Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Techtober Grab Bag: Audi, Vive, Plus some Q&A

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Techtober is here! This week is the calm before the storm as Marques and Andrew discuss what they expect from the Apple, Google, and Samsung events next week. After that, they talk about the electric Audi that Marques is driving as well as the new HTC Vive Flow headset. They round it out with a Q&A, answering a few questions from Twitter. It's a fun one! Twitters: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/DurvidImel https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Shop the merch:  shop.mkbhd.com 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

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, we have laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. All right, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And it's Techtober.

Yeah. But like, about to really be Techtober. Yeah, it's like the calm before the storm i think last year techtober was absolutely insane because you have the iphone event pushback you have playstation 5 coming out you i like looked at our videos from last october and it was absolutely insane it was a lot yeah uh this year and it's kind of funny because it sort of lined up all right one after the other i think think it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We have three different events, three huge ones. It's an Apple event on Monday.

It's a Google event on Tuesday. It's a Samsung event on Wednesday. We're going to be right in the thick of it. And even the calm before you storm we mentioned. We just reviewed a bunch of stuff, the Apple Watch being the latest one. And so it's a calm, but there's still a lot latest one and so it's a calm but there's still a lot going on and it's about to level up it's there but next week seems to just all just

happen all at once and it's going to be a crazy week it's great fun part is next week is also the beginning of nationals for our college team or club team yeah so uh we'll be spending i'll be spending a couple of days away from the tech area Yeah, I'll live here for a bit. Then I'll go out to, it's in California. I'll be totally away from the tech and then I'll be right back immersed in it. Sort of like, what are they? You know how when you dip someone's head in like hot water, cold water, hot water, it's supposed to like reset you.

I don't know. It sounds like torture. It probably is torture. But that might be what next week's like anyways. It'll be pretty great. Yeah. So we have what apple event we're we don't want to talk too much about all this because next week we're obviously going to go in depth of all of it but just like a quick what we might expect so apple

event on monday i think everyone's hoping for m1 macbook yeah let me relook let me look at the invitation again this is what we all do we look at the invitation and analyze the ever-loving daylight it's something about like hyperspeed right and has like uh so it looks like light speed yes so it's uh it's an apple logo with like this sort of warp speed animation and it just says unleashed period yeah that's the word they keep using all the all the execs on twitter are saying we're going to unleash something to me that means m1x like m1 we've've seen in this new chip in the MacBook Pro. I'm using an M1 MacBook Pro, but we've seen it in the iPad and the MacBook Air

and the Mac Mini and all that. And M1X is them unleashing Apple Silicon at a high level. That's what I read into it. And obviously, you know, moving fast is the warp speed animation. But we may also see some other stuff like airpods possibly i think everyone thought airpods is gonna happen earlier and it didn't so it seems if it's true seems kind of like a gimme on this one but like hyper unleash is definitely and warp speed kind of stuff is not

describing airpods so it's got to be something else. I was thinking just the what, because that's the smaller version M1 MacBook Pro. Right. I was thinking maybe the 16-inch version we get, not necessarily M1X, which is totally different. Well, so we don't really know exactly. I mean, this is the question. So we have this M1 that has been incredibly versatile, and they've put it in the baseline MacBook Air,

but it's also ended up in this 13-inch MacBook Pro, so it's that good. We're expecting, at least this is what I'm sort of roughly anticipating, is a 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro that are higher end than this, and that would be

the M1X chip in those higher end machines. Possibly that same chip could end up in an imac pro because we saw m1 in the baseline imac but we haven't refreshed the now discontinued imac pro maybe there's a high-end unleashed m1x imac pro as well okay um that's kind of it yeah it feels like we're and speculation but probably getting airpods and a new macbook what we're, in speculation, but probably getting AirPods and a new MacBook. What we're really, really hoping for is this new crazy M1 chip in a MacBook,

maybe even an iMac. That would be best event, best possible scenario. Yeah, higher-end Apple Silicon in the Macs. And I think maybe the AirPods are one more thing. But yeah, maybe there's all kinds of other little rumors about maybe a 120-hertz display, maybe mini-LED. These there's all kinds of other little rumors about like maybe a 120 Hertz display, maybe mini LED. These laptops have all kinds of other rumors about them. I think they kept saying they were going to get rid

of the touch bar, which would be pretty sick. Maybe an SD card slot. Maybe the SD card slot comes back. I'm not going to get my hopes up too high for that. But mainly this looks like an Apple Silicon thing. Okay, cool. And we have a Google event on Tuesdayuesday which we know is pixel 6 and we had kind of like all this crazy marketing stuff from them where we've basically seen the phone but there's still

some things we're waiting on yeah um strangest strangest launch strategy it's a very strange one but that's just kind of what google's done like when they leaked everything because it got leaked and we saw a disassembly video already of it um i'm excited i still am not fully on board with the design but i've also become a case person in the last year oh really design matters a little less to me yeah this this is an interesting one with like the uh the camera bar on the back which is like it's a it's a it's a feature it's a design feature for sure but then when you put a case on it you kind of kind of get rid of that feature as far as like protrusion yeah that's the thing is like it looks kind of strange to me i wish they kind of uh like

put it on the top almost like how the s21 like is continuous with the top edge of it and then it would kind of look like a nexus 6p um but again i've turned into a case person i've found this thing where i just love tossing my phone wherever and never worrying about it like literally just dropping my phone and which pixel are you on 4xl 4xl so that's that's a bigger phone but are you are you leaning one way or another towards like we have pixel 6 and six pro coming yeah i think it'll mostly come down to price which one because both of them like i can do the lower one with what we've seen from it so far like those things don't bother me just whichever one seems like the better

deal i think i'll wind up picking fair yeah yeah and we'll see as long as it's also good we get the little privilege of being able to review it beforehand, so it probably won't be a first pre-order. I'll probably gauge it, and then if not, I might just get an old S21, an old, quote-unquote. But yeah, it's time for an upgrade, for sure. Word. Okay. Then we get to Wednesday, and there was a surprise Samsung announcement.

So it's an unpacked 2 event. Yeah. And it's not quite, I mean, this probably won't be like a bunch of phones or anything. I don't think we're going to see a Galaxy Note. There have been no indications that this would be a Note event. It's the first thing that came to mind. Like a lot of things crossed my mind.

The first thing that came is a Note. And it's funny because I wanted to know what you thought about that because you've been pretty adamant on not discontinuing the note series and like when we first heard the unpacked event and only saw fold you're like no no i still think there will be a note yeah not maybe not at that event maybe sometime later so at first i thought that but the fact that they're calling it unpacked too feels more like this isn't a whole thing by itself it reminds me of when they released fe last year where it was like right this kind of secondary event i don't think there was really any in

pretty chill pretty quiet yeah um yeah it was actually kind of a surprise when we got that phone so yeah and wound up being phone of the year too so exactly um so this one yeah we'll see it's funny i my question now with the note is like at what point do we consider the note canceled like obviously if there's some sort of official no more note announcement, then it's canceled. But what if it just goes for two years without hearing anything about the note? Is it canceled then?

I would say next August is when we can make that decision. So like you are now two events over when it normally launches. But yeah, I don't know what's going to come. My, my second thought after thinking note would be an S21 fan edition, just because of the timing like last year, but we've seen like zero leaks or anything of this. Usually before a phone event, we've seen a couple of renders or something. So I really have no idea what's going to come out of this. Yeah. This event, which again, you could read

super into is a bunch of like blue, black and pink squares all like lining up sort of like a like an ecosystem and then a couple different samsung icons if i remember correct that's what it was last year it was like the fold and flip one was super obvious yeah this time um but a little less like this is a lot harder to tell or exactly what they're going for i'm hoping for a fridge a fridge yeah for sure if they send a review in it and just got a new house yeah i'll take a fridge we could use it yeah some fridge fridge action in here with the hot sauce uh so that's three events that we see on monday tuesday wednesday and then we just also have like an insane lineup of stuff on the channel so make make sure you're subscribed. There's some really cool things coming up along with all these things,

along with other stuff coming out. The second half of October is going to be like five times as much content probably as the first half of October. It's going to be great. Yeah. I'm excited for you to see it. So we did release our Apple watch series seven video. That's sort of the last review we've had up by the time this podcast goes live

I'm wearing it right now it is the same as the Series 6 in many ways but as I said in the video the two main things that are new bigger screen, slightly faster charging and that's kind of it this is good for people who have either never had an Apple Watch or smartwatch before or have a much older one. Yeah.

So now their lineup is this new Series 7, then a Series 3, and the SE. I have a one weird complaint with this watch. Okay. Which is I get the aluminum version every time I get an Apple Watch because it is the lightest one and it's durable enough for me and it's also the cheapest. Apple Watch because it is the lightest one and it's durable enough for me and it's also the cheapest okay and this year with series 7 there is no neutral colored aluminum Apple Watch so they have red green blue and then they have this thing called starlight which is I guess some people would consider it neutral but it's like a warm like flesh tone sort of off gold color neutral but it's not like i consider right right neutral to me i should

just define it is like a shade of black or gray or white yeah so like silver gray space gray black something like that and then they have midnight which is again it's just like the afl-13s very very close to dark or to black but also blue again so there's two blue colors so maybe i'm picky about it but like i don't know i'm not gonna wear a red watch every day yeah i was gonna say you're wearing red right now are you gonna get a different one i've been i've been testing it it's pretty bold i'm going back to the series six because it's black just going straight up so midnights yeah the upgrade isn't enough to warrant almost black as being better than black. Yeah.

And this is a picky thing for me. Like I really like that it charges faster because I wear the watch all the time and I need very specific times to charge and I need to get it right. Still say in the car. I should get an in-car charger, but it's like I get in the shower and it's like that's the 12 minutes that that watch has to last the rest of the night and like the next morning. So I really like the faster charging. I think that says a lot though,

is that you're one who enjoys upgrading. You're a tech person. You like being in the newest thing possible, but like even an almost black is still not enough. There's not enough upsides to the new watch for you to, you'd rather just have black right it says a lot yeah yeah it's it's literally like it's the new system on a chip but it's the same processor like it's it's almost the same computer inside so like yeah the old watch

gets watch os 8 and it's like every bit is functional minus the qwerty keyboard and like two special watch faces so i I'm fine with that. You know what's kind of interesting, though, that we've had here at the studio for a little bit now? I mean, I know what it is. I don't know if the listeners know it. The listeners haven't seen this yet because I haven't posted about it yet. We have an Audi RS e-tron GT here at the studio that I have been testing now for a little over a day. Yeah. I've driven it a bit a little over a day. Yeah.

I've driven it a bit now. It is fascinating. And we knew this was going to be a fun car. Like, we've tested the Taycan. We've obviously had Teslas here before and lots of other sporty EVs. Yeah. This would probably be closest to what Porsche made. It's built on the same platform.

It's almost the same thing. Yeah, it's just stylized. But it's now the Audi-styled version with an Audi interior. And you got to drive it for a bit as well. Yeah, you were gone, so I took the delivery for it. It was very hard for me to do, but I did it proudly because I have to for work. I love the interior of this car. It's really nice.

It's really nice. Now, there's a couple things that I actually don't like about both the exterior and the interior of this car it's it's really nice it's really nice now i there's a couple things that i actually don't like about both the exterior and the interior but i mean all the stuff we expect to be good like driving dynamics handling absolutely no body roll like handling is amazing i love driving this car the steering wheel it's a wheel it's great um it's a really nice like leather stitched wheel too uh it is an alcantara wheel alcantara okay and it's got these it's got these paddle shifters on the back and i was very confused about this for a second because i i keep pressing them just to see if they do anything as i'm driving i change the

driving modes they the paddles don't seem to do anything i watched i re-watched doug de miro's video the paddle shifters only add or subtract regen power so stock as i'm driving the car i let off the gas or the accelerator pedal and it just coasts like a regular car which a lot of evs are programmed to do they're supposed to like feel like a regular car so you let off you get no regen it's not as good for efficiency but hey you get used to it like a regular car you can hit the plus on the paddle shifters and add regen little by little until you like the amount of regen you get.

And then you can get to one pedal driving. That I thought was really interesting. I don't know if anyone would ever find that or know what they're doing as a paddle shift without watching a video or reading about it. Paddle shift seems like too convenient of a thing. Like I would almost rather paddle shifters like control my volume than like true that and just like gradually increase it when i start a drive

or something i did think that yeah how often do you really change region well yeah why do you need to do it that often i it made me think like maybe for some of these ev cars where they're worried about people not being used to like regen and everything is like you have it set to slowly increase the more miles you put on the car maybe something like that i mean while also being able to manually change it but like to slowly get people into that because it's clearly and like me as someone who drives an ice vehicle like when i come and i i like get the chance to drive some of these evs i'm still really confused by all the regen. Like it's very different for me.

And I see how people can like not be used to it at first and have to get used to it. But it's clearly the better thing to do. It is one of those things about driving an EV that you just have to go dive right in and get used to it. And it turns out like the second you do get used to it, this is like, I've said this about a lot of things about EVs, but the second you do get used to it um and it turns out like the second you do get used to it this is like i've said this about a lot of things about evs but the second you do get used to it it's it just makes sense

and it's one pedal driving you don't really want to go back to two pedal driving well it's one where it has crazy benefits it gives you the regen and it makes it so your brakes like barely ever need to be changed like you increase the lifetime of your brakes tenfold because of it so yeah that's huge like there's no downside to doing it yeah when we drove the uh the rimac concept one that also had paddle shifters and the paddle shifters changed the gear so if i shifted down i could shift into reverse and if i paddle shifted up i could go into neutral into drive and then also if you were in like the sport mode you could go between the two different gears so i could downshift into a different electric gear had two gear ratios that was kind of crazy that's like i don't know why i was expecting that you're trying to do that too but

yeah i don't really get my impresa has battle shifters and it's a cvt motor so it doesn't even have gears like it just really wait so what are your pedals mine do so it it essentially takes the way the transmission works um since it's not a gearbox it's a little different right and it's continuous but it basically just like creates fake gear levels in that continuous belt driven system and then you can pretend you're at like first gear second gear third gear so like it will you know rev the engine up more or whatever for that and i've just you know it's one of those things where it looks really cool it feels really cool but then you just absolutely never use it yeah yeah the cars that i've driven that actually use paddle shifters traditionally are really fun where you actually shift through gears with them and like

can downshift whenever you want all that that's crazy fun so it was interesting seeing that in the car let's get to the uh you said you had a couple things on the exterior that you didn't like well i want to go that first because this is clearly like it's a looker it's a good looking car i think yeah i personally i believe it's nardo gray i'm not 100 sure but it is that like uh non-metallic gray color it's so glossy but it's yes definitely it looks similar to it i think this one has a bit of a blue hue so i don't know if i would i would describe it exactly as nardo gray but on the things i like i mean the shape is cool it isn't a hatchback but it does have a pretty big trunk the trunk opening is small but the trunk is actually pretty big uh does have a real front

trunk uh so i like the sporty shape of it. The things I don't immediately love, one, the wheels, they're kind of like aero cap-ish, but also, I don't know. So it's hard to do silver wheels well, in my opinion. I love black wheels, like, no matter what. And this is, like, a big silver wheel with, like, half aero caps trying to look sporty. I think they're 21s. It's just, it's a bold look on that car. I'm not a big fan of the wheel design. Second, the black plastic on the front of the car.

This is something we've seen on some other EVs. Like you got to figure out how you want to do a grill. In fact, I was going to do a video all like talking about all this stuff. I might've cut it from a previous video, but it's like, or I think I did actually talk about this a little in a dear Tesla competitors video. Okay okay but when you do an ev there's suddenly a bunch of things

that you have to now consider that you didn't have to do in a gas car one is aerodynamics are much more efficient for your efficiency or much more important for your efficiency and you have to do some sort of efficient wheel and two is you don't need a grill anymore so what do you do on the front of the car and uh you know tesla's had black plastic they got rid of it the uh mustang mach-e has had either body color panel or a black panel which i like there is a black plastic one as well that looks very similar to this just bigger yeah and i hate it i don't love this black plastic on the e-tron it's got this like hex pattern on the front and then there's all the sensors underneath it.

I wish it was body color. That's the one thing is like, you don't need a grill, but you do need way more sensors than like regular gas cars have that do have grills. So like it has this kind of half of a fake grill with these giant cameras underneath it. I think my biggest issue,

and this is something Hayato brought up, was like, it's a very glossy black plastic that looks very similar to like really bad infotainment systems inside cars where the borders of it is like this really glossy fingerprint written. And the reason it stands out a bit more on this car is because it also has a black trim around under the headlights. So you have this really beautiful color gray, like one of my favorite colors in a car, followed by a black trim, which looks good, is glossy, but then you have another black gloss next to it that's different, and you can just see the difference between them,

and it looks far cheaper than everything else. Right, yeah. So that's, you know, they might play with that a little bit in future versions, but that's something I didn't like about the design. The rest is great. Other than that, I think it looks great. Yeah, it looks great.

It's got the bar taillights, which I'm a sucker for. It's a really nice car. A lot of carbon fiber going on in this trim. The whole roof is carbon fiber. The mirrors are carbon fiber. Half the dash is carbon fiber. I'll probably try to drop some pictures in here so people watching the video version can see it.

Really, really like that interior. It's $140, 140 000 so you should like the interior for that price but e-tron gt about 240 miles of range okay yeah that's around the minimum i think ev should have it is what i'll say about it is i didn't get to drive it much I got to drive the Taycan a bunch I think I still like the Taycan better but if I were going to drive a car if I only had one car and it was my daily driver this interior feels more like a more comfortable everyday driving car daily like commuter whereas the Taycan it was so much fun because it felt and maybe it's just the trim that we had but it felt like I was on a racetrack no matter where I was going.

I was just like deep in the seat. I felt like I should have a full racing harness on. The wheel made it feel like it was going to like pop off like a racing wheel. It just like, it felt like I was racing no matter when I drove this. When I drove this, it at times could just feel like a regular sedan driving around, which is great.

Yeah, you know, the interior is really similar to a lot of other Audis. Like if you get, if you see an RS7 or something, a lot of it is very similar. I mean, those are also expensive, but GT Grand Touring, just comfortable driving around. It's obviously much, much sportier than a lot of other cars, but that's the goal is to be sort of a comfortable touring sports car. Vaguely reminded me of when we had the NSX here, because that is a car that is awesome, is amazing. It is a looker, it's fast and everything.

But when you drive it every day, it can just be a super comfortable sedan. Impressively. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. We got a little more tech to talk about, and then we're also going to do a Q&A. We've got a bunch of questions from you guys about,

I guess, kind of anything. October, tech, whatever. So we'll come back and we'll do that. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer. You're always taken care of with a sports book born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with bed MGM.

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So tell me about this HTC stuff. We're recording this, by the way, on Wednesday, and the event will be Thursday, so we haven't seen the event, but you've seen the press materials and gotten the lowdown on what HTC is going to announce. Yeah, and this is obviously released Friday. So we wanted to make sure we could talk about it, but we needed a briefing beforehand too. And they were giving briefings out. So I just took one this morning and wrote down a bunch of notes. So I'm kind of explaining this to Mark.

Yeah. You tell me about this. Everyone listening may have already seen it. If not, go check it out. So it's called the Vive Flow. And I think the best way to describe this is, I'll start with what it looks like. And then Shen over at HTC did a great way of kind of describing where it fits in the lineup

that I'll talk about later. And I think that kind of puts where this is very well. So essentially we all know Vive, like we have a Vive Pro at the office. It's fantastic. VR headset. Generally, when you think about it, you think about it as connecting to a computer.

You have base stations and sensors all around and you have controllers and it's like incredible VR experience. I love VR. I still say it is like one of the most futuristic tech things. I think like that's really out there because in the sense of like

showing somebody it for the first time, any VR that is, it's the most magical experience to someone who's never seen it before. I've never seen someone hate it. I've always seen just people impure awe when they try it. As long as they don't get motion sick.

Yeah, obviously. That would probably not be as magical. So we have the Vive Pro here. They also created the Vive Focus pretty recently, which is a standalone. And then this is called Vive Flow, which is a much more portable version of it. So I want to say imagine glasses.

It's like they're like immersive glasses. Now, not as small as like a typical Ray-Ban. It's got a very like steampunk giant brass circle front to it it's it's still a big headset okay but it is in re like uh in relevance to other vr headsets is far far smaller so it's still a vr headset still a vr headset but it's much smaller yeah you're not like looking through it you're still fully immersed into a pair of into virtual reality right but rather than having this big heavy headset that comes like a few inches off you know like six inches off of your face it's much more compact

it's held on with just side rails like a regular pair of glasses you don't have a full-blown strap that goes over your head okay you know how like a lot of vibes also almost have like weight in the back so it kind of counterbalances this is 189 grams um they found that most of the phones that were running it were usually heavier than the headset yeah i was gonna say the iphone's like 220 grams yeah so super light very compact the lens the what do you call the sides of glasses why am i blanking i'm calling them that's a great question okay i'm just gonna call them rails that you guys can just rip into this is called uh legs that are arms some call them legs others call them arms i'd rather call them arms let's call them arms okay so glasses arms they fold up like a pair of glasses they compact very small um so

to kind of go with this the the way shen described it is like if you were to look at vive's lineup kind of like the way we look at computers you look at a desktop in a lineup of computers it's like it will always have its place as top of the line most powerful when you really want to get something done similar to us like you edit and you render on your desktop because it just gives you the most power no matter what um that's kind of like the vive pro like the vive pro it has to be hooked up to a computer it has base stations but you're getting the craziest experience possible like the top of the line everything sure if you look at a laptop now, it's still like extremely powerful, can do a lot of things that a desktop can do, but will never quite hit that range.

But you're gaining some portability out of it. So that's kind of like the Vive focus. You now have a standalone headset, still as controllers, still as a bulky headset, but don't have to connect to a computer, can bring it some more places. Then you have something like a tablet, which is like you're not expecting to get the most insane performance out of it, but some general entertainment and the portability of it is way easier than a laptop,

way easier than a desktop, obviously, which is not portable at all. And that's where you get the Vive Flow. You now have this like very portable, a little less capable, but you're sacrificing that for the pure portability of it. I love that analogy and I'd love to stay on it. So I have both a laptop and a tablet

and I often find I only really need one of them because it's kind of binary whether something's portable or not. Like my desktop is not portable and my laptop and my tablet both are portable, but I usually pick one or the other. And I end up usually bringing my laptop. You've seen the design.

Do you feel like there's a big enough difference between Vive Flow being super small and lightweight that you'd substantially differentiate it versus the larger one? Yes, because the main thing is how it can fold up and be compact and the weight of it so rather than similar to i mean like the vive focus which is the standalone um one that i compared to a laptop it still has controllers and it's still about the same size as like our vive pro like an oculus quest type size yeah, pretty similar. And you can still imagine that.

It's still taking up quite a bit of room in your backpack. The Vive Flow now, when it folds up, it fits into this. There's a carrying case for it that almost looks like a thermos. I'm saying like what's the best way? Like maybe a bit bigger than like a tall boy soda or beer. You know, like easily is fitting in there, not taking up that much room. Where like a tablet's sort of similar to that. I mean, a tablet and a laptop portability is pretty close, but like laptop charger, if you have a mouse for it, it's like obviously quite a bit bigger. So what this is, the main thing it seems like they're really focused on this is kind of two things.

Travel portability. So when you look at this, you're not getting quite the gaming. There's still games, but not the gaming experience of like a Vive Pro. But you're getting this giant immersive screen no matter where you are. And all of this is powered by your phone, which is also you're not bringing controllers with you. Oh, I didn't know that. Sorry, maybe I didn't know that. Okay, sorry.

Maybe I didn't explain it. So this is a screen that is wirelessly connecting to your phone to power a VR experience in this headset. Okay, got it. Yeah, I think you got that right. Yeah, it's a VR headset that is wirelessly connected to your phone, and your phone is basically mirror casting this into there and creating a VR experience experience from got it so up against your glasses you have a cinema level screen that you can watch movies on you can do relaxation stuff that's another thing they talked

about a lot so like if you're riding on a plane and you want to watch a movie rather than use the small tv on the front headrest of the person in front of you. You now have this like giant screen that you can watch on. That's a really good example. Yeah. And what's cool about it because it's just mirroring your phone. Yeah. Rather than having to use a bunch of like proprietary software, go through like we just saw the Oculus Quest the other day go down because you couldn't log in with Facebook.

You're just mirror casting here. You can use your netflix you can use your disney plus you can use whatever streaming software you have on your phone and now you're just watching it youtube personal youtube now you're watching it personally to you i mean the first thing i thought of was the one time on a plane we were traveling and i tried to watch wolf of wall street which has some pretty um lewd scenes in it pretty pretty early on you don't want anybody looking over your shoulder and seeing some like weird stuff i mean and then like these are totally normal movies so but like sometimes you just don't want people to see you watching that so like you have this opportunity now to see something like that and also it's just way more like

beneficial and ergonomic to be watching something that's right up on your face and looks huge than this like small tv screen yeah as i say the ergonomics i mean a lot of times you know the plane doesn't even have a screen on it but like you can put what will probably look like a much bigger higher quality screen and with headphones you're you're you're in a theater kind of yeah which is way better than so airplane It does have speakers on the arms, but it also can connect via Bluetooth and use noise-canceling headphones that you used as an example on a plane. I mean, even think about it, if the plane doesn't have a screen,

how many times have you propped up your phone on the tray table with your hoodie or something like that and you're watching on this little tiny phone and now you're just casting it onto there what i also thought was really interesting since they don't have controllers is rather than using your phone like when you think about using your phone as the controller for this how would you imagine using it uh interesting i i kind of imagined it would be in my pocket and i'd be controlling with something separate but if the phone's a controller i guess i gotta hold it in one hand

and hopefully the accelerometer plus me using it like a remote control works so it uses since your phone has like an accelerometer and a compass and everything like it uses it as a pointer and essentially it creates these larger buttons on the phone that now you can just point to the menu selector play pause or whatever you need to do okay in there without having to take the headset off and look on your screen and like um click on stuff like that because obviously your eyes are covered with a pretty large set of glasses um so i thought that was really cool and if you want to play games or something like that, you can connect a controller to your phone like you would with Stadia or Xbox remote,

but now you're playing it on the screen in the Vive Flow instead. That's cool. Yeah. It sounds really interesting. To me, it's like, wow, HTC is clearly really crushing the hardware side of VR. And the fact that they've made this thing that, you know, assuming we get it here and it like satisfies everything we're talking about, it's like, it really would encourage you to bring a VR headset on the go. But why would I bring a VR headset on the go

is the other half of that question. Like, is there some, obviously media is one part of it, but is there some couple of games? Is there a killer app? Is there some reason why I just got to have VR more often? And HTC, I'm sure, will help find some of those use cases. Honestly, sitting on a plane and watching a movie in the headset sounds like the best version of this headset. Media consumption sounds awesome.

Yeah. To me, like, the number one thing would be media consumption through traveling like that where i can just completely clonk out and i kind of seat of a car on a road trip watching a movie on the screen yeah and especially on a plane like i don't need to always feel like i'm in a plane crammed with a bunch of people inside there for six hours going cross-country like you're gonna miss your food though the food crowd's gonna go by you won't have any they did actually specifically say one benefit of it being very light and not a full strap is like at any time you can just lift it up yeah but you gotta know you gotta know you should lift it up you gotta smell the peanuts or something same thing with headphones too though there's always that part where i have my like

bozes on while we're traveling and i always like i see them the stewardess or steward start to move and i like move it back to just make sure i don't miss them yeah um but yeah it's it's all that with the capability of now still some games and stuff like that if you do want to play you know maybe you want to i don't think i don't know if it has beat saber i hope somehow it has beat saber on it but i have not confirmed that i would love to play beat saber sitting in an airplane in the middle seat just like hopefully not elbowing people around me. No that sounds really interesting. Do we have a price? I'm sure this is like the last second stuff that will get announced.

$4.99. $4.99. So that's right a little bit over the top of Oculus Quest but you're paying for the convenience of traveling more. Yeah and you're paying with the it's like the convenience of it is also how it's so much of it is controlled by your phone and just like a small battery bank. They said pretty much any battery bank can control it or can power it.

I guess that was going to be my other question. You make something so small and so light, it must not have a very big battery. You're saying it has no battery. It has enough battery to where if something came unplugged, it'll shut down properly and let you fix stuff. But it can be run with either a battery bank um they say 10 000 milliamp hour battery bank will last you five hours and they very specifically told me five real hours not this like garbage laptop battery five hours um and that it's not

recommended if you are someone who uses your phone a lot, but if you plug it straight into your phone, your phone will also power it. True. So like you can just use your phone to power it. Right. They also have a pretty cool little adapter that they're having. That is a single USB-C cord that then splits. So you can plug into the Vive and also plug into a battery bank. So it'll just power everything pretty much.

Got it um so if you want to charge both things at the same time yeah i thought that was kind of neat but yeah lots of other cool stuff they talked a lot about relaxation and meditation well-being like if you wanted to do yoga in your living room and kind of change up the environment have like a well-being app that's a little more relaxing to meditate uh stuff like that all seems really cool i'm not someone who does yoga or anything like that the only other way i saw it is i have this like little acupuncture mat thing that's really nice to lay down on and just kind of like relaxes you makes your back feel really nice because my back's all torn up from climbing and i'm an old man now um

but i can't watch tv when i do it because I have to be laying fully down. Throw these on and now I'm like relaxing looking up and I can watch something. I know that's such a niche case, but like. Yeah. It's nice since there's no back strap. You don't, you can lay down fully. That's the difference. Yeah.

See, I was going to say they they should they should focus on examples that are outside of the house because i feel like if i was in my living room i could still use something like the oculus flow or the or sorry the htc flow oculus quest because the standalone headset can be moved from room to room like a laptop yeah but if i'm on a train sorry focus good one and if i'm on a train or a plane or an automobile yeah then it's in a backpack and i'm using it where i wouldn't necessarily want to use the bigger one yeah plane and train seem to be what they were talking about the most uh but but it's it's again it's one of those things where like you said it fits in the lineup like yeah this is something for traveling.

I bet a lot of people who have this will also own a Focus or a Pro or even a Quest. Maybe they do that. Like, maybe they have a VR setup at home. Maybe they have one for traveling now. I think it's a cool branch into this more portability and more accessibility, mostly, with the phone stuff that I'm kind of excited about.

I can't wait to try it out. That sounds pretty cool. I will also try it out when we get one hopefully um all right well we'll take a quick break again and then we'll come back we got a q a section i'm sure i'm hoping there's some good questions i'm crossing my fingers for the video viewers you can tell uh so let's do that let's 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 sides, and everybody's favorite, four buttermilk biscuits. Hurry up, though. Like the holiday season, Popeye's $25 festive family box deal will be over before you know it. Love that chicken from Popeye's. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're not alone. If you ask nine experts, you're likely to get 10 different answers. So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not, nobody can say for certain. So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business in times like these. That's why over 38,000 businesses are already setting their future plans with NetSuite by Oracle.

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we're about to read them but i have a quick question when you use twitter there's like two dark modes which dark mode do you use because all of these are like black black out really use black too yeah i used to like blue dim one yeah i like it a lot better you know it's funny i i think i used to use the blue dim one and then I posted a screenshot of a tweet on my Instagram story, and people said, wow, you don't use the blacked out Twitter dark mode. So now I use the blacked out one. Yeah. I'm team Dim.

I think they just call it Dim. Yeah, it's like evening versus night or something. I think it's a little easier. All right, right off the bat, we have one from Tech Gal. What's in store for Intel with Apple making its own chips and now rising popularity of AMD? Also thoughts on semiconductor chip shortage and what do you think triggered the cringy Intel ad?

Yeah, cringy Intel ad. We definitely have our thoughts on that. Go to the studio channel to see our best thoughts on it. Yeah, we've already reacted to it last week. Yeah, that also. What do you think triggered Intel to make it? Definitely all their competition, but also a little bit of a lack of awareness of how that looks. reacted to it last week yeah that also uh what do you think triggered intel to make it definitely all their competition but also a little bit of a lack of awareness of how that looks i mean a lot

of ads is lack of awareness to yeah how they come out um in terms of yeah they definitely have crazy uh competition like amds really coming out with some great stuff and then apple you have to think is a huge huge business aspect of Intel because they were Intel and now they're making their own chips. So, you know, they're kind of losing out on that. Let's start. They've done a lot of ads recently. They do like, and I always feel like they focus on touchscreen

and two-in-one laptops as being like the big thing that Intel does so well. It's just like the two things I really don't care about when it comes to a laptop yeah i think that's what we were talking about when when david was here i was like so do people think they're buying a laptop because it has intel inside or are there 75 other reasons you buy the laptop before you think about oh i wonder what brand makes this processor yeah but like you pointed out like the majority rising there's a bunch of other stuff happening uh i don't have a ton of thoughts on the chip shortage but it's a ship shortage i don't know that much about i just always wonder like whenever we see these shortages and stuff like that is how long are they going to like ride that as an excuse

for things not coming out and this isn't't just Intel. This is literally everywhere. It's everywhere. It is everywhere and is clearly a problem. But how long are we going to see this as an excuse for a while? Because it becomes a thing where like, can you really confirm how bad the shortage is anymore? Can we confirm these places can't get good chips? I mean, this is borderline conspiracy stuff. Yeah, you really do get a lot of headlines about like,

Apple cannot order enough of a chip. Like companies, like car companies especially, they'll make a lot of these cars have multiple chips in them and they want to place an order of X million chips because they're going to put one in every car and they can't make that many. They can't get that many. I do definitely think we're going to be hearing about this for a while. I think it'll be, yeah. It's got, it's kind of in everything.

Like literally everything. Yeah. All right. We got another question here from Josh, the Josh Morton three. Do you think Google will ever actually release a smartwatch? We need a good pixel slash Android watch to compete with Apple style. I guess the Apple watch. I have one gripe real quick.

Yeah. Apple style. I do not want an Apple style smartwatch. I want a round smartwatch that looks like a watch. I know what you're trying to say, but I just want to nitpick there for a second. Yeah. So this is a question that's been asked many times

and we keep getting new Wear OS stuff and we keep getting these like hints of, oh, maybe there'll be a Pixel Watch. Will they ever make one? I don't think I can rule it out, but- I wouldn't rule, they'll definitely make one eventually, but their latest announcement was like partnering with Samsung to-

Right, that's why I don't expect it anytime soon. When you think of the Pixel phones, by the way, you always think of like excellent software and really lackluster, not that amazing hardware. So to ask them to spin up a whole nother division to make amazing watch hardware is a whole separate thing. I wouldn't, Josh, I wouldn't cross my fingers. I wouldn't hold my breath for that anytime soon.

There's a bunch of other good Wear OS watches that are pretty decent for Android phones, but I don't see a Pixel watch. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. I mean, they have to nail the Pixel first before they do a Pixel watch. So I think we'll see how that goes yeah uh we'll wait for

me to travel to different places to do the podcast like a different city ever yes we've actually done it a couple times we've done a ces one we've done we did one from the car i guess it was in the same city we did one in a hotel room at that was it an apple event no there's an apple event one where i spent the whole night trying to figure out how to unplug my refrigerator so it stopped making noise yeah so we've done a couple we'll continue to do more if you haven't noticed there hasn't been a whole lot of travel globally in the last year or so so it's kind of held that back a little bit but definitely don't rule it out i mean yeah it usually well it doesn't add much to it because you know there's not a lot

i guess we'll have to do a video setup wolf that oh man okay yeah we have a lot of stuff to work out if we're doing this again um okay but yeah it'll eventually happen sometimes we just have to it's just too busy we're a weekly podcast it's gotta happen yeah oh i see one uh the reviewing every iphone ever video was great. Is there going to be one for Android? I really want to do one, and I think the way I would have to do it would just be to do every Google phone.

So obviously iPhones made by Apple, you just go straight from the first iPhone to now. I think with this, I would go from T-Mobile G1 to like maybe I throw the Motorola Droid in there, but then you have to go just Nexus phones up until Pixel phones. I mean, it's even if you just, well, first of all, saying is there

going to be one for Android? Like, that is a lot of different things. Android is the operating system, not the phone. That's why it's so much easier for iPhone. But like, even just trying to describe one lineup is like still difficult for pixel i mean i could do galaxy s series exactly i was just thinking that galaxy s1 through galaxy s21 yeah but you still then like do we add notes do we add no no just s just s just s yeah yeah i think that would be the easiest straight lineup to do.

Yeah. Because even with the Google ones, you have Huawei ones, you have HTC ones, there are LG ones, they're all over the place, which I think is also interesting. Like Google, I think Google would be really fun. Samsung would be fun as well. People just like to always compare you did something for iPhone. Why don't you do it for Android? It's just not the same. iPhone is very specific. It's very easy to use that lineup. Android is a lot of stuff going on. So if we can find the right way to do it,

that'll make a fun video. Yeah, I think that would be awesome. Yeah, I'm drafting it. I'll work on it. Cindy Benjamin asks, be honest, how much caffeine has the team consumed for Techtober so far? Yours is an easy answer. Zero for me. But caffeine is the team consumed for techtober so far um yours is an easy answer

uh zero for me but sounds like the team drinks a lot of coffee i mean like i said the first half of techtober has been bad we do just drink a lot of coffee in general though uh mark has uh got a very nice coffee setup for the rest of the team here and we make it pretty often and by pretty often i mean multiple times a day so i think adam has something brewing right now or did just before this um but yeah we like a lot of coffee i'm a total sucker for energy drinks too which is something i'm still surprised you have sugar no almost all the ones i drink are zero sugar it's usually like taurine and cap or Taurine, is that what it's called? Caffeine, stuff like that. There's one, I'm surprised you haven't gotten into it

because of waking up early for tournaments and stuff. Like sometimes you just need that kick. You're a champ. I just get my blood flowing, just like start running around. Just gets me going, that's all I need. But yeah, I'm huge on coffee. My energy drink of choice right now is called celsius it's really really good and a little different than like the crazy red bull

and monster flavors and stuff like that word this is an interesting one would you ever review a brain implant why or why not? I, it's, look, I never say never. I'm like Justin Bieber. I never say never. But I'm pretty sure I would never review a brain implant. Like I. We could hire someone for that. Because the question though with like a brain implant,

I'm assuming you're, you know, you're thinking about like Neuralink and the future of like augmented tech with your body those in their earliest stages appear to be permanent alterations yeah right i mean it'd be so early like imagine getting the google glass equivalent of a brain implant like you don't want that yeah let i'll let people ride that out a couple years let the tech get better third fourth, fourth generation Neuralink, then we'll see what's going on. So for the why or why not, yeah, it seems like you typically want to,

yeah, wait for the tech to develop a little bit before permanently altering your entire body. That sounds good. Your brain. I have one here from Armchair Crit Tech. It looks like they're trying to say critic, but Crit Tech, play on words, like it. One gadget from the past,

bring it back and refine a little. That's good for the next five to 10 years. So I want to change this a little bit because there's something that kind of popped into my head. It's not necessarily a gadget, but one thing that I really miss from tech a long time ago

is playing games offline with others. Like, it's something that is almost impossible to do these days, because all the games you buy are online, and you almost always need online connectivity to play them. And while in theory, that sounds super easy, like we all have Wi Fi, we all have that it's it's really not that hard and and it's combating piracy you know if you buy the game you can't just go offline and then play it and then other people can play it or whatever um but if you like have a bunch of people coming over to play like some land games or something and your wi-fi just can't handle all that now you're all

lagging something's an issue it's at the point where there's a really big tournament for Valorant yesterday. Riot themselves set it up, whole stage, everything. The client's still online and not local. And there are multiple instances where players in a tournament that it's their last chance. It's literally called last chance qualifiers to qualify for the world's event. And people were lagging out and there were like issues with players lagging and they're literally sitting across from each other like that's just ridiculous to me i miss the days of all of us bringing our tvs and xboxes over to

each other's houses and playing halo all night and not having to worry about an internet connection and doing it wherever i want if i get an airbnb somewhere and i want to like bring some offline games to something i just want to be able to do that yeah infuriating it's a really good answer i actually had a gadget answer okay htc 1m8 google play edition bring that phone back in a modern style. Keep the huge boom sound speakers, but trim up the square sides, push the screen closer to the corners, metal body, big battery, stock Android, new cameras. That's a... I would use that phone.

Sounds great. Nice. Maybe that's what the Pixel's going to be. We'll see. I think we've seen the Pixel already. Oh, someone asked, when's the Plaid Model S review coming out? We have a whole bunch of plans for car stuff as well.

Now, here's the thing about car videos in the Northeast. We love shooting them, and I love making them, obviously. But in the Northeast, the temperature plummets right around November, and it goes from being like 60s, 70s, 80s every day to being like 30, 20, 10. And it's really not fun to spend a whole day outside

shooting a car video. It's really not fun? Yeah, so we kind of have like seasons where we can go for a while for shooting car videos and then we just kind of go a while without shooting any car videos. So with Plaid Model S review, I'm thinking I want to do that before it gets cold,

but I'm not sure yet. I do have about 8, 000 miles on the car though and i do feel ready to review it though so expect that at some point we i have kind of a fun story if we can rant or go off a little bit here so i think it was like a year or two ago we got offered to go to tesla's um it was like their testing facility in alaska to see how they work in like extreme cold weather and we were like oh yeah we're going got ready to do it um then like an earthquake happened in anchorage and we weren't able to fly out and we were so bummed about it and then like that next week in new jersey we made our video on the mclaren 7 720s i think it was and it was so cold here we had the most miserable time shooting it we had we would go out shoot for like five minutes and then we had a car

that just had the heat blasting the whole time we would jump back in and all of us looked at each other and we're just like i can't believe we thought we could go to alaska we would not have survived we were not equipped to do any of that. And so, yeah, it gets really cold and that makes it so, so hard to shoot cars. Yeah. Yeah. Literally would get out the car, leave the heat going in the car, shoot for like five minutes until our hands were numb and you couldn't actually feel the record button anymore. And then you'd have to get back in the car and thaw your hands.

It was like an RDX or an MDX and it had a heated steering wheel. And we were like, people were reaching over, just grabbing the steering wheel to try and warm their hands back yep that was the time brutal yeah so we wouldn't have survived no um here's what one question i haven't thought of my answer but i like the question so i'll just toss it over okay what is the most underrated tool tech or not in the studio for producing videos so that's a really good question because we have a lot of non-tech tools that i think the reflection blocker that we made oh that's a good one it's like yeah that thing's like four years old it's just a piece of poster board that we cut a hole for the lens to stick in so that all of the buttons and stuff on the camera don't reflect

in glass um so that's probably the most used like filming piece of equipment that's not like a tripod or a camera or a microphone yeah or lights we use that for every single video we shoot on top of that a lot of people don't know this like shooting a phone or any sort of reflective surface that that was cut out of a black piece of foam core yeah and we have a bunch more of those that will literally just hold up to block reflections so i'm shooting a video i have the camera in one hand and i've got the phone in the other hand and then like vin is on the other side triangulating to block the reflection so that we don't have glare on the phone when we're shooting that stuff so that might be the most i never talk about this but that might be the most i never talk

about this but that might be the most underrated under yeah definitely most underrated i mean there's also some if you're a grip or have worked on a film set there's so many things that are super important that people who don't do that like sandbags the amount of stuff that is held up by just sandbags like there's a huge light right over a bunch of cameras right now and without some sandbags it would probably fall a huge light right over a bunch of cameras right now. And without some sandbags, it would probably fall down. We have another flag over there that without a sandbag

would probably be constantly falling on top of us and breaking things. Like there's just, there is a lot of non-tech stuff that's super important. Half size Apple boxes. We don't have any.

Just ordered a bunch of half size Apple boxes. Apple boxes are also huge. Yeah, they're huge. Is there any tech ones that are specifically underrated and super important? You know, I always come back to this, and maybe it's not underrated anymore since I've talked about it so much, but the lens I use far more than any other is Sigma's 24-35. And before that, it was their 18-35 for the same reason.

It's a wide angle fast zoom with close focus distance and it's sharp i for some reason i can't find any other lens that satisfies all those things canon makes an 18 to 35 it's not as fast and it's not as sharp but it's close but yeah 18 to 35 on crop or 24 to 35 full frame. It's great for like first person shots. But at 35, you can get right up on something. You get really close to it. So it's like I only need the macro sometimes.

And it's F2 or T2. So F1.8. So it's a fast lens and it's very corner to corner sharp. We've got all our filters for it. It's just like I almost never need to use any other lens. It's awesome. it it's just like i almost never need to use any other lens it's awesome um but it's not underrated anymore because i've talked about it

what's an overrated piece what's something the camera over the camera itself is the overrated i hate saying that because i love the camera but it gets too much credit with you it gets too much credit like anytime someone sees a great shot in a video they're like well of course it looks good it was shot on an 8k monstro camera it. It's like you can do crazy things with other cameras. It's not about the camera or the 8K as like people like to focus on as much as it is about the technique and the lighting and all the other things the fact like why do you buy a red camera like you could probably get something super similar with uh you know r5 or whatever it's like yeah we could but there are still so many benefits of having the bigger yeah the bigger frame and resolution it's like the tool makes it easier but the tool is not necessary it's like if i'm a golfer and i got a a driver that was like you know, five years newer than my old driver,

it's not going to totally transform my game. I still have to swing the club. So yeah, like I wouldn't switch back to the old driver and I love the new one, but like, come on, you got to hit, you got to hit the ball yourself. So that's my analogy for sports for the day. This one's really good. I just don't know an answer to it. Go for it. I might have an answer. I know you guys touched on tech and farming while covering John Deere's software debate. As a new farmer, I enjoyed hearing you guys talk about some of the stuff I'm working with.

What industry that isn't mainstream, phones, cars, computers, is taking a massive tech leap? So what other industry that's not like a mainstream tech-focused industry? I mean, first of all, all of them. Yeah, everything. I have a weird weird maybe oddly specific

answer but i do have one i get asked a lot about the overlap between tech and sports in ultimate frisbee which is a relatively young sport like in the nba we have advanced analytics everywhere like you can track like how far players run how fast they run every single little thing about every game and in ultimate there there isn't the budget for that so like we've got cameras on the field you can measure yardages and things like that but uh this season for the first time ever in the pro league uh that we played in we had these little gps trackers that we wore while we played and got a surprising amount of information out of it like how much people are cutting we got we got hot zones for completion percentage

versus location on the field. So if you're scouting, you can be like, I know when my matchup's on the right side at the 50, they usually throw it out the back with a hammer. It's like you can view a lot more of this advanced analytics. And this is the first year I've really felt like a big step was taken. So I'm excited for the future of like ultimate

and actual tech happening, but it's been a while. Another thing in sports isn't necessarily just like stat tracking and all that, which is clearly getting much better. What I do really like is when it comes to professional sports with social media and the accessibility of cameras and recording information, like all these athletes that we've loved

because of how good they are at sports and the little interviews we get to see, we're getting to see more personal aspects of their lives. Like you were on JJ Reddick's podcast the other day. That's awesome. You're getting to see this behind the scenes stuff you never do. With the Devils, there's a player, P.K. Subban,

who has a YouTube channel now and does a bunch of stuff like that. I'm getting to see the behind the scenes of hockey and stuff like that. I do love that. It's a really cool, maybe it's not the best answer because I'm sure you're looking for something like a little very more specific. I'll throw in one more. Okay. So Bryson DeChambeau is a golfer and he's been, he's been doing the same thing. He has a YouTube channel. He's one of the most popular golfers in the world, but he's also one of the best golfers in the world. And he vlogs a lot of this stuff. He did, he went from long drive

from winning the Ryder cup. He's a major winner and he's like vlogging the behind the scenes of all this stuff. That's awesome. Super cool. Yeah. So Hey, the internet's given us a little peek behind the curtain. Sometimes Bryson, you're invited on the podcast PK too. Yeah. He's right. New Newark also. So Oh, yeah. That's a New Jersey player. Okay. Or is he, he still plays New Jersey? Yeah, he still plays New Jersey. Sick.

All right. I have a question here. Okay. And maybe you can actually, this is good for you. So with the increasing number of car manufacturers announcing EVs and the rapid increase in public EV charging infrastructure, do you still think it's a good investment to buy an ICE car in 2021? charging infrastructure do you still think it's a good investment to buy an ice car in 2021 and this is great for you because you're in that exact decision tree right now so here's my biggest problem with the question is the term investment do i think it's a great investment right now

probably not um do i think everybody buying a car has the choice to make buying a car an investment decision or not? I don't think the majority of the people have that. The majority of the people buying cars are buying cars because it's something they need and it's something they need to be able to afford and it needs to fit into their lifestyle. So there's so many more things along there. If you have the luxury, maybe not luxury is the right term there. If you have the luxury, maybe not luxury is the right term, but if you have the privilege of being able to buy a car as an investment, then I would probably go with the,

I think even in general, they just seem to be cars that are most likely going to last way longer than gas powered cars. So just in an investment opportunity, being able to keep it as long as possible means you're getting better value from your investment.

Just that and right there is a better investment opportunity. But also resale value going forward. We're going to see more and more EVs. But that doesn't mean a good investment doesn't always meet a lifestyle choice. Right. He added a follow-up to it also, which is a little more specific. He said, with the expansion of charging infrastructure and ubiquity of EVs in the next decade, would that cause gas prices to become too high to justify the lower cost of ICE vehicles today? So you're saying if you're going to own this car for the next decade, will gas prices go up so much over the next decade that the difference in cost would actually have been better if you just went with the higher priced EV today? And that's like kind of crystal ball like looking into the future that's like someone who's uh like mastered economics

and stuff like that we are not those people um i can't see i can't imagine gas going up that in a decade a decade is not that long a decade is not that long we do see a lot of really big promises from a lot of these companies as far as building EVs and that infrastructure in the next one to two decades, which is promising. But just my quick answer to this, I don't think a decade is fast enough to say that you should go EV now just for that one economic reason. But that's something to keep an eye on because that inflection point will hit eventually where it's like it no longer makes sense to buy a gas yeah that will hit eventually um yeah a couple things in there one the price difference between a gas car and a an ev right now is it's a really big i mean you

can get a really nice like mid-sized sedan for 20 grand the cheapest mid or ev you can get right now is 40 right model the cheapest reasonable ev yeah yeah okay that has a decent range i'll just call it the model three i think is the cheapest one i would consider and that's 40 grand that's double the price of some of a gas car seeing similar size to it i cannot imagine where you would make up twenty thousand dollars in gas prices yeah over 10 years. What was the other thing? Oh, and then the other thing is we're seeing percentage-wise massive increase in infrastructure and stuff like that, but we're seeing it because the infrastructure is so small, it's getting bigger.

That percentage increase is obviously going to ramp down as more things happen. So it's still probably well over a decade away from being able to have as many charging stations as gas stations as we have in the u.s there's a lot more to that a decade i think is too short if cars lasted for 50 years then yeah buying an ev now would probably definitely save you the money or if a gas car lasted for there's a bunch there's a bunch of dials that you can spin to make the choice more obvious like if cars last 50 years or if like gas prices are gonna you know shoot up uh yeah fully agree maybe we'll we'll come back to this question probably in a couple years and personally right now i will i will be buying a gas car um i just for the the place i'm in with having a house and

trying to start a family and everything just like a car for one that ones that i were looking at would probably be i'd be paying at least twice as much per month for what i'm looking at i'm looking at like a forester right now so you know 25 to 30 grand it just it jacks up a lot it becomes way more expensive and for me in my lifestyle right now it just seems like what I'd rather be spending money on is some other things than EV, as much as I want one. Trust me, I cannot wait to finally make that till I'm in a spot where I can do that. All right, maybe I have a good question to close it on.

Sure. Because this is what we usually close the year on, which is the blind smartphone camera test. Oh, we're not going to smartphone awards, we're going into blind test. Yeah, one of the last things we close the year on on so we're almost at having everything we want to use yeah i know but the thing we want to use the most is next week right we've we were we'll have pixel soon right we'll probably have one or two other phones come out but soon so this question from car teak is

now that the iphone 13 has color profiles, we have those picture profiles, will the camera bracket have to be by default or tweaked? I wouldn't ask if it was just a filter, but the whole baked-in processing thing is very important. So I actually was thinking like, hmm, we're doing another blind smartphone camera test. Should we make a little twist? We've thought couple times of like separate brackets for specific things yeah we've thought of this year basically there's

different ways to do this bracket we've done it the same way every time which is just huge list of a bunch of phones and mix them all up point and shoot auto and yeah separate brackets is one way we've discussed like maybe making it a little more interesting. Another would be potentially fooling people and putting the iPhone with different color profiles against itself or against other phones. Like there's six profiles now. And is that something we may do? Probably not.

But I do think it is an interesting question that like the amount that someone prefers a photo could dramatically change based on which profile you use yeah which is interesting i think ultimately the the whole basis of the blind smartphone challenge is that we wanted to do a giant bracket based on like if someone just bought a brand new phone and we're taking pictures of it as simple as possible that's what's going head to head now in terms of different brackets not necessarily changing brackets up but adding additional brackets where we can start looking at portrait mode or night mode or profile or selfies and

stuff like that so um that that sounds fun we do we've almost doubled our team size since the last one so maybe we could do something like that um or maybe even do it on the studio channel or something but i still think ultimately the main bracket will be pretty simple this is how 80 of people take pictures we want to remove as many variables as possible for something like this. Which is impossible, which we know from the comments every single year and the massive headache I get from bashing my head against the wall

from people telling me how to do it. As many as we reasonably can. Yeah. Which we'll try. We will. I do like the idea of some other ones. Okay, so let's, I thought this question was going to go,

any guesses. So let's just do it anyways. Okay. Doesn't have to be winner. I have one guess. What's your guess? An Asus Zenfone will just do better than people expect. That just seems to be a constant.

That is a very good guess. And I'm like kind of mad because the last two years we've guessed, I don't think people were on that train. And in my predictions bracket i've gotten really good points because i always put the zen phone it did really well yeah yeah i will predict that i'm thinking of the phones we'll have i'm gonna predict uh pixel wins it all pixel wins it all that's a brave pick for not seeing it yet you've got a lot of a lot of hope you called yourself a pessimist before that's a very optimistic view i so i you

know i'm thinking about the other phones that have come out this year and how good the cameras have been i've shot a lot with the one plus and the s21 ultra and obviously the the iphone and uh yeah that's my that's my dark horse is the Pixel. Has Sony ever made it out of the first round? I don't think so. And now this is not a huge knock against Sony phones. They have a lot of great features, but generally it's a very dull profile based on their auto.

I'm going to guess, let's see, Sony makes it out of first round this year. iPhone has also never made it out of first round, by the okay so that's really not just like sony uh yeah yeah that's that's probably a less i'm sure people are so pumped that it's never made out of the first less lower odds but i'll also i do still want to like i want to find a better way to start the bracket off because the way we decide is how it goes is like kind of random but also trying to make sure that no like heavy hitters are going against each other right off the bat so it's fair but i think there's a better way of doing it if anyone has any

suggestions i almost want to seed them it's kind of what we've been doing but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't i don't think we can go full random because if like Pixel iPhone starts. Yeah, then that's rough. Yeah. All right. Well, that's where we're at now. We're sort of drafting the idea

and we'll be putting it together over the next few weeks. And when all the phones are out. That's so soon. When all the phones are out, it'll happen. So either way, that's been it for this week. Thanks for hanging out. And thanks for the questions on Twitter.

I will say next time we do a Q&A, we'll probably also do it on Twitter again. So make sure you're following at waveformwvfrm over on Twitter to get in on that. And I'll end it there. Thanks for listening. Catch you guys soon.

Peace. Happy Techtober. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina. We were partnered with Vox Media and our intro outro music was created by Vane Sil.