Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Our Early 2021 Rumor Roundup! A Tesla Model S Refresh? Could We Lose LG or Huawei Smartphones? A Macbook Pro SD Card Slot Revival?

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

We have a ton of 2021 rumors to catch up on as January comes to a close. In typical Waveform fashion, we read some very faint tech rumors and then wildly elaborate on them. The aforementioned rumors include: Tesla Model S/X refreshes, LG and Huawei smartphone deaths, Macbook Pro's resurrection of some old favorites, and Sony's new $2500 smartphone. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Tesla Refresh: https://bit.ly/3t84maY iPhone Mini Sales: https://bit.ly/39r9zD1 LG Phones Halting: https://bit.ly/2NL3usQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit superstore.ca to get started. All right. Good morning. Welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcasts. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And today we've got a lot of tech stuff. A lot. And that's, I mean, it's mainly because last week we spent all our time talking to Mr. Beast, all about YouTube, all about that sort of stuff. We had a lot of good feedback on that. You guys really enjoyed it. And I, like I said, I want to do a lot more of that type of stuff, but that means it's been two weeks since we've talked about tech in the news and lots has happened. Yeah. It just seems like also a very busy two weeks considering the first two weeks of the year, we're just not much of anything,

but everything's popping up from all, all aspects of tech. It's definitely usually quiet, but we had, we had like a big camera week in there and we have, we have like a whole bunch of random, one of the things we're not talking about is the stock market and everything going on with it and respective subreddits. Yeah. Even though it has a lot to do with tech, I don't think we're qualified to really talk about it. It does have to do with tech. It has a lot of characters in tech, but I'm not trying to get into the weeds of financial advice right now. Maybe another podcast is what I'm trying to say.

But we have plenty to talk about. I think we should probably just lead with tesla yeah i have tesla just first because i know no matter where i put it in the script you will talk about it first so definitely get to it so it's funny though because i had like this big you've been telling me about why you think there was going to be a model s and x refresh yeah And it was like, it was really hard to test drive them. They were like upping the sales out of everything. They were, you couldn't see them in showrooms anymore. And I had this big list of rumors as to why we thought it might happen.

And then like an hour ago, it just all got unveiled. So, well, so there's a, there's a lead up to it. The Model S design is, it's like 10 plus years old at this point. Like fundamentally the design of the car is unchanged since the beginning. Big vertical touchscreen. There's one, right? So there's one small outside refresh. The hood.

Or the front grille. The nose cone. That was an exterior look change. Is that what you call it? A nose cone? Nose cone, yeah. I've always just called it the grille, but obviously it's not. It isn't an actual grille. So it went from a plastic nose cone to more metal okay but uh the autopilot version

has changed but really fundamentally like the inside has always been that vertical screen it's always been the same doors same door handles same shape so they've never really changed the model s and in car years that's a long time let alone tech years that's forever yeah so the rumors have been building for a long time and we kind of were like, I think that this earnings call on Wednesday, we're recording this on Wednesday night, just so you know.

Yeah. I have plans to possibly make a video about all this. But we're recording this on Wednesday night and during the earnings call, they update the site, they go over all the stuff and they drop the new Model S and X. And yeah, it's something.

There is a lot to it. I guess we'll just, I'm just going to go down the list. This obviously isn't a video podcast yet, but I do have a lot to say about the aesthetics and the things that they've changed, right? Maybe I'll use this template as like a guide for the video when I make it. We'll see. Yeah. I almost debated telling you to just throw a camera up here and just take the clips out and turn it into the YouTube video also. So right off the bat, outside changes are pretty small. They turned all the chrome black, kind of like they did with Model 3 and Model Y.

Every single car company do that. Please. Stop with the chrome. I think Toyota's been doing it a bunch with just maybe not even like their door handles and window trim, but they've been doing it with their emblems and like the wording and names on the back and it looks so good on every single color and chrome looks terrible please stop yeah chrome starting to feel old basically starting to feel a little bit outdated so it's gone from the car i think maybe just the logo is the last chrome piece but that's that's pretty sweet and then

there's a little bit of a different shape up front, a little bit of a more simple grill at the bottom for the front splitter and some different fog lights. I think I read people were saying it looks like the air intake vents are a little bigger probably to help battery cooling. Yep, a little bit better battery performance. And I think that leads us beautifully into the new specs before I talk about the interior.

So it's just going to be three models. Model S, and I'm going to focus on Model S, even though Model X also got this refresh. It basically doesn't exist to Tesla. They still make it kind of because they have to, but it's kind of a nightmare. Yeah, there's not a lot of attention around the X. All this is about the S. I'm just talking about the S. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of who's the...

I feel like the X still gets a lot in the vlogger community. There's a couple out there. It just seems... David Dobrik, Jake Paul, Logan Paul. I don't know. It's the Doors. The Doors feel very... Or Jalen Smith.

Jada. Jada. What's his son's name? Now you got me thinking. Smith. I don't know. But yeah. Jaden Smith.

Jaden Smith has one. There's a small market for the for the x yeah but the model s is where it's at so there's really just three versions now and by the way i'm gonna say overarching for this whole thing is simplicity tesla's simplifying their manufacturing simplifying their lineup of vehicles so there's three there's a long range model s long-range Model S, a plaid Model S, and a plaid plus Model S. So Model S long-range has 412-mile range, 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds, dual motors. And it's a pretty standard look.

That's like what probably most people getting a Model S would get. Then the performance version is your plaid Model S, which goes directly to triple motors. It drops a little bit of range, 390 miles, but it goes 200 mile an hour top speed and zero to 60 in 1.99 seconds. I'm going to say that one more time, just in case you didn't hear it. time just in case you didn't hear it this several thousand pound four-door family car hatchback does zero to 60 in 1.99 seconds i feel like you need to like take a an advanced driver's test in order to get something that can go under two seconds to pilot this thing yeah yeah i've yeah every time i think about like performance cars on the street i'm like i see regular people driving under two seconds. To pilot this thing, yeah. Yeah, I've, yeah.

Every time I think about performance cars on the street, I'm like, I see regular people driving cars poorly all the time, and I just get a little bit worried about giving them that much power. There's a whole YouTube rabbit hole of great like Mustang car meets of people just like wrecking it into the median, pulling out. Yeah, I mean, I guess the good thing is

this is all-wheel drive, this is the safest car in the world. This is a car that tries really hard not to crash itself. But yeah, a lot of power here. But just so you know, that's starting at 112,990, which is 10,000 more than the previous Model S. And then Plaid Plus is 1,100 horsepower versus the 1,020 of Plaid. Zero to 60. They're a little more vague with this,

under 1.99 seconds. So it'll be faster. We don't know how much faster. It's still triple motors. And it'll do the quarter mile in less than nine seconds, which would make it the quickest zero to 60 and the quickest quarter mile acceleration in any production car ever.

And again, this is not yet the Roadster. This is just the spec. But the most interesting spec to me of Plaid Plus is it's still triple motor and there's no new battery info, but it goes 520 plus miles on a charge. Wait, what was the long range again? 460? Long range was 412. Plaid was down to 390 and then Plaid Plus was was 520 So this leads me to believe that plaid plus is a different battery technology. Yeah, do you think it's the one? Because that sounds around the specs that Roadster was supposed to have right exactly Roadsters got a 620 plus quoted mile range And on top of that, this is the one other thing. That's really interesting. I'll just touch on the X for a second I don't think this is happening to the X because if you go to the Model X on Tesla's site, you can see you have the long range version, which has a 360 mile range,

and then the Plaid version, which has a 340 mile range. So there's no Plaid Plus. So whatever's happening with Plaid Plus is, I guess, this ultra high-end, super premium powertrain and battery system that only the high-end Model S and, I guess, eventually Roadster are going to get. It sounds like it's just a Roadster with a Model S body. It's a four-door Roadster. It's a four-door, two-door. Yeah, no, it's a crazy car. I'm prefacing all of this with, I don't need it. I'm not going to get it. I'm going to wait till the Roadster, but also this is absolutely insane what they've done. Now, really the most important part is the inside of the car that they've updated. So like I said, simplicity's sake, they've finally switched to the horizontal touchscreen inside,

which I think looks pretty good. It's like a little more well integrated with the car. It doesn't stick out as much as model three. Yeah. I think what I like, I like that, but I like that they kept the screen in front of you like a regular odometer, like they have in the Model S already. Because like 3 and Y, I'm fine with that screen there. The only thing is it's a little weird that you have to look over to see your odometer. But the fact that you have it, it's a better spot there, and you still have your regular driving odometer, which I think is fantastic. And speaking of that steering wheel, oh boy. This is the odometer, which I think is fantastic. And speaking of that steering wheel,

oh boy, this is the interesting one. And I think this is where a lot of people are polarized because this interior looks very similar minus the steering wheel. If you look on their site, it's a yoke style steering wheel and it's almost kind of squared off. So it's like the bottom half of a square steering wheel.

And then there's a bunch of buttons on the steering wheel itself. And there are no blinker stalks no windshield wiper stalks nothing behind the wheel no paddles no nothing yeah let's paint a picture here though because i've never heard the term yoke style and i only understand it because i saw the picture right before so picture fighter jet uh handles like that yoke style so there's no top just saw the top off a steering wheel it's like rectangular and doesn't have a yeah top part so yeah i'm just like i was just trying to think about using it in general yeah it seems so cool for like straight line and like minor turns on

a highway but exactly turning around in a parking lot or like a tight driveway or something seems miserable on it yeah i this is one of those things where I'm imagining it and I'm imagining it really poorly. And I think I'm just going to have to try it because as of right now, I don't even think this is legal to ship yet. I think you technically have to have an enclosed steering wheel and then people, or at least you have to ship it with one and then people can modify it later. I think that's technically the rule here in the US. I don't know the rules internationally, but I've never seen a car actually ship with a yoke steering wheel before. So, again, this is all TBD.

We'll see it when this happens. But I think I'm going to have to give it a shot because it's really weird. I'm sure we'll find someone with it if you don't order it. And I say that like you're not going to be taking delivery by the time this episode is out somehow. I really don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I'm just waiting for the Slack message tonight of like went back on my yeah guys remember what i said

like 20 minutes and no i got it um yeah it's estimated delivery is march if you do happen to get one so if you do get one and you're a listener of the podcast and you're in the northeast i mean i would love to make a video trying to drive the thing kyle connor is gonna go he said he wasn't gonna do cannonball but like he just did it and now this is coming out it's pretty sweet i i just i i have a full video in the works i'm pretty sure about all of my reactions to model s plaid and the refresh but that's just my general surface overview thoughts are it looks pretty sweet they've simplified it they've done a lot of the stuff that we expected, which is getting it closer to model three, but they've kept the upgrades and hashtag I don't need it. All right. Back to things apparently people don't need. Next step, iPhone mini.

Oh yeah. All right. I have to talk about this one because i thought it was super interesting and two because i thought i made we make a lot of like predictions and calls on this podcast we do and this is one i was very confident in that i could not have been more wrong about so what was your prediction and then what happened i said, when the iPhone 12 line came out, I said, iPhone 12 mini is going to sell the best out of all of them. Now, already when I was reading this, I've realized my grave mistake.

So my initial thought process behind it was, iPhone 12 mini, cheapest iPhone. I don't know about tech. I walk into my carrier store. Please give me iPhone. I don't want to spend that walk into my carrier store please give me iphone i don't want to spend that much money iphone mini hooray i forgot about iphone sd like a and i'm like really embarrassed to admit that um so it didn't it didn't sell very well in fact iphone 12 series accounted for 76 percent of total iPhone sales in the United States

in October and November. iPhone mini only accounted for 6% of those sales. It's funny, we never get like actual real numbers numbers, but that's a hard number. That was from macrumors.com, which I trust. I believe, because Apple just had an earnings call. I haven't had time, I've been working on videos, so I haven't actually listened to the earnings call,

but that probably was where it came from. Yeah. So 6% of all the iPhone 12s were the mini. That's not very many. That is not a lot at all. iPhone 12 sold the best, by the way, out of all that. Got it. But yeah, so I was very wrong about that.

And I think there was already rumors. I think what started all this, or at least the talk about iPhone mini sales not doing very well, is that some manufacturing plants were already shutting down manufacturing on the 12 mini. And if you only sold 6%, I'm assuming you've got a pretty big stockpile of them somewhere. Yeah. I think that I read that there was some switching of manufacturing going from the Mini to the Pro. So they already knew they needed to make a lot of the 12, and they've been making a lot of the 12, just cranking those things out. But they've made so many Minis that they don't have to keep making so many,

so they shifted allocation of production of that to some of the 12 Pro, which I guess they sold more 12 Pros and less 12 Minis than they thought they would. That's interesting. and less 12 minis than they thought they would. That's interesting. Hindsight, it makes sense to me because I know people want the bigger iPhone generally. And I think every year, us tech people, oh, Dieter said this best.

I think he said it either on the Verge cast or in a video. Oh, he tweeted this, actually. Which is that we all, every year, go, hey, make a small phone. And every few years, Apple goes, fine, hey, make a small phone. And every few years Apple goes, fine. And they make a small phone and everyone goes, yeah, you made a small phone. Everyone's going to buy it. And then no one buys it.

And Apple goes, see, why do we even do that? And then they go four or five more years without making a small phone. They did that with the SE like five years ago and it wasn't the best seller. So that kind of brings me to my next point, which I think we need to explain a little bit because it's based on a conversation you and I have had. You told me you don't think there will be a new iPhone SE next year, right? Or this year, 2021. You think it's going to take three to four years before another SE comes out? I think so. So do you think it was a mistake to release 12 mini the same year there was an iPhone SE instead of, let's say, SEs every three to four years.

And two years after the SE release, so between it, then a Mini comes out, which is at a cheaper price point, but much more recent specs. Yeah. I don't know if I would call it a mistake, but I think it just depends on what Apple wants to do with the Mini or what Apple wants to do with the SE because the SE is still such old exterior hardware. It's touch ID still. It's still got so many things that we just don't think of as a new iPhone. Do we think SE sells in carriers for the full four years before presumably it comes out again in 2024? I think it's maybe like two or three years.

Yeah, so like when that leaves Carrier, would that have been the better time for iPhone mini to come out as the new cheaper alternative iPhone? It's not even that much cheaper. Technically, yes, but I don't think Apple's too worried about cannibalizing their own sales. I think they're more worried about other people taking up their own sales.

So I don't think they're going to stagger the iPhone SE release because they want to sell more minis. I think they just want to offer more things and sell more iPhones, period. If that's just people deciding between iPhones, Apple doesn't really mind. They'd love to sell more high cost, big margin iPhones, I'm sure. But if you're already buying an iPhone, you're buying an iPhone. Yeah, and then, so my last question on this is, people like small phones arguably because, you know, they're much easier to carry around.

We got so used to big phones. If iPhone mini is, let's just assume, dead in the water now, I can't imagine Apple being super pumped to start another one unless they had plans for an iPhone 13 mini already. Is this where the folding phone flip style really has its chance to shine as a compact phone? Okay, that's not what I thought you were going to ask.

I thought you were going to ask, do they kill the mini next year? I think that decision has been made already. Do you think they're killing it? No. I wouldn't be surprised if they already started planning for a 13 mini and then based on sales this year could potentially in the future be like, this isn't working and not worth our time.

So, yeah, we went over the Apple rumors, and we know that Apple's thinking about a smartphone that folds, and we don't really know too many details yet about what type of fold is it. I think the Bloomberg article talked about the quo rumor which is that it is one of the smaller folds kind of like a flip phone type of thing that i didn't know i was just talking in general like yeah there are people out there and it seems like they're tech people apparently because of the sales because we know a lot of tech people that love the mini, and a lot of people are like, wow, we just lost our chance because it sold so poorly. So is that enthusiasm for small compact phones

going to be taken up by companies other than Apple, like Z Flip 3 or whatever comes out next? I think there will always be a niche hunger for a small phone. Small candy bar phone. Small phone, yeah. Small candy bar phone. Who's going to fill it? I think people who bought the Mini really like it.

I just think we didn't realize there's not that many of those people. I think people who are buying the small candy bar phone, like when Sony makes an Xperia Mini and people get those, they're like, finally, I wanted a small flagship, and it's good for them. But if Apple decides not to continue with the Mini, what company is going to take over that position? Oh, I think those people will angrily buy a bigger iPhone. So no one?

We've killed mini phones. Yeah, I don't know how many. I think it's a tiny group of people cross-shopping iPhone 12 mini and Sony Xperia mini. I think that's a very small group. I just think of, well, we'll talk about this later, but I think of places like LG who keep the headphone jack and their DAC. So it's like, they've hit this niche of people that really love stuff like that. Who's this company that doesn't have the likes of Apple and Samsung power that, you know, maybe could sneak in here and increase their market share by tending to a group of people who really like the compact phone

or who would you like to see do it yeah yeah I guess I'm gonna toss I mean if it's anyone I'm predicting it seems like that would be a Samsung move is to go we're throwing everything at the wall already let's throw a galaxy s mini right at the middle of this wall and just fill in the iPhone's void. But I will see. I wouldn't be shocked to see it. OK. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about that LG stuff and a bunch of other tech rumors we got to catch up on.

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The Festive Family Box is here to make your holidays brighter with all your Popeyes favorites. For just $25, you'll get four pieces of delicious Popeyes Signature Chicken, four tasty chicken tenders, four regular size, and everybody's favorite, four buttermilk biscuits. Hurry up, though. Like the holiday season, Popeyes's $25 festive family box deal will be over before you know it. All right, welcome back. I said we're going to talk about LG, and that is what we are going to talk about, but not what you'd think about. I think last time we talked about LG was LG Wing or rollable phones and this is very different

um there's a lot of rumors going around based on a memo that LG CEO sent out that they're considering eliminating their smartphone division um that's very sad I think yeah um so the quote is and I forget if this was from The Verge or but it was kind of like there was the memo that came out. They denied the memo and then they let out a release to a Korean news organization or something. Anyway, the quote is, since the competition in the global market for mobile devices is getting fiercer, it is about time for LG to make a cold judgment and the best choice. The company is considering all possible measures, including sale, withdrawal, and downsizing of the smartphone business.

So, that doesn't sound fun, first of all. Yeah, I think when you think about market share in, and they said global, so global smartphone market share, LG's not exactly at the top of the heap. And financially, LG does a lot. I mean, if you think about what LG does, they have a dominant display company, basically. And I've worked with a bunch of different divisions of LG, so I think of them

as different companies because they definitely don't talk to each other. But they make appliances, they make stovetops, they like smaller displays for a bunch of other like mobile devices. TVs, computers, like they're probably some of the best manufacturers of both of those. Exactly. So LG is all over the place and they're looking at their smartphone sales like, oh, I mean, we make the displays and we make like a bunch of components for these things, but they're not selling too well.

Maybe someone else wants to carry this brand or maybe we can just axe it all together. So it makes sense, but it is kind of sad because you do not want to see competition leave yeah we lose when that happens we want to see as much competition and new upstarts and you know growth as possible so when something like a massive company who could subsidize a smartphone division like lg is bailing, that's less for us. I mean, we're just getting Wing and like the beginning of their Explorer program. What would the next versions of that look like?

Well, maybe never know, but I would like to see. That could be what decides this fate, to be honest. If you're looking at stuff like innovative stuff like Wing or potentially a rollable phone, I mean, we don't know the exact timetable of this and we don't think they're pulling out quite yet but success on that could make or break something like this i think lg needs to have a couple big volume sellers i don't think wing was ever going to be that but like when you think of samsung with galaxy s and you think of apple with

the iphone you have to have like one big constant seller. And if you're like a BlackBerry where you have a couple smaller sellers or if you're like a company that doesn't have that cash cow, then you can't really subsidize all your smaller projects. You just don't have the money in this division. So LG's G-Series isn't the mainstream flagship that it kind of tried to be a while ago. And that's why they're not going to keep going.

Yeah. And the V series is always like it's there. It's competing with all the top flagships. It just like misses the mark just by a little bit. There's I mean, unless you're like a huge audio nerd, audiophile, whatever you want to call it. And you really love that headphone jack. Like chances are, you're probably going to lean towards the galaxy S series or the note series,

or you're going to lean towards Huawei's peer made series. It's there's similar pricing. I mean, maybe a little cheaper on LG, but I think generally you go the route of Samsung or Huawei. Um, yeah, which isn't great,

but I like, like we said, how this competition breeds innovation. A great example of this is LG had an ultrawide on like four cameras before it really made it to mainstream cameras. And ultrawide is something you and I talk about being like one of our favorite camera. That's right. LG was the first to put an ultrawide in a phone.

And we looked this up, so you you probably remember but what were we guessing I guessed v40 was the first one and I thought it was like g8 or something yeah it's v20 which is 2016 they've been at it yeah I when was the first ultra wide in like a Samsung I feel like it wasn't until like I think there's definitely a gap here there was a gap here Because I remember reviewing that phone and being like, this is cool. I hope we see this more often. It's like fun, it's useful, it's unique. And you can't, it's so much better

than trying to take a panorama, which is what I was doing to get wides before. And I was always, I remember traveling. I was in the city all the time just taking pictures of buildings I couldn't take before. And yeah, I was really a big fan of those early LG UltraWides. So it eventually made its way everywhere until we were like why hasn't

the pixel done it yet it's clearly the thing to do so yeah so thank you lg for the ultra wide appreciate that we don't want you to go anywhere because you're bringing you're bringing stuff making other phones better which just makes makes it better for all of us. You know what makes me feel old? What's that? The fact that I've seen legit smartphone brands, like seemingly massive companies, grow and then fall from grace and they're gone.

I mean, HTC's completed that already. That's a big one. HTC, I remember the HTC One was like, wow, is this the best phone out right now? Like next to what Samsung makes? They made a Google Play edition. That was the jam. I love that phone. And they made these metal phones. They were pioneering these unibody, these front facing speakers, all this stuff. And then they slowly, they didn't make a Nexus. And then they slowly just started to disappear. And then it was just, it was just and they made like one of the worst phones ever and i reviewed it and i said

it was bad and it was poor use of space and then they were gone well but at the same time they they redeemed themselves in that same year and made a good phone it's just they did something kind of similar as they were pricing themselves as the top the same as all the Samsungs and Apples, and they just weren't quite there. I feel like if Samsung and LG, I mean, if they both went to that 750 mark, or you know, $300 under the top phone, and maybe like didn't try, what was the last thing

the HTC tried, those weird buttons on the side? Yeah, those like phones with no buttons and then the the transparent backs they kind of like they were like fake buttons on the side that just had like no click yeah they tried to do it with a haptic motor it was rough it was really rough um and it's just sad to see them gambling on something like that as being their new feature they're gonna bring into and it just doesn't quite work out as well. So here's a question, and your answer might get plastered everywhere. We'll see how it goes.

I don't think I have enough pull to get plastered on things. We'll see. What do you think is the next big smartphone company that we have now that will eventually turn and go under? Oh, man. I think I have my answer. I don't think I want to. Well, we're going to talk about another one after this.

I don't think they're going to go under, though. I kind of, my hot take is OnePlus. Oh, interesting. Because, I mean, they're not mainstream, but they are pretty big. And we kind of all know about them at this point. I think that they've made it into carriers as I'd have to consider them mainstream enough. Sure. I'm trying to think of other companies. So Motorola is like, you know, we don't hear about them as much, but their budget brand, like their budget models are amazing. And they're like in carriers and they are just,

when somebody goes in and says, need a phone that's probably what they get they're in bed with verizon yeah they yeah i think motorola is fine maybe their flagships aren't working perfectly but whatever i mean we're considering blackberry dead already right yeah yeah okay yeah because that's that's the easy one oh not according to uh the stock market though i think they're starting to rising again. My hot take is Motorola. Is it? And it's because I think they don't have the cash cow that they once did.

Their flagships, they haven't had for a long time, right? They haven't really made a flagship until the edge for the past year or two, and that's typically where you have high margins, you make the most of your money. And I think their budget phones, while they are really lockstep with Verizon, that's not every carrier in the world.

And the budget space is incredibly competitive, especially in the other markets like Asia. You look at like what Huawei and Xiaomi and Redmi are doing. People aren't looking at Motorola as like the king of budget over there like they might when they're here. So in the US specifically, if you can dominate, which they're not dominating,

but if you can do budget phones really well, that's a decent amount of cash, but they don't have that cash cow anymore and their Razr isn't exactly dominating either. Oh, I forgot about the Razr. Yeah, so I feel like they might kind of just be treading water right now looking for a cash cow. I wonder if they just,

I think Motorola before going under, and I mean, this is based on nothing. This is just my assumptions. Um, maybe they just stopped trying to do the flagship, big stuff like that. And just keep being the,

the like people's company, the non-techie company. Well, that's a carrier company with, with who? With one plus. Well, no. So not like the fans company. When I say the people's company,

I mean like the general people of the world, the average consumers, the people who are just going and don't even know what, they're probably still saying, I want a Droid and picking that up at Verizon. I think the opposite reason for that

and why I would pick potentially OnePlus, I think they're trying to do too much at this point. And they didn't have, I mean, I guess they're owned by BBK, right? So they've got some backing. But they're trying to do way too much. They've lost their way. They're putting out headphones and TVs

and four different, no, like six different phones at this point. I think that's low key. That's a sign of success, I think, for them. When you're like, we could only make one phone a year and now we're making two, now we're making 11 and headphones and these accessories and everything like that. To me, that sounds like we finally have enough money to start building like more than just one phone in the ecosystem and we're getting into it and we're starting become like with one of the biggest companies I mean maybe around the globe they're doing better but if you can name me one person that has a oneplus TV or uses a pair of oneplus headphones and actually uses

anything other than probably like a oneplus 8 Pro or oneplus AT I'd be very surprised interesting all right can you no yeah I. I think we're in a different market. Yeah. Like, we obviously know U.S. better than a lot of other different countries, but I don't remember anything. Like, all those extra products that they announce, I never hear another thing about them after the announcement for them. Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah. Like, do you know anything about the OnePlus TV that's out right now? I just know it's not in the U.S. and it's probably not dominating the way. I mean, if you make a display, they're not making the displays. They're buying the displays and rebranding them and selling them as a OnePlus TV. So that doesn't necessarily take that much money to do, but you probably also don't make that much money doing that.

So I don't know. Maybe it's just a brand play. Anyway, we got one other thing in this same category, which is China's Huawei in talks to sell their premium brands. Now, I will again mention in every article you read, Huawei furiously denies that any of this is happening. They will say, no, we're absolutely not doing this. But this is just our little food for thought because the rumor is they're in early stage talks to sell off their smartphone brand, Huawei's mate series or

p series just the series not their brand just those two series yeah and i think that it mostly comes stemming from the u.s ban so like they actually sold the honor brand already because of it and because they just wanted to break it off i'm sure there's still some sort of connection or whatever with that but yeah they didn't want US to be banning Honor phones. But they're just talking about selling off the P series and the Mate series as, I'm assuming, maybe a lot of those sell in the US despite. To me, this one makes no sense. This one makes no sense to me.

This one's less. I'm assuming that it's just hurting them enough that these luxury models, they have plenty of other phones that they're making that are doing well globally, and the P and Mate series potentially are taking a huge... I read there was somewhere in here that said, analysts have already noted recent insufficient supplies of the flagship P40 and Mate 40 due to severe component shortage.

So they're having like, it's affecting components as well with the US ban. So I don't know if something's because of that is specifically hitting that. And also last year they said US restrictions meant they'd soon stop being able to make the Kirin chips. Oh, right. Well, they definitely have to change the way they do it

because as of right now, they still need the partnership of a couple U.S. companies. So, yeah, I get why the rumor has legs, but I just don't see them breaking it off in that small of a thing and expecting to get anything for it and really making a difference. I don't know. Do you think they're getting something for it or do you think they're just potentially avoiding losses from it i think i think they holding they're holding probably a little bit of faith in a new administration and getting back into

the u.s and changing things yeah yeah i don't know um but you know it wouldn't be a rumor unless we took that rumor and wildly um irresponsibly ran with it. And just speculate to the moon? Imagine. Oh, boy. Google buying either the P or the Mate series. Oh, God. I mean, didn't, so Google already. No, no, there is nothing,

there are no rumors about Google buying it. I'm just saying. Right. Google sucks at hardware. We all know that. I guess the rumor you're tossing this out to to maybe make a better pixel hardware wise right because that's what they did with motorola isn't it they bought a bunch of hardware engineers and they bought htc or htc they yeah exactly and

that didn't really work so they bought the engineers what if they were physically buying the series already and then could just work on that further? I mean, the dream is there because Huawei makes amazing hardware and Google has not made great hardware but does the software well. So, boom, put them together, Huawei Pixel 6. Imagine a Mate 40 with a Snapdragon 888 and stock Android. Yeah. And Google Cam algorithms. I mean like Google

Cam algorithms. I think that would actually be pretty sick. It would be amazing. I'm not trying to get my hopes up though. If you speculate to the moon you get your hopes up too high and then you're disappointed. What else is this podcast for? I mean. Isn't there a quote that like expectations

are the root of disappointment or something like that? That sounds boring. It's true, though. It's so true. Anyway. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back.

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Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. All right, welcome back to the Too Good to Be True Tech Podcast. I'm your host. Today we're talking MacBook Pros, MacBook Pro rumors. No, there's a new bunch of rumors, a bunch of new rumors floating around

about the new MacBook Pros with Apple Silicon coming this year. Can I make the pitch that I think was at Apple headquarters for the, what is it, 2021 MacBook Pro? Yeah. Hey, remember all those things we took out of the MacBooks? Let's put them back. Johnny Ives isn't here anymore. We can finally do it. It really kind of does seem like that. They're going backwards on a lot of stuff. Number one, the return. Okay. Let me just say 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros are expected at the higher end of their lineup because we have the M1 MacBook Air and the M1 MacBook Pro at the lower end. So we're just talking laptops here. Number one, that sounds really exciting.

Can be bigger screens, can be thinner bezels, maybe even face ID. But the number one thing that catches your eye is the return of the SD card slot. And as soon as you see that, you're like, oh, anything's on the table. Anything's on the table. If they'll bring back a slot, a port, Apple doesn't bring back ports. So that's a major deal. As soon as I read this, I'm like, all right, I don't want to get my hopes up. It's too good to be true, but let's keep reading. Then there's the removal of the touch bar, which, I mean, I'm sitting in front of a MacBook Pro with a touch bar. It's my favorite laptop in the world right now.

I never use a touch bar. It's funny because I feel like we've made it to that stage where people kind of stopped hating the touch bar and either don't talk about it or are on the side of, I actually like my touch bar now. I don't know why everyone gives it such a bad rap. I got my mom an M1 MacBook Pro for the holidays,

and I think we've basically just ignored the touch bar the entire time. I've done the remote tech support thing. We just don't talk about the touch bar. We don't talk about it. It just looks nice. Yeah, it just sits there. I think Apple realizes that the dream is dead with the touch bar. They wanted to do probably a lot more with it, and it's not happening.

So why keep spending the money on putting that there bring the function keys back and we already got the escape key so let's just bring all the rest of the buttons back fine i'm cool with that but again wow too good to be true we're going backwards yeah it's weird is this the like everyone calls apple the dongle sales people like they're they're gonna tank google stock is gonna tank because of their dongle sales are going to go down the tube after this one. Yeah, it's like, you know how Apple has different divisions or by themselves multi-billion dollar companies?

The iPhone by itself is a billion dollar company. The Mac by itself is like a Fortune 100 company by itself. I feel like their dongle company right now is like- I want to know those stats because AirPods airpods were like one of the fifth highest like grossing airpods by themselves quote-unquote companies yeah yeah huge company so like yeah i want to see what their dongle company how that's doing dongle llc yeah it's definitely doing better than game spot their stock is plummeting currently um yeah, that's really interesting. I thought it was funny Mark Gurman called this the fix everything edition. I can't wait. I mean,

there's just so much. When you see this dramatic of a change, you know, Apple Silicon is already enough for me to get excited for these machines. You add on top of that a redesign, because they really haven't redesigned these laptops in a while. They've sort of adjusted and shaved and tweaked here and there. Is there, like, rumors of the redesign? Basically, we're expecting some squared-off edges, kind of like iPhone. Okay, that's what I was going to ask. But also 14- and 16-inch laptops in the footprints of, like, a 15-inch and 17-inch laptop.

So they're going thinner with the bezels and then going maybe touch id or face id or both and it's just sort of a different look i don't know if i would like squared off edges on a laptop interesting explain it would feel too much like uh remember was that the lenovo like yoga book that dual touch where the keyboard was also a touch screen and yeah it would feel a lot like those two-in-one tablet i mean i'm sure they could do it well but i generally like the the bezeled edges on a laptop or else it feels clunkier counterpoint pixel book i didn't love the pixel book okay yeah i thought that was a nice little squared off design it's one of those ones where it's like it it's nice it looks really nice

but then i'm like holding it i'm like i it just doesn't really feel i think macbooks have always just felt so slim and nice it kind of reminds me of how one plus phones felt with like the one plus five the 5t stuff like they just felt so much thinner than everything else because of how well they tapered the edges they got really good at taper yeah and i think like the macbook air is still one of my favorite laptops despite never owning one but just because of how thin it is especially now with m1 how powerful it is and just like that can slip into any backpack without snagging on things or like yeah it sucks when you have a backpack on a flight that's completely packed and you're trying to jam your laptop in and move everything out of the way and too many c's too thick yeah no i i think the redesign may have something to do with the new internals and the thermal management needed so we're still

waiting for details we don't know what the gpu situation is they're going to be higher end laptops and we know that requires some sort of g solution. But again, are they going to do this mega M2 chip with a huge integrated GPU or what the deal is? And will it have to be for the MacBook Pro? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's, it's probably not the best option, but we don't know what their plans are. And I wouldn't put it past Apple to do that. And then also, what kind of fan situation is needed? The MacBook Pros have fans. Do you err on the side of throwing a bigger battery in there or just having more airflow? I don't know what they're doing with it.

Wait, did the MacBook Pro that came out in December, did that have a fan with the M1 chip? This one? Is that the one you're using right now? Yeah, M1 MacBook Pro. I can't keep up with that. Yep, it's got a fan. So the Air does not have a fan.

It's passively cooled. The only performance difference between this and the Air is the fact that this can keep cooler longer and run at higher clock speed longer because of the fan. Okay. So, yeah, I'm curious to see what they do

with that silicon and with the cooling. But bottom line, too good to be true. I cannot believe all of it is going to happen. I just don't believe it. But we'll have to see. SD card slot. I just, I can't wait to see their reasoning on stage. Yeah.

Like, are they just going to be like, are they going to pretend it's like this new feature that's never been seen before on stage? Or are they going to talk about taking it away? And then what is the one thing Apple they going to talk about taking it away? What is the one thing Apple is going to finally admit, like, maybe this wasn't our best move? They got to make one joke about it.

Does Apple joke? No, they do. They joke sometimes, but they joke in a very self, in their own universe type of way. Because no one else exists? Right. They'll maybe roast what Android doesn't do with their updates once in a while or something like that.

But generally, if they ever joke, they're joking in their own universe. And so I could see them like self-referencing, like we brought this thing back that you guys loved so much. I don't know. It feels weird. They don't usually ever admit fault ever. And I feel like if you kill the touch bar bar You have to admit that the touch bar was wrong And if you bring back the SD card slot you're admitting that getting rid of it was a mistake

Yeah I think the SD card slot feels like more of a mistake because you Got rid of it and brought it back rather than like made it and then just kind of didn't do it anymore It's like when they went back on their keyboard design. When they went from the scissor switches and the butterfly switches, they made a new keyboard and everyone went, you went backwards, thanks. And Apple went, like our new keyboard?

The new SD card slot. Exactly. They just refused. So they're probably going to have to paint it as new in some way. I can't wait. It's just so obviously old that there's no way it's not hilarious. What poor new VP there is going to have to give this part of the presentation on stage? It's the new courage.

It's definitely the new courage. Them explaining why this beautiful new port is appearing on their greatest MacBook ever when we all know it was there two years ago, four years ago, five years ago. It's going to be great. when we all know it was there two years ago, four years ago, five years ago. It's going to be great. Last thing on our list of major tech topics,

because there's a thousand of them, but we're picking the major ones. We dropped a new video on the Sony Xperia Pro. It's a $2,500 smartphone with last year's internals, but a couple pretty sick features that make it incredible for pros. Best pitch ever. That is the pitch. No, it's the Xperia 1 II,

but in this pretty sweet polycarbonate shell. It's kind of like it has a case on it already. And it's plastic. And honestly, I think it's not bad. I actually like that choice. Of the exterior? Yeah, I think it's fine versus glass. I that like choice but of the case of the like exterior yeah i think it's fine i don't think it's that bad i i would be interested in more phone companies almost doing like a quote-unquote built-in case yeah because i mean everyone's gonna put a case on most of

their phones yeah remember the s7 rugged edition i think it was 18 to active yeah um i kind of miss those. Yeah. But the reason this one's polycarbonate is for antennas and signal strength. So it has these beam form, it has four beam forming antennas that will combine for a really great millimeter wave 5G signal. And that's specifically for a feature

that's built into the software that'll let you live stream or send high quality photos and videos to a service like YouTube or Twitch, wherever you want to stream. You could use StreamYard or Streamlabs, all this stuff from the phone. And the phone is connected via HDMI because there's an HDMI port on the phone to a mirrorless camera or to really any camera with an HDMI port, but I was using it with an A7S III. So now you're using your A7S III basically as a webcam or whatever you want to do. Or a live streaming.

Or a live streaming camera, a Twitch IRL stream, or like just sending photos because you're taking sports photos and you're just sending them off. So this is crazy. It's very an interesting This is crazy. It's very an interesting setup if you watch the video. It's kind of like this YouTuber rig of putting it all together, having a cage around the A7S III and a shoe mount with the phone on it and the cable and maybe a mic if you have extra space. But this solution to me is absolutely the most Sony thing they could have done, which is making an incredible technical achievement in a phone

that's really great for a very small number of people that no one will ever appreciate because it'll never be in stores, and it's $2,500. So I think the, well, first of all, I think the whole kind of point of the video, which we didn't notice notice is that it's like we've seen a million phones call themselves the pro versions and this feels like the only pro like this is actually for professionals and if you are not a professional that this

would benefit from it's probably not a not for you at all um i do i'm trying to think of the camera rig we had today with it on and that we shot for in the video and i would love if there was some way if you had a cage on your mirrorless camera that could bring the phone back almost in place of where the general screen was because right now you had it up with a shotgun microphone facing forward and then it's like off to the left and the cable is like an extra foot out on the side of the camera just hanging out it's just like all over the place and feels like a lot if you could bring it back and kind of tilt it upwards along the back of the camera so the only reason the only reason i think that might not work great is because there's no

touch control. Like if you had one-to-one control where you could still touch the screen and go through the menus and do whatever you want on the phone screen over HDMI, that would be great. But since you can't do that, you still have to use the menu button that's on the back of the camera

and the jog wheel on the back of the camera. And that would be blocked. I feel like if you could tilt it off. And still reach it? You could still have your fingers behind it blind maybe yeah yeah i mean it's just a tilt wheel and an okay pretty much fair okay yeah i guess because it disables the physical viewfinder on the back of the camera it does it's black um yeah so that seems kind of weird i do think it's i mean you mentioned the main reason for it would probably be like a photographer at a like major sports complex that has millimeter wave 5G built in.

It's so specific. Which is insanely specific. It would be so great for that person because they're down on the field. They're doing sports photography. Maybe they just got the new Sony A1, which has like a 50 megapixel sensor and it's made for sports photography. It's not out yet, but that's a new's a new 6500 full frame sony camera you're down on the field with that you have the sony xperia pro connected to your camera so you're sending photos straight as soon as you take them right up to the booth to be published for fox

sports or whatever you work for or you're even doing videos that can just be beamed up to the broadcast because you're in a stadium that has 5g yeah That is such a, it's going to be a great tool for that person. And I'm so jealous of that person because they're going to get the Xperia Pro and love that thing. And everyone else who's thinking about getting the Xperia Pro, think very carefully about what else you could possibly use it for. I do think there's potential for it in the IRL streaming community. So as far as I'm aware right now, a general setup to go stream yourself walking around the city,

going to Disney World, whatever, is kind of like a, generally a Sony like action cam. So maybe the size of two phones put together. Yeah, not quite a GoPro. It's that longer one is what I've seen because I think it has a little more capabilities than a GoPro.

And then they have that on a selfie stick attached to like an external battery attached to some sort of antenna, cellular antenna. And then they hold another phone in their hand that has their chat and everything like it. So you're talking about people walking around with like a lot of stuff. I'm imagining like you hook that up.

I mean, this isn't as professional, but imagine hooking that up to a RX100 and then you just have a little RX100 with your nice screen that is also your signal to send to Twitch, to send to YouTube. And I don't know if it would be able to have your chat on it as well. It would be crazy if it could have your viewfinder and chat split screen well and it feels like a like irl live streaming

dream yeah just pick us pick the smallest camera you can that does hdmi out and yeah and is like good i mean i don't think any of them are no one's streaming in 4k i don't think so well you could now if you're in a if you're in a 5g antenna you can now dang yeah that's actually good interesting so it's such a small yeah it's a really small niche that opens up that opens it up to about 20 more people on top of the nfl photographer went from 30 to 50 so for those for those people wow boy do i have a phone for you you're gonna love the xperia pro uh it's a little pricey but hey where else you can find a 4 4K OLED viewfinder that has 5G built in? Other than that, yeah.

No, there's not a whole lot else to say about it. The A1, by the way, I think is really interesting. We can briefly talk about it. I know we don't have it in our hands yet, but I do think we will pretty soon, which is exciting. The A1 is a small mirrorless camera, about the size of a 7S III, 50 megapixel sensor,

8K 30 FPS 10-bit video, 4K 120 FPS 10-bit 422 video, 5-axis in-body image stabilization, $6,500. To me, this is like attacking if Sony could finally do it, like the all-around best hybrid camera, which I think for me is still the R5. But the big downside is, well, one, we don't know the thermal situation. How long will it shoot 8K? Will it overheat? I don't know. Number two, no articulating LCD screen.

It's just plastered to the back. Doesn't tilt, doesn't swivel, doesn't flip. It's just right on the back of the camera. Yeah, I can't believe it doesn't even tilt. Yeah. So as a hybrid shooter, I really love my R5. Like that's a 45 megapixel sensor. I think the knock against the a7S III being the champ was it's amazing for video, but ooh, 12 megapixel photos.

Can I really get away with that? Honestly, the answer is probably yes, but people just like seeing the bigger numbers. So you get that really sharp, high quality. You could do landscapes, you could do billboard photography, but I think Sony's ads right now are sports photographer, nature photographer, that type of thing. So we'll probably have to go do a little more testing in the video department to see if it actually pulls off 8K video. Sony's also coming out with a drone in the future, aren't they? Yeah. I've seen aren't they yeah slap that on a drone

oh wow aerial that's like what i first thought of is like some good good good drone footage and then slap that on an xperia pro and live stream the drone footage to uh wherever you can find it we've added one more one more consumer for that phone it's like three three more people. No, that's pretty much it for Sony. We've talked about a lot this podcast, kind of all over the map, but we've got a lot more to talk about in the upcoming weeks. I'm sure there's gonna be,

I mean, we always say the first quarter of the year is quiet, but here we are just rolling through the new announcements and Apple stuff and Tesla stuff. So anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging out with us. Definitely continue to hit us up on twitter let us know what you like and let us know what you want to hear maybe we can play some uh some games or like some unique headline games in waveform yeah i've been thinking about

that i really when we get to a video section i i need to have some sort of game and i want to have a leaderboard for whenever guests come oh i just that's like i i have an idea for a game but i don't think it's that good don't spoil it i love top gears leaderboard for whenever they had a guest on and i want a leaderboard that i can literally judge how good guests were based on some arbitrary game that we play perfect okay we'll be working on that mentally help us out yeah till the next episode thanks for listening way from is brought to you in part with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.