Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Apple Raises Prices on Everything!

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Marques, Andrew, and David start things off talking about Apple raising prices for a bunch of products by...a lot. Then they talk about the rumored Samsung foldable that's coming before discussing a bunch of smaller stories like WhatsApp getting usernames and Sony discontinuing physical discs. We wrap it all up with trivia of course. Enjoy! Links: Bloomberg - Apple to skip high-end M6 chips Verge - Polestar to leave the U.S WhatsApp launches usernames Verge - Playstation ending physical discs DBrand companion cube statement The Completionist - Buying every Nintendo Wii U game Video game history foundation This episode brought to you by: Framer: https://www.framer.com/wave Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/wave Quince: https://www.quince.com/wave Follow us on socials: Marques: https://twitter.com/MKBHD Andrew: https://www.instagram.com/andrew_manganelli/ David: https://www.instagram.com/davidimel/ Adam: https://www.instagram.com/parmesanpapi17/ Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform: Twitter: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro 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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Wouldn't it be cool if we had some sort of protocol that all the games could be hosted on online? Stop! Everyone's computers could run this protocol to help seed these games. Yo, it's up, people of the internet. Welcome back to another episode of the Wayform podcast. We're your hosts. Yeah, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode.

of the Wayform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. And I'm Andrew. And that's the chair where David would be sitting if the bridge wasn't closed. So he is on the way

and he'll be here soon. And at some point, video users will just see him appear in his seat. And I guess audio users will hear him. Yes, we're at a tricky day where you have a game tonight

so you have to leave early and also it is going to be one of the hottest days of the years. So we decided to record a little early that got screwed up with traffic. And the goal, The goal of today's podcast is to not melt by the end because the AC is off. I don't think people realize, or maybe we said it, but maybe they've forgotten that we

turn the air conditioner off in this studio every time we record because, you know, for you, for your ears, we want it to sound good. And our mics, you know, no background noise, all that fun stuff. But that also means that if it's 103 degrees outside, like it's going to be for the next three days, that means that the temperature of this room slowly goes up as we record. And there's a good chance that in two hours it will be way different in here. We turn the AC on before we come in so that it's cool. But, you know, we do this for you.

That's what we do for you. Isn't there saying, like, slow boil the frog or something like that? Yeah. We're just the frogs. The frogs, well, but we still notice it get hotter. The thing is the frog, the frog, if you change the temperature slow enough, doesn't notice that it's getting hot. Have you guys not heard this?

No. Really? Yeah, I thought it was like a thing. Like, you slowly, they're going to yell at us so hot. So a frog, I guess, is not particularly sensitive to temperature changes if it's slow enough. So you can slowly increase the temperature of the water and the frog will not get out of the water until you're literally boiling it. A chef said because you felt bad that you were boiling fries. I just Googled that it is a myth.

And by all you have confirmed that they can escape the water if it gets uncomfortably hot. Okay, that's good. That's really good to hear. For anyone that was thinking about boiling frogs. Well, it's still a common sense. community today. Still a common saying. Definitely a myth.

That's good that it's a myth. The difference is we can't stop recording this podcast. So we will boil and cannot get out. Yeah, for sure. Okay, in today's episode, we will have Apple's increased prices across the board. I know they tried to sneak that out on a Thursday, but jokes on you guys. We record every week, so we're talking about it this time. But there's also a first look at the new Galaxy Fold Wide Pulse Star leaving the U.S.

And PlayStation Killing Physical Discs. and we're wrap it all up with some AI companies. That we don't really understand. Yeah. Very confused. But first, did they even test this? Yes, they did. Yes, they did.

It was funny. We had a sort of a mini tech support this morning with Google Docs, which is how we organize all of our podcast docs and notes and stuff. And I don't know, if you've used a Google product in the last couple of months, you've probably seen, like, a lot of Gemini logos everywhere, like maybe too many. and one of them was really annoying at the bottom of Google Docs.

And I don't know if you've been annoyed by that bottom button for Gemini. It's like a floating button that covers up maybe the last three lines of all your documents. And then when you go and try and select something there, it widens into this big search bar essentially.

Describe any changes you want to make. Looks like you're trying to write a document on some clippy shit. So if you want to get rid of it, you can. There's a Gemini button at the top of Google Doc. and you go down to bottom bar preferences and you can turn it off,

which is, I think they added that probably at some point because they did test it and realized you should be able to turn that off. Yeah. I mean, I've hated it for a while and I Loki didn't notice the Gemini menu bar thing. And then I saw Hank Green tweet about it yesterday and I was like, I do really hate this.

Yeah. And then Marquez this morning went, oh, look, you can turn it off. And we both collectively turned it off. There's still a Gemini button in the top right corner. There's still Gemini things all over the rest of your Google products, but that one, you can make it go away. There is still, when you click the image button, the first menu option is still generate

an image new instead of upload from computer. And I still click it every single time I try and put a photo in our pot outline and it tries me insane. Yeah. So very, very sad. But I'm sure that bottom thing, plenty of people won't turn it off and they'll get plenty of fake clicks to make it seem like people are using it. But for all your listeners out there, if you didn't want it and you didn't notice that, you

can turn it off. Now you know. now you know. All right, let's get into Google Price Sikes. Or sorry, Apple. Apple Price Sikes. What do you know that we know? Google just that software.

Yeah, Apple Price Sikes. So last week at some point during Thursday, Apple, which they'd warned us about this, but they just went through, the Apple store went down briefly, and then it came back up, and there were a bunch of new prices for basically all of their products,

almost every single hardware product that they sell. Is this like the top three worst Apple store went down scenarios. The tweets were so funny. It was like, Apple stores down. What are they cooking? What's coming next? And then there's just like tweets right above it. Like price store heights, all the different changes. It's back. Yeah. The store comes back live and base prices, upgrade prices, tons of prices for all the different products that they sell have gone up. iPhone prices, notably are unchanged. That was one thing that people were thinking would go up. But the things that did go up are Macs, iPads, Apple TVs, Homepods, Vision Pros, across the board, prices are all

higher. Now, I looked at these price increases, and they're kind of interesting. They're kind of of spread out across the board. Some of them, I mentioned on Twitter. Some of them are higher than I expected them to be. Some of them are lower than I expected them to be. We know that the price increases are because of the RAM shortages and just how expensive it is to put memory in anything these days. And some of these products do have a lot of memory, and some of them don't. But that does not seem to directly correlate with how high the price went up. It seems like more about, well, as sort of an efficient balance. Maybe this is a Tim Cook thing of some products are higher volume and the price didn't go

up as much. Some prices are lower volume, but the price went up more. Some prices went up, I think, more than they had to in order to make up for other prices not going up as much as they could. Would you say it's the opposite of higher volume possibly went up higher? Because like the one that sticks out here, right? Like there's some big ones. There's the M3 Ultra Mac Studio, one from $4,000 to $1,000.

$5,300. So $1,300 price increase. We saw the M4 Mac Studio $2,000, $2,500. That's crazy. Vision Pro only went up $200. Yeah. So that has to be because it's flopping so hard. No one's going to spend an extra thousand. Or obviously, like compute, right? Yeah. It's like a compute thing. I think there's a lot of factors. I think Vision Pro is already priced really high and the $200 dollars might be fine to cover that, but also maybe if it was 4,000, that would look really bad. Like, there's optics they have to consider, there's supply chain stuff they have to consider. Also, yes, Vision Pro is not selling very much, so maybe the price increase there doesn't do much for them.

Whereas something like the MacBook Neo, which they're doing a ton of volume of, goes from $599 starting to $6.99 starting, which means it's no longer like the crazy flaming good deal that it just was. It's still a pretty good deal. but that 100 bucks per unit will probably go further than the 200 bucks per unit on the Vision Pro because volume is totally different. Also with things like the Mac Studio, like the M3, what was it, the Ultra that went up by $1,300 I feel like people buying that, that's like a business expense.

Like people doing that expect to be making their money back somehow by using the professional workflows with that. So they're willing, like Apple's like, those people will spend a little more and not. It's fine. And we, I think it was also pretty obvious we were going to see. see those specific price increases because Mac Mini in, was it in March or May, already got a price increase because we're seeing them sold out everywhere because of how the like compute to price ratio of what they are.

Yep. So like this kind of, I mean, I think this obviously all comes down to compute again. It kind of reminds me of how we were talking about steam machine where like if you price something and subsidize it to where you're giving such good bang for your buck of just pure power in this RAM shortage, you're probably going to eat it because people are going to take it and use it for machine learning and not necessarily all the things that you make money off of. So that's one of the things I was wondering here is like, does Apple see these price increases as like, what is our best chance of people still buying the products, but buying the products to

use them as actual personal products, not AI machines? Because Apple clearly is making plenty of money on hardware, but they're also making a ton of of money on subscriptions and software that people physically using the products. That's a commentary I've seen a lot is Apple's already been making a ton of money. Why do they have to increase prices at all? Why can't they just eat this? But one, I think the memory shortages and the price increases we've seen are pretty unprecedented. I don't know what Apple supply costs are, but I feel like they just decided, along with a lot of other companies, we have to raise prices.

But I don't know if they're thinking so much about what people are doing with the machines. I don't think they have much control over that. I think it's more just what do we think is a reasonably acceptable price increase for the target demographic of the product. Some other ones that stood out to me were iPad Air goes from $599 to $7.49 for the 11-inch iPad Air. That's a different price bracket to me, it feels like. $599 was like, all right, I can stomach this. This feels like I'm not going to get an iPad Pro, but I could get this nice mid-priced iPad Air.

now 749 starting is is quite a big difference there that doesn't feel like a good deal anymore yeah the iPad air went up more than the MacBook Neo yeah yeah yeah so that's a hundred fifty bucks extra there uh something like an apple TV this is my favorite one the Apple TV was 129 they were selling that box now it's one 99 that is a pretty I think percentage wise might be the highest increase uh that's close to like a 40% increase or something like that that's pretty big That's a totally different price bracket as well. Home pods, though, you know, not a lot of people buying home pods. Homepods are already expensive.

The regular HomePod goes from $299 to $3.49, and the HomePod Mini goes from $99 to $1.29. So some smaller, some bigger, just kind of a lot across the board to consider. And I'm sure the supply chain meetings to decide all these new prices were super exciting. Maybe it's just Tim Cook with a spreadsheet just walking around going, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. Why does the Apple TV need to go up at all? I don't know. That was another question.

need to go up at all. It's for all the people that are using local AI on their Apple TV, right? I think that's another thing that people noticed is a lot of these products that don't have very much RAM at all were going up in price when they feel like they didn't have to, which I agree. But then a lot of the products that did have a ton of RAM were not going up as much as they feel like they could have. So I think some of these price increases are literally to subsidize other lack of price increases, if that makes any sense.

I also want to note that saying everything we've said so far does not mean they had to make price changes, does not mean that the price changes are clearly not for Apple to make more money. We all agree with that. There's just like the reasons why they're making more money. There's still a trillion dollar company that wants to make as much money as possible. So obviously that's why they did it. This is, I think it's like it's more, it's interesting to see what their reasonings were for things. how they were, because this is just like such a broad or all over the place in terms of where

they increase prices. I still, yeah. So the number one. $70 is crazy. That is a big one percentage wise. The question I've seen the most chatter about on social media is are these permanent or temporary price increases? And I have my thoughts. I think, I actually believe that they are temporary, but I do see valid on both sides. I see both sides of this argument. I think, I'll explain why I think they're temporary. I think a lot of the conversation, and we haven't gotten very many quotes from Apple,

but a lot of the talk about these memory price increases has been like, this is unprecedented. We've literally never seen anything like this before. Our hand has been forced. This is like a spike in pricing. This is not how we want to continue to sell our products. We want to get back to eventually regular pricing someday. Which all to me kind of implies, like,

we are rising prices here as long as this memory shortage slash AI data center boom is happening. And then once it's finally slowed, then we would love to go back down to regular prices, which is, you know, a good way to market as well. But I think the other thing people are saying a lot of is, yeah, these are greedy tech companies. Of course, they're going to leave the prices as high as they are. There's plenty of greedy companies all over the place.

That's just how it goes. They're making tons of money. And if they aren't like negatively impacted too much by raising the prices, why raise them, Why lower them back down again? And I see both sides of it. I kind of see it as like gas prices. It's like very closely tied to supply and demand. And if demand goes too far down, they can't leave the prices this high,

especially if other competitors start lowering prices again. So I would like to be right and say that they will bring prices down at some point months slash years into the future. But who knows? History probably doesn't seem to be on that side. I don't know. There's not a lot of examples of things going up and coming back down when they see they're still selling. So there's a couple interesting examples there.

And I used the price of gas as an example because like gas did spike and then it has started coming down, but it is more of a commodity. But we've seen some products once in a while, like the Quest go down in price again. We've seen occasionally a smartphone model will go down in price again. When did? Sorry, Quest. Sorry, Quest didn't go up. Quest did go up. Until it did.

But I'm talking about older devices. Older devices. I'm trying to think of like phones that dropped in price by like $5,200. Wasn't there a... Well, I guess the iPhone doubled in storage but didn't go up in price. So like things happen sometimes where you're like, oh, I could see them increasing the price, but then they don't. So, I don't know. There's not that many precedence for price spike and then price drop again.

I haven't really seen. I think my most optimistic... assumption is I don't think any of these prices change on these specific items I think maybe

when new versions of them come out we could either see you know depending on the global economics of what

compute like pricing is they go back to their normal or we see them doing the game of like you know

now the the Mac Neo 2 starts at 699 but starts at a higher storage or whatever. Like, and that's our like, this is higher. It's still a higher base barrier of entry,

but we have more compute in it or like it's a more powerful machine, therefore it's worth that price increase when probably really could have went back down to the other one. I don't know. That's like the capitalist way of going back, but not really going back. I don't see this going down at all. Really just New Jersey. Yeah.

David's it. By the first. It's early and you still get an half an hour late. Welcome. It's definitely just New Jersey and not New York City. It's not like a World Cup or anything. Yeah, definitely never traffic in New York City. Well, hey, at least the New York City traffic is generally predictably bad.

Welcome, maybe. Is like, are you in hell or are you in hell plus plus? Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think that these prices are, we're talking about Apple prices, by the way. That's the price is going up for context. Yep. I don't think they're going back down just because, well, one. One, if it is temporary, it's temporary for a while. Like, it's going to be a minute because of how everything is right now.

It's not like temporary for another cut, like another month or two. This is like, it's looking like a year or two more so. Like cycles. Yeah, like it's going to be a while. And then on top of that, everywhere else in the world, technology is fairly expensive. The United States has been pretty like hidden from those calls for a long time. And I think that like barriers kind of coming down now. I also think probably one of the best arguments that prices will stay and only continue to go up is just inflationary.

Like if this lasts years, then by the time the crisis or whatever you want to call it is over, that's just the new norm, I guess, is the phrase people keep using. Like the prices of everything have gone up and now the Neo is $6.99 and that's just the way it is. Crazy we made that video like a couple of months ago and it's already completely different. Yeah. Yeah, that was the, yeah, the sentiment is like, remember that three or four months when Apple had several of the best priced pieces of tech in the world? That was fun. I felt bad for Quinn at Snazy Labs because he just made a video a month ago about how, like, the whole premise of Apple devices being more expensive than competitors are just completely gone now.

It was. It was. He was correct briefly. For a moment in time. And now here we are. For a beautiful moment in time. There was a long time when Apple things were just regularly priced. And now they're going back to being expensive.

Yeah, some of these MacBooks, oh my God, they added like $1,400, $1,400 to the pricing. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. Memory increases. So we'll keep an eye on it. Obviously, other companies are probably going to be increasing prices of tech as well. This also makes me think that that folding iPhone, when it launches later this year, not going to be cheap.

Not going to be cheap. That thing was already going to be like $2,100. Now it's going to be like $26 or something. We can probably rewind and find an old podcast episode where we're doing. debating if it was over under 2000. I think it's definitely over 2000. Oh, it's 100% over 2000. Okay, question for you guys then.

And David, this is perfect because you just got here. So you need no other context. Okay. Do you think these price increases are going to hit iPhone? Yeah. Will it be the same prices last year's iPhone or will they all be $150 more expensive? They could do the little magic that they do where they just get rid of the bottom tier, you know?

Yeah, pretty much what I just said. Like the new version of things are going to be like the more expensive price, but a little higher in powers. So that will be their excuse when really. Yeah. But even for iPhone? Well, it's kind of hard. They already cut the lower storage tiers from the iPhone, right?

Because that was your whole thing was that Google was still offering low storage phones and Apple wasn't. Well, it was that their lower tiers got better instead of cutting. Google cut their lower tier. But now, the iPhone, the iPhone 17 had doubled the base storage to 128 and didn't go up in price. Yeah. So they got rid of the lower storage tier. and they kept the price the same, which is good. Yeah, I guess when I think of it, I think of the price tier.

When I think of lower tier, I think the lower price tier. So in my eyes, Google just upgraded the lowest tier, or sorry, Apple upgraded the lowest tier where Google got rid of the lowest tier, which then made the lowest tier more expensive. Right. I tend to think, this kind of goes along with the rest of the price increases, which are sort of all across the board. I think Apple realizes they can't increase the price of certain things by too much. And I think the iPhone is one of the things that they know they don't want to have.

dramatic price increases on so I think they're willing to do bigger price increases on other things to keep the iPhone competitively priced I still think that ultra that folding one is going to be expensive but I think the base iPhone 18 and 18 plus for example will probably not be a hundred dollars more expensive yeah it's hard because they're already at 260 gigs for the base tier they're 256 yeah I I hope I don't eat my words they can't cut that and only offer a 512 gigabyte iPhone. So you think next iPhone will still be $7.99, the iPhone 18? I don't know if it'll be $7.99, but I don't think it'll be $9.99.

I don't think it'll be dramatic, huge increase. I can see $8.49. I don't think any subsidizing any of these things on this list will make up for what they would lose in the iPhones on keeping it the same price. They just sell way too many iPhones. The $70 Apple TV change isn't going to cover. That's true. The things that they should really be pushing the price on are the things that, like,

businesses and enterprise use like the Mac Studio and which they did yeah that's what they very much did but even the MacBook Pro I mean regular people still buy Macbore pros and they still jack the price a lot so I feel like the cheaper things like the Neo and the MacBook Air they should be trying to keep as low as possible obviously the Neo they had to try to be really careful with that yeah but yeah it's it's interesting to even see a home pod mini price increase just because there's a little bit of ram in there a little bit something that's a copper a little bit around.

I just bought an M5 max full spec, 128, 8 terabyte about two months ago. Oh my God. That would have been. And I was saying, I was saying I don't think I'm going to be able to get this computer in a year. And you know what? It's fair. I hope I can.

I hope it comes back down, but it won't. Yeah, they're supposed to release the MacBook Ultra at the end of the year. And I was like, I'm just going to hold out for the Ultra because it's going to be so different. You know, it's going to have a better screen and all this stuff. Now I'm like, oh, so expensive. That might be a $7 to $8,000 baseline computer. Base, you think? No.

I mean, six. I think it's six-something base. Yeah. Yeah, but for any upgrades, it's going to be. Yeah, that's expensive. Yeah. That laptop, if you give it some RAM, is probably going to be over 10K. It's going to be insane.

I've, so if you want to max out of MacBook Pro now, it's getting up there. Yeah. It's getting up there now. But yeah, this is, you know, a new screen, new design, all this new stuff. It could be pretty spicy. Yeah, and that kind of feeds into the whole rumor that they're basically going to release the MacBook Ultra with an M5 Ultra chip, right? Or an Ultra chip? Was it that, or was it the M6?

I think it was the M6. M6, because I'm trying to remember what it was. I think the rumor I've seen now is they're going to have an M6 and then skip all the higher tier versions of M6 and then M7 every version again. So the MacBook Ultra will come out next year now. With M7. With M7. Correct. That could make sense.

So maybe the reason they're... Maybe one of the reasons they're doing that is because they are hoping that within the next year, year and a half, the RAM crisis kind of peters out a little bit. And that way they don't charge $10,000 for MacBook Ultra. Like, they might scare the market a lot if they released a MacBook Ultra starting at $6,500. Interesting. Yeah. You think the base MacBook Ultra is going to be $6,500?

I mean, it could be... It's got to be high. It's going to be up there. It in itself is basically saying like let's start towards the top of a MacBook Pro. Yeah. Like start.

Right. I think the base version is going to be really powerful. Yeah. Also. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at a 9 to 5 Mac article. And there's a couple people sourcing this,

but basically from Bloomberg saying Apple will skip M6 Pro and M6 max. It'll just be the base M6. So the stuff that gets the base chip can get M6. And then they'll start over. with M7 by doing the whole lineup again. M7, Pro, Max, Ultra, all that stuff. That is crazy. Even when you name things easily,

they're impossible to follow. This M-series chip is really hard to understand. I've been waiting for a new ultra chip in a Mac for so long. They stopped at M3 Ultra in the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio, but then M4 happened, no Ultra. M5 happened, no Ultra. M6 is going to happen, no Ultra. So I'm going to be waiting until M7 Ultra for a new Ultra chip.

That's crazy. That's why it's funny seeing the M3 Ultra price increase being so much more than the M4 because of how confusing that is. Maybe they'll do an M5 Ultra. I don't know. It seems like they're holding back on the more powerful stuff, right, if they're not planning on doing M6 Pro or M6B. Oh, I did. Yeah. Okay, I remember seeing this also on Twitter because there's also rumors of an M5 Ultra coming out with up to 768 gigs of memory.

Oh, right, right, right. And everyone went, oh, that computer is going to be. You can buy a house instead. Really expensive. Yeah. How expensive? I'm going to just throw out a guess just to make myself look stupid.

768 gigs of memory. That computer is going to be $9,500. Probably more. I think it could break the 10K barrier. No way. That's like 18,000. If you spec it that high, somewhere between...

That much RAM is obscene. 15 to 18,000, I bet. Let me look at the Mac Studio pressing right now. But yeah, it's not going to be cheap. My conspiracy theory, which we probably shouldn't talk about conspiracy theories on this podcast, is that OpenAI and Amthropic

are intentionally having the RAM crisis happen because open-sourced AI models are getting more and more popular, especially running on Mac hardware. And if it's affordable to buy enough RAM to run your own AI models, you don't have to use Open AI or Anthropic for your AI stuff.

This is a really compelling conspiracy. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So you have to go to the model providers, It's like, oh, only $20 a month as opposed to 796 gigabytes of RAM. I think you're on to something. Without checking Apple.com. Without checking Apple.com, if you want to buy the most powerful, most expensive Mac Studio

with just 96 gigs of memory and 16 terabytes of storage, how much do you think that would cost today? Today. 12K. Is it over 10? I don't know. Those prices at all. It's the most powerful. M3 Ultra. M3 Ultra

90s 12K 14,000 God I was actually you can't check the tape you did start to say I did say that

$14,000 $14,299 for that computer today so if you're thinking M5 Ultra with 768 gigs of memory that's going to be

really expensive That's why I said what I said W2 or M5 Ultra Not to give Apple like too much credit here, but remember when we used to buy Mac Studios for $50,000 each? It was the Mac Pro's. The Intel Mac Pros. The Intel Mac Pros. Intel, that's what I mean. Yeah, sorry. Remember when we used to buy the Intel Mac Pros for $50,000 each? Just be for yourself. Well, yeah, not we, the company. But now, you know, we got so

used to the price being so much cheaper for so much more performance. For unified memory. Still, nobody should buy a $14,000 computer, generally. Yeah, how will I make my TikTok videos? That's true. This is the thing now. If you are capable of doing the work, like I've found that the amount of computer I need to buy to edit the videos that I make has gone down over the years. Especially when you consider how expensive that MacPro was, we had $40,000 specs on the Intel MacPro and those AMD radion GPUs and a ton of memory. When those were 40K, then I started going down to a Mac Studio and then down to a MacBook Pro.

I've been editing videos on this MacBook Pro, which costs less than $8,000, which is expensive, but compared to $40,000, it's like reverse inflation for how much I have to spend to edit. So I'm pretty excited to continue to spend less on computers. Well, don't get too excited. I'm just going to edit on this. I'm going to edit on this as long as I can. Continue to spend less by not spending anything. Exactly. I'm also curious to see how the competitors respond to this because just recently, Dell and a couple of other companies came out with their MacBook Neo-competitor devices.

Yeah, XPS 13. Exactly. And are they going to raise their prices? Are they going to eat it? Because Apple's the most well positioned to actually eat all of these prices. That's, I'm very curious. And I fully expect them to. I think the more volume you do, the more insulated you are because of your order sizes, etc. So I assume XPS 13 is selling less than MacBook Neo. And therefore is more likely to require a larger price increase unless Dell is willing to subsidize it by increasing other things. Which I just don't think they will. I really don't think they will. I think that's due for. price increase as well. Yeah, they don't have like 12 different products that they can just slightly update the price on. Yeah. Interesting. So we'll see. All right. Well, I'm sorry to everybody who didn't buy a new computer yet. We'll have way more galaxy stuff and others to talk

about after the break. But before that, let's do trivia. Trivia. Do you want the Ellis question first or the me question first? Who's Ellis? You mean Reuf? I never heard of him. Never heard of him. Who's that? Today's birthday, by the way. Oh, yeah, I say, oh, happy birthday, Alice. If you made it to the end of the podcast, oh, we're not the end of the podcast. You made it at this point in the podcast.

Say happy birthday, Alice. I would like the Adam question first because I feel like I'll have like more. I'll like have my hopes up. Like I think I might get one right, you know? It won't be as hard. All right, so I'll do my question first and then Rufus will read Ellis's next time. A hard bit. I have in front of me a, well, not actually in front of me,

but I have pulled up on the website, a maxed out MacBook Pro inspired by Marquez just digging around on the Apple website. How much does it cost? 16 inch. 16 inch maxed out. I'm going to try to do all of the, because the nanote texture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff. The 8 parabyte SSD, 128 gigs of unified memory, all the good stuff. You said M4M5 max chip. Yeah. This is well as I know how much I paid for this when I got one a little while ago. I added like,

So much. It added like $2,300 or something. $128.28 gigs and 8 terabytes. Yeah, I think you guys could have answered this like four days ago. But now with the new price increases, how much is it? Oh, boy. Well, I think they added $2,300. But I don't know how much it costs to begin with.

So I guess I'll be. I'm going to do Delta for this. Yeah, closest Delta. Yeah, closest Delta. Okay. All right, I bet. All right. All right.

Well, think about it. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Shopify. Landing on a good idea for a business is basically catching lightning in a bottle. What are the eyes it'll happen more than once? You have to jump on every opportunity to make it work, and the last thing you need is to get slowed down by clunky logistics. You want tools that are ready to go right out the box, and if your business involves e-commerce,

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but they started teasing this new Samsung Galaxy thing. They, like, deleted, they wiped their Instagram account and, like, started posting these new teasers. Basically have a bunch of different things with new aspect ratios. Yeah, like, you know, like a candy bar has all the pieces you can break off, so it was, like, four by three, and they popped the, top off so now it's like three by three which doesn't actually represent the aspect ratio very well but but i think a lot of what they're teasing is uh this sort of small wide passport you know when

you open your passport that like aspect ratio it's like that and i think we're all expecting some sort of a foldable that is a little more squat a little more wide and like passport shaped uh similar to what we've seen in the past from like that remember the first pixel fold OppoFind and... Yeah. We're going to see that again. My favorite thing about the T's real quick is if you open it up on browser

because it's... They deleted like the grid, so the grid system comes up to show the pieces snapping off on top by being six in a row. It's four wide on a desktop, so none of the things match up. If you're full screen.

Because I have a... Well, yeah, like normal people that aren't using a dying browser. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Just because something isn't being updated doesn't mean it's... I would argue it probably is. It's debatable.

I only have a couple problems. But yeah, we're expecting new Samsung foldable, and I'm curious to see how they're going to market this as being particularly new or different because we have had this already. And then we kind of like moved on from it, but now we're going back. Yeah, it's funny that there were a few brands that did this, but then because everybody else was just doing regular phone that opens even bigger, everyone switched over to this.

Because of Samsung. essentially. Like, Samsung was so good at the folding phone. Everyone was like, well, that one's working. Let's do that one. Even Google, like, use this at first and then moved on from it. And now everyone's like, oh, well, Apple is kind of setting the trend. So I guess we have to do it first.

Yeah, this is kind of almost along the same lines as the air. Remember, we all knew the MacBook. We all know the iPhone air was coming. Yeah. And then in the middle of the year, Samsung went, oh, but yeah, here's ours. This is the Samsung Galaxy S-25 Edge. Yeah. And it was ultra-thin phone.

better than the iPhone error in a lot of ways like had dual cameras, had a bigger battery and all that, but was their own take on it before Apple to preempt Apple. Now, all these rumors are floating around that this folding iPhone is going to come out, first folding iPhone, and it's going to be a more squat aspect ratio similar

to the phones we've talked about. And so Samsung's in the middle of this year are going to go, huh, well, I bet we could do that too. And so they're going to keep doing the Z-fold in the candy bar style and shape and aspect ratio, but this is a new foldable that is like, I think they're calling it the wide. I think that's the rumor. So the rumor is that it's, no, sorry, that's just how I wrote it to describe. I thought the rumor was galaxy fold wide. The rumor I saw it was just that it is the

galaxy Z fold eight and the new, the other one is the galaxy Z fold eight ultra. Oh. So ultra being the one that we're used to? Yes, which to me, it reminds me of note 10. Okay. Which kind of worries me because in note 10 land, we had the note 10 and the note 10 ultra right? Yeah. And everyone really liked the size of the note 10, but the note 10 also got a bunch of downgrades compared to the note 10. It was like plastic. It was like plastic back. It had worse RAM. Like it didn't have as nice of cameras. Like if I remember correctly, almost everything about it was slightly worse. And the leaks we got from Android headlines show the, I'll call it the note 8, but I'm still going to call it the wide just for audio listeners to make sure we're talking about the same thing. The Fold 8 wide version,

the passport version, only has two cameras in the leak that we're seeing. There's some case manufacturer that probably leaked it. Oh, that's clever. It looks like a like three by two aspect ratio, but two cameras. So I'm wondering if everything about this is going to be slightly worse than the candy bar style

a ultra fold a ultra. Three by two is cool for previewing photos, just saying. This could be extremely clever positioning from Samsung, I think. Because if you look at all the rumors of what the iPhone fold is going to be, that's all the same.

Dual cameras, squat aspect ratio, and if you're Samsung and your marketing, wow, I feel like you can get really clever. You can go, hey, all right, we have had this candy bar style phone, which is really great to use wall closed, and you can open it up and have a big screen. But, oh, if you want like a sort of a compromise experience where it's not that great to use while closed, but you can at least have a bigger, like, screen open, here's a less premium version. It's only dual cameras.

It's only this smaller passport shape. and then we can have the Ultra which is actually more fun to use while closed and then when Apple comes out with theirs you go oh Apple made one of the compromise shaped ones with dual cameras and password shape but we're Samsung and we also offer the big bad ultra thing that's interesting

I think that's the clever at least that's how I could see it comes out yeah look at the compromise you only get two cameras you have to do this that would be f*** up that would be pretty messed up that would be some chess I think my issue with it and why I compare it to the note 10 is like, it makes me wish they were both just essentially the same thing,

but you as the consumer get to pick which size you prefer. But if it does wind up being, and I haven't seen any specs other than the camera, so I don't know if it's going to have like slightly worse materials, slightly different battery or, I mean, it'll probably have a different battery. Probably smaller battery. Yeah.

But like then I just wanted to pick my size and still have the same performance. This feels like A-B testing titles and things. thumbnails where the two thumbnails are completely different. And what did we learn out of that? I don't really know. Instead of two thumbnails that are the same, but one has an arrow and one doesn't have an arrow to be like, okay, people really do prefer the bigger size? Well, do they prefer the bigger size or do they prefer the better specs out of? When you're paying that much money on? Scientifically, the Ultra sells more for Samsung because in America, we basically do carrier plans and everything is the difference between $18 a month and $20 a month. So, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I could

see that. I mean, you do you do want to isolate one variable and see if people like one thing over the other, but in this case there's going to be a bunch of things different about these phones, so maybe not. Hopefully it's just the cameras and the size, and maybe they're running similar. I just don't know if that's... I would assume that this ultra

will be more expensive and the small wide, yeah, will be less expensive. And they're going to want to put enough of a gap in there that it doesn't feel too close. Yeah. Oh yeah. Interesting. Well, we'll see in a couple weeks, I guess, because that's supposed to drop sometime in July or August.

I don't know, something like that. Speaking of drop, because you said it was going to drop in July, Polestar is dropping out of the U.S. market entirely. Kind of being pushed out in a way. Yeah. And this makes me sad. Yeah.

Well, it's funny. I like a lot of the Volvo EVs, and I actually like some of the Polestar's, and it is unfortunate to have that competition leave the U.S. market because I thought the Pulse Star 2 was a solid option. That's the most realistic one to recommend to most people. It's by far their most popular one. The lineup gets a little confusing after that because it's a mid-sized crossover

and then another mid-sized crossover and another mid-sized crossover. But that's okay. They looked nice. They drove nice. They had nice speakers. They had these Spartan super clean interiors. But the Pulse Star 2 is solid and it's a shame to see it going away. Yeah.

So effectively what's happening here is the U.S. government kind of issued this order that you cannot. have cars that run software from China. If you didn't know, Polestar is a sub-brand of Geely. Geely is a giant Chinese automaker. For some reason, Volvo, which is also owned by Geely, was given authorization to sell cars here. I think this could be one of those things where the U.S. government's like, Volvo, we've had Volvo forever. Polestar's a new thing.

Get rid of it. It is confusing because Volvo's a Swedish company, right, that then got bought by Geely. But what's even more confusing is don't both of them run Android Automotive for software? Yes. Which is Google. Yeah, I'm not sure. There might be some, like,

code in the way that it, the card tells. Well, I guess, like, where's data going back to? Yeah. I don't know. I still think it's one of those things where the government just doesn't understand the difference. And we've seen a lot of companies do this.

Like, people don't like DJI, so they launch a subbrand, you know, like the government doesn't like One Plus, so they launch a subbrand. And then they're allowed into the U.S. So it's very strange. But they're going to be continuing to sell all of their leftover stock in the U.S., but they won't be able to sell after model year, 27, and forward.

Yeah, it kind of sucks. I personally did not like the Polestar 2 that much because the interior felt like very, very cramped, even though I felt that they were one of the best-looking cars on the outside. But either way, it's not fun to see our options. appearing, especially because in the United States, our car brand options are already very limited compared to a lot of other countries. Yeah. Sounds like New York City just got a bunch of new taxis.

Just like the Fisker. Yeah, just like the Fisker. Okay, next quick story. WhatsApp is launching usernames. This is my least favorite thing. It's your least favorite thing. Whoa, wait, way, way, way. Because every time a company launches a new thing and they let you pick a username, the second

I go to pick my username, it's already taken. and I never get my username. That is, I'll be quicker. I'll sell it to you. Yeah. I've been set. I knew it for you. You tell me you haven't already been testing this for two weeks?

I wish, yeah. So this is pretty straightforward. Basically, previously it hooked up to your phone number. Now you can pick an username. I think in general this is a good thing. I understand that for you, this is probably not and kind of sucks. Honestly, I think what they should do is because it's hooked up to your Instagram account through WhatsApp, it should automatically park on.

that username for you. And then you can decide if you want to keep it or not. And then if you don't. I saw people online saying not to do that, though, because then if you have a very public social media, now they can just message you on WhatsApp. They can't, though, because they did add a feature where you can, only people with a special private code can message you through your username. So when I signed up for my username, you know, and when I did it, it said there was an option

that was like, only let people message you if they have your private code and they gave me a private code. So basically you send it to someone and say, oh, I'm this on WhatsApp and here's my code and then that's how they can start a conversation with you. Hey, hey friend, if you want to message me,

here's a code to let you message me. You know. I don't know, that feels. I would also assume that if they like scanned your QR code or something like when you first give them your WhatsApp account. Yeah, then it would automatically let me go through.

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a username? Well, I wish it was more like Instagram where I would just have my main inbox and then like a secondary inbox. Yes, but the other half of that is impersonation because if there's someone out there with the official MKBHD username on WhatsApp and it's not me. Yeah. What the fuck is that? Yeah, true. That's like the most obvious.

Maybe they're just doing this so that they can do a unified verification system even though meta verified is not actually verification. It's just play like Twitter. I don't want to connect to Instagram as much because Instagram getting banned in the EU. but WhatsApp is not part of that and they want to keep those apart as much as possible. They let you, though. When I signed up for the username and said, do you want to just use your Instagram username?

And then it did a little lock icon, kind of like the Apple one. Wow. Very important. Very important. I also just want to point out that six years ago was me this time, it was Adam. Adam made a video.

I knew you were going to bring this up. When him and I used to work at Android Authority, Adam made a very controversial video at the time, which he was right all along. about how we shouldn't have phone numbers anymore, and we should just have usernames. I could get on board. Yeah.

I did have multiple people reach out to me afterwards and bring up some very compelling reasons why that shouldn't be the case. But overall, I do stand by it. I think it would be a better world if we had just usernames or something instead of phone numbers. And to be fair, at the time, we were trying to revitalize a dying YouTube channel,

so we just kind of threw a shit at the wall. It was a hot take at the time. I mean, it was, yeah. We were like, Adam, can you make something? Anyway, he did. Hold my beer. I think it's good. I think it's good.

All right. PlayStation is ending physical disc production. Also, for everyone reading this, I'm sorry how often I wrote disc like a frisbee and not like a disc, like a PlayStation disc, because I'm pretty sure that's a K. Marquez didn't even notice. Didn't even. Oh, I didn't notice either.

You can tell, you can look, it swaps back and forth because I realize sometimes. Anyways, Sony just announced out January 2028 and on. They will stop the production of physical discs for new PlayStation games, only digital versions will be available. And this, I think, has initial reaction from almost everybody. So before we get to that, I'm going to play bad guy or good guy or Sony and say a couple of reasons why they're probably doing this. Physical games are sold way less often.

Most people don't want to wait for delivery or go to a store. Game discs for PCs has been dead for ages. We download things. I'll throw out the little Apple, look at us, We Good. environmentally beneficial, because that's a lot of waste, plastic and discs that probably get thrown out, and giant profit margins in capitalism

when you don't have to make physical things. That's probably the main reason. Let's all be really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I boo you now? I just plan to point out that Sony put out a video a while ago for the PS4 that I just need you guys to watch.

I'm going to have you watch this. I don't know if you already watched it, but it's very funny. It came out 13 years ago, To be fair, a lot changes in 13 years. Totally. This is called official PlayStation used game instructional video from the PlayStation account. I remember this.

This is how you share your games on PS4. Wasn't this done as a retort to some other console that Xbox? Probably something like Xbox. Yeah. And I also need to point out that last week, Sony removed a ton of movies that people had already bought from the PlayStation store. Because they ran out of their licensing deal for them. And they just, people cannot watch those movies anymore. Even though they bought them, there's no refunds offered.

Unless they have a disc. We are living in modern digital serfdom. You do not own anything. You are renting a license by paying money. And it's bad. And that's a reason why the discs should still exist. Even though most discs are just kind of ways for the console to actually talk to the internet and say, oh, hey. Nowadays.

Yeah, nowadays. Anyways. Well, well, well, here we are again once back in our digital serfdom. Resident Gamer Mariah is in the house. I just want to say, I saw this article this morning. I got so mad it gave me a headache immediately. I'm an avid physical media consumer for games. And I don't trust companies.

And probably a good... There we go. Probably a lot over. In fact, I was actually researching this. for a video recently. And in the short term, I personally, in my personal opinion, I don't think it's bad to reduce e-waste and all those kinds of things coming from disks

and streamlining the process and making it cheaper for consoles that don't need to have disc drives and all that kind of stuff. But I do support resale in fair competition. And as you will note recently that the... Let's see. We've had a bunch of different online digital stores

actually closed down within the past. five or six years since COVID. We had the Wii online store shut down, the Nintendo E shop, the Wii U shop, Nintendo 3DS shut down. RIP. Xbox 360 stuff became limited over the past couple of years. So I don't trust companies with preservation and like availability to games. And so there's a really great foundation if anyone actually wants to research this called the Video Game History Foundation, who would like to provide access to researchers and other

people who would like to be part of video game preservation. And I suggest following them. And we'll see what happens with Sony in the next couple of years. Very nice. And that's my rant. Good shout out. I feel like, I know I mentioned like PC games don't have discs and haven't forever, but like consoles feel like a time capsule.

There's like this, like this is six years of video games on one thing. And the fact that all of us now can go out and buy the like systems, we grew up with. Like, if I want to go play Spiro on a PS1, like, it's probably not the hardest thing to find. It might be a little pricey, but not crazy. Or N64 cartridges are still kicking ass out there. I mean, they're expensive, but you can find them and you can play those games. And, like, I can show my kids the games that I played back then because they don't know

that crisis looks almost identical. Instead, they're going to play golden eye and be like, the aiming in this game sucks. Is this the same thing that happens to music where we all used to buy albums? Oh, yeah. And now in the future, kids are not going to know what that's like, but we'll have our albums and we'll be like, this is the one I bought. Yeah. It'll be like a relic of former times.

Yeah. It's that, I think it's, in my opinion, it's also all the indie games on the storefronts. And once the storefronts disappear, access to the indie games and the smaller developers also will maybe disappear with it as well. There's a really cool video from a YouTuber called The Completionist, where when the Nintendo, Wii, and 3DS store shut down. downloaded every single game in the storefront, every single

one before it shut down, and then he donated it to the foundation for research purposes. It's very cool. Very noble, very sick. I hope we don't have to do that again in the near future. Wouldn't it be cool if we had some sort of protocol that all the games

could be hosted on online? Stop! Stop! Everyone's computers could run this protocol to help seed these games. Yeah, well, That would be nice. It's depressing. I, um, yeah, I don't like digital surfdom.

Anyway. That video of them is like the quintessential big company makes stand regrets it a lot later when it gets put against them. Yeah, it's, it was literally the Netflix sharing password tweet. Yes. Like, yep. That's, this is fun. We're all for this.

Age like milk. Yeah. And also the, the Samsung haircut. The notch haircut. That one aged so, it was like two years later. Something like that. Something like that. Well, speaking of gaming,

last week we talked a lot about the D-brand companion cube accessory for the steam machine. I don't think we talked about it at all. At all. Never mind. But it did exist.

Well, if you didn't. I meant to talk about it. I guess, I really thought we did. I had it in there and we just talked about the machine. That's crazy. Well, D-brand made this really cool companion cube accessory.

I say made because they're not making it anymore. basically what happened is they didn't ask permission from Valve, which is crazy. Didn't we talk about the video they made for it? Before and we were just watching it. Are you kidding me? Okay, well, this apparently wasn't on the podcast. D-Brand made some incredible launch video for this where they used like the Cave Johnson voice

and a bunch of companion keep stuff and some portal guns and like the robots from portal atlas and like those guys. And everyone's like, wow, this is crazy. This feels like an official Valve video. It's wild that D-Brand was able to do this. It turns out they weren't able to do this. I also know, I mean, we're close. Okay, first off, D-brand is a major sponsor of the channel. So everything we say is a major disclosure.

Major disclosure. I find if I never thought that. And I hadn't talked to them before or anything about it. D-brand's always kind of been a... They kind of go rogue all the time. Yeah, they go rogue all the time. They did the dark plates with the marketing term of like Suea, Sony. And they've had logos in the past that they had to like stop including.

It's just kind of their vibe. That's true. Which is a fast and loose vibe, and I'm sure they're very aware. Sometimes they'll, like, show a case for an unreleased phone before the phone comes out. Yeah. Which I'm sure the company is not happy. They just kind of wing it sometimes. Yeah, this is maybe backfiring on the wing and it part.

Yeah, they made a big apology post on Reddit, and they said that they definitely should have asked first. They did try to plead with Valve to work up some sort of licensing deal. They said no. They said that was fair. So, unfortunately, not going to see the light of day. However, I'm sure that we will see a bunch of 3D printed faceplates and stuff like that because the entire point of the same machine is to be able to be modded physically. We have one of the cubes.

It's sick, sorry to say, for all the people who don't get to add one. I'm going to look at it. It's really well made. After the podcast. I saw a lot of people saying hopefully they'll release the STL file. Is that a 3D printing file? Which a lot of people appropriately responded. This doesn't just have to do with the fact that it's like,

like something they're selling. It's the distribution of copyright trademark material. Like they're definitely not going to be able to release that. Yeah. But yeah, it's a bummer. They couldn't. It's obviously a huge mistake that they made that they know because Dbrand's great at being transparent. Yeah. They also said it was their second fastest selling product ever, only behind the Kill Switch case for the switch.

Sure. Which is great. Which actually tells you a little bit about steam machine demand. Yeah. That should imply that steam machines display. all that we said last week about how expensive they were, are still pretty in demand. Yeah. To the point where people are buying accessories for it.

It's sold out instantly in Japan. Alex got screwed over with his steam machine because he put in his reservation for the like 512 gigabyte model. And then like the day he was supposed to get his place in line went, oh, wait, I'll open to do the two tarabyte one. And then got launched like months back in the line. And isn't getting one. Hey, speaking of sold out, did you guys see that random headline that the Ferrari luce, despite

all that we talked about it, also sold out in China. Only Marcus could segue. In China. Do you know how many cars that was? Wait, did you find out? Yes. Oh. 12?

No. Is it more than 12? 100. More than 35. More than 35? More than 100? No. All 88 lucees for that market.

They made 88 for China. In all of China. Yeah. Known little country China. How do they get up with 88? I don't know how many they were planning on making, but that's what the article said. 88. So you just like you take.

orders for six minutes and then you cap and you're like, we sold out. Yes. We sold out. Or they came to that market with the number 88 and they were like, this is how many we're going to sell here? Oh, you know what? I think it's lucky.

Is it important in China? I think it's lucky. Probably. I think eights are important. Oh yeah, because Snapchat 8, that's what they call it Snapchat 8 because then China 8 is a lucky number. Yeah, they figured if they called a Snapchat 7 series, didn't they? No, but that was lucky.

The flagship one was eight. Yeah. The seven and six are just cut down for instance. Yeah. But yeah. All right. Well, that's just a hundred-opt. You just wanted that luce jab in there.

Just wanted to throw that in there. How many did they sell out in America? That, I don't know. I just saw the luce sold out in China, and I was like, wow, what does sold out mean? So I clicked the article, and that was the number. Very nice. Instant sell-out. Very nice.

Instant sell-out. Yeah. Okay. Well, we have another trivia question. Nice. Apple, the company that has always overcharged for RAM, is now charging. even more for RAM. True.

But what Apple offering has increased price over 2.5 times since its launch in 2019? Polishing cloth. What Apple offering? So this is an option

or a product? Yeah, I think you're saying offering. It is a product. Okay. So what Apple product has increase in price 2.5X? since 2019.

Since it launched in 2019? It launched in 2019. And since its launch, its price has increased over 2.5 times. I have an idea. I think it might. It's not air tags.

Air power. That one's been free. It's free and price list at the same time. I think we should go to the break. Okay. Before we spoil it. It's break time.

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Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Okay, welcome back. I have one more thing for the end of this podcast because I've just been confused on Twitter. Nice. And I'm generally confused about AI, but these ones are specifically confusing to me.

It's a natural state of being on Twitter's confused. That's super fair. And I hate state, but I will be on Twitter a lot today because hockey free agency starts and I'm very excited for it. I think LeBron's going to go to the Buffalo Sabers. Anyways. Wow.

Okay, we've seen a million different AI things, but there are two that I've been just bothering me a lot, because I don't really understand what they're trying to do. Okay. The first one is more recent. I think it's called poke. Just poke, right? Is it poke or pokey? Polk.

Polk. Okay. Polk. Okay. Polk. It was already an AI that lives inside of things like I message WhatsApp Telegram. Essentially, it is, you know, an AI chat bot that lives inside your messaging apps. Yeah.

I believe so. I've used this. You have used it. I have used this. Okay. Well, their new version of it is called poke humans. And they have this insanely confusing hype video. That's just a bunch of messages going back and forth that I can't really follow.

But it seems like essentially, when you are talking to your chatbot, if something gets too confusing for it to do for you, it will bring you to a human to start doing that thing. This is just customer service. Actual intelligence. Yeah. Like this is just your personal assistant, but like you're on a call with Comcast customer service, where like you have to go through 20 different AI recordings to try and just tell you your bill instead of actually figure anything out.

And then it brings you to a customer service agent who also has no idea what they're doing. Yeah. I'm so confused by this because I can't imagine the humans being paid to do this are making enough money that it's not just a call center again. that probably doesn't really know what's going on, especially in your personal life, because I assume this is supposed to be a... Yeah.

Like, you give it all of your data. Personal assistant, yeah. Yeah. So, like, they definitely can't afford to have really high quality change. I mean, what was the... What was that phone that had the... Oh, the one Markets, weird. Oh, the assistant?

What's it called? Why can I think... Caviar phone? Caviar. No, no, no, not caviar. The virtue, but what's it called at a hotel when somebody... Concierge. Concierge.

Thank you. It reminds me of that because that was like, cool, personal concierge instead, random person from across the country who switches every couple minutes and doesn't really have any idea what they're doing. Do you know how much this costs for POC Ultra, the version that has the human assistance part? I assume it's a subscription. Yes. I mean, it's right there on the page, but take a guess monthly. Oh, I haven't looked. A few hundred dollars?

$1.99 a month. $200 a month. month. Also, you can get onto it and then go, human, human. Can you just say human? Human. Type zero. Human. Talk to a human. Talk to a human. So you're basically just asking for a personal assistant, basically. Yeah, but assuming just like the virtue concierge, presumably one that really doesn't want to do any of the things. Of course. Yeah. In the hype video, they were doing things like, can you ask David if he wants to go to a restaurant in?

San Francisco and what is preferences would be or like what is dollar amount well like stuff like that yeah which feels so hard to send to another human that's potentially I mean they're at a call center no matter what whether it's in the U.S. whether it's in another country it's like yeah like a type center it's true yeah let's make this slower let's make customer service slower sounds yeah I just I thought the whole point this is confusing I want to try to explain this product to you because I did I did use it for like a day. Polk or poke human? Polk. I did not use the human version.

Okay. Yeah. So poke is an AI assistant app that lives inside of iMessage also can live inside of WhatsApp, toagram, et cetera. The whole schick of it is that it gets access to all your information so it knows like pretty much everything about you

and it's very sarcastic. It kind of ribs you. And instead of you having to go to it and ask it questions, it'll just text you periodically to throughout the day to like remind you to do stuff or like ask you little questions, stuff like that. It was kind of launched in the same era as like the friend pendant. I was going to say this sounds like the friend pendant. Which again, I don't know what ever happened to that. Who knows? They spend a million dollars on the URL. Anyway, so that's been out for quite a long time. Famously, when you set it up, you actually have to

negotiate, you negotiate with the AI to try to set your monthly price. So it tries to set it at like a certain monthly price. And then you go, I'm not paying that. And it goes, okay, how about Okay, how about this? And you just argue with it forever. What? Yeah, it's very weird. A lot of people got it to like 99 cents. Some people got it for free.

I argued with it for like an hour to try to get for free and then I uninstalled it. So you have to haggle with your AI? You haggle with the AI. Yeah, with the human one, it's not that way, I assume. So I should just get my AI to haggle with it for ever for me. That's true. Just get clod to haggle with each other. I'll get two poke instances and they'll both get each other down to free.

Does anyone remember Smarter Child on AIM, the bot you had message? No. It, like, responded back to you. Sparter Child? It was called Smarter Child. But, like, as a kid, you would be like, I mean, the typical AIM, hey, sup, NMU. And then you would just be like, fuck you, smarter child. And then it would just be like, it's not saying anything.

You'd be like, that was fun. And that's all you would do. That's what this poke sounds like. Like, this is an AI that you can just rib at and it can be sarcastic and maybe screw around with it and be like, I'm deleting this. The one positive thing I will say about it is that for the like day that I was using it, it was kind of like scarily accurate about things about my life that it was bringing up. You know, where with like Gemini, you'll tell it like one thing once and then it will just fixate on that, you know? Like how the Fitbit Air just fixates on the burrito that I ate that one time.

How did it know things about you though? If it's just in your messaging. It plugs into your Gmail. Like you give it access to your Google accounts. Oh, okay. Yeah. So you have to plug into everything. Yeah, you have to get it.

Okay. So now when it goes to a human, humans can't scan through an entire Gmail account in milliseconds like an AI can. So I guess it's being a little more targeted and getting the information, but it seems like it's going to slow down significantly and also human get a bunch of information. Well, what I would guess is that the human, yeah, the human element is because they trying to make it like a pure personal assistant concierge. And so for certain digital tasks that the AI can handle for you, the AI will do that. but then there's things like, I don't know, booking flights that maybe they don't have access to yet. And so they want it to be able to eventually do everything. It's kind of crazy that's 200 a month, but that's how much humans cost at a minimum.

I guess so. So. This also seems, it feels like, you know how there's like digital well-being tools in your phone to help you use your phone less? Yeah. Feels like the opposite of that kind of. Like you're just texting it all the time, basically. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

But it's almost like you're talking to a person because it uses a lot of slang and it uses a lot of... It doesn't use a lot of capitalization. No, it uses like no capitalization. That's cool, man. It's trying to be very zoomer. Very zoomer. All right.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like we're just going back to actual intelligence again. So who knows? I guess I just get a personal say. Just I. I don't want AI. I want I. Just intelligence.

Okay, I'll go with my second one. This has been out for a little while, but I feel like I've not included it in the podcast because it just felt like I was going to make fun of it, but that's kind of the section right now. Taste Labs. Did you see this? I saw this. Okay, a new data and infrastructure layer to give AI

models and agents taste. Sorry. I, no, it's perfect. I saw this whole huge tweet and this 90 second video. When you got to the end of that sentence, that's when I left. I saw the first sentence of, we're building the data and infrastructure layer

to give AI models and agents taste and then I close the tab. But go on. That's probably what I should have done and said I got really angry. Their CEO tweeted, they're on a mission to end AI slop, which feels like the most tone-deaf stupid thing I've probably ever heard of. It actually sounded like a company Ellis would make up for one of our trivia questions.

Unfortunately, it is real. What? So this is what I'm confused about. What are they talking about? Because in the world of AI slop, it's because stock go up. it's just like we are funneling everything into AI so that it can create the things that it sees all the time

taste is something that like people have because they're genuinely creating their own things so is this just going to be a curated amount of stuff the model is getting fed into? Probably. Therefore then just turning that curated stuff into the same thing thousands of times over destroying the quote taste from the thing they should.

For sure. I'm going to play minor devil's advocate, but then also play Angels Advocate again. Nice. Usually AI design is really bad. It's bad and it's all the same. And there's kind of this like AI website look now where everything has these rounded corners with these certain gradients. And like eventually when you get the net average of everything, it kind of just ends up like that. And it's pretty lame.

It's happening. Sorry, with that YouTube thumbnails in smaller niche communities. Right now, I think the tell is. slightly dark, white, slightly dark background, white and yellow text that has like brush strokes

and this like slight black grunge tint and black outline. Yeah. In the disc golf world, there's a bunch of them right now. You can tell they're using the exact same program because all the thumbnails look exactly the same. Yeah, for sure.

So I can see where they came up with this idea because they were like, well, AI has terrible taste, so we have to make things look better. Angels advocate for the problematic part of this is that the way that, the way that design works and the way that everything works is that everything works on a pendulum cycle.

So if the average of everything becomes really good, eventually that starts to look dry and bland and like old. And so then people start using ugly stuff again. And that becomes hip. So everything's like this pendulum. And so if their company is just based around, okay, we want to make AI design look better now, that'll work for a little bit. But eventually it's probably going to start looking old and draft. If they're successful, the quicker they turn the more niche tasteful design into the slop. For sure.

So it's just like, we're not ending AI slap. We're just making different. This is AI slop with a little garnish on top of it for a little while. And then the garnish gets all will-be. Exactly. It's stupid. It also almost feels like they're straight up saying, like, we want to make sure we're ripping off the best designers out there and stealing their stuff. And definitely not paying them for it.

I mean, yeah. The other thing about taste is, it's subjective. Yeah, it's subjective. And the AI is inherently based off of someone else's taste and work. So it doesn't, yeah. Well, it's kind of like how everyone was using the Chobani font, you know? We talked about this a little bit. The yogurt font?

Yeah, the yogurt font. Like, everyone has been using the Chobani yogurt font for the last, like, year or so because it's sort of like, it's sort of like New York Times, like really high quality. and now every single brand is using that. And so it's like, yeah, it looks good for now, but I think that pretty soon... Damn. It's a good-ass font.

Not going to lie. It's a great font. It's a great font. I think there's a reason everyone has been using it. But, yeah, anyway. It's going to get long in the tooth pretty soon. Did they make this font? Did the yogurt company make this font?

Or did they quote, Chabani Serif? Did they make this? Javani Serif. Is this better than their own product? This is kind of sick. Yeah. Shout out to Chibani. We need Tim to use this on the thumbnail this week.

It is called Chobani Serif. Wow. I mean, hey, they cooked. They cooked. But everyone's using it. I swear to God, everyone's using it. No idea. It does look familiar.

Yeah. And then there's the newsprint stuff like Anthropics logos, very newsprints, very New York Times, Gothic. Anyway. But they all have like very slightly rounded corners. Yeah. All of the new serif fonts are all soft. Because all of these new AI companies need to feel more human, you know.

Yeah. That's the reason they're doing it. They want to feel relatable like yogurt, you know what I mean? I don't want my AI to feel more human. I want it to just do the small, like. Yeah, but they want people to feel like their AI is more human. I know, I'm just not the person for this. Do you know the best way to feel like a human?

Being a human. Breathe. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. We did it. We did it, Joe. Okay.

I don't want to go any further because it's just going to be hate. That sounds like a good time. confused by these things. And I'm not surprised that I'm confused by them, but that just seemed wild. I think we're in the state, I mean, we've been in the stage of the AI boom where, like, everyone is still trying to find a unique idea. And even if it's not good, people are still going to try it. This feels like, that's why you're confused. Taste Labs feels like the needle that is currently popping the AI bubble. Like, this is like we've reached to that point where she blowing.

Hopefully. Every time you think you've reached the top, there's another mountain to climb. Yeah. All right. Well, what's trivia? I think we should trivia. Okay. Okay.

Here we go. Question one. Yeah. I have in front of me a webpage. On that webpage is a maxed-out MacBook Pro from Apple.com. How much does it cost? It's one of the things where I'm worried I'm going to be like so drastically low. It looks like I have no idea what I'm talking about.

It's a 16 inch with nanotexture display, M5. max chip 18 core CPU 40 core GPU 128 gigabytes of unified memory 8 terabyte SSD 140 watt USB C charger I hope no I heard they up the price of the ninawf texture because it uses so much RAM nice just kidding they didn't actually do that I don't know that's true I actually don't know it to be true because I didn't look all right flip them and read what do you got has it old math equation I tried I can break mine down since I should my work. Go for it. So I have the 16-inch

M5 Max MacBook Pro starting at $3,000. I think the nanotextor adds $150. I think the 128 gigs of memory adds $2,500, that one I'm not so sure about. And then I think the 8 terabyte, because I think it starts at 2. So you go from 2 to 4 to 8. So that's $4,000 more for that. So I ended up at $9,550.

All right. Andrew. I'll break mine down. I put a 8 and then a five and then two zeros for $8,500. Okay. Okay. My logic was that it's probably worse than I think. So I put $12,000. The closest is...

Marquez. David. Marquez. Marquez gets the point. What was it actually? $10,149. Well, I almost attend. So with that, Marquez, you now have 32 points.

Andrew with 27 and David with 32. No! Hide up. No! My age. No. That's wild. Uh-oh. Okay. That's great. Uh-oh. You know, sometimes people stop me on the street and say, good job with trivia. You're killing it. I feel like they're going to stop now. Now they're going to stop me on the street. Really? It's like, good job catching up to David. Yeah, that's exciting. Apple, the company that has always overcharged for RAM, is now charging even more for RAM. But what Apple offering has increased its price over 2.5 times since its launch in 2019? You know, Marquez may have been tied with me for a brief moment.

I'll give you a hint. This is an Ellis question. Keep that in mind. Yeah, I was going to say that. That was probably like Apple VHS. Oh. I tried to write this in the Chobani font. we have oh okay Andrew and I

both said AirPods I don't know if you're thinking the same thing I was thinking nope I was thinking the air mods I was thinking the base AirPods maybe that's what I was thinking the base ones which AirPods specifically Andrew it's almost like you could have just written Sony AirPods are the name of a model

the AirPods three well the AirPods line there are 1 to 3 yeah like Sony you know no Expeerio 1 2 3 it's literally you're proving my point that I stopped arguing. Whatever. Whatever. David, you wrote...

I'm not salty. I wrote Apple One. Apple One. Which is not correct, but is sort of a little bit correct. Without going over. Their answer is Apple TV Plus. Wow. Oh.

Which has... Really? It launched it $4.99 and is $12.99 now. All right. Well, in case anyone is wondering, it is about 80 degrees isn't here now. It was not at the beginning of the pod, but that's okay because we survived. And just like that, we created another episode for your regularly-scaled programming. Very exciting. If you made it this far on the pod and you already left a comment wishing Ellis a happy birthday, take it away, delete it. Edit your comment and say happy 32nd birthday specifically to Ellis.

And let's go back. It's not his 30-10. Definitely not his 30-1-13. But it will make sense. Yeah, call him Unk. Yeah. Say happy birthday, unc. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for watching. Thank you for listening.

And specifically for subscribing, which means we'll catch you guys next week. Peace. Bye. We have produced by Adam Alina and Rufus Mulhopped. We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our Traitor music was created by Veen Still. Bingo.

Let's go. I'm going to roll with trivia. That's so exciting. I ain't. That's so exciting. I'm on a generational collapse. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different.

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