Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Dangerous Phone Wallpapers, the Oft-Delayed Pixel 4a, & an iPad-Designed iMac?

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

After last episode's interview, we have a ton of tech news stories to catch up on. Today, we investigate a smartphone background that is literally bricking people's Android phones, why the Pixel 4a is delayed and when it may finally be released, and rumors of a new iMac that has a sleek iPad design. To wrap it all up, we finish with a good 'ol fashioned Twitter Q & A! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by Kamren Barlow: https://bit.ly/2JSbKTd MrWhosetheboss Wallpaper: https://bit.ly/30A58Sy Neil deGrasse Tyson Color of Skin: https://bit.ly/3cR97wf OnePlus Removes "X-Ray" Camera: https://bit.ly/2zp0M5v Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, live laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And today we're talking tech that's right on

the horizon. So we've had a bunch of smaller updates on the year so far, as you've seen. But what about that huge rumored iMac update that's supposed to look like a giant iPad Pro? And what about Apple switching to their own design chips for Macs? And where is the Pixel 4a? We'll talk about all that and more. Let's get into it. All right, so it's been, what, four weeks since our last regular episode, but our last episode was talking with Mr. Mobile about the ethics of tech. I honestly think that was one of my favorite podcasts so far. far yeah it was fun because it wasn't like hyper focused on like a product for once it was just kind of all of us sharing stories of of stuff people don't really know behind the scenes and yeah and i definitely want to do more

stuff like that i think if if people leave suggestions on twitter of other guests we should have on or topics we should talk about or things like that. That was a lot of fun to me, so super down for that. For sure. But that means it's also been four weeks since our last regular episode where we had recaps and everything, so there's been a ton of things both in the news and on the channel since then. I'll just list the videos that have come out on the channel, and we can recap a little bit of it. Quickly, quickly, yeah of it quickly we had the yeah we had the the budget blueprint phone video we had the surface headphones to review a video

about how tesla's upgrade over time with auto summon and auto park and all those software update features and how to think about them pocahontas f2 review the escobar part two video, sort of a PSA. Um, I said a little bit of a reflection about, uh, the state of where we're at with race. And I did a reflection on the color of my skin and inspired by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Um, I'll also link his piece below, which was the reason I made that video. Uh, there's a dope tech video about both a Bluetooth speaker, a rehoused vintage lens, and a magnetic table. And just all of that. Just all of that's happened.

That's a lot of stuff. I can think of one story quickly I'd like to tell about one of those videos that's kind of BTS. So you may wonder why a bunch of us working there were in the Tesla upgrade over time video. And that's because we started shooting that months ago before all of this happened. Yeah. But that shoot was really fun because the majority of it was testing all these new features, which one was auto summoning. And in the case of a pedestrian going involved in front of it so

brandon had to sacrifice himself and essentially jump in front of a moving driverless car in it multiple times so shout out to brandon for uh for that but we also had like a couple times where we took two i think it was brandon's model 3 and your model s and tried to smart summon them at the same time near the same area. And we definitely had a couple hold your breath moments where both of them started moving. One started backing up, one started going forward. Both of them started charging at each other. Yeah, I have a Model S and Brandon has a Model 3. So yeah, this footage didn't make it into the final video, but trying to summon those two cars in an empty parking lot,

like there's no other variables, in an empty parking lot by themselves at the same time, they still had these weird moments where they're like, am I going to, are you going to go? Should I go? I'm going to go. Oh, let's both go at each other. Let's both go.

Yeah, that didn't make it into the video, but that was pretty funny. Yeah, that video had a bunch of different phases of what it was going to turn into when we started shooting it all those months ago, and it finally ended up coming together. But yeah, I don't know. That's a lot of videos.

There's obviously been a lot in the news and a lot in the tech world since then. You have something here for content we liked yeah um and it's funny because it was a story i had written down originally to be talked about in this podcast and then mr who's the boss made a video on it that explains it way better than oh i love this in like my best case scenario of writing the story for the podcast, Mr. Who's the Boss just blew my imaginary story out of the water. He's on a roll. Yeah, so he made a video called How This Wallpaper Kills Your Phone, and I just want to kind of go over it, sort of how the story's there, but I'm also going to link it in the show notes if you want to get the really, really deep dive into what's going on. I'm sure, did you see this on twitter as well yeah so like the general like overview of this story is if you just see the

headline it's like there is a wallpaper out there it's a picture of a sunset if you set it as the wallpaper on your android phone it will nuke your phone forever. It literally started as a tweet from Ice Universe saying, do not set this as your wallpaper, especially if it's a Samsung, I believe he said, but do not. Which, of course, when you see that on Twitter, what is everyone's first instinct? Okay, here I go.

Yeah, let's try it. And then I think an article I read said there were almost 2,000 comments of people complaining that they bricked their phone after phone. That's so many people. When you see 1,980 comments of people who bricked their phone and you see that wallpaper, you're like, I got to try it. I got to try it. I guess you have to assume some people are probably like, oh, they're probably using cruddy phones. I have a great phone. It'll be fine. Or like, I bet I know a way I can add this onto here without, and there were some ways some people took like screenshots of it or, but, uh,

let's, let's go into the video a little bit about why this happened and why this one picture is, it's, it's not just like restarting your phone. It's not freezing it. It's literally, you can't get the phone to boot up not even in safe mode you just have to straight up factory default wipe your phone when you you add it on to the back um so let's see i have a little list here of what happened so mr who's the boss saw it on twitter was blowing up all over twitter his original original assumption was like, there's no way just a regular photo is doing this. Someone somehow put some malware into it. And it's causing all these issues. That seems like the most reasonable. Yeah, excuse for I have no idea

how someone would add malware to just a photo. And that's how you open it. But like, people are smart. Stranger things have happened. I think when I read the headline at first, that was my first assumption where you see, oh, okay, set this wallpaper on your phone and it will like shut down your phone and harm it and brick it. My first thought was, oh, okay, something is either wrong with that file. Yeah.

Like you can embed some key, some nick in that file that harms Android phones specifically, takes advantage of some weird vulnerability or what it actually turned out to be which was like some incompatibility with the color gamut that the photo was exported in so so you're definitely on to something um right the way he found it out is pretty interesting though he he did a reverse image search of it found the original photo which is interesting because it wasn't a phone background it was just straight up a photo posted on like an hd wallpaper website um so it's cropped actually he found best websites in the world oh my the word the greatest if you don't

have an ad blocker never go to a a hd website or hd wallpaper website but so since he found the original file that wasn't cropped he thought well the crop version must be the one with the malware and if i download this i can add it to my phone and it'll work bricked so he set the full size version the original file i think he took the full size version and then you know cropped it just in the in the phone you know it only gives you so much space to use. Oh my God. How many phones did he brick during this video? I don't know.

It seems like it was his actual phone as well. He didn't do it on a test phone. Oh no. Come on. Come on. You've got plenty of phones to test that out. But the perils of being a tech YouTuber. Okay.

So let's see. He started reading up. Everyone thought the same thing as you. Color profiles. Android's default color profile is set to srgb this photo was set to pro photo rgb which is interesting though because android can still handle pro photo rgb colors the issue all it does is it converts it pretty much it takes that if you were to imagine the color spectrum sRGB is a small triangle Profoto that covers all the different colors in that color spectrum and then

Profoto RGB is a larger triangle so it just kind of switches the points around changes it makes perfect sense you know when you see the picture it's a photo of like a sunset so it's an obvious high dynamic range situation where there's gonna be stuff in the shadows and the trees and then the sun is going to be really bright so oh instead of just using the standard srgb let's just uh let's use a wider boosted color gamut so people with compatible displays can see more like a pro display xdr that would be that would be a great place to set that as a wallpaper what's also interesting is he shows the difference between if it was if you brought it into photoshop and set it as pro photo rgb versus srgb it looks far better in srgb i mean yeah it's just a beautiful landscape with the sun peering over it looks better with some vibrance blown up in it um so let's see

it's not just though that it was on that color profile normally it would be able to switch the color profile to srgb no problem the issue actually comes down to one single pixel in the sky that oh so like watch the video if you want to see the really in-depth version of what this happens but essentially each picture each pixel has a luminance scale and there's a certain formula that calculates a number a set number to this the luminance of each pixel and the max value that that can be is at 255 and because it's very confusing but basically because Google uses that formula and rounds numbers, it was so close to pushing that limit in the first place,

but still under when Google rounded the numbers, it pushed it over the max limit of the luminance of that pixel. I hope I'm saying all of this right, because it's very confusing. Yeah, it basically was a rounding error. So the entire photo in ProRGB by itself or that extra wide color gamut

by itself is not ordinarily a problem but when you get into the clouds in the sky and this this one individual pixel happened to have such an extreme value that the sum of the the red green and blue when it added them up with the weights and the rounding, it was 256 instead of 255, which is what Google doesn't know what to do with that number in its conversion. So when it tries to convert, it crashes. Now, typically, you just open it in the gallery and try to convert it and it crashes. It doesn't matter. But when you set it as your wallpaper, now it's like, okay, every time the phone turns on or wakes up or has to display the wallpaper in some way it starts freaking out it can't do it it shuts down it basically breaks the phone and you can't do

anything until you just wipe it which is uh pretty brutal i don't i'm really i should dm him figure out how many phones he lost to this process of finding it out but he did it he found it out he found it was one single pixel which is kind kind of, you couldn't even write that. I think that's what the coolest thing about the whole story was. It's like, okay, cool. A photo with a strange color profile breaks phones. But like the fact that somehow one single pixel out of,

I mean, it's an HD photo. Like there are thousands and thousands and thousands of pixels in it. Yet one of them just happened to hit two numbers that caused a rounding error upwards to be over the max limit by like a single digit is what is causing people to literally lose lose data on their phones um top of the top of the show notes is the link to the mr who's the boss video for sure yeah be careful let's not link the wallpaper.

I was going to say, I'll just link the wallpaper. Yeah, I don't know. If you do happen to see that headline, don't be one of the 2,000 people that decides. You have to also try it to see for yourself. Trust me, it really does. It really does break your phone. So yeah, go ahead and avoid that wallpaper for now. Watch the videos of other people doing it if you're so interested in seeing what happens, but don't do it to your own.

Exactly. Also, in a previous episode, remember we talked about the OnePlus 8 Pro and that sort of x-ray vision mode in the color filter camera? So that actually was removed or disabled. In some markets anyway, they're pushing an update where it disabled that feature due to privacy concerns.

And I thought this was worth including just because it basically confirms this was unintentional. Yeah, I mean, our main argument was, do we think this was intentional? And I think we settled on there's no way this is intentional because OnePlus markets literally every grain of any feature in any phone. So the fact that they didn't market this made us feel like it was unintentional. And there's also a couple of theories floating around about that OnePlus, you know, they

finalize these phones so long before they come out. Like people see the phone, you know, they drop in an event. They think like they just finished making the phone the day before and they're ready to show it like this. These phones were done. Yeah. And one of the theories sort of floating around is that they finished the phone like a long way before and started putting together the marketing materials.

And they had this this sort of spiel for the color filter camera, and then realized, wait a second, it also has this problem where it can see through fabrics, and it can see through clear plastics, and maybe that's a bit of a privacy concern. And it is its own dedicated camera, so what they did is basically nuked that feature, and then in all the marketing materials they were absolutely as quiet as possible about that extra camera so they were still able to say yes we have four cameras instead of two or whatever but if you notice you like read through the the press materials it's like you have this whole extra camera and you've been so price conscious all these years about not having nfc and not having wireless charging.

So you threw in this whole extra camera just for a photo filter mode? Like what? They didn't encourage anyone reviewing the phone to use it. They didn't show any cool features. In the keynote on stage, they had maybe one quick slide about its existence, acknowledging that there was a fourth camera on the phone with the color filter. And they even buried that color filter camera in the menus all the way to the side. So if you saw the videos about enabling it, it was like you'd have to open the camera, switch to color filters, and then swipe all the way over to find that camera. So yeah, the theory is OnePlus figured

it out a little too late after they added the hardware and finalized it, realized it was kind of a problem, nuked it, and still left it enabled at least so they could justify having that hardware there, but weren't able to totally cover it up. And now here we are. Interesting. I mean, it fits. It fits well.

Yeah. And it kind of fits with our theory that they still, OnePlus likes to talk about every little thing so the fact that they didn't talk about that feels a little i don't know sketchy is the right term but it's not like because it like we said it sees through some plastics and it it can see through some clothing material but it's only like super super thin clothing material so but you can see that headline writing itself yeah i mean like if you work for them you know

yeah one one little piece of clothing if you have the picture and then it's that's not what the headline doesn't say sees through like one percent of clothing it says sees through clothing and then it looks terrible so um yeah so i guess they're smart about you know when the when the headlines did start to come out they were like oh what do you know it does does have some privacy concerns so they're pushing a little software update to uh trace back those steps yeah so like you said i don't know i didn't really ever use it i think they um did they disabled it on it's called hydrogen os is the the china version of oxygen os from what i'm reading and then oxygen os there's so they already disabled it there and then they're pushing some sort of update through oxygen os so um i guess

have fun using it for a little while but it's it's about to be gone let me just see if i still have it photochrome i still have it so so far it's not gone from my os but we'll see if they they leave that longer and nuke that too uh all right let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll talk future products both by Google and Apple. partner of the NBA has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM is your basketball home for the season.

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Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. All right, welcome back to Waveform. So there's some products on the horizon, some interesting ones. Some of them rumored, some of them a little more concrete than others. And this is the part where we talk about those because we're tech geeks um the first one is a okay a rumored iMac refresh with a new iPad Pro like design yeah now this isn't you know you don't have to say iPad Pro like I think the iMac hot take iMac is ugly it's dated it's very dated looking it's real it's really dated because I used to use an iMac in my video class in high school and honestly no maybe I'm thinking of

the wrong iMac but like ever since they've done just the small like a stand in the back the main change that's happened is just the thinness of it which honestly i don't care about the thinness as much especially when i'm moving the thing because moving an iMac around it's like sharp on your hands yeah that's such a that really shouldn't affect you buying an i an iMac at all but like but for real that giant chin with the apple logo just feels very very dated yeah there's a couple things yeah that i just don't like about the imax design i had the imac pro which is the darker like space gray version of the imac as my main computer for a little while and like obviously it's a powerful computer and it's an

all-in-one and it's a fantastic 5k display but a couple things about it one the chin like you said with the big apple logo on it really big number two the bezels are thick on all four sides the bezels are really thick and that's not a problem so much as i used to i've been a dual monitor person for so long that i wanted to put another monitor next to the imac but no monitor looks right sitting next to the iMac that just has a gigantic bezel I don't want to put another iMac next to the iMac that's kind of weird that's a waste so what am I putting like a like just a totally different looking monitor it just it didn't sit right with me so I couldn't I stayed to one monitor just because it was it looked that dumb I mean think about it like if you're just doing a two a normal two monitor setup you already have to deal with the two bezels between that and that's

already kind of annoying now imagine doubling it yeah the the bezel on a regular iMac is already the size of like two regular monitor bezels put together it's like you're scrolling through a whole nother screen that you yeah it's a lot of space. So the chin, the bezels, and then how much they round everything. So the screen itself is rectangular, but they really round off the whole aesthetic of the iMac, which, again, I kind of prefer. And this is something I think they found with the iPad Pro. I really prefer the design language of that sort of boxier,

a little more trimmed up, squared, clean Uh, and that's the new rumors. So according to Sonny Dixon, the new iMac will have this iPad Pro like design language, thinner bezels. Uh, and we're also seeing potentially face ID, which I'm not super, yeah, I'm not super into Face ID. I think I'd be more into it on a laptop. But I think all of this is improved from the current iMac. I would love that. I actually, I would be interested in Face ID. That seems kind of nice to me.

Like sitting down at your computer is the one place that I'm almost never going to have anything on that could interrupt Face ID. Like right now we're seeing the biggest issues with face masks, but like normally if you're sitting down, maybe some offices are requiring face masks, but I think most of them are super like restricted to how many people go in. So if I'm sitting at my house, I'm never wearing a face mask,

never wearing sunglasses. I'm never wearing a scarf. So like it would be nice. No, I usually don't wear a scarf. I don't wear my ski mask when it's really cold. So I mean, being able to just make sure my computer is secure, but sit down on it and it just unlocks actually seems kind of nice. Yeah. So I'll take it back. Sonny Dixon isn't the one who said Face ID.

So I'll read his actual tweet here. He says, New iMac coming at WWDC, iPad Pro design language with Pro Display-like bezels, T2 chip, AMD Navi GPU, and normal Fusion Drive. Fusion Drive, I thought, was sort of on its way out anyway. That's the sort of combo between hard drives and SSDs that they've offered. I think hard drives should be pretty much done in Apple's high-end lineup. I think they are now. I think regular

hard drives should be done in anybody's lineup at this point. Yeah, especially if you're a main boot drive. So that's fine to see it go. The T2 chip is, I think, what suggests Face ID. But T2, we already have a T1 chip, which is for security and it's encrypting everything on the drive and a T2 chip suggests some more security features. But yeah, I think just the aesthetic, you can see the render here in the article. We'll link that in the show notes,

but that aesthetic is pretty nice. Yeah, for people who can't see, essentially imagine a giant iPad Pro and then just the regular iMac kind of like L stand behind it. And it looks sleek. It's really weird seeing something that's potentially an iMac that's just actually just widescreen and not this giant square because 10% of it on the bottom is totally useless and a chin. Yeah. So it looks way nice.

Bezels look really thin. It looks sleek. Itels look really thin it it looks sleek it just looks really sleek now that's just a random mock-up they did based on ipad pro like design um it's like if you gave me like the tools to design my own imac i would just take the ipad pro and stretch it and put it on a stand but here's my here's my devil's advocate or at least one thing that I would like to see different. Okay. The current Pro Display XDR and the current iMac have all the ports on the back still.

The iPad Pro has ports on the side. I would be totally fine with a little bit of a thicker, boxy design and just put all the ports on the side. The ones that you want to hide where it's like a usb your your power put those on the back but give me like one or two things like the sd card in the side give me like two usb on usbc on the side uh just so i don't have to reach behind the thing every time and blindly fumble for it you know i feel like i can agree with you with sd card in this i would hate to see something that finally looks aesthetically pleasing and then having usb wires coming out of the side of it all the time that would that would just like and and i'm out of everybody who has a desk at work mine is always the messiest and the

least clean looking and that would drive me wild so i think that's saying quite a bit to like finally i get this sleek new imac and then i just have like a flash drive and uh my mouth i'm one of the only people who still use a wired mouse at work but like my wired mouse coming out of my monitor would drive me nuts i think it's just i hate having to put the sd card in the back i have to like spin the Mac around every time I can never find it what about this and still not perfectly aesthetic but what if they had the ports the wires for the ports come down the uh the stand in the back and the front of the stand would lift up a little bit and you had like four usb ports on the front little uh width of the stand and you would just plug it into the bottom part of it okay yeah i could see that did i explain

that well yeah i think so yeah i mean if i'm just plugging in like a temporary thing like a like a dongle a reader an sd card something that's like not going to just be sitting there forever and i just want a quick access to just plug it in okay you know i'll just i'll just take it on the side i don't know that's that's what i'm looking at this render and thinking about is like how it compares to the current imac but other than that you know if they're if they're giving it the the flexibility oh here's another question is it going to articulate at all probably not the current imac just tilts tilts there's no height no height adjust. There's no swiveling. There's no rotating.

I assume this will be the same stand, basically, not the Pro Display stand. Yeah, it's not the best stand in the world. It looks nice, but when you're tall like us, or like Quinn's had a huge issue with, he had to mount his. Yeah, like when you're tall, you want it standing up. We had it on the, what's the name of those stands?

12 South, right? Oh, yeah, we have 12 South stands. Those are great, but I just want a monitor that actually sits up. We're tall. If you're taller than six feet and you're sitting at a monitor like that, your posture is probably terrible. Yeah, so that'll be interesting to see. It'll probably, I assume, end up being the same, like, non-adjustable stand.

Maybe they'll sell an optional, like, $1,000 accessory that'll have you able to tilt and adjust height and things like that. Maybe they'll let you put wheels on the bottom of it for $700. Whoa. Whoa. Wheels on the iMac stand. That would be something. Actually, I would be so down for that. I'd be down.

I don't even want to know the reason why would be so down for that i'd be i don't even want to know the reason why you'd be down for that i just want to see an imac rolling around on wheels i don't know it's just a part of me wants to see that uh no yeah that's cool i think uh hopefully we see this at wwdc there's a bunch of things we're thinking we're going to see at wwdc and actually that sort of dovetails right into the other horizon thing that we've been looking forward to for a while. And we talked about this for a little bit in the episode with Mark Gurman, where we're hoping to see Apple move to their own ARM chips. And so the headline that we'll link from Bloomberg from Mark Gurman himself, Apple is preparing to announce a shift to its own main processors in Mac computers, replacing chips from Intel as early as this month at its annual

developer conference, WWDC. I am super ready for this. Now there's a bunch of reactions to it that I want to address because I think everybody, once they see that headline goes, whoa, Apple is going to change all their stuff right now? This is the type of thing that happens in stages, and it can't just all happen at once because of the way architectures work. Apple makes their own chips already for the iPad and the iPhone, right? You see those A12X Bionic fun name chips, and they're incredible. And so we've always wondered, why don't they put those in their those in their laptops and of course it's because developers need to change their apps and

the operating system needs to run differently but as they prepare all this with developers behind the scenes moving over platforms you know you can start to see maybe they have a new 12 inch macbook with this uh this arm chip in it with their own design processors. Maybe they have slowly after that a new MacBook Pro. But I think at the higher end, the iMacs and iMac Pros and Mac Pros of the world, people were like, oh man, I just bought an iMac and now they're going to move chips. That's not anywhere, I don't think, anytime soon. We might see this announcement at WWDC that they have begun working on it and will start replacing Intel in maybe their first laptop this year or something like that.

But I think we just got Mac Pros in the studio. If you're expecting this new iMac refresh, I think that'll have Intel chips. I don't think it's going to be straight through the lineup all at once. That being said, I am super looking forward to it. I mean, I'm going to be totally honest. I don't really know much about ARM chips, and I've almost only ever used Mac at work. So I'm totally a Windows guy, and that's not a great excuse for that but i've always used amd or intel so i guess the main way i'm seeing it from what you've described so far is compare it to like an iphone and an ipad and how apple's creating their own chips and it's uh it's a new way from the

couple things i've read it's very confusing but efficiency seems to be a huge reason. Efficiency and power. So I mean, they've put these chips in iPad Pro and iPhone, right? So like the universal language, even if you're on Windows is like performance numbers and benchmarks speak to you, right? Yeah. So imagine in the thermal envelope of an iPad Pro, they've put a chip that is more powerful and more efficient than the chips in the MacBook Air. They perform better and they're more efficient. So now imagine like making a bigger version of that in the MacBook Air. It already outperforms the MacBook Air on paper and benchmarks. So you can imagine like Apple putting their own chip in the MacBook Air. Suddenly that's a really impressively powerful laptop.

And then you have more thermal envelope and you have like a better form factor. Now you imagine giving it MacBook Pro type space and even bigger chip. And the efficiency is already great because you already see iOS is so well optimized. You imagine macOS being well optimized as well. And you toss like 16 gigs of RAM and a

gigantic Apple design chip in a MacBook Pro, that thing is going to scream. Yeah. So I think the promise of what could happen from, you know, the higher overhead you get from moving out of just an iPhone or just an iPad, and moving into a big old laptop is that's the exciting part. Okay. So, so it's just the next step in Apple's ecosystem getting that much stronger and creating that much more of a gap between, you know, everything working seamlessly together and parts that we're used to and everything else that have to mesh together as best as possible. And it's also, it's just smart by them. I mean, we already know they're great with vertical integration. Um, but we've seen their hints of it. They already make the T1 ship. Like we talked

about, they have start to, to put their own ships in their machines, but basically taking your reliance away from Intel, you know, taking that huge, not that burden off of Intel, but just not having to wait for Intel's improvement anymore for your own incremental improvements, uh, is also huge. So you can imagine, you know, when the new iPad pro comes out and it's twice as fast as the last one, um, imagine that in a laptop, like that's, there's so many different doors that open up from Apple. Essentially it's just a big of a story. that's there's so many different doors that open up from apple essentially it's just a big of a story it's just as big of a story for them to move away from intel as it is for them to make their own ships so it's twofold yeah true i'm ready cool when when is wwdc

again is there there's a specific date right it's very soon i believe it might be by our next episode and we might have a lot to say about it when it comes out but wwdc 2020 is expected let me find the exact date june 22nd oh my birthday so cool nice so like we have an episode maybe like a day or two after that yeah i believe so yeah um speaking of uh big conferences that are supposed to be going on, we've officially missed Google I.O. And what was that? It was set to happen May 12th to 14th. Obviously, COVID 2020 happened, you know, and now they just straight up canceled it. But I guess what we were all hoping for out of that the most is the pixel 4a and now that it's been officially canceled we were all waiting for it then they announced android 11 but we still don't see anything about pixel 4a so where is it the beta

yeah where is pixel 4a huh yeah so last year at google io was pixel 3a so that was the that was the first budget edition pixel and so we sort of with the cancellation of google io now the pixel 4a is sort of in limbo but that was that was the phone we're looking forward to a lot so i guess i mean i mean like it's funny because we know mostly about it because Google is fantastic at hiding everything and definitely not leaking every little piece of information about it. So we kind of have all of it, but we were, it was supposed to be May. Then there were some rumors of June, but now the rumors seem to be July-ish, like a week or two into July. So we're still waiting for that. Do you want to go over kind of like this? I don't think we've talked about it on the podcast at all, right? What we're

expected to see from it? Maybe not, but we can go over it. Yeah, let's do a quick overview of what we're expecting to see. So I think contextualizing it just to have on our radar what Pixel 3a was. Pixel 3a was not the most powerful powerful not the most high-end phone not even the most well built but it had the best camera for the price it was 400 bucks right if i'm remembering correctly yeah it launched and it just has basically the same camera as the pixel that came before it awesome phone awesome budget yeah yeah so for pixel 4a we're sort of looking forward to a bit of a design update but But again, still, it's Google. It's a Pixel.

It's not the highest-end hardware. We're going to see probably Snapdragon 730, maybe 6 gigs of RAM, something like that. I think that was a big thing that everyone was excited about was the same amount of RAM as the flagship, which is pretty big. You're talking maybe 64 or 128 gigs of storage. Probably a full-screen display, probably like a 1080p oled display um but we're we're seeing all sorts of different rumors still about whether they do a punch out i think last i heard was hole punch which is interesting because i would consider that more advanced than the regular pixel 4 and it's horrific forehead which is yeah i still use it i still hate it um i still would prefer the like bathtub notch to be completely honest so my god hole punches is really neat and i hope

they follow that route and not the um this like asymmetrical crud right so you know something like we're also seeing 3 000 milliamp hour battery something like that and probably also a similar build quality but again new higher-end cameras same recording basically looking like pixel 4 camera which is in my opinion not even gonna lie still my favorite single camera setup uh they're not gonna have an ultra wide probably they're not going to have a telephoto, it'll just be a single camera setup. And that's that's sort of the same formula, little updated design to the three a now you have a four a. The question now though, is this is coming out after we just saw iPhone se, which is now you know, Apple's in this $400 brand new phone, pretty good camera space how do you

think those two line up i mean as someone who's used pixels for the last two years i honestly think se just blows it out of the water if this is what we're looking at the biggest thing you think about right here is like iphone and pixel cameras even though you said pixel is your favorite they are so close like so remarkably close and apple's even better in some ways but like either way you're thinking of s tier cameras but then immediately look to the processor which is usually one of the next most important things. Yeah, future proof wise. Okay, so here I'll give you I'll break down what I think the Pixel wins at. Okay. And what I think the iPhone wins at. So Pixel 4a will beat iPhone SE, I in my opinion at the camera by a little bit.

I mean, they're both going to be very good for the price. But if they're both 400 bucks, I'll give the edge to the Pixel 4a's camera, single camera setup. The Pixel 4a has a headphone jack. It's supposed to have a headphone jack. That's an advantage because the iPhone SE doesn't. And that's it. So one other thing, if it has hole punch cutout, yeah, like that. I'll take a hole punch cutout over big bezels any day.

True, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like to me, I don't think the camera being better like giving something the edge isn't enough of a reason to buy it i don't think like giving something the edge means it's so much tiny better i mean the ultimate thing is if you prefer android over ios right it's gonna be a bunch of little usability things like Android over iOS is one headphone jack is one. Also where they put the fingerprint reader will be another one. Sounds like it's going to be on the back, which I think is fine. I think that's great. iPhone SC iPhone SC is just the home button, which everyone already knows and is used to. And that's fine too. But I really like the back fingerprint reader. So that could be a little thing. Yeah. That,

that gives you the benefit of having the whole bunch cut out like we talked about. And both of them right now are actually winding up being almost improvements because we're all wearing masks all the time. So like having an actual physical fingerprint sensor seems to be this like 2020 out of the blue, like a big improvement. OnePlus 8, honestly, most of the phones I'm using now,

I'm using fingerprint over Face ID, Face Unlock. So yeah. But you know, when you look on the other side of the aisle, you have iPhone SE and you're going to have iOS, which for a lot of people is where they want to be. Battery life is maybe a toss up. We don't know how the battery is on the Pixel 4a yet, but we'll see. But then of course you have performance you have the latest apple chipset versus snapdragon 730 i think that's a clear win for apple then you get to overall value you know when you're looking at this price how long does this phone last for your 400 bucks if the iphone has twice as many years of software updates that's major that's a major key for that phone so iphone se is probably going

to win that value department and And yeah, it might tie on camera be a little worse and has a little bigger bezels. But so yeah, here's something to consider. I've noticed a lot of people talking about iPhone SE battery life, and people seem to be all over the place on what they're getting. You found it to be pretty good, but you are someone who doesn't play a lot of games. I've read a lot of stuff saying people who play games on their phone because it's a smaller battery using an a13 it is very power hungry because when you're gaming you're using that so much more so people are apparently chewing through iPhone batteries um that's an excellent point yeah I I would describe a lot of my use of an iphone especially

as pretty like standard if i'm not doing gaming i'm like i'm on twitter instagram taking photos web browsing email that sort of thing like i could do that all day on an a13 because that's just sipping power but at the end of the day the a13 is new and it's the highest end chip with this huge amount of power when you want to put it towards something. So even though it's only a 768p display, if you're gaming, it's going to start to really chew through power. And when you're at that max power on a tiny battery, you can chew through it. So that's good to note is that if you are gaming a lot on your phone, you probably don't want to get a budget phone. Yeah.

I mean, if you're picking between two of them, I guess between 4A and SE, you're going to pick, do I want the best performance on my phone? And then you probably go SE, but then you realize you're going to need a battery bank or you're going to be plugged into the wall at home. Yeah. Or is it like,

am I fine with a little bit worse of an experience and uh like overall the processor playing the game to its max potential but i'm okay with the fact that i'm on the bus and i don't have a place to plug it in or i'm on the train and i can play for hours and hours like the the pixel 4a is going to be able to play those games for longer on its battery life because it has a smaller less power hungry processor and a bigger battery i don't know i don't know as much about the snapdragon 730 like that might yeah maybe i don't know if that trade-off is even going to be that great like a 3 000 milliamp hour battery i don't know well this is why we review the phones is we have to test them

and see but yeah that's a it's an uphill battle now that you're you're fighting apple for 400 bucks that'll be interesting so also interestingly there were some rumors of a pixel 4a xl coming out um well unfortunately now it seems to be like there's no chance that that happens i mean all they were looking at was because it's bigger, it has a bigger battery, but it was going to add the second camera, which everyone assumes is telephoto, like the Pixel 4. Wow. So it would just be like a cheaper, worse-built Pixel 4. Pretty much. I'm guessing it would have hole punch cutout,

so it would look better than the Pixel 4 again. Yeah, a little bit. I've been using Pixel 4 because i'm testing the new android beta but it's like you get used to that forehead pretty pretty quickly like if you're just staring at the forehead you're like oh this is so ugly why did they make it like this that's but that's the issue as far as like buying it you forget it and then you notice it and then you're like that stinks and you're like why did i this? I'm not a fan of that. Yeah.

Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. And then only other thing I have. So I have like a scenario here. Because at this point, Pixel 4a is potentially releasing in July. But at that point, we're really starting to creep up on like smartphone season when google regularly releases their flagships so like normally you have like a six month gap in between their mid phone their mid-range and their flagship now we're getting really close i guess my main thing is why don't

companies i'm sure they have market research, but I would just like to know why do they decide to release their mid-range phone at a completely different time than their flagship phone, especially when they're almost putting it under the same, what am I trying to say? It's like the same lineup. I get Galaxy S20 and galaxy note 20 are two completely separate things but like i think i know what you mean i think samsung is a little bit

a little bit of an unusual one because they don't do this but i think most of the big players want to have their flagship phone out uh as its own thing and also ideally around the holidays so you see you see like you know iphone in september you see pixel in october you see these these bigger phones coming out and i think they separate it from their budget phone launch events so that mentally you separate them too um and sometimes they don't do that sometimes they'll have iphone se alongside another phone but i just think when you have your big, main, this is our killer, this is the one you should buy phone, they want all the attention on that. And if they're doing anything else separately,

it's going to be an even higher-end, crazy, folding one or something wild. Yeah, I guess I see it. So, like, in terms of Apple, for example, the SE looks totally different. Apple, for example, the SE looks totally different. It doesn't, like, the 11 and 11 Pro and the 11 Pro Max all coming out have a similar face to them. Know what I mean? Like, it has that, this is Apple, this is the new phone, this is what it looks like. It has a notch and everything. So if then you're also tossing in the 8, it has these big bezels. It just doesn't look like it fits in that lineup. But then on the other hand, like you said, before the holidays, I'm a kid. I tell my parents I want a new iPhone.

There is a way higher chance that when my parents go into Verizon or T-Mobile and they're like, my kid wants a new iPhone for Christmas, they're going to buy the SE because that's the phone a younger kid in middle school probably deserves over a $1,200 iPhone 11 Pro Max. So I guess I don't, it feels to me strange why they come out at two different times. But like you said, I guess mixing them up puts the focus on, yeah. Yeah, when you pull back the curtain, it's probably like in a dream world, they could just, as soon as they're done planning and and finalizing the phone they could just put it out um but i think since there's like different teams working in parallel doing these different phones it's like well we're gonna we're gonna finalize the phone and we're gonna come up with everything but we also need to pick an ideal time for it to come out and they probably have separate slots

for like all right the flagship phone's coming out. It's done in June. Let's drop it in September. Oh, the budget one's done at the same time? All right, let's drop it six months after that. And it's like, I don't know. Everyone has a different strategy, but I feel like they want to separate.

Oh, that's definitely true. Yeah, like now you all get a news cycle in the middle of the summer as well. It just, like I feel bad for all those people who are constantly keeping their old phone ready to upgrade, and they're like, I'm ready for the Pixel 4. It's going to be amazing. Oh, it was the Pixel 4.

I'm going to now maybe wait a little longer. Whereas, like, maybe if Pixel 4a came out at the same time as pixel 4 they would have felt better upgrading knowing it was half the price of it because still it's an it's an upgrade you're getting new operating system like you're getting the better cameras and everything and some people are at this point where their their phone screen is completely cracked you know the battery life is terrible because they've been holding on to it for so long but then the phone they've been waiting for comes out and it sucks and now you've just waited for so long so i don't know a lot to think about everyone i'm rambling everyone's got different strategies i'm with it it's like imagine you have uh three youtube videos you just finished

making three different videos do you drop them all at the same time or do you pick one to drop now pick another one to drop a couple days later and then another one to drop a week later everyone has a different answer probably to why they would do a certain thing but you know that's why I don't work for all these companies well we'll see what they decide to do all right let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll do Twitter Q&A. This is an ad from BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life.

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had some good ones. So we're going to talk about some of those now um i've won kind of goes back almost to last week's episode in terms of sponsors uh okay so let's see when a company sponsors you to try their product how long do you spend trying out their product to determine if you're happy to have them with a sponsor or do you just accept the sponsor yeah it's uh i'd say the the amount of time i test a sponsor or do you just accept the sponsor? Yeah, it's a, I'd say the, the amount of time I test a sponsor product is definitely different from the amount of time I'm reviewing, like I'm spending to test a review. Uh, because obviously if it's a, if it's a sponsor product, they have a couple of points that they probably want you to highlight. And I just want to go through and make sure those all do what they say. Meanwhile, if I'm testing for a review, I'm going to find things that work.

I'm going to find things that don't work. I'm going to find things that I wish were a little different. I'm going to find bugs. I'm going to find all kinds of stuff. And all of that goes into should you buy it or not versus just a quicker sponsored message. Yeah, I think most sponsored things are along the lines of like an unboxing or a like a first impression. along the lines of like an unboxing or a, like a first impression. So sometimes there's barely, you know, the video is the quote unquote testing. It's the, so as long as it at that point, if there's not a lot of testing to do beforehand, then it just has to, we have to know there's

something interesting enough in that product that we feel like we'll make a good video. Like a sponsor doesn't come through unless it's going'll make a good video like a sponsor doesn't come through unless it's going to make a good video for some reason something out of the box something like new whether that new thing is great yet sometimes it's just interesting to see so so we're just worth sharing yeah something has to come to us that we think is going to make an interesting video for you guys and then that's how we move forward with sponsors. I see another one here. You've mentioned before that people should not buy products with the promise of future software updates. Where do you stand on that now? And do you expect it to change in the near future, especially in light

of your most recent Tesla video? And to answer that, I 100% stand by that still. I do not think you should in tech buy a product based on the potential of future updates or changes. I think you should spend your money on what you absolutely know you're going to get and anything you get in the future as a bonus. Now, some companies like like I mentioned in that Tesla video, have a pretty great track record of software updates and future bonuses, if you will, in the form of software updates. And it's still so weird. Like, I wouldn't buy a Tesla hoping that it maybe gets full self-driving and this other unannounced feature that's rumored. I wouldn't do that. If you're not happy with the car without that feature, don't buy it. But yeah, I think there's, you know, you look at the company's

track record and you're happy with what you're buying, but maybe you're in for a little bit extra down the road. Yeah, I think it's pretty easy to say, like, if you buy something and you're really something excited about something it doesn't have and you're going to be really bummed out when it doesn't have that, you obviously should not buy that product because assume it won't get it. Yeah, it's just like the chances of it not getting that are great. really in a situation where you're making the decision and putting money that you've saved towards that decision, don't save that money for something that's not there yet. Either wait for it or pick something else that has it. It's not going to be worth spending all that money and then having the day when you find out it's never coming. Okay, I think this is an interesting one for you. I know my answer, no problem, but you are somebody.

Okay, so I'm someone who uses Windows at home and I use Android. You are someone who prefers the Android side on phones, but you prefer the Mac side on computers. If you had to go all in and use one combo forever, is it Mac and iPhone or Windows and Android? It's Mac and iPhone. I kind of thought that's where it was going but yeah you know the ecosystem as restrictive as it is you've seen how much people love living in those walls like the blue bubble squad like dude people love that i

happen to be a tech reviewer and i'm a big fan of the customization of android and i'm super into that but if you had to nuke android for me or nuke max for me uh nuking max is a much bigger problem yeah so yeah i feel like there's one thing you and i both do that that answers that question you edit in final cut and you don't want to go to anything else because that is you spend so much time editing that's your favorite way to use it you don't want to change that makes total sense so then it's much easier to change how you use your cell phone because the other product is still great easy i play games i play a lot of games there's there's no gaming on on max like there is on windows or at least as easily as it is so i would much i mean i'm already on android but if i was on iphone i'd

rather switch that because i want to continue to play my games that's my favorite ultimately a phone phones are amazing but like it would be pretty easy to switch to the other software where when you have something that's part of your everyday life that's a bad example because the phone is a part of your everyday life but i feel like this is what feels more critical yeah you know it's funny the more you say like i guess i could see it um you know i'm trying to imagine a world without max for me and i have to switch to premiere which is actually not the end of the world. I just don't have my plugins, but I've done Premiere. I edited there for years. But getting rid of... I feel like I use my two different phones more similarly than I would use the two different desktop operating systems. I think that's what it comes down to. I can use my iPhone and be fine, almost the same way I use my

Android phone, almost. But switching to Windows would require a lot more change. So I guess that's where my answer comes from. Yeah, and as much as I love Windows, using Mac at work, there are very obviously some much better features on Mac. I have to say, dealing with sound on Windows is like the most frustrating thing in the world. I do not know why they can't figure out just

how to make like plugging in a microphone or plugging in headphones i don't understand how they can make it so difficult it's impressive um this might sound really weird to some people but like when you click open your sound thing in windows and you have 10 different options is just mind-blowing um it's just a little yeah it's so dumb um but yeah okay so i'm windows android you're mac iphone oh my god this question it's 2020 what tech are you the most disappointed in so far um what tech did you have expectations for that were way beyond its current state whoa oh man are we at the point where 2020 sucks so bad that all tech is just exciting and nothing is as disappointing as just the world of 2020 yeah that might be where i'm at right now it's like you know a little minor update comes out for the MacBook Pro with a new keyboard.

And I'm like, this is it. It's my next laptop. Yeah, and you know, I don't try, I try to keep my expectations pretty in check. I think expectations are the cause for disappointment most often. So, you know, as far as things that had really high hopes and expectations for, I think those are still all like on the horizon. Like Galaxy Fold 2, I'm really interested in. Galaxy Note 20, Pixel 5, iPhone 12.

All these things that I'm really hyped about are still in the works. I was pretty disappointed about the new Escobar phone. Oh, man. Were you? I don't know what I expected. I guess I shouldn't have been too shocked wrapped phone um yeah i i honestly can't think of anything specific i had high hopes for that didn't meet those hopes but 2020 also feels like it's been going on for 10 years so i have no sense of what's really happening at this point i'll say uh huawei's app situation i was

hoping would be better by now that's a good point i'm testing the p40 pro plus right now and it's like i'm so tired of like trying to get it to work like putting my sim card in that phone and i'm like all right here we go time to oh god time to, time to load the apps. And it's just not, it's not fun. That's a good answer. It's disappointing that we basically can't use the P40 like at all in the US. Yeah, because it's a great, dude, that phone is like a rocks.

It's made of ceramic now. It's got these incredible cameras. I think it's honestly probably the hardware champ. I mean, I just got it. I'm testing it now. But as far as like just straight up hardware on the outside, amazing phone. And it's quickly nuked by like the fact that I just,

it just takes you so, like I could never recommend that phone in the US. So maybe that's the disappointing part. I think that's a good answer. I'm always interested with Huawei and our smartphone bracket. It always seems to do so well. And when you just feel them, their hardware is just like second to none lately.

So it's such a shame that you basically can't use it in the US. So there you go. Here's one quickly. I think it's, well, it's going to be towards me because it's about editing it's just how long does it take to edit the podcast um not too long a couple hours i'd say like it's definitely beneficial that we sync up all the audio beforehand and it's super easy to do that i'm not dealing with video pretty much all I'm cutting out is a lot of ums or dead space or me totally fumbling over words. So what you listen to still sounds, I still sound like an idiot, but I sound like less of an idiot because I get to edit it in between.

But we do have a funny story. We had a guest on once who was recording on their either iPad or MacBook, and they were listening to the Zoom call on their headphones, their AirPods, and managed to not connect them correctly. So all of our call was playing out of the speakers, which was then getting picked up from the microphone. So that entire podcast, i had to manually delete anytime marquez and i were talking from that voice uh that track so that podcast probably took eight or nine hours to edit because it was just a mess there was there was definitely a point in the beginning where i just

put my head down and knew how long of a day I was going to have um especially because we usually record these on Wednesdays and they release Friday morning so like I have Wednesday night and Thursday to edit so when we found out all that happened Thursday morning it was like all right it's crunch time we're in for a good one but uh but ultimately editing is usually two or three hours probably it's not too bad it's it's just weird having the full conversation and then having to listen to that same conversation a second time yeah um and making sure you you catch everything which hopefully everyone listening hopefully i'm catching everything and there's not too many mistakes i'll toss in just in case i haven't

already said the videos on the channel probably average somewhere between I mean it's it varies a lot but I want to say between five to ten hours of editing uh the one I'm working on right now I've been doing all day so it's probably six plus hours going into tomorrow but yeah that's where we're at yeah the video from what I've seen Marquez do and from what little editing I've done, not for the channel, is much harder than this. It's very nice to have just audio. I guess the hardest thing to do

is when it's an hour long of audio is realizing you drifted off as you were listening to it and then having to go back to the point you last remember listening to. So that makes up for probably a solid 20 minutes during every edit session. Here's a question we might disagree on. Okay.

Just because of... Okay, I'll just read it. I know you guys aren't fans of touchscreens and laptops, but what's your opinions on touchscreens in cars versus buttons? I mean, I have no... Um, I mean, I, I've no, as long, I mean, as long as the important buttons are on the steering wheel, like the ones you need when you're driving volume, I guess the only like, uh, air AC climate control could be a little tougher, but like you've used it, you've gotten used to where everything is. Right. Yeah. For context, the, the model S I drive a car that has zero buttons except for the two on the steering wheel and the

hazard button. And you can control everything through the screen. I mean, I I've memorized the location of like the, the temperature up down. Basically the reason physical buttons are so great in a car is because you want to keep your eyes on the road and just be able to feel over where you've memorized as a certain radio dial or volume or climate control. But because those buttons, even though they've changed the UI and the design in Teslas, are in the same exact place, they're almost as consistent as physical buttons. So I'm totally cool with the touchscreen. Yeah. buttons so i'm totally cool with the touch screen yeah uh my context i drive a 2013 subaru so it is not up to date in terms of touch screens and stuff like that but i'd say the main controls i use while i'm driving is volume up down track skip and answer hang up the phone everything's on the

steering wheel there i don't think there will ever be touch screen buttons on a steering wheel I don't think there will ever be touchscreen buttons on a steering wheel. I shouldn't even say that. There probably will be a concept car at CES next year when everyone's not going because CES next year is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Can we talk about that? Can we talk about that for a second? Might as well.

CES, there is an article. I know maybe nobody asked about this, but there's an article about CES. As of of right now they're planning to hold it as usual like i know the olympics got moved and like the entire nba season got canceled yes but like more important than the olympics yeah nobody will interrupt the ces schedule here's the thing i know you have to because like okay you don't want to lose all this money for the sea and for the committee and all these things you've planned and all the all the things that go on every year to make ces happen are so many jobs i get that but that this ain't it this ces is is already potentially one of the major reasons of the beginning of the covid covid spread um and we don't want it to be the reason that it spreads again.

It spikes like crazy. It's so early. It is so dumb to even comment about it at this point, but to say it's going on is just, I mean, we've talked about CES. It's fun to go to, but we've always wondered if there's a reason to not go. And I think COVID's a great reason to not go. This will probably be the first year in my eight years of not going to CES.

And I think a couple of the YouTubers have already replied. Like I tweeted this, like this isn't the year to have it. And a couple of people on board, like, look, if there's no vaccine and there's no no like safety measures in place like there's no way to go to ces this year so maybe we'll just have like a little virtual we'll have a little zoom call instead they should um they should replace attendance with a controllable robot and a 360

camera on it that you can purchase and check out the show floor from the picture ces i just pictured ces full of remote robots just like remote presence robots reeling through all those halls but like the same amount as people so there's like thousands of them bumping into each other and that would be chaos and then yours falls over the the thing about ces though is like it's not just a lot of people packed in a room which it is it is like being in front of the lg booth with those screens is you are shoulder to shoulder with people if you're getting through the crowd you are touching almost every person that you walk past but then on top of that imagine how big headphones are and vr is and mice and keyboards

everything you are touching has been touched by 50,000 other people and now you're putting that stuff on your face you're putting on your hands which touch your face like we used hand sanitizer every time we met someone or went to a booth and there's like still people getting sick doing that from just the regular flu or the ces flu it's the it's such a terrible unfamiliar yeah it's like every year you go to ces there's a very high chance you get sick in that petri dish and i don't i don't know i think the bottom line is this is probably not actually going to happen in the way they say it will but we'll we'll keep an eye on that well we'll update you every podcast on whether or not ces is still happening so. So far it's on, but yeah, CES Watch is on.

Whoa, okay, this is a weird question. Okay, a wizard appears. This is already amazing. Great start. A wizard appears and teleports you to an island. I'm glad that needed a wizard. The island is a completely normal society, except they all use products and devices

from just one company. Which company is it? This feels like a riddle that, or like there's a punchline to it that I'm supposed to know. Yeah, let me, maybe I'll rephrase that as like, what company, what would be like the best case company and like the worst case like apple you think of apple like them if everyone on this

island is only using apple products and that means they all have phones they all have computers they all have icloud oh so you're saying that all you're thinking of which company has the most range of products that could make society continue to live its normal existence. Yeah. You know, this island, this particular island of Apple will not have any transportation or any like cloud services or anything like that. But they'll have personal computers. I mean, well, what about what about LG? Aren't they literally building their own smart

city or something like that that's gotta be lg the obvious answer is like lg or samsung yeah they've they've got the widest amount of of products that could i kind of want to imagine an island where the society is based on the tech company so if i i imagine apple i'm imagine everyone wearing only white or black turtlenecks tucked in oh my god with circular circular island yeah like everything is aesthetically pleasing and it reminds uh have you ever seen the movie equilibrium no it's like this this strange future uh all about how like it got taken over and everybody doesn't have feelings anymore they basically take these shots that take away feelings so everything is just like monochrome and and perfectly in order all over the place so like

i imagine that with with hopefully hopefully still feelings but we don't know if an apple society would take that away from you or not. The Google Island is like super colorful. There's slides and playgrounds everywhere. Everything's updated super quickly. But only for like a year. Yeah, I don't know. I think, yeah, if I'm going with somebody

to have a best case, Sony had a car at CES. Let's go, let's go, no, because Samsung makes like washers and dryers. I'm picking LG over Samsung because I don't want Bixby to be the overlord of the island. At least LG still lets you use Google Assistant.

Oh, Google won't exist. But you can't use it though. Yeah. You can't use Google Assistant. That's okay. I'll take pure LG anarchy over Samsung Bixby overlord. I'll take the LG anarchy over Samsung Bixby overlord. I'll take the Samsung island.

Okay. The worst version of this island would be like the essential phone island. Oh, Jesus. Where everyone's phone's just bricks. I kind of want to answer this one. How did you come out of quarantine better or worse? I'm not out of it. It's probably...

Oh, man. I hope it's better. I'm going to come out of quarantine. Let's go with one thing that's better and one thing that's worse. Okay. When quarantine's over. Okay. Do you think you're better at cooking now that quarantine's been weeks and weeks?

Oh, man. That just brings up a whole nother. This is going to already go deeper than it should have. Cooking for a while. Yes, I was doing some. I was cooking a ton. Favorite recipe I've made so far. I made braised short ribs, which I've never done.

And they came out incredible. But because of all that cooking, i realized i was eating terribly for like two months so now i'm trying to not eat like that and i actually haven't eaten meat in almost three weeks which for me is like absolutely insane when my mom listens to this she's probably not gonna believe that i just said that um but i've been trying to find a lot of different recipes that don't involve meat um buffalo cauliflower wings are really good uh i made huevos rancheros the other day for dinner which is very hearty it's hard to find hearty stuff i feel like i think it's making you better at cooking then yeah okay i'll take that um what about? What are you getting better at during quarantine?

I would say I am better at, oh God. I was going to say just like the, the organization of like the compartmentalization of work. Where like this building is closed on weekends and i'm like physically unable to work on weekends so like i you know typically i i just sort of merge everything together i'm like either tweeting or working or something kind of all the time and i think i've gotten better at separating those things yeah during quarantine i feel like people don't realize that

there are there are times where like i'm in the middle of the weekend and I see a video post that I didn't even know was going to come out. And I'm like, Kez, come on, dude. Like, just have a weekend off. Like, did you want help with that or anything? You just, like, decided to go in and make a video. So, like, yeah, you work a lot. I'm sure it's nice to just force you to have weekends although now these weekends are way less fun because we can't do as many things but i think

it's i think it's also made me better at 2k i've played more 2k i'm better at it i can definitely confidently say that but i'm definitely worse at a lot of things now yeah i'm worse i have uh my haircut is worse that's number one i'll just say. And then I am worse at Ultimate because there's no way to play with a team. And so, yeah, just all that. So since I don't really play Ultimate as much anymore because I've been injured a thousand times, I've been really into rock climbing lately, though, which all the gyms are closed. I tried outdoor climbing for the first time. climbing lately though which all the gyms are closed um i tried outdoor climbing for the first time and then i've actually gone so crazy that i just built a climbing wall in the backyard

so i don't have all the holds for it yet so i haven't gotten to see how terrible i am at climbing um now that i haven't done it for like three months but there's a full-blown like eight by eight foot climbing wall in my backyard claire's not the happiest about it because it's a full-blown eight-by-eight-foot climbing wall in my backyard. Claire's not the happiest about it because there's a total eyesore, but I'm very excited to get some holds on there and to climb a little. So that's probably what I'm the worst at. I'm sure I'm terrible at it because I was never very good to start. Perfect. All right.

I think that's probably a good place to end it. I'm trying to get better at outroing podcasts so thanks for listening to this episode of waveform we'll be back in two weeks we'll keep an eye on ces watch see if that actually happens but uh you know wwdc will happen between now and then and there'll be plenty of stuff for you guys to tweet at us so get us at wvfrm on twitter and uh we'll be in touch. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Waveform is brought to you

with Studio 71 and our intro outro music is created by Cameron Barlow.