Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Is the Vision Pro Worth it Now?

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

This week, we start off by discussing some of the better April Fool's jokes including our own Teslabot short and the Discord loot box fiasco. After that it's all about Apple. We talk about Apple trying to take over podcasts, bringing RCS to iPhone later this year, and an update that came to personas on the Apple Vision Pro. Lastly, we round it out by discussing the Xiaomi electric car before finishing up with trivia. Enjoy! Links:  SoKrispyMedia: https://bit.ly/4anqpjp Mode Keyboards April Fool's Joke: https://bit.ly/49rORid IGN Virtual Boy Pro: https://bit.ly/4aHYj1M Semafor Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/4aiQrEg Google Podcasts is Dead: https://bit.ly/4aHYlGW KilledByGoogle: https://bit.ly/4aGWodV Google Leaks Apple News: https://bit.ly/3xmg7kS Cleo's Apple Vision Pro Video: https://bit.ly/4cN9mZu Telescope's Xiaomi SU7 Video: https://bit.ly/49r8ZkC Autofocus VinFast VF8 Review: https://bit.ly/49s5b2i Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: 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://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

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1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The West Coast has like a couple Hey, what did you just say? What did you just say?

Beast Coast, baby. Oh my God. They have good weather though. And other stuff? No, just... They got stamped. I'm with you, David. Look, look.

Name one good thing that's come from the West Coast. Me. Me! What the hell? Incorrect. thing that's come from the west coast me me what the hell incorrect all right what is up people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez i'm andrew and i'm david this past week was april 1st did you guys see anything good on April Fool's Day this year? I feel like I didn't see anything.

Very little. Very little. I mean, ours was fantastic. Ours was dope, yeah. But I feel like I didn't see much as far as other company announcements. We did one. We did one. We did.

Sorry. You know what's funny about that? So we made one April Fool's Day short, which is similar to last year, but it was the pseudo studio tour accidental upload with the robots in the background. You nailed it with the accidental upload title. I think that really was the icing on the cake. I loved it. But then it's a short, so it's going to keep showing it to people after.

But in YouTube shorts, it doesn't really show the date of upload like kind of anywhere unless you click in and like look for it yeah so people are seeing it on april 2nd and then april 3rd and they're like what wow you guys have you guys have tesla bots that's kind of cool it was an incredibly well done cgi job by the team at so crispy which they do a lot of cgi stuff all over youtube you kind of don't really notice until you like peel back the curtain and realize how much they do but they helped us out with it and it looks very very realistic so yeah it's kind of out there we're still getting texts from people you guys have you guys have tesla bots actually um i know that sammer doesn't list this podcast

but he's a neuroscientist and he uh texted me and said dude were you there are the robots there and i was like bro i'm sorry my mom does watch this podcast and she thought they were real so that was april fools just so you know but uh i i literally didn't see anything good i saw one small one and i'm apologizing for talking about keyboards again but this company mode they make awesome keyboards but their like logo on the back of it is a circle and they just like made a fake one about how that logo on the back is now magsafe charging pad and so it's just a whole ass keyboard upside down put magsafe chargers everywhere it's fine is this in the realm of like company

announces product that might be a good idea on april 1st to see if it's actually is this in the realm of like company announces product that might be a good idea on april 1st to see if it's actually i don't know if it's a good idea to have like a 300 keyboard upside down so you can charge your phone on the bottom okay so definitely a joke yes but also i feel like i've seen a lot more of those lately where like it's upsetting that it's not a real thing companies will announce i wish i had a good example of this well they'll announce something that seems kind of pseudo realistic but maybe kind of a bad idea but it's april 1st so if if it bombs or if everyone goes haha funny joke they can go yeah it's yep it's a joke but if people go wow i would have really liked this and they go

yeah no yeah of course good thing this is actually real yeah because they were testing the waters right i don't know did you guys see the ign april fools video the virtual boy pro it was it's essentially a switch strapped to someone's eyeballs it's it's pretty funny is it only red uh no it has the joy cons on the side yeah nice um yeah blue sky made shorts but like actual shorts you can wear and i just sort of feel like that's really overdone yeah um extremely tesla did that already yeah they did yeah they did and then ellis and i went to this like thing in the city that was uh it was like a short like story festival. And every time a new person came out to read a new short story, they would be wearing a different pair of shorts.

And it's just like, okay guys, it's a little overdone at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, but one that is actually our first story that was an April Fool's thing to start with and turned out being really hilarious. So Discord made loot boxes, which for those that are not deep in the gaming community, loot boxes are extremely controversial depending on how you give them to players.

There have been times when you have to buy loot boxes and you can get items out of them and it's like a good way to monetize your game, but also people hate them. There are times when in Overwatch, you get loot boxes for free just depending on how many times you play the game and people like them in that sense in overwatch one of the reasons just because i know someone's gonna say not everyone loved them in overwatch but like it used to be

the only way you could get the skins so like yes you got some for free but if there was one skin you really wanted it was basically incentivizing you to like buy more skins then they added coins and some other stuff and i think it's okay yeah and then star wars battlefront blew up their entire game because of loot boxes it was it was a whole yeah it was a whole thing anyway um so discord made loot boxes for discord which was sort of like a joke thing, but also actually exists where basically you can like open these loot boxes and get virtual icons that are emotes you can use in Discord. So people use emotes all the time if you're subscribed or on Twitch.

If you're subscribed to certain channels, there are special emotes for it. So Discord is sort of, they're trying to become Twitch. It's really big in Discord having custom emotes for servers yeah not only that but then if you have nitro you can use them on other people's servers so like our server has a bunch of custom emotes of all sorts of different things so they launched a

thing recently which was like discord quests where if you're streaming it on discord and you can get other people to watch your stream it gives you special quests and then if you complete those quests then you like get special emotes and stuff and also nitro subscriptions but uh the thing that ended up being funny is they launched these loot boxes they made a video for the launch that they released on april 1st they also put that video in discord as like a what's new update thing that automatically pops up when you launch discord and they also made it loop and they didn't understand that doing that would count as a view on youtube because it embedded the youtube video they embedded a looping youtube video as a discord pop-up for every discord user

yes so a hack within within 24 hours the video got 221 million views on youtube guys i have an idea it is now the fastest growing youtube video ever oh wow they accidentally view botted their own they accidentally made it working view bot for yeah not quite view botting but yeah it is pretty hacky yeah sort of like a view bot is not real people this is real people upload opening this app and watching at least once this video so they watched it a ton of times because it automatically looped yeah there are ways people viewbot by um like embedding it into a popular website so it's just auto playing on like this side so it's like you're not really watching it but a twitch stream might get a bunch of views that way or a youtube video might get a bunch of views that way so like yeah kind of not exactly but um yeah it got a

stupid what did it pass what was the uh the gta6 uh there's gta i don't don't ask me how i know this the top videos were a mr beast video yeah will smith slapping chris rock another mr beast video and then the gta6 video and now this yeah the gta6 video was 93 million views in 24 hours this was like 221 million views and smoked it because again it looped on like everyone who opened discords we're not gonna get a new record holder for yeah but this is like obviously not real this has the asterisks it has a big asterisk but i think it's still count like when you see the youtube record lists half of them are always music videos and you're like does that really count it's like yeah that counts people watched it like a new k-pop video will drop and it'll be like the fastest video to a billion views and you're like should this count i guess so i guess

this is a little different but it's still i think this counts yeah yeah it is funny it luckily it doesn't seem like they monetize the video um imagine unskippable wow that would have been if they dropped some unskippable mid-rolls in there that would have been i think that's why they didn't monetize the video because it was gonna auto play in people's uh discord and they didn't want to force people to watch ads before they watch the update good idea yeah which is a good idea but they could have made a lot of money on the 221 million views um apparently like even one of the software developers in their internal discord was like how is this video getting so many views like they didn't understand what was going on it was just part of their joke that seems so obvious in hindsight

it seems so obvious but yeah i think that they didn't understand that like embedding a video into the client would actually make it see as a view and then making it loop like there's always it's always kind of ambiguous like if you watch the same video multiple times does that count as two views or does that because it's from the same ip not gonna as two views it's generally do you know the answer it's generally two views it is if i watch an entire video twice through it's two views okay now if you sit there and refresh over and over and watch one second of the video 10 times youtube i think by that point is smart enough to realize that's not 10 views but yeah if i watch the whole thing and it loops and i watch the whole thing again that's two yeah Yeah, okay.

And the video that they made is very short. It's like 30 seconds long. This is the perfect storm. It's funny. I didn't actually see it despite logging in to Discord twice that day because it like pops up on the corner as a loop box and it like moves.

I didn't even realize it was going to be an April Fool's thing, but I thought it was hilarious because the way to click out of it wasn't just an X button. It was a button that said, I didn't even realize it was going to be an April Fool's thing, but I thought it was hilarious because the way to click out of it wasn't just an X button. It was a button that said, I didn't ask. And you just click that and it went away. It was like, oh, here's your loot box. It's shaking.

Get ready to open it. And then there was just a thing that said, didn't ask. I don't remember asking. And you clicked out of it. I thought that was funny too. Yeah, so maybe if they had forced it upon more people, it would be 500 million views. It could be bigger.

It could be way bigger. Yeah. So I just thought that was a little funny YouTube thing. It was just meant to be like a dumb april fool's thing it just became the fastest growing video on youtube of all time that's crazy so that was fun that was very funny yeah um okay next up we have apple is now highlighting podcasts no no no no yeah we need segue i need a segue. I need a better segue. Oh, sorry.

You got to think of something. Okay. Speaking. Wait, I got it. Okay. I don't actually have anything. I'm going to do it on the fly. Speaking of loot boxes, Apple is looting.

is looting the podcasters that make podcasts on Apple Podcasts for 30% with this new subscription feature of their money. Oh. Yeah? Bars. Okay. The flow there was impeccable. I haven't thought of anything prior. Check it out. Discord loot boxes. Boxes. the flow there was impeccable i haven't thought of anything prior okay

discord loot boxes boxes apple boxes apple so speaking of apple yeah uh-huh oh okay yeah okay okay so we got there yeah i think in 2021 apple launched this new podcast subscriptions feature which is effectively supposed to be patreon for apple podcasts um you can do multiple different things like give exclusive episodes you can give early access it's it's basically exactly patreon however apple, got to take their cut because it's Apple. So if you sign up to be a podcast that uses the Apple podcast subscription feature, they take 30% of your revenue for the first year and 15% for every subsequent year. Yeah. So it's a lot and you can probably see why people probably don't want

to sign up for this because like, I don't know, locking yourself into, there's a whole discussion around this and like a big part of it is podcasts are one of the only things so far that have not necessarily been like locked down by a platform because there are, well, cause there are assess based. They're like one of the last remaining RSS based things that is just a feed it's a fire hose that can be captured by any any client okay hear me out this is probably a terrible idea apple don't do this but but you know how you're ready to bleep this you know how we had sms which is just like the thing that carriers supported and then apple went and we want to build something that does more media and rich and bigger files, blah, blah. And they just made iMessage and it just straight up didn't need SMS.

You can use it over the internet. Apple Podcasts is so big and so dominant that if they just went, RSS is like whatever, but we want to do this rich ecosystem thing here where we have subscriptions and tiers and all this stuff. We're just going to build it separately and people will upload to our thing. They could do that, right? Well, they're not actually dominant. Spotify is the most popular podcast player in the world. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.

Yeah, Spotify has most of the – But the same thing applies to them. Spotify could do that. Okay. Yeah. Spotify has most of the. Is that relatively new? But the same thing applies to them. That does. Spotify could do that. Yeah. I guess it would be, you would need some sort of dominance already to pull that off. And they had the dominance with iTunes, but when Spotify started doing podcasts, somehow they, it was so successful.

They were able to transition so many of their music listeners over to being podcast listeners. Okay. That's good then. Which is pretty crazy. All right. Anyway, so they made this feature, you know, and some people signed up, some people didn't. But just recently, there was this report out of Semaphore that now in the browse section of Apple Podcasts, they noticed that five of the seven of the recommended podcasts were

channels that had signed up for the subscription feature. And they found that to be a little bit sketch. That doesn't shock me at all. Well, I don't know. YouTube might highlight channels that use their new features. It wouldn't shock me at all. Yeah, but I feel like this is,

so the thing about podcasts, like I said, is RSS is this big fire hose anyone can tap into, and Apple is sort of trying to get people to now focus on using Apple podcasts. Because if you have Apple podcast subscriptions and you're like pulling people towards Apple podcasts as the only place to get the bonus episodes and the early episodes and that kind of stuff that you're inherently not going to use any of your other options and then it's like oh if i want to subscribe to this channel and get early access to episodes i can no longer i have to use an iphone this is the same thing as the department of

justice it's the same thing yeah like you have to use an iphone to be able to get your early podcast stuff which is like not something apple should be able to own that's why yeah like we've looked into this because we look at any podcast type of things for waveform obviously and like when we originally saw this one we just release episodes when they're out like we've been pitched a million times on a million platforms like early release have people pay for early release and we're like we release it as early as possible sometimes maybe too early yeah like that is not something we can do we are not that but like when we looked at this even though i know you said spotify is the most popular in the world for us we have a huge u.s base apple podcast is the most popular way people listen to waveform yeah it still doesn't make sense for us

to do a bunch of stuff specifically that can only be tapped in through apple podcasts right even if we found this extra stuff that we wanted to release on it it like it would alienate well probably over a half of our viewers right yeah and when podcast is like that with rss feeds and people are listening on a million different things yeah this is this feels way less of like hey podcasters come make some extra money and more apple being like hey start not thinking about other ways to listen to podcasts which is really hard if you need to do it on a an iphone or yeah a mac like the podcast app right something like that so you said this is in the browse area of the app it's not like a chart or something no it's in the like discover area because Because I would expect, you know, charts to remain sort of untouched.

Yeah. But if it's whatever they want, if it's Apple's discover section, like they can put editor's choice stuff, whatever they want there. The way that you traditionally got your podcast in the like discover section or the editor's choice section of Apple podcast, but you would fill out a form, say, this is my podcast. This is what it's about. And then someone at Apple would like listen to it and decide whether it was good enough to throw up there yeah yeah which was kind of like a it's like a lottery and it's already a slippery yeah that's just whatever apple likes it does feel a little

weirder being like people using youtube's new features are not based on though the user paying right like youtube isn't going to put something forward because the users are paying for something towards that channel whereas this is like hey you're going to get pushed forward because you're getting your users to pay you money but also youtube is like the platform where you upload the video and so i feel like because podcasts are rss focused trying to consolidate power towards one oh yeah that's a platform just feels bad no no i agree yeah yeah uh there's this quote from some from the semaphore article that says an executive at an independent podcast told semaphore that in recent months when they asked the company how they

could be promoted in the browse carousel apple leader suggested that the show participate in the platform's new subscription program buy your mom an iphone it's like that's that last part was not in the quote but it's it's very similar like just you know you want to be featured yeah use our use our 30 percent tax i totally see both sides but like if i'm like if i'm youtube again if i'm like hey YouTube how do I get more promoted on like home page and recommended well if you use the subscription features and you use the playlist features and use all these other features then you'll have more chances to be shown and highlighted obviously it's how we encourage people to use the features more so that doesn't shock me but when apple does it and it's it's like sort of siphoning from rss based podcasts in general then it feels a little different it's yeah that's it doesn't

shock me that they're doing this yeah but i mean it is yeah it is interesting it is just weird because the the value proposition from youtube is upload it and you'll get paid basically like if you get to a certain point we'll put ads in your thing we'll handle it all you're good and then you're using their features on top of that but for podcasts podcasts are already free you know like there's no value inherent in uploading to apple specifically and then they're taking 30 well they think Apple would argue... Of the premium subscription revenue, yeah. So they're having you create value proposition by more content that people would pay for

or something like that. And they're taking that cut? They're giving you a platform to make money off of additional content and they're taking 30% of that additional revenue in the first year and 15% in each subsequent year. I also think the word platform does a lot of lifting where you assume that if you just made a podcast and put it on an RSS feed, then almost no one would find it. But if you put it on a platform that elevates it and has some discoverability in some way,

then more people will find it. And if you put it on the biggest, most discoverable, vibrant platform like Apple's, you're more likely to get more eyeballs. So I think Apple would argue there is value to being on our insert platform here, App Store, whatever. Being on Apple Podcasts gets you more eyeballs,

lets you charge more for ads, and now we'll take our cut, thank you. That's kind of their thing. Yeah, but they need to do more. Like as someone that, like we use Megaphone, which is a Spotify company. They make it very easy to do everything we need to do. Like show notes and ads and all that.

And not f***ing chapters. Megaphone, what are you doing? People have been complaining about it on this podcast for years. Just add chapters. I know you're listening. I know somebody right now at Megaphone or Spotify is listening. Give us chapters. Sorry.

Thank you. Agreed. But I say like that platform discussion versus what Apple will offer if you upload to Apple. Again, there's just nothing we're getting out of just uploading straight to apple outside of something that already exists somewhere else like i don't get anything specific to apple just eyeballs yeah which is like is that really worth it for yeah eyeballs are pretty important in the browse section sure but that's only like what three podcasts a day or something you know yeah. That's something that kind of bugs me a little bit with this is like, I think, I hope we all agree,

or we've talked about it a lot. One of the biggest issues with podcasts is discoverability. It's something we're consistently focusing on. That's why we put it on this platform. It's why YouTube is great for podcasts, I think. Yeah, yeah. Apple Podcasts has a chance to have a platform that can help discoverability and do better i'm sure they're doing some things but still no matter

what discoverability and podcast sucks it does so then to be like well the thing that sucks now our way of doing it is five of the seven things we're going to suggest to you are because they're making us money and have this kind of weird subscription thing focused on it that's where it feels a little ickier to me hear me out what if there was a platform where you could upload your podcast and it had discoverability built in and they would cook in this is the minute he said what if yeah he said hear me out He's like, he's just going to pitch YouTube. They would give you ads without you having to do extra work. But they take 55%.

Would you do it? Is it a podcast? Yeah, you have a podcast. You have to put it online. They offer you the eyeballs and discoverability. And they will bake in ads for you so you don't have to sell them yourself. But they take 55 percent.

But I could just put it on an RSS feed and monetize it myself. But what Marquez is saying is that it's really it's got really good discoverability features because that's the worst part of distributing your podcast. Because everyone can't have a top five podcast. because everyone can't have a top five podcast you know yeah so good that it goes out and finds an audience for your video and is able to learn who will watch it based on who it's successful with is the host of this hypothetical podcast the most famous tech reviewer in the world or am i starting really from nothing and we're talking about audio podcasts right we're talking about whatever format you want and whatever host you want. Well, I think if you're going the route that 90% of podcasts go,

where you have an established media brand, this is not it. But if literally no one has ever heard of you before, and you don't feel like you have the ability to make a splash on the internet in any other way which is more often true yeah but dude you said 55 55 it's a lot of money yeah that's what you forever youtube that's what youtube takes of the ad revenue that's what we do currently by the way i just described exactly what we do wow yeah i didn't know they took 55 yeah wait so the so are we being ripped off the point i guess i'm illustrating is that the trade-off for eyeballs because of how hard it is to find podcasts is absolutely worth the actual

the difference in in revenue and all the other tools built in yeah and what's i think kind of weird about the well and here's the other thing which is just why we can't relate is like for apple podcast maybe we do want to do something or we are willing to like pay to get a little more eyeballs in the browse feature but like the subscription thing is we just don't see ourselves as contributing to that like that feature itself for us doesn't make sense because we don't have time for extra content like the content we make is very specific and we just push it to everyone as much as we can like yeah we've tried to do subscription things multiple times and we just find ourselves as like we want everyone to see this instead but now we

don't get any benefit of being in that browse feature yeah there are a lot of creators that come up with interesting things to be really early or yeah or early releases and stuff like that and for them when they get this offer they're like okay we should probably yeah for sure apple way there are two podcasts that i have paid subscriptions to that the only way you can listen to them like they don't put out any content for free and uh clearly i'm cool with that i i want to make sure i think supporting podcasts or just content in general through subscription stuff like this patreon whatever is awesome like i 100 think it should happen we're lucky enough that we don't really need to do it and we just like pushing stuff out.

But there are plenty of people that you should support. And I do with multiple different channels like that is great. I like this. I just think the browse feature having five of seven of like doing that when I don't know that feels a little bit. Yeah, it makes it so there's just a much higher incentive to move towards Apple's kind of podcast subscription feature.

And, but then what you're doing is you're sort of locking yourself into one platform distribution. Yeah. So there's a, it feels bad. An inverse relationship between discoverability and loyalty to, or diversity of platforms.

Right. Right. We have something so precious with RSS feed, like all of the aspirations of the ActivityPub, which David has totally convinced me of, by the way. I'm like full send. ActivityPub is awesome. What's your thread, Tim?

Where are you on Mastodon? Where's your blue sky? No, that's not ActivityPub. That was a test. And low-key, I kind of am a fan of that now, but continue. I like the app protocol, too. Yeah, it's just like we should not give in to these companies trying to damage this beautiful ecosystem that we're blessed to have.

In an extremely non-capitalistic world, I really think that RSS and just these fire hoses of publish once, it goes everywhere, and whoever decides to build the capture platform you you are competing on the quality of your capture platform yeah and that's why i think things like we have a lot of diversity in podcast players like pocketcast is awesome a lot of people like um rip a google podcast though oh yeah that's it yeah all right did we talk about that no i just figured we were going to throw it in at the end but marcus found a good

way to talk about we were going to talk about that briefly but we could just loop it into this i mean yeah um yeah i don't know there's there's a lot of really great podcast players uh and so if if the consolidation gets pushed more towards like platforms instead of competing just on the merits of how good the ux design is yeah then that kind of sucks can i at the risk of sounding like a shill play devil's advocate one more time oh you're gonna sound like a shill i know i'm fully in fill me up but what if what if one of the features of these podcast platforms is discoverability so like you have a great ui that if one of the features of these podcast platforms is discoverability so like you have a great ui that's one of the features you have a great download interface

and like speeding up fast forwarding cutting silence all that stuff they all do the basics so one of the features to differentiate yourself as a podcast platform is a discover page that can find the podcasts that you're interested in and serve them to you that would be a really nice feature that technically is something they do yeah yeah so that's one of the things Apple highlights and while they're at it they figured they would also give you pay walled content and give you you know subscription stuff or whatever all that can be sort of mixed into what separates them as a podcast platform yeah but it's all on top of RSS a really simple syndication but that's the beauty of RSS

is that like, if people really felt like, oh, I'm not discovering enough podcasts, you know, new podcasts, someone could make an app that is just a podcast discoverer. And it would be super easy because it just would have to plug into RSS.

Which is basically ActivityPub. Kinda. It's the same thing. You make a different platform that takes the same fire hose but has a bunch of other features that yeah is what that's the merit that you're competing for your customers on so you can make an app that's just we are so focused on podcast discoverability and that's our focus and then that's why we want you to use the app it doesn't necessarily address marques's devil's advocate point,

but I just feel so strongly that all the answers are in RSS, both for creators and these platforms. The biggest problem is they're not capitalistic enough. Yeah, innovating on top of it is the challenge. It would also be cool if somehow in that RSS whatever, if you did want to do subscription-based things, like being able to do it on all of your platforms like why right i do what if i do want to pay a podcast and get bonus content but

it's only available on apple podcasts i don't listen on apple podcasts why should i have to move everything over there why can't i just like that's apple that's what apple wants exactly i get it i get it yeah the bonus here's an example too it. You want the bonus stuff. Here's an example too. If there's a podcast, it's RSS. It's really simple. You just get the episodes and you like it so much you want to donate. And only one of the podcast players has a donate button in it where you can donate directly to them. Logical answer is I'll go to that podcast player.

I'll donate through that button and that podcast player as a result of surfacing that will probably take a cut of what they just allow the donation to right so they they give you the discoverability of the donation button and that's a that's a gift from the platform and then they take a cut of what they're giving you because they're making it possible for that donation i don't really care about the cut that's there's a cut of what they're giving you because they're making it possible for that donation to happen. I don't really care about the cut. There's a cut in everything. Patreon has a cut, right? Everything has to have a cut.

I don't really mind that that much if they're offering that. I just think it's weird with RSS and people listening on a bunch of different things. Why is only one platform? And it's not Apple's fault that there aren't other ways of doing that. And if you do it on an iPhone, there's another cut. Yeah. Guys, should we make a podcasting app?

I think we should make a phone. Wait, no. Never mind. Bad idea. I don't know. I think the moral of the story here is megaphone ad fucking chapters. Yeah.

Please. By the way, is megaphone ad fucking chapters. Yeah. Please. By the way, everyone that tells us. Daniel Ek. Daniel Ek. Daniel Ek. So everyone that begs us for the chapters, we literally can't do it. We want to. We want to.

There's a specific reason, too, which is, and I'm sure if you ask them, they'll repeat the reason, which is we have dynamically inserted ads, which are a slightly different length every time, which means that it would break chapters. You just do plus or minus. You just do dynamically inserted chapters up here. Yeah, dynamically inserted plus or minus. Also, if they're dynamically inserted, doesn't that mean they're dynamic and can move if i well i think the

podcast uh i actually don't know that chapters would be like a clickable pot like a link to like here's the next section it starts at this time stamp here's the next section yeah and every single user has different time stamps the way our ads work is we just say here's the part in the podcast where this gets inserted and they can change those ads through megaphone but like if you're clicking on a chapter you should still know exactly it should know how far in the file you are and then where that spot is okay i agree with everything he is just asking questions yeah i think i think a chat gpt and one grad student could figure out how to literally just make this work but here we are here we are just saying just to round it out yeah okay uh i know that we've talked about before google podcast got announced it was dying last fall rip it is officially dead

uh there's a great article by david pierce who was on the podcast a few weeks ago called google podcast is gone and so is my faith in google i think this article gets written every time google calls a product but amen it especially pretty hard this he said my faith in google he specifically said on that episode he has faith that google tasks is going to stay around and i'm starting to work like this yeah it looks like the old sine wave yeah it's a it's a toxic relationship with google so yeah it's dead it sucks if you use google podcast you now have to use youtube music which is just apple podcast i don't know man use but i don't i don't know use what you want but but regardless uh rip use something multi-platform for your own sake which it was

yeah just don't use something multi-platform that's not made by Google. Pocket Cast. Pocket Cast, which is now owned by Automatic. Is that bad? No, because they own WordPress, Tumblr, Coca-Cola. The Shine Heart Week Corporation. Okay, none of those are true. The Green M&M. They closed the hole in those.

We're in too deep. We should take a quick break, which of course means we should do trivia. Let's hit that trivia button so hard the whole desk just shook. I just want everyone to know. Okay, first question. So Google killed Google Podcasts. Shocker. But Google has killed

a ton of products. Google Allo. This trivia question has started like this with a hundred different trivia questions. Google Domains. I knew it. That one hits the hardest. There's a whole website dedicated, shouts to killedbygoogle.com. Which of these was not a real product that Google killed?

Google Thesaurus. An early implementation of Google's LLM transformer efforts, with the idea being to leverage context awareness in order to accurately rewrite short sentences and paragraphs. Google Compare, a data aggregation service for comparing financial services such as car payments and or credit cards. Google Showtimes,

a standalone movie search results page and google trips the precursor to google travel a streamlined trip planning app with guides to over 200 cities which one is not real i know the answer maybe i might be wrong you've said that before david i have many times i think he's usually right though because i've been waiting to make fun of him for being wrong i'm the thing he's so certain about get ready there's a 50 you're gonna win this time dang all right you should have just done all messaging apps this is just like an evergreen trivia question i could just do this every week obviously yeah you could also rip aloe rip inbox that's all i gotta say there were so many that I was like

having real feelings about watching scrolling through that list it was crazy yeah inbox well the answers will be at the end

like usual we'll think about it we'll be right back this episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Be honest. Between meetings, workout classes, and the kids' clubs, who's got time to cook?

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here since last year's sale. Hey! Get away from my fries! Oh yeah. Book with your local travel advisor or at 2 freshly cracked eggs any way you like them. 3 strips of naturally smoked bacon and a side of toast only six dollars at anw's in ontario experience anw's classic breakfast on now dine-in only until 11 a.m all right welcome back speaking of things that google is bad at um because this is a segue from the last,

the trivia question in Google. Right, yeah. Killing things podcast. It's better when you explain it. Yeah, Google's also really bad at keeping things a secret. You've noticed how they leak like their own products on the regular to the point where it's a meme. Yeah.

Turns out they can't keep other people's secrets either. You don't want to be friends with Google. Sorry, that was a really long segue. Really long segue to say that Google ended up saying on an Android website that Apple was bringing RCS to the iPhone in fall of 2024. We didn't know when it would be. We knew it would be sometime in 2024. Now it appears that Google has accidentally told everyone

that it will be fall of 2024. We don't know yet what this actually looks like. Yeah. We know that the iPhone will support RCS. If I was guessing, it'll still be a green bubble. It'll still not support all the features of iMessage. It'll still be very heavily segregated of this guy has an iPhone and this guy doesn't. But fall 2024.

It'll be encrypted. It won't be SMS anymore. it won't be unsafe exclusive to the iphone 16 pro that would be brutal but just buy your mom a new iphone yeah i think yeah no i think that's that's basically it yeah we talked a little bit last week about the uh department of justice's antitrust lawsuit against apple and how that's a whole big thing that's starting and probably going to be going for a long time. Years. And one of the sort of pillars of it was the blue versus green bubbles. So it's still TBD what this support looks like, but now you know.

Yeah. I have a question for David. You said that when Apple implements RCS, you're switching to an Android phone. So what phone are you going to pick this fall? If slash when this happens, what's like top, like I'm getting this one. The phone I want to try the most right now is the S24 Ultra. Okay. I will say I have been between reviews.

I have been returning to the s24 ultra the most and it's an incredibly good phone yeah and i kind of for a while i was like let me hit the pixel up one more time let me go back to the pixelate pro and for this this past weekend i was on pixelate pro and it's it's really close but the s24 ultra i think is the best android phone out right now i love my regular s24 and i'm sure the ultra if you're down with the bigger phone is probably just way more just really into the flat sides and the texture of the metal the flat sides i will give a lot of credit to the incredible display the anti-reflective coating on the display the really really fast fingerprint reader just like

having an optical fingerprint reader on the pixel just very quickly yeah became obviously slower yeah yeah it's a good phone can can i throw something out there that maybe our audience can help us with because it's something marquez and i have had an issue with on our phones and i can't figure out the setting to change it so if a floating notification comes up on when you're inside the phone if you accidentally swipe that notification it makes a pop-up app and i hate oh yeah bubbles yeah yeah they're the worst i hate them it's a picture and it's like picture it's like picture and message bubbles or something i think it's a little different notification bubbles slightly slightly different from so

notification bubbles are one thing they baked that into android after it got popular through facebook messenger yeah and this is not that slightly different from that okay it is specifically samsung's picture and picture windowpicture window over a... It's a smaller version of the app over the top of whatever's in the background. I don't like that. I don't like it. I understand why some people would like it. My problem is when the notification bubble comes up,

I think I turned it off, so if I click it, it won't do that. No, no, no. No, never mind. I don't know how to do it if you click it it just comes up in the app if you swipe down accidentally like so if you click it but you just pull a little bit it turns it into that window and then every time i have to hit the maximize button and go up again and i haven't figured out how to do it there's ways you can like disable pop-ups but that's more along the lines of like, if you're in- The notification itself. Or if you're in like Google Maps and you swipe away

and it stays as a floating thing, like, and then I disabled them all and then realized like, oh, I don't have YouTube player as a pop-up thing outside of an app anymore. Or Google Maps is that, and I can't figure out this one thing and it's driving me crazy.

I don't know. So please, if you know how to fix it, let me know. Little Samsung. I have a quick pro tip for anyone that's thinking of getting the S24 Ultra just get the champagne model

is that what it's called? yeah titanium? titanium yes just get that one everybody's doing titanium now I got the black one because I was like

everyone's getting the titanium I want to be different the titanium's so pretty I'll trade with you I love my orange one you want to trade? you want the black one? I really kind of want a black one.

Oh. Let's do it. We'll trade right now. Because the titanium, it's nice. Do they have the same storage? That's a great question. I don't know. We'll figure it out later.

But I kind of want a black phone. I like the black one, but the titanium's just so pretty. Are the fingerprints bad? Or you have a case, so it doesn't matter? I got a case. Whatever. There's something, I have the orange one, and even though it's in a case,

you can just still see that like light shimmer on the three cameras just like do it exactly the same as you move it i think it looks fantastic which uh which samsung phone do you have hashtag ad no we i i i think that phone is is really where were we we were talking about i was gonna try to pull us back. But while we're talking about Samsung, I do want to note something real quick. So I don't really watch TV ever.

Same. Yeah. But I recently am watching this limited series with a friend of mine called The Regime, which is sort of about this Russia-esque country that gets away from... it's like a global, I don't know, it's a limited series. It's six episodes,

but the amount of Samsung product placement in that show is insane. Everyone has an S24 and every TV is the Serif TV. That's like the LCD TV, but it's like really pretty and has killer tv yeah yeah and it's just every every single piece wait don't you have that tv what tv do you have no i don't have that i don't have a tv oh i don't want that type of stuff takes me out of a movie it's like it is really subtle because again like the s24 looks like a generic generate me a phone that's what the S24 looks like and the Seraph TV is like it just kind of looks like a

fancy TV and it's also on it has legs so they just have it sitting in the middle of the room because it's supposed to be an extremely fancy like castle so it kind of makes sense it takes me out of it if it's like a very specific or the shot when it like shows the shot like oh they're using a

surface dual too like what yes they also they have a couple galaxy folds in the Or the shot when it shows the shot. Oh, they're using a Starfish Duo 2? Yes. They have a couple Galaxy Folds in the show as well. But they're always open. And they never have a crease because it's superimposed. And then there's a couple shots where they close it. And I'm like, there's no branding attached to it. But it's so obvious to me they're trying to subliminally get Samsung in people's heads. I wonder about that.

They also have Rolls Royce product placement because they had the rolls, the, the electric Rolls Royce that we reviewed the specter in the show. And there's like two shots where the camera is just directed at the wheel worth of Rolls Royce. Of course. Okay. What do you think is less effective product placement in a hollywood blockbuster movie or a billboard right over the lincoln tunnel as far as like effectiveness of how many dollars you just

spent versus how many customers i think the billboard over the lincoln tunnel is just brand awareness it's like it just slams it into your head every day and i mean the rolls royce close-up is kind of also the same thing yeah Yeah, but you only see it once. Here's my argument. The billboard you see a million times. That's true. A billboard you look at, you're expecting an ad. A TV show you're watching, you don't want an ad in the middle of it.

Oh, that's so slimy. So, like, yeah. Like, if I'm looking at a billboard, I'm like, okay, what was I expecting? Like, I was expecting that to not try and sell me something, whereas, like, I'm watching a TV show and it's just like they just take this really close-up selfie with like a Google Pixel like right in the camera. Yeah.

That hits different though, right? Because like I don't... It annoys me. When I see a billboard, my brain just like blacks it out. I don't actually know what was on that billboard once I pass it. You asked which one is more effective. Not if either of them are effective. I think they're both incredibly ineffective.

I think your subconscious does know, though, because it's the same thing as jingles. It's in your head in this way where when you think of, oh, what do I want for lunch at McDonald's, it's just kind of there. Yeah, I think we all underestimate how effective those are. I have no idea.

I think if you had a form in front of me and you were like, how affected are you by ads? I would just go, no, not at all. I look at the reviews. I objectively pick the better product. I don't care. But like. It's the first thing you think of when you think of that category. It's very effective.

It's really effective. Jess used to work at an advertising company. And she would be like, the of like data they have that shows how effective it is will scare you it's very effective like she'll we'll be watching a show and she'll be like oh that was product placement and i was like what are you talking about and she's like rewind it 10 seconds and it's like oh yeah they picked up like a very particular brand of phone or something i needed to i need if i need an experiment where like people watch two different versions of a movie and then after they go, all right, buy a speaker online.

And they see how many of them buy the Beats speaker, because they saw the Beats product placement. I'm sure that's been done. I want that study. You could do that by just one group watches it with the placement, one watches it without it, and then they go purchase something afterwards and see if it... Yeah. That study has to have been done, right?

Oh, yeah. I'll be looking for it afterwards on Statista or something. I encountered my first Serif TV in a really crazy product placement. I don't think it was actually like they paid to put it in there, but I saw the Serif TV for the first time in a museum. That makes sense. Not like it was on the wall showing something. Like it was the plaques said Samsung Serif TV designed by,

it was designed by a pretty famous pair of designers named the brothers. So, and it was an exhibit about their design, but that feels addy to me. It feels a little addy, but you know, it's so sad about that TV.

It's a beautiful TV with one of their worst displays that it's so true. It's it's, that's why it feels. It's an IPS LCD. make. It's so true. That's why it feels so expensive. It's an IPS LCD display, right? Yeah, it's an LCD. And they have all of these OLED TVs

and they made it a freaking LCD. Does Samsung have OLED or they're QLED, right? Well, anything that's not LCD. Okay, yeah. You know? I'm just making, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It has legs.

Has legs. That is really cool. And you can play stuff on top of it. Avatars in MetaQuest don't even have legs. Speaking of avatars. Wait, wait't even have legs speaking of avatars wait wait okay because we were so good why are you why are you stopping guys i just wanted to go ahead what did you want okay we'll go and then andrew will say it again okay okay just to round out this like rcs thing um as part of the Department of Justice filing, they note that Apple did say they were going to support RCS, but Apple only said that they were – they only committed to supporting the 2019 version of RCS with no commitment to updating as the standard evolved. and as i understand right now they are working with the gsma to develop a open sourced encryption protocol because they don't want to go through google which makes a lot of sense but again

still going to be a green bubble it's going to support the absolute basics it's not going to have any of the iMessage stuff and i I think that at this point, the green bubble versus blue bubble paradigm is already so strong that they're probably just like, all right, we'll play ball and it won't really matter. Okay, wait, I have a question about that that you just brought up. Yeah. That I just thought of when you were saying that.

So you don't think it would be a different color than green? Because what happens if you do get a text from something that's not RCS? That's a good point. You know, like what if someone, I think they'll keep it green. What's worse than green because what happens if you do get a text from something that's not rcs that's a good point you know like what if someone i think they'll get it green what's worse than green what if they're just different shades of green pink bubble would be so fun i think i think if i was guessing because we don't really know i'm guessing they will all just be green i think sms and rcs will all just still be green i think so but then how will you know it'll just be iphone or not iphone i just don't think they care.

And there will be the slight difference of like, your mom can send you a high resolution video now. It's like the RCS advantages to some extent will be there. If I send you a high res video, it'll still work. But if I'm like texting my dad who has RCS turned on and my mom who has RCS turned off, as a regular user, I'm not going to understand the difference. I don't think they care.

I'm like, how come the image is clear with you and blurry with you? Yeah. By your mom and RCS turned off. From what I understand, the reason that they made iMessage blue is because they, or the reason they made Android messages green on iPhones

is because they wanted to denote that you were paying for the SMS text. Because at the time, none of these carriers had unlimited texting and so you had to pay per text or you had a hundred per month or something like that I remember I had a hundred per month and I begged my mom every month I was like please move me into unlimited it's five dollars more and we get 200 now I was like and that counted for outbound and inbound messages oh no I remember my mom being like this is how texts, like this is what you have to pay me

this month because you went over these text messages. I was on a family plan and my sister was cooking up all the minutes and I didn't have any texts left. We get it, you guys are old. Adam, you right here with us. Yeah, you're older than me. So blue was over the internet and it was free. Yeah, so it was free. So that was the

sort of like denotion they were trying to portray to people. But I agree with you. I think they're all going to be green and I don't think they're going to have, they might have a little check mark in the bottom or something that shows that it was like internet related.

But I really think they're going to make it as bare bones as possible just to say we care about security. Well. Wait, I got one, I got one. Well, it seems like Apple's RCS rollout date is still up in the air which you could kind of say means it's a floating date

speaking it's going to be coming out with the new iPhone because it's going to be iOS 18 sorry I just ruined the whole thing Marques please complete the LEA Wait wait wait before you finish that I am hopeful that at WWDC when they release the betas of iOS 18 if it's included in the betas

That'd be nice So that would so we could start using in June would be great anyway does that still can you still segue it? Can we? Should we just say it again? Should I pause it? Well, it seems like... It seems like it's still kind of floating up in the air.

Just like... Speaking of floating, there was a recent Vision Pro OS update. Did you guys see this? Vision OS. Vision OS 1.1. Big update to uh shared experiences which is a big deal i made a video a week after vision pro came out about the things that were missing from vision pro and my first and most i think significant thing missing from

the vision pro experience which is has been in vr headsets forever is shared experiences meaning you and i both have a headset on we're in different places but we're looking at the same virtual thing at the same time very basic thing it seems like one of those things where i'm sure there are people who bought the vision pro went in and were like wait this doesn't yeah like how it seems like such an obvious thing to start with it feels like they probably were planning on it they probably knew they were going to launch this app right after the headset pretty at wwdc when they announced the vision pro one of the developer sessions said it was coming yeah showed how to implement it when it did ship so the update is most of the time when you're doing of, how do I explain this?

You've seen the personas, right? It's like in a little glass window, you kind of look at the person and it's their face and their like shoulders and they're kind of floating in the glass window. FaceTime, right? So there is now a button when you're in certain experiences to enable spatial personas.

And when you do that, the glass windows around the personas go away and the persona is a little floating ghost person. And it's surprising. Again, all the things that were good about FaceTime are now good about spatial FaceTime, which is the person's audio sounds like it's coming from the place in the room where it is.

And when you look at people, you're now all in a room together. So I did this, this first demo where I was on FaceTime with two other people and the person one was to my right and the person two was to my left. And when they looked at each other, they looked like they were looking at each other and not at me. And when one of them looked at me, I was looking at her. And when I looked at the other one, they, you know what I mean? Like it was spatially accurate yeah heights were also correctly represented so if we all stood up the headset can see how far from the ground we are i could see that i was the tallest one in the group because i was looking down at the other ghost i mean spatial persona um yeah it worked and you could you could

sort of enable this in a couple different experiences there were several apps that they had beta versions of that would uh allow us to play with this so jig space which is the one we've all seen with the f for formula one car you could pull the engine off and you can look at the wheels and stuff like that jig space had a demo where they supported the spatial spatial personas right off the bat i like ghosts let's keep calling it ghosts you support the ghosts and right away it was exactly the way cleo and i described it in her video, which was, let me show you this. You see the object. I move the object.

You see the way I moved it. If I wanted to point the engine at you, I would literally take it and manipulate it in space and point it at you, and you would see it pointed at you. Yeah. So all of that interaction with objects in 3D space is starting to roll out now. They had, I think, it was like one or two Apple apps, like the Keynote app and JigSpace and one or two other things.

Apple TV. You can watch videos in a virtual theater where you're in the middle seat and the people behind you have a further back seat, all that stuff. You could walk around the theater. It was cool. So that's new.

That's finally, you can do the thing that you were doing oh you can do environments as well right so i did this thing where i played chess uh with uh the group and there was three people and we were all sitting around a chess table or no cards sorry we were playing cards that's three player chess sorry multiplayer chess but four four people all sat around a table we were playing a card game we turned on the environment and so if we all turned on the environment at once we'd all be in the same environment we could all look around and see the same things so we all saw the same board i played my cards they all saw it then the next person played their cards there i'll saw it it just it's it's the way we yeah have been doing their virtual cards for years yeah but i thought you said you were playing chess i did chess with one other person oh but then i did cards with four people i was like

yeah yeah four person chess is not yeah four person chess with cards it's a weird game they need like that that is real now board games game simulator with that which i'm pretty sure is available and of probably quest already and probably it is it is it's been around for a very long time that seems to be the cool stuff in like vr that would be really fun is like a bunch of board games because like right still playing chess i could see being fun cards feels like one of those gimmicky things like look we can do special ghosts or whatever they're also quite limited on what card games you can play because the games that i play most with groups are like Speed or Egyptian Rat Slap. And those games are games that require

like rapid movements in front of each other. Yeah, this wouldn't work as well. That wouldn't work that well. But I will say, my two biggest takeaways from having a demo of it were one, the ghosts look... Bad? Better.

Well, they look okay. I mean, the hands are much more prominent so you know how you could see like hands in front of your face when you did a facetime through the glass window the hands are like always visible now so it kind of looks like a like a wee character you've seen the wee characters or the hands are always there and then the body is kind of floating you sound like someone who like just gave a friend a present and they open it and they're not very excited and so you're trying to explain why it's really cool and they're just not buying it at all.

I guess if you compare this to what I was just doing in the Quest, it is obviously a very different experience. But the other version of that is the Quest has much more massive, immersive environments to move around in and I still don't really have that on vision pro yet haven't seen that yet obviously having a chessboard is cool in front of you everyone can interact with

it obviously being in a theater where everyone watches the same video is pretty cool yeah but having like a huge map where you can run around and play games and all this stuff is not a thing on vision pro yet yeah here's a question i have and maybe you still haven't used it or either of them quite enough but like i'm still interested in the if the avatar is realistic versus like specifically an avatar and like what feels better especially because the realistic avatars in the vision pro right now clearly still have a lot of work to do that aren't overly realistic beta yeah so like is that does that feel more real and more like fun or like if you just know that you can't get that realistic to have your own personal avatar that looks kind of like

you but it's clearly a cartoon yeah is that more like immersive because you're just in the whole world like that it's a really good question i think that's exactly where it comes down to taste like when i look at the the apple persona especially in the glass window i can see how it feels realistic like a real conversation but when you take the glass window away like the side of your head just fades into clear and your shoulders fade into clearing your hair fades into clear and if you if you look away from me I just see like a ghost outline of you with floating hands so it doesn't look realistic which means I look at it I'm like this has a long way to go but it's if it's a cartoon it doesn't have any of those clear fadeaway downsides I didn't scan the top or the back of my

head but now it's a cartoon so it's not it's it is further along because you can see more of me more often in the cartoon but it's also not as far along you know i think sometimes in vr though it's really easy to be like it can be immersive without being realistic and like if the avatar matches the environment you're with and once you're in there for like 10 20 minutes and then you're in there for a while that's when you have that like i took the headset off and it's like whoa yeah i i was really into that and that's what i could see it being more immersive despite being less realistic it's also a use case thing too like immersive versus realistic in gaming i want immersive but in a a meeting over a keynote i don't't know. I kind of just want,

like if I'm doing it, if I'm doing a business meeting, which I think is kind of what Apple actually thinks some people are going to do with this. And I'm showing you a thing on a presentation. If it's a cartoon, it's like, I'm not trying to take that seriously. But is it more distracting when it's like, it's a cartoon, you're expecting a cartoon versus it's david but the left half of his face is missing because he keeps turning to the right and like his ears are like glued to his head and like he's fuzzy all over like sometimes i feel like if you're trying too hard to be realistic and it's not that feels way less immersive meta leaned really hard into the cartoons and i just think that that didn't age very well and it just

feels it makes it very hard for them to be like uh serious this is a business like kind of thing i totally agree with that and i'm not one way or the other but i i don't know which one would feel better so you know what i think the main challenges is apple wants the scan process to be as easy as possible for as many people as possible. But I think if you were to do like a much more detailed, like two minute long scan process, you could have an amazing persona.

Kind of like the way, like some people will like set up like a mirrorless camera with a USB cable into their computer to be like their webcam. And that's a small fraction of people. And most people will never want to do that. But for the people who actually want to put in the work, it can look way better.. And that's a small fraction of people and most people will never want to do that. But for the people who actually want to put in the work,

it can look way better. I think if there is some fraction of people who are like, I'm going to give a work presentation, I need the high res like good scan. I'm not going to do the 12 second scan that Apple makes you do for FaceTime. I'm going to do the big high res full torso scan so I can like have a good looking realistic persona. I think that if you buy the vision pro

at an apple store they should have like a setup and take it out and do this help you do the scan with like studio lights and stuff they should do that well like what you're talking about does not exist right yeah this is a made-up thing that i think would be nice the best scan possible with lights i still think would look sketchy it's it's definitely better in this update than it was originally like it's it's better at the hair cutouts and stuff like that yeah and the textures of the face are slightly improved it has a long way to go yeah for sure um i i wanted to note something about the the presence of the ghosts or spatial personas i do think that this is a much bigger deal that this is finally coming out than people sort of realize because before it felt like

there was pretty much literally nothing to do with the vision pro except maybe like watch a movie that felt like a good or meaningful or better experience and the arc that this is moving towards with the spatial prospronos is actually feeling the presence of like being in a room with someone and doing something with someone i think is like the biggest value proposition of this because already people talk about the metaverse right tim sweeney loves to talk about the fact that kids now get on fortnight and it's it's kind of like they're in a room together right they're all on discord they're all playing fortnight you're going to a concert together and the whole thing about that is you're

doing it with your friends but there's not the the limit of presence in a fortnight concert is that you're all on discord together but the closer you can get to like, this is my space. Someone's sitting right next to me. We're doing this thing together. I think it's really awesome. Because if you're across the world and it really feels like there's a person like right next to you, that is incentive for me to put on a Vision Pro and actually hang out with somebody.

I would rather do that than just get on Discord with them and talk to them over that. Or even the Quest, if you have a cartoon version of them. Right. Even though you're in the same place, it doesn't feel like you're hanging out. It doesn't feel real, yeah. They're still in the uncanny valley with the scans and everything, and that needs to get better for sure. But I think that for the future of Vision Pro,

and going from this headset doesn't make sense to buy at all to I can see where they're going with this, where this will be incredible, and people actually might want to buy it. Makes a lot of sense. Also, one cool thing about the, if you're using Apple TV, which I hope that they enable this in other streaming apps, but they probably won't, I don't know. Something that's cool is if you are watching a movie together or a show together or something, even though you see them sitting, standing right next to you, like, or sitting right next to you watching the show, the TV will be perfectly aligned for both of you. So if you're both in the movie theater and your character is like sitting at the direct center of the movie theater, even if you see your friends sitting to the right to them they're in the direct center yeah so you always get the best experience even when you're hanging out with your friends it's kind of cool like come in late and you're like oh i got the bad seat again for the movie

you're always late to the face one time i watched a movie in the theater and we booked tickets at the very last minute and we were literally first row and it was a massive screen it was like that name of the guys painful yeah do not buy that ticket yeah um anyway i yeah i think it kind of plays into theo's thesis for her video which was this is a teleportation machine and i think that's going to be the most valuable value proposition did you say cleo or theo oh you said Theo's thesis I said Theo's thesis Cleo's thesis sorry Theo Cleo's thesis about it being a teleportation

machine I think that I can see us getting there slowly which is cool the fidelity of everything that's not the ghosts is pretty good yeah like the audio yeah the spatial the objects that we're manipulating in front of each other like that all that the ghosts is pretty good yeah like the audio yeah that sounds a little cool the the objects that we're manipulating in front of each other like that all that stuff is

like really good yeah so it's just the ghosts they're a little and ironically apple being super obsessive about things being exactly as they were being would be in real life like for example having to like pick up a window and carry it with you that obsessiveness is annoying but i think that they're trying to program into people's heads that this is a real object except that it's not you know yeah i still wish that you could pin windows in front of you but that was the second biggest point in our video so it has to be coming yeah it has to be i hope so that is great anyway i'm i'm gonna keep using that we'll keep playing with it but of course we have a lot more to talk about,

so we'll take a quick break. And before we do that, we should do a little bit of trivia. Trivia, dude. So last week on our autofocus channel, we put out our VinFast 8 review. VF8. Excuse me. Yes, VinFast, VinFast 8 review. VF8. Excuse me. Yes.

VinFast, VinFast 8. Yes. Did we confirm that's what it stands for? Yep. I mean, what else would it stand for? I don't know. Very fast. Jinx.

You owe me a soda, but I don't drink soda, so you can give me something else. Ellis Irvin. Ah, there we go. I got you. All right. How was it? Ellis Irvin. Ah, there we go.

I got you. All right. So in doing some research on VinFast, we learned that VinFast's parent company, the VinGroup, is a massive, massive company. So naturally, which of the following is not a real VinFast subsidiary? VinGroup subsidiary. Thank you. VinGroup subsidiary vin group subsidiary thank you vin group subsidiary a vin home a real estate development

company oh my god b vin mech a chain of seven hospitals and two health clinics c vin university a higher education institution that is partnered with two iv League universities.

I really hope not. Or D, Vin Cha, a chain of tea houses housed inside their Vinmart Plus convenience stores. Epic. Wait. That's real. One of those is real or one of them is fake? One of them is fake. Three of them are real. That's real. One of those is real or one of them is fake? One of them is fake. Three of them are real.

That's awesome. Okay. Dang. Wow. We'll be right back. Thank you. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed?

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The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. Not sure what to get the young people on your list? The latest phone? Sneakers? Video games? Get the one thing they need now more than ever. Give their feelings a place to go.

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We have an EV to talk about. An EV we've talked about before sort of and got a lot of things wrong about it but we'll get everything right about it today okay the xiaomi su7 oh first off it's not an suv despite the name sounding exactly like an suv yeah it's a car it's a car it's a very good looking we've all seen it yeah it looks it's a mclaren porsche model 3 i think it looks great which i'm fine with bro i think it looks awesome i don't care if it doesn't have the me i can't get over the xiaomi logo on the front of it just because of

how much i associate it with that logo to phones yeah and it's weird seeing that on a car do you not like how it looks i know that's like the logo i'm i agree with you on the logo it's like the boot screen from the xiaomi phones i love that you like it on the phone on the car yeah i do i i think we're the only people who might like not really like it because it just feels because we're in this i like it because like crazy people make concepts that of these things all the time and it feels like a concept that came to life it feels like apple car Yeah, would the Apple Car have an Apple logo right on the front of it? I think so.

Oh, definitely. I think so. That would be strange. Yeah. That would be really strange. Yeah. But so the Xiaomi S27 orders went out this past week. In China.

In China. 90,000 people put an $800 deposit down in the first 24 hours of the orders being open. Refundable or non-refundable? I'm not 100% sure. It said deposit, though, which feels very much different than a reservation. Oh, interesting. So I read deposit and assumed deposit.

But even refundable, $800 is way more than the $100 refundable one, even if it is refundable. And $90,000 in 24 hours is pretty pretty crazy yeah um it's still going to be about seven months before deliveries start but they had a big event where some people got to go actually check the car out um and someone named telescope i believe their channel is did a pretty cool video showing all of it um i highly suggest going to watch it if you want to see what the car looks like it looks really cool inside and outside and he had some great things to say about it but it also is a review unit at a event not actually living day-to-day with it

and seven months before it comes out and seven months before it comes out but it is an actual car that multiple people were driving around so it seems like we're much closer to it um i guess there's kind of a couple things i wanted to talk about some in the video and some but let's just go over the specs for everything first um because i think we have like the more overview of all the exact specs of everything so there's gonna be three models the standard the pro and the max it's a phone yeah i didn't even put that together yeah it's a's a phone. That's very funny. Yeah. There's a lot of phone relevancies here, which makes total sense. So the standard comes in at around 30,000.

Rear wheel drive, 400 volt architecture, 295 horsepower, 73.6 kilowatt hour battery, approximately 343 miles of CLTC range. approximately 343 miles of CLTC range. My calculations from that, based on the EPA generally being 35, or CLTC is 35% more than EPA, so I tried to do the calculations for all this, would be about 250 miles. Yeah, CLTC is China's version of the EPA.

Which looks great on paper, maybe. Bigger numbers. Yeah. The pro version, 34,000, rear wheel drive, upgraded to an 800-volt architecture, 94.3 kilowatt-hour battery. This is the one with the most range because it's single motor and the bigger battery. 515 miles of CLTC range, which is about 375 miles epa which is still a great number good number um max version that's where you get 504 miles of cltc range which is about 370 miles of epa range 663 horsepower zero to 100 kilometers an hour which is about zero to 62.78 seconds you look i. Don't believe it?

Claimed specs are always a funny thing. Claimed specs, for sure. Okay. Observation number one. There is three versions, standard, pro, and max. If I use Tesla as a precedent, they're going to probably start with the most expensive ones and then work their way down. Very interesting on that, which I have in here,

is they are saying that the cheaper versions are actually going to be the ones shipping quicker. Hold on. I have the actual dates in here. Bonkers. The cheaper model, which is between 30 and 34,000 should be arriving in 18 to 21 weeks. And the more expensive one at 41,000 is in about 30 weeks. So we probably won't see that till almost beginning of next year. Okay. That is really interesting. I like that. So we probably won't see that till almost beginning of next year. Okay. That is really interesting. I like that.

Observation number two, the cheap one has a 400 volt architecture and the more expensive one has an 800 volt architecture. Why? I don't know what that means. I would hope you would explain that. Yeah. Well, that's just different hardware, but also a whole different development process for both. Like I would imagine if you did all the R&D for an 800 volt architecture, you just put it in all your cars. different hardware but also a whole different development process for both like i would i

would imagine if you did all the r&d for an 800 volt architecture you just put it in all your cars but more expensive it's expensive to develop and i think it's less materials to actually install so i i'm not an expert obviously but to me if you spent all the money to develop an interval architecture why also spend the money to develop a 400-volt architecture to put in the cheaper car when it's just, I don't know. That one's a little confusing to me. I've never seen that before. I've never seen one car with two different architectures, 800-volt and 400-volt. Is it possible that they're all 800, but they limit it to 400?

I just saw it gets the update to 800-volt. I think there's a hardware thing about i know zero about nothing there's a hardware component to this okay which is why i would say no i do want to look real quick it said mentioned something about using byd byd batteries is that the manufacturer byd is a gigantic ev manufacturer in china. They passed Tesla in sales. Yes. Could that possibly be it? Are they using? Well, there's the battery and there's the wires around that, the drivetrain, everything in between.

Like there's just a lot of wiring in a car. And I've just never seen that before. So that's stood out to me. I feel like that's notable. I do not know enough about that. Yeah yeah to say if it's notable or not number three is the specs for the price seem incredible and if they deliver on a 42 000 car that does 0 to 60 in 2.78 seconds and has 660 horsepower and 370 miles of range. That is unbelievably good. Just as far as specs on paper,

nothing about design, build quality, software, just those specs for that price is incredible if they deliver that. It will probably cost more to ship one from China to here and it'll probably cost more to buy one here, but that's also standing out to me on paper. I am also assuming that all of these prices are the start of that trim because obviously there's a bunch out to me on paper. I am also assuming that all of these prices are the start of that trim.

Because obviously there's a bunch of things you can add, even if you start at a specific trim. But still, yeah. I mean, these prices, in all the articles that I read, were very specifically mentioning about how it's undercutting Model 3. And that seems to be their big. And if you're thinking about a company that could do it, it's probably one of the largest tech companies like they have the money to do this they're not this brand new company starting up and only doing this they make literally everything that has an on off switch yeah it's funny when you look at some i think a lot of people don't realize how big these companies are like yes they're new to vehicles but they're huge companies. Like VinFast, when we reviewed the VF8 on Autofocus,

they're new-ish to making vehicles, but they are a gigantic company. They have music festivals. They have an enormous amount of things they already do. So yeah, this Xiaomi car will have the benefit of, I guess also with 90,000 pre-orders, they know they're going to have some volume. So that's good.

Do you know if there's special Xiaomi phone integration? Yes, I know a little bit about it, which is one of the very funny things I found out about this. So like what is cool about this is not only just like, like we're looking at a different level of ecosystem here now of actually having a car that is part of your ecosystem. And I know we mostly talk about here as Apple has the best, but like in China, Xiaomi phones are wildly popular

and not just their phones, but like potentially everything, like I said, with an on and off switch. So it could be in your ecosystem and it connects to everything. The funny thing is inside the car, there's tablets on the back and one of the trims of each of the driver the front seat so the back seat has it apparently they're ipads the guy said this the video i watched the

telescope said there were ipads and that you could connect an iphone to and have it what i thought that was so funny okay specifically the tablets in the back yeah should we be happy about this i don't know i thought the voice correct is it is it uh um because if this was just like the whole i mean we're just talking about the antitrust thing where like only apple watch works with iphone works with okay yeah something i was gonna say like xiaomi is a massive company in china with a massive ecosystem and they do have integration with other xiaomi products but they're not like it's not the same thing where like you can only use this xiaomi product with this other xiaomi product generally they're like you can bake it into your ecosystem in any way you want because it does feel extraordinarily easy to

just picture this in your head being a xiaomi tablet and yeah the only things that work because they make tablets yeah so that so why aren't they why what i don't know it's very funny especially because like iphones are not very popular in china where this is mostly going to be sold um there are some other cool things inside of the actual car the one thing i thought was the coolest is the touch screen in the front for the driver's side that like we all are aware that touch screens are becoming super popular and whether we like it or not they have a magnetic attachment that you can get in your trim that adds physical buttons to the bottom of the oh the thing so if you want physical buttons there shall me or that's

an attachment for the touch screen that you can pay extra i think that's cool that's cool that should be in every single car with a touch screen i you know what i hope this car comes out i think it looks like we were talking about probably last time we saw this car it looks like a porsche it looks 70 porsche 20 mclaren 10 like audi and tesla and one percent of xiaomi phone and it yeah it's got the logo and it's got look if they can deliver on those specs to price that is going to be really interesting yeah and i'm not shocked that they got a bunch of deposits on something it probably is never going to come to the states it's also very possible i mean it's like we probably won't see it because it'll be popular over there there's tons of cars that are popular in other countries that we're just probably never gonna see xiaomi doesn't sell that many phones over here so like

i don't know why they would try and now bring something that's way way harder to ship over this is a decent size market i mean the china market is obviously way bigger for evs but you know they might want to ship some stuff here europe who knows i would love to try it out um this video by telescope i think the channel was um it's pretty good you should watch it he said it it drives really well um and that it like it does remind him a lot of a Model 3, just at a different price range. It looks amazing. The interior looks nicer.

I wish that we had, you know, if Apple just allowed super apps in the United States, maybe we would have a Xiaomi car in the United States. How much did the OJ pay you to say that? A Pixel car? A Google car, Google logo. And then they would stop updating it after two months? Yeah, and then the messaging app would get renamed after a couple more months.

The car would get renamed. They would stop making the car after three months. It would be. It would get leaked. It would be one product. It would get leaked to Oblivion. They'd start selling it at Best Buy before it even gets announced.

It would happen, I promise. I would love it. Well, that's a good place to wrap this up. We will keep our eyes on the SU7. Bad name. Bad name. SU7? That's an SUV.

Is that how you say it? SU7? Yeah. I assume so. SU7? It's not an SUV. It's a sedan. It's a sedan.

That's very true. I think it's a confusing name. Yeah. Other than that, I like it. It's beautiful. I was thinking about this recently. There's a lot of weird names out there of like evs like kia ev9 if you think about it is the electric vehicle 9 that's kind of weird the vinfast vf8 what does vf stand for

fast this is a vinfast vinfast 8 what is that like there's just some weird names just thinking about i don't know yeah keeping the tech vibe alive terrible naming i do think like razor weirdly enough started doing this they started doing this a while ago but they just name it like razor blade 15 2024 i don't mind that i think that's a good way to do it making actual amount that year and it's this one i just googled it su does stand for something oh super user you're close super super ultra so you weren't that you're very close speed ultra speed ultra su stands for speed ultra and seven stands for the market segment so market segment the seven is like the size of it like how kia does EV6, EV7.

I don't think Kia does a good job of that either, though, because the 6 is smaller than the 5, but the 9 is bigger than both of them. Kia is out of order. The EV9 is the big one, the EV6 and the EV5. I have to imagine at this point there's one person that... IONIQ 5. Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry.

That's what I meant, IONIQ. IONIQ 6 is smaller than IONIQ 5. So maybe they're just going backwards? Yeah, well Elon just named his car sexy, so... Yay. We're out here. Speaking of random fun facts, we should do trivia.

Trivia, dude. So first, quick update on the score. Marquez with 6.quez with six. Andrew with five. Hanging in there. David with one, two, carry the one, four. Not bad considering I was in Japan for a few weeks.

That's close. You're just going to say that every week? When he's winning, he's like, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. What was David's last count? While David was gone. First question. Thanks. Which of these is not a real Google product?

Google Thesaurus, Google Compare, Google Showtimes, or Google Trips? I'm just going to read some other ones while we wait. Google Now. RIP. YouWeave. RIP. What? Google Block Search API.

Google Code. Google Earth Browser Plugin. RIP. Google Moderator. RIP. Google Helpouts. What is TimeFull? TimeFull was an iOS to-do list and calendar application. Oh, God.

Don't say those words in this room. You know what's about to happen. Wait, I need to find this. I need to find old APK. Flip him and read. All right. David, what did you put? I put V and then dash dinosaur.

So, thesaurus. Thes dash dinosaur. So thesaurus. Thesaurus? Yeah, thesaurus. Yeah. Okay. That's correct. Is it right? Oh, I needed the buzz.

I said compare. Nope. I also said compare. Nope. That's a real one. I thought I used compare. Okay. So all the other products are ways that they can make money.

Fair. You have ads in there. Hey, hey, hey. They had no shot of making money on Google Magenta. What was it? It's different from Fusion. Google Magenta was four Ableton Live plugins that used their AI to generate short musical phrases. I do remember Google Tri so that's 100%

sound was like something that one i was hoping that actually existed remember but kind of like doubt yourself i used it once for a trip that i did so now you can just ask your rabbit i've been thinking of making that joke since my first yeah they they kind of got rid of it because they started bundling all the features of google Trips just like into Gmail, basically. Or just straight into Google. I used to use Google Trips for everything. It was awesome. Yeah.

And Google Travel, too. That's still there. Google Travel, yeah. Google Flights is still a thing? Yeah, for now. Oh, God. They did add Google Flight to Google Flights late last year. They added pricing protection.

You know what that means? So if the price goes down between when you book through Google Flights and when the flight is they give you your money back. Really?

Yeah which is really cool. Anytime they update something with a feature that means it's close to done. That means someone just realized it exists.

Yep exactly. So what did you do this week? I updated Google Flights. What's that? Kill that. Wait.

We're spending money on you updating that stop we're cutting you and the products yeah deep cut second question actually before the second question i just wanted to say lots of people reached out uh via youtube comments last week and said guys why are ellis and adam still sharing a microphone and i just thought we'd provide a little bit of like explanation. It's because we haven't really ever addressed it. No, it's actually because Adam and I are both part of an ancient prophecy that says if we both share a microphone for 300 podcast episodes, a healing rain will actually wash over the world.

New Jersey. So we are actually protecting all of you. You're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome, everybody. Anyway, for the real second question. It's raining too much outside. I'm getting you another mic. VinFast is owned by a giant company called the VinGroup,

which has their hands in lots of different baskets i'm going to read you four vin group subsidiaries one of which is fake you have to tell me which one first vin home a real estate development company b vin mech a chain of seven hospitals and two health clinics. C, VinUniversity, a higher education institution partnered with two Ivy League universities. Or D, VinCha, a chain of tea houses housed inside their VinMart Plus convenience stores. their Vinmart Plus convenience stores. I already forgot the name of the one that I'm writing, so I'm just going to... YouTube for PS Vita.

What? Glass Explorer Edition. Huge fan. RIP. Word Lens. I love... Google Schemer. Google Schemer. word lens i love google schemer google schemer oh my gosh oh my god what do we got all right we all put oh you all put vin university vin university is real they are

with cornell and the university of pennsylvania is it me? Vin Meck is real. You can go to a VinFast owned hospital. Another guess? Is it the Tea House? The Tea House is fake. I made it up, but they do have a chain of convenience stores called VinMart Plus. Yeah, I don't know. I thought that no U.S. university would ever

partner. It's not U.S. It is. Two U.S. Ivy League universities have partnered with them. I thought... Wait. I was smart. Really? Yes.

Money talks, baby. Who cares about education? Which Ivy Leagues? I just said Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Yeah, so anyway, thanks for watching and listening and for learning with us. Next week's trivia questions, I've been promised, are tech-related. That's crazy. I know.

Mine was tech-related. Both of ours were tech-related. It's crazy. I know. Mine was tech related. Both of ours were tech related. It's crazy. I heard from a source. No, this is slander. Either way, we'll catch you guys very soon. Next week. See you then.

Peace. Bye. Wave Firm was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnered with Fox Media Podcast Network and our intro music was created by Vane Silver. You know one thing that makes me really irrationally angry? When people say I'm going down there and it's north of them.

That is irrational. I am on your side.