You've got the equivalent

of 27 focal length of all anecdotally fight back. I was so excited that the pixel 10 the base versions have three cameras now because they haven't. every time I take a zoom or an ultra-wide picture, I hate it. Yeah, I mean, it's bad. It's just so bad. But if you didn't have those cameras, wouldn't you be more mad?

I think I would be upset that I don't have them because I wouldn't be able to take the picture and then realize I'm never going to use that for anything or really look at it. Every time you zoom and it's like, dang, this is not that good of a zoom photo. If you didn't have that zoom camera and you zoomed, it would be an even worse zoom photo and you'd be more mad. Unless you give me a good zoom lens Because you got rid of the third lens So you just want two Just give me two

I don't need three Yeah I'll Who needs to choose as you're saying? An ultra wide is just for fun zes you know it's funny There's like a generation where I think that Totally changed I saw a I think it was an Instagram real But it was probably TikTok

Where there's a kid holding his phone And then there's a photographer Who's doing like this really high end sports photography I saw that too And the kid goes yo switch it to 0.5X And the guy says 70 to 200 And he's like no I can't What are you talking about?

And he's like man there's no point five this thing sucks and he's like this is I can't I can't talk to you I mean if he was at 140 mil and he could just switch it back to 70 and say it was point five yeah I like the ultra wide it is a fun lens but as far as like the one that I need every day I need a regular lens just to like quick take a take a picture and then I need a good zoom lens so you can see things from far away even if it's not a good picture just like to tour remember yeah as a tool like I need the lens in my opinion the point five x is the work the most pointless camera i i have two very i have two specific thoughts i think anytime i'm trying to take a good photo i definitely get them

out of the zoom way more than the ultra wide but anytime i'm trying to like functionally like take an ultra wide because it i need it for this photo it's never about the quality of the photo but i that's when i need an ultra wide i can't fake an ultra wide like i can with the zoom right so Also, Ultra White is objectively hilarious on the iPhone. It is bad. I want them to make a 0.2 camera. Like, why stop? You just put it, just put an Insta 360, you know, 360 cam.

Yeah, 360 cam. Yeah. So anyway, all right, I think this is a reasonable take. It's not particularly hot. I think we all kind of agree with it. But if they've gone all in and said we don't need three cameras, that would have been pretty spicy. True. All right.

Next take. Dennis on Threads says. wireless charging is overrated. You still on that? I can't believe. We're still talking about this? Because it's right. It's correct. It's not right. It's wonderful. It's overrated. It's the specific quote. I don't think anyone

underrated. I agree with you. Yeah. I will defend this take. I love losing heat. You will defend this take. I recently. I love I love over here. Spending 45 watts to get 27. I love it. I recently received as part of my employment at this job a chance

channel sponsor, channel partner, Ridge, portable battery bank. Pretty incredible. Because of my phone never leaves my side. In fact, it is glommed on to the side of my phone like a remora. Nice. I just love that your iPhone mini has to live with something twice the size of it all the time. It literally looks like a barnacle. It's so funny.

That being said, now that I'm charging my phone all the time, I have seen how inefficient wireless charging is because I can either choose the wireless charger or the built-in lightning cable. And I thought I was like, oh, yeah, it's just like a little less efficient. No, no. It's like I can, it's the difference between, I'm going to get these numbers wrong, but it feels like the difference between being able to charge my phone twice, like dead to full on the wireless versus like six.

or seven times with the lightning cable. And it's like, now it got to the point where I actually feel bad when I charge my phone wirelessly like that because I'm like, I'm just, I'm wasting this battery, I'm wasting this lithium, I'm wasting electricity. I'll counterpoint two things to that. Yes. One, your phone fucking sucks. Like, why are we comparing it to a phone that dies four times in a single day?

That, of course, it's not going to be beneficial for that. Got it. Two, I don't think anyone is wireless charging for efficiency. It just becomes the placeholder on a desk or a nightstand. It is a thing to just rest a phone on and happens to be charging. And at any point, I can just pick it up or put it down without having to undo a wire that is now hanging on my desk or night stand, falls underneath the bed, falls behind in all my cables. Like, I have one of those mats on my desk at home that has the wireless charger built in. and like while I'm working at my computer

I just have my phone on it and it just happens to be charging it otherwise I'd just be sitting there right and yes I could like I guess get a cable and do that God forbid no this is my thing there this is my other thing

that Ellis didn't say it but the most sorry I'm amped up about this one I think it comes from like four trivia extravaganzas ago where it was like what's things you need in a phone and wireless charging wasn't on it and I'm still salty about it but everyone's

always like, it just takes one second to plug a phone. It's like, we are in the tech space where literally every single thing we do is to shave milliseconds off of things. I'm sure the person's saying you can just plug it in also bought a 5090 so they can play old school RuneScape. Like, we are at a level of, I am also the person that said recently that the best product Apple has released in the last five years is, uh, no, standby mode, which is part of MagSafe. Which is, yeah, which is a wireless charging feature. So I get that I'm being a little hypocritical here. I mean, but I think overrated is acceptable. I just don't think that many people rate it. I think a lot of people underrated. People like to hate on it. Yeah, yeah. I overrate the shit out of it, maybe. But

I think people rate it because when a phone comes out that doesn't have wireless charging, it's like a knock on it. That's the same thing. I think I'm hypothesizing that this person who is saying wireless charging is overrated does not have or use wireless charging. And I think once you have the convenience of wireless charging and then you get rid of it, then you're like, ah, I actually really like wireless charging. But if you never have wireless charging, you look over at the other side of the fence and you're like, just plug in, bro, it's overrated. That's my hypothesis about this.

Yeah. Anyway, on my bedside table, I love when I officially stop doom scrolling and go to sleep four hours after I was meant to, I can just like lean over and drop it and then fall asleep instead of like, where's the wire, it's over here? well you need the magnets to line up yeah but it's magsafe so just slaps it that's why magsafe is also because then you never have the how do they work yeah takes me away when i put this phone on the charger i go i mean that there is a case right that has uh chi ready yeah it's okay it's okay it's and you have shakes a little bit yeah and then i wake up and it's 50% of it dang that is old if that was the case

Then, yeah, maybe it's over it. Fair enough. All right. All right. This one might age some of us a little bit. Once Sikradu on threads says, AI is just Silicon Valley's Labubu. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

It's a weird new sentence that I can't believe. I'm saying out of lessons. AI is just Silicon Valley's Laboooooo. What is? Can someone explain what a Labuobu is in, like, it's the nancy little doll. It's, do you know what Pop Mart is? No.

Okay, so Pop Mart is this company in China that sells toys that are primarily delivered via blind boxes. So you buy a box and you don't know which one it is. LeBoooo, and it's very big in China. It's very big all over. Korea, right? I don't think that's free. I thought it was like most popular in Korea. No, it's definitely most popular in China.

Oh. But there is a K-pop group called Black Pink. They're not, it's their K-pop, right? Demon Hunters. called Black Pink, and Lisa, one of the members of that group, I think, publicly had a Labibu, which helped kick off the whole thing. But I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. But yeah, so Pop Mart is a big Chinese toy company.

They sell lots of different lines of toys that are primarily delivered via blind boxes. Labubos are the ones that have taken off internationally. Thank you, Ellis, our K-pop correspondent. I can't wait for the comment that's like, it's just so painful hearing these guys try and talk about Labubo. Based on an artist who grew up with Nordic fairy tales and made some fairy tale books that look like Labuboos. That's what they're based on. So how does this relate to AI?

I was just going to say, my only connection that I'm drawing is these are extremely trendy. And maybe AI is extremely trendy. That is what they're going with. I would, I'll do, I'll take it in a different direction. The boo-boos primarily come in blind boxes. And a blind box is an experience where you put lots of money into something and then you don't know if it's going to pay off. Damn.

And by that logic, I would say AI is definitely the libouou of tech. Everything is gambling. I have another parallel that libuboos to those not in that world look pretty silly. And I'll be honest,

so does talking to a chat bot to a lot of people who are not in this world. I rest my case. You're absolutely right. My girlfriend is having trouble doing this complicated Microsoft Word formatting thing. I was like, do you want to ask my Claude, and she shot daggers at me? My cloud.

Yeah. I think this is a wonderful analogy and encapsulation, and perhaps not a hot take at all. Perhaps a totally reasonable take. All right, I'll do one more. Camera control is actually very useful. Very useful, you say. It's the most annoying feature Apple has put out in a long time. I use it to open the camera.

That is it. That makes it useful. That was exactly what I was going to say. That's what I was going to say. But you know what else you can do? You can long press on your screen. You could, but how often do you do that? Well, not now because I have camera control.

Exactly. So you're saying you use it. I mean, sure. I would prefer this is a touch ID. Wait, hold on. What are it? Yeah. That'd be a weird place for it.

But what are your two long presses on your home screen right now? It's flashlight and Gemini voice mode. Those are also mine, too. So it's not camera anymore? I could get rid of the flashlight. Or I could, or you could do the picture. pixel twist you know camera control also okay so you use it to open it the camera is open once you've opened it do you ever use camera control no then it just slide tone all it ever does is interrupt things

yeah accidentally and then i'm like oh 2.3x horrible image quality yeah that's what i want yeah it sounds like if it was just a button you would be okay with it not a camera button not a capacity i just wanted to be touch id that's all i wanted to be i think this person made it a great flaming hot take by calling it camera control but really all we find useful is the ability to open the camera quickly. Once you open it, the rest of the camera control features are kind of annoying. They're just in the way. I think that a lot of smartphone companies have made like a million ways to open your camera faster.

Well, so for the longest time, you just double press your power button on like 97% of Android phones double press power button would open. There used to be the iPhone has double tap accessibility. Is that still a thing? It's still a thing. It doesn't work for me though. It's kind of finicky. It's kind of finicky. But then there would be Android phones where they would add a specific camera button.

That would also be a shutter button. Like Sony phones did this for a little bit. I think an LG phone had a custom, like a G5 or something back in the day. So there would be like a hardware button to open the camera, which is cool if you'd take a lot of pictures. Yeah. Nowadays, it's like I kind of still just double tap my power button on most Android phones. And then on the iPhone, the action button came along a few years ago. And that's what I would map it to.

Open my camera. Oh, yeah, action button. Yeah, what the heck? There's so many buttons. Yeah. You don't need this button. Yeah. But now I have...

It's not a button. It's camera control. All right. Action button is one thing. My camera control button is the camera. My two shortcuts on the home screen are two different things. I have my flashlight. So I got all kinds of customization going on.

Maybe we're back to the customization. User-centric customization. As a non-Iphone user who's never used camera control, I think we have one piece of evidence from someone who knows quite a bit about iPhone. of how useful camera control is and that is Apple because it seems like they have completely forgotten about camera control. This is also true.

They didn't even mention it a single time in the last iPhone announcement, right? It's because they just one-shotted it right out the gate. You know what's the best indicator that's not very useful? Oppo in the FindX9 Pro didn't copy it. Did a perfect clone of camera control on their phone and nobody talks about it or cares

because nobody uses it because it's not that useful. Yeah. Because you can still double tap the camera button or double-tap the power button to open the camera. What would it have to do to become useful? Like, what would make you be like, okay, now this is cool? Not be annoying is what it sounds like. It would have to have more, like, granular.

Not granular, I don't know what the word is, but like when I swipe and it goes from 0x to 2.2x or whatever, that's annoying to me. If I could have more fine control over just, nox me over to 2x, notch me to 4x, if that worked better, I would be happier and probably use it a little bit more. yeah um but i think it's too late to save itself i think i just use this screen because it's a

huge beautiful screen why would i not use the screen yeah decent take wait is it well it's hot because no one agrees with it exactly yeah it's hot because no one agrees with it but it's decent because we actually all use it to open the camera so it's arguably useful yeah you just make it a regular button not a capacitive whatever the heck that's what we really want cool okay well that was it trivia trivia dude i don't want to argue about this but i saw a really funny hot take on twitter this weekend where much people were talking about nuclear energy and how silly it is that nuclear energy is just a new way to boil water and the hot take was that it's crazy that

humanity essentially one-shoted the best way to generate electricity in the 1700s and we've just been figuring out slightly better ways to do it since then um guys trivia as i opened the trivia document. 1700s? Yeah, the Industrial Revolution. Oh, yeah. The steam engine. The steam engine.

Gabe Newell's been cooking for a long time. True. No one? No, I get a steam. And he bought the cruise ship, I mean, the yacht company. Guys, in 1994, if you wanted to go to Comp USA and buy an Apple perform a 630 CD with a 14-inch monitor and an HP inkjet printer on a Black Friday deal. How much would all that cost?

And you have to let me know if you're giving this in $1994 or September 2025. I don't have a pen. Does anyone know why September 2025 is the last year there's inflation data available? Because they decided to just pretend it doesn't exist. Pretty interesting, huh? Wait, September 2025? September 2025, right before October 2025. I just assumed the website's not updated well enough.

Oh, because the government shut down. Probably because. Is that way? I was trying to be cheeky and infer. Wow. Read them. Wait, I never said, I guess we're doing Delta because I never said prices, right rules. Did anyone think we were doing prices right rules just in the interest of fairness?

I think I, not unless. Even when we're doing prices right, I go Delta anyways because I want to beat that on. We're doing slightly complicated math, but someone read me an answer. I wrote $25,000, $2,000, September. And you wrote $3,000. Okay, cool. In $1994, $700. And I put in $194, $2994.

And the winner is, Andrew Mangonelli, by about $100 off from David. It was $2,000 in 1994, so you were $1,300 off. Oh. And it was, wait, it was $3,000, excuse me, $4,340 in today's, so close. Which was $1,430 off for me. Yeah, you beat David. What's the inflation on the Delta?

Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, you shouldn't have to do that. I should get the point, but the smarter move was to guess the 1994 price because the money smaller, smaller, smaller delta away from it. That's where my head was that. Stratt, good strat, good strat. Quick update on the score. Mark Hess with 10. Oh, nice. Andrew with 12 after that correct point.

Nice. David with nine. I'm catching out. I'm embarrassing if I got past. Ooh, it'd be a shame somewhere to happen to those points. All right. Aluminum, what's the atomic number? Go.

Ah. Just visualize the periodic table. Where do you think it is? Aluminum. Aluminium. The periodic table is in alphabetical order, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why it's periodic.

Do you guys want to hear a fun waveform fact? Sure. Is this closest delta? Sure, yeah. What? Did you know that the waveform podcast has 0.8 mics per host? Wow. That's pretty fun.

That is pretty fun. All right. Flip him and read. What do we got? We're all exactly even from each other. My goal is to not name a number that's not on the periodic table. So we are actually periodic. Yeah, because I put 12.

Okay. And I put 16. Mine's not periodic? No, we are periodic. No, what's your number? Because we're periodic with a delta 4 between us. Oh, 20. 20?

The correct answer is 13. So the closest is David. David gets the point. I'm not... I visualized very well. What is 12 to be? Magnesium. It's 12.

Well, anyway, that's been it for this week. And all of our hot takes and air dropping various files between and Android phones and Macs and iPhones. It's been a really good time. Let us know what you think in the comments, but of course make sure you're one of the people who subscribe before we get to 500,000. It's very important that you do this

because once you get to 500,000, the door shuts no more subscribers is what I heard. So make sure you get in now. And I believe it's free as of Black Friday. So appreciate you. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys the next one. Peace.

Happy Thanksgiving. Oh, that happened already. I already have. If you're in America. Leave it in. Way from it was produced by Adam Alina and Ellis Riven. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and our showtry music is created by Vain Silk.

Bingo! Bingo! If you don't like and subscribe, I'll never get back to the producers' table. Do it. Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana. Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s.

You splurged. At Team Mobile, you can get four iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe. Well, it's better than socks. So, I have to trade in my old phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone, or give it as a gift.

Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family. Drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with... Hey, where are you going! To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe!

The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us, no trade it needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just $25 a line. With 24-month-bid bill credits and four eligible board ins on essentials, for well-qualified customers brought up pay plus taxes, fees, and $35 device connection chart credits, and imbalance do if you pay off earlier. Cancel, contact us, finance agreement, $256 gigabytes, $830 required. Visit team mobile.com.