Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Our First Video Podcast!

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

In this week's episode, our first-ever dual-release of both audio and video, Marques and Andrew break down all the latest tech news headlines, including iFixit's fixing of the AirTag keychain loop problem (pun intended), CES's announcement of potentially having an in-person event in 2022, and Apple and Epic's trip to court following their previous anti-trust lawsuits. Lastly, just in time for summer, we wrap everything up with several potential new Apple Watch health features! Links: http://bit.ly/WVFRMPodcastYouTube https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli http://twitter.com/durvidimel https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh iFixit AirTag: https://bit.ly/3usNxI9 CES 2022: https://bit.ly/3xU4XzJ John Gruber Article: https://bit.ly/3nT40Tu Bloomberg Apple vs Epic: https://bloom.bg/3uqqqhs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And we're on video this time. First time. We're on video for the first time in Waveform published history. We've practiced this a little bit. We've set this thing up a few times,

tried to get this going in the right direction on get it off. Wow, I'm already being very verbose. We're trying to get it off on the right foot. But, yeah, this is on the YouTube channel now. I mean, people have been asking it since we started pretty much. I think that's safe to say. And we've always wanted it, but we wanted it to be, you know, us, we like high quality stuff. So we wanted to make sure it was high quality. So yeah, started with having to move to the new studio. Right. I mean, so we've had this podcast studio for a bit, which is really exciting. We moved to this new larger space. And if you're seeing the

video version now, like for audio only listeners, it it won't change you'll still have all mostly the same still our main focus right but for video you can now see like we've got this space we've got the the acoustic wall behind us with the logo on it we've got this table here set up we have the mics attached to separate tables so we can hit the table and yeah make overly deep noises like that. If anyone's noticed that in the past, if you haven't noticed it, Adam's an amazing editor, so he's probably taking them out. You've got Adam over here on the board. Of course. He's got his own table now.

He doesn't even need to be on us and super careful about typing and everything. So we're set up. We've got the setup. I think it'll be good. I think it'll be good. I like watching video podcasts. I'm subscribed to a bunch of them on YouTube. It's how I find a lot of them,

even though I end up going to Pocket Casts for a lot of audio-only stuff. So I think it'll be fun to have. It's also a very common format for Discovery. There's a Clips channel as well on YouTube. Everything will be linked in the show notes, but also down in the description. You can chat in the comments and all that stuff.

So it's all here. It's all happening but uh i think we should just get right into what we normally do just for those who are discovering that there is a waveform podcast for the first time um we've done a bunch of audio only episodes in the past over a year in the bank so far this is episode 62 i believe exactly maybe we'll just start this by saying it's it's 62 in the title. So you know there's a catalog. But we've done all kinds of stuff. We've had David on the show.

We've had Vin and Brandon on the show. We've had interviewees. We've had all kinds of chats. The last episode was chatting with Neil deGrasse Tyson on wormholes and teleportation and stuff. So it's been a lot. It's been really fun for the for the audio only podcast but this is sort of just like a level up so you have a visual if you want it and there's gonna be some good visuals i think yeah podcast i mean we're pretty good at visuals yeah we try

i think i think it's safe to say so did you do anything this weekend we have a a bunch of stuff we want to talk about i i did something kind of fun this weekend which i know everyone's obsessed with nfts and you guys are begging us to talk about it more. And I've had to just tone it down because we already did three episodes in a row of it. But let me just take like five minutes to talk about this. People, we've had them on the show. If you haven't listened to that interview,

100% listen to it. I think it's one of my favorite episodes, to be honest. I like it because everyone expected us to talk the whole time about his $69 million painting, but he's a fellow very regular creator. He does a lot of stuff, and that's mostly what we talked about.

It was good. Yeah, so he did his spring collection drop this weekend, and I just found the whole experience really fun and interesting. Can you explain what the Beeple Spring Collection is? I'd love to. Because I know he makes art. So what is this collection? Well, so he makes art every single day.

Right. So like this collection was a group of, I think it was like 10 or 11 pieces of, they're all pretty recent. I think they were all between like, he just passed 5,000 days. So I think some of them were in the like 4,900 range and some were a little over 5,000.

So he took like 10 or 11 pieces and we talked previously about how he started to do some physical pieces, which is kind of like a acrylic glass with a video monitor inside, maybe like a foot tall. And it like lights up and it's really cool because not only does it show the piece, it'll like zoom in and go over the detail

and then it'll also bring up your QR code to show you the blockchain address to it. He's really good about that. It's wonderful. Okay. But we've seen how much these pieces go for. He's clearly the most popular NFT artist right now. So some of these pieces went for like 500,000.

NFT artists. NFT artists. I'm sure he doesn't like to call himself that, just like you don't like to call yourself an influencer. Or a YouTuber. Yeah. Right. But in order to make it more available to everyone and all of his fans,

out of the 10 drops he did, I believe four of them you could enter, and if you won the raffle, you could buy it for a dollar. A raffle. Which is crazy. We're talking about pieces that are selling for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and now you have the opportunity to get one for $1. Okay, it's smart.

So he's got physical art pieces, and he's raffling off entries into the ability to get it for $1, basically. It's not even a raffle as an entry. You enter for free. If you win, you buy it for $1. So you don't even have to risk the dollar for it, which is pretty cool.

So what he was doing is every one of these pieces there was a hundred of them or every one of the raffles there was a hundred of them there was he did a couple silent auctions for one of one pieces but all the raffles there's a hundred available two of them i believe you had to answer a quiz which knowing people or if you don't know people he's insane, I think is the nicest way of putting it. I mean, like insanely talented, but also like a little insane. And it just like this mess of questions, which is, I'm excited for

because that's how I found his Discord to try and figure out the answers. And he had this insane community that was just like, it looked like a live stream chat, just like flowing with people trying to get the drop and figuring out the answers and everything. And it was just a whole experience of watching people try and get the answers, entering, waiting the 30 minutes till people started winning.

And then people were like, no one was getting mad that other people were winning. It was all like, congratulations. That's awesome. Like, I'm so excited. And so it was really cool. people were winning it was all like congratulations that's awesome like i'm so excited and so it's really cool um the second one they did though although i didn't win it it was you had one minute to enter the raffle okay and so many people were trying to do it that the website just like completely crashed but i'd somehow managed to get in and there were only so for a hundred pieces

only 7 000 entries got in so like I'd consider that a pretty solid chance of getting something that we're selling for like $20,000, $30,000 an hour later after people won. So it didn't win, but the whole experience, I thought, was just really neat. And he was having a blast on Twitter. He was posting these videos out. It was on Nifty Gateway,

so I think he was out at the headquarters and he was posting videos and like tweets, kind of making fun of people for the quizzes. And he made this whole video about how all the physical ones will come with a pair of underwear because you're going to poop your pants when you see how amazing it is and he wants to protect you. So for the 2021 collection, we included underwear in each one of the packages. The guy is just entertaining. Yeah, he's combining a lot of good stuff in one place.

A lot of good hype there. Yeah, for sure. Nice. Well done. I didn't do that much exciting this weekend. I did have practice. We're back to practicing for Pro Ultimate. Nice.

Which is pretty wild. Everyone's wearing masks. It is about 100 hundred times harder to breathe while you're sprinting around. You guys are all still surviving. So imagine that. True. It is definitely great to be alive and playing Ultimate again. That's like, it's pretty good for me. So that was my highlight of the weekend. But speaking of things that are back. Yeah. CES coming back for 2022? Okay, I saw this. How do we feel?

We haven't discussed it much. I think we both just laughed when we first saw the announcement. Yeah, so the official announcement is that CES plans on returning to a physical event in 2022, January 2022, in Las Vegas, in the convention center, just like normal, like nothing ever happened. I mean, they'll probably have, maybe they'll have masks, maybe they'll have special precautions, but an in-person event again. Yeah. I don't know that I want to go to this one. Well, let's take it back.

You said you think there's going to be masks. My first question here is what restrictions are they going to have? Because that's a lot of people. I mean, I don't think we're going to get full like concerts and venue stuff back by then. Yeah. Why are we going to pack like 200,000 people into a convention center?

Yeah, we talked about this when maybe this was about, well, yeah, right around when the pandemic was first starting, which is that CES was like the perfect storm of, you used to get sick every year we go, is like the CES flu. We are aware of why this happens, is because tons of people internationally

all descend upon one place. They all stay in the same small group of hotels in the dry air, and we all touch the same pieces of tech. Yeah, and half of it we put up to our face. And we put it on our face, and like all this stuff, and then we all go fly back home. Like, that's... On the same plane. On the same dry tube.

Like, this is pretty ideal for getting a lot of people sick in a lot of places. So I don't... I mean, I believe that they'll do it. I believe they'll get enough people to go that they can pull off being able to say, we did CES in person. But, like, CES, underrated.

I think one of the most well-attended flying to events that will actually happen first. Like all the other previous shows and IFA and all the Mobile World Congress stuff was digital again. Apple's doing digital events. OnePlus, Samsung, LG, Apple's doing digital events, one plus Samsung LG, everyone's doing digital events. So this would be like one of the first in person international high volume events since the pandemic. Like that's not a small deal. No. So they have to really think about how they're going to handle it and actually pull it off and

not become a super spreader event. Cause it's not over. COVID is not over. No, it's not over. And as, as close as, you know, a lot of our listeners are in the U S like we're handling it better than we were, where we're doing pretty well on vaccinations at least. But like, this is an international event. Like you said, it is much different than whether it's over in one or two countries. Like this needs to be over, over and I don't know. Yeah. Some, some countries will handle it well, and then others will have spikes, and then others will have spikes when they handle it well. Yeah, there's a million variables,

and I don't know how CES is going to be able to. I think at this point, it's far enough away to where it's a pretty safe bet to say it's coming back. Right, January. It still has time to hopefully make that decision, the safer decision. Okay, here's a question. What would get you to want to go to CES in person?

You've been to a couple now. What would happen? What sort of headline would roll out where you're like, all right, I want to go? CES comes back 2025. Oh, wow, okay. No, I don't know, really. If I saw that they had some sort of a strict requirement on at least making sure a certain percentage of people are vaccinated and we also happen to know that there would be like a couple major announcements which we never know about ces if all that happened i would actually be like interesting going but i

just don't think i think most of the second one is actually unlikely because people don't want to go to ces to announce their biggest thing now by themselves especially if it's going to be a ces that might not be as well attended because of like the i don't yeah i don't know to go to CES to announce their biggest thing. No. Don't announce it by themselves. Especially if it's going to be a CES that might not be as well attended because of like the, I don't know. I think the only thing that would make me go is like listening to the experts and if they say they think it's safe, which sounds unlikely.

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. CES is fun, but in terms of content, we don't get the most content out of it anymore. Yeah, like the thing that I actually miss about CES is fun, but in terms of content, we don't get the most content out of it anymore. Yeah, like the thing that I actually miss about CES is it's one of the only events where like almost everybody's there. And you can actually like see faces

and like your friends are there and you can actually shake hands and hang out with people. Where like that happens sometimes, like Samsung's another one of those events where almost everybody's there. There's a bunch of other events where almost everybody's there. Uh, there's a bunch of other events where a good overlap of people are there, but like, seems like CES is the one thing where like you can see everybody.

And it's multiple days too. Like a Samsung event, you see everyone, but then they're just want to hammer out their content. Everybody's busy. Yeah. Where CES, other than Linus, who is CES is the busiest time for him like last time we had the podcast we were just in our hotel room and we were like hey Austin what are you doing come join the podcast talk with us and he just like showed up 20 minutes later oh my god that was a video podcast that would have been I wish incredible

for those who haven't like heard that episode that was in a CES hotel somewhere in Las Vegas I don't remember whatever floor we were on in a very echoey room. So we had like blankets hung up and like a mattress up against the wall, like to try to make some sort of a sound booth. That would have been a hilarious video podcast actually. Yeah. It would have been really funny. We had this like weird fur carpet, like draped over the table

to try and like pronounce. Yeah. On the table. We put the rug on the table. Yeah. Like that was great. It was a solid setup it sounded really good we've weirdly had that was back when we were doing the podcast in the studio upstairs so it wasn't the best sounding we've had like off-site trips where the podcast probably sounded better than the actual studio at some point so i think we're all fixed now we're at a huge now minus the planes and the trucks but we're pretty solid all right there's this article i wanted to pull up uh i fix it drilled a key ring into one of the air tags so for those who haven't seen apple's newest creation air tags it's the

little bluetooth tracker which is just a circle that doesn't attach to anything natively so if you want to use it attached to anything you need to also buy a way of attaching it to a thing. It's like if you stepped on a Mentos. That's how I would describe it. Sure, yeah. I don't know. I just thought of that and I interrupted you just to say that.

By the way, there's a bunch of great threads and pictures about how perfectly it seems to fit inside of other Apple products. It might even be the same person. I think Stephen Hall's posted a picture of it inside of AirPods Max in the thing. Patrick. I'm Patrick. I forget his last name.

And then it also fit perfectly into the wheels. Not perfectly. I actually tried this. But very close to perfectly inside of the wheels of the Mac Pro, which is- Which everyone's just got laying around to throw their tags in in case. It's great. I'm sure it's not a coincidence at all. But, yeah, you have to buy a key ring to attach it to your keys.

You have to buy a bag tag to attach it to your bag. So I fixed it, who's known for tearing things down, figuring out what the repairability is like, opened up the air tags, found out where all the circuitry is, and found a spot in the motherboard where there isn't any circuitry and found that they were able to just drill right through that spot on the edge and create a key ring so if you want to put air tags directly on your key ring you can follow the iFixit guide and do exactly that not spend an extra 450 dollars or however much the air maze yeah can you get an air maze drill and drill it in and then you have an air maze yikes god yeah i don't like that my bad jokes are on video right now this is a little uncomfortable

i just i want to i want to give that shout out to i fix it because they're always looking out for people want to trying to save a little money doing that stuff we'll link it in the show notes it's a it's i mean it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like but if you you're interested in doing it um it's not our fault if you break it it's not i fix its fault if you break it yeah but it could be cool all right we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we'll talk apple and their epic trial but also just the whole paradox of choice thing they've got going on i'll be right back tis the season to treat your family to the great taste of Popeyes. 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' $25 festive family box deal will be over before you know it. Love that chicken from Popeye's. The Paramount Plus exclusive series, The Agency. The CIA sends us out to behave in a dangerous way. Starring Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere. Whatever it takes, make it invisible. The Agency, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. All right, so our last video on the MKBHD channel

talked about Apple and we called it the paradox of choice. You could call it the illusion of choice, a bunch of different ways to phrase it, but it's a topic that's come up a bunch in the news lately, and I felt like a great way of summarizing it because i went straight to the analogy of comparing it to sharks and i can't believe how well this worked but it was such a good analogy i had to run with it no it was so picture this you've seen sharks in the

aquarium maybe you've seen videos of sharks on youtube whatever and you know how sometimes you see those like little sharks like swimming right next to the shark a little fish a little attached to a little fish and it's like sometimes suctioned onto the side see those little sharks swimming right next to the shark? The little fish next to the shark. A little attached to it, a little fish. And it's sometimes suctioned onto the side of the shark or swimming right next to it. If you look up what those sharks do, it's called a remora fish. Those little, they're sharks technically, but they're little fish. Oh, are they sharks? Okay. But they're called remoras.

And basically, they have evolved over time to be mostly dependent on the sharks. And it's a win-win relationship because that remora fish will hitch a ride on the shark and can eat scraps of food. Whatever the shark's messily eating, it's just like, all right, free food, eat stuff around there. It's kind of got this bodyguard where there are no natural predators about to swim up to a shark and try to pick one of those things off. So it's pretty good for the remora, but also it's eating parasites off of the shark's back. And it's like actually kind of a healthy thing for a shark to have a couple of those hanging around and so the more you look into this remora fish and the relationship with the shark the more

interesting it gets turns out the the dorsal fin of remora fish is actually modified and evolved over time to literally become a suction cup the dorsorsal fin, the thing on the back? Yeah. Does it like come over like an angler fish? No, it's like it used to have a normal dorsal fin and over time it evolved that into a suction cup because over time the most successful remoras are the ones that are able to stick to the shark the longest and it's literally now evolved to be dependent on the shark

by this like suction cup and if you take one out the water, you can suction it onto a wall and it just stays there. So all this is to say, there are a number of dynamics like that in the tech world. Yeah, also, how long till Coyote Peterson's coming onto the channel? Because we've been doing a lot of weird nature analogies.

I would love that, actually. I mean, he's got a great channel. Actually, I would just love to talk to him on the pod or like his team because the stuff they film out, out in the wild is pretty, pretty crazy for like a YouTube channel. Yeah. But okay.

Sorry. But anyway, so yeah, this, this dynamic exists a lot in the tech world. And in this video, I used Apple as an example where Apple is the shark and there's a bunch of companies that are specifically evolved to fill in the gaps of what Apple doesn't do. Their whole business is

to do something that Apple doesn't do for existing Apple customers, which turns out a really dangerous place to live, because at any point, Apple can decide, that is a good idea and just do that thing um so we we made this video it's called the apple and the paradox of choice and and you can watch it on the channel and i i suggest watching it actually it's it's quite a good video uh but you know gruber wrote an article actually about that same topic which i thought like boiled it down really nicely which is if if you are a company whether whether you are accessory to Apple or anyone else, and you make a business out of filling in a gap that one of these companies has, you should expect, if that idea is good enough, you should expect that company to eventually

take that idea. And whether that means they will put you out of business or acquire you or copy you or whatever, that either any one of those things could happen, but you should expect if that idea is actually good, you should expect them to take it from you, which is pretty true. Yeah, it makes sense. It's hard to say like that.

Oh man, I feel like that's what's so hard about all of this is it's so easy to kind of argue both ways. Why should I like that that's just so hard about all of this is so easy to kind of argue both ways like why should i create something that's not been created and then expect to get destroyed later on it kind of like i guess the like the anti-competition part of that is like people might think of something great and then never make it because they're just gonna assume they're gonna put all this hard work towards something and then get crushed later that doesn't amount to anything i think it's tougher with apple and i think gruber was talking about this in the apple

because we were talking about apple yeah like apple very rarely at least i can't think of something off the top of my head and i'm sure there are but like they don't acquire things as often as say like google does so apple if you're making something that is specifically for apple products which is very very popular it very, very popular because Apple's very popular. Yeah, I would always be worried that Apple's just around the corner if my idea is doing well and just take it and then I'm lost in the dust. Or if I was developing something that works for Android or something like that, you see Google acquiring people all the time. I think one of my options would be like, I'm gonna make this awesome product. If they never compete with me, I have an awesome product.

If they wanna compete with me, there's a good chance I might get acquired and then at least my product's continuing. Whether I have a say in it or not, I'll make a ton of money. It's probably the goal for a lot of people. This was, it reminds me of Shark Tank. Whenever someone comes on to Shark,

Shark's coming up again. Whenever someone goes on Shark Tank. Welcome to the Shark Form Podcast, baby. It's Shark Week. But whenever someone goes on the show and has an idea that seems like it might be able to be easily copied, Kevin O'Leary will always go, if you can't protect this, the

big guys are just going to squash you like the little bug you are. He always says that. But it's kind of true, which is like, if your idea isn't that good, you probably won't be squashed. But if your idea is actually that good, you can expect them to make a move to either take that idea or just fill in the gap where you were being successful. So yeah, it's tough. It's tough out there. It's tough in today's world because the way everything's set up that is what's going to happen and you should kind of expect it i guess what people are trying to fight with right now and the reason we're seeing apple brought up a lot and anti-competition anti-trust

is people trying to figure out how to change those rules so something like that doesn't happen i do not know where to even begin with that um but i guess i totally understand wanting to make a world where you don't have to live in constant fear of just pure capitalism punching you in the back of the head well it's actually a pretty that's a decent segue into apple versus epic which is uh an ongoing trial now there's a lot of apple versus things out there in the world right now and we could talk about any of them but apple versus epic is interesting because of this specific literally okay apple built this thing yeah called the app store and if you just break it down i always i try to see both sides of every argument or every versus and it is for me very easy to see both sides. So Apple built the App Store. Epic makes one of the apps in the App Store

and the App Store policy is that they take 30% cut of all in-app purchase transactions. That's just the way it is on the App Store if you want to exist. And the Epic argument is that's too much. Why do you deserve 30% of all the money that we're bringing you? And Apple's going, we could have charged way more.

We built the App Store. We made the rules. You don't have to be on the App Store, but because you're here, yeah, we deserve the 30% cut. And so now there's all the anti-competitive arguments about, well, what other App Stores are there? Like, what are the other rules? You don't have enough competition to change that 30% around, blah, blah, blah. I just think I find it very easy to see both sides, which is pretty interesting to actually be able to focus on. I think our knowledge and stuff like this is very surface level because

it would be impossible for us to know every detail of this. These lawyers are insane, the arguments they can come up with. But to kind of recap back onto it, Apple obviously charges 30%. We've known that for a long time. Epic got upset with that. And instead of going straight into some sort of lawsuit, their first, or maybe they went into a lawsuit, but the big news that broke was that they entered in a way

to circumvent buying things through the App Store, which then apple got mad at kicked them off their store google also kicked them off the play store because of that and because of all of that that's what started the first suit i think we talked about it three or four months ago yeah they knew what they were doing with that yeah now we're getting into the trial aspect of it i think it just started may 1st was the first day um and we don't have a lot of updates there's a lot of arguing back and forth obviously um one thing i did find kind of interesting the other day um there's a bloomberg article and while it didn't have much about it they one of the apple lawyers argued that

so originally so so i think cross-platform play is the biggest thing fortnite did like it was the one of the things that made it as successful as it was because when you have friends who have all different types of consoles or pcs or even phones you can let all of them play together no matter what they're on that's amazing sony at first didn't let you play with other cross despite the fact that pc and xbox could play or switch could play sony would not let you play with other cross despite the fact that pc and xbox good players switch could play sony would not let you play on playstation with others and eventually they got sony to allow cross-platform play but an apple lawyer brought or specifically asked tim sweeney so sony finally agreed to cross-platform play but has never agreed to cross wallet transaction is that correct which Tim Sweeney the CEO of Epic replied yes so

I find that kind of I don't know exactly how wallet transactions work on the Sony store I'm assuming they take some sort of cut through anything yeah the other thing is people talk about will probably say like well why don't you just take 30% off the initial purchase and why don't you let them do their microtransactions like normal? The issue is, is the most popular way of games these days is free to play microtransactions. So that's impossible. Like Apple is not going to take no cut of Fortnite. Of course. That's dumb. But Sony now not including wallet transactions. Is this a little'm i'm assuming that question out that goes out there to be along the lines of is this a little hypocritical that you're coming at apple

for trying to take microtransactions but it doesn't seem like you're going after what uh sony it's just i just think it's so fascinating that you can easily paint both sides as totally in the right or wrong like okay listen this is this is the, let's start with like the obvious Apple is wrong argument, right? Apple will take 30% of all in-app purchase dollars and you are not allowed if you're in the app store to go around that. So if you have in-app purchases,

you can't go, hey, pay us through this like credit card form or like this other thing. If you wanna do in-app purchases in your App Store app, you have to go through Apple's way and they will take a 30% cut. So that means, so this kind of came up, which was funny in the podcast argument, Apple is starting this new podcast subscription service where you can subscribe to a podcast and pay them like sort of directly and Apple will take a cut.

And Apple takes that, I think, 30% cut. And so Spotify announced a competing same thing where, oh, okay, we'll have subscriptions, but you can do that for free. But all of the money that Apple makes or that Spotify makes in the App Store gets cut off 30% to Apple anyway. So all of the money that Spotify is making in the App Store goes directly to Apple 30%. Or not all of it. 30% of that money goes to

Apple anyway. So it's kind of like they're losing money to Apple in order to make a better product. The point is, why is it exclusive? Why don't you have the ability to do other transaction methods? And Apple will always argue, oh, for the security of it, everyone knows Face ID and everything is so secure with our portals and everything, but it's pretty anti-competitive at the same time. Yeah. I mean, they also can make the argument, and it's a 100% true argument that your stuff on the App Store is going to make more money if it is there. So like, I'm sure they argue plenty of times. Yeah, we're taking 30%, but I bet you you're making more than that. So if you weren't on the app store, that is, yeah, that's the other side.

So Apple's going, wait a second, wait a second. We run a store. We built the store. We've put the money into creating the best store. We deserve the money that we make from the store. By the way, most stores charge more than 30%. If you'd look at like wholesale pricing versus regular pricing in a store, like to get something on the shelf of Walmart, your thing isn't 30% less for Walmart. It's like 50, 60, 70% less for Walmart. And by the way, YouTube takes 45% from all creators. I don't know if people knew that, but 45% of AdSense revenue goes to Google and YouTube. 55% goes to the creator.

So 30%, Apple's like, you're welcome. We only take 30%. And I think David pointed this out in this deal earlier. When they first announced that 30% cut on stage, everyone applauded. The developer gets 70% of the revenues and it's paid monthly. This is the best deal going to distribute applications

to mobile platforms. So when a developer wants to distribute their app for free, there is no charge for free apps at all. There's no charge. Developers are very happy

about that. So that's the other side of that. So it's just, it seems so easy to paint either side as pretty good. Like like i think they have a good point so that's why it's such a fascinating issue so um our our channel friend como code actually tweeted a pretty pretty interesting video of tim sweeney in 2012 where he actually says we're now in a time where indie developers can flourish thanks to the

app store, which is just a long rollercoaster of events to get to where we are. And in his defense and in everybody's defense, we talk about that. We talk about 30% maybe not being that bad, but I'm not against trying to move forward and move to a better system. And like, you know what? Maybe 30% is too much now it wasn't too much then is there an answer now to like solve everything like just make it 15 or just let us get around the cut like everyone's gonna take advantage of whatever change you make so if apple goes all right you don't have to be exclusive to our in-app purchase anymore they'll never do that but if they did everyone would stop giving a 30% cut to Apple. It just makes financial sense. They would incentivize the credit card form or whatever other thing that takes less of a cut.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think all these trials are ultimately to find a way that hopefully works for both. I know that will probably never happen because that's just what should happen. And why would that ever actually be the result? But I think there's, like we both said, there's a million ways to argue both sides. Everyone's going to have their opinion. Everyone's going to have their biases. And I think it's something that is so hard. It's going to be a very long time before we find out what official rules are going to become. And I don't know when this trial is set to end, but I'm pretty sure not much is going to come out of it for a long time. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk some more gadgets.

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With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. 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. So we talked about cross-platform play earlier in the show, and I really feel like I didn't harp on it or talk enough about how important I think that is and how important for the future of games I think that is um we're we're seeing it I I still think Fortnite is what made it

pretty mainstream I'm sure it was available before that Rocket League started doing it um Warzone's doing it now I think it's really the the big step because games are launching on all different platforms and people obviously have different platforms. Not everyone can afford a PlayStation 5. Not everyone can afford a gaming PC, but people can afford a Switch. People can afford a phone. So cross-platform play is the best way to bring everyone together. And I think it's incredible. But because of that, there's definitely a few hurdles we have to go over. And we just got news that Discord and PlayStation are partnering. And I think that news is really big because of what I think is the future of cross-platform multiplayer gaming. So actually when I read this out loud and said we were going to talk about it, Tim,

our new graphics guy, just immediately was like, wait, what? That sounds awesome. And I was like, oh, I think it's cool. But he's like, yeah, I play Warzone on my PlayStation, but all my friends play on their PC. So in order to communicate with them, I have to have a pair of headset for the PlayStation on. And then I have another pair of headphones on underneath that that's connected to my computer, which is in Discord talking to them. Oh, wow. So that's the setup you have to do. To create. Something along those lines in order to...

To make it cross-platform chat. Because especially with those Battle Royale games like that, you need the game sounds. And it's almost imperative that you have them on your headset because you need to hear footsteps close to you. The whole point is surviving. Yeah. But you also need to hear your teammates talking.

So like two pairs? That's amazing. I'm assuming he probably does like one earbud in and then his over ear headphones over top but like that sounds brutal so like that kind of work around to be able to talk to your teammates or just friends i mean like come on we're all playing with our friends normally it is brutal that's no one should have to do that so there's no official statement what this like partnership entails quite yet but it seems like it's pretty obvious what it hopefully it will be some sort of way that you can either use your psn

and add that to discord or use your discord username and add it to the playstation network and then through that join different parties because obviously playstation has its own party chat that you can use voice chat in but it's's just PlayStations. But it's just PlayStations when you're playing on that. Or when you are on PC, sometimes there's in-game chat. Most people use Discord because it's just far better than anything else. A lot of times when you're using like party chat in a game, when you get into the menu system or something, it's a little different.

Or if you die, Discord's just a much more secure way and the easier way to talk to each other so hopefully you'll have some way of where like i would hope you're in the playstation menu you want to party you can party with your friends already like you can add pc players in your friends list to your party hopefully you can then join through their discord as well or their discord will be linked to their playstation network some kind of integration that makes it easier to just plug that in. That's good. I think it sounds awesome.

And hopefully it goes further than just PlayStation. Hopefully we're seeing Xbox do that. Switch is a little harder because I don't know of a lot of... So PlayStation and Xbox have accessories to put microphones that go directly to the console. Switch is still that like less of a competitive gaming console and whereas playstation and xbox are more competitive yeah i can see this like never even applying to the switch yeah that is that is a good start that's a good start i

mentioned we talk about gadgets so i do want to talk apple watch rumor uh-huh apple watch rumor uh at this point it's like the watch itself isn't really changing that much it's gonna be a circle no it's not gonna be it's literally like

they've decided like this is the form factor they're gonna they're gonna run into the ground and maybe someday they'll eventually change the form factor

they'll do a different shape or something else like that but the rumor is this is from Mac rumors Apple Watch likely to gain blood pressure sensor, blood glucose sensor, and blood alcohol monitoring. Now, again, it's just a watch like on your wrist, like it's on the back of your wrist. There's not really that great access to your veins. But again, they're doing great stuff already with the sensors. You can literally do an electrocardiogram on the watch so so the reason this rumor comes up is a british company called

rockley photonics i believe that's how you pronounce it they um they just developed a the like non-invasive optical sensor that can detect a bunch of different blood or metering i guess you would call it and um apple happens to be one of their biggest customers so the assumption then comes that's a fair rumor rockley photonics can do blood pressure blood glucose and blood alcohol level this is obviously coming to the apple watch if apple is their biggest consumer we don't know when or customer we don't know when that's going to happen but okay so hear me out yeah apple car Apple Car someday comes out, right? Yeah.

Apple Watch is the key to the car, naturally, because you have to have an Apple accessory to do the accessory thing. You unlock it, you get into the car, you push to start, and it goes, you can't drive yet, your blood alcohol level's too high. And then it makes you sit there and wait till the reading goes below the legal limit.

Is that a good idea? Or is that just the inevitable future? I think there are so many people who say that's like a complete invasion of privacy. But I guess at that time you have made the choice to an Apple car. I would, I'm 100 behind it. I absolutely despise anyone who drinks and drives, especially if you're, I consume alcohol, I drive a car, I never get even close to mixing them together. I'm just like over the top.

I know people, I've lost people that I know because of it. So it's just very near and dear to me. So I think that sounds amazing. I wish everyone would have to do something like that. But I can also immediately see people arguing against it. 100%. And I understand why. The blood alcohol level monitoring thing can probably just like any of the other sensors be turned on or off.

Like you can decide for it to measure your heart rate if you want or you can just be like don't and just turn that feature off. So in the hypothetical Apple car world of 2028 or whatever, when it's like, if you leave the feature on, it will not let you drive, then people turn it off. So you're saying Apple car 2028? I don't know.

And hypothetically, I mean, what is it? It's 2021. So that's seven years from now. The thing about an Apple car, like, we've talked about this on the podcast before, but I just don't know what that is what that looks like i saw i've seen the hyundai rumors i think they nixed that though of course and i think there's also a lot of rumors that it got it was happening but it got nixed because it because i just love like

imagining the scenario where maybe that happened even though it probably didn't but like there's so many other questions the thing about an Apple car though, I think it's one of those ultimate plugins. Like if Apple makes a car, it's gonna be the most plugged in, like terrible car for a non-Apple user and great car for an Apple user. I don't think you'd buy it if you weren't an Apple user. Yeah, like if you, it's gonna be one of those products,

like literally the delta between how good it is and how bad it is, well, going to be one of those products like literally the delta between how good it is and how bad it is. Well, it might not be huge. I mean like an Apple watch is literally useless if you have an Android phone. So it's great smartwatch if you have an iPhone, the Apple car, I'm thinking like, obviously your phone is your key or your watch unlocks the car or something like that with Bluetooth. Like you're going to have find my car, find my parking spot, whatever. So you'll be able to see where you're parked on your phone. It'll guide you to the parking garage spot. Like there's going to be all these easy plugs where it has lots of nice features because

of the connections in the ecosystem. But if you don't use the Apple ecosystem, it's just like a normal, like basic car, I guess. I don't know. I don't know why my thought process was like, if it's an Apple car, it's going to have all the Apple features, like find my. And then my first thought was like,

is this going to be the least stolen car in the world? Or like people love to steal Apple products because they're expensive and sell well. Is it going to increase the amount of time? I mean, right now we're talking about Grand Theft Auto on an imaginary car, but are people going to steal Apple cars because they'll be easy to track? I think it might.

It's going to command more attention because it's Apple. Like, this happens with Teslas now. There's entire YouTube channels dedicated to people's sentry mode footage, and there are entire subreddits showing my car just got keyed for no reason because people walked up to the car, saw it was a Tesla and decided to do something about it, which I still don't understand. And I think an Apple logo on a car and it's gonna look like an Apple car.

Like there's no way it looks like a Hyundai Sonata. Like there's no way you don't walk up to that car and go, oh wow, the Apple one. So will it be stolen a lot more? I don't know. But I definitely think it be stolen a lot more? I don't know. But I definitely think it'll get a lot more attention. So you're saying Android fanboys are gonna definitely vandalize some Apple cars?

Oh, God. It's such a weird, like right now, it's like electric cars get hated on by electric car haters. So I at least understand that dynamic. But if you're driving a car and see it a tech car and you don't like the tech company, do you then get mad because you're an android user

that's so weird i guess i love it in this dystopian tech war world that we may live in one weird future yeah future it is but uh if we want to go back to what we were originally talking about which is blood measuring in an apple watch yeah we've gone a little off the tracks there not i mean i think blood alcohol level is what the headline really like brings you to that seems the most interesting my one thing my one issue with that is you definitely hear about people who buy those like bac measure the like blood alcohol content measures and they like use it as a competition when drinking which is very dangerous oh i hope that does not happen well Well, it's gonna.

It's gonna. If you're listening to this, please never do that when this comes out. It's dangerous. The other thing is like Apple will always specifically mention if this new sensor is like medical grade or just like kind of nice. Remember the blood oxygen sensor?

Yeah. Like when I went out to do that David Blaine Ascension project, he was asking me like, should I try to use the Apple Watch for my blood oxygen? And I was like, dude, use the one that's made for that because it will tell you the exact number and it's medical grade and it's going to be right every time.

Where the Apple Watch is like kind of for fun. You go on a hike, you're like, ooh, I'm at 95% instead of 100. It's not going to help you survive or not survive. It's just kind of for fun you go on a hike you're like oh i'm at 95 instead of 100 like that's it's not gonna help you survive or not survive it's just kind of fun information i feel like blood alcohol content or even blood pressure any of these things probably will still also be in that realm of for fun general knowledge and if something spikes or goes crazy in one direction you'll know but they're not going to be, you don't have to go to the doctor anymore because you have an Apple Watch. This is just not.

I think it'll be the opposite, which is fantastic, which is like, huh, this seems a little odd. Maybe I should schedule a doctor's appointment and get this actually checked out, especially with blood pressure and blood glucose. If this gets to the point where people are finding out they have high blood pressure or they have diabetes. Or have developed it.

Yeah, have developed it. That then they're getting to the doctor quicker. Yeah. I think that's great. That's a win. It might cause some anxiety for people. I'm one of those people who like one thing feels off about my body

and I'm just like, I'm gonna die. Just let the watch tell me. It sounds like a nightmare for me. But at the same time, if you're anxious all the time, having something that's giving you good readings might be a way to just calm you down but i think it'll be awesome if this is potentially bringing people to medical professionals sooner yeah um that there's a there's

a ton of articles already about like my apple watch told me i was getting hypertension i went to the doctor and got to know a bunch of stuff yeah a regular heartbeat the one thing i just pictured though is somebody getting pulled over and the officer going, like, have you had anything to drink? And him going, look, I'm below the limit. My watch says I can. She's like, get out the car. Like, I have an actual medical grade tool.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting. If your first excuse is I'm below the limit, that's get you out of the car right away. You know what this really all comes down to is how Apple presents it. I think what they're really underrated at is the demo they give you of how to use their new feature or what it's useful for

or why you should care about a feature is usually very instructive on how they want people to use it and how it works best. AirTags, they got a little carried away with the graphics, but it was just finding your keys on your couch. They didn't do anything crazy with like anti-theft or like somebody takes your bag on the subway and you need to track them down. It was very basic, like somebody lost their keys in

their house and they found them. And I think that goes back with a long history of Apple products, where the demo they'll do, especially on stage or the video ad they produce for it, is really actually very instructive. I think what they do with this blood alcohol measuring, let's say they do pull this off, whatever they do in the video is probably, it's probably going to be like you go for a hike and you know, whatever. They'll have like some demo of how they expect people to actually use a sensor and it won't be medical basically. That's, that's interesting though, because first off, all these things are pretty, I mean, blood alcohol monitoring, isn't be medical, basically. That's interesting, though, because first off, all these things are pretty,

I mean, blood alcohol monitoring isn't that medical. I'm hoping that, I don't know how they're, I have no clue how they're gonna announce that. Yeah. I'm like fascinated to see how they will. Blood pressure and blood glucose will have to be medical because you don't really. Blood pressure.

I mean, blood glucose could be like, you do have diabetes and I, now forgive me if this, I'm not right here, but generally you're measuring your glucose level to make sure that you're staying in a realm of it over the day, and then that affects your diet, et cetera. So maybe this will help people rather than having to prick their fingers and everything.

I know absolutely nothing about diabetes, so I apologize if that's not right. I like that idea. If they feel like this thing, this new developed sensor is accurate enough that it can help people who usually need to prick their finger to measure that thing, then that's a huge win. And also it's like, by the way,

you need to buy an iPhone to make this work. But hey, if you don't have an iPhone, there's another reason to buy one. But yeah, you're right. How do you say blood pressure isn't like some, how do you recreationally explain like, I just check my blood pressure for fun. Yeah, right.

I guess maybe stress levels. Generally, blood pressure gets higher with increased stress levels. Maybe it's a way to help you calm. That'd be my guess. They go something along the lines of like eliminate stress or help reduce stress through blood pressure, which they already track stress, don't they?

Or the OnePlus Watch did, but who knows what that was actually tracking. The OnePlus Watch had a stress app that you open to tell you if you're stressed or not. That was stressful. Yeah, I was gonna say the only thing, it didn't even need that because you were just stressed on if the watch was gonna work or not.

You did mention how Apple's so good at announcing things. Some of the only backlash I've ever seen on an Apple announcement was probably the last time they did kind of, I think it was the blood oxygen stuff for their watch. They had this very gloomy. Wait, what did they do? It was a whole series of people talking about

how Apple Watch saved their life and oh yeah while that's like very feel good it had this very like almost dark and gloomy vibe to it and some people were pretty upset that it it had a little undertone of like you're not safe without apple or like i mean i'm sure that is people stretching what that is a little bit but it definitely was less fun upbeat more of like we are a protector and yeah so i i can't imagine it's not gonna have a similar vibe to it if you're talking about health stuff i think it was people selling it was them selling the app watch to people's parents like you like you want your parents to have this right you want your parents to know if you love your developing you love your parents right you this, right? You want your parents to know if they're developing. You love your parents, right?

You love your parents, right? You're going to get them an iPhone, right? Right? Right. Yeah, no, I could see that angle being a little bit of a stretch. But I don't know. I could see them doing it. I think that's a rumor I could see them doing.

That's just about, you know, it's a new sensor in the watch, and they'll probably keep it the same shape, same size, same feature set. Sounds about right. I like the Apple Watch, though, so not complaining. But, yeah, we did have kind of a grab bag of stuff, but that's basically it for this week. Honestly, this was just fun just chatting about a bunch of stuff. But let us know for video podcasts what you thought of the format, what you thought of the set, how you think the quality looked and sounded. We've got all kinds of questions

because this is obviously our first go at it. How good Andrew's face looks. Yeah. I mean, the YouTube comments section is open, of course. This is something we didn't have on the audio-only podcast. We just had our tweets. So this is a new method of interacting, and I think it'll be fun.

So one new channel. Two new channels. Clips channel, original channel. Hit us up. Let us know. This is exciting. I'm pumped, man. There will be guests.

There will be interviews. There will be topics. There will be co-hosts. There's a whole bunch more coming. But until next time, thanks for joining us on Waveform. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina. We are partnered with Studio 71, and our intro our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.