Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Apple Drops New M2 MacBooks and Mac Mini!

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

New Apple M2 products just dropped! Marques sits down with Andrew and David to discuss everything that was announced by Apple including the new M2 MacBook Pros, Mac Mini, and even a HomePod. After that, they talk about the typical 5-star review system and whether or not it is actually helpful to consumers. Finally, we wrap up by discussing the latest Boston Dynamics video before getting into trivia answers. A few new Apple products, some philosophical discussion, and a humanoid robot make for a classic episode of Waveform. Hope you enjoy it! Links: Hand Mirror app: https://bit.ly/Handmirror Apple AR glasses article: https://bit.ly/BloombergARglasses Atlas Boston Dynamics video: https://bit.ly/wvfrmbostondynamics Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Shop products mentioned: MacBook Pro 14” 2023 at [https://geni.us/ixxVA](https://geni.us/ixxVA) MacBook Pro 16” 2023 at [https://geni.us/Q90j0](https://geni.us/Q90j0) Apple HomePod (2nd generation) at [https://geni.us/oGBZd](https://geni.us/oGBZd) Twitters: Waveform: https://twitter.com/wvfrm Marques: https://twitter.com/mkbhd Andrew: https://twitter.com/andymanganelli David: https://twitter.com/DurvidImel Adam: https://twitter.com/adamlukas17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ 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

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All right, what's going on, people of the internet? Welcome back to the waveform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And this week, we've got first some Apple news. It's it's pretty short, but we might end up having a lot to say about it. So there's some Apple stuff at the beginning, but also some potential VR stuff we want to talk about with a rumor. Then we've got our musings on reviews and review systems for things. We review things, but there's more to it. And this is a conversation we were having before that we just brought into the podcast room because it was kind of existential and interesting. Anyway, let's start with the Apple stuff because there's two main new announcements.

They kind of went into press release mode. Apple's done this thing before where they had some products that were ready to be refreshed, but they weren't really enough to be their own event. So they just go one day at a time with new press releases of new products. At the time of recording, it's Wednesday. So we had yesterday MacBook Pros and new m2 chips and today home pod which should we talk about first i think some people think it's a press release because it was supposed to come out in november that would be like that would follow the macbook pro time

general timeline right so they did do this like youtube 18 minute video like pseudo event type thing for the MacBooks anyway. The HomePod was just a straight press release, just a piece, like a one-sheeter, which is kind of all it needed. But we do have some interesting things here, so I'll just go over the laptops first. So 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pros

are now updated with the new M2 generation chips. So before they had M1 Pro and M1 Max, now they have M2 Pro and M2 Max, which are sort of incremental improvements, bumps over the previous generations. These laptops, which I'm still, this is my 16 inch M1 Max MacBook Pro. Prove it.

It's exactly the same as the new one probably, but I can show you. You probably can't read that, but it says Apple M1 Max in About This Mac. I can tell that that HDMI port is 2.1, just so you know. The internet's going to be able to tell. Oh, this is the old one. This is 2.0. Sure.

Yeah, sure. Either way. Here it is. Those old machines, old in air quotes, they're one year old, are still amazing. So my take on these is this isn't for people who have the M1 Pros already. This is for people who have older machines to be upgrading and now have a better option. As you mentioned, HDMI 2.1 is also new, which was kind of a head-scratching omission from the M1 Pro and M1 Max. God, these names.

I know. The MacBook Pros before, but we get that. We also get Wi-Fi 6E. Yes. And a little bit of a performance boost. Up to 96 gigs of shared video memory and RAM. For a lot of money. For the highest end M2 Max chip.

For very expensive. Pretty sick. Do we know what the Max that is? I'm looking at that right now. Same prices, I think. No way. For 96 gigs? Oh, for the Max, yeah.

You can go up higher probably. But the starting prices are the same. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 96 is what I have on my Mac Pro at my desk, which is back then, well, it was the smaller end of RAM for the Mac Pro, which is kind of funny, but not a laptop. So prior, it added $400 to go from 32 to 64 gigs of RAM,

and now it adds $800 to go from 32 to 96. So it's another 400. So if you're an absolute animal and you need 96 here's the thing is i edit videos on this laptop like i yeah i am doing a lot of heavy work on this laptop and i will not be upgrading mine i mean well i'm going to review it i'm going to check it out but i don't feel compelled for the first time in a long time to upgrade to a new piece of kit for work yeah which is pretty actually. I'll try it for you. Sure.

I'll take it after. Yeah, I'll give it a good home. They also get a new color matching MagSafe cable. Put it in quotes. Put it in quotes. Color matching. On the front and in the middle. I guess the thing is,

these laptops are only in space gray and silver, so it's not as, you were mad about the power cable and what they did with it. Which, why? Explain why you're mad. On the air. Well, because it's like quote unquote matching because the MagSafe aspect and the braided

cable match the computer chassis. Yeah. But then the USB-C port on the end is white, which like on space gray looks terrible. I think it looks worse than if it was all just white. Yeah. It looks even worse on the air, which had the midnight color. So it would be a nice dark cable. And then just the white plastic on the end, which looked dumb.

I will say the white cables that everyone got with the last year's models, they get dirty really easily. So they look kind of yellowed pretty easily because they're braided and they just get dirty. And it would be nice to have a different colored cable however it is just a cable functionally i do not care you don't like that patina speaking of cables and functionalities does anyone know what the difference is between hdmi 2.0 and 2.1 yes i dare you to ask how you ask adam this is a tech podcast you should use this for trivia because i do know i just wanted to explain it for the audience oh times the bandwidth? How will you ask? Adam. This is a tech podcast. You should have used this for trivia because I do know.

I just wanted to explain it for the audience. Oh, I was, okay. No, it was a setup. You can if you want.

It was a setup. Are you going to explain it? No, you explain it. Oh, me? No, you explain it,

yeah. Oh, okay. I don't know what the difference is, legitimately. HDMI2 got 18 gigabits per second of pass-through,

whereas 2.1, I believe, is a quarter of that. Way more. 48. 48 gigabits per second of pass-through whereas 2.1 i believe is quarter of that 40 way more 48 gigabits per second of pass-through oh yeah two uh it also as ellis taught me a couple days ago has what is the audio term for this e-arc can you explain this isn't that just syncing uh no it's pretty cool so like um you know typically an hdmi cable is one of those cables that you plug it into an out jack and you plug it into an in jack and it's not necessarily like bi-directional in any way. But let's say, hypothetically, you have a setup where you have a game console plugged in to a like stereo receiver, and then you have that stereo receiver plugged into your TV. a like stereo receiver and then you have that stereo receiver plugged into your tv but you have a smart tv yeah so when you're playing games you're sending audio from your game console to your stereo then from your stereo to your speakers right but when you're streaming

the audio needs to go the other way the audio goes from your smart tv to your stereo to and you're not going to go hd HDMI out of your TV into your stereo. That doesn't make any sense. So EARC adds an audio return channel going the opposite direction on the HDMI cable. Yeah. Yeah. People have had to deal with this for a minute.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 2.1 also add support for variable refresh rate displays, which is nice. I'm not actually completely sure if that means like, because the MacBook Pro is variable refresh rate. Yep.

It goes up to 120. I don't know if that means it'll just like mirror it if you have a VFR like separate monitor. I'm not totally certain about that. But it can also carry 4K at 120 hertz. 8K 60 if you want. And 8K 60. 8K 60 if you want. And 8K 60. 8K 60 through one cable.

Yeah. So if you have an 8K monitor and you're playing 8K content on your MacBook, I think that means it could. 8K content out from the HDMI. Marques, that's not worth it for you? Well, I don't use HDMI. The thing for me is that it should have been there last year. And so it's just good they're adding it. And then also Wi-Fi 6E because there's all of these Wi-Fi 6E routers that are starting to come out now.

And we even have Wi-Fi 7 now. That's the one thing that I did kind of think about. I mean, the Wi-Fi is great. I go home and I get like the best speeds on this computer out of any other device on my Wi-Fi network. But it would be cool to have Wi-Fi 7. But whatever. I just bought a Nest Wi-Fi Pro and that is specifically the 6E router.

It's one of the first 6E routers and it would just be nice if like the computer... We just upgraded the studio here to Wi-Fi 6E routers. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So glad we have 6E for the like 30 down. We got something for ISP. It's probably a good idea at first.

I'm not going to buy a new MacBook just to get Wi-Fi 6E. I'm just saying it's great for the people that are buying new MacBooks. Yeah, exactly. I'm just saying the last time Marques said you weren't going to get something, we then had a plaid like three weeks later. That's not the last. I've been very good. I said I was going to get a matte black trash can and I didn't buy it.

I just remember getting a Slack message in like the random chat with Marques just saying, okay, guys, hear me out. And I just knew what was about to happen speaking of things marquez has said in the past while we're on the subject uh i do have a little link here in the doc from something that you said the last macbooks that came out and i think there's a little promise you're gonna have to keep good on can we play the audio? Paying attention to what's on the screen It disappears even more than it did on the smaller screen of the phones But that being said if the next version of this laptop still has a notch this big and doesn't add face ID I'll wear socks and sandals for a day like Linus. Like they gotta be planning on putting it there eventually, right?

Do you remember that? It's not that big of a deal. Have you not been getting tagged in this like a million? I've gotten multiple tags on Twitter and Reddit about this. I've gotten tagged about this. To be fair, since Tweetbot and Flamingo died, I have not been on top of my mentions you're having a rough day yeah i lost my favorite apps for keeping track of these things

no i think well okay i guess my question is does this count as the next yes version of this because it was it's basically just a it's a chip bump in the same laptop but they added other stuff too they added hdmi 2.1 and they added wi-fi 60 and they got an extra hour of extra battery life and they're not going to refresh the chassis of this until like the m4 i would guess i guess that's kind of what i'm maybe yeah well i'm just trying to weave it my way out it's not that big of a deal to wear sandals fine width sucks come toals with socks I said for a day I think that's a bold I think you should have ate a sandal

I considered it would be winter that's a fair point what if you can double or nothing so when they do change the whole design if there's still no face ID then you have to wear Crocs yeah if there isn't for a week for a week

crocs double or nothing i was gonna not let him get out of this double or nothing that is crocs for a week i don't think i want to take i think my logic behind this was like if you look at this notch and and obviously all the technologies apple typically puts inside of a large notch is like all the face id stuff and this gigantic notch in this laptop only has a webcam and like the ambient light sensor and like maybe the microphone and that's it and i was like okay they're clearly going to do more they're gonna like you know start doing notches across the whole you know all the lineups they're gonna do notches and all these things and they want to add face id at the same time get us used to it but i i just can't believe yeah they're clearly going to there's no way they just did this huge notch which is so unsightly just for the webcam yeah um there there is a cool mac app though called hand mirror where if you bring your cursor

underneath the notch and click it brings up like a little video preview of what your camera sees. So if you need a quick... That's kind of cool. Yeah, you have to click behind the notch so it's not just accidentally swiping by it. Just catch a glimpse of yourself. Yeah, so if you just need a quick... Does anyone know if there's a Windows app of that?

Because there are some times where I'm just like, I kind of wish I could see myself in my webcam real quick without having to open up OBS or something. Why would you want that? You never know, man. I don't know, check your hair before a podcast. Yeah, or if you...

I don't know, everyone just thought it was cool when it was on the MacBook, but now it's Windows and it's terrible. Yeah. Wow. It's the notch, man. It's the notch. It'd be cool if you could ask Siri.

It'd be like, yo, Siri, do I look okay today? Siri's like, yeah. There are times I want to make sure the webcam's plugged in and working and everything or like not dirty before a call. Yeah. Yeah, typically I just like open quick time and but that's convenient. I usually want to check if

I'm dirty before a call, you know. That's why I need my digital webcam to confirm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't see myself without it, you know. Fair. Well, I mean, you know, new laptop. It's got the notch. I'll figure out. Yeah, I do not want the Crocs myself without it you know fair well i mean you know new laptop it's got the notch i'll i'll figure out oh yeah i do not want the crocs bet looming over my head so i'll i will find a way um that's not the only new machine though there is also maybe a more interesting machine

which is the new mac mini which got me thinking a lot about the poor imac the m1 imac that's just kind of been like sitting unupdated for a while and we have a new M2 chip but they haven't put it in the Mac yet why I don't know yeah but the Mac Mini which had an M2 which had an M1 and an M1 Pro now has an M2 and an M2 Pro I don't think it had M1 Pro did it oh sorry yeah it didn't even have M1 it just had M1 just had the Apple Silicon M1 Mac Mini yeah these names okay so now we have the mac mini with m2 and the mac mini with m2 pro which is nice it's a little higher end no ultra that's of course for the studio the studio comes with the pro and the mac or for the ult the max and the ultra the mac

studio has the max and the ultra yeah which is why we don't have a new mac studio because there's new there's no m2 ultra yet yeah um but we do have like all the i thought all the base m2 stuff would be done like the m2 ipad is out the m2 everything else is out why is there no m2 imac what i did they forget about the i think they've got leftover m1 chips left and they just need to put them somewhere and people that buy all-in-one computers are not the people that like like if you pick if you pick up a mac mini or like a mac studio you're choosing your own display which means you kind of care about your peripherals so that means that is an indicator that you're more of a professional but if you buy an m1 imac you're probably using it as like a family computer or something basic so

those people most likely don't really care about that like 30% GPU bump or whatever. True, except same with iPad. Well, okay. iPad is just unnecessary in every way. Although they have, at least they have Resolve on it now. Yeah. I figured they ship a lot more. I may be wrong, but maybe they, I think they ship more iPads than they do iMacs.

I'm sure. Oh, almost definitely. So if they really wanted to get rid of M1 chips, just put them in all the iPads. They still are like fire sailing the M1 iPads all the time. True. Yeah. I think they're still trying to get rid of them. But for leftover M1 chips in general, I would bet you they're putting them in M1 iMacs.

Plus, they come in a lot of fun colors. You can put them kind of anywhere. Yeah. They can move a lot of units. Look, these are going to be good computers, I'm pretty sure. I mean, we're going to test them. We'll have reviews when they're ready but i feel like my initial reaction is like wow these m1 machines if you can get a discount on them uh are are still amazing like everyone i've

this is very rare everyone i've talked to who i've recommended get one of these m1 pro or m1 max macbook pros loves the thing if you can find one on a discount i highly recommend it it's gonna get software updates the same way the m2 does like i don't see any downside so unless you need hdmi 2.1 or wi-fi 6e keep an eye out for those discounts because that's gonna be good a 600 m2 mac mini that is like kind of the most interesting to me sneaky great deal that feels like there's some there's some very niche people out there that probably are like, oh my goodness, that's a killer price. Yeah.

I just had this memory. I remember, I think I saw on Twitter maybe one or two days ago as of the day we recorded this of like, this is the eighth anniversary of like Steve Jobs pulling the MacBook Air out of the envelope or whatever. I don't know if you saw that. And that was like a crazy thing to do for a computer. It was like mind-blowing that that much compute

could fit in a Manila envelope. And now I'm just thinking like, yeah, an M2 iPad would fit in that envelope and be dramatically more powerful. Like if I had this M2 Mac mini back when I was doing the fastest Mac mini in the world project. Not in the envelope,

but like I did the fastest Mac mini in the world project and Not in the envelope, but I did the fastest Mac mini in the world project and tried to cram as much power into a Mac mini as possible. This thing would just obliterate it, and it's $600. I think about that manila envelope moment a lot because I was in seventh grade in the audience for that moment. I was there when that happened, and I had no idea why that was important.

I was just like, seventh grade, you're right. Okay, he's pulling a computer out of an that was important i was just like seventh grade okay he's pulling a computer out of an envelope my brain was just mush so i kind of you know i kind of feel like i do remember being really impressed and i was like i wish it had ports because i would totally use that i'm glad that you obtained consciousness before that i before i did i was i was online i was not i was just like i like not. I was just like, I like iPods. I was just thinking like, what is going to be the next moment that they do something like that? And I was low-key thinking, the glasses.

What if like the whole time someone's on stage, they're wearing glasses and then they're like, these are actually them? That's tough. That would be crazy. That's tough. Everyone will notice that immediately. Yeah, because every time someone comes out on stage, they get analyzed from head to toe. Yeah, because every time a salad comes out on stage. Yeah, they get analyzed from head to toe You know

like if you have a watch being rumored everyone who goes on stage has a little sliver of a watch sticking out into this leaf and That thing is all over Twitter the second they walk out. What if everyone wears what wears glasses the whole presentation? That's even more obvious problem. Tim. Click on which will it be like everyone? They're all different frames Tim Cook does usually have glasses on. Yeah. They just find all the presenters, they make sure that they all have these diabetisms

and they're just like, okay, all these people usually have glasses, so I'm not sure what's happening right now. I don't know. There was that like, there was like a few events in a row where it was like,

this is our new camera and video capabilities are great. And this whole live stream has been filmed in it and that like seems pretty obvious when that happened too and but none of them have been as shocking as like the earlier technology demos when like you have no idea what's happening and they just pull out a whole new technology like that's what was always so incredible that's it's increasingly rare be long. My leaking's making that so much tougher also. Yeah.

Like, we know all the products before. I think it was so iconic because even if the computer did leak, that moment of pulling it out of an envelope

on stage could not have been leaked. The reference of it? Yeah, totally. Like, that moment of a smart presentation moment was pretty iconic, I think.

Right. Well, there's another Apple product we gotta talk about. The best one. It's the home pod 2 second second gen second one the home the second generation home pod home pod gen 2 okay so what's new about this home pod right and ad break i'll just say to set the stage for the HomePod, the first generation HomePod was discontinued, right? Okay, so this was a $350 Siri smart speaker.

And it was a cool sound. It sounded pretty good, right? Yeah, it launched at $350, remember? Yeah. And then they dropped the price to $300. Yeah. And then that didn't work. And then it discontinued.

But it was like, okay, we're going to bring the Home the home pod back what are we gonna do with this home pod so this second generation home pod it is 299 at launch same size same size i'd be losing money if i didn't buy it so so here's the difference is the screen on top which was this like cool animation like lcd touch sensitive area for volume and triggering siri is bigger it's a full coverage of colorfulness now that's why you didn't buy the home pod right yes yes absolutely the reason yeah that's what that's new uh has an s7 chip inside it now has a temperature and humidity sensor inside so you can ask it what's the humidity in this room why would you do that and people do that apparently that was also activated by a software update for homepod minis which were

secretly also carrying the sensor the whole time yeah it's being updated next week but you wanted the bigger one so you know they they wanted the 300 bigger you wanted to sit out one so that's new there is also a software feature where because there's microphones it can always be listening it will recognize the sound of a smoke detector or carbon monoxide alarm yeah and if you're not home it'll send a notification that it heard that sound to your phone so you'll i mean that's also a software update for the home pod mini but come on if your house i do like that wait it's a cool feature it's a good is it yeah i actually do like that feature is it a good feature is that what you're saying yeah if you're it was done because if i'm

in the room and i don't need my home pod to tell yeah but if i'm if you're gone away but if yeah you call 9-1-1 and you have them go to your house and oh yeah nest has been doing it for a really long time i actually think it's really do they want you to race home like well what are they just like i mean it's like a it's it's like the apple watch where it's like if you don't have this product your house could burn down yeah like that would be what if what if like we were chilling recording the podcast wednesday and i'm like oh sorry guys my apartment's on fire it would be good to know good to know i think like in the city where it's like your apartment somebody would probably call the but like if i'm even if i was just like walking the dog and i got a notification that your house is on fire and i'm like a block not even a block

i'm in the middle you turn around and you're like Well, it's like call 911 and like run back. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's cool. And Nest does it, but Apple doesn't have any security cameras. Right. So this is their way of being inside the home with a microphone. It's their way of always listening, but returning the favor by giving you convenience.

Yeah. You know, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually do like that. So that's, that's the stuff it's it also now has matter um which i think is great but as we learned yes uh the old home pod

got matter in october of last year yes uh however it didn't have a thread radio so the only difference is like you can do matter over wi-fi or thread but thread is the thing that allows for that like intranet thing where it creates a mesh network inside your house that it doesn't have to go into the internet so it's um you know it's more secure and it's local and all that stuff um that's good i think that more expensive home smart speakers are going to get thread radios with matter yes in the coming years. And it also can be a thread border router, which is good because you need at least one in your home if you want to have a thread network. But yeah.

Yeah. So it's saved. It's saved. We did it. This is okay. This is going to flop so hard because it still doesn't have Spotify support, which is freaking stupid because every other smart speaker

just supports basically everything. And I don't care if I'm an Apple Music user specifically, but if people come over to your house or apartment or whatever and just can't cast the music, they have to go on. It's just annoying. If you live in the Apple ecosystem,

it's a moderately cool product like you you hold your phone up to it and nfc and like you you beam your music from apple music it's like kind of cool yeah if i'm not in the apple ecosystem i this product doesn't really make me want to be in yeah ecosystem yeah well you can airplay spotify and things like that but it's true but it's not the same it's It's not the seamlessness of like me asking my assistant. I won't say it. So I don't trigger everyone's. I just say, Hey, Hey, G.

No, we get so many comments every time we do this. I'm like, Hey, G, uh, play this song. And I literally can in the, in the home app, tell it, okay, when I asked for that, I want you to do Google play music or Spotify or whatever else. And, and it will use YouTube ask for that i want you to do google play music or spotify or whatever else and and it'll use youtube music whatever i want and it will log into my account and stream it from the internet so i'll have to do a say the command and it does it yeah it's like that's what people want just like let me say the thing and it just plays wherever i want it to yeah so it doesn't do that i'm also open to be being proven wrong but historically expensive smart speakers have

not done well except for sonos people don't care about audio quality the good well the google home max did so bad like that did really badly i'm serious like i'm serious yeah people don't want to pay 400 or the nest for a smart i think it's 300 but yeah lss2 on pre-order right now. It's not that audio quality is unimportant. I really like a good sounding speaker. But as we're just saying, like the reason the Echo Dot and the Google Home Mini and the HomePod Mini are much more successful than the HomePod Max and the, sorry, the Google Play, Google. Nest Hub Max. Nest Hub Max.

HomePod. HomePod 2. Big one. The big expensive ones is because most people are just doing the convenience thing yeah and if it's loud enough to fill the room then that's fine yeah if i want speakers i'll get speakers and that's where we're at this has happened with google multiple times too because it's not just the nest hub max that sold like not very many units but when they originally did the google home audio the big audio speaker what was it called

i thought it was just the max that was the nest hub max it was google home max i'm pretty google home max google home max and the nest hub max both sold really poorly yeah but any smaller versions that were like affordable and you could place anywhere sold really well the only thing that could probably change my mind is if i listen to it and it sounds tears just run down your face if it sounds incredible that would pop and it is an updated sound signature if you want to do the dolby atmos pairing you do need two of the new one it won't pair like one of the old and one of the new so annoying so that's a thing but you know i'll listen to it i'll give it a shot do you use apple music i do not i use spotify so it's gonna be it's gonna be annoying okay it's gonna be annoying i'm gonna ask you to do things all right and

siri is also like the most commonly accidentally triggered assistant i'm shocked that it hasn't like woken up over here because typically we'll have like the the the home pod will sit in the studio for a week and it after enough like random quiet like an like a air conditioner will squeak and it'll just go huh just wake up and you're like why you do you think i'm triggering this i'll just unplug i think that's my favorite is that it does huh yeah yeah chill sir i like that a lot more than the google like sorry i don't understand just the huh is's more natural, but it is weird when nobody said anything. Yeah. And just a corner of the room voice goes, huh? And you're like, who was that?

Where did that come from? Yeah. We'll see how this goes. Okay. But that's the HomePod 2. Cool. That's the Apple press release week. Yeah, and I have one more Apple rumor.

Just because this tweet was kind of funny to me. So I'm just going to read it to you guys, and we can talk about it for like five seconds. But Apple has indefinitely postponed development of its standalone AR glasses and is planning a lower-cost mixed reality headset for next year as a follow-up to the first version coming this year. Move your red thread around to where we're going there. Wait, I need you to read that again. We all know about the current

Google headset, right? Apple headset? Yeah, I'm just kidding. It's not Apple. This is a tweet talking about delaying an inevitable rumor or a rumor that's then going to make the second version

of where the first version is a rumor already. We've seen none of them they're indefinitely delaying the standalone glasses yeah i think like the google the apple google glass kind and then they're planning a lower cost version of the headset that they are going to release next year where then this year's headset is the higher so this report is just basically saying version the second gen of the thing that is coming out next year which is not standalone glasses but a headset oh yeah this year this year is oh my goodness i'm sorry the mixed reality headset ar vr i'm assuming like oculus

quest pro and yeah competitor um competitor whereas then the ar glasses are indefinitely postponed which is so we are going to get a cheaper version of the Mixed Reality. It's so disappointing. These are all just like... It's like rumors about products that don't exist and how they're like reorganizing how they're... None of this will actually affect anyone until they actually come out. So I'm just like waiting for them to come out. It is kind of, to be fair,

anytime you go to like a VR or AR event or where anyone is ever talking about this, sort of looming in the background of every one of those conversations is well apple hasn't done their thing yet yeah and it's sort of when are they going to they're going to jump in eventually have you seen what apple's working on even when i talk to people at meta they're like have you seen what apple's doing and i'm like no yeah nobody has but we're all expecting something soon yeah so they talk about those stories second mover advantage but they're like the eighth mover advantage yeah yeah i'm just imagining apple's vr home screen when you log in it's just a solid white room which is normally it's like a cool fancy living room that makes

you feel at home apples is just walls of white with like no quarters except depending on the time of day there's a ar tim cook and, and he goes, Good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening! I would log out all the time and just tell me good morning. And constantly over your shoulder is just a Johnny Ive sitting in a chair. Oh, that's what I was going to say. The menu points to the Johnny Ive. The settings button is Johnny Ive. When we looked at the aluminum of your home screen, we knew that it was time for you to log off.

It's perfect. And the battery's dead. Your battery life is low. Have you considered voice acting? That wasn't bad. Okay, well that's the Apple stuff for this week. I think we have enough to talk about after the break, so let's do trivia.

Trivia, dude. Trivia with lights. Trivia trivia so quick update on the score marquez has three andrew has two david has two oh close how long is this season however long we want it to be let's go brother yeah so we have a comfortable lead on david yeah and then they'll give me the chance to catch back up again and i still won't catch it So we have a comfortable lead on David. And then they'll give me the chance to catch back up again and I still won't catch it. Okay. All right.

In 2000, Tristan Lois first proposed attaching audio and video to RSS feeds. In 2004, the word podcasting was coined in a Guardian article by Ben Hammersley. In what year did Apple officially add podcasting to iTunes? I feel like this is one of those things where, as a podcaster, we should know the history behind it. I have a rough idea. And I have no clue. Oh, wait, I'm going to do this. I already forgot the question. Ad break.

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all right welcome back i have a rant and it's not really my rant because this is a rant all three of us have had before on the side a long long time ago i think i pitched it as a long form podcast episode and then as we talked about it we pitched it as a long-form podcast episode. And then as we talked about it, it felt too long for a podcast, which was kind of wild. But anyways, it all resurfaced as a shower thought. And I'll explain why.

So I ordered a mirror for my shower. Why? On Amazon. Because I wanted to shave in my shower instead of having to clean all the beard hair off. That's really smart, actually. Yeah. It would be harder if I actually could grow beer. But so it's not that important.

But so anyways, I get it. I put it in my shower and it like fogs up immediately, despite saying it is a no fog mirror and like using a mirror in the shower that's fogged is pretty much useless. Yeah. So I thought to myself, I was like like i'm not just going to return this like would we all agree when we get a bad thing on amazon the first thing we do is just return it and then forget about it get our money back because that's the most important either that or i forget to return it and um you know and then just eat eat it yeah yeah okay yes i put it in the microwave and then i eat it let's kind of warm it up first okay so i was like instead of just returning this i'm leaving this

a bad review because i've i've felt like i have not been leaving things bad reviews lately i need to give more negative i need to give more negative reviews okay and then i just thought i just need to give more reviews in general and And that online review system is broken. And I feel like if I can give more reviews, I can help that system. Because this thing had 30,000 reviews and an over four star rating. Welcome to the rabbit hole, my friend.

We, this has been a thought. This has been a, well, a series of like a web of thoughts that we were at some point going to try to make a video with like i try to i try to come up with like a structure when we have a thought that's worth a video we try to come up with like a title that's sort of at least in my head i can picture like a branching out into either a flow of ideas with a beginning and an end or like arriving at a conclusion like a funnel and this one is just like a bunch of things that i are all interesting and have all something to do with reviews but here's a place to start all right

when you go to buy something from amazon like a product you you always have a choice of like a couple different options would you rather pick one with 12 reviews 4 4.9 stars, or 780 reviews, 4.6 stars, all other things being equal? And there's always a tipping point where you're like, oh, well, maybe if it was 4.7 I would do it or maybe if the price was different. But that's one of those things where it's always like, hmm, reviews online are mostly just us deciding what to do with these numbers in our heads. Sometimes you look at the distribution of ratings. So two things could both be 4.7 stars but if one of them is mostly even and one of them is mostly five stars and then a bunch of one stars that's a different vibe you know what i'm saying and like how do you process this information make a decision it's all fascinating to me and i have no answer let's answer that question first.

What would you, which one would you pick? I would pick the slightly lower reviewed one with way more ratings. I agree with that. I think my reasoning for that is, is I feel like Amazon tries to game, like they try and get people to put good reasons. So more ratings,

more ratings to me feels like less of a chance. Like they're going to get 500 plus a thousand points with not many reviews in general feel suspicious and it's sort of like how you can create any shape from triangles or squares if you like have enough of them even though triangles you can create a circle right you integrate under the curve and then you get this like really filled out yes it's it's harder to get 780 4.6 stars i was like what are you talking i'm going to accelerate so we can forget it i give that analogy a three star out of five i just it's like it's harder to get 780 4.6 exactly fake reviews yeah uh no if you just like have a good enough product people will review it enough that you have 780 4.6 star reviews fake reviews no if you just like have a good enough product

people will review it enough that you have 780 reviews where like I could get 12 4.9 star reviews like pretty quick but it also it depends so much on the context like is it a restaurant or is it skydiving is it an uber or is it a hotel like if I see an uber that's 4.6

stars something bad that's 4.6 stars, something bad. That's bad. What happened? Sorry. I was just going to say really quickly. Yeah. If you're an Uber with 4.6 stars, you might not even show up on someone's account because like in Uber, you're basically like a 4.9 or a five.

And if you're not, you're probably just not showing up and you've lost your job, which is insane to me. The stratification of acceptable changes based on the context of the thing like if you're going for an uber ride it's basically like 4.8 stars to five stars is the range of acceptable and 4.8 is the lower end of acceptable if you're going to a uh a theme park it's like 3.5 stars is probably fine if i'm gonna see a movie like i'm not like rotten tomatoes people go to two two out of ten rotten tomatoes movies all the time but if it's skydiving i don't accept a two out of ten what happened at this guy

right two out of ten so the context now like your laces reviews yeah my yeah oh yeah lasik i would give my lasik a 10 out of 10 but here's the other question how do you give a rating because we have this one system in our head for evaluating existing ratings and then we have another system in our head for you got the shower mirror hear me out technically only one thing was wrong with it it worked yeah yeah it attached to the shower it just didn't do the one thing which is fog so like it just didn't do the one thing which is fog so like it just didn't do the one thing that made it usable it did reflect so it reflected you it was a mirror break you took it out the box it was packaged well like nothing was the same it looked

the same way as the picture this is kind of okay so this is kind of what i wanted to talk about in this sense is like i think the way we review things should be different in the sense that we should stop using the only ones and fives like it feels like we're in this scenario of like i either hate this thing therefore it gets a one and i'm putting no other thought into it or like i really loved this and it's a five but i think we should stop giving fives because for five it has to be perfect like what was the last thing either of you guys bought that was like a literally perfect thing like you had zero qualms about it that's not very often the uh and this is not a joke the fogless shaving mirror in my shower

well I need to get a do you have an affiliate link for that yeah it's sweet it's awesome okay I'm going to actually ask you for that. Is there any part of that that could have been better? That's the question. Well, that's a so slightly different question because I think something can be perfect and still could be better. Really?

I think that's possible. Really? Yeah, I think there are products out there. Like right now, imagine a super simple product like a hammer. Sure. I could go to Home Depot right now and for $20 pick up a hammer off a shelf and it's heavy and it's weighted and it's got a nice grip. And I hammer in the nail in one shot and I'm like, this hammer, nothing wrong with it.

Five out of five. But it could have a nice carbon fiber weave on the inside to make the handle lighter and that would be better. I'm not going to give this hammer a four now because it's not even better like yeah so that's like that's like that's like reviewing in a vacuum versus reviewing against like everything else that's available i guess right but then you have to take like the price into account like all of this stuff price has a lot to do with my thing is like my macbook pro 16 inch i to me is perfect except it could have wi-fi 6c it could have hdmi 2.1 which technically was still true before this new one came out yeah yeah totally and it has the notch that doesn't have

face id so it's like i love it and i don't there's nothing that i'm like it's so it's so annoying that i don't want it but but what's wrong with giving that a four? A four is a great score. I, cause it was, it was the best available thing. A four is a fantastic score. I think we should. The hard thing is everyone needs to move to your system, which I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm saying they should.

It's just going to hashtag. It will be difficult. That solves everything. Yeah. Because people, people do need to be more kind of critical because right now ratings are five star to 10 tar, 10 tar,

five star ratings are pretty binary. It's like you either get a five star or even if you get a four or a three, that's basically a one. And then it creates, especially when you have like all of these reviews that created like a 4.2, 4.3, like even if you have a four, four star and a five star, there are 10 systems in between that. Yeah.

That's what's confusing about it. A 4.1 star is just a matter it's just a function of how many one stars you and what you're comparing it to a 4.1 star compared to a five star is a one star versus a it's a one star versus right zero star versus a one star yeah this is like another one of those thoughts it's like a five if if something is pretty good but it has like a 4.5 that means it got a certain number of one stars but if it's a 4.2 that means it probably got more one stars in the 4.5 yeah so yeah that's another thought they're binary but yeah binary is another thing yeah so a lot of rating systems for evaluating

i don't even think products anymore but content a lot of times has turned into binary because it's just a simple quick thing like youtube used to be a five-star rating system. Not that long ago. I mean, for me, I was around back then. But like a couple years ago. I'm pretty old. Okay, boomer. I remember back in my day asking for a five-star rating on a video.

And that was cool because people would leave five-star ratings, but my video would end up with a 4.9 because some people gave it a one. Some people gave it a two. Very rarely did anyone give it a two, three or four, but that was a real option. But like no one really used those buttons. So YouTube just turned it into like, or dislike. If you want to train your algorithm, you either hit like to see more or hit dislike to see less. And maybe that supports the creator. You can't even see the dislikes anymore, which is funny, but now it's like on tiktok it's it's almost less than binary because i don't know maybe we're not reviewing content but like i can like it but also if i just watch it till the end that's positive signal yeah and then that's the same on youtube too though i mean i'm the netflix too like if

you watch something all the way to the end they assume you like it. Netflix I recently saw added a love button so there's a like. Have you seen this? Like like. There's like a heart for like me or do you like like me? And there's a dislike but there's a love button so now it's like yeah you watch something that gives

it a positive signal. Do you guys ever like stuff on Netflix? I don't. Netflix really needs validation. I like stuff. Do you really? Yeah, sometimes. To feed the algorithm? Yeah. To be like, more of this, please. Also, I share it with my girlfriend,

so sometimes it'll be like a movie that I really don't care about. And if she's liked it, I'm just screwed. So I try to like push it back in my direction by pushing the like button. It's a constant battle. I also want to make a really quick note about YouTube removing the dislike button.

I know we already had this conversation. The button's still there. The count's gone. Right, the count's gone. Oh, okay. I was just going to say if they removed the button

it wouldn't change anything because liking the like button or not liking the like button is the same thing as liking or disliking. Only, my only pushback would be people have to really,

the ratio of likes and dislikes on YouTube is like most people don't press the button at all. Yeah. And the default for any engagement

for most people is to hit the like button. Yeah. Only in the strange case that people really don't like the video do you end up with a lot of dislikes

or something went wrong. So, if you remove the button, you kind of remove the difference between not hitting the button and really disliking it and wanting to signal that you dislike it yeah so that's like it's not quite a binary it's like a three-tiered rating system yeah as it currently exists um there's also the snowball effect like on reddit like upvoting versus downvoting things if you see something that's really highly downvoted

you're more likely to downvote it. To pile on, yeah. Yeah, or upvote. That's aware of all of our videos on our Android. It's pretty much like, was the first couple of comments good or bad? And now the entire thread. That's the entire trend

because nobody wants to be the person that doesn't have the same opinion. Yeah, I've noticed that actually. I don't know, I don't have a name for it yet, but I could probably write a thesis paper on like momentum of sentiment analysis. That has almost definitely been like heavily studied, probably through Reddit specifically.

Yeah. We have the benefit now of like, we publish content on YouTube and we get instant feedback. But I even, I will notice now on our own videos or on videos in my sub box, if I check very early for the sentiment of comments within the first two minutes of a 10 minute video, those sentiments can drive the rest of the video unless it's a pretty dramatically terrible video. Yeah.

It usually will just set it in motion. Yeah. So, yeah, it's all about that's another blob in my head of like review momentum. ahead of like review momentum and if you if you're an amazon seller you need to get as many reviews as possible and they need to be five stars because the second it starts turning yeah it's turning that's one of my problems with amazon though is now imagine that momentum carries on year after year after year imagine you made an updated version of let's say state of 4k and rather than a new video it replaced it and you kept all the old comments. So like on Amazon, you could have,

let's just say like the Galaxy Watch 4, that's a bad example, but like the Galaxy Watch, and then the new generation comes out, it stays under the same- In the old listing? In the old listing, and then- Oh, that's terrible. So now you look at reviews,

and they're from like 2019, and they're great, you sort by frequent, and they're like one star one stars, like the new version of this sucks. I like never buy it. But that's not what you see unless you dig for it. It's easy to do people like that, like having having new product listings, taking advantage of the momentum of old ratings. There is one place, though, where we we actually accept that which is software because if if you have an app in the app store there's constantly new versions coming out and they just keep all the

old ratings like we have a podcast and the ratings when we put up a new episode don't go away they stay and we just continue updating it over time they've always been five stars yeah but if you sort by most recent then you can get a better idea of the newest version of the product and how it's going versus older things this happened really recently i don't remember if it was sony earbuds or a sony phone or something but i remember like some xperia product i think it was had just come hadn't even come out yet and i looked on amazon to see if it was like available for pre-order and it already had like thousands of reviews and I was super confused and I looked at them and they had just swapped out the like existing listing of the previous version of the product. So it kept all of the same reviews. That's but it was a new product that hadn't even come out yet.

Yeah. For a tech product. That seems insane. Yeah, I think I think it was a Sony product. I don't particularly remember but um it was really weird i was like how are you even allowed to do that this is not even the same product it's weird it's like more common when an existing product that is like technically the same model number but they like change some of the materials which are worse now and they

change the manufacturing process or something there's a threshold for how much change is allowed before you need a new a new listing yeah basically yeah that's why i'm surprised with the sony thing it was weird it's like the the another thought in this pool of thought this is a rant yeah is is like uh the the more um complicated a product is the more lenience you give its flaws so if you again again to use a hammer example you buy a super simple hammer it only has one job right so if it fails at the one job yeah i guess it's one star like it doesn't there's no legit i mean you can't really it could fail it this is the thing is like yeah yeah it could be like uh the hammer could be too small for a like an exterior deck nail versus like a finishing nail for adding stuff in yeah i'm just trying to go like all the way

simple like a brick if i'm reviewing it like it either works or it doesn't break through the window of my enemy like i find it difficult to give a three-star review for a brick right but then we we sit here and we review like electronics and gadgets are very intricate and nuanced. And so like when a phone comes out, it's like it might have a really nice screen, but it might have like not the best processor, but it does have a lot of RAM.

So it's future-proof and the company has a good record for software updates. So we're teetering at like four stars, but then the camera system this year is really bad. So now we're back to 3.8 stars. Phones are so complex. But for video quality, it somehow does really well. The stabilization and the features they added this year are great. So it's're back to 3.8 stars. Phones are so complex. But for video quality, it somehow does really well.

The stabilization and the features they added this year are great. So it's back up to 4.1 stars, right? And so you have all these things competing for like dragging it in different directions and you end up with a review somewhere in the middle. So you almost never end up

with a perfect five or a perfect one for an exceedingly complex product. Yeah. So you probably don't have to give that many fives or ones, but nobody gives threes. Yeah. Unless they have a mid experience. Give threes. Yeah. So you probably don't have to give that many fives or ones, but nobody gives threes unless they have a mid change. Give threes. Yeah. Threes are not bad. A 3.5 is a seven out of 10. If you think about it, that's not a bad score. That's not bad. C minus what's wrong with seven out of 10. It means it did the majority of the things, right? I think that's why.

the majority of the things right i think that's why would you get on a plane that worked seven out of ten i'm gonna i as a score not bad i i yeah i just give less ones give less fives i mean here's what i'm gonna do and everyone can join with me if you want okay i'm going to review every single product i buy on like amazon etsy any online store gadget i'm not gonna do this because we've gone on a million tangents about restaurants and everything being different everything i every product i buy i'm going to review and i'm going to limit myself to one five-star review per month i only like i don't think i should be giving out that many fives. I'll do this with you. Thank you.

One five-star. I don't buy a lot of stuff, but I will do it. I buy way too many things. That's really interesting. You're a homeowner, though. I'm always afraid I'm going to get evicted, so it's a little different. Here's another note to add.

Here's another note to add to this out of five. Here's another note to add to this pile of thoughts. Which reviews do people actually pay attention to? Because for a product, most people, if you can actually sort by reviews, and this applies on YouTube, whether it's like a phone comes out or just like on Amazon, a lot of people sort by most helpful. But you can choose to read just the three-star reviews if you want to. But I think most people choose to read the one-star reviews to see what's wrong with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the five-star reviews to see what's good with it. That's exactly what I do. And so if you don't give a five-star or a one-star review, most people won't ever see your review, which is kind of what happens with the stratification of like sensationalism on YouTube, which like a new phone came out it's all right but no one's

clicking my video if i say it's all right so i gotta say it's terrible or amazing like that's a real force effect i could also write a paper about which is like most products are fine most products are just three stars and that's fine yeah Yeah. But no one wants to say that. Like even the Motorola phone. This is kind of a point of like that Moto phone that with the Moto G 2023 that we just did is like it's a smartphone. Like smartphones are incredible. It's amazing. Maps works on it.

It can like get you around the world. You can make phone calls. You can browse the Internet. You can order from Amazon. You can do like. Yeah. Technically, this is an incredible piece of technology it's just like in a vacuum where that's the only thing that exists yes as soon as you have context of other devices or the price or like or

the price any any additional context and you're like okay let's step back for a second yeah yeah yeah put the context in your review that you leave that you know i just think if you leave a bunch of three and four star reviews you will i don't know if you care about this but no one's going to read those reviews i do how about why don't we end this with what are some best practices you guys use when you use reviews you said you like to look at one and fives i actually think three and fours generally have a lot of truth to them. They usually do. Somebody leaving a three to four star review probably feels pretty strongly about the things that they liked and the one or two things that they didn't like. It's probably the best review. Yeah.

So I like to look at stuff like that. And I also like to sort by more frequent. I like reviews that are more recent that I know is going to be the exact thing I get from Amazon or Etsy or whatever. On Amazon, you can sort by most helpful. So you can sort by reviews that have the most reviews. So you can leave a thumbs up on a review and it's like, oh, this review is helpful. And so when you go to read the reviews on Amazon, you can sort those reviews by the most reviewed reviews.

So if a review is all reviewed, you'd review the review and you'd... by the most reviewed reviews. So if a review was all reviewed, you'd review the review and you'd... The people that review the reviewer's review are often the people that have not reviewed the actual product. Would that have to be a verified review to review the review?

No. Anyone can review the review. Yeah, anyone can, on Amazon, anyone can review the review. Yeah. That's what's frustrating about like tech reviews is that there's so many people who like to review your review and they're just like good review but a lot of the time can we wrap

this up please okay i'm just saying like there is a way for a review to be a good review even if you don't agree like agree with the reviewer because it covers everything right if you talk about the things that are important that people want to hear about, that's technically a good review. Your opinion about that device is subjective, but it's the people that say like, oh, this is a terrible review. I don't agree with you,

even though I've never touched the thing. That's what's so frustrating about the reviews. Review people reviewing the reviewers' reviews of the review. Yeah. One thing I'll say is i've i've always strayed away from giving uh we review lots of things here but numerical ratings uh especially for tech because tech improves over time yeah and so a theoretically let's even say

four star product from years ago the older it gets the more context you have about new things that are better and you'd never get that thing, that thing that was four stars is now one star. That thing that was a nine out of ten. Today, the iPhone 4S might have been a nine out of ten when it came out, but today? Yeah. It barely works. It's probably a three out of ten. Context.

So I don't like giving numerical reviews to things. It's always just the feelings and the experiences and sharing that with people yeah and ideally that's the most helpful thing you can do yeah and since it's since you're on amazon you have to attach it to a star rating yeah i don't know if you're going to account for like star inflation over time will you adjust your review in a year when the new shower mirror comes out well Well, when stars inflate, eventually they lose their energy. They collapse, become black holes. Someone cue the trivia music, please. Before we do, I have one thing I want to throw in here about reviews.

Just one last thing. If you're ever shopping, and this is what I do, if you're ever shopping for pro audio gear specifically, this just applies to pro audio gear, and you want to know if a product that you're buying is going to be durable. Specifically, if you can like bang it around, take it with you, and it's not going to break. Look for someone in the reviews that says exactly this. We have this at my church, comma, and we love it.

If someone has written that in the reviews, it means that thing is getting banged around and treated terribly and it works week after week after week, which means you can trust it. That's a good sign. That's a good sign. Ellis' pro tip. And without... Wait, fun fact. U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday was actually written about pro audio gear at churches. Because they bang it around so much.

All right. Okay. Okay. Anyway. Trivia! All right. Okay. Okay. Anyway. Trivia question number two. Yep. U2's Bloody Sunday. No, no, no.

So, at the beginning of this, we were talking about a lot of Apple products, like HomePods and whatnot. It reminded me of the original iPod. Released in 2001. original iPod released in 2001. What does the pod in iPod

stand for? 160 by 128. No one will ever get that joke except for us. Here's an ad break. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving.

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The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. All right, welcome back. We don't have much else to talk about, but I do want to show you guys a video. There is only one YouTube channel that when they drop a new video, I literally stop what I'm doing and go watch it. Whatever hour of the day.

I'm afraid it's not that one. Yeah. I mean, I'm subscribed. I got notifications turned on. I got the bell, the whole thing. You know, Andrew does not have notifications turned on to the Waveform podcast. Fake fan. But with this one, not only do i have notifications turned on i could

be in the middle of something i could be driving and if i see that notification i pull over and i open that notification and that is the boston dynamics youtube channel because when they drop a new video as they did this morning on the day of recording it's wednesday um you just know you're gonna see something that's gonna change your whole day i thought you're going to see something that's going to change your whole day. I thought you were going to say I pull over because I need to watch if they finally drop the video of like, this robot will kill you. Start running. Do I need to turn this car around and save my family? Very important information. So yeah, I wanted to show you guys the video they put out today because this one is life changing and just like the rest of them, it's really well done

and really interesting and I want you to see it. So I'm just going to turn this towards you. Life-changing in like a life-threatening kind of way? Your life will never be as safe as it was before. You never know. All right, here we go. Can you describe it, by the way, for audience? So there's just a guy on some scaffolding. What do you think the rating of that hammer is?

With a hammer? Three out of ten hammer. Okay. And now there's the Atlas robot, the humanoid-shaped one at the bottom of the scaffolding. Okay. Runs over, grabs a board. Great cinematography, by the way. Yeah, that lens flare.

That lens flare. Spins around, puts the board in place. You can see where this is going. Why is he dancing? Man. Because he's stoked. Because his quads are jacked. Instead of yeeting the tool bag up to the top of the scaffolding, he runs up the stairs. Oh boy.

Jumps up, ducks under, turns around, yeets the bag. Oh dang. Is it an OSHA violation if it's a robot? He needs to get down. He just double fists his punches the... He jumps to... I i don't this is insane and then he shows off a little bit oh gainer yeah off the box nice with the tiger woods pump yeah and that's the video dismount eight out of ten wow ladies and gentlemen that dismount was

pretty good boston you see the dynamic that twirl i could not do that that fluid of a twirl and that's a really heavy robot these robots have been doing things for years that i honestly couldn't do myself yeah definitely my main thought was also when seeing this like one half of my brain i think i tweeted this before like one half my brain is like it's fine it's fine it doesn't it's it's totally fine it's just a pre-programmed series of moves that somebody with a controller told the robot to do it's not alive it's fine it's just rehearsing something that they built a robot to do but then the other half of my brain is like oh my god this thing is like going to take over the world it's clearly capable of things that none of us are it's aware of its

environment it's sentient it's picking up things it's wild sent yeah it's not sentient but it is also it does bring up an interesting question to me which is like how much of what it's doing is pre-programmed like it yeah you clearly like set up the scene you put the board there right you put all the the scaffolding there so it can climb up everything. And then when we spent time with the Spot Robot, if you steer it at an obstacle, it will walk up to the obstacle and climb over it. Even though I didn't hit a climb button. Yeah. Yeah.

It is aware of the obstacle and it knows that with its set of legs and with the things in front of it, it needs to do the certain things to climb over it. Yeah. With this humanoid one, what is it programmed to do versus how much of it, like when it does the gainer off the box and then it lands and it does like a hop or two to like get its like balance. Yeah. That part is-

I was just going to say that it didn't stick to landing. Yeah. Like it lost balance. But the gyroscopes are constantly being pinged like a thousand times a second like they're they're in real time like evaluating right weight distribution if i had to guess also before like we get fact checked on if it's a gainer it's not a gainer it's like i don't know i don't know exactly what it is we're just saying gainer because it's front flip it was like a 180 front flip or something yeah anyway just fact check us live on the podcast yeah i know the parkour community would be really upset about it um like okay so it grabs the board

if i had to guess in the whole scenario i'd say there's like a couple things that are pre-planned like i don't think it's smart enough to grab a board like to see the gap and grab the board to fix the gap i think it's like yeah grab this put it here and now here's your walking path in that walking path you will react to what's in your way yeah there's definitely like a mix of computer vision with pre-programmed yes and in terms of the like it it wouldn't think i need to get down over here let me push this block off jump onto it and then do a 180 front flip off the end of it but i do think the programming was walk up to this box, push it,

walk up to wherever you think the edges evaluate, evaluate, then do this jump flip. Yeah. And then the landing again is like land as best as you can. Yeah. And it's, it still needed to use its cameras to get to the edge of that block to then

do the flip off of it. Because, because it pushed the block off. It wasn't in an exact coordinate that you could program until you don't know how far that's going to slide forward or backwards. You still need to clear a gap and then do a flip. Yeah. So it's like if I...

We need Boston Dynamics. Yeah, we need someone to tell us, someone who's worked on this probably. I just imagine the controller for it. You point it at a set of stairs and you just hit forward and it just starts running up the stairs. Like, oh my God, it's running up the stairs.

Like it had to figure that out. You pick a face and you just push chase. I believe what this is probably doing is similar to like a production line. You know those production lines where they're like putting cans on soup or something and they're just like, whoop. Well that has minimal uh intervention exactly that has like no computer vision but

imagine there's like computer vision attached to this so it knows like where it needs to stamp like it sees the can and identifies the camp then it stamps it sees the can stamps it like i imagine that this is doing a similar kind of thing uh it's when it it's when it's able to make its own decisions that we need to start worrying about it ripping out your spine and then fist pumping yeah i also i like your tweet that's like like i just want to imagine your first tweet is the motto for boston dynamics just like boston dynamics it's fine it's fine everything's fine it's totally fine everything's fine yeah this uh it's fascinating i'm i i kind of want to play with the atlas one i don't i'm scared i just want to know what happens because

it was still it was so cool when we had spot and it was like all right would you like to play with it they hand us the controller it's like go ahead in like 10 minutes like no training and so i would just like i walk up a curb and I turn around and I hit forward and it just walks up the curb. And I'm like, I didn't tell it to go up. It just looked at the curb and decided to step up.

Like all these little things, I want to know what happens with Atlas. Anyway, that's all. I just wanted to show you the video. I also think it's cool that Atlas from Portal

is like the same shape. It's like the humanoid. That might be its inspiration for the name. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I don't know. If you haven't already subscribed to the boston dynamics youtube channel highly recommend

it just to stay on top of your robots and happenings you should probably stay on top of them before they stomp on top of you it looks like since this morning they also released another video called inside the lab taking atlas from sim to scaffold and it's just like how they did this oh really yes yeah oh from a couple hours ago well i guess i guess we'll be watching that after this we'll still bring them in yeah i'm embarrassed to say i haven't seen this video yet well when did it came out why we were recording potentially okay so then i'm going to watch it okay okay okay but okay trivia answers i bet atlas can't get any trivia answers right oh That's a good question. Let's find out. They probably could get all of them actually.

All right. Get your boards ready. Jump at once. Don't everyone get all excited now? Are you guys ready? Yes. All right. Update on the score again.

Marquez three, Andrew two, David two. So you're saying there's a chance. There is a chance. First question brought to you by Ellis. Hey, that's me. In 2000, Tristan Lois proposed attaching audio and video to RSS feeds. In 2004, the word podcasting was coined in a Guardian article by Ben Hammersley. In what year did Apple officially add podcasting to iTunes?

Hmm. Can you say the dates again of the other things? I was too embarrassed to ask that. Is this the closest person or is this specific only? In 2000. 2004 was the year that... David? Sorry.

You said it in the thing, didn't you? There's a lot of dates here. Okay, in 2000... In 2000... Tristan Lois first... Okay, in 2000, the idea of attaching audio and video to RSS feeds proposed. 2004, there's a Guardian article

that invents the word podcasting. Okay. In what year did Apple add podcasting to iTunes? Cue the music. David's searching things on his computer. What? No, I'm? No I'm not I'm not searching anything

Sorry I'll move away Close your computer My thing's already down Alright I got it I'm gonna be Plus or minus one year I know that for a fact Oh wow

Yeah I'm interested in your answer Should we do closest Or should we do Get it or not For this one Let's do closest Okay should we do get it or not? For this one, let's do closest. Okay, we're doing closest.

Good. All right, who wants to go first? Here's my answer. Read them out. Wait. I said, March has, I said 2003. I said 2004. Took a risk.

I said 2006. Was it 2005? It was 2005. I knew it. Was it 2005? It was 2005. I knew it. Andrew and I both get points. Andrew. Oh my god, that makes the score threes. What date was it in 2005? Oh, don't do this. First half or second half of the year. Don't do this.

No. Don't you want to be tied with Marquez with me? Take the point where you can. Well, I'm either I could be tied with you or tied with Marquez. Or all three of us. No. You're saying either David gets the point or I do. Aren't you and I tied right now?

No, you and I are tied right now. Yeah, we're tied. Yeah. I like to throw a wrench in things. Why do you do this? Oh, man, are you guys ready for this? I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose this. It was June 2005.

Technically, that's the first half of the year. Take the point. Take the point. Let's just take the point take the point let's just take the point dude come on i just want to say that i i thought it was going to be a fun trick question i kind of did too that's why i just went with the same year yeah okay yeah i got to remember i remember on my computer in my class in my like before school computer class in 2006, opening up iTunes and seeing the little iPod logo and being like, oh, they have podcasts on here for the iPod. And I guess I was just like, I guess they must have released it the year before, but I only noticed that the year after. I wasn't aware that podcasts were something that Apple didn't come up with themselves. I kind of thought they did, too. Yeah.

That's why I picked the same year, because I thought it was just interlocked or something. All right. Question number two is brought to you by Podgod III. Thanks, Podgod. Hi, it is I, Podgod III. Are you ready? Yeah. it is I pod God a third oh yeah are you ready yeah so what does pod stand for an iPod not pod God the third I did the same thing yeah I mean I should I should

I cue the music yeah it's taken it's taken some time well I mean just always keep the music when we cue the music that gives you 30 seconds that means there's a countdown I'm done but I'm wrong but it's okay yeah I mean sure that's called being a chill dude it's either stupidly obvious or I have no idea exactly can I give you guys a hint it is not stupidly obvious okay so we're all wrong in that case

wait should I just change my agenda wait do I have more time then you got three seconds my guy two one okay whatever I mean I'm not gonna get it whatever two and three quarters no i'm not gonna get it one and a half flip them and read mine's a fake word i said pocket i said patio on device wait that's a recursive acronym because

do you know what a recursive acronym is called is a word for that yeah you have talked about it on trivia trivia i was question it was one that i wasn't here for and i listened to on my road trip me you were there yeah you talked about a reverse acronym an acronym an acronym oh we did it was like it was wow it wasn't originally an acronym and it got made into an acronym through it alright just because just because I'm mad

that you remember whoever remembers gets a point no shut up there's a free point floating out there also David you're wrong

oh I do remember I remember now David said should I tell you first for the listeners should I tell you now yes backronym.

Bingo! Let's go! Okay, so David's in the lead with four. Marques and Andrew tied with three. Unbelievable. Because David remembered what Bacronym was. The answer to the question, by the way. Portable open database. Pod.

Portable open database. Well, that's it then. Thanks for tuning in to our rant on reviews and ratings. I do want to say I feel enlightened about that trivia answer. Because I really thought that iPod stood for iPodcast. Podcast. Like portable podcast. Yeah, I thought podcast got named because they were on

the ipod i thought that is correct it is a play on the word broadcast yeah i didn't even realize that but the guardian termed it yeah weird so uh ben hammersley termed it writing for the Guardian. Okay. But yeah, the whole idea is that like you're, you're broadcasting via an RSS feed to iPod specifically. Okay. Yeah. I'm more on, I'm on, I'm up in line with like vlogging, which is video logging. Yeah. Is it not video blogging?

No video. Well, it's, it depends on who you ask because there's both. Yeah. Because blogging, both are things. Blogging is be logging you know yeah really yeah I don't I don't really I don't know most people would say it's video blogging but people who did daily vlogs would call it like video logging their day. So I'm sure both answers exist. Anyway, thanks for listening.

We appreciate you. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks for hearing us out. Peace. Bye. Don't forget to rate this podcast, but ignore everything I said about five-star ratings. You should definitely rate this one five-star and then like on Amazon

and go use your threes and fours or whatever. But Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Ro rovan we are partnered with vox media podcast network and our music was created by vane sill