Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - iPhone Event Rumors and Predictions!

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Next week is the Apple event! So of course we spend a good portion of this episode going over what we expect to see (and also what we hope to see). Marques, Andrew, and David also talk about Shorts in the Play Store, a possible Polestar phone, a Cybertruck spoon from McDonalds, and Google killing Pixel Pass weeks before the new Pixel phone is going to drop. There's a lot to get into this week! Links: Google Play Shorts: https://bit.ly/ShortsPlayStore Polestar Smartphone: https://bit.ly/PolestarPhone Sawyer Merritt Twitter: https://bit.ly/SawyerTwitter Pixel Pass FAQ: https://bit.ly/pixelpassFAQ WVFRM Trivia Website: https://bit.ly/wvfrmtriviasite Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Instagram/Threads/Twitter: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https:https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hamburglar, why are you calling? Rubble, rubble. McDonald's has a new biggest burger called Big Arch, made with two 100% Canadian beef patties, a new delicious sauce, and all the McDonald's flavors you love, and wait, you want me to help you get it? Rubble.

Come on. Compared to beef burgers on McDonald's current menu at participating restaurants in Canada. McDonald's current menu at participating restaurants in Canada. The all new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs.

And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew.

And I'm David. And it's Tech-tember, so we got a lot to talk about. That's just kind of how it goes. Yeah. I think this week we want to talk about a couple things that are a little all over the place. Polestar, phone, Cybertruck, spoon. I don't know. Like, we kind of just have weird stuff to talk about this time.

Just the way it went. Random word generator. Yeah, it kind of feels like it. But also, we will do our full iPhone event roundup and predictions because there's a lot to expect to kick off September. That's kind of the thing that marks the beginning of TechTember, I think. And then also

Google getting rid of a service at the worst possible time. We'll talk about that later as well. The worst possible time we'll talk about that always the worst possible time yeah this one might be the the worst out of all the ones they've done that's true it's surprising but first Ellis has a correction from last week hey guys I was wrong allegedly okay no remember last week I was like Sony link those dogs with their Wi-Fi direct or I said I it's, those dogs with their Wi-Fi Direct. Or I said it smelled of Wi-Fi Direct to me. Someone anonymous who is kind of in the know reached out to me and was like, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's not Wi-Fi Direct.

They said for battery life reasons. They said it's much more likely that they developed their own proprietary protocol on a 2.4 gigahertz band oh so that makes more sense yeah it smells like wi-fi direct but it might not be so even though i didn't say that for certain just wanted to clear the air a little bit before the sony hounds uh wind up bro i don't care it's a proprietary protocol they're 200 earbuds i don't care what protocol it uses all right do more well we'll jump more into the the iphone event stuff after the break but we do have a couple of weird random word generator articles to talk about uh which one do you want to start i have a fun one here to start that i didn't ask either of you if you saw

this or not because i thought it was funny did you see there's a new app with short form content yeah i read every article on the internet you didn't see this another one if you had to guess because I thought it was funny. Did you see there's a new app with short form content? Yeah. I read every article on the internet. You didn't see this? Another one? If you had to guess, which app do you think is launching short form content? Which app?

So it's an existing app that's launching short form content? Yes. You're going to get it wrong, but it's funny. LinkedIn. I wish. That was my guess. Oh, man. That makes way more sense. It does?

Yes. LinkedIn actually kind of makes sense. It might be Spotify? They already sort of have short form content. Yeah, they guess. Oh, man. That makes way more sense. It does? Yes. It actually kind of makes sense. It might be Spotify? They already sort of have a short-term app. Yeah, they kind of do, right? They have TikTok feed. Oh, yeah. If you can find it.

And the short new... We just talked about it not that long ago, that the music that clips from it. Oh, yeah, clips of the songs. Yeah, to try and discover. Is this an app that already has content? It's an app that serves you other apps. Oh, no. The App Store? The Google Play Store. What? yeah is this an app that already has content it's an app that serves you other apps i don't know the app store the google play store what yeah wait uh so so an app already has like video listings is that what you're gonna tell me is no no no the google play store is going to have

short form content so right now inside of an app listing no you can have screenshots and or short videos it's not that oh god what is it it's worse the play report what it is now an original series that spotlights the latest and greatest apps and games on google play and it will be available i can't there's a for you page on the google play, my God. And Google will shut it down in 15 minutes. I guarantee. Can we make bets on when this shuts down? This is a thousand percent going to shut down. Will this podcast be published by the time this shuts down? Yeah.

It's literally, okay, I'm looking at the screenshots here now that I've clicked this. Fireball wizard. The top of the Google Play Store, which normally just has some apps because it's the Play Store, instead has a screenshot, a thumbnail of a short. It's a short. It's a YouTube short, I guess. I didn't look at that. That part's confusing.

The bottom says shorts, but the top has a watermark that says Google Play. The article says, behind the scenes, this just appears to be YouTube shorts with the App Store already supporting regular videos and listings. Right.

Google is piloting this new way to surface hidden gems and trending apps games in the u.s it does have to be a little further though because i'm assuming you can swipe through this like shorts to see other play report things right that's the question if you click into this and you're in the shorts feed and then you swipe are you just going to go to a random other youtube shirt or are you going to go to another play store related short i would assume it has to be a place if you just are in the play store to download an app get distracted and now all of a sudden you're 45 minutes into short form like tiktok style content that would be hilarious it could happen i don't yet have this on my phone but i thankfully also have not seen this on my phone yeah oh it does say for those who aren't

seeing the play report today the shorts will also be uploaded to google oh so you can just follow it on google on youtube as well yeah I was gonna say I think it's the google play account and that's why it says google play in the screenshot okay wow google play is its own youtube channel yeah all the all these services out there on youtube channels that's a nice way of like keeping track of the graveyard of google services that have existed is because they all still have their old youtube channels out there in the world nice yeah okay wow we can move on nice yeah that's rough that's where i'm gonna spend all my time consuming oh there we go i found them all there they are 182 views well wow they can't even there's only five own shorts yeah i guess it's

early i mean it's not fully out for everybody yet i guess um but let's keep an eye on that let's see how many views they pump in from the google play store i think that's gone by the end of 365 days from now absolutely gone 100 that's a pretty long tenured google like the last video will be uploaded before the end of 2024 last short anyway 100 yeah before probably before the end of 2024. Last short, anyway. Yeah, probably before the end of this year. All right, well, moving on from Google Play Store shorts to either Polestar phone or Cybertruck spoon.

Which should we do first? I want to talk about the Polestar phone. Okay. Yeah. Well, I haven't't actually i don't know anything about it so please i'll tell you about it okay so at a press conference very recently the pull star ceo said that they are going to be shipping a pull star branded phone in partnership with maizu or maizu um by in december uh for those that don't know maizu or maizu or however

you pronounce it is is a Chinese phone brand that makes generally mid-range phones, and they're generally really weirdly shaped. The first one I ever saw was when I started working here and it had a screen on the back so you could take selfies with the normal camera.

It was inside the camera bump. I know we've done that more since then, but that was the first time I ever got introduced to their stuff. And I probably haven't seen it since. Yeah, my friend Ayano, who works for Engadget Japan, she loves the phones because they make these weird phones that have like ring lights built in

and that have like really good cameras. They make really weird phones. I mean, they make some generic phones, but they also make weird phones. Yeah, yeah. So apparently, Meizu got, a majority stakehold was acquired by Polestar slash Volvo's parent company last year. So now the parent company owns, well, doesn't own fully Meizu, but owns a majority stake in Meizu.

So basically, and also owns Polestar. So now they're making some Polestar branded phone for the Chinese market I believe it's only for the Chinese market because it doesn't run a normal version of Android it runs like a fork of Android that is used in China without the Google Play Store and so it's going to ship with the Polestar 4

so it's going to sort of be like a companion device and the CEO is saying like oh we want to live in this future we're like the phone and the car like the same things you get in the car and you can like play the same apps on the car is that the polestar ceo saying that or is that okay and yeah just to clarify geely is the company that owns all of them right okay yes owns is the parent company that we're talking about that owns a lot of different they own a lot of stuff um they bought volvo from ford in 2010 so that they also own

lotus um so yeah so i got really excited when i saw the headline of this initially because it just said pull star is making its own phone as people may know pull star also is like makes like like motorcycles and like quad stuff now actually didn't know it's it's not directly through them it's like a partnership with other brands but so a lot of people thought like oh they're just kind of sticking their brand on like a maizu phone the begatti scooter it sounds yeah but apparently it's going to run the same os or a version of the same os as the car will be running in china so it'll have more tight integration. And that's also a little confusing for us

because we're used to Polestar with Android Automotive. But now I guess I don't know what it's like in China. It won't be running Android Automotive in China, I don't think. I'm hoping that doesn't touch Android Automotive over here. I agree. Because I am a full stan of Android Automotive on whoever wants to do it. Yeah, I think that'll continue on Polestar's here. And Volvo volvos and all that so i want to see what that looks like i think it's funny because um the tesla phone has been like this like funny fake thing for years yeah was

that a caviar phone or well there was like the caviar cyber truck phone right yeah that was a totally separate thing there's always been rumors of like oh what if tesla made a phone what if tesla made a phone and then people always like to make like mock-ups of like a tesla phone yeah and i don't know there's been occasional rumors of like tesla buying a phone company or making their own phone but it's never happened yeah and to me all this just kind of screams like wow phones are really good and easy to use and cars aren't car software still sucks and people are actually interested in the idea of a phone that like pairs with your car and like works seamlessly when no one seems to be able to make good car software yeah maybe this is going to be a good

version of that i don't know but it's an interesting point because we talk about bad car software all the time and we also talk about bad car software all the time and we also talk about bad phone software but i would generally rather use the bottom end of bad phone software over the high end of good car software depends it's a ceiling is way higher for phones the ceiling's way higher is pretty low for both yeah yeah like a lot of car software is very bad if we're talking about majority there's like tesla and rivian that's doing pretty good those are good yeah but like that's still nowhere close to the top line of phone software exactly the bottom line of phone software is still android and still ultimately just being inhibited by the hardware that it's

we were just behind why aren't we just talking about uh when Apple had this whole CarPlay demo at WWDC. That never happened. I don't know. The whole idea was like, it'll be your phone, but your car. And everyone thought that would be really nice and convenient and easy to use. And if you ask, I bet if you surveyed average people and asked, would you rather have an iPad stuck in the middle of your car that you already know how to use, or would you rather have the iPad stuck in the middle of your car that you already know how to use or would you rather have like

the current car software experience I bet most people would be like yeah just like give me an app on the iPad that just does everything and that's kind of just what Tesla did they just went everything's on the screen now yeah so most car software is pretty bad most phone software is even if it's not pretty good

it's more familiar to the average person and they'd rather just use that and especially especially if you're using it every day on your phone it's going to be more like you're just going to be used to it now going in between it we all love ecosystems yeah makes sense also making good car batteries does not translate necessarily to making good phone batteries just want to put that out there totally different batteries definitely does not completely different i think people thought tesla would make a good phone because tesla has like good evs and good batteries for some reason and they're like oh that would make a good battery life on her phone that's all there is that's a completely different not the same yeah totally different battery just

so you know doesn't but what if tesla no no made a spoon uh i think the translation works pretty well interesting go on tell me more go on this is just we all woke up to this this morning of a tweet about tesla china partnering with mcdonald's to launch a cyber spoon that's four dollars that comes with your mcflurry on one hand i totally understand this and on the other hand i don't get this at all well you're not the only one who doesn't get it because elon immediately responded that it was fake news yeah to where then sawyer who originally tweeted it had to bring in a bunch more information proving to him that it was real because mcdonald's has already posted about it and tesla china has already posted about

it so it's just there's a bunch of images of the official like product and marketing for it on their wife so this is a so this is real what is happening is this a spoon that you get when you order a certain menu item or something they hold on you know what a mcflurry is right uh kind of yeah okay cool i'm sorry I had to confirm there it's an ice cream it's an ice cream okay yeah that's blended and then it comes with this big usually a usually the spoon is big because that's what they use to mix each one they like put it on actually no Marquez would appreciate this so picture like a big hollow spoon right then you fill this paper cup with soft serve and topping of your choosing then they

affix the spoon to like a rotating spindle wait really which stirs your mcflurry then they detach the spoon from it and hand it to you so that's like an iconic part of the mcflurry if you're like a nerd like us well if the ice cream machine works because in my mind i'm like who cares about the spoon that comes with the it's like wendy's has made slut whatever smoothies they've made forever like i don't care what spoon i get with it like but now it's shaped cyber truck s yeah cool does look like it comes to the carrying it looks dumb okay wait but i yeah i don't see the how they would attach this i think i don't either i don't think this is the one that stirs it i think it's a two spoon situation i think this is a collector thing i mean mcdonald's and fast food places do collector stuff

all the time and people are obsessed with collecting stuff from fast food um what is this this isn't metal though is it it looks metal but it's also four bucks and has a carrying case i have a hard time believing it's actually a carrying case look at it in the second one it's got it it says right there's a case for it. You're 100% correct. So I'm just trying to fully understand this. So you're in China. What part are you stuck on?

You spend an extra $4. Yeah. So you go, hi, I'd like a McFlurry or whatever it's called. And they go, here you go. Would you like the optional $4 extra cyber spoon? Listen. And then you say yes. Let's take a step back.

Have you ever seen limited edition stuff at McDonaldcdonald's people you don't get asked people go in there and demand this stuff do you remember when the rick and morty sauce came out all hell broke loose you didn't say like hey do you want sejuan sauce you had to fight people off the counters for like crawling over i thought that was like mulan sauce no it was originally a promotional oh was it or the 90s and then it got like memed into rick and morty and then they brought it back and did you pay extra for it that you didn't pay extra for but i'm just saying limited release stuff people are selling that on ebay for like a lot of money i still own two burger king star wars watches from my childhood. That's sick.

And you had to buy them? My parents probably did, yes. They may have came in a... Happy meal. You're right, it is an extra four bucks. Tesla's thrown their name on various random pieces of merch for years and created a lot of demand and hype for them. I have the surfboard like they made a surfboard once they've made random models of their cars alcohol a whistle whiskey flamethrower

tequila tequila yeah sorry so that part's not new so i guess i shouldn't be shocked by a four dollar spoon with the tesla logo on it it doesn't have a logo as far as i know or it has a quote from um it's accurate to one mic it says don't pay that's impossible it's just i guess i don't know the hilarious part about this though is that elon's like it's fake news and so he was like no it's not it was posted by the tesla china accounts and it's on the weibo and then he just replies in that case i'll definitely have some so he just has no idea what's happening over there yeah i'm sure there's a lot of funny things going on in this as a whole i think there's it's funny because this isn't weird for a ceo to not know every minutiae of

everything that happens with this company but it is funny that he tweeted that it's fake and doesn't yeah rather than just like checking real quick yeah just check just to make sure but he's on twitter all day so he doesn't check uh and in twitter all day can we wait what is twitter oh sorry following yeah this is this is all x he's on yeah i don't know it's a it's a thing i think the cyber truck is funny because we're actually working on something about this also but the cyber truck is kind of weirdly already iconic despite not coming out yet yeah does that make sense that might be partially why it's iconic i think it's just that it doesn't look like anything else and it's so clear when something is inspired by the cyber truck yeah because nothing really looks like the cyber truck on

the road so when you do something with that like like, hard-edge geometric design, it's like, oh, this is the Cybertruck of X. Yeah. And that's sort of become iconic in the last, like, three years despite the truck not even being out. Well, but I feel like part of the reason those things have gotten hype and become iconic is because we don't have the actual Cybertruck.

So this is, like, dip your foot in the Cybertruck pool. Yeah. Here's your whistle. Here's your your spoon here's your whatever that also kind of here's your caviar iPhone that kind of looks like a Cybertruck and it's easy to make and anyone can make anything kind of look like it why is there no Cybertruck harmonica yet actually like someone can do it pretty much the only thing that's hard to make shapes like a cyber truck is a truck. Is the actual truck. That's actually true. Yeah. You could make a cyber truck laptop like very easily and it would be pretty simple, actually.

But the truck is tough. We'll see. It's supposed to come out soon. We keep coming back to that. We have our bets. We have our predictions. But either way, we have a lot more to talk about. We'll do our iPhone event roundup after the break.

But of course, before our break, we should do some trivia. Trivia, dude. Let's go. All right. So first question. So believe it or not, Polestar has been around since 96. What a name. Oh, we're getting there.

I didn't even think about that. It originated from pegatron i just had a moment yesterday where i was like can you believe polestar is the name of a car company i never even thought about that i think it's a great i'm not gonna finish that do you not like the name do you well i like the name but when you think about it you're like oh anyway anyway it was previously called blank engineering sharing the name of what dc superhero dc i hope i don't name a marvel one accidentally if i were to get canceled over anything i would hope it would be getting a superhero thing wrong can i get like a

like a spreadsheet of all the dc superheroes i have a hint but I don't think it'll help you. Poison Ivy Engineering. DC's the Justice League one. Yeah. Was that the one with Thanos? No. We'll be right back. Hamburglar, why are you calling? Rubble, rubble.

McDonald's has a new biggest burger called Big Arch, made with two 100% Canadian beef patties, a new delicious sauce, and all the McDonald's flavors you love, and wait, you want me to help you get it? Rubble. Come on. Compared to beef burgers on McDonald's current menu at participating restaurants in Canada.

You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the Government of Canada. All right, welcome back, y'all.

Let's talk technology. For the first time. For the first time today. We've got an Apple event coming up next week. And I always, I don't know, I don't lean too heavy into predictions usually just because this will be useless in a week. But it's kind of fun to look back

and think what we were thinking before it happened and see what we were thinking so let's go over what we're expecting and thinking about the upcoming iphone 15 event that we all know now has been announced for september 12th uh we know we're expecting some things we have some maybe hot takes maybe about things that might happen or might not happen let's get into that stuff and we can speculate wildly because that's always fun that's always fun that is always well let's start with the baseline because this is an iphone event it's going to be uh iphone 15 and iphone 15 pro right allegedly allegedly there are also some random people that were like there may be an ultra i have that in here we will talk about that don't worry okay well okay so the main things that

we're expecting from the new iphone 15 by the way i don't know i don't even know if we're expecting a 15 plus i guess probably probably probably 15 15 plus 15 pro 15 pro max i think they do everything for at least two years and then they see how it works out because they had the minis for two years true yeah so okay that'll be the second year of the plus uh usbc let's go. Expecting it. I think that seems inevitable at this point. There's no consensus about, like, is it going to be Thunderbolt speeds on the Pro and regular USB 2.0 speeds on the regular phone?

I bet you that's going to be the case, and they're not going to mention it at the keynote. That would be very Apple-like. Very Apple-like. Or they'll talk about it on the Pro, and they just won't say that it's not. Right. On the Pro, they'll mention that it's got even faster data speeds

than ever before for transferring your ProRes video onto your Mac. They just won't say anything about the 15. Yeah. Magic port. I am interested to see how they just bring it up in general. Mark Gurman had a good article about this on how they are going to be announcing it. They are going to obviously show it they are gonna obviously show

it as a pro but like they're pretty reluctant about having to do this because like apple wants to seem seem powerful and that they're making their choices and their hand wasn't forced by they're doing it a year early i kind of feel like a year early doesn't really make that much well that's what makes it that's what makes it seem like they're doing it on purpose okay because they did it right as the eu is forcing them to it would be like we have to do this yeah i mean that i still think it is we have to do this it is but yeah so i think positioning one is they've definitely been testing an iphone with usb for many many years and it was just a matter of when and two i actually don't think it's that hard for them to just call it better than lightning.

It's just better. It'll just be fun when they say it. And it'll be fun because we've always known, they've said USB is better than everything else in all their other devices, but now that it's coming to the iPhone, all the things that it said about lightning previously no longer matter, and that happens all the time with Apple.

They just improve something and then suddenly it's like, well, didn't you say the last thing was great? Yeah, well, it's 2023. So welcome to the new thing. So I think they'll just say it's faster data speeds, it's faster charging, and it's a new single cable for everything.

I would love it to be faster charging. If it's 30 or 35 watts, that would be amazing. Would that be amazing? I mean 35 watts, that would be amazing. Would that be amazing? I mean, the pixel is still 30 watts. That's not amazing either. No, it's true. 100 watts.

But we're not going to get any super fast charging in the United States for a while. Like Samsung is 45 watts, but they have the like fake 45 watts where it does it for like a microsecond and then it charges like one minute faster in total. Yeah, we've got, isn't there a OnePlus phone in the US now that's dash charging at 65? I guess you're right. There's a handful. They're not popular, but they're out there. So when I hear amazing, I would be like, oh, wow, 65 watts on the iPhone. That's amazing. A hundred watts.

That's amazing. But it's like right now we're dealing with like 12 to 22 watts or whatever so yeah i'd be happy with 35 45 also quick trivia when did the first ipad pro come out the first ever ipad pro yeah god it's been a we're like six years at this ipad pro aren't we let me i'm gonna guess 2016 2015 2015 that thing in usbc right didn't the first gen have USB-C? It did. It started with USB-C. So it's like...

And I remember when the 12-inch MacBook came out and it just had like that single USB-C port on the side. That's when I first started thinking like, wow, Apple's really all in with USB-C. They're all in. Here they are at the end of their all-in coming. Maybe it didn't have USB-C. I'm just...

While you look that up, I'm very interested to see what the crowd reaction is going to be like when it first gets announced. Is it going to be like just a couple cheers? Is there going to be like actual enthusiastic cheers? Or is it going to be the most sarcastic applause possible?

I think there's a big difference between the cheers at the event and the reactions of regular people at home. Who was it that put in the slack that someone was like oh, they're changing the charger again that sucks i think we talked about like a lot of normies will probably none of us said that i want to make that clear that they decided like one of us were like no we have like a family member someone like heard that maybe it would switch to usb and they're like really but

i have a lightning cable now like that's the actual reaction from some people out in the world. Where a lot of us are like, well, finally, like everything else is USB-C. Why not? But I think that's an easy segue to AirPods. Quickly, I want to fact check. Actually, it was the 2018 iPad Pro that added the USB-C port. But that was the first time they had the 11-inch. And I bet that on stage when they announced that they were switching that to USB Type-C,

they had all kinds of nice things to say about it almost oh yeah oh yeah they were like connecting it to a sony um camera oh yeah they were like alpha camera you can instantly transfer your files really rapidly yeah and then most things never really did that people never don't really you don't really do that i mean you don't put red footage on your ipad no well you'll be able to on your iphone now people don't really connect accessories to phones like that i think that's about to change though once iphone gets usbc we're gonna see all types of accessories i don't i mean i think we will see all types of accessories but we already have all types of lightning accessories yeah yeah but that's owned by Apple and it costs money for people to use lightning. USB-C will not cost money.

Yes, but I think that just means the same accessories will just have more options that are way cheaper. I don't know if many new types of accessories are going to come out, but all those ones that were done by bigger companies that could afford the licensing aspect. Now there's just going to be 10,000 more Amazon red flag listings that will be doing the same thing with the non-licensed USB-C.

The only lightning accessory that I use on my iPhone is, I just shot today with it. It's a microphone that plugs into the lightning port. So it's a little shotgun mic. So I don't have to use the built-in iPhone mics. And I just plug it in. It just kind of works not with pro res works terrible with pro res really yeah it glitches out when i use pro res video so i have to shoot non-pro res for it to work but then i plug it in and it works that's the only lightning accessory i uh i think a power user of my phone ever uses yeah and then i just like plug it in to charge it and that's it yeah

so i don't know if we're gonna suddenly get this revelation of like people plugging mice and keyboards and accessories into their phones i think it's just gonna be everything is the same charger now faster data speeds for transferring whatever music and files and videos to your computer and that's it i think usbc iphone accessories are gonna go crazy because i can't find an exact number for this but it seems like uh the current lightning iphone can only output in between half a watt and a full watt of power to any of its accessories but really yeah like think of it this way like you ever try to use one of those phone fans but yeah like they barely use no power though but i don't think it's because i don't think the iphone can really supply any power but with a usbc cord you

know think of all the crazy power i'm trying to i'm having a hard time charge your tesla with you you could have and you can drain your phone Charge your Tesla. You could have an active... You can drain your phone 20 times as fast. You could have an active cooling block that you just put on your face when you're waiting for the subway and it's really hot. There we go.

Get on Weibo. Phone fridge. I kind of just wanted to have reverse wireless charging. This is my hotter take because I don't know if it'll happen. This is just my thing that I would like to happen. Reverse wireless charging on the iPhone to charge AirPods on the back. That'd be cool.

And then the AirPods case, we get a new AirPods case with USB, and it also has MagSafe, so it locks in and just aligns with the coils on the back of the iPhone. Wait, but the MagSafe coils are the same polarity as the MagSafe coils on the iPhone. Maybe there's some magic they can do to have both swap the polarity yeah wow maybe i don't know that's my hot take i would like them to make that happen please okay yeah i mean i think that that was the the one good use of reverse wireless charging was charging earbuds and smartwatches. Yep. Sort of smartwatch.

Well, then the Pixel Watch. Well, the Pixel Watch, though, the way the band is on it, it like hovers it way too high up. So you can't even. Yeah, that's unfortunate. That's totally another topic. But yes. Okay. So USB-C.

All right. So titanium frame on the Pro iPhone instead of stainless steel would possibly be a little bit lighter. Neat. You know, I bet they did this. It cost them a little bit more, but I bet you it makes it like harder for the phone to break. So they don't have to honor as many Apple care subscriptions.

I mean, that sounds like one of those things that's win-win for everyone. Yeah. A more premium material. It's lighter. And it is ultimately cheaper that's win-win for everyone. Yeah. A more premium material. It's lighter. And it is ultimately cheaper for them if that is the case. Yeah. And then Apple sees what you just says and goes, that'll be a hundred extra dollars,

please. Yeah. The rumor is that they're upping the minimum storage to 256 finally. And there's been a lot of conversation on Twitter about whether or not they're actually raising the prices because it was always $100 more for the extra storage. But storage is exponentially cheaper every year. Yeah. And it's so cheap to have a 256 gigabyte DIMM now.

That would be like us saying, well, the original iPhone started at 4 gigs. So technically, it's like a three thousand dollar phone back in the day yeah yeah no that's crazy all right new colors and by by new colors i mean new hues barely yeah the the suspected colors for the i guess this is the pro iphone yeah pro yeah are space black silver gray and blue nice the gray is like a titanium color it's like a raw titanium oh kind of like a dark silver you mean like a cyber truck color yeah like cyber truck like the other color cyber truck iphone yeah i don't know i kind of miss i would like like a brighter color. I was missing like bright, interesting colored phones. And someone, when I tweeted that was like, well, you just want matte black anyway. Yeah, I know I do, but it would be cool if you had like an

option for a red phone. I think, yeah. And some people like the new blue and I say new blue, but it really looks like the Pacific blue from before, but I don't know, pretty reasonable looking, uh, color rumors. I don't see anything too exciting there this does not talk about the regular models though the regular models i think there are like five colors usually like the one color that's off matches with the one color that's off on the pro so are we assuming a blue like we had like the green the midnight or whatever it was called green pro and then there was a green more normal color green regular phone and then it was blue and blue so i'm assuming this is gonna be blue and blue again do you guys remember the alpine green i love that was such a good color wait was that the the pro one or the i liked both of them yeah it was the pro was it the 11 yeah i think so

i like the pacific blue the most i think that was nice. I liked the green better. It's been a while since we had a red. They're not. Product red is like mid-cycle refresh red. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A couple other small rumors.

Action button. Action button would be nice. I would be really happy with an action button. Knowing Apple, it'll just be like a few small things you can customize it to do. Someone's going to make an app that makes it like run a series shortcut to like take two seconds to launch a custom app but it'll still work but it's not really what we wanted uh thinner bezels all the way around can i ask a question before we switch from action button yeah yeah i saw a lot of people saying they're sad about the mute switch being gone because it should be replacing the yeah yeah the rumor yeah i've

never had a phone that has a mute switch. Are you guys going to miss it? Because I do not see why that seems nice at all. One Plus is the greatest thing they ever did. I don't know. It's just a convenient. I think if my question why in your first thing to say is I don't know is not a great argument for it. Okay, I'll give you the real reason.

It's because when the phone's in the pocket, I can change it and know what status it's in without looking but do you ever have your phone and thank you david thank you bingo yeah i go from vibrate to mute those are the two things but vibrate is mute no on one so so on a one plus phone with had the alert slider yeah is that what it was it was uh volume on vibrate mute yeah there's three and the middle is vibrate and if i could feel it in my pocket i would know it's on vibrate and i'd slide it to me without looking but the iphone only has two iphone only has two volume on volume off i'm on or mute slash vibrate yeah and it is that much quicker than going into the settings and doing it in the quick settings that's it it is but

i never turn my phone off of vibrate the only only time my phone rings is if somebody's coming to my house and I know I'm going to fall asleep on the couch. And then that will wake me up or something like that when they're on their way. My phone is not even on vibrate. Ever since I got a smartwatch, I don't think my phone's even been on vibrate for over a year. This is probably something that Apple knows is true about most people's phones. And's why they feel comfortable we're past ringing yeah i'm done with apple should get rid of the ringtone verge cast said this i'm stealing it from them but like must have terrible ringtones because like dude do you ring i let i let that go baby i let it drop if it's the samsung

orchestral mix i will use it oh no yeah the only one I like is the Asus notification that sounds like under the sea. It's definitely the first four notes of under the sea. You only have to hear the first four notes and you're like, this is definitely under the sea. It's the only. It's like it's the marimba. No! Copyright strata. Okay.

okay the only time i ever turn my phone off of vibrate slash mute is when i take the case off and accidentally switches it on so it happens every time so now you'll just accidentally hit the action button instead uh yeah okay but i have a theory um i think that you know apple's been trying to get rid of hard switches for a very long time there's always been all these rumors that there were rumors last year i think that they were going to get rid of hard switches for a very long time. There's always been all these rumors that there were rumors last year, I think, that they were going to get rid of the hard power button and replace it with like the same as the MacBook, the haptic trackpad thing. And then they didn't. But they do want to get rid of these hard switches because it erases points of failure. I would bet you that they've been like weighing getting rid of the mute switch for a while but it's too iconic on the iPhone it's like a too iconic part because Android phones in general don't have it and now they're like wait we can we can do two things at once because we can switch

this to a haptic button that is the mute probably the action button is a haptic button we can switch it to a haptic button and we can make it more useful it's just like the dynamic island right it's like okay we're cutting out a part of the screen but we're adding utility to it so it's like the same thing they're getting rid of a physical switch switching it to the haptic but they're like also making it more useful do you think that's also partially like hey this is a new button you're going to use a lot get used to this haptic button look for our other buttons to turn i also like that you you would use it way more than the mute switch like which is cool because if if it's contextually aware and you can like press it when you're in certain apps or when you're at certain gps locations like if you're

at the track and you can just press it and it starts a thing that'd be useful that's way too android-ish. There's no way they're going to let it be contextually aware. So the action button on the Apple Watch is just a little bit contextually aware. Yeah, it's not enough. With shortcuts. Just a little bit. So if I press the action button,

I can make that either start a workout or I can have that open the workout menu. So when I press it right now, it goes, ah, I'm going to open the beginning of a workout. Now that it's open so when i press it right now it goes ah i'm going to open the beginning of a workout now that it's open when i press it again it's to start and stop the workout but isn't that just for certain workouts too like running or cycling like track running and stuff right but like if you do that at two o'clock in the morning it's still going to start a workout it's not going to know that you're trying to like silence your alarm yeah uh i think when i was at

a track recently it asked me if i wanted to use it to like silence your alarm. Yeah. I think when I was at a track recently, it asked me if I wanted to use it to count laps or if it, I don't think it was the button automatically. I knew you were at the track. Yeah. I knew I was at the track. Wow. That's dope.

Yeah. I didn't think it could do that. Apple, the Apple shortcuts, assuming they let you plug that in with the, this new action button. It's like really good at running checks for context. Like I have a go button that I made on my phone where I just hit go and then it goes is ellis here is he here is he at work

is he at home and then depending on where i am it'll be like oh he probably wants to go here but how long did it take you to set that up how long did it take me to set up or how long is it between push button and i get directions both wait what is it pulling up apple maps uh google maps google maps um well isn't that google maps telling where you are though and where you probably want to go because like my ways in my google maps when i'm at home the first suggestion it shows is work and when i'm at hurt work the first thing it shows is home yeah no because it's all being done in apple shortcuts like apple shortcuts is first querying its gps and getting like figuring out where i am

and then once it knows where i am then it knows exactly where to ask google maps to route me to i mean serious shortcuts can be useful but i'm guessing there's a nice little delay from when you press the button and when it actually finishes you know it's like it's like you push the button you like go order your last beer clear tab come, it's still going. Yeah. I don't know. My point was that it's too complicated and it's too, like, the delay is too much. Like, Apple is not going to let people do that, if I had to guess. I would guess that it would be limited to a very small number of things you can customize it for, just like the action button on the watch.

Yeah. I think you're right. I think you're right. I don't think this is the case but let's speculate chances it's an accent color no i want it to be the accent button looks so good on the apple watch ultra if it was orange that'd be sick it would be so good like what if it was the color of the phone what if they just did the like the gray or titanium looking one the the like silver is it silver the gray one that you said it is metal orange underneath on that if it was the

gray with the orange switch that would look sick that'd look it'd look like the apple watch ultra apple really likes having one key way of knowing that you have the new phone one key visual when i see dynamic island i know that's the iphone 14 that's a great point when the iphone 10 came out it was a notch when the 11 came out it was a new color when the 12 came out it was this and we there's always something square and i think that could be the thing yeah you know it's crazy i just also want to note that like we we're like we're six days away from this and we still have no idea what it looks like there is whereas there have been dummy phones i saw this morning where the action buttons on it i believe so and i think it's just normal oh dang sorry i thought those were just they're just dummy models so it doesn't that... That's some guy made, right?

Yeah, yeah. Probably the Sonny Dixon or whatever. Whereas, like, on Google, on the Pixel 8, we already know exactly where the temperature sensor is. Like a full 360 high-resolution model of the phone. You guys haven't seen the Pixel 9 yet?

I just unboxed it. Yeah. I think action button could be cool that could be very nice thinner bezels is a small detail wi-fi 6e is a small detail two extra gigs of ram is a small detail maybe a little bit more of a periscope lens maybe like 5x 5x instead of a 3x something we didn't write down here um i lost my train of thought i'm sorry ultra continue oh i have the ultra stuff it's important i thought i wrote down here well why you think does that have to come before the ultra part no go for it do you want to okay i'll just say yeah we mentioned before the ultra yeah

i don't know whenever i see ultra i just think of remember the pixel ultra that was such a god We mentioned before the Ultra. Yeah. Whenever I see Ultra, I just think of remember the Pixel Ultra. That was such a debacle. Everyone thought it was 100% going to happen. So is this a rumor, iPhone 15 Ultra? So from what I understand, some retailers put iPhone 15 Pro, and then they had a separate listing for Ultra. Oh, I remember now what I was gonna say okay okay yes the rumor also is that the screen sizes are going to be um two millimeters bigger

uh so it's going to go from 6.7 to 6.9 inches and 6.1 to 6.3 inches is that because of the thinner bezels or is that i would that make up enough space i don't know i am it might be because it's probably at least partially due to the thinner bezels i would hope i mean in an ideal world that's the same size footprint and then just like even smaller bezels yeah i don't know but point two is like but they'd have to be a millimeter smaller on each corner yeah it'd be quite a bit okay but i don't know that'd be interesting anyway back to the ultra thing wow um it probably won't happen so please don't assume this is'd be interesting. Anyway, back to the Ultra thing. Wow, 6.9. It probably won't happen, so please don't assume this is going to happen.

We're just having fun here. Let us talk about it. But at first when I read about it, it says it just seemed like this Pixel, or oh my goodness, just seemed like this iPhone 15 Ultra was just like the maximum spec version of the Pro Max because it's two terabytes, eight gigs of RAM.

But then the rumor, the sketchy rumor also said better camera features. I don't know what that means. I don't know, man. That's really funny, because do you remember when ProRes video came to the iPhone Pro and you could only get it on the higher storage iPhone?

Remember that? Oh yeah, they didn't allow it on the base one. The base iPhone 14 Pro didn't have enough storage and they were like, yeah, that's not going to get ProRes video. You're going to fill up your storage in like three seconds of ProRes video. So I could see there being a better camera feature on a higher storage iPhone. It doesn't make it an Ultra, though. I mean, a better camera feature could be so much.

It could be actual better cameras. It could be some random setting in the camera thing that's only available on the ultra for whatever reason you know give me 8k pro res pro res give me some insane 8k pro res dynamic you've got the 48 megapixels now apple what's holding you back kiosk 8k pro res i don't want more subdivisions it's gonna take us an hour to get it off the phone but let me have it not with not with usbc for now it would take three hours but now it only takes one yeah um okay well that's you know that's iphone stuff i think we're also

expecting a new apple watch ultra ultra and nine i don't think the the rumors are that crazy about those i think it's just like new chip new but the new chip though is fairly important because they kept naming the new s like s7 s8 chips new generations but they were basically the same chip it'd be like one more core or something super super smartly different but the new one is supposed to be significantly faster okay so and it's all i believe it's a node shrink because i think the other apple i think the other iphone rumor is that it's shrinking to three nanometer am i correct oh honestly i would like if it's if it's a more efficient chip i would want i almost don't mind if the performance stays the same and it's just more battery

yeah totally that's basically what because people want out of the watch. Yeah, because the Apple Watches don't really lag. Yeah, they're fine. It's 60 FPS. It's a watch. It doesn't do that much crazy stuff, so just give me plus 30% battery, please. Okay, the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Bionic is likely going to be Apple's first 3nm chip.

So if they can use a cut-down version of that chip for the Apple Watch, it should have better battery life. And the regular Apple Watch and the new Ultra having better battery life is like just what people want. That's pretty much all I want. Yeah. Yeah. So.

New AirPods? USB-C AirPods. USB-C. Do you think that's the only change? Yes. I think so. And probably some talking about changes and better transparency mode or something just to also throw in there maybe reverse wireless charging apple come on you can do it i know you can do it apparently the airpods

max are not going to get refreshed until end of 2024 or beginning of 2025 oh my god which is like to just put usb port they'll be the only thing to still have a lightning port yeah it'll be the only well not exactly they still sell the magic keyboard oh yeah i forgot about that stuff like that you're right but yeah so frustrating whenever i need to plug it in at my desk yeah most things i want to travel with though it would be really nice to have one cable everywhere and it would be really awkward if they say you could have one cable for everything but then the airpods max are still like i didn't even think about that though we made the joke before about how the iphone usbc and airpods usbc are finally like finished they went all in but there are still things out there that are it's probably

because they're accessories and i think that the eu law said phones and and headphones and earbuds or something but i don't think they said anything about accessories at that point like that's just inconvenient now yeah why why are they still lightning uh well we've talked for a while about these new apple things is there anything else we want to any other hot takes or crazy expectations let's do some predictions is there anything we can think that uh okay alice just jumped right to the microphone i know david has some things before before you we wanted to make this a little fun because next week we're going to be doing the pod from Apple Campus. Yeah.

From like right after the event. We're doing it on the stage. Yeah, right after. We're going to do it in Tim Cook's lap. No, so Adam and I thought it'd be fun. We don't want to take up the whole next week thing, but we are going to let everyone predict. We're going to take up the whole you know next week thing but we are going to let everyone predict we're going to make some predictions about the event next week and depending

on how correct you are we'll uh award some trivia points while we're at apple campus okay cool so i want to make i want to make the most definitely correct prediction i possibly can that's my incentive there's an iphone i predict if you predict that we can take it away and you will not get your bonus point oh okay it's got to be somewhat crazy predict something we actually in our the rules we wrote yesterday during our meeting we wrote if we don't like the predictions then you just don't get to make one the event will be held we'll find out if this is in the episode or not later this friday so i want to go not too it's not too safe but not too crazy okay okay i have one i'm ready let's hear it i'm ready to write it down mine is that usbc is the most important change on the airpods

all other changes will be minor compared to the new port. There might be a new audio mode or some new updated sample rate or some... I would argue a new audio mode is more important than USB-C for the AirPods. I guess it depends on what that new audio mode is. Yeah. I think... New audio

mode sounds big. But isn't that subjective? Not like a totally new audio mode. I just mean we have transparency mode, noise cancellation mode, and then adaptive transparency in the middle. It'll just be that again. So, yeah. I think if there's a new one on top of that, that's a big feature. I agree.

And then it's wrong. I agree. What could make you wrong? If there's a feature more interesting or important than USB-C added to the AirPods. How much of a design change can it go through? None. It won't go through. Zero.

It won't go through. Design change is more important. I was going to say, if a design change happens, that's more important than USB-C. Is it one millimeter shorter? That's not a design change. That's my prediction.

Like new drivers? Okay. New drivers is more important. If Alex gets excited by it yeah it's a big change okay interesting interesting wait so then we say yes or no on that next week yes yeah i agree i think it'll be the biggest yeah it's the main thing they're going to talk about for sure okay all right andrew what you got oh oh i was going to give it to david oh david you do it david okay david david okay um my prediction is that they all have usbc but only the pro gets thunderbolt i agree i'm oh man i'm pretty sure

like a few weeks ago you two both said they would be the same, and I was the one who said, no, I think they're going to be kind of different. No, we talked about Lightning versus USBC. Was that Lightning versus USBC? Okay, and I said that would be funny. I think they're all going to have USBC, and it's all going to be the same. So you just disagree.

You don't have to disagree. Yeah, I guess I disagree. If it's a permutation, you can disagree. Oh, I can only disagree, so anything that happens, I win. You think it'll have Thunderbolt? The odds are in my favor here i think yeah yes i i think personally i just think they're all going to be the same type of usbc they'd probably have to brand it as a listen i agree with you completely i still feel

like a dynamic port um wait just so just when i have that right uh david and marquez you both think that we're gonna have lightning thunderbolt pro and uh us regular usbc yeah okay and andrew disagree you say i disagree all right very good very good it's in the book okay risky so i don't think that there's going to be a powered accent uh or an accent colored what is it called action button thank you but maybe they make a case with an accent colored action button their cases will have about whatever what's the bug okay wait hold up hold up so you're saying not only will the iphone no no no the iphone action but it has an action button that's the same color as everything else yeah i wish it was this is like two predictions in one uh same color like but the case will have a colored action you're going all in on action button existing well i liked the i thought about

it before when marquez said that like they want to have something that shows off it's the new phone and the action button seems to be that on a case they probably think most people are going to put a case on why not make that button an accent button interesting so now it's different color accent color thank you i am just action accent i get it um i'm disagreeing yeah i disagree i guess how many cases need to have that for that to be right only one only one wait all you're saying is that there will be an action button on the phone and apple will make at least one case with a colored action button well and the the action button cannot be an accent color like in its original finish i don't think that's gonna happen

i just want that you don't think it'll have any accent color no because the mute switch does have a little bit of an accent yeah it's like inside though to show if it's on or off though like i think that serves a purpose not for a fun design oh wow this is really hard i like that we're this intensely about the most mundane aspects of it possible but i'm is. I'm going based on the past, which is Apple has never had a multicolor case. So they won't. Sounds like it's time to start.

I'm playing my odds. This is really difficult. I thought it was a pretty crappy prediction, but how much turmoil it's put David in means it's got to have some sort of validity to it. In some ways, I feel like they will, like like minorly change the color of the accent button. Like it'll be a slightly different color of gray. I like how I've confused David with the name of the button at this point now too.

Wait, did I say accent button? Okay. Well, I don't know. I mean, if that button like has functionality, you need to be more careful about when you press it. So I feel like adding a slightly different color makes sense. That's a good point. When they put Siri behind the power button, nobody didn't blink.

Yeah, but no one cares about Siri behind the power button. Someone changes the color of the action button and everyone loses their minds. Goodness gracious, golly gumdrops. I'm really wondering right now. It would be so sick if there was an iPhone that matched the Apple Watch Ultra. Because I think the orange accent button. It would be sick. Action button.

It's too bad they're not going to do it. The orange accent action button. I don't know, dude. I'm going to say. To be fair, your best bet is to just disagree with me. Because there's a lot of options in there. So you should just disagree. I'm running through like 37 different permutations.

I'm going to disagree. And I'm just going to disagree. All right. It's in the books for that reason. I'm out. It's locked. We'll find out who got the points next week. I'm sticking with my prediction from last week.

Someone's going to mention Among Us. Someone at some point during this presentation. Either visually or with words words i hope there's an among us face disagree so am i hearing three no's to among us correct no they mention it or it's just shown in the it's either mentioned by an executive on stage or it is visually this is this is does that count when just the big tile of all the apps are up and Among Us is one of those apps? I'll count that, yeah.

I agree. I'm out. Too easy. For that reason, I'm out. I'm out. I think that's a better... I bet you Among Us is somewhere in that keynote. That's the bet. It doesn't have to be mentioned, it just has to be shown once uh i don't think this is an official prediction but i really do think

deep down my heart we're getting a wireless iphone i think that's how they're gonna true a portless portless iphone i think that's their that's the only way they can deliver they can they can like give lightning a true like viking funeral like like like phase it out with a vengeance i just want to clarify because this may have been off camera ellis thinks there's going to be a portless regular iphone and a usbc pro yeah that may or may not be thunderbolt that may or may not be i would say the way i think about it is Apple, every time they make a change, especially to the iPhone, their flagship product, always tends to think about it in like 10 years down the road. Every change they make is in a direction that will continue for 10 years. And so if they do this

fork now of no port in the base iPhone and USB-C in the pro iPhone that would suggest that USB-C is better than no port for the next 10 years. But I think we all know Apple wants no port period. So if they're going to go no port at some point, they need to align in. We have a port until we don't have a port. So the only way one phone doesn't have a port before the other is if it's the highest end iphone that's the way i think i do i do kind of agree i like i agree with i feel like the no port feels like the premium version so it feels weird to have it in the bottom but it does make sense to have yeah c and thunder and imagine the memes of like you have to pay 100 bucks extra for a port imagine that's too easy to make fun of dude

sometimes apple like makes stuff that's like that's a little easy to make fun of that's too easy the funny thing is like it feels more premium to to be wireless only except for the fact that i don't want that yeah exactly right i don't want that at all i know that you're in the pro market yeah but i don't want that but what if that one has like extra fast wireless charging and a bunch of other things that the non-pro one doesn't have? Then you're like, well, I want the pro one, so I guess I'll deal with no port. And then everyone's getting the pro one and dealing with no port. And then soon you just get used to not having a port.

It is hard because I have wirelessly charged almost all of my phones, like almost exclusively for quite a long time at this point. Okay, I have a prediction. Predict me. He's back. My prediction is this entire segment will be 30 minutes shorter than the actual episode. This bit went on too long. No, this is what the people want.

We'll do it live. We'll do it all live. Why don't you guys do a live podcast? Well, we only have one thing after the break, so maybe we can just include all of that. That's true. We should include it. As long as we end now. Yeah yeah what's the next trivia question please be something

i can get right uh it's about titanium that's right because that seems to be something we can all agree on i love titanium um specifically there's been a titanium phone before several in fact but the first one was made by erickson when did it come out i don't know i don't know how about no you you get a year buffer so if you guess 20 2000 you get 99 2000 2001 okay i I'll take it. Pod quiz rules. I think there's a little hint baked into the question because I specifically said Ericsson and not Sony Ericsson. Oh, because I know when they merged. Luckily for me, my two favorite things are Titanium and Sony. Titanium and Sony.

I mean, my three favorite things are titanium, Sony, and Ericsson. What about Vio? We'll be back. After the Pegatron. No. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and

policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're not alone. If you ask nine experts, you're likely to get 10 different answers. So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not, nobody can say for certain. So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business in times like these. That's why over 38,000 businesses are already setting their future plans with NetSuite by Oracle.

This top-rated cloud ERP brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more onto one unified platform, letting you streamline operations and cut down on costs. With NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting tools, you're not just managing your business, you're anticipating its next move. You can close the books in days, not weeks, and keep your focus forward on what's coming next. Plus, NetSuite has compiled insights about how AI and machine learning may affect your business 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. Welcome back, everybody. Last segment of the pod, a little short one. Pixel Pass, RIPp add it to the google graveyard what is dead if you didn't yeah what's coming yeah if you didn't know what pixel pass was uh came out with the pixel 6 it was sort of like this subscription service that you would buy with

your phone and i think you could add it later it's a similar thing to apple care but it also adds a bunch of other services so it would get you um insurance coverage for your phone that was the apple care part it also gave you youtube music youtube premium 200 gigabytes of cloud storage and google play pass which gives you like points for when you buy things on google play um and they're getting rid of it well hold on but the funniest part about what they're getting rid of is that this is in 2021 we are 22 months away from when this was announced and one of the main selling points was that this was also kind of financing your phone so it's 45 a month for the pixel 6 or 55 a month for the pixel

6 pro right so at the end of those two years you had paid off your phone and it hasn't been a new pixel phone upgrade every two years was one of the selling points oh my god pixel pass so now we are a few months away from the upgrade that you would be getting from pixel pass yo so not one single person who bought pixel no way gets to upgrade is it officially dead or is this a rumor? It's dead. It's officially dead. It's gone.

They definitely had like a to-do list item where they were like, we need to kill Pixel Pass before October. Bro, I smell a class action lawsuit. If that was one of the reasons that you would buy this. Yeah, I think it'll be hard to do that because technically what it's saying, like you would come up on the two years and then you would be continuing to pay that money. So it wouldn't make sense. Your phone's paid off. Right. So now you're paying too much for all these extra things.

So getting the new phone and restarting your payment plan kind of is what the upgrade is. So it wasn't like you get a free phone. It's not a free phone, but you would just continue your payments. and then that would be getting all of the things plus the payment pin it's kind of like what carriers do now with like you're paying your phone off every two years okay i still so it's not straight up it's certainly like google you want people to trust you like the pixel 6 is this big hardware change like hey we're in this for the long run look at us trust us bro like we're here get this because you're gonna keep wanting pixel upgrades google had such a pristine reputation before the fact that they

killed this two months right before like one like when i have a screenshot here it says it's a new way to own a phone here's what's included And the first thing it says is the latest Pixel, a new Pixel phone with upgrades every two years. And you kill it off 22 months later. That's hilarious. That's pretty rough. And horrible for anyone who is very excited. Right, because it's financing.

Okay, so you're basically financing the phone and then you also get all the other stuff and it costs you $45 to $50 a month. Yeah. Okay. So $45, $55 a month. Yeah. Okay. So $45, $55 a month, like you've paid well over $1,000 by the end of the two years. So you just keep paying that, keep paying that. And then every two years you get a new phone and you don't pay.

This is very popular in the US. A lot of carriers subsidize things like this too, but you don't pay the full $1,000 of the new phone. You just keep paying $55 a month or however many dollars per month that phone is. And there's your new phone. And you just pay until you've more than paid off the value of the phone you just keep going and going and going and every two years you get a new phone and this one didn't make it two years wow i'm sorry that's crazy there's something about like this like getting axed a few months ago but like they

really push this to the brim there are people people probably on this like, I'm so excited for my Pixel 8. Look, the leaks keep coming out. I know what it looks like already. Two months. I'm just going to keep paying the subscription I'm used to and I'm going to have a Pixel 8. I've got a high res render of it on my phone. So I just look at it every day.

So apparently they didn't even offer it with the Pixel Fold. So everyone thought they just weren't offering it with pixel fold but that was their way of saying it's dead it is funny because i could see it not being offered as the pixel fold because the price is our phone yeah the price is based off of the price of the phone and the six and six pro are so close to each other it's only a ten dollar per month difference but the fold would be so much so they're probably like oh you know maybe it's too much of a difference for that wait look at this so there's an faq as to why they're getting rid of it um the question is why is pixel pass being discontinued the answer is we offer the best value of our hardware products and give users the flexibility to purchase their favorite services we continue to elevate

offers based on evaluate offers based on customer feedback and provide different ways for them to access the best of Google. That's not an answer. And it's their own FAQ. It's not even them answering someone's question in the crowd. It's like their own FAQ. That's like when someone says, why didn't you do this? You just go, I'm doing the best I can over here. And you just don't answer questions.

We love our customers. Bard wrote that, yeah. Nicely done. Nicely done, Bard. But yeah, I don't know. It feels pretty brutal. Wow.

That's pretty real. I feel like if Apple did this, there would be a crazy uproar. Like if Apple two years ago had made this part of Apple one and it was like, you get a phone every two years. And then two months before I said, nevermind. This would be like everywhere.

I will argue on scale. The uproar is the same but apple's scale is just way bigger the pixel scale just unfortunately is not that big they're also honoring all two-year terms on anyone that bought pixel pass in the last two years so if you bought it with the pixel 7 you'll still have it for another year and they're also giving everyone who ever bought pixel pass a 100 coupon which can be used towards a pixel device purchase on google fi only nice cool cool cool cool um okay well so yeah you get to keep your youtube premium and music and your insurance pretty much for it if you bought it if you bought

it until you're two years yeah but you don't get that upgrade, which again, the first marketing point when this originally came out was the upgrade. Apparently a lot of people are mad because do you remember when they, Google Play Music had like an early adopter price that was $7 a month and it was going to be $7 a month for life. And then they upped the price later and then they got rid of google play music but went to youtube music but the people who had google play music got to keep the price so apparently a lot of people are mad because they were like wait pixel pass is a better deal for me and then now they're getting rid of it they don't have the grandfather the grandfather

price anymore woof woof anyway semantics the moral of the story here is when google introduces something don't depend on an existing for a long time yeah which is depressing generally a good rule because there's a only there's a few things that they offer that is like the best in the industry like google drive i should say don't mention any of them out loud. Oh. And then maybe they won't. Yeah. A friend of mine who works at Google told me that if it doesn't make a billion dollars, they will kill it, even if it's net positive.

That sounds exactly right. Yeah. Which is why we only just have like Gmail, YouTube, and Google search. That's basically it. And BART is like quivering in the corner. Everything else is on the cutting board. Like BART is really, really shaking over there. That's a good point. Like basically and bard is like everything else is on the cutting board is really really that's a good point like basically everything else is like they could cut that tomorrow and

i would not be surprised man yeah all right well it's been a chaotic ride let's finish it up with the trivia answers wait time out was that your record that was actually the soundboard yeah shout out to howie adderley who tweeted at us and made a website where you can play along with trivia and marquez has not seen this yet so marquez if you will click the link i'm clicking the link i'm clicking the link where'd you put it he literally went through and tracked like every trivia question well and then and it looks amazing it's really good yeah it looks so good try look at those what is the website called again wvfrm trivia.com that's amazing and it's not only play along you can go back and play

essentially every single question that's ever been asked i did it and uh i got so many of my own questions wrong i was so embarrassed this must be how you guys feel and did their multiple choice and you got them wrong yeah so they were easier for you yeah because one you made them funny and it has player stats in different categories wow it does and he has guest scores they had to go through and like trivia has changed a couple times so like we used to play it where one person one person got posed the question whoever was losing at that point and if they got it wrong then the next person got to steal so some of these are i think they even wrote what we answered for specific things yeah if you go to

game log on the side it will show every single question, show what the answer is, show what the person guessed. My favorite part of this is in the top right corner. You can switch to dark mode. I love that. I love that. Marques' top category is auto.

My top category is science. And Andrew's top category is other. My top category is getting them wrong. They made a gold, silver, and bronze waveform metal. This is so sick. What I learned is I am not even close to 50% accuracy on trivia. You're 41.2. It's not that bad.

Yeah, I would like to not be that low. It's not that far away. There's top guests on this side. Dan Seifer is in here getting four out of six questions right. And just knowing that the only questions he answered were about G Fuel is fantastic. Yeah. He has a 66% G Fuel rating. If this stays updated, I would love to get up to 50% accuracy.

That's what I'm going to do. Dude, and he put links to our YouTube, X, Spotify, Apple Music, and merch stores. Can we request he changes it to twitter even though it even though it's x i'm sure he's listening you just make it twitter instead this guy is truly amazing yeah thank you howie adderley so let's get up to 50 time for trivia so first question i'm getting him wrong. Believe it or not, Polestar has been around since 96. Oh, yeah. It was blank engineering sharing the same name of what DC superhero? DC superhero? I don't know.

Sharing the name, like exact name or based off of the name? No, exact name. I will give you a last second hint I already wrote down do it do it do it Barry Allen I don't know the listeners are screaming at you

I'm so wrong flip him and read boys too late flip it oh frick me what did you guys say wayne wayne engineering bruce wayne good guess oh i wrote cyclops is that um that's marvel that's marvel x-men yeah that's real oh it's real it's x robin okay it's flash robin it's flash isn't it it's flash uh what did you get flash What's the point? Okay, anyway.

I'm a last second hint if I can't even change it. It wasn't a last second hint. You had like three seconds there. You said I'll give you a... Okay, whatever. It's okay. You're right. You shouldn't have even given me that hint. Oh, that was X-Men. I thought he looked kind of like Superman who's DC.

So I thought maybe... X-Men only officially became marvel fairly recently though right that's what i was x-men has always been marvel the movie rights were owned by other companies please don't cancel me okay next question before david gets canceled okay next question first titanium phone it was an erickson specifically it was the ericsson R320 Titan Limited Edition. What year did it come out? We're doing the one-year buffer on either side. The hint is it wasn't the year one. Actually, I-

Wait, was it a smartphone or a dumb phone? My percentage is plummeting. Can I say that? Do you think it's fair i think it's fair this doesn't help me know what you're a dumb phone that's right i knew it okay i'm just gonna stick with what i said because it's wrong so fun fact erickson actually put out its first phone in the late 1800s so it could be any year between this and now but it's not wait let's read the boards did they create they didn't create but they were way early to the game yeah 1800s it was the bell thing right alexander alexander going bell we could talk about this

you know stuff let's uh all right i wrote i just guessed 2009 2009 no i wrote 2008 nope 2005 uh-uh it was 2000 so so closest i almost put that but i was like no that was my example though i know when you said that i was like wow so like if it's 2000 so so closest right sure wait what what wait no yeah no that is not you almost got me 2000. So close to straight. Sure. Wait, what? You almost got me. I knew those were in the rules. All of our percentages have now I feel like you knew it was a joke and then you agreed and you were like, oh wait, no, this might work.

This is exactly what happened. Well, that's going to do it for this week. Thanks for watching and listening to a ever more chaotic episode of the waveform podcast. We just, we just have all kinds of tangents and all kinds of topics and all kinds of spoons to talk about sometimes, uh, either way, catch us next week from Apple HQ. We'll be at the event. We'll be figuring out if our predictions are right or not. Make sure you subscribe to see that when it comes out. And of get subscribed to uh see the rest of the stuff that we talk about after thanks for watching

catch you in the next one peace and with that waveform is produced by adam melina and ellis rovin we're part of the vox media podcast network and our intro outro music was created by dean ad and clips that should did adam just leave he's in the bathroom yeah yeah lock the door lock the door don't lock the door baby