Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Smartphone Season is Coming Early This Year!

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

This week, Marques is back to discuss all of the news he missed last week (and a bunch of new stuff too). With David out on vacation, Marques and Andrew do Headlines in a Hat and go over everything from the Surface phone that never was to icon theming in iOS 18. They also talk about all of the gadgets that are coming this summer including the Pixel 9 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra. Then we wrap it all up with some trivia questions provided by James Carter of the PodQuiz podcast! It's a fun one, enjoy! Links:  The hat: https://bit.ly/4cioPQR PodQuiz weekly: https://www.podquiz.com/ New CMF Teaser: https://bit.ly/3VYsTQq iOS Icon Tinting: https://bit.ly/45GI4kz Surface Duo 3 Patent: https://bit.ly/3WbMVap New Motorola Phones: https://bit.ly/3W0nGY9 Pixel 9 Renders: https://bit.ly/4bnIAVy Volkswagen Group Invests in Rivian: https://cnb.cx/3zmRBRA Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Rumors: https://bit.ly/4chnutt Galaxy Watch Renders: https://bit.ly/4bvUxcc Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that goal to be the ultimate soccer parent?

Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. People pre-ordered and put down a lot of money for the Roadster. No, that makes sense. No, I'm totally getting Elon'd right now. Yeah. But one of my Elons is never happening.

I've been able to put that dream to rest. I think that closure is nice, though. It wasn't. Luckily, I never pre-ordered it, so I guess I'm not out of money, but I'm out of a dream. Anyway, that's my rant. It's a low-energy rant, but disappointing.

That's a good first headline. Still coping. Go Sixers. Go Sixers. Another dead dream. Hey, hey, hey. Which will come first? Yeah.

Brandon Ingram can still save us. Ahem. Ahem. What is good, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. I'm back. We're your hosts. I'm Marques.

And I'm Andrew. And this time, David's on vacation. Yes. David's on a sick vacation. I'm sure he'll have lots of photos I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And this time David's on vacation. David's on a sick vacation. I'm sure he'll have lots of photos of it that are way too wide for Instagram. He's on a sick... They'll take at least

four Instagram carousels to make it through the entire photo. So we wish him well with that. We also have Ellis back who was on a sick vacation. Well, he was sick. Yeah, then the vacation was COVID. But we're glad to have you back. One day we will have the full crew back on the pod. Yeah, at some point. At some point. But until then,

we have a hat here. And whenever you see the hat on Waveform, you know what that means already. That means it's a kind of a light, but kind of a scattered week of news, which is just the right formula for Headlines in a Hat. I don't know why I thought music would play there. We do need a Headlines in a Hat theme song. Maybe. Is that what we played last time we did Headlines in a Hat? I don't remember.

I think that was from a trivia episode or something. It was from a trivia episode. It's the only sound that I have here, so I'll take it. I like that. But as you can see, we've got some headlines. We've got a hat. It happens to be a Nova York hat, which if you're following the NBA this week will make

a lot of sense. If you're not following the NBA, then listen to the Not Locked on Knicks podcast, but you probably won't understand that either. If you're a Philadelphia 76ers fan, hang in there. That sounds evergreen.

Yeah. You want to go first? You do the honors. You're back. Okay. First headline in a hat. We have some of the best tech headlines, rumors, and leaks in this hat.

I think there's eight different ones today. Some fun ones, some hardware. What do we got first? First one reads, in all caps, ADAM MAD. I'm mad. That was not put on our outline. Is it a headline?

What's this headline mean? Who wrote it, The Verge? I just thought it would be fun to throw this in there so you guys would have no idea what I was going say and what I am mad about is that I still cannot pair the Apple Watch with anything but an iPhone this is true and always will be random random little thing that I'm mad about like I have my iPad mini I have an Apple Watch I'm not on using an iPhone I can't I can't use it it's just like okay so what was that uh that thing where like to get iMessage on your android was actually running a bunch of like iphone 6s off of a server we

haven't done that for like the apple watch yet on android virtual machine iphone on your android phone that's that pings it back to your android phone that would be apple's worst nightmare apple's already ready to take that down yeah Yeah. No, that's classic Apple leverage. Their goal is to make the Apple Watch so good that you want to switch to the iPhone just to use the Apple Watch. And that's kind of true about some other products they already have in their ecosystem. This is why we call it a walled garden. If you love AirPods and all the features of AirPods, you can't really have all those great features. I mean, it'll work as like regular Bluetooth headphones, but most of those great features only work

if you have an iPhone. And so if you see those features, you get the iPhone to get them. And then once you have both, that's twice as hard to get out because I don't want to get rid of this nice pair of headphones. So I'm going to stick with the iPhone

instead of just leaving the iPhone. Adam, what would you be okay with? What features would you be okay with losing? Let's say if it was like Apple Watches, like AirPods, and it could work on your Android phone, but you had to lose some of the features. What would you be okay losing? And what do you really want?

I would assume that I'm automatically going to lose iMessage. So that's fine because I'm on Android. So no text notifications? No text notifications, like no messaging, period. I'd be okay with that. I literally want it just to be a watch, obviously, time to time. And that's all it does.

And then my health metrics, like tracking my workouts and things like that. It goes to Apple Health. And that is on, is it on iPad? I don't think that's on iPad. It is just recently. I think the latest version. There is. Okay, but can you sync the Apple Watch to on iPad? I don't think that's on iPad. It is just recently. I think the latest version. There is. Okay, but can you sync the Apple Watch to the iPad?

It has to be synced to a phone first, I believe. And then it cannot go to the iPad. So it's like that little half step off is just so annoying. So you would be okay if you could just set up your Apple Watch on your iPad, let it locally store your data, and then sync it at night to your health metrics on your iPad? Yeah, exactly. I'd be completely okay with that.

That's crazy. But see, that would allow you to not have an iPhone, which is not cool with Apple. That's funny. Yeah. Since we're doing the Adam Mad headline, and I just thought of something this morning that I was mad at that was very small.

Please go. Does anyone else have any ones? Can we all do one small thing we're mad at tech wise? I'm cool with that. Okay. Why can you right click in Google Docs to see copy paste and different formats of that, but can't click them? You have to use shortcuts. And I know that sounds really stupid because like command C, command V is very easy, but there's one called paste without formatting that I really like because sometimes if you copy text from,

it feels like Discord does it a lot, but it'll copy it with like a black background and white text. And rather than changing that, I just want it to be formatted how my doc is. But I never remember the shortcut for that. It's command shift V, by the way. And if you just try and right click

and paste without formatting all it does is bring up a little pop-up that says copy and pasting in google docs these options are actions are unavailable using the edit menus but you can still use shortcuts but then it only does copy cut and paste not paste without formatting mine worked just now you have right clicking you have to install a chrome extension for that to work that's gonna be hard in firefox i believe so well i think it would work in firefox another thing i'm mad about has it firefox and youtube in the last week have just been butting heads and it is basically impossible to play a youtube video on firefox um with some update that youtube did i tweeted about it and got like 150 comments of people having the same issue

and that it's a known issue. I don't know what they changed and Firefox is working on it, but the amount of times it buffers or the video pauses but the audio plays, skipping around is basically impossible. All of that happened in the last week. And I have- Yeah.

I've known you've used Firefox for a while. But why? Why? It all started when I was a young warthog. Yeah. I've known you've used Firefox for a while. But why? It all started when I was a young warthog. No, just when I was doing IT, my director used Firefox as well. And I was like, I remember using that once. And I started using it and just,

I don't like change. And I just kept using it. I usually have a Chrome window open with like maybe like some other things so I can like separate windows and such because I don't like separating in the same app because then I can't click the icons on the bottom to select which windows specifically, at least in one click.

But yeah, I don't know. I just still use Firefox. Because I feel like Firefox might be like a 2%, 1% market share at this point. It's pretty low. And I feel like the best browsers, because of their huge market share, get all the great features and support. And I don't think Firefox is going to get any better. I think Firefox gets features and support.

But like these issues with YouTube or issues with sites that don't load properly probably won't get priority fixed anytime soon. I think Firefox is fixing because it's just, I wish I dug deeper, but everything I tried to read about this was extremely hard to understand why it's not working. According to this website's stat counter, Firefox is 2.82%.

There's dozens of us. Yeah, I don't know. I like it. Why you got to harp on me like no i'm just curious because i i've switched browsers recently i moved from i was a safari on mac person to chrome and now i'm using arc which is i guess you know built on a similar engine but it's got all this chrome extension support but all these other features that i like and i just find it great so i'm just curious i think firefox is more users than arc but you're saying it's like true it's like compatible it's got all the features of chrome so it feels like chrome i just like it i like to be different

and cool i don't think it is yeah web kit like safari quantum browser engine oh that sounds there's a problem that sounds way cooler than chromium sounds cool but breaking youtube do you know what else is built on chromium edge touche touche what do you know i'm trying to think of something i'm mad at i like that as a topic but i like it a small thing we could just bring it up later if one of these headlines ellis do you have anything oh yeah he's got something and this is just maybe less a specific thing and more just like uh part of the punishment we're all receiving for living in the future um but uh in 2019 maybe like 2020 or somewhere around

there um the uh sequel to my favorite video game ever was announced uh kerbal space program 2. around that same time uh my favorite synthesizer company announced their next synthesizer um both of these companies said uh we'll be releasing our project in one and a half, two-ish years. Whoops. Yeah, it is almost five years since then. My friend, shout out to you, Ian, if you're listening. We, for years now, we're like, which one's going to come out first? We know we want both.

And I don't know, if you're in the Kerbal Space Program community, you now know that Kerbal Space Program 2 borrowed too much code from Kerbal Space Program 1 for them to be able to implement all of the features that they promised when they announced the game. Like the Kerbal Space Program 1 architecture, it just isn't capable of making. So the publisher fired everybody at the studio and shut it down. And it's not, I don't know if they're refund. I think they are giving some refunds for pre-orders. Like if you played the game for less than like, I don't know how it works. And then for the synthesizer, and I'm not trying to knock the synthesizer company LZX

because they are a very small business that makes incredible things. Lars, the owner, rocks. But he hasn't updated the production block. And, you know, my pre-order, I pre-ordered it. It was announced in early 2020. I pre-ordered it in November of 2022. Marquez is sitting here with a $200,000 Roadster

he's been waiting seven years for. He's like, oh, first time? Can relate. Wait, seven years? Can relate. 2017? Why did it take so long? Well, it's still that.

Yeah, you're acting like it's out. Tesla Roadster. The Tesla Roadster. I thought you were talking about your Porsche. I was like, you waited seven years for that? Yeah, people pre-ordered and put down a lot of money for Tesla Roadster. The Tesla Roadster. I thought you were talking about your Porsche. I was like, you waited seven years for that? Yeah, people pre-ordered and put down a lot of money for the Roadster. No, that makes sense. No, I'm totally getting Elon'd right now.

Yeah. But one of my Elons is never happening. I've been able to put that dream to rest. Kerbal. I think that closure is nice, though. It wasn't. Luckily, I never pre-ordered it. So I guess I'm not out of money, but I'm out of a dream.

Anyway, that's my rant. It's a low-energy rant, but disappointing. It's a good first headline. Still coping. Go Sixers. Go Sixers. Another dead dream. Hey, hey, hey.

Which will come first? Brandon Ingram can still save us i'm gonna hold up a hat all right and just remember you have to think of something you hate i'm thinking of it i'm have it next to me to remind me to think about something to hate i got ellis rant is that the rant did you just do it how did you guys get the those are supposed to come up randomly throughout the episode. You got them one and two. Yeah. Was that your rant? I was trying to think if I had a second one, but I'm feeling really chill lately.

I don't know. Everything's pretty good other than my missing synthesizer in the video game. Okay. So this happened already. Okay. Okay. So I'm repicking. Reselect your draft pick.

Okay. iOS icon tint upgraded this should have a question mark on it because it's a little dicey on how upgraded it is okay um did you see this yeah fundamentally what happened is ios 18 got announced you guys all saw that and then we saw that there's this feature where you can tint all the icons on your home screen the same color to kind of matchy matchy and like you have a wallpaper that kind of looks cool with it and that's that your customization happening and then people started playing with it after the keynote and many of the tinted icons look horrible they had legibility issues they had like weird color tints that didn't look right or they would like blend together just looked horrible i think

the issue is is that like when everything they showed were icons that are super simple like i message is just two colors in a bubble right but then you get things like maps which has a bunch of different colors a bunch of different lines but something that still needs to be legible and when you pick a color like green it just kind of makes it a bunch of different shades of green and mostly flat aims lighter and the contrast is like very hard to tell the difference between things. Yeah. So iOS 18 Beta 2 just came out and people are testing it. And now we're seeing screenshots of some updates to some of these apps that looked horrible before.

A little better contrast, a little better looking with the same tint. Yeah. Upgrade? Sure. Does it look good now at this point i don't think i can say that yet i think it looks better and i think it's on the right direction i think my hot take is the only acceptable tint is just monochrome meaning black and white i like some of the tint colors have you seen a good looking tint color i haven't seen a good looking tint color yet i loved the tennis ball one that they showed on stage.

What was the tennis ball? They showed it on stage, so it was all really good ones, but I think Craig showed it off. It was like his dog with a bunch of tennis balls, and then all the icons were like that tennis ball highlighter yellow color, but I think I really just like crappy colors like that. This is not what decorating is. Decorating, it's just like, even in this room, okay,

where we have an unbelievably limited color palette in this room, right? There are still five colors. There's white, black, three grays, and red, which I think is six. What the heck? You want more colors is what you're saying. This is dumb. I think these are just like... I think you should be able to do whatever you want in your home screen i think you should be able to color everyone you should make the battery whatever text whatever color you want this is like the

worst thing they could have given us to customize our phones it really is weird like i on a lot of android phones you can change everything about your home screen and not just your home screen you know the icons at the top of the phone you can change which ones show up when you can choose if your battery is a circle or a bar or a bar with the text in it or the text next to it you can change where the time goes you can change if it shows 5g and the volte text or just the 5g bars like you can change everything and then on the iphone it's like all right you can turn them all one color if you really want to okay so let's get the record straight here the last time we talked about this some people were like upset that we were mad about customization we're not mad about customization we're mad about how little customization they gave in the giving

customization yeah it's like faux customization it's yeah it's if you lived in a house that had no kitchen and you begged your landlord for a kitchen for years for years and he gave you entire new houses to live in but none of them had a kitchen and then one day he's like hey i bought you an easy bake oven you'd be pissed as hell i you talking about how it's just like colors but they're all it's just one color and different ones yeah you both missed this last week but uh david had this like blue surface pro and he was like andrew it matches your hat and they were just the most opposite colors of blue ever and all it was was just that they were blue and there were so many comments that are just like this is the epitome of like men thinking colors match just

like they are both blue i've seen i think my ratio of good home screens i've seen to bad home screens with ios 18 is like five to one bad to one but it's mostly because you want to make your home screen look better and you don't feel like you're getting the adequate tools to making your home screen i think i can make a good looking home screen, but I can make an extremely limited number of good looking home screens. Where on Android, I can make a wide variety of good looking home screens. Okay.

If that makes sense. The way David put it, because we were texting after the episode two weeks ago about this, and he was just saying that Apple just implemented it poorly. And he thinks people don't realize how poorly they built this.

I think we're excited that it's customization but we would be way more excited if it was better implemented customization i think if you work at apple they're the balance they're trying to strike is it has to also be easy to use and if you ask a regular person who's not really into customization to do what we've been doing for years on android phones they wouldn't really enjoy it or figure it out quickly or even want to do that. So Apple is giving people extremely easy to use tools. It's like two button presses and a slider away and you just slide to the color you like it. That's good UI. That's good design. It just, this is supposed to be customization here. So that's like a very

hard design challenge is to give people the ability to go nuts without giving them all the tools to completely break and ruin everything or get lost and confused. So it's hard. It's a hard UI thing to do. On the bright side, I think people are going to love it.

They're going to play with it a lot. And then a week later, they'll forget it exists. Yeah, but then you'll grab like your aunt's headphone headphones you'll grab your aunt's iphone in like three months and it'll still be that same shade of purple that she did way back when and she's just gonna be does it auto update when you change the uh i guess we've no one's had it for that long because it's still just the beta but like if you change if you set it to a color of what your background is and you change your

background does it auto update it or when your uncle or aunt change it to green to match this like landscape background but then change that background to a picture of their it'll stay that green okay yeah that's what we're gonna see i also just want to say i'm i'm willing to die on this hill of my opinions but i also recognize that i'm clearly wrong about this like the amount of pain people put themselves through with the shortcuts to customize their icons and clearly still felt like it was worth it. Like clearly this matters to people. So I'm not going to be like, you're dumb if you like this.

Because again, clearly I'm in the minority here. But I do not think this is a cool- We are in the old man yells at cloud stage for this and embracing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm on an Android, so yells at cloud stage for this. Yeah. And embracing it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm on an Android, so I don't give a shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here's one last thing to think about. How many, what fraction of iPhone users do you think were using the Siri shortcut hack to customize their icons versus what fraction of iPhone users will change the color on their home screen now that it's easy? You're saying more people are going to change the color? Yeah, a thousand percent. I think there's a tiny fraction of a percent of people who were like, I need to change the icon for my weather app

to match my perfect setup and would be willing to do this stupid Siri shortcuts hack to do it. And they heard that and they were like, all right, customization seems to be something that some people want. And then they gave people this. And a few people are going to use it. In five years, maybe it'll be fully customizable. I doubt it. It's Apple.

I doubt it. But to tack on the iOS 18 Beta 2, for select carriers, RCS is officially enabled. And there are some people using iMessage and sending RCS messages. And I'm supposed to be happy about that. So I mean, I'll be happy about it when just like it makes it easier for when somebody with an iPhone sends me a video and thinks I'm seeing the full quality of it

because that'd be nice. Maybe I'll see a better quality of it. I think I saw somebody had like green bubbles, but typing indicators was working and I was like, Oh nice, something better. had like green bubbles but uh typing indicators was working and i was like oh nice something better it'll i honestly think it'll be better for us as android users and of course people on iphone won't know the difference at all yeah and then you'll get a 12 by 12 png of a generated i'll take it if i can actually tell what the video my like aunt is sending me finally fair cool next headline

you pick or no you just pick okay new headline in a hat one more than a break okay oh this one reads surface duo three question mark you see this? I did see this. Little refresher if you don't know. Surface Duo 2, sequel to the Surface Duo 1. The first Surface Duo was one of the most iconic phones of our generation. And by iconic, I mean unique in a way. This is going to be our most engaged podcast episode ever, I think. The Surface Duo was a smart, I can't say smartphone, right?

They didn't call it a phone. They said it was a device. It was a Microsoft device that had two screens and it was very thin and beautiful and worked very poorly. I don't think that's what they said. That's what it was. And the one sequel they got to was Surface Duo 2, which had some improvements. It had a slightly better camera. They made some changes to the hardware.

A little bit of a curve in the inside screen. But it didn't really change all that much. And it flopped. And it's dead. And it's gone. And now there's an article showing that there were some filed patents by Microsoft that show a design for a folding phone that could have potentially been the Duo 3 if it ever came out. And it looks similar again.

There's a full-size rectangle on the back for a larger camera. There's like a little magnetic kickstand accessory. Well, I think it's supposed to be a folding screen this time is what the article seemed to portray to it's it is much different it looked like it conformed to the folding phone that it's not a duo true the dude it's also really funny that it's called the duo three that's the best it's called the duo three it has one screen i want to i guess wait that's perfect oh no no no duo 3 i think it has a screen on the front though now whoa we have are all folding phones a duo we

have strayed so far from the light of god and by the light of god i mean the original purpose of the microsoft duo i want to now double check that because i'm pretty sure it said folding screen in this it says the cover screen and the inside foldable screen were edge to edge. So that's at least in this patent. This isn't necessarily ever going to be a real product. It's just a patent. And we'll never know what we're saying is real or fake. Exactly.

Speculate, baby. I mean, there were, look, people had all kinds of feelings about the Surface Duo. I think inherently it was flawed for a couple of reasons. One probably being the aspect ratios of the screens and the sizes of it in general. One probably being that it was an Android device and that had its own set of challenges with making a two screen Android device with like blending and bezels and pixels and all of those challenges. One being how much did it retail for?

Surface. Wasn't it like $2? It was at least $1,300. I thought it was closer to 15. It was $1,399 to start. So that being another challenge. And then another just being it was buggy and didn't work very

well. And some people did make it work. I did see, believe me, I saw the comments. People who made it work for their lives and they were like, yes, the Surface Duo is exactly what I need in my workflow. I prop it up. I use the side screen thing. I flip it over. I use it on a single screen. Who cares that the bezels are huge

and the aspect ratio is incredibly weird? I love this thing. That group of people did exist. And I'm sure they would have loved to have seen a Surface Duo 3. Well, I would argue based on how it seems like they conform to the regular like folding screen form factors,

those people probably wouldn't love this because the things they liked were the 360 hinge. So could prop it up in different ways the two separate screens being able to lose that so it looks like by this from the patent images is we have a completely folding phone that opens up to flat but as far as i can tell does not go past 180 degrees it has a screen on the front with the whole punch cut out it has triple camera array in the back kind of in the shape of a play button like the iPhone, but also with a huge camera bump like the Mi 11 Ultra, which everyone loved.

And then it has this, I cannot tell if this is on magnets or rails, but it has this almost credit card shaped bump on the back that looks like it pops out to be a kickstand. But then when it opens up to full, it slides over on a set of rails and then kickstands out so you have the that is neat that's kind of cool i think that's really cool worth a patent it is worth a patent so so it would have been like a thinner galaxy z fold with a cool sliding back plate accessory yeah

this would be really sick for like setting up at your desk as similar to like Apple's, what's the landscape mode thing? Standby mode. Standby mode. Like if this had a standby mode at my desk in this configuration with my calendar and stuff on it and it's connected to Windows somehow and... This is how they get you, Andrew. Well, they're not getting me every time

product every time a surface duo thing gets announced we all go oh man that's actually that's kind of cool and then it i'm allowed to say it now because i will never be held accountable for what i say for this thing um but yeah i don't know it's interesting i would have loved i wish i wish there's a prototype out here i want to see what this thing on the back is is it looks like it's on a rail system right yeah it does which i think it's fine that's cool it means you never lose it yeah can you put a case on this now though if it's like permanently attached you'd need some crazy bespoke case which i'm sure microsoft would make because they made them for the duo yeah honestly it doesn't look that crazy i'd kind of be into it yeah it's way more normal quote unquote

but it's just a patent now that's all it is that story looks like they still in that first image of the article they still have a lot of these magnets that make it look like it closes which was super satisfying on the surface duo um it looks very thin and the flat edges which was like the best part about the surface duo um but the Note 360 Hinge feels so much like they strayed away from what the original thing was, which was probably the route they needed to take because that wasn't working very well. Yeah.

Shout out to the hinge designers of the original Surface Duos. That was a good one. But we should take a break. We got a couple more headlines to go through and talk about. And also, I still need to find what I need to be mad at. i'm gonna think about that too cool but of course before we take that break let's do some trivia i forgot is this yeah so in case you missed the bonus episode earlier this week it's happening we had james carter the host of pod quiz who just wrapped up his 1000th episode on i interviewed him he was great and since he is the trivia master he was kind

enough to create two tech trivia questions to play on our normal episode this week not only that since david's missing and ellis is our trivia master. Ellis will be answering for David this week. Because one thing that James said in the interview was, as someone who loves to create trivia questions, he finds himself not very good at answering trivia questions at an actual trivia thing. So we're semi going to put Ellis to that test as well. And David, if he gets no points, you have Ellis to blame.

Perfect. I love that. Do my points go to david yeah i do you're david no no no i want numbers on the board baby we'll also give you numbers on yeah we'll we'll match her i will match i will match whatever points that you earn for david for yourself all right sweet all right first. Hi there. I'm James from the Podquiz podcast, and I've got a couple of questions for you. These are technology questions, but they also have an historical element to them. Oh, no. So the first one, question one. In 1947, Harvard computer scientists claimed to have discovered the first computer bug when they removed a creature from a relay in the Harvard Mark II computer that had caused it to fail.

I know the answer. What kind of creature was it? Oh, you guys don't know? I don't. It's funny because when I heard this i knew ellis would know the answer i'm sure ellis knows this answer i think this might be along the same lines of why dead mouse is called dead i was exactly what i was thinking about as well but cool that was a great question yeah if you if you haven't heard the bonus episode go back and listen to it i thought

it was pretty swell but do you feel like you're in the car right now? A little bit. I'm so happy that his voice is on our podcast. That's pretty fun. Yeah. All right. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, We'll be right back. fast bet settlement and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca Alright, welcome back. We've got a headline. Sorry, we've got a hat. I'm just going to keep it going. We've got a hat. Send it. You've got headlines in it. I've got headlines in the hat. I'm going to start it. No, I'm just going to pick.

It's too late. Just pick the headline. Next headline in a hat. All right. CMF new leak. What was the teaser? Teaser. Yeah, I'm so used to calling them leaks

that I forget that CMF is just straight up the ones teasing these, which last week you missed. So I'd like to get your thoughts on that first but cmf teased a knob some sort of rotary dial on their phone yeah thoughts on that huh this could go one of three ways okay so i'm looking at this leak this this this teaser render this is the the dial one of the cmf phone with this little flathead screwdriver going in and unscrewing something from the back of the new one yeah yeah

this new one uh cmf being like the ultra budget brand from nothing this could either one be a throwback feature where you can actually open up the back of the phone and there's this flat head screw that holds the back in place and you open it up and then everyone goes nuts because we went back in time. Holy smokes replaceable batteries. Two, this unscrews

and does very little to like actually get into the back of the phone and you can't actually do anything but you can like look in the inside or something. Okay. Or three, the screw comes out and nothing happens and it's purely decorative screw. I hate to admit that I would still like that.

I want the replaceable battery. That would be the best. Yeah. I think it would be cool if as a budget thing, they were like, okay, maybe our battery life's not that great, but you can add on batteries and just have replaceable batteries that's one way to be like okay we're sacrificing battery life on this but later on down the line you can buy a new battery and

maybe have a backup one um i want to first off say what so did you see the the dial or the knob leak from like a week ago um hold on let's bring that up i want to see what you think about that okay so this was the leak last week that david and i talked about this is the like wheel knob dial whatever you want to call it on the corner corner we don't know which corner so take your guess on which corner you think that is okay Okay. Top left. I think that's what I was leaning towards. Okay. It says introducing CMF phone one. So they're going to make a phone. Wonderful by design. Leveraging nothing's innovation and meticulous attention to design. It serves as a wonderful entry point into the entire product ecosystem. And it's this picture of a dial. ecosystem and it's this picture of a dial i feel like it could be well i have some ideas off of that could be like a volume dial but it's customizable to do other things in certain

apps which would be neat that would be awesome um i don't think it does anything do crazy like open the phone no no no no yeah what are your thoughts of it so i was wondering putting something like this on something that's already going to be pretty budget it's it's strange seeing sacrifices of things but also adding something that's never been done to a phone are we going to see bigger sacrifices on things or yeah i don't know how expensive this particular thing is i feel like we're going to see this and it's going to be a kind of a cool thing and then we're going to want a more premium version of it and that gives them an excuse to sell a higher end

or more expensive version on a nothing phone maybe someday in the future. Who knows? But I also think we kind of always ask for trying something new in smartphones and we've seen so many phones that are the same, that look the same. And I think this being a little different

and maybe actually functional is pretty cool. I do too. I think this and the screw, even if like you said the screw does almost nothing even if it just means i'm gonna fidget around with my phone now at my desk i'm still excited for it it could also be like a mounting point like in a camera too because you take it out there's threads in there now true or you could put a bracket underneath like i that's what i assumed it was was like that's interesting mounting accessories mounting

something out of that even if it's just like a lanyard ring or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Pistol grip. The pistol grip for it. 20 under there. My main takeaway from this, also, the first tweet said community update on July 8th. And now this latest tweet says coming July 8th. I still don't know if it's going to be like launched on that date, if we're just to get the announcement for it community update seems more like a post versus like an event right yeah they

seem like a unveiling type of company yeah we're going to unveil it on this date well so i want to say these teasers i think cmf teases things way better than nothing does cmf is like beautiful render interesting aspect of a phone look it up at it up close working and then nothing does. CMF is like beautiful render, interesting aspect of a phone, look at it up close working, and then nothing is like, here's a bug. And that's it. Here's a high-res ladybug.

Yeah, like. That's fair. I think CMF is doing nothing's job better than nothing. It's also confusing that they call it the phone one when the nothing phone one is already. Yeah, so it's gonna be, I guess this will be the CMF phone one. I've reviewed one CMF product so far. It was just a watch.

The watch was 69 bucks. Is that what it was? I think. I think, yeah. So it, I mean, at this price, like ultra budget, it really doesn't have a ton of margin, like literal margin

to experiment with new hardware stuff. So I wonder if you make a phone, number one, what price point do you actually aim for? Like the nothing phone was only 400 bucks. So to really differentiate as a CMF phone, how cheap is it going to be? And then number two, what can you actually do in a phone that cheap that hasn't been done on every other $150 phone or whatever? Knobbing a screw. That may be it. We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. What do you think, if you had to guess price, if it has to be the budget version of nothing, I think it can't be higher than $250. I'm going to go with my best prediction of the future is always from the past. So if the CMF watch was $70 and then the nothing, there's no nothing watch, but like a base smartwatch.

Man, a nothing watch would look really good. A base smartwatch is what, $150, let's say? So half the price? So this has got to be like a $175 phone. Yeah? Yeah. Do you think they do the like, I feel like almost every phone we've seen that cheap

is cheap for an exclusive amount of time so they can call it that cheap and then goes up to like 220 exactly i could see cmf doing something like that i could see that as well because they're nothing with a mask on can i have like two minutes to redeem the ellis rant we skipped earlier sure let me give me give me like two minutes oh i just I just pulled Ellis rant. Oh, sweet. Wow. Nice.

All right. Am I good? Is someone keeping time? You're good. All right. Sweet. Dude, we don't need this many knobs. Stop us!

They're just, we just, we just don't need them. Okay. And here, here is why. Okay. There are essentially like three kinds of knobs. Well, there's a few different kinds, but the big difference is a knob can be endless, meaning you can spin it all the way, or it can be fixed. It can have a beginning and an endpoint. The beginning and the endpoint knobs, which companies never use because they're cowards and are too busy to program healthy takeover modes into their firmware,

which companies have done for a while now. The code's out there, just don't want to do it. Those knobs are great for controlling different parameters. You know what I mean? Because you know a knob is at a position, you know the value of that thing. The endless knobs can also work really well when they're stepped, when you feel a click and you know each increment. Because as soon as it's not clicked and it's endless and you can scroll forever there's no attachment between your brain and the parameter you're

controlling you're just moving it up and down and for everyone in the office for everyone in the office who's like oh i got it i got a knob on my keyboard that i use to control the volume guess what you use a mac there's 16 volume steps Even if you're not feeling the knob clicked, that's a stepped endless encoder. Yeah. Get out of my face. Build, make your encoder stepped. Don't, shut up. If you want a physical parameter control,

put a fader on your device. We've known for years, faders are superior to knobs. Yeah, they take up a little bit more space. Shut up. And final point, if you are like, I need a non-stepped rotary encoder,

it's called a jog wheel. We established this like 20 years ago. That jog wheels are the superior endless rotary encoder. It's why all video editors have one. I'm done. This is just stop it with the knobs wouldn't a knob with a set amount of volume on a phone be the same stepping as a macbook

it's it's complicated because the mac makes it really clear as you go up like you can see each each of the 16 steps so if my volume slider went up and down as i if you're not if you're not getting any feedback and the phone was trying to convince you that it was faking like potentiometer status and smoothly grading the amp up with an actual resistor you would just get lost in the sauce you know what i mean i i think you know maybe like some of the old like walkmans and cd players had no but they weren't endless they weren't endless they had a stop yeah they'd stop yeah stop it with the knobs i have two i have stop it and they break the endless endless digital non-step are the first thing to break on every electronic

ever shut up stop it so i have two other categories of knobs that i'm thinking of as you say this and i'm i think i agree with with both of them in principle so the first one in my car there is a a stepped but finite knob for volume and it's it's hard on one side and hard on the other side. And there's a little dot and you can only go up or down and it's notched and stepped and it's great. Sounds crispy. I don't know if that's less likely to break or not.

I don't remember. I guess we'll find out. It doesn't matter. It's enjoyable. It's great. No, it's great. It's built well. It clicks.

It's nice. It's satisfying. But the other one I feel very strongly about, which is lenses. Lenses, if you've used a photo lens before, they have infinitely scrolling, like, what's it called? What is it? What is it called? I'm forgetting the name. The ring. The focus ring. They have infinitely scrolling focus rings,

but internally there are mechanisms that stop. So you can keep scrolling the focus ring but internally they stop so you can't actually assign like a follow focus to the ring because you can just keep spinning the ring and it would be all out of whack but high quality cine lenses are stopped so you can you can put a focus ring and a follow focus on this ring and it will actually stop and always be accurate right now so i fully i hard agree with lenses it's the same volume if you can keep scrolling and the volume's not going up anymore it's a meaningless physical connection to your device yeah shut up what's the physical connection is emotional i don't care about what it's actually doing.

I want to feel a click, boy. I think you would feel more direct. We're agreeing with each other. That's what I'm saying. It's the directness of it when you feel the hard stop and it's the same amount

every time. Yeah, if you can keep spinning the knob and nothing is happening, you're not receiving any physical feedback. That is a one-way conversation i want you and your device i want to bring something up but i don't want to send this off

do it what is this a mouse scroll wheel infinite because although the second step of the mx master non-step counting one where i'm just on reddit with infinite pages and I'm just or like a YouTube comments and I could just go and it just loads all the pages for me. Yeah, it's fantastic. But I can also I immediately step out of that into the stepped version when I'm normally and you specifically said that you were using it with infinite pages and not and there is an amount but it takes a very long time to get to that. I would also argue specifically in the case of the MX Master 3 when you're on the free and it's not and there isn't an amount but it takes a very long time to get to that i would

also argue specifically in the case of the mx master 3 when you're on the free mode uh you can feel the inertia of the flywheel spinning inside true so there is physical feedback communicating the infiniteness of it it's the only thing i'm right i'm right about this that is the best thing ever youtube comments trying to find something and just sending i'm gonna close i'm gonna close it with this ready i have an arteria midi controller from 15 years ago this thing is old and it's budget tech i think it was like 90 when i bought it okay everything on that keyboard still works every single thing even the magnet even like the touch strip something that is it all still works every single endless rotary encoder on there has broken every single one it is the only part of that keyboard that has ceased working there's like 30 of them on that keyboard

and they all don't work and it's not like the controller for them failed and all of a sudden they don't work they all are messed up in their own stupid jittery own way coincidence it's a stupid stupid component to put on anything well isn't doesn't everyone think that the knob doesn't even do anything on this it's just for the lanyard no let's say it did do something do you think it would be stopped or infinite it better be stepped it's probably i think it'd be it's probably infinite it can be infinite we just have the rabbit steps the rabbit was infinite too yeah it's gonna be infinite no one wants to get compared to actually actually honestly i might give the rabbit a pass what of all oh no hold on hold on no no no i might give the rabbit a pass specifically on it's not it has the same

number of elements every time i don't know that just feels right all right you just lost all the credibility for your entire the rabbit okay rant over that one was tough all right hat shaking no more knobs hat shaking i'm still trying to think of what to be mad about that's good rant though i feel like we need to go back and edit the like if you don't to this jump to time code. All right. Pixel event. We have, ladies and gentlemen, at least a date for the next Pixel event, and that is, let me just make sure I pulled up because I tweeted it, was it August?

Well, I feel like that's the funny part about it. It is so much different than what we're used to that you have to double check what the date is. I got the invite. You're invited to an in-person made by google event where we'll showcase the best of google ai android software and the pixel portfolio devices august 13th um so now we know when that's coming now we know also when samsung unpacked is also happening where we get the new foldables and probably the ring and probably something else so yeah devices everything's so much earlier i feel slowly samsung used to be end of august now it's oh yeah mid-july right didn't the pixel used to be october yeah the last years was october 4th huh it's so much different this is now and that's not

just like a step back this is a step back from a whole nother release. It used to be the release after the iPhone release. Yeah, now it's before the iPhone. Whoa, I did not realize this was the Pixel 9 event. This whole time, I thought it was just the watch. Oh no, this is the Pixel 9 event. Pixel portfolio devices. I assume this is Pixel 9, yeah. Here's my theory.

Start of August is usually when we just see the whole phone already. They're getting ahead of the- They're just like, let's just do the event then. You all know what it is already. It's been done for months. They might as well just send it. Yeah.

Yeah. Instead of getting leaked for two straight months before it comes out. That's a good idea. Yeah, there were some. We've talked about leaks before. I think the biggest kind of change to the Pixel 9 that we're seeing is that the camera bump on the back isn't rolling over onto the side rails like it used to. I'm going to miss that. I like, if the renders are correct, I kind of like it.

Because it also looks like it has flat edges as well. So I like the flat edges part. I thought that, because this is what's happened. If you just continue extending what's happening here, it just turns into a regular camera bump, just like every other phone. I thought what made the Pixel the Pixel was the visor. I think they did a good job at keeping the visor vibe while also rounding the edges of it

to fitting this like Pixel rounded edges vibe lately or what that render looks like. I think it's still very Pixel and you would still pick it out as a Pixel despite having a case on it. You're right. I'm just hitting fast forward and I just continue to see it, you know, shrinking into just a regular old camera. The crab theory.

Yep. It's an evolution. We're watching it in front of our very eyes. This is the first time it steps out of the water. Okay. It's still got the gills. It's fine. But it's going to be a tough couple years.

No, this, I think it'll be fine. I think it'll be a good-looking phone with nice hard side edges, and I'll love it. And then, yeah, hopefully the software is good too. Pixel 3 Watch. Pixel Watch 3. What do we – Pixel Watch 3, yeah, sorry. Assuming that you're saying –

I haven't seen anything about it. What's one thing you would like to see in the new pixel watch bigger size still round with like very curved edges like it's still yeah still love the form factor i i think they kept it one size for a reason but i would like a larger size available for me i would like a bigger screen and a bigger battery and bigger everything and a bigger watch what if same size but the screen just extended out to the curve better it's already pretty good is it i feel like pretty good i mean they do a good job of like blending it because the glass is so curved yeah so it feels like it can't really get much further out what if they it got around the curve like the image itself yeah like the

screen i mean that'd be sick but i'd still want a bigger. Because I want a bigger battery. I think the device needs a bigger battery. That's what I want. I like the small size. I liked wearing it. It didn't feel clunky like this Garmin watch I love, but it's gigantic. Yeah, I'm wearing an Ultra right now. But the battery was terrible on it.

Yeah, I want a two-day battery life Pixel watch. That'd be fire. Two-day batteries should be standard on all smartwatches. Like, legitimate two-day. It's a good it's a good take hot take all right i'm spinning the hat back towards you still brainstorming my rant i really don't know how are you new motorola razor oh yeah that came out this week we just got yeah it's announced uh well there's two actually right there's a new razor and a razor plus razor plus being the 999 flagship foldable with a larger outside cover screen it's like a four inch outside cover screen now it's also 165 hertz ltpo which is cool because it's a lot i found that when i used the razor i i liked that it was a big

outside screen but i i'm not a person who ever like stayed on the outside screen even though i know that that's why it's supposed to be really good you're supposed to be able to just open it read a text swipe over clear a few notifications check that one read the first few lines of an email and then put your phone away i just i just opened the phone i think that's me why it's just like it's not a phone for you but that screen i seems like the reason why people like this phone like this yeah they're giving you all the right reasons to continue using it more customization 165 hertz ltpo it's corner to corner the whole thing's ipx8 water resistance that's cool yeah uh and it's a thousand bucks for this phone

a couple cool colors too the colors are really sweet what's cool is prices didn't change between the two yeah um and the regular version is now getting the 3.6 inch screen that the old plus had because it used to be a 1.5 inch screen i think on the front so now if you are getting the cheaper version you can still have the benefits of the front screen while the plus still gets a couple of small upgrades to the screen which are also really nice but these colors yeah are great so the cheaper razor the cheaper razor is now 699 i think it's the same as last year yeah and it gets that new bigger screen that's cool yeah like i was under like in my own personal headcanon this whole time that we've been doing foldables

i've been kind of thinking that one form factor was gonna win out i don't know if that's true anymore do you think we're just always gonna have both form factors flip and fold a crumble phone as ellis wants i think the fold is beating the flip right now really in what in popularity or just an evolution because i think flips more popular that's a really good question i see more about folding phones but that's probably because of the like like space yeah where we the bubble that we are in yeah but i you're probably right i bet the flip is probably more popular i think the flip makes more sense to everyday people, but I've seen,

I still can't believe how many folds I see. I played disc golf with someone who was keeping square on our card the other day and he had a Samsung fold. And I was like, huh, interesting. I just don't, I see them so much all the time and I'm surprised they've gotten into hand so quickly. It does feel like they are like

crabbing into their own like several different crabs like they're they're all basically feeling similar to each other in flips and they're all feeling similar to each other in folds yes that makes sense so yeah whoever whoever makes the thinnest most advanced fold everyone starts chasing that one and i feel like the the z flip is the standard for flips and they all kind of look more and more like each other there too could it get small thin enough to where it starts like this it flips out to a regular size candy bar phone but then this is now the front screen and then it opens up like a book. And now you have the bigger inner screen.

That requires four screens. Four screens. That's a lot of screens. And also it'd be pretty thick if it did that. It's definitely in a prototype lab somewhere. LG definitely has a prototype of that somewhere. TCL's built that a few times already. They're like, how much thinner can we make this? Yeah.

No, it's out there. It's a phone you can buy. I think you have to be on Verizon again because yeah no that's it's out there it's a phone you can buy i think you have to be on verizon again because you know it's moto that's how they roll uh but yeah shout out to the new the new moto razor we should take one more break we've got more headline in more hat and we have more trivia to talk about about okay next question from the pod quiz god himself james carter and question two the arm processor is in everything these days i'm sure we've all got them in our phones in our pockets arm is an acronym what does it stand for and what did it originally stand for it changed in around 1990 oh you y'all are done bro this is so what did it stand for and what did it originally stand for two points two points two points available i won't be getting either

i think david would have gotten the first part of that. I suspect he would have gotten at least one point. I suspect, yeah. But now that it's Ellis. I know what one of them is. So maybe you'll get one point. We'll do two separate points. I'm not going to get it.

Do I have to tell you which one is the old one and which one is the new one? Okay, cool. I'll call James. Thanks. All right. Well, we'll do some thinking. Yeah. You guys better be thanking your lucky stars that I'm not answering trivia questions every

week because I'd be out here bawling. Well, you do make them. Okay. Yeah. We'll think about it. We'll be right back. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves?

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All right, welcome back to our final stage of Headlines in a Hat. I said it right that time. I'm proud of that. Okay, here we go. This says Galaxy Watch Ultra. Now, this is a natural evolution because Samsung does what Apple does when it works well. That's not what that says. That's not what that says. That's not what this says.

No, I'm joking. But yeah, I'm wearing an Apple Watch Ultra. And Samsung went, wait, you're saying we can charge $1,000? Not that they don't already do this. But you can charge $1,000 for a watch if we just give it a ton more battery and features. And it's just the same thing as when we already make. Cool. Great. They already had the pro they already have they already have thousand dollar smart watch yeah they need uh they need to just sort of they're so tempted by the ultra thing i get it

they have an ultra phone already why not 47 mil you know it does it does make more sense for them to call it the ultra versus the pro because that follows the phone naming scheme yeah have you seen the leaks for this yet or the renders well so first of all the reason we know that there's it's called the galaxy watch ultra and that it has lte and it's 47 millimeters is samsung accidentally posted a support page post about it saying that and then took it down very quickly but of course we found it not we 95 google found it uh i think 95 9 what 91 mobile found it 91 mobiles found it yeah yeah um but have you seen these renders because these were all over twitter the other day but i think you were out so you may have missed this but the design of this has got a lot of people talking. Really? Why?

It looks fine. You think it looks fine? Yeah. People seem to have very polarizing opinions on this. Do you want to describe it for our... It's kind of like a squared off circle. It's a squircle. Yeah, it's a squircle, kind of like the Apple Watch Ultra. It's a squircle with a circle, though.

Yes. Yeah, okay, that's a good observation. So the screen itself is a circle andcle with a circle, though. Yes. Yeah. Okay, that's a good observation. So the screen itself is a circle and has a circular bezel, but then the frame around it is more of like a squared off circle, probably to just have more room inside for battery and things like that. I'm fine with it. That looks fine to me.

Orange dial as well, which is very apple watch ultra but also probably my favorite part of the apple watch ultra is the orange accent i've gone back and forth on liking this or disliking this i i kind of just wish it was the squircle shape without the circle on the inside yeah i would have liked more more screen coverage on the front but then again i think all of samsung smartwatches are circles they are mistaken yep so they're just keeping with that i like that yeah um yeah i don't know i don't know i like it and i dislike it i've also been recently thinking of switching back to a samsung watch my problem is i need more battery which maybe this will have i i feel like i love my garmin

watch i've been using this for like a year and a half now it's i i bought it because of all the health metrics and everything and i seem to not care about them as much but now i've gotten to the point where i need the notifications on my wrist and i check the time so often i hate my phone being on vibrate or ringer so I need something buzzing me for calendar tasks or text messages. This is really bulky. Did you say tasks? Yeah. Oh, I'll just let that slide, but I'm proud of you.

Tasks. That's awesome. Thank you. That means a lot. Yeah. This feels bulky. I think the Samsung watches look nicer. The battery watch is a problem.

I've also thought about doing no watch because this watch tan is getting terrible yeah it's hot out here yeah so i don't know i think i might try out the new samsung watch whatever comes out because i am using a samsung phone now i did like my galaxy watch before i think they're some of the nicest looking ones i want to see this in person not versus a render and see what it looks like yeah but it is also just going to be big and bulky like my garment and I kind of want something smaller yeah I think David was saying he did not like the way this one looked and I kind of really do like it yeah same yeah oh yeah so maybe it's not polarizing and David just gaslit me into thinking that it is super polarizing well it is like a watch it does i mean it seems like it's only slightly bigger in display than the current max size watches you can get from samsung

but the biggest known benefit to more chassis size is just here's some more room for battery yeah it's just if that's what you're after that is what it probably will offer but i guess tbd because it was just a leak and then disappeared well yeah this is a render so this wasn't even part of the leak so it might not even be what we're seeing yet it is slightly bigger the galaxy watch pro is 45 millimeters so that will be a touch bigger and i'm assuming the 47 is the screen size not the squircle size right yeah i just i think i i get why it's a little weird that it's a circle inside of a squircle but it is like you said all we always say hey can our phones just be a little bit thicker so we can have some better battery life so if that means this has over two days of battery life

which i still think is the minimum that i want i'll be really happy about it. You'll get one and a half and you'll be thankful. I will and I won't. Realistic. All right. So yeah, we'll see that very soon, right? If it comes out at Unpacked, then yes. If it doesn't, then maybe sometime later this year. We'll see. It could be at Unpacked.

I hope we see it in July. Word. Well, it's your turn to pick a headline. And I have a hat hat there are headlines in it all right this isn't a headline this is just the ionic 6n we have at the office oh the 5n it's the 5n yeah ionic 5n yes you're right sorry oh man we have the 5N. It's kind of sick, but it's not like practical. How did you describe it to us yesterday? Okay, the Ioniq 5N.

So I've talked about the Ioniq 5. We've made a video about it. The Ioniq 5N is their sportier version, maybe even a track version of the Ioniq 5. Makes some sacrifices. It also straight up pretends to be a gas car like and i don't know if you realize how far it goes to try to pretend to be a gas car but it is one of the most fun and funny car experiences ever because when you think about

it okay what are the advantages of an electric powertrain over a gas powertrain typically it's one gear maybe two gears so you have this relentless pull of instant torque and then just pulling you forward that's what all the most powerful fastest quickest electric cars have done the ionic 5n has a mode that emulates a gas car a gas powertrain a seven speed gearbox and literally has paddle shifters and an engine sound so you can pull through gears and it acts like a gas car through all of the gears meaning it's slower at lower rpms it builds torque at higher rpms you can redline it which means you missed a shift and it will slow down and you'll feel the shifts as you're driving it kicks you when you do a heavy shift it kicks like you literally you feel like yeah and it it inserts all of this with the

control of the electric motor so yes it is slower than it could be if it just drove like it normally could just flat out but it's the engagement it's the feel it's the sounds and boy are the sounds there are some serious sounds you know what this reminds me of my friend's dad when we were kids used to pull up to like nice looking cars at stoplights with like a dodge caravan full of kids and he used to rev the engine and then he used to fake shift and like make noises with his mouth oh my god and this sounds like the ev version of basically i still do that you still it uh it has a speaker inside the cabin that is specifically over your shoulder so that it sounds

like it's coming from where the exhaust would be coming from and there's also a speaker outside of the cabin that you can turn on or off so that when you're driving, when you're banging through gears, you actually have people outside you hear what you're hearing. It's all true. I really appreciate that you can turn it on

inside the cabin and off outside the cabin so you can do it. I think you should have to make the commitment of if you're listening to it inside you have to pretend to play it outside it's funny there are so many cars that like pump more sound into the cabin so that you can hear them like the i8 bmw i8 it's kind of like a quiet car but they pump so much sound into the cabin that you would think your car is super loud because you want to hear it but it's not that loud this This is kind of the opposite. It's like, yeah, I want people to hear more than they actually have to.

Let's just blast everything. Yeah. There are three modes. There are three modes. The first one sounds, I think, the most like a normal car. It's got this low grumble. I believe that's mode two. I think the first one, the top one.

The one with the grumble. You're talking about this one. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's number two. I could be wrong about that. Let me hear the first one. The first one sounds like this. Oh, OK. The first one is the one that has the shifts that sound like this.

OK. OK. The first one is the one that has the shifts that sound like this. Okay. Okay, yeah. The other one with the grumble. That sounds the most like a regular car. It's actually, I think they were telling me it's based on the Elantra N. Actually, no. I think the behavior is based on the Elantra N, not the sound. The behavior, the way it pulls through like a 7,750 RPM redline and has, I think, either a seven or eight speed gearbox.

I'm not going to get all this right off the top of my head, but it behaves like the Elantra N, which is kind of hilarious. This is an electric car. Yeah. This is how it sounds when you accelerate. And when the car shifts, you feel it. It's like knots. And I don't you feel it it's like knots and and

i don't know if it's actual like haptics or if they're just using the speakers in the car but when you switch into that mode and you begin to hear the low engine rumble you feel the car vibrating like there's a v8 in there it's silly it just sounds like you're driving a forza simulator yeah it's fully electric and it fully commits to that sound the other two sounds however uh don't really sound like a normal gas car i'll let you hear them kind of weird that's a little i i think you could get used to them but they sound more like a video game listen to these another one sounds like a video game miles said it best the the in mode one the

sound of the gears shifting is the same sound you get if you hit a cyber truck with a sledgehammer. Just slamming through gears. Sounds like giant robots are attacking. Yeah, that's so aggressive. It's so funny. I think that one could fool me. It has a little burble and you let off. Yeah, this one. Also, sorry everyone for the shaking.

Clearly the shock mount on our binaural mic is not good enough for these raucous launches. I would love to know in the comments, for those of you who have made it this far, who is this car for? Who is the Ioniq 5N, an electric car, fully masquerading as a gas car? What is the customer that goes, I love banging through gears, hearing the sounds, feeling the forces, and taking my car to a track, but it's got to be electric? Or is it, I want an electric car, but I want to take it to a track, but it's gotta be electric. Or is it, I want an electric car, but I wanna take it to the track and also I want to feel all these things,

so why do you want an electric car? I don't know who the person is. I feel like taking it to a track is the place you would get made fun of the most for having fake sounds coming out. But also it'd make a really funny video of just like showing up to track day with it. The car looks, by the way, awesome awesome it looks fantastic i love it it's got a good size backseat

it's kind of like a fast hatch type of size it's also very similar to the ev6 gt it's it's like 200 miles of range tops yeah like it's it's not the most practical car in the world but it is a fun car it looks it's really really fun i wish you should be able to um import in sound packs so you can replicate like a wrx or joe wait there's no way hyundai's gonna let you do that but maybe someone will find a way to uh bring in like forza sounds and wow replicate some different different kinds of cars that would be really fun it's like you're the impression person now do you know like the guy that like breathes into the can and does all the different cars different engine sounds yeah yeah your car could do that for you that would be or you could do that guy's sound what if you could use that guy's

sounds in the cans as your car drive by you just hear that guy's voice as he drives down the street. That would also be crazy. I kind of love that idea. I know they would never do it because Hyundai doesn't have enough cars that sound like that. They wouldn't do another car, but that I love that idea. Wow.

Okay. That was the second. Is it my, I think there's one left. Yeah. My pole, pull it final headline in a hat. It says Rivian,

and what we're referring to is a Volkswagen group investing, was it $5 billion in Rivian? Which honestly isn't much news, but it is good news if you're a Rivian fan, because that means they get an injection of capital. If you're a Rivian stockholder, that means they're more likely to be around longer.

If you have an R2 reservation, you feel more confident that it will get to that point. Great point. R3 is that much more likely to eventually come around. All good news. Yeah. I do think it's a little interesting because we always talk about who will win this race of software companies making a great vehicle or legacy car manufacturers making good software.

And now they are going to partner up with that architecture and use it on some future cars, which they say within the second half of this decade. within the second half of this decade. So it sounds like Volkswagen's going to get some help on the software side from Rivian based on what they've learned because they've made it this far and seem to be doing a pretty good job. So this was not something I was fully expecting, even though Rivian's gotten investments from like Ford.

I think they were supposed to build a Ford SUV at some point, but that never happened. So it's great for Rivian. I think it's good for Volkswagenian i think it's a it's good for volkswagen as well because now hopefully i can group owns so many car companies i don't know if you know like they they own porsche audi lamborghini like across the board and they make tons of different types of cars so i mean this just feels like another yet another feather in their cap of like oh yeah we're gonna also make yeah rivians that's another thing we work with them on cool great i don't know i just i'll see

what the you know announcements are that come out of this and when they actually start making new models that'd be cool to see but yeah i just think it makes the ones that they've already announced that much more likely to eventually actually come out which is great for your rivian fan this hopefully should be good as long as they're not stepping on any toes over at rivian but question about this because we were talking about this i think last week with the with the fisker news where let's say somewhere down the line rivian doesn't make it and they are no longer a company what happens to the rivians like i want an r3 if i get an r3 eventually when that comes out

and then the company goes belly up what i do with my car there's a couple things that change when a car company goes under the most obvious one is service who services your car um don't know you just drive it till something breaks and then you'd fix it yourself or your car is cooked that's what miles was saying that you can't really do that with like it's so much harder yeah you can't really go under the hood like if something just breaks on the inside you're fine but if something like fundamentally has an issue with your powertrain on an ev that's that's the end if you can't service it so that's that is a concern but then there's other things like software updates uh do they continue to get software updates or support or if they stop getting updates and there's some sort of an attack or something what happens then i don't know there's also charging network and

this is a little simpler because they should all have the ability to with an adapter plug into any tesla supercharger. But before that, it was even weirder because if you don't have access and Rivian has those chargers that are theoretically no longer maintained because they go belly up, then where do you plug in?

Only Electrify America. That's a bummer. Yeah, it's not a good look when the product maker disappears. It's definitely tougher because even with Tesla being the most popular EV right now, if you have to get your Tesla fixed at a non-Tesla service center, like a mechanic, still parts are way more scarce compared to legacy manufacturers. Not every mechanic is able to do it. If you're something like a fisker if you

brought a fisker into a mechanic right now they would be like yeah sorry man i can't help you like nothing's gonna happen here um even if you probably brought a tesla into a lot of them they would be like i don't know if i can do this and they're far more popular than anything else so yeah yeah it's a tough spot if uh rivian went belly up which i hope they never do you're in a bad spot. Everyone with a Fisker right now is probably very worried and hopes nothing happens to their car. It's a ticking clock on how long you can drive that thing. Yeah.

Well, I didn't find anything to get mad about, so I guess I'm mad about that. There you go. Wow. Nice. Great job. There it is. I found something.

Let's do trivia. I got bored this time oh yeah all right first question i'm just gonna play james again so the first one question one in 1947 harvard computer scientists claimed to have discovered the first computer bug when they removed a creature from a relay in the Harvard Mark II computer that had caused it to fail. What kind of creature was it? Andrew staring blankly into space. I don't know how to draw it. I was going to try and draw it. I drew one.

I don't think it's accurate, though. I am sitting in David's seat, so it would be canon for me to do a terrible drawing. And you have to write in cursive. Tilt brush. Cursive. I don't think David does either. Material theme editor.

I get to flip a board. This is so crazy. Ooh, flip them and read. What do you guys got? Oh. I said fly. Andrew? Roach. Marques?

Roach. Okay, and the answer. I asked what creature was extracted from the Harvard Mark II computer making it the first real computer bug and that was a moth oh none of you got it it was a mom i think that makes so confident i was trying to think of what bug would be in a house and a moth makes so much more sense it was a moth i i had to assume harvard people wouldn't have roaches for some reason well they do Boston yes they have roaches damn well that's hard watch me get these next two wrong too and all my confidence go out the window oh yeah I forgot you said you

definitely knew the answer to that I thought he would know that one that's like I mean fairly popular computer trivia I was ballpark in it yeah yeah moth fly be be be okay now let me find question two real quick wait i'm not supposed to say that sorry i'm so used to being where you are all right and now the second question the arm processor is in everything these days i'm sure we've all got them in our phones in our pockets arm is an acronym what does it stand for and what did it originally stand for it changed in around 1990 again two points up for the acronym is arm i just want to confirm that right yes google bulletin you can even make up a fun one and I have to make up two. Message Center.

Works with Nest API. Hangouts on Air. I did that. YouTube Gaming. I only have one. I did Hangouts on Air. Wow. All right.

The seat got to you. You were very confident until you had to get into the hot seat. I knew I had one, but I didn't know it ever changed. Dang. All right. Flip them and read. What do you got? Mark, how's you go first?

Gobbledygook. I wrote actual real messages, which is wrong. And then I wrote arm instruction manual, which is also wrong. I could use an arm instruction manual. is also wrong i could use an arm hold on yes instruction is an i with the r's in the middle yes it's exactly right yeah i like that i wrote architect's random memory okay sure i put advanced risk machine risk with a c what does that stand for? It's another acronym.

It stands for Reduced Instruction Set Chip. There's an acronym inside an acronym? There is. You're damn skippy. Jesus. Wow. This has been a trivia question before, too. What has?

What does RISC stand for? Oh. Oh. Well, I wouldn't have gotten that either. All right. The answer to the second question. And for number two, I asked what the ARM acronym was. These days, it is the Advanced Risk Machine.

Let's go! But the ARM processor was originally developed by a British computer company called Acorn Computers, and it was originally the Acorn Risk Machine. Oh, fun fact. Cool. Alright. That's interesting branding. So David gets one more point. Ellis, on the board with a point. Yeah, you're

for David. Alright, sorry I didn't get you three, David. So the score after this is Marquez still with 11. Andrew with 12. Youquez still with 11. Andrew with 12. You were tied with David. I want last week's questions.

David now has 13. And Ellis on the board with 1. Let's go. Are you carrying the 1 now? I'm literally carrying the 1. Also, James was like, if you write trivia questions, you can't answer them. I guess I only got a third of them right.

So, maybe that is kind of true. Great in the zero. Great in the zero, my friend. Well, that concludes this episode of Headlines in a Hat. It was a good hat. It was good headlines. Good trivia. Thank you, James. Yeah, thank you, James.

Shout out to that whole episode if you go watch it. It's another good one, another banger bonus episode, but we'll be back with the regularly scheduled programming. And of course, that means we'll be back next week. So until then,

catch you later. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven, this time with additional trivia from James from PodQuiz. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music

is produced by Vane. Shut up, Ed! So. Only Jono and I grew up with bagged milk.