Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Did Hype Hurt the OnePlus 9? Is LG Done Making Phones?

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

At long last, we finally stop talking about NFTs and get back to our bread and butter. We start by covering the possible demise of LG's mobile device business, before debating if OnePlus's Hasselblad hype may have hurt its launch of the OnePlus 9 series. Finally, we wrap up the episode with our thoughts on Tesla accepting Bitcoin as payment for their cars. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Drag Times: https://bit.ly/3lP2DV3 Explaining McLaren Situation: https://bit.ly/3cmemr5 LG Possibly Stopping Mobile: https://bit.ly/3sr7XAj Tesla Accepts Bitcoin: https://cnb.cx/39fwSPX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Mitsubishi Motors. Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. So we'll talk today about pronounced cringe levels in pandemic product presentations and LG and the lame lack of life of their smartphone business. And then the huge Hasselblad hype and maybe going broke from buying with Bitcoin. There's a lot to get into. But first, we got to talk about NFTs. I feel like it's been a while since we have. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. We're not talking about NFTs again. I know a lot of

people have heard probably to the moon and back about NFT stories. But I do have a lot of interesting stuff to talk about in the media world. It's sort of a parallel world to the tech world on YouTube. I haven't told you guys

all of the story, so I'm just going to break this down here. We'll just talk about McLaren. We'll talk about YouTube. And we'll talk about media and the perception of YouTubers. Okay. Sounds YouTubers. Okay.

Sounds good. Okay. Let me start with, there's a really good video by a YouTuber called Donut Media. A couple of them host that channel, but it's called Why Some Supercars Take More Than Money to Buy. So you know how sometimes you'll see like a headline about Bugatti. Bugatti made their most expensive, you know, sport version ever yet. They're $10 million each and they're all sold out.

You're like, how is that possible? How did people buy this car before it was even sold out? So it's an exploration of that concept of some supercar companies are so exclusive and have so much demand for so few cars that they actually get to decide who gets to buy their cars. And Ferrari is a prime example of this, where if you and I today walked into a Ferrari dealership or something like that with a million dollars cash in a briefcase and said, let me buy a brand new SF90 right now, they would actually look us in the eye and say, nah, nah, we don't really want that. I mean, here's some other older Ferraris that we're willing to sell you right now. And maybe if you buy enough of these older Ferraris

and maybe are a supporter enough of the brand, then maybe someday we'll like you enough and think of you as an SF90 buyer and we'll let you, we'll let you give us your money. It's wild, man. It's a very different world where obviously you're used to just walking in, being able to buy the thing you want. So that video, we'll link it in the show notes. It's a really good one. And it're used to just walking in, being able to buy the thing you want.

So that video, we'll link it in the show notes. It's a really good one. It explores a topic super well-researched and has little interview bits in there. But shortly after I watched that video, I was sort of catching up on this sort of YouTube story. So there's a YouTuber I follow, Brooks. His YouTube channel is called Drag Times. Brooks is one of the few car YouTubers who regularly uploads who I follow. He buys a bunch of cars.

He drives a bunch of cars. And as you can tell by the name of his channel, we'll drag race him against each other. So he's all about that drag times. Like literally, what's the rolling splits? What are the quarter mile times? What are the trap times? How low can he get these cars?

And he's been on a little bit of a tear recently where he's got this 765 LT, which is McLaren's newest car, to be the first fastest ever production car on the quarter mile under nine seconds. Sorry, he's got a stock one in the low nines, and he's got a modified one under nine seconds, which is crazy. For quick, I feel like we focus on zero to 60 so much. What's like a good, kind of averagely good not or quarter mile yeah i think you're you'd probably think of a fast quarter mile as about 12 seconds okay probably about 12 second quarter mile under nines insane yeah a tesla model s will do like low tens

which is like what you think of a model s is one of the quickest cars in the world from zero to 60 sort of flat lines after that but very impressive sub 11 second quarter mile. So when you're talking sub 10, you're, you're talking like hyper car territory. And then to go sub nine is unreal. That car apparently did less than two seconds, zero to 60 modified rear wheel drive. So it's a crazy, crazy McLaren. He's covering this. He's documenting the process in a way that only an owner or someone who knows the owner possibly could. So I know I've been a big follower of Brooks. Recently, he'd uploaded a video on another McLaren called the Alva, which is this roadster with no roof.

And for some reason, a couple days later, it was deleted. And I never really found out why. It just kind of disappeared for a while, and there was not really much said about it. But then later, it apparently came out that McLaren asked him to get rid of the video. And this is when a bunch of the reporting sort of started to pop up like, wait, why did McLaren ask Brooks to get rid of this video? He was again, you know, drag racing that car, trying to figure out what the times were, what the power put down was. It did great numbers. People loved the video.

And then it was gone. And apparently, so this has come from multiple sources that Brooks has spoken to, but apparently a sort of VP at McLaren Marketing asked him to remove the video because he was a little early with it and shouldn't have had access to it. And at the end of the day, he's just an owner with a YouTube channel, not an automotive journalist. And those were actual words from someone who works at McLaren. That to me is the story.

That is such an odd perspective to take as someone who's obviously in the marketing world and who's supposed to know about what how cars sell and in this modern day like what makes a good user experience and why people buy cars that to me was really strange to see it just seems like such an old way of thinking because i mean we've all seen in the past decade that journalism's just changed a ton and it seems like they're looking at these like really, really defines lines of like who a journalist is when really YouTube and people who didn't go to journalism school have been becoming reviewers. And that seems bad for the brands. But at the

same time, when you're a brand that has not only such a highly like entry point in terms of just straight money, but now, which is news to me, you're telling me about this entry point that is, uh, like you literally have to be allowed to buy some of these things. That's insane. So I guess is marketing to them that, yeah, there's just, there's just so many things wrong with that stance to me. Number one. Okay. To say, uh, you know, to me. Number one, okay, to say, you know, if you're offering cars to journalists, what are you fundamentally doing? You're sharing what you've made to the world through someone else's experience, right? That is exactly what people with YouTube channels are doing for free. Number one. Number two, the phrasing of it of like, you're just an owner with a YouTube channel.

You're not a true proper you know whatever automotive journalist imagine if it was the other way around like no matter how you phrase that it's condescending like you're not you're not a YouTuber you're just an automotive journalist like that's condescending no matter how you phrase it yeah they're all

doing roughly the same thing now here's the thing so journalists people have a lot of respect for journalists obviously they go to school to do what they do. There's a certain code of conduct, and it's very traditional. It's very well understood. Someone who's probably been in the game for a long time understands much better how journalism and automotive journalism works than how YouTube channels have been doing what they do for the past couple of years.

But the thing is, the effectiveness, if you've been paying any attention lately of an owner with a YouTube channel can be dramatically more dramatically better than any one automotive journalist experience because that journalist, again, no offense at all, but has a day or two or a week with a car to give their experience. I do my best in that same context with the autofocus series, but an owner who has like a year or two with the car, who gets to find out what breaks first, who gets to find out how it does on a bunch of different tracks, who gets to get much more involved with the modification process, all this stuff is going to have like a lot of useful information to a potential buyer.

And so people who are actually looking to buy these cars who are going, you know what? I have that million bucks in a briefcase. Where do I want to spend it? They're watching YouTube videos. They're watching videos of owners. They're talking to other owners, trying to figure out what those experiences are like. And Brooks, I can tell you right now, is single-handedly responsible for a lot, a lot of McLaren purchases over the years. So it is really weird to me that someone who's at the head of McLaren marketing could look right past that. Now, maybe there's something to the exclusivity of the Alva.

Maybe they didn't want this to get out early and it's sort of messing with their PR. Fine, but just say that. Just say that instead of that. One, you don't have to be condescending. Two, when the owner of that, you said he borrowed it from an owner right he is an owner but he took that car or borrowed it from an owner yep was

there something in the contract when he bought that car that said you're not allowed to make videos or lend this to like that's a good point what what is the legality there of being able to show this i think what you were saying before is that like maybe there's no like written in stone legality thing. But is is he worried now about just not being able to access McLaren stuff if you piss off the company? And right. So this is why the video down. That's a good point. So this is this also goes back to the donut media video where if you're like, OK, in the supercar world, these car companies are trying so hard to maintain their image that they will hand select who's able to give them money for a car they will also and this is sort of famously with the ford gt

put like clauses in their contracts about what you can or can't do once you get the car you remember deadmau5 uh painted his ferrari with like nyan cat or whatever ferrari got so mad at that and they wanted to take the car back i think I love Deadmau5 so much it was beautiful so the Ferrari is no more because that it happened it happened and it was a problem for Ferrari and it's no longer so that's a thing and that's been a thing with

the Ford GT where you know people would buy the Ford GT and then want to sell it and there was literally a clause that you couldn't flip it within a certain amount of time because that doesn't look good for the car. The people are just flipping it. So there is a real element of buyers wanting to stay in good graces with these car companies.

And maybe that's a little bit of pressure Brooks felt when McLaren goes, hey, take that down. He's a buyer. He wants to stay in good graces with McLaren. Keep buying the cars in the future. Fine, I get it. But I put all the weight on McLaren for this dumb decision. I guess I also wouldn't be worried if it's not necessarily

Brooks being worried about that, but Brooks being worried about messing with the owner, whose car he borrowed it from. Cause I'm sure McLaren can figure out whose car that is very, when you don't sell a lot of cars, you know, where, where those cars are a hundred percent. So I, I bet he's more just trying to make sure his friend and his buddy who lent him the car doesn't get in trouble. And I totally, totally understand that. It is just an, it's an awful look for McLaren, but at the same time, like when you're not really a, I don't think I consider McLaren or Lamborghini, Ferrari consumer car, like, like there are four people who are consumers, but there are four, a very, very small percentage of people.

Like, they can do that. It doesn't really matter to them. They're not going to really lose sales off of this, I don't think. I guess that's the thing is, is McLaren really in a position where this video, which, by the way, said a bunch of really nice things about the car, showed the car had really great performance? I remember seeing that video in my sub box and the thumbnail was like, it's a convertible. So it's him with his face like stretched back, like driving this car, like all these awesome things. Is McLaren really now in a place where they literally don't want that? Like what is the harm in that video showing all these great things

about the car to a bunch of people who may eventually be prospective owners. It is very niche, like you said, but there's a bunch of prospective owners watching that stuff. I wonder if they just assume that like when you're purchasing high level cars like that, you're already in some sort of community and the actual like outward motion of a YouTube video to the masses isn't actually helping them at all. And I mean, that's a very, very in the box way of thinking. But maybe do we want to make a parallel to this? Like when I think about this, though, I think about how much we may complain about traditional media, not loving this like new media of YouTube in the tech space.

But we are light years ahead of stuff like that. Yeah, I was going to say I would give a shout out to the tech community for being that far ahead. I mean, you look at companies like, if you replace the McLaren with like a tech company, like the Apple, Samsung's, whatever of the world, the difference is they're selling consumer products, but they are very much embracing now

of an owner with a YouTube channel. Matter of fact, they love owners with YouTube channels. They'll run commercials, super cutting and licensing clips from owners with YouTube channels before their event, which we'll talk about an event in a second. But that's kind of their thing is like in the tech world where anyone can buy anything. And that's probably true of a lot of worlds. They love owners with their own independent opinions because nine times out of ten when it's a good opinion, that helps your company's bottom line. So that's just something to keep an eye on. So shout out to the tech world for not being as, uh, as in the rocks as McLaren,

maybe they'll change their ways. Maybe they'll, they'll flip a switch and realize they're selling more cars. Thanks to Brooks. But either way, shout out to Brooks. Keep it up, man. Well, anyway, speaking of things that you can't really buy anymore. Maybe. LG. LG. Oh, man. This has been, we've talked about this briefly in episodes of the past, but the new headline, LG may shut down its smartphone business since it can't find a buyer. The original early days of this story was, wow, LG's not really selling enough phones.

They might have to get rid of their smartphone division, but hey, maybe someone will buy it and take it from there. might have to get rid of their smartphone division, but hey, maybe someone will buy it and take it from there. And that's happened to varying degrees of success in the past, but now it looks like no one seems to really want that and they're just going to shut it down. Yeah. It's like the rumors we talked about before was that their just mobile business wasn't doing quite as well. And also let's think about that's comparatively LG has a crazy display business. They have a crazy home appliance sector. They're doing very well in their other aspects of products, but their mobile business

hasn't been that good despite a lot of us seeing LG stuff all the time. We probably cover at least one or two LG phones a year. But this new rumor came out from a Korean publication, and it just said that LG was in talks with a couple different buyers, but essentially because their global market share was only around 1%, the set price they had was too high, and the couple potential buyers backed out because of that. I mean, it's hard to sell something that has a market share of 1%. There's, what, 20 different cell phone companies maybe? There's, what, 20 different cell phone companies maybe? There's a lot. We should pour one out for LG because LG, you know, as much crap as we give some companies for doing weird things, we need some companies to try weird things.

And sometimes they do catch on. You know, some of the earliest, the absolute earliest phones with ultrawides came from LG, 100%. I think we give them credit for that. Yeah, we give them a ton of credit for that i mean would i would say ultra wide is a standard in almost any flagship and going down to like pretty budget phones are having them these days and you say almost every flagship i think it's every should be oh finally pixel 5 did do it yeah i feel like it's everywhere i mean it became a thing where Pixel 4, we made a huge stink that it didn't have the ultrawide.

Like, it became a negative thing to not have it. And I think that's... Did I make a stink? I made a stink, I can tell you that. I remember many podcast episodes complaining about that. But just, like, they've done some weird things. The LG Wing, you know, maybe it wasn't... Maybe they didn't nail it on that one,

but they're trying to innovate something. There's talks of them having a rumored rollable phone. And like, if I can think of any company right now that would do a rollable phone, it's probably LG because they already have a rollable TV that works. They also made that modular phone, the LG G5, which you could literally just pop the battery out. This was right around the days where removable batteries were starting to disappear from phones, kind of like the way the headphone jack is now. And everyone looked back and said, wait, removable batteries are so good. If we just ran out of battery, we could just pop in a new one instead of waiting to charge. Then LG comes out with the G5, where it's literally just like a hot swap, not hot swap, but a quick swappable

battery, which was like this super cool system. And yeah, that's another one that didn't catch on, but was a really good idea. So if, if, if any company is out here just pumping out a bunch of cool ideas and seeing what sticks, well, LG is definitely one of them. So we're, we're going to miss that a little bit. And they were like, they were mainstream enough. They were in carriers where like, we have Vivo doing early things like the under, uh, under display fingerprint sensor. Remember when we tested that, but those aren't really like hitting markets, especially in the U S so LG was like mainstream enough while also pushing the boundaries on some things. So I know, I know you and me haven't been the biggest fans of LG phones in the past, and maybe that's just because they don't appeal to us as much, but like,

it's still sad to see them go. Yeah, I think it gets misconstrued. I think people would think that I'm not a big fan of LG phones because often I'm reviewing phones from the perspective of should you buy it or not? And the phones that it appears that I like the most are really the ones that are the easiest to recommend where it's like there's so much good about this phone

or there's so little bad about this phone that it's like a blanket like, look, Pixel 4a, great phone, cheap, good camera. You want it. Nothing really wrong here. Get it. There weren't that many LG phones that did that, but I loved LG because they would try these crazy, weird, different things. And I would never end a review with, yeah, this is a great phone overall. Nothing really wrong here. Get it. It would always be, this is really interesting. Like there's some quirks here. Is this a good idea or not? I don't know. Like LG wing. I love that they made that, but I never recommend it to anyone. Right. So this, this sort of pattern with like the way LG

phone reviews went, where you didn't really get any of those bangers where they didn't have a pixel for a, they didn't have, I mean, they, they even made a Nexus back in the day, which was one of their better received phones. But they never really had that mainstream hit to keep the smartphone business going. That's why they find themselves where they are. But I did really like a lot of their stuff. And I think the innovations didn't come with like technologies, like the under display fingerprint reader tech or the selfie camera behind the glass tech. Those sort of minute innovations that we see now,

they're more with ideas. Like what if a phone did this? What if a phone swiveled? What if a phone had a hot swappable battery? What if a phone took ultra-wides too? That's the type of stuff that I like seeing from them. LG's also the one, I feel like the biggest fans of LG right now are,

it has a DAC and it has a headphone jack. So like I find that now really interesting that ROG 5 brings back the headphone jack and LG might be going. So ROG might have made a weirdly, really great decision on that and being able to grab a bunch of the LG fans to go over there, the people who need a headphone jack.

So if you have an LG phone now, where should you go? If you love it for the headphone jack and the high-quality DAC, ROG Phone 5 is an option for you. It's kind of a gigantic phone. You're probably not coming from an LG phone that size, but that's a quad DAC for you. The V-Series are pretty big.

They're pretty big, but the ROG phone is big. Yeah, nothing really compares to that chunk. Yeah, but that's still out there. If you loved LG phones for, I think another one that's pretty common is a lot of the manual controls in the camera. They had a pretty good pro mode and some good video modes.

I would suggest looking at Sony for those same controls, Sony Xperia series. Yeah. And it's mainly just for the manual controls. The video quality itself might not be at the same level, but you get that extra control

if there's specific use cases you like the controls for. But yeah, other than that, you know, LG phones, they've had this pretty similar software experience for a while. Samsung's honestly close. Oxygen OS, they've all sort of coalesced into a generally pretty acceptable software form. So if you loved LG for the software,

you'll be fine in a bunch of places. And yeah, if you loved LG for the software, you'll be fine in a bunch of places. And yeah, if you loved LG for the swivel, I'm sorry to say there's not really any other swiveling phones out there right now. Yeah, I don't think you can pull that off. But yeah, it's a sad one. Luckily, LG is still going to be dominating the display market. I still don't think there's a TV. If you have like an unlimited budget, I don't think there's a TV out there. I could suggest other than an LG OLED. They're just so far ahead of everything. So glad to see LG is not totally leaving. They've got a bunch of great products,

but it's still sad that we lose them as just improving the smartphone lineups. No one wants to have just, I mean, like if we were just left with Samsung and Apple, that would just get real boring. So hopefully all these other companies are doing well. Maybe we'll see some new companies pop up out of this, maybe. Maybe some LG and HTC bros are like, oh man, we're not making phones anymore. Let's band together.

We'll keep our hopes up. Speaking of smartphone companies that have popped up recently, we'll talk about OnePlus after the break. improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. You can help create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at camh.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. This is an ad from BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life. You. Give yourself the gift of better mental health. All right, we're back. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com.

All right, we're back. And we just saw another smartphone virtual launch event in the form of the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro and OnePlus Watch. We could talk about the phones themselves, and I think we will in a little bit. But let's talk about the live event first because we're coming up now on, just mentioned almost a year of virtual events since we had to stop going to events yeah i think this is right around the time that uh everyone at the studio went home right started quarantining so like this is right around that we were looking at like mobile world congress getting canceled wwdc getting canceled like i found in my notes on my phone recently it just said podcast topics. And there's

a little note that said, are events going to get canceled? Question mark. I was like, oh man, it's been a while. Little did he know. Yeah. So, so we have a new event here and we're at one year. So like, I think we can talk about how it went and maybe how it's evolved since, you know, this is becoming a normal thing. I hate saying that, but. Yeah, I feel like this event was somewhere in the middle. It was somewhere in the middle. And I feel like we're kind of measuring these events now on like a production scale and a cringe scale. There's like two sliding scales

where if you can max out production and minimize cringe, then you've done a good job. I think that's like Apple's latest two events were probably top of that meter, top of the power rankings, maximum production and effectiveness, somewhat low levels of cringe. You still have to have some cringe, I guess. It's marketing. It's literally like part of marketing. But Apple just blows you away with some of its production stuff that like maybe you just are – you're still thinking about how cool that transition was when they say something really cringey.

Right. Then there was the other end of the spectrum, which might be Samsung. We just had a Samsung event, the A-series event, which had pretty good production, this sort of virtual stage type thing going on, but also very high levels of cringe if you were watching the actual event.

Literally the title of it. Before the event even started, it was called Galaxy Awesome Un unpacks. Yeah for awesome Yeah, yeah, but I mean the entire commercial was like It was like the how do you do fellow kids meme of like they make tick tocks right in horizontal? No, I don't know how this works. It was rough, but I'd say this one plus event was somewhere in the middle It was set in it was a very stark set like a bunch of very white rooms. I almost kind of half expected. Or dark rooms, yeah.

Yeah. I was kind of waiting for like a Johnny Ive to like skitter through the background of one of the shots or something. They announced bringing on Johnny Ive into OnePlus. That would have been wild. But that was, you know, the production was pretty clean. They had a couple like cool transitions, but for no reason. You know what I mean? Yeah, we were talking about that,

how they were like, they were very Apple-like transitions in the sense of, and I mean, I know there are probably people out there like you guys keep comparing everything to Apple. These were literally like Apple transitions. Like you would transition up to make it look like it went into a room above them or transition down like a room under them, but.

Things we've seen before. Yeah, but on Apple campus, we kind of know the context because we have a pretty good idea. I mean, like you've under them, but. Things we've seen before. Yeah, but on Apple Campus, we kind of know the context because we have a pretty good idea. I mean, like you've been there, but even the general people watching have seen Apple Campus so many times. They know where a lot of things are located. So you know that drone shot from the main stage

through the projector room is going to another part of the Apple circle. And then you know on that bottom floor it's coming up through a bunch of floors into Steve Jobs Theater main entrance or whatever. And you have the contacts. With OnePlus, these are just these voids that they're switching back and forth from that.

We don't know where they are. I mean, we don't know OnePlus. Maybe their campus is a bunch of voids. Maybe it is. Maybe we're starting to learn it. We don't know. But no, the thing about Apple, even if you don't know Apple campus, though, they'd use the transitions to move the presentation along. So whether you're going from one device to the next one or when they were talking about like the screen and performance, for example, and then they go down to the lab to talk about the new chip.

It was very purposeful, very purposefully driven. So if you ignore the purpose, you can replicate the production value. But OnePlus would literally transition while talking about one thing into more of talking about the same thing. And so the transition didn't make as much sense. And it would literally be the same person after the transition. Talking about like the same topic. Talking about the same thing. So if I'm one company with two different people and I need to get from, you know, Tim talking about the 5G to insert this person here talking about the chip, we're transitioning between those things.

But it would literally go from like underground to above ground and it would be the same person still there talking about the same thing. So that's why I say that it was a little bit cringe in that way. There was also, you know, there's just weird moments like the guy like climbed himself and tried to high five himself it was kind of weird high five okay um but overall i'm gonna put this i kind of want to give like a letter grade because there's too many yeah like a power rankings now but they did a good job addressing straight to the camera i liked that they spent an awful lot of time on the hassleblad camera system but eventually got around to everything

else which i think said a lot about their priorities so i'm not going to fault them for that so i'm going to give one pluses nine and nine pro event a b a b total a B. Total? A B, yeah. I would give their production like a B to B plus. Oh, if I separate them. Yeah, I think you kind of have to separate it and then give it a score together because I think their production was really good.

Again, they like nailed the effects and while some of the lighting was like super moody, I think they probably nailed what they were going for. Whether we agree on what they're going for is good or not is that's really subjective. But I think they like they nailed a lot of that stuff. And I think it's better than their past ones. I think it's way better than their AR event. And that last event that I still just can't forget that like gray room with that screen

and the guy sometimes not looking at the correct CGI screen or like text that would pop up. Right. So this was far, far better than that. Again, on the like kind of cringe level. Yeah. There are some weird moments that high five was really strange. I think some of their marketing was like full blown. Like the Hasselblad stuff was really, really.

And we're going to talk about that in a second. But like 30 minutes of an hour long presentation was about like their collaboration with Hasselblad. And everyone does a collab, but like we want to know a little more about the phone. Yeah, it was pretty strong. Also, biggest missed aspect here was when they talked about the watch, they talked about a two week battery life.

Up to two weeks of use. And if you're a heavy user. And just glossed over that like it was absolutely nothing. So I am either very confused why they wouldn't hammer... I would have listened to 30 minutes about how that has a two-week battery life. So I'm either worried why they didn't mention that more and hammer it in because maybe it's not as good as they say it is or I don't know. They mentioned that it would have an up to two week battery life.

And then they immediately said, if you're a power user or a heavy user, then you can get a week of battery. Which to me is amazing for a smartwatch of the types of functions that they said it would have. And I want to know more about how, and I want to test that. But if I was OnePlus,

that would have been the biggest feature. I would have landed on that hard. Like, here's all the other smartwatches. Here's all their battery life. Here's our battery life. And I would have been the biggest feature i would have leaned i would have landed on that hard like here's all the other smart watches here's all their battery life here's our battery life and i would have stuck that landing and really made everybody look at that chart and the price is really good for it also so like if it's even remotely competitive with an apple watch or like a garmin or whatever and a two week to one week battery life that's that's really good so yeah i'll give production a b okay uh the the content maybe like a c i didn't yeah so b minus not bad not bad but we got to the phones we finally got the phones

so if you didn't watch the event they did in fact jump straight into the deep end opening with a hassleblad commercial actually and then just talking about that partnership for the opening 29 minutes straight of that presentation so you can say they made a pretty just talking about that partnership for the opening 29 minutes straight of that presentation so you can say they made a pretty big deal about that um the cameras being the most important new feature of the one plus nine and one plus nine pro we tested the phones now review the one plus nine pro that review is up by the time you hear this the one plus nine review will also be up let's just talk about what we think about the phones so here's i'm holding you handing you the one plus nine pro so this phone is going to, we'll start with the Pro. It starts at

$969. It's got all the highest end specs, not the highest end, but very high end. Snapdragon 888, 8 or 12 gigs of RAM, up to 256 gigs of storage, which is not as much as you can get in some other phones, but it's non-expandable. Then you're going to get 4,500 milliamp hour battery with really fast charging love the charging 65 watt wired charging and then if you get one plus's special fancy 70 wireless charger because of the dual charging coils in the charger it's going to charge each half of the battery at 25 watts totaling 50 watts wireless charging so it's got a little fan in it and you can like play with the the fan controls in the, but love that. Then you're going to get a six and a half, 6.7 inch 1440p

LTPO 120 Hertz display, which had a pretty good experience with occasional stuttering, but I feel like that's fixable with software. And then what we really all just landed on was the camera quad camera system on the, 48 megapixel main sensor. Then there's a 50 megapixel ultra wide, which I'm just gonna say it, it's the best part of this camera system. It's one of the best ultra wides in any phone. Then you've got a 3.3X zoom camera

and a two megapixel monochrome sensor. So overall, I wish I got like a matte colorway of the phone to test, but I think the design is solid. I enjoyed using the phone. It very much nails the OnePlus experience of like you know what you're getting with Oxygen OS, and it's smooth, and it's fast, and the charging is, you know,

the warp charging is awesome. But all of the hype, and this is, we could talk about this for a long time, but all of the hype was around this revolutionary, maybe they didn't say that actual word but they kind of implied it a lot this Hasselblad partnership and this new camera system now it's it's really hype is dangerous I'll just start with that so like

the way they brought forward that hype was uh you know we've been listening to you one thing everyone's always said for every OnePlus basically ever is like everything's there, but the camera just doesn't compete with other flagships. It's good. It is a C plus to be it is there, you know, like most people aren't going to have the biggest issue, but it will it just hasn't competed at all. And like they just said, we hear you. We want to compete with them. We're not just like a spec phone anymore. We want to be the full package. And, you know, have you heard of this little company called Hasselblad?

Because if you haven't, we are going to slam it in your face for the rest of this presentation and box and branding. And that's how we're going to prove to you that we have this new camera. Now, if you do that and you hype it up for 30 minutes of a literally half, we were taking bets on how long. I think at like 20 minutes, we were like, okay, how long does this go? It's an hour long presentation.

Is it going to hit 30 minutes? And it hit like 29, I think. If you're going to spend that much time, you have to deliver. So here's the thing. They deliver a pretty good camera. And if the OnePlus 8 Pro that I was using last year had a pretty solid flagship quality camera,

it's not gonna blow the others out the water, but it's competitive enough that you're like, I have a pretty good camera here. This one is better than that in pretty much every way. The ultra wide is dramatically better. I was very excited about that. But when all of the hype was like, this is the camera that went to the moon,

this is the camera that captured the orb we live on, and now we're gonna bring this color tuning. Maybe on one hand, they did everything right, and we're just, it's impossible to live up to that level of hype. But the cameras, despite all being better than last year, which was already competitive, were still somehow a little disappointing

because they weren't the best of the best. I think we were hoping for like a new best camera. Like, oh, iPhones and Pixels and Samsungs are great, but OnePlus and Hasselblad really did it this time. It's not there. And not even like just getting the title of best camera, but just like, it still probably isn't competing

with like an iPhone 12 and that's a couple months old and there's going to be a new one this year. So if you're, especially if you're just thinking of 2021, like probably a pretty low chance

this is going to be the best camera of 2021. It's the best ultrawide of 2021. So, so far. Yeah, that's ultrawide yet. But yeah. So let me ask you a question then. If you're OnePlus

and you have have you are on the one plus marketing team so you had not really much input in the product but they've given you this new phone and this partnership with Hasselblad and this new money and they say go do you think it would have actually landed better if they didn't hype up this as much and just said hey here's our new phone it's got a bit of a better camera. Check it out. But also the rest of the phone is really great. And here's our new fast charging.

Here's the price. Do you think that would have landed and then reviewers would have got it in their hands and went, wow, they really improved the camera a lot versus last year. Check this phone out. Or do you think they had to go hype, hype, hype, hype, hype, the one plus way, like this is this incredible new thing we've done because that's what the marketing team is supposed to do. Did you just use five hypes? I think I did.

I say we knock it back to two hypes and that would have been like a pretty good. So, so like, I think what you're saying and Dave 2D made a video about this. That was really good. And basically saying like, with all this hype reviewers got this in their hands and expected way more when if they didn't have all of that and reviewers just got this phone they would have been like oh yeah the camera's definitely improved like it's going up it's getting better we wanted that it's not the best but it's better and that probably would have been wonderful but with all this hype every single video is the focus of it is going to be the camera and if it lives up to that hype and it's not going to and therefore that's going to bring the entire review having more of a

negative aspect onto it and that's that's not good i think what i would have done and you know i'm not a marketing person i'm a consumer i don't know how much money they dumped into this hassle bod thing so i don't know how much 50 million dollars million. Okay. Yeah. A lot. But if I were doing that event, I don't think I would have, I would have probably just tried to keep the event structured similarly and in the camera section, maybe make it a little longer and bring up the Hasselblad partnership, bring up how that improved things, bring up the calibrations that they did and bring in the Hasselblad guy to explain all of that. But not just like, it almost feels like in the Hasselblad guy to explain all of that, but not just like, it almost feels like they said Hasselblad

before they said OnePlus 9 Pro. Like it just felt like just straight into this. They weren't even talking about the phone. They were just talking about the cameras right away for so long. Yeah, so the Hasselblad, the extent of the Hasselblad partnership is really interesting to think about,

especially to me. So I like Hasselblad and I've shot with, actually I have an X1D that I've shot a lot with in the past. I only shot with it at CES last time I went actually. This partnership is over the course of three years and OnePlus has said they're investing $150 million in the entire camera system, including in this Hasselblad partnership. But if you really read exactly what OnePlus says, it's something that has the potential to evolve over time. So obviously you see the Hasselblad name on the back of the camera and on the box

and in the ads and in the presentation of marketing. But as of this point right now, what we're seeing is their first layer of feedback, which is like working with Hasselblad ambassadors and working on a more natural tuning for color, which is great. Color is important, but in a smartphone photography setting, there's a lot more to what makes a good smartphone camera than what makes a good Hasselblad camera. Hasselblad does great glass, great sensors,

great processing, but OnePlus has to do computational photography, has to do a great auto HDR, to do computational photography, has to do a great auto HDR, has to do a great video mode, has to do great stabilization. And so a lot of the things that we're starting to see, like the freeform lens that's corrected the ultra wide to be much less distorted around the edges, that is pretty cool. The more natural color science, that's pretty solid. But in the future, they could potentially have an impact on more of that processing and potentially more of the video side too. And maybe we'll start to see an even bigger gain in the next OnePlus phone or the next two OnePlus phones because of that partnership. That is me being

optimistic. I don't really know how deep they're going to go, but if you read into what they've done so far, that it's, it's basically boiling down to color at the moment. It's a pretty classic example of how we mentioned like, listen, we'll talk about potential software updates or things that could happen in the future, but you should not buy a product based on that potential because there's a way better chance you get let down and annoyed later down the line. I almost like kind of compare this in a way to when the Pixel 4 came out with Soli, they were just like, they hyped Soli so much. And it felt like this really, really cool new feature. Pixel 4 is the first smartphone with a radar sensor. And they talked

about it forever in their event. But then when you get the phone, it's not that great. And it's like, if you just mentioned Soli briefly and said, like, we're working on these new things that, you know, it's in the phone, mess around with it. It has, you can do this, this, and this. I bet people would have been like, oh, that's kind of neat. Like I could see where the future of this is going. But when you start putting like, that seems to be the feature of the phone, then people expect that to be amazing. And when it's not, it kind of just ruins the whole phone. And I hate Soli. I was going to say ruin the pixel for yet it had really cool, like potential. And now they're not even doing it anymore. So like, I think this is

different because that's like this whole other technology and this is just camera they're trying to make better. But I also think there's this little part of people, whether it's true or not, they see this huge, huge marketing push towards one specific thing. And if it doesn't deliver and they see a high price tag, they automatically think I'm getting charged so much money because of this feature that doesn't deliver. And I think price on the OnePlus 9 Pro is a huge deal. Yeah, there's two ways to look at the hype of one feature. I think that the amount of stage time and presentation time that we see in a new feature is probably directly correspondent with how much money was invested into making that happen. But I think the amount of stage time we hope to see is based on the amount of benefit to the user. And I think those

are two very different things. So when we see Hasselblad, Hasselblad, Hasselblad, Hasselblad, that's because OnePlus spent a lot of money to make that Hasselblad partnership happen. They put a lot of effort in. They jumped through a lot of extra hoops to be able to do this Hasselblad thing. But when we see Hasselblad on the box, when we see Hasselblad, Hasselblad, Hasselblad in the presentation, we're thinking,

oh, this Hasselblad thing is gonna be a game changer for the whole phone. Like, I better love this Hasselblad camera. And so it's just a, it's just a little bit of a different way, uh, to, to think about these new features. So with Soli, yeah, I think they probably spent a good amount of money fitting tiny new industry first radar sensors in the phone. And they had to talk about it because if you spend all that and then don't talk about it, what's the use. And so we all see that presentation and go, wow, Soli is going to

change the way we use our phones. And it doesn't that's why I say like from five hypes go to two or three hypes like you hype your product I am not telling people to not make a big deal out of this it's just hard to focus on the rest of the phone when your focus is barely on the rest of the phone and so much

on like especially for one plus it's just weird not seeing an entire presentation that's talking about how insane the specs are compared to other things and a good price difference and just seeing them talk about the camera that much. Yeah, as someone who makes things, I think it is really challenging to not talk

and be really proud of how much effort you put into something when you put a lot of effort into it. Like when you, even when we will spend like hours and hours on like a robot shot in a video, and it's only three seconds in the video, but like we want everyone to know how long we worked on that just so you know that took a really long time.

I'll mention it any chance I can get that it took this many hours. And I think if you're like working at OnePlus and you're like, do you know how many hoops we had to jump through to make this Hasselblad logo fit on the back of the phone? And so we could do all these things with this partnership and these ambassadors and there's only 12 in the world and blah, blah, blah,

$150 million in three years. They're like, if we don't hype this to the max, we're not getting our money's worth and we really need people to know that this is a huge deal for us. So I get it on one hand, but you know, it's not the greatest camera in the world. Also, we want to talk about the OnePlus 9 briefly, just because I think this kind of got lost in the sauce

of all the hype of OnePlus 9 Pro. Yeah, exactly. Which is more proof that too much hype can be not a great thing. Right. So this definitely got sort of overshadowed, but OnePlus 9 starts at $729 and low key, maybe even high key, I think this is a sort of a sneaky good value phone. It's a Snapdragon 888. You don't get the Snapdragon 888 in many phones less than 800 bucks right now. That's the highest end chips Qualcomm makes right now. So you'd be comparing it to like the likes of Mi 11

or Galaxy S21. And this phone does all of the same stuff, especially in software, that the high-end one does. It's the same exact spec sheet, 8 to 12 gigs of RAM, same storage, not expandable, still fast, still 120 hertz,

though it's not LTPO, and all the same OnePlus software features. The things it's lacking is like- It doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel great. Maybe you put it in a case and you don't care. It's missing a telephoto lens, so you're not gonna get the best zoom photos.

So if you don't zoom and you don't care, then whatever. But they did keep your two megapixel black and white sensor, if you're into that. And it still has the 65 watt fast charging, but it doesn't have the crazy fast wireless charging. But hey, that was an optional accessory anyway. So I feel like this is the OnePlus thing, where they find a bunch of the things they think they can take out and save

money. And they did it. They once saved you 240 bucks for essentially the same phone with a 1080p flat screen and lack of a telephoto. Like that's the same thing. Yeah. I think it's interesting because that's like the original OnePlus thing. They didn't have this was would be what the higher end would be. It's like, hey, we you know,'t have, this was, would be what the higher end would be. It's like, hey, we took out a couple of features that I don't think everyone cares that much about and can be pretty easily forgotten about. And we gave you a crazy good price point.

Yeah, it still has the ultra wide that I think is the best ultra wide in any phone. So this is now a $729 phone with a Snapdragon 888, the best ultra wide in any phone, 65 watt fast charging, and the same size battery as a phone that costs $240 more. Yeah. And like, I find it funny because then with the pro version, has it felt like the last year or so, this is becoming more common is I feel like a lot of phone companies have

just been hitting this diminishing returns aspect of like they have all these pro versions. If you think about the S21 Ultra, if you think about the iPhone 12 Pro, you're getting these pretty decent price differences between the version. So the iPhone 12 or the S21 Plus, there's not a huge jump between those two, but a huge price jump. And that's what this feels like now. Also, like it's a $200 difference between the OnePlus 9 and the OnePlus 9 Pro. 240. Yeah. But like you said, you're not really losing that much out of it, especially if you throw it in a case and don't care about the build quality. So I feel like people should be eyeing these quote unquote lower priced phones more often. It makes it way harder

for all these companies though though, to have the headline of the cheap number. You know what I mean? I think it's definitely the best, most competitive phone for the most people in that price range. And when you start getting, like you said, law of diminishing returns up to $1,000, $1,100, $1,200, they're all going to be good on paper. At this point, they're trying to find like a specific niche feature that they can go all in on that will get you to buy it over the overall standard good phone. So if you get, you get a standard good phone for 800 bucks, or you can get a standard good phone for 800 bucks that has a hundred X zoom, or you can get the standard good

phone for 1200 bucks with a hundred X zoom, or maybe it's the standard good phone for 1200 bucks with 100x zoom or maybe it's the standard good phone for 1200 bucks that has you know some crazy gigantic battery and gaming features so they're trying to find like an extra thing on top of the standard good phone but that standard good phone is usually the better buy for most people which is why we got to pay attention to them well anyway i'll leave you the quote expectations are the thief of joy we'll come back and we got to pay attention to them. Well, anyway, I'll leave you the quote. Expectations are the thief of joy. We'll come back and we got to talk about that. I'm a Mac guy.

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and how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. All right, welcome back. We got two other quick things I want to talk about, just because they're just kind of funny, like, office conversations we've had,

and we might as well just talk about them a little bit. One is the I'm a Mac guy, which is what I'm calling him now, Justin Long. The I'm a Mac guy, back from those old ads where it was, hi, I'm a Mac, I'm a Mac guy, which is what I'm calling him now, Justin Long, the I'm a Mac guy back from those old ads where it was, hi, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, has switched and is now doing ads for Intel. Hello, I'm a Justin. Just a real person doing a real comparison between Mac and PC. Now, it's not technically a PC thing now, but he's doing ads in part of this like massive intel almost like slander campaign

against the m1 yeah it's really cringy in a lot of ways to watch but it's the i'm a mac guy so there's there's your headlines that's about it yeah i think like my biggest issue well i feel like there's a couple funny things about the whole thing one is the commercials are just bad um they weirdly like uh they weirdly for some reason show a macbook that has smaller bezels and looks better than regular macbooks so the cg is bad yeah the cg is awful then he's holding up what is that that is zen book with the dual screens and they like superimpose the screens on but they're they didn't do it over his thumbs or something like that there's a lot of really sloppy work just in it in general and also there's the argument and they like superimpose the screens on, but they didn't do it over his thumbs or something like that. It's a little bit sloppy. There's a lot of really sloppy work just in it in general.

And also there's the argument that some Macs still have an Intel chip, but I think they're trying to get ahead of the ball and like, because eventually Apple's definitely gonna go to all their own chips and probably not include Intel. Yeah, look, this is, it's Intel. Like Intel is in a rough, a tricky spot right now.

They're competing against a bunch of other chip manufacturers. They're trying to be, they're trying to beat AMD on one corner. They're trying to fight off Apple's chips on the other corner. And so literally this whole ad campaign is like, hmm, how can we position Intel chips above Apple Silicon? above Apple Silicon? And their answer was, get the I'm a Mac guy to talk about how he uses a PC. But there's so many PCs that use all of the same, like, okay, literally he talks about dongles in one of these ads where it's like, okay, well, I mean, if you point to any number of different PCs with Intel chips that also use USB-C, that's like not really an Intel thing, but you know, you got to make the jab. I don't know. There's a, there's the gaming jabs, which is like, there are also Intel Macs that can't game. So I guess you can make the jab, but not really. So it's, it's kind of confusing really. I don't, I don't, I'm not a huge fan of the ad campaign, but again, if I work for Intel, I get how they thought this was a good idea. Yeah. If I work for Apple, I'm super pumped because it's just like free press of everyone making fun of these while Apple just again gets to ignore everybody and still just like kill it in marketing.

Like they're just at this point where it's hard for them to fail. And I know a lot of people aren't going to like that, that I said that, but like Apple does a great job. And I think the reason they do such a great job is because they're so focused on their own products and explaining how their products are good and helpful. Whether you agree with that or not, it's hard to give them crap because they're focusing on what they do good. When you're a company that focuses on other people for 90% of your commercial, it doesn't have the best feeling. It's also a tough spot because how does intel market well like that like when apple has their whole complete product people are buying the product because it does the thing that they want it to do well i don't know very many average people who are going what kind

of chip is in this computer can i make sure it's an intel one like they just want the computer to be fast and have the nice screen and do what they want it to do. And if it doesn't, whether it's Intel or anyone else, they don't want it. So Intel's challenge is advertising Intel chips despite the broad variety of beautiful and garbage products that they're inside of. And if it's their high-end chips, then maybe you give it a fancy Lake name and make sure everybody knows about it. And there's a sticker on the laptops, but I don't know. There isn't really a great Intel marketing campaign that I've seen so far. I feel like it's almost the, like the iOS versus Android. It's just even harder because you have two quote unquote companies comparing against each other, except one builds the software and the

hardware. The other where it builds the software and 50 other companies build the hardware where when it comes to laptops, like intel is trying to sell more windows-based laptops with intel chips but like they can't they don't get to control whether asus does this or acer does that or hp does something cool that people are gonna love so it's it's just really hard marketing for them um i think the initial attempt at bringing in the quote-unquote mac guy which i also have an issue his name's justin long he's an actor he but like he's not a shill for intel or anything or shill for apple he now is just somebody who got paid i i just don't blame him on any of this

no no i don't blame him i'm just saying this does this only makes headlines because it's him it does correct but i think companies have done it correctly where Verizon took the old Sprint guy, right? Same deal. Can you hear me? And they actually did a pretty good job with it. And they made a just super simple commercial where you're like, I remember that reference,

blah, blah, blah. And now the reference is different and it's funny. That's a fair playing field, yeah. One carrier to the other. Intel could have taken Justin Long and maybe did something funny with it. And they just tried way too hard and just made it way too easy to pick apart. And that backfired pretty, pretty hard. Yeah.

Yeah. The playing field is not so even. I did think the one fair thing they said, which was like a sliver of one of the commercials, was like him going, let me see like the Apple laptops or whatever. And there was like a pair of MacBooks sitting there because there's only two M1 Macs right now. Oh, there's only two? So these are the newer Macs?

Okay, so gray and grayer. And then there's like a thousand PCs that run Intel chips so they can go, well look at all this variety and choice. That's real. Lean into that. But you know they had to get like snark look at all this variety and choice. That's real. Lean into that. But, you know, they had to get like snarky and all that stuff.

So I don't know. There's a bunch of cringe in every sort of version of marketing and there's plenty here. The other thing I wanted to mention just before we head out,

Tesla, because I have to talk about Tesla every episode apparently, is accepting Bitcoin now to buy a car. Like officially. Like it's on the site.

I went to tesla.com and scroll down and it's right there. You can pay in Bitcoin. I find it funny because we were talking about this in the office earlier and I was, I said, I can't see a car company accepting Bitcoin anytime soon. And Tesla just loves to smear it in my face that I'm wrong all the time. So. They are very invested now as a company in Bitcoin. We saw them buy a billion and a half dollars of Bitcoin and already make more from the profit of that fluctuation than like all of their cars that they've built, which is hilarious. And so now them accepting Bitcoin for cars means they will continue to pile in more Bitcoin. And if they believe in it, like that seems seems like they do and it appreciates over time,

this is a great move for Tesla. I notoriously said on one of those last podcasts that that makes you buying a depreciating asset with an appreciating asset. So if you happen to have a bit of Bitcoin and don't believe in its future, this is great. You can just drop it on, drop it on a car

and you're good, you're out. But if you actually do believe Bitcoin is going to continue to appreciate and become worth more over time, then this could be one of those things where you're like, man, I bought a Tesla with my two Bitcoin, but 10 years later, that two Bitcoin is a million dollars. Yeah. I think it's really hard and it's like a hindsight thing in general because none of us can predict what's happening, but I would take your quote and change it's like a hindsight thing in general because none of us can predict what's happening. But I would take your quote and change it a little and say you're buying a depreciating product for a potentially appreciating and like a reasonably appreciating but not guaranteed. I think that's why it's really hard to look at this from either aspect of being a buyer

or being the seller of something and accepting Bitcoin because especially in large quantities like this, where a car is $60,000 to $100,000, if you sell 50 cars and it's all in Bitcoin and then that price plummets, you've just lost so much of your profit to the point where you even could be losing money on those in terms of profit margins. It is risky. And if you are a buyer and you buy a car with two Bitcoin and it spikes up, you probably hate your car because you're just like, well, like this car wasn't $60,000. This car is $100,000. And now if I just paid for that in cash, it would have been $40,000 less expensive.

But that's the problem with crypto, or not the problem, but a big issue with crypto in general is, yeah, there's huge risk involved in anything and you'll never know exactly what's going to happen. I just think it's fascinating. It really speaks to how much it seems that Tesla believes in Bitcoin. That's basically what it comes down to. Yeah. I always wonder what like believing in Bitcoin means. Meaning they believe that their risk is minimal of it depreciating over time. Okay, so it's like a risk factor based on it. That their risk assessment is Bitcoin will continue to go up in value and it will be worth it for us to accept Bitcoin.

Also, there were some people in my comments when I tweeted about this saying that a Tesla could potentially be an appreciating asset when they eventually do self-driving, which I think is interesting and possibly fair. I just don't know that you can consider that as much of an appreciation as the potential of Bitcoin. Maybe I'm wrong. I might be very wrong. Maybe the Tesla will be worth five times as much in a few years because of self-driving and every car in the world is going to have to have that. I just think generally it's pretty well accepted that cars don't go up in value. Is the argument for that, that it's appreciating because when it gets full self-driving, don't people say like when you're not using it, you could send it out as like some ride share,

something that you could make money on? And sure. I think that's a stupid argument. I love that. Yeah. I don't get it. I mean, if it has full self-driving, their cars later on are also going to have full self-driving. And if you still buy them in cash and the risk is way more if you purchase something in Bitcoin, I feel like. Yeah. I mean, what if you buy a car for 60 grand and then you go out and it earns you $10,000 in a year by Uber taxiing or robo taxiing? Yeah. But it would do that if I bought it in cash also. True. I guess I just don't get the comparison by saying it is fine to do it in Bitcoin,

which we are seeing appreciate and is wildly fluctuating all over the place. I think people just thought that the value of a Tesla could go up more than the value of Bitcoin over time, basically. So if you buy it for 50 grand and it makes you $10,000 a year for three years, and you spent that on cash, you just turn that into a $30,000 less expensive car, where if you bought Bitcoin and then Bitcoin plummets in value, then it's a very different calculation. I'll accept that argument when we're anywhere close to that ever actually happening. And I don't think we're even remotely close to that, despite seeing some.

I mean, like he promised a level of full self-driving like a couple of weeks ago and then already has passed that and has said that there's another delay on it. So I just I don't think we're as close to that as possible, especially just with pure regulations, not even the technology. So, yeah, it's a very future future facing vision of robo taxis and self-driving cars. But yeah, don't make an investment on a Tesla because you think it might make you some money from full self-driving while you're having dinner. Don't buy a product based on the promise of future software updates. Yeah, it always comes back to that, doesn't it? I think right now, like the the main reason you would buy it in Bitcoin itself is like

you went in at a certain price, you wound up making way more money than you expected, and you are just happy with the investment that you made and you're not looking to take that risk anymore. So maybe you put 10 grand in a couple of years ago. Now you have enough to buy a Model Y at 60 grand. Sure. You have a hard out. You've made a lot of money. You get something you really wanted. And who cares? At that point, you shouldn't care if it goes that much higher after you buy it. What if it goes way higher?

That's, man, sometimes I wonder if like all of crypto is just based on this, like, but what if it goes way higher? That's exactly what it is. It really is. And I don't, oh man, I can't even begin to start getting into that. I'll just confuse myself if I try and go any deeper into that argument. Well, that's a perfect place to end it.

Let's not confuse ourselves out of this argument. We love it. Well, that's been pretty much it for this episode. Thanks again for listening. Thanks for tuning in and having the conversation with us. We'll talk to you guys in the next one. Peace.

Okay. Let's see if I can do this first try. Waveform is produced. Oh, wait. I don't count that. I still heard wobbling on the table. That was plain. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina.

We are partnered with Studio 71, and our intro-outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.