Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Objective Top 10 Phones List

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

This week the gang discuss Apple's new groundbreaking yellow iPhone, Spotify's latest AI DJ, how TikTok is using paid content to help support creators, and we wrap it up with the best sold phone model...s of 2022. Links: Top Phone Models of 2022: bit.ly/3J4IS7U Edge Super Resolution: bit.ly/3J3yD3C Spotify AI DJ: bit.ly/3yr2MoB TikTok Paid Content: bit.ly/3kU3xne Realme Dynamic Island: https://bit.ly/realmidynamicisland Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Twitters: Waveform: https://twitter.com/wvfrm Marques: https://twitter.com/mkbhd Andrew: https://twitter.com/andymanganelli David: https://twitter.com/DurvidImel Adam: https://twitter.com/adamlukas17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Be honest. Between meetings, workout classes, and the kids' clubs, who's got time to cook? That's where HelloFresh comes in. No matter how busy you get, HelloFresh makes it easy to get a home-cooked meal on the table. With flavor-packed recipes like crispy chicken parmigiana,
Starting point is 00:00:18 you'll be filling your kitchen with the cozy aromas of a homemade meal in no time. Visit HelloFresh.ca and use code SPOTIFY for your exclusive offer. We interrupt your holiday listening pleasure to bring you an important bulletin. You could be doing exactly what you're doing right now, but with bottomless bevies on a beach in paradise. With Sunwing's big Boxing Week savings, you can choose between literally hundreds of all-inclusive vacation packages that offer big value for low prices. Take it from us. We've been here since last year's sale.
Starting point is 00:00:51 Hey, get away from my fries. Oh yeah, book with your local travel advisor or at What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And today, on this episode this week, we've got TikTok introducing a paywall for content that includes 20-minute videos. Spotify's AI DJ we want to talk about. And we'll wrap it up with the objective top 10 smartphones of 2022.
Starting point is 00:01:24 No disputing the list. We'll get into that one too. It's fun. But first, usually we leave our huge breaking news segment for the middle of our video, but I think this is the biggest news to hit. It's too big. Probably the biggest story in 2023.
Starting point is 00:01:37 We can't bury the lead. If people realize that we didn't talk about this at the top of the episode, we're in trouble. This is the biggest story probably of our generation. So let's just get right into it a new yellow iphone 14 this i i didn't see this coming to be honest we've gotten these like pale colors in the past of iphones of like what is it we have the the midnight and the starlight and there's a purple one yeah um yellow really like just shook shook the whole tech world up for a day there i figured i think yeah it's a it's a bold choice i appreciate their bravery but yeah we have it yeah you know green purple that was expected but as soon as the
Starting point is 00:02:19 yellow hit i just i i didn't know how to handle it i had had to call my therapist. Did you see the sides? The back is yellow, but the sides are like a different yellow. What? Dude, you got to watch the videos. It's incredible. They invited a lucky couple YouTubers and people with cameras to point their cameras at it. I'm amazed that the cameras actually were able to capture what they saw. It's like a wider spectrum. In real life, I wouldn't have believed it if I saw it. It was hard to tell through the tears in my eyes of how beautiful it was yeah
Starting point is 00:02:49 vibrance of it sure would you say it's like more yellow than the sun or it kind of had like a gold look to it i think it's going to replace this one like one of the most important product releases i think i've ever seen i've never even seen it with my eyes but i mean neither i've seen it with my ears now that you're describing it and I can't even, I can't even imagine what it's like. The articles are something.
Starting point is 00:03:09 They're poetry. They're special. This is, I'm just glad to be alive. We should probably end the pod right here. Yeah, no, that's kind of it
Starting point is 00:03:16 for this episode. I'm glad you tuned in. No, that yellow iPhone mid-cycle release. I did a video like two, three years ago on like mid-cycle new color product releases.
Starting point is 00:03:24 If you want to watch that, that's kind of the summary of the new yellow iPhone. It's yellow. Didn't the purple iPhone video last year get like 5 million views? Well, that's why I did the video. I was like, I usually wouldn't make a video about a new color of a phone, but if you just look down at the view count, you understand why this video exists. So yeah, that's, um, that was a thing for sure. Wait, the purple iPhone show up on camera so the purple iphone was last year yeah i think so yeah oh my god yeah yeah it's a 13 because ellis has it the 13 mini i have the 12 i don't think the 13 came in i think no i think the purple's 12 and then there was like a red
Starting point is 00:03:56 iphone was it red 7 10 not 10 because the 7 i think then right because well i just remember us getting that and doing an unboxing in like an hour and a half and that video had like five million views yeah that's great the 13 is green you know it's actually funny kind of some of these uh these new colors everyone's like camera settings and everyone's color correction is a little bit different so you kind of have to like if you watch three different videos on a new color you might actually not really know what the color is because they'll look a little different in each video. And that's especially true with the red because it was a really saturated red.
Starting point is 00:04:29 And that notoriously will oversaturate the red channel of people's cameras. And then it will start to peak and then look pink a little bit when it was not pink at all. Fun fact. I can't prove that my red is the same as your red anyway, though.
Starting point is 00:04:40 That's true. In my brain, I know what red is. And I hope everyone listening and watching also knows what red is and i hope everyone listening and watching also knows what red is it's just a different red yeah anyway tiktok on the clock we we have a tiktok headline so tiktok introduces paywalled content kind of a trend that we've seen on social media in general is enabling creators to make more exclusive content behind a paywall for smaller audiences like twitter already does that um instagram actually already does that and so now tiktok is doing that i mean youtube does it also youtube exactly so so i'm just gonna read
Starting point is 00:05:16 the bullet points here and maybe we have some reactions to it so it's called series which lets creators sell collections of videos that you can purchase. Each collection of videos can have up to 80 videos in them, and those videos can be up to 20 minutes long. So creators can choose the price for the series. They can go between $1 and $190 to charge for their series. At launch, 100% of the revenue goes to creators, minus the App Store and processing fees. And there will be a new series website to publish and track performance. That's it.
Starting point is 00:05:47 It's just sell videos behind a paywall within the TikTok platform. Yeah. Packs of videos, which is really interesting. Yeah. That's way different than what I was expecting. Yeah. And I mean, I'm assuming that they want it to be unique videos, but I'm wondering if creators would like sell if they have like a series of
Starting point is 00:06:06 videos that they already do, if they're just going to package them and then be like, you can buy, but what does it mean to buy a digital product, especially on TikTok that you can already look at for free? It would have to be a unique video. It would have to be a new video. Yeah. Maybe you do like a series and you have parts one through eight are for free on your thing, but then parts nine and 10 are behind the paywall something like that we could do like if you're a cooking tiktok channel or something you could do like we're gonna do a tie package and then it's like 20 tie videos yeah it's an idea yeah i went from seeing the the title of this that you posted thinking this is an awesome idea to reading this
Starting point is 00:06:40 and thinking i don't think this makes any sense at all it's kind of of like quibble. Really? I mean, so it's really, it's up to the creators to decide like what this extra content is going to be. So like when Instagram did this, you can be a paying subscriber or supporter of an Instagram page or whatever. And then there will be specific stories and posts that only paid subscribers see.
Starting point is 00:06:59 So it might be similar photography to your other photos or it might be special, you know, behind the scenes or something like extra content whatever same thing with youtube youtubers can choose what they want to be just for the paid subscribers so i want to that's what i thought this was going to be but this makes me think it's different now because when you're saying can charge between one to ninety dollars for a series it makes it seem like you are going to create a series of five videos charge
Starting point is 00:07:26 x amount of say ten dollars for that and then just that series is unlocked whereas like youtube and stuff is you subscribe for extra and then like you also open all the past stuff that was like that so it was a little different it's like buying a movie on google play yeah movies or on on apple tv basically yeah you're buying a digital product that only you have access to it would have to be a really great video yeah yeah individual video i well that's why it's there i don't think they want it to be individual they want it to be multiple videos ideally it's multiple videos that's like harder if tiktok did like youtube subscriptions i think it would make perfect sense and allow 20 minute videos in
Starting point is 00:08:05 there because then it can be like, I'm going to make my regular TikToks that got me popular, but I can also make some 20 minute deeper dives. Or if you could do paywall live streams, or you could do paywall, like long Q and A's that are 20 minutes. And then whenever you subscribe for that month, the creator gets, that seems perfect. It's like the Patreon model, right? Yeah. I think like the cookie example that i said before i think that could really work because you could do one tiktok video where like we're making pad thai i have a whole collection of like thai food videos that you can pay for i was just gonna say about like travel you could do like one tiktok to be like i'm going to columbia next week and then 90 videos about like the cool things to do there
Starting point is 00:08:44 and you just buy that series i would argue you'd be better off making the tiktok that makes you I'm going to Columbia next week. And then 90 videos about like the cool things to do there. And you just buy that series. I would argue you'd be better off making the TikTok that makes you popular and the YouTube long version of that. Well, I would argue you should just go on YouTube period. I mean, yeah. I guess they're trying to figure out a way to maximize the revenue that creators can make, which is like if I was going to pay. I get that. I totally get that. Because most people don't subscribe to tiktok remember it's like usually for you page stuff for most people
Starting point is 00:09:10 so paying to subscribe to a user might actually not feel as at home on tiktok i think it feels more at home than doing weird charged like video on demand things i mean like to pay for a one time yeah i i feel like if they went the youtube the like youtube subscription series or patreon like method or whatever like that would make so much more sense it's just that like you would be surprised at how many people will pay for people's courses on things that instructional there's unlimited information about that thing on youtube already but people still pay for instructional courses yeah like that guy marquez brownlee he has like i would be then tied to like trust of that particular instructor right and that platform
Starting point is 00:09:55 where i just like tiktok feels like a not the same place i just feel like the other one feels way more tiktoky and creator based than like this yeah tiktok doesn't feel like a place i would go to pay for content pay for specific content not even just like extra content yeah i mean it's cool that it's an option and i'm glad tiktok is thinking about ways to diversify a little bit in that way and offer it at least and maybe somebody takes advantage of it and it looks really cool and people get ideas from it i think that's why i think it would be amazing if they did it the other way you may be underestimating the power of parasocial relationships i think you're overestimating i feel like it it feels less
Starting point is 00:10:32 parasocial relationship if i buy a person's specific video rather than get like the to open the curtain behind the scenes of like extra videos that they will make i think that's a different that is people paying for individual pieces of content because of the parasocial relationship oh that is individual pieces of content yeah yeah i think it's i think it's a tougher it there's like a lot of different things going on there that are a tad different whereas like different like i think a perfect example is we've done we've done member-only live streams right like that to me feels like now once a month i get this live stream where i am in a smaller category of people and a better chance to get
Starting point is 00:11:14 in contact with this person engage that is primo social relationship whereas if i'm just buying an already created video that i get i just only get to open those five of them feels like almost like another step away from parasocial. I don't know. Maybe someone gets creative and offers custom videos on TikTok that you pay for before or you ask to be made and then pay to unlock. They can get creative with it. It might not just be here's a pack.
Starting point is 00:11:44 Does anybody want to buy it? It might just be, hey, does anybody want to see a video on a certain set of things? Oh, okay. Yeah, you're interested. Okay, I'll make it. It's here for you to unlock whenever.
Starting point is 00:11:54 That type of thing. I don't know. We'll see. People get creative with it. I do think it's funny that instead of just trying to figure out how to monetize TikTok with advertising, the way that YouTube Shorts is trying to do it.
Starting point is 00:12:05 TikTok is like, yeah, the creator fund isn't really working. Can we figure out a way for the audience to pay for it instead of actually just trying to figure out an actual ad model? I do think it's like, especially 100% revenue, like basically is agreeing, hey, we're making plenty of money by ourselves. You also said for now though.
Starting point is 00:12:23 Yeah, yeah, true. I think that's how successful it is i like the patreon model it lets smaller creators be able to turn things into a living because if you do have the super loyal base getting that extra thousand true followers basically exactly yeah like that's incredible this is yeah yeah but this is almost like the opposite of that's why i think it's followers that's why i think it's weird. It's like you'll just find one follower every five minutes forever instead of 1,000 right now forever.
Starting point is 00:12:51 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much people stan each other on TikTok. You know what I mean? Yeah, that is the other thing. There is a pretty notorious drop-off in how connected you feel based on the platform. When people follow each other on Instagram versus YouTube versus even something like Twitter or Patreon where you feel more connected.
Starting point is 00:13:09 And then on TikTok, you're just sort of like scrolling people you don't know most of the time. So I feel like that does make it, that's a new wrench in the dynamic of like how do you monetize this? I'm effectively a boomer because I don't even have TikTok. So I don't really understand
Starting point is 00:13:23 the parasocial relationship on there. And I mean, I have Instagram Reels. So I understand. I basically have TikTok. That's the most boomer thing you could have said is I don't like this newfangled thing, but I do like watching it two weeks later. Well, no, I don't like watching it. I don't like watching it.
Starting point is 00:13:39 It's just forced upon me. Yeah. I'm just saying. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not really sure the level of parasocial relationship that happens on tiktok i would bet that there are some people that are insanely obsessed with some of the creators on tiktok yeah totally most of the best examples of successful tiktok creators that i've seen have turned it into a following on a different platform yeah so that says this is true tiktok this is true yeah so i don't know i guess we'll
Starting point is 00:14:05 see i mean they uh like they said they're taking 100 of the they're giving 100 of the revenue for now it's great to me that says we're gonna see how this actually plays out that's it ends up successful we take 30 percent yeah like that all right andrew i had a question for you actually yeah are you you remember how you said you were going to review everything for a while are you still reviewing everything yes but i'm like i've found that i need to give myself way more time to review things and i like because if i'm going to be this specific which i also think plays into i don't want to go too ranty again but yes i would i'm trying things more often i'm reviewing them and i'm also just returned like i'm returning things and giving them bad reviews actually there was a pair of socks i bought the other day and i got very upset
Starting point is 00:14:49 and then i got ghosted by the website and then and then you left a review yeah and then they refunded me another two weeks after that dang dang so my review is probably deleted but oh yeah for sure my my question i have i have been thinking, I have these several weird review scenarios happening to me at the same time that just made me think of like, how do I review this product? And am I just reviewing the product or am I reviewing the overall experience? Can I clarify real quick? You're not talking about like something we're doing for work. You're talking about like a more personal thing that you can review on a website. Okay. So they are actually personal purchases that I've made. So,
Starting point is 00:15:29 so here's one of them. I bought a year and some change ago, a table, a marble, like a, like a small counter height dining table from Wayfair. I'll just name and shame. I mean,
Starting point is 00:15:44 I can already tell you two stars okay so it was a great table and it lasted like that year and a half or whatever it looks great it was sturdy everything i liked about it pointed towards like i never reviewed it but if i did this would be five stars and then uh a week and a half ago it just broke spontaneously not quite full shattered like that uh tempered glass thing that we have but i have a picture of it and we'll put it on the podcast where like the side of it just kind of like broke open like it cracked like but like like big crack big crack like sharp dangerous crack like fit your pinky up to your first knuckle crack yep nice pretty bad so this table just breaks out of nowhere spontaneously. I'm like, whoa, that's, that's really weird. Was it because it was sitting in the sun? I don't really know how to like how to diagnose the problem, but it clearly broke. Like, okay, well, I can't keep this table or keep using it.
Starting point is 00:16:48 counter height similar size tables that would fit the same look and for like an hour i'm going through all these other options i'm reading reviews oh this one's built cheaply this one's plastic this one doesn't it's square instead of circular all these other things and you know what i landed on the original listing for the table that i bought and i started reading the reviews for the table and everyone loves it. Nobody mentions it breaking. So I'm like, is it still five stars even though it broke? I called them. I was a year and a half out.
Starting point is 00:17:12 So they were like, oh yeah, it's out of warranty. So we can't do anything. Sorry, you're kind of screwed. And I was like, all right, well, I need to buy another table. Am I gonna buy the same table because everyone had great experiences and it seems like nobody else is broke and maybe it was a freak accident?
Starting point is 00:17:27 Or do I go with a different lower rated table? I don't know. I'd probably buy the same table. I might. Are you allowed to edit reviews on Wayfair? I don't know. Maybe. I haven't left my initial review yet.
Starting point is 00:17:40 Well, that would be interesting because if you're not, then that doesn't necessarily mean all those people didn't have that issue it means they left their review that's really early exactly it's possible a lot of people like built the table set it up and a week later they were like i love this thing and left a great review and then disappeared and then everyone's table broke and nobody can adjust their reviews amazon does let you review yeah edit reviews and i actually usually find those ones to be like that's something I like to look for three months later yep and they'll be like update and it's like oh that means something important enough happens that either it got that much better or that much worse and if that happens down the line and you're willing to go back and review it that feels like major green flag to me
Starting point is 00:18:20 like I want to read that review I'm submitting a review on wafer right now okay so i reviewed this you didn't originally review it right i didn't originally review it but now that i've done that do your deed to the people also if i i would just not buy something off wayfair i would go for something really no i was looking at a bunch of other tables online on a bunch of other different websites like i googled this specific type of table i wanted and went through all these other sites and it landed me back on this one table that is on Wayfair. Yeah. I feel like Wayfair is just kind of like Amazon at this point where they're just bringing a bunch of third party garbage and making it look incredible. And it's all just like white labeled the same trash.
Starting point is 00:18:59 And if one of them gets really good, I don't know. I submitted a review and it says pending review so it's not even on the listing yes what'd you review it i just i just submitted like a blanket that i got just put a five star thing and hit submit and now it says pending wait you just five stars have reviewed the table that broke no no no just a random other thing to see if i could edit a review are you saying they have to review your review it sounds like they're gonna review my review uh-oh if you review their what if you review their review david no david no we were in the time loop it was suddenly back in february like what happened uh i bought something recently
Starting point is 00:19:34 period um and i'm probably going to review it because it was way worse than i was expecting okay what happened uh so i bought some exercise clothes um because i have traditionally only had I'm probably going to review it because it was way worse than I was expecting. Okay. What happened? So I bought some exercise clothes because I have traditionally only had one exercise shirt and one exercise pair of shorts and I need more. So I bought some random like no name brand on Amazon because it came with three pairs of like shirts and shorts. Funny enough. How do you pronounce that?
Starting point is 00:20:02 I think it's by. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Yeah. It's B-U-I-j-y-a all caps well okay always that's that's good first off red flag immediately amazon listing all caps company name red flag yeah immediately but so it comes with three pairs of both a shirt and shorts red flag for 38 i $38. I could have told you this. I could have reviewed this already. Well, look, it's workout clothes. Like, how bad could they possibly be? No, that's comparable to Old Navy pricing.
Starting point is 00:20:32 Red flag. You don't buy socks in bulk? The last pair of pants I bought at Old Navy, I wore them immediately to a wedding, and my whole crotch just split open, and I had to do the whole rehearsal dinner with the pants just ripped down the center. I think coming in a pack of three should be a yellow flag.
Starting point is 00:20:51 Yeah. Not a red flag. I thought value because like, look, I'm just going to the gym. How bad could these possibly, I just need to get them sweaty. Like that's the only thing I'm using them for. Right. So I opened the package and I wear them and I go to wear them and the pants are literally backwards.
Starting point is 00:21:09 Like the drawstring is, is coming through the wrong side of the pants on the back and the pockets are backwards too. And I was like, I walk into the gym, I walk into the locker room and David's just like looking at his pants. I was like, cause I put them on and I tried to put my hands, I tried to put them on the way it looked like it should be
Starting point is 00:21:28 and I tried to put my hands in my pockets. I'm like, these pockets are backwards and then I realized, no, the drawstring part is backwards.
Starting point is 00:21:34 So I was like, that's weird. This brand like makes weirdly shaped pants. Hold on. And then I... Can I cut you off? And I think it's just
Starting point is 00:21:42 the question we all have here. Yeah, the drawstring and the pockets are facing opposite directions. Opposite directions. Oh, okay. I thought you just? And I think it's just a question we all have here. Yeah, the drawstring and the pockets are facing opposite directions. Opposite directions. Oh, okay. I thought you just had them on backwards, if I'm being honest. It just sounded like you had them on backwards.
Starting point is 00:21:53 No, no, no. Yeah. The whole pants are backwards. My feet are facing this way and the pants are facing the other way. Okay, look. So I put them on and yeah the drawstring is like in the back like on my lower back and i'm like that's really weird yeah right so i just dealt with it and and i thought like i guess this brand just puts the drawstring
Starting point is 00:22:16 around the back which is confusing and strange modern chic vibe yeah but then the next day i opened the the next pair and they're the right way. So I'm just like, they literally made that part of the pant backwards somehow. That is weird. I think, see, what you need to do is use the backwards pants for core day. Because when you're doing sit-ups, the backwards-facing pockets will prevent your phone from falling out when you're lying down. Then your tailbone will be on the drawstring. No, no, no. Because if the pockets are backwards, then the drawstring. No, no, no, because if the pockets are
Starting point is 00:22:45 backwards, then the drawstring is the right way front. Oh, if I flip it around? Yeah. Well, if the pockets are... Oh, that's a good point. Are they side pockets or back pockets? Boom. They're side pockets. I think I've turned this one star of you to a five star. Feature. The other problem is that Feature or a bug. Every single...
Starting point is 00:23:02 Yeah, feature or a bug. But it's only one pair of the pants because I bought six. Right, because you only have one core day per week yeah exactly exactly yeah um and then every single shirt just has tons of like threads hanging out of it like it is the lowest oh and i got a medium and they're like extra large they did look pretty they're so big so anyway i'm gonna i'm gonna review i just i'd review this i think this this is a learning experience here because the name of this this listing is just the ultimate amazon red flag and i think we can we can connect this to tech here i'm gonna read it for you right okay boyja men's workout clothes athletic shorts shirt set three pack for basketball football Athletic Shirt Set 3-Pack for Basketball, Football, Exercise, Training, Running, Gym.
Starting point is 00:23:45 That's every Amazon listing. Exactly. Yeah. The more words in the title, the bigger the red flag is, I feel like. Yeah. There's a lot of things about that I think I would probably be like, this is an Amazon listing. But when you bought it, it was a 4.4 star listing. It still is.
Starting point is 00:24:04 Which is not that bad. I was looking at value versus ratings. How many ratings is it? There are 1,346 ratings. I would take a shot on that. Yeah, right? The value versus rating scale, I was like, yeah. But then it's 4.4, but then when you expand,
Starting point is 00:24:23 there's only 67% 5-star reviews. And then is it stratified evenly, or is there a bunch of 2 and 1-stars? So it's 67%, and then 16%, and then 9%. Yeah. But you notice there's a little more 1-star than 2-star. There are recent reviews, actually, though. The reviews are pretty positive. So this is a tough one.
Starting point is 00:24:41 And they're all this year. Did you get a fluke backwards elastic package? And with crazy oversize, you just got a weird bad one but that was only one pair of pants and then all of the other ones were still terrible quality and super oversized this person only got the shirts they didn't even send them the pants oh my gosh okay you gotta so what are you gonna what are you what is your star i'm gonna give I'm gonna give this, I was, it was probably, I was thinking two star because the sizing is completely wrong. Like the backwards pant thing is like funny and weird and I don't really care.
Starting point is 00:25:12 But like the fact that it's super oversized and the shirts just have threads like hanging out of them constantly, it just feels low quality. Like I think two star, even though again, they're just exercise clothes and I really don't care but they managed to goof it up that bad and if I could get it for the same price at Old Navy then maybe I'd do that I'm gonna I'm thinking about this table I think I'm going to I think you should go to a furniture store and look yeah but it's gonna be 20 that's a lot of work I know it is I know it is but it's also a lot of work to throw the like attempt to return this table
Starting point is 00:25:44 or get rid of it and get another one and set it up. Yeah, I mean, I could go to a furniture store. I just won't know if the table is going to explode by doing anything different. You might get a better warranty, though. Yeah, oh, this time I'm going to probably get the warranty that's more than one year. You can buy it. I'd skip the warranty. I always skip the warranty.
Starting point is 00:26:02 That's my thing. I take good care of stuff. But this one just exploded. One other thing. Wait, is this another review? Another review. Okay, sorry. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:12 I bought a set of wheels and tires for my Tesla. So it's a site that just does wheels and tires for Tesla. Just wheels, actually. And they happen to sell a wheel and tire package. Okay. And so they ship you the wheels with the tires mounted already i got the wheels i went to a shop they jack it up they put the wheels on and one of the wheels is one of the tires is flat and i go oh you got to air up this tire it's not i can't drive home unless you air it up they air it up i drive home next morning, I can't drive home unless you air it up. They air it up. I drive home next morning. Tire's flat again. Ah, that's weird. I air it up. I come home from work. It's flat again. Oh, it's leaking. That's like the obvious answer.
Starting point is 00:26:55 I go have it looked at, at a tire place and the cords, like the seal around the rim is just leaking as if it was ripped during installation everything else about the rims gorgeous wheels I love the wheels the tires are installed everything else about them is great but I can't drive because yeah I have to literally and I probably will end up having to get another tire what is the what's the star rating well you're all I mean it sounds like a fluke right I mean they'll replace it right what's their return policy i think that's what it'll depend on i would wait until the customer service yeah are you need to gonna need to get two tires if you have to get new ones he's gonna i know
Starting point is 00:27:34 they're all matching uh i will have to i'm guessing what i'm going to need to do is they they damaged the tire when they mounted it so i'll have to get one new tire and get that installed that's the second time you've had work done on a vehicle where they kind of damaged it a little bit wait wait but you said the tires were installed already yeah they mounted the tire onto the wheel and then shipped me the four wheels with the tires oh yeah so the company not the place you got it installed that right okay sorry i thought you meant the company that installed them just like took them and put them on the car for sure they didn't do anything bad it's the the shippers who like put the wheel
Starting point is 00:28:05 and tire package together those are the ones i think that i need to i would go through the customer service policy and like wait for that and then if they return it and it's good and it's easy and they're doing it for everybody then that's on you that part's on you but if if the customer service is good then it's five stars to be fair they probably shouldn't have sent one that was messed up to start with. I agree. Yeah, I would do four. Mistakes happen, though. Yeah, but if you're not lucky enough and you don't have another car,
Starting point is 00:28:33 you could potentially be missing days of work now or having to rent a car. That's quality control. Yeah, I would do four. I can't give it a five. It's also not subtle when you tear a tire and there's a leak in it you know what i mean um uh yes i'll give them benefit of the doubt yeah maybe something weird it's tough to say because it's a slow leak and so they could have like put it all on and then everything looked fine they aired it up and then they shipped them yeah and then they slowly lost
Starting point is 00:29:01 air during shipping and they never noticed but i mean mean, I'm not a mechanic, but like, I'm sure there are a litany of tools to make sure that the air pressure on a tire is constant. I bet the person who did it in the back of their head is like, I hope I didn't rip it. But they probably knew. Fire them. They probably know. Well, that's the end of my segment of exploring weird review scenarios. I think we should keep this up because I think we constantly have questions about,
Starting point is 00:29:26 like we review things professionally, but there's also like random things that we buy where we're like, how do you review this? And they're like, back of your pants. Could we do a segment at the end where people send us in things that they bought they're wondering about reviewing? I was waiting for the trivia section to say that.
Starting point is 00:29:39 Well, too bad. My idea now. Check me, Adam. So like people send in ideas of things that they want. People bought something and they send us what they liked and didn't like about it. Oh, that'd be fun. Maybe on a slow week. End of the off-the-rails podcast.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Only weird things, though. Not just, like, I bought a toothbrush. Like, if you bought a toothbrush and it came backwards. Yeah. Like, I bought three sets of pants and one of them was backwards. And the other one had, like, the shirts were too big. Yeah, I want to hear about all the weird ones. Weird stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:30:07 Yeah. I like that idea. All right, well, let's get into trivia. All right. Trivia time. Like the new iPhone. Lights are back. Speaking of the new iPhone.
Starting point is 00:30:18 Biggest story of our time. We were just talking about the yellow iPhone 14. Biggest news story of our time. We can't stop talking about it. What was the last yellow iPhone? I knew that's what you were going to ask. Damn it. Oh, I know exactly what it is.
Starting point is 00:30:31 Did you look it up, Nigel? I know what it is. No, no, I just know it. I think I know what it is. I'm going to write it. Yeah, I'm going to write mine down. You're going to write it down. Are we that confident?
Starting point is 00:30:40 Either way, ad break now. You don't have to watch us write it, you know? Does anyone else have my pants? Anyway, we'll see the answers at the very end. Let's take a quick break. Bet MGM is an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League and has your back all season long. From puck drop to the final
Starting point is 00:31:05 shot, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite skater, or your style, there's something every NHL fan is going to love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your hockey home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sports book worth a sellie and an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only.
Starting point is 00:31:38 Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario you've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself you live for experience and lead by example you want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you this is for you the canadian armed forces a message from the government of Canada. All right, welcome back. Let's talk about this AI feature.
Starting point is 00:32:29 The yellow iPhone? This is a, this AI color. No, it's a, Spotify has a new AI DJ feature. I have feelings about this. I have thoughts. I don't actually have this feature yet. I've been trying to, I've been reloading Spotify. You're the only one that doesn the only one that doesn't i'm somehow yeah the only one who doesn't have this beta feature it's like the opposite of what normally happens but hey okay i didn't have it until literally 35 seconds ago and you have it now yeah so like maybe i'll get it
Starting point is 00:32:57 soon but here's what it is okay so you know what ai AI synthesized voices can be? AI DJ is basically like it'll play through a playlist, which Spotify can curate playlists, but it'll also include like a radio DJ voice that like talks you through the playlist as if you're listening to the radio or something. So it'll just be a guy going like, hey, I'm your Spotify DJ. Your first few songs are from your high school days because you listen to this artist a lot. Plays a few songs and then it comes back and it's like time to change up the mood. I have some more songs and it's just like a radio AI
Starting point is 00:33:33 thing, whatever. It has some scripts that it reads. I'm not going to use this ever, but it's AI. Everyone who has a company has to do AI in some way. So here's Spotify's AI. I'm going to david go on it like let let david talk on his because so i was in your okay dms david likes it adam likes it marquez and i were super skeptical of it i think ellis was skeptical too you no no you i've tried
Starting point is 00:33:58 it all last night and all this morning so i have notes but i want you to talk about i want you to talk and then i'll show you my notes okay so the the voice map that of the guy that is talking to you there's only one voice but it's based on one of their early employees okay so they got like a lot of his voice and then they he's got a dj voice yeah yeah sounds like a dj um and they got script writers and a bunch of other people to like kind of decide on how he was going to talk how he's going to mix it around but i i really enjoy it because like i was just listening to it um this morning and then it's like yeah we're gonna throw it back to the music you were really liking in 2018 and i was like damn this is kind of nice i mean just it was how about you just play the song yeah but it does it for me i mean yeah i think this is my like my initial thought was that's cool but it's because you
Starting point is 00:34:45 have a playlist called my top songs of 2018 I do and it's just playing that and I like can go back to that but like the fact that it's jumping around to a bunch of different stuff that is the thing I like about it and and like I think that we have we're always on a sine wave of wanting more control and wanting less control like the reason that people watch there are like what is it called that tv channel that just like cycles through tv but it's online but it's streamed i remember that do you remember stumble upon the website yeah it sounds like that we're like yeah i think that people are in a phase where they kind of don't they have over too much choice and over abundance of choice and they just kind of want to be served stuff and the fact that like regular radio right has no mapping to you it's like a billboard right it's
Starting point is 00:35:30 like you're going by a billboard it has me probably has nothing to do with your interests radio is the same way and it's probably if you're listening to 96.9 the eagle it's only going to play classic rock radio but this one is tailored to the music that you've liked over the years. And you can hit the DJ button to be like, I'm not really into this. And over time, it will better match your taste. So it's like a better version of what Spotify already does. Okay, so I would like all of this without the DJ voice. Just like an endless playlist without the DJ voice. Yeah, there to say, so like, I, just like an endless playlist without the DJ voice.
Starting point is 00:36:05 Yeah, there's like lots of good playlists. It's got like a hip hop mix that's tailored to my hip hop listen. So it's got a bunch of hip hop artists I listen to and then radio sprinkles in some more. Then there's a pop mix.
Starting point is 00:36:15 Then there's a Kanye mix. Then there's a Drake mix. Then there's a Deadmau5 mix, a Muse mix. And they're all like, because those are things that I've listened to. And so it'd be cool to have like a
Starting point is 00:36:24 throwbacks plus modern, whatever, like, but I are things that I've listened to. And so it'd be cool to have like a throwbacks plus modern, whatever. Like, but I don't want the voice at all. He gives context too. And it's like, so I like, I think we can, we all agree that Spotify is really good at making these playlists, right? Yeah. That's the thing. Like discover weekly, all that kind of stuff is incredible.
Starting point is 00:36:41 Like I, they do a great job at that. And the tailored to you part is super important. I do like the fact that he jumps between them i kind of wish i could just say like here's a bunch of playlists i have can you shuffle between playlists and then like make up do that without the the voice that'd be cool i think that would be cool he sometimes talks a little long he sometimes is a little quick. He like, he, okay. Just bumps his head into the mic.
Starting point is 00:37:11 Some of the things he's saying is basically just like, like the scriptedness of it is just essentially explaining the name of the playlist. Cause it's like, here's the songs you liked in 2018. It's just popular 2018 songs that you listen to. I also have noticed with a couple bands or like artists, he's got a very grocery store self-checkout vibe where it's like, you really liked songs from 2018,
Starting point is 00:37:33 so you're going to listen to Banana. And like, it's just like, it says the name of the artist really poorly. Some are totally fine. Some of them, they tried to pronounce foo fighters and i thought they said firefighters and i was very confused but which this brings me to my next point the immediate thing i thought of this was this is like radio how are they going to bake ads into this oh no because it's only for premium subscribers so now i already got something i think i could kind of relate to an ad which is it it was like, you've listened to the Foo Fighters.
Starting point is 00:38:06 You seem to enjoy the Foo Fighters who are going to be starting their touring again, blah, blah, blah, soon. And then giving me close by tour dates, which I can only give me nearby tour dates because they're starting a tour again. And then that was the intro to this like next five songs. It played one Foo Fighters song and then four songs that were from a completely different genre so it really felt forced sorry just to enunciate the force slam the microphone but it really felt like pigeonholed in there to be like foo fighters are playing near you and foo fighters are probably paid to put their tour dates on spotify well that's exactly why i enjoy this so much yeah because right now it's cute it's cool
Starting point is 00:38:46 there's a voice but with location data with all the data spotify has about you with if i want to start a running playlist and just be like i'm running give me the dj hyping me up playing with tempo songs that match my pace give me the weather while i'm driving to work what's the traffic on my commute to work and i just hit the AI DJ and it does all this because it knows, like that is where they're headed, I hope because that, I could see because they're never going to replace a human DJ
Starting point is 00:39:14 like Dave was saying, it's like a human DJ is broadcasting to everyone but if they could get an AI DJ to do the same things but be very specific to you and your routine, yeah, it's over it's like the google assistant of your audio world yeah listening yeah i get it i have two more things that i noticed sorry do you have anything else to say because i feel like i just i took a bunch of
Starting point is 00:39:37 notes because you told me to try this all right so one so i had two things back to back that were kind of weird okay it brought up hey here's an artist you used to listen to, but they've seemed to fallen out of your rotation. Let's bring it back. It was some like lo-fi playlist that I must have played when I was working once. So it was like really strange. So I immediately skipped all five songs. And then it like, I must have skipped them too fast.
Starting point is 00:40:00 And I got confused because then there's just 15 seconds of dead silence with the, but like my Android auto said the DJ was up and it just like didn't know what to say and just waited speechless and then he just like came back so it was like clearly processing what it wanted to recommend me next and that that i thought was kind of weird but i have been trying to think of like what i think this could do you're talking about like running tempo i think it would be cool like i'm going on a 30 minute run can you pick songs that will end at 30 minutes like so you're not ending a run at a certain point or like a warm-up tempo then like right in the middle get really intense yeah yeah yeah and yeah and basically so here's here's a pitch that i have that i i think could be cool we've all played pod quiz right do you know how the first five is always music-based
Starting point is 00:40:46 and it's like play a clip of a song and you guess? I think it's always my favorite part of Pod Quiz. If the DJ could somehow do something like, I'm going to pick 20 songs that you might know and I'm going to play you clips of them and you can play this in your car of guessing the song and the artist, I think that would be really cool. That's what I'm saying.
Starting point is 00:41:04 This is limitless. There's so many things that could be used. When you tailor things specifically and the artist, I think that would be really cool. That's what I'm saying. This is limitless. There's so many things that could be used. When you tailor things specifically to the user, it makes the possibilities a lot bigger. Okay, let me propose another version of this to you and see if it sounds absurd or not. YouTube has a recommended page. Let's say in a theoretical world,
Starting point is 00:41:22 YouTube can put together a quick AI-generated 10-video playlist for you based on what it knows you like watching and it's usually pretty good. But then also insert a video AI DJ. Alex Trebek. Alright, next video for you is going to be a throwback
Starting point is 00:41:39 that you used to watch when you were younger. It's me at the zoo. And you skip a few too fast and then you get to the end of the playlist and he just looks at you like i wasn't ready for that man hold up new video it's every medium i feel it's like the playlist just minus the the guy i know i would like that here's my movie theaters yeah but music you listen to over and over and over again videos you probably don't here here is my counterpoint and another thing i think could be interesting is i wish it was more interactive and another thing i think could be interesting is
Starting point is 00:42:05 i wish it was more interactive potentially with voice or it could be with forward and back buttons because in your car it you should not be controlling your phone yeah i wish the dj in some sense was like hey we can either play oldies from the 70s or stuff you listened to in 2019 and i could like give it the direction or like scoot it in a certain direction because right now it really is just going all over the place like sending me summer 2018 into lo-fi beats into dualipa is like yeah that's wild crazy it's an interesting vibe i do think that eventually they'll introduce some sort of natural language processing there has to interact with it. And you can be like, I'm kind of thinking of more like I want some island vibes right now.
Starting point is 00:42:48 And then it just is like, yeah, island vibes. I heard you loud and clear. You were listening to those in 2018. I heard you on island vibes. Yeah. I don't know. It's very beta. I think there's potential.
Starting point is 00:43:01 It's very beta. I think it has a lot of potential. It's based on a company that they bought only a year ago so they like implemented it very quickly and i could see them doing a lot of like chat gpt style natural language processing uh injection pretty soon so i'm i'm down on the dj as it exists now but i'm you've talked me into its potential future i think it is a success look at that we. We convinced Marques of something. Too bad he can't use it.
Starting point is 00:43:30 Let me use the feature. I'm just going to throw this out here solely out of pettiness. When I was applying to college as a high schooler, I applied to this fancy business and technology hybrid program at a university I'm not going to aim. And I wrote an entire essay about how Pandora's Music Genome Project was worthless, because all the important data as far as music went, is going to be user data and listening data. Because you never like a song
Starting point is 00:43:58 because you liked another song that sounds exactly the same. You like a song because of the time you heard it and who showed it to you. And I was was like whoever can collect all this data and use it is going to be the you know biggest player in the music industry and i didn't get into this school wow so i'm like shame them right now name and shame but somewhere there's a professor who read that who's like i'm gonna teach this yeah i so i won't name them it rhymes with with University of Schmothern, Schmallifornia. I love naming and shaming. Yeah. I like, I love shaming the schools I didn't get into.
Starting point is 00:44:32 It's my favorite. Stanford. Cornell. It's whatever. It's no big deal. Harvard. Northwestern. So there's one other thing we wanted to mention, which is a, not, it's not AI, is it? It's a Microsoft Edge machine learning.
Starting point is 00:44:46 So slightly adjacent. Super resolution. Super resolution video. Yeah. This, okay. Well, I pitched this to you this morning about talking and you had some strong thoughts. Do you want me to read the, and then you can. Sure.
Starting point is 00:45:01 Okay, cool. Yeah. So very quickly, Edge is introducing a new feature that can use machine learning to upscale online video content to create higher resolutions the videos have to be 720p or lower they can't be drm protected so netflix hulu hbo stuff like that probably mostly youtube videos um and you have to have some certain uh hardware requirements so like 20 series or higher or an rx 5700 or higher um then it also says microsoft has not mentioned if vsr can boost 720p resolutions to full 1080 which we're just like what's out there yeah um i know david's worked with video resolution upscaling stuff before yeah
Starting point is 00:45:39 so like that's why i kind of saw it interesting and like in an ideal world if i can play me at the zoo at a higher resolution or like old stuff like that yeah sounds cool before you i know you really don't think this is ever gonna happen how's your uh like upscaling yeah how is it uh it does really bad with hard edges so text is terrible it kind of looks like if you put into Dolly to like make a sign that says something and you know how the text is just like random letters all scrambled and kind of like they don't really have hard edges. I remember upscaling for a video we were working on the original Apple like iPhone keynote because it's only available in like 240p. Yeah. You've done it for me before for a couple of podcast things. Yeah. And I upaled it to 4K and like Steve Jobs looks great, the theater
Starting point is 00:46:26 looks great, everything looks kind of great, but all the presentations on the screen are just the text is just totally scrambled. We've upscaled a few of the videos we've posted on the waveform Twitter from 720p to 4K and no one's like noticed
Starting point is 00:46:42 or said anything like that. And also it's gotten way better recently um the topaz video ai for that before and i think that within the last year or so all of this video upscaling stuff has gotten way better like nvidia has dynamic super resolution and all this different stuff and i'm just throwing this out here i have no proof of this but i think one reason they might be closing the edge upscaling to older stuff is because I find when I try to upscale things that were shot on film or shot on analog video, it can't make sense of what it's probably trained on high resolution, like 4K digital video. So like the soft lines and the noise and the subtle color banding, it just freaks out because it has no reference to what it's supposed to look like. Yeah, that makes sense.
Starting point is 00:47:34 Yeah. Yeah. My take on upscaling is it's generally not good. Generally. So I've used various and I think also this is this is source dependent so upscaling like i've seen a lot of really uh like interesting demos of upscaling video technologies on a tv and it's like i will play a 720p video on this tv with the tv's upscaling technology turned on and it'll look like 4k and then i play it and i like it looks like sharpen 720p i know what that
Starting point is 00:48:05 looks like so i've never looked at uh the result of upscaling and thought wow mission accomplished it looks like the higher version high res version um and i think that also applies to audio where like the worse your source is the harder it is to do a good upscale so like me at the zoo 240p 480p video whatever it is will never look like new modern digital video because of the way it was captured it just there's other than like really severely altering it there's no way to make it look like normal 4k video i think with diffusion you can do that though because like they yeah because then you're like generating and adding yeah yeah yeah versus just like sharpening and that can look good yeah the the old upscaling i would completely agree with you that like a few years ago upscaling looked pretty trash but some of the most recent
Starting point is 00:48:55 examples that i've seen have been actually quite good and i don't know whether they're using diffusion or whatever but i think that there are new ai models that do it a lot better yeah i have yet to i would really love to see like some of this in action i should have we should try it on edge yeah we should try this this isn't out yet oh yeah but we can try it on some of the other nvidia or topaz you said you were using yeah but yeah i don't know i want to try that the no i do want to try the edge one when it comes out um it's not out quite yet. One thing to think about, though, I think, though, is I don't think 720p is going to look as good as 4K, but if 720 can look 70% as close to 4K, it'll still look way better than 720.
Starting point is 00:49:36 We should test it with your HP laptop video. We should upscale that bad boy because that's rough lighting. I think the tonality is still going to look exactly like that that quality you won't get more dynamic range you won't get more yeah it'll be like a like a nice sharpening filter yeah with like a little more detail and some of the finer lines maybe so now we need your youtube dj to play old youtube videos upscale so then we can just flashback you remastered here's when you were watching a lot in 2007 hp elite remote review minecraft tutorials tutorials are good yeah that's funny all right
Starting point is 00:50:15 we're going to take another quick break to talk about the top 10 phones in the world in 2022 objectively objectively but first all right so last night andrew adam me a few other people went to a hockey game a new jersey devil's game so i thought today would be a fun week to do a tech hockey collab question let's go i finally might have the advantage get it wrong so maybe uh the nhl has an official app for players and coaches it's called sap hyphen nhl it runs on ipad and it gives all sorts of like live statistics live insights it's actually like the kind of data it provides is super duper cool um but the trivia question today is on game day at the arena, how many iPad pros
Starting point is 00:51:08 is each team allowed to have? Okay. Maybe. I might have an answer. That's also an interesting question because the Flyers coach banned all iPads off of their bench. So are the Flyers paying?
Starting point is 00:51:22 Off of their bench? I don't know anything about hockey. I know nothing about sports. Yeah. We'll be right back. I am so dreading groceries this week. Why? You can skip it. Oh, what? Just like that?
Starting point is 00:51:52 Just like that. How about dinner with my third cousin? Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable. Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices?
Starting point is 00:52:04 Uh, nope. You're on your own there. Could have skipped it. Should have skipped it. Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed?
Starting point is 00:52:18 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. This top rated cloud ERP brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more onto one unified platform, letting you streamline
Starting point is 00:52:43 operations and cut down on costs. With NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting tools, you're not just managing your business, you're anticipating its next move. You can close the books in days, not weeks, and keep your focus forward on what's coming next. Plus, NetSuite has compiled insights about how AI and machine learning may affect your business and how to best seize this new opportunity.
Starting point is 00:53:01 So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. All right, welcome back to the official countdown of the top 10 best smartphones of 2022. And by best, I mean most unit sales globally of the year number one is the yellow iphone i mean no doubt about that yeah but 100 well we have 2020 is lost already yeah we already know
Starting point is 00:53:36 how this year is going to go but this is 2022 um so this is uh this is a some data gathering from a site called counterpoint and they've actually broken it down into a pretty interesting chart which is every single month uh we have the top 10 for the year but then for every month how many where on that list each one of them was it's rank yeah it's rank for the year so it's really cool so let's just i think we're just going to put this chart on screen so you can see this real quick and for our audio listeners i'll just break it down our top 10 smartphones starting at number 10 is the samsung galaxy a03 number nine is the iphone se number eight is the iphone 14 pro number seven is the iphone 14 number six is the iPhone 12. Number five is the iPhone 13 Pro. I'm sensing a trend here.
Starting point is 00:54:28 Yeah. Number four is the Samsung Galaxy A13. Number three is the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Number two is the iPhone 13 Pro Max. And number one is the iPhone 13. This was surprising for a couple reasons to me. Number one, this is global. So this, I mean, this is, I would expect this in the US, right?
Starting point is 00:54:49 For sure. But there are a lot of other markets and a lot of other regions where I don't expect to see much on the premium iPhones, like at all. Like a lot of countries, a lot of regions just don't buy premium iPhones like that. And that also we don't see premium phones from other manufacturers that are competing with the iPhone. So then you look at the month to month and it gets even more interesting. Obviously the iPhone 14 series didn't come out till September. So they don't have anything listed on there on this list until September where the iPhone 14 pro max debuted at number one and was number one for September, October, and November, and then gave up its spot to the iPhone 14,
Starting point is 00:55:29 and it stayed at number two. So the Pro Max is the one that's actually selling the most volume, and it sold so much volume in those four months that it became the number three best-selling phone on the planet for the entire year. That's insane. That is a lot of volume. Obviously, Apple sells the most volume right at the beginning of the release,
Starting point is 00:55:49 but that's gigantic. Then the 14 Pro sells a lot, the 14, the 13. People are still buying the iPhone 12 in such mass that in January it was the number four best-selling phone of the entire month. In March it was in the world. And April and May and June and July was all top five every single month. People just buy iPhone 12s regularly. That's insane.
Starting point is 00:56:13 I mean, the iPhone 13, the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-4-4-4. So people continue buying the iPhonehone 13 crazy yeah yeah this is like also really disheartening for like samsung because if you're samsung first of all you wish that your premium phones would sell in the same mass and be your most popular phones but clearly here it's the a13 and the a03 which are like 190 phone and 100 phone selling the most volume and number two instead of buying a cheaper android phone people are buying old premium iphones which is really interesting like people would actually go buy an iphone 12 at what i presume is not a very steep discount from what we know about apple's pricing yeah um they'll keep it the lineup, drop it by maybe $50 to $100, you know, when they put the graphic on stage.
Starting point is 00:57:09 So, yeah, this is eye-opening. Because, like, the amount of phones that ReelMe and Redmi, all of these guys make so many variants of all their phones. And you would imagine that they would ship, like, hundreds of millions of units. And in some markets, they do. Yeah, like in India that they would ship like hundreds of millions of units. And in some markets they do. They do. Yeah like in India they sell like crap loads. Yeah in China and like Huawei phones. I think that is probably part of it though is like because this is by model
Starting point is 00:57:35 when Samsung and Realme and all have like 30 models and then those 30 models each year or whatever like it's so much. So one interesting thing about this graph is between the third spot and the 10th spot is 1.7 to 1.1 so like yeah 10 to 20 could be neck and neck and that's where we could see a bunch of other samsung phones a bunch of other real me phones the other thing here though is the number one spot is five percent of total market
Starting point is 00:58:01 share globally was the iphone 13 yeah and then the next closest was half of that yeah apple totals about 15 of all global market share with these charts so this this is a type of chart then that favors apple because they have so few models yeah and that they're not the number one global manufacturer of phones by volume. They might be like number three or something like that. Huawei surpassed them for a while a number of years ago, but now I'm sure they've dropped by a lot. If it was by volume, I almost wonder if they would even be top five.
Starting point is 00:58:35 I wouldn't be surprised if they were, but you think of like Huawei, Honor, Realme, Oppo. There's just so many phones. Samsung, yeah. But they have so few models that in order to get a model at the top of this list it's easier it's easier when they have less models so yeah it's still like samsung still has like clear flagships like s23 23 plus and 23 ultra are kind of like their flagships in the same vein as these iPhone flagships, but they didn't crack the 1% mark.
Starting point is 00:59:06 So they didn't end up on this list. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does still seem like Apple has a huge amount of market share. Like Samsung is above them with, let's see, Q1 of, let's see, Q4 of 2022. Oh, Apple was above them. I don't know. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:27 let's see q4 of 2022 oh apple was above them i don't know yeah they sold 70 million phones of q4 in of 2022 and samsung sold 58.3 million phones you know also yeah another stat that just keeps blowing my mind more and more is in the u.s how dominant they are among young people so like you think of like what's a dominating market share for a smartphone in any one country? You'd think like 50% for one company is pretty crazy. That's 60% is crazy. 70% is like dominant. And then the numbers of like people in the U.S. ages like 18 to 24, 18 to 24. It's like, no, it's like 90 plus. It's like an insane percentage of people who specifically get pressured into the iPhone and the ecosystem.
Starting point is 01:00:08 Because not only do all their friends already have one, but their parents have one. And it's just like the communities have them. It's just the phone in the U.S. Well, it went up from, I'm trying to remember the years, but within a five-year span between I think 2014 and 2019, it went from 40% of 18 to 24 year olds in the US owned an iPhone to 75%. This is just a recent article I pulled up from Phone Arena. According to their survey, 9 out of every 10 teenagers
Starting point is 01:00:34 in the US own an iPhone. 87%. 9 out of every 10. 87%. 9 out of every 10. That's insane. Most people in that age bracket, like 13 to 19 or whatever so it's crazy it's crazy how dominant they are in this one country but then it is kind of eye-opening to see a global chart where it translates the global thing is what surprised me the most here
Starting point is 01:00:54 because i know we talk about apple a lot because we're u.s based but we clearly get a lot of comments that's like apple's not big where i am they're way too expensive or like import fees, all this stuff. But I think it said they're most popular in US, UK, Germany, France, and China. And like, if you just really can dominate a few markets, you really can dominate global sales. Like it's pretty crazy. I think that really shows the power of the ecosystem lock-in, especially in that age group. Like if you're not able to use the power of the ecosystem lock-in, especially in that age group. Like if you're not able to use the thing that the social dynamics of the other people your age use, you're going to get outcast.
Starting point is 01:01:32 And that's the worst age to get outcast in because you're trying to make friends. You're growing as a person. And it just – It's strong. It's an Ouroboros. It eats its tail because the more people that get pressured into getting an iphone then they become part of the amoeba that pressures other people to become part of their amoeba and eventually the smaller amoebas just get completely eaten and it turns into one they grow out into crabs we're all back
Starting point is 01:01:57 to crabs that's a that's a deep cut but yeah i don't know it's like it makes sense that scent in the last five years the, the market share has grown that much in Apple's favor because they're the most ecosystem forward brand. And because they already have a dominance, that's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger. And there's going to be a day where there's like 99% of teenagers have iPhones in the US. That's always been an interesting question is like, can any other brand crack this?
Starting point is 01:02:25 Because you can obviously emulate the same pressures with your own ecosystem, but you also have to get switchers. So like Samsung can build a really strong ecosystem and they have, like you can get a Samsung laptop that talks to your Samsung phone and has Samsung services and it has their own version of AirDrop and their own, all this stuff like works really well together.
Starting point is 01:02:42 Huawei does the same thing. Oppo does the same thing. But you also have to balance the people who are already in a different ecosystem and get them to switch into your ecosystem, which is way harder. So I think it's tough to pick someone cracking this and actually starting to turn over market share and get into what Apple's doing. Well, in the fragmentation of the fact that, yeah, you can have a Samsung phone and you and like actually starting to turn over market share and get into what apple's doing yeah well in the fragmentation of the fact that like yeah you can have a samsung phone and you can have a samsung laptop but it's actually a microsoft laptop because microsoft makes the software
Starting point is 01:03:14 this is true and just the the level of parity between those devices if they're not made by the same manufacturer is just always glitchy and buggy and never really works that well because like what is microsoft's incentive to make this random samsung pairing app any good yeah and it'll be a samsung laptop with an intel processor exactly and the other yeah microsoft's os and it's like you look across the aisle and it's an apple chip with an apple computer with an apple piece of software on it and like an apple phone of course they all work great together like apple architects things within the hardware to be software features that work well with their other devices yeah you can't do that if you're fragmented as a device yeah so it's tough anyway they're pretty good at this huh yep people always ask like oh wow well there's always there's always the like wow you
Starting point is 01:04:00 guys do a lot of iphone videos and then you look at, we were joking about the iPhone, the yellow iPhone being the biggest story of our time. Joking? What? I mean, of course, it is the biggest story of our time. But it's like, you wonder why so many, we were talking about the, this is another thing I could make a video about
Starting point is 01:04:16 if I really got, if I really wanted to. Do what you want. I don't actually want to. But about YouTube channels, because there are so many youtube channels there are now increasingly fewer ways to differentiate yourself in the youtube ecosystem and so you see like back when i started if you were a tech youtube channel that was enough of a differentiator for you to be like oh wow you do tech you do videos but you do
Starting point is 01:04:41 tech videos that's really interesting i haven't seen that and now there's a bunch of tech videos now there's people who just do smartphone videos or people who just do software or just do productivity inside of tech yeah and now we're so saturated that there's just like what can you latch on to to just you know sort of drag yourself above the noise and and all the saturation and i think a lot of people find that just making Apple videos is just, yeah, people are interested in Apple. There's always a popular Apple product around. We might as well just hook onto that. We're like the menorah fish on the side of the shark.
Starting point is 01:05:15 So I don't know if there's a video essay in there somewhere, but that, I think that's even too saturated at this point. Apple channels. Now you need to unbox iPhones while jumping out of a plane. It's true, because there's going to be a bazillion Apple videos, and if you're not on the first page of search,
Starting point is 01:05:29 you might as well just... I mean, is Bing AI ever going to find you? Nope. Probably not. Steal your content. Quick check, by the way, it's not a menorah fish. What is it?
Starting point is 01:05:38 Remora. Remora, sorry, thank you. Ellis looked at me like he was going to kill me. I can't believe I got... I'm sorry. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. So, yeah, it's a real thing.
Starting point is 01:05:48 The iPhone, turns out, is a pretty popular phone. I can't wait to tell my grandkids, like, in my day, we had Android phones. Shut up, Grandpa! It's time for bed! Alright, girl, let's get you to bed. Two different charging ports, and you had to pick one. Android's not real.
Starting point is 01:06:04 Go to bed. there are ancient manuscripts that detail the samsung galaxy s23 ultra there is a it's like book of eli there is a super super old um super old carcass of a video idea in the video board which is is the iphone the most successful product of all time? And I started like writing down others that could possibly compete with it. One of them is. Sliced bread. Well, so it has to be a company who's made a product. Ford, I was going to say Ford.
Starting point is 01:06:34 And then tech is one of the things that iterates every year. So you have newer and newer versions of the product. So it keeps getting sales. So Ford Model T doesn't really have a modern equivalent that I can say, oh, it's one of the most so it keeps getting sales for definitely so Ford Model T doesn't really have a modern equivalent that I can say oh it's one of the most like successful products ever it turns out Toyota Corolla every single year is one of the best-selling cars on the planet for a long time yeah you could make an argument for that or F-150 you could make an argument some others I saw um Lipitor a drug product that's just been popular and useful to people for a long time.
Starting point is 01:07:08 Penicillin. And then some other random dark horses like the Harry Potter series or just another one-off thing. Pokemon. Like one-off media entities, which are really interesting. But I ultimately kept going back to the iPhone. which are really interesting but i ultimately kept going back to the iphone i think the iphone is probably hands down the most successful individual product ever yeah i love harry potter i love harry potter it is like my thing i have tattoos for it and everything it doesn't hold a candle to the iphone it's just like cultural impact was probably a higher spike for harry
Starting point is 01:07:45 potter but just iphone yeah i don't know i don't know i still meet people that are like oh i've never read the books oh i've never watched the movies so maybe in its heyday harry potter in its absolute heyday was like every kid like pokemon was standing outside the store waiting for the book to drop or at least just like to drop. Or at least knew about it. Because it was a book instead of a $100, $300, $500 thing. Everyone knew about it. But then it's got to get translated in all these languages. And it's got to be international too.
Starting point is 01:08:16 I'm just like the iPhone. I think it's hard to compare. It starts new economies almost. The iPhone started so many new sections. It is the reason apple is what it is and then they have all these other businesses that are built on top of the iphone being popular which is just like the ipads the app store the entire app store like all of that is from iphone yeah exactly i think it's hard to compare product to like story-based entertainment
Starting point is 01:08:42 yeah that was like a dark horse like the apple watch is the most popular watch on the planet it's an iphone accessory yeah it's what it is yeah so that's true yeah i think the airpods are like one of the biggest companies in the world on their own right if you were to map out all headphone companies like sony makes headphones so we consider them a headphone company uh audio technica makes headphones, so we consider them a headphone company. Audio-Technica makes headphones, among other things. I think AirPods would be like a top five headphone company. And Sony makes movies. They make a lot of stuff.
Starting point is 01:09:14 Nintendo is bigger than all of Sony, too. AirPods, as their own standalone business, are about as valuable as Netflix in its entirety. So I think if they were their own company, they would be actually one of the biggest. It's insane. And they're an iPhone accessory. They're an Apple product. So the more you know, I think we've talked about it.
Starting point is 01:09:36 I was thinking about making this video, but it also kind of felt just like, if I make a whole video about why the iPhone is the most popular, the most successful product on the world. Who else did they pay you? It just feels like I'm just patting them on the back like, congrats, guys, you did it. You really did it this time with the iPhone.
Starting point is 01:09:50 Take a victory lap. Make a yellow one. Yeah. They wouldn't dare. So it is what it is now. It's a podcast thought. I think that's appropriate. Pod thought.
Starting point is 01:09:59 Hashtag. Yeah. David wants to talk about, well, yeah, just victory. It's kind of a quick thing. Yeah, I guess this is perfectly what we just talked about. Realme shipped its first phone that has its extremely dynamic island ripoff. It's not just a ROM that you can download or an app that you can download.
Starting point is 01:10:21 It's literally a feature on this Real me c55 phone um and you know what the thing is like apple can't really stop manufacturers from like making software things it's just a software thing on the screen it looks it's cool like it's it's a good idea right yeah i think that the hype behind dynamic island is probably one of the reasons that the iPhone 14 Pro Max sold so many units. Like, it's a very simple feature that got a lot of people invested. Now, what I wanted to talk about with this specifically is that, one, people have been complaining since the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max launched that still not that many apps take advantage of the API. launched that still not that many apps take advantage of the API. But even less apps are going to be made.
Starting point is 01:11:09 For this one. Because this is not like there's an Android API that can take advantage of DynamoCon. It'd be like Realme would have to be like, hey guys, Uber, the C55. Calling all developers. The Realme C55. Every single time a company releases like a fringe product there they always go like and we opened the api so anyone can make anything like razer's done this a ton of times with like their weird products and nobody makes anything it's tough and the fact that apple can't even get enough manufacturers to make stuff for that dynamic island it's like
Starting point is 01:11:41 yeah real me is just gonna there's gonna be system information charging animations whatever the charging animation looks it looks dope terrible wow wait i haven't seen it so i don't know what to think right now look at this tell me this isn't a tenth of as good as what apples is and i'm saying that because they wrote super vuk in the charging animation how could you it says super vuk Why would you put that on the top of the phone? You know what's funny, too? It says 99% right next to the battery icon that says 99%. Exactly. This is what I would call in my day a poor use of space.
Starting point is 01:12:16 This is crazy. I mean, the space is there, right? It's a software feature. This is funny because it's just a regular webcam hole punch cutout. Yeah. I do like having stuff at the top as basically like quick switch. I think that's what was cool about Dynamic Island. They needed to do it more so on the full pill cutout.
Starting point is 01:12:34 If you're going to do all this for charging, why is this also here? Oh, I'm not talking about this. I'm not talking about charging. I agree with you on that one. But I think to what David said, and it's not even necessarily Realme's fault. It's not Samsung's fault. It's Android and a million different specifications where to ask a developer to do that
Starting point is 01:12:53 is please hire an entire new branch of this development in order to get it to work. So if it's not working on Apple, which has two models that are exactly the same, where it's so much easier, and we see this in a million different apps, and it's just an unfortunate side effect of the Android. Yeah, I mean, I'd say the reason that there's still not that many dynamic apps that take advantage of Dynamic Island is because, yes, it's Apple.
Starting point is 01:13:18 Yes, it's the iPhone, but it's still only two models of the iPhone. I would bet you that when the iPhone 15 comes out, especially if Dynamic Island comes to the regular model of 15, we're going to see every app manufacturer taking advantage of app developer. Trying to find cool ideas to do it. Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of cool ones now. My Weather app does it. Uber does it.
Starting point is 01:13:37 Spotify does it. So we'll see more. Yeah. Super, super teaser. We kind of have some of our own first-hand experience in this now too which is kind of interesting so it is what it is it's a it's a shameless clone which is what the verge called it and i agree with that um but that is it okay that that concludes our iphone section of the podcast wait but did we talk about the yellow iphone yet
Starting point is 01:14:03 oh right there's a trivia question based on the yellow iPhone. Oh, is there? Well, then let's do trivia. We read it already. Oh, right. I did that already. Okay. Anyway, the last trivia question.
Starting point is 01:14:14 All right. So trivia time. Quick update on the score. Of course. Marquez has eight. Andrew has seven. David has 10. That's right.
Starting point is 01:14:23 David's in the lead. That's right. Wow, that changed. Yeah. Andrew, you got to get on it. Yeah. You got David has ten. That's right. David's in the lead. Oh, wow. That changed. Yeah. Andrew, you gotta get on it. Yeah. Catch up. And also, before we do trivia, we did hear feedback and we are going to make this much faster. We are doing very
Starting point is 01:14:35 strict time limits and we will try and cut out dead space so you will just hear the question and you will hear the answer. And you will like it. And you will rate it well. And you will not listen to my rating restrictions, and you will give it five stars. You're welcome. Thank you for that very concise explanation.
Starting point is 01:14:51 Okay. You're welcome. We're making this longer than it needs to be. I've already written. We could have just had the delay in the trivia, but now we delayed the entire show. It's future-proofing. I've written my answers.
Starting point is 01:15:02 First question. Yeah. So, just got the yellow iphone what was the model number of the last yellow model number yeah the model the model oh not number i mean same thing what was the last iphone that was yellow yeah okay yeah yeah so you have until the end of this music to write down your numbers or answers okay they're not numbers i just may have confused myself a little but yeah we wrote it down no adam i did not change my you changed yours from before i'm just saying what mine's still what i wrote the first time you're changing it you better hurry up we got
Starting point is 01:15:35 about three seconds okay all right flip them and read okay i had to really think about that one. Oh, I know. Yeah. Okay, iPhone. I wrote iPhone XR. No. That's not the latest. I wrote XR. Really? Nope.
Starting point is 01:15:53 iPhone 5C. Nope. Is there a 12? iPhone 11. 11. Was it yellow? Was it the last yellow iPhone? The last one that came with the iPhone. Okay, because the 11 was when they first,
Starting point is 01:16:04 didn't they basically, the first time they made the pros quite a bit better, so the 11 was almost just like an 11R? Yeah, that's why. You know what's funny? I thought about that too, because the 11 always skips my mind. I always forget it exists.
Starting point is 01:16:17 The 11 was basically the 11R, but they just shifted everything forward. It was the 10RS. All right, next question brought to you by i really thought i had that ellis no in a regulation nhl hockey game how many ipad pros is each team allowed to have what is it called andrew is it a bench bench in their little ring so like in one team's bench how many ipads are allowed in that bench not assuming it's two because there's two benches right not in the arena per bench per team per team okay how many iPads are allowed in that bench, not assuming it's two because there's two benches. Right?
Starting point is 01:16:45 Not in the arena, per bench, per team. Per team, how many iPads are allowed on game day in the arena? Per team. In the arena. On game day. In the arena? No, no, in the bench, I thought. Wait, per team or not per team?
Starting point is 01:17:01 Per team. Okay. On the bench, or is this including... I smell the one up here, actors. Because they have analysis people outside of the bench. This is on the bench. Okay. Final answer.
Starting point is 01:17:14 A bench, if you guys want context, a bench holds three coaches and 20 players. Here's the reason it's important. Because during the week outside of game day, they are allowed X number of ipads per team all right flip them and read what great did you write oh two so i wrote zero because i thought it was a trick question because like the nfl doesn't allow any ipads because they do services but then i changed it to two you wrote two that is the kind of question I would write.
Starting point is 01:17:45 That is a great. I wrote three. I wrote four. Let's go, baby! So on game day, they're allowed four, and then the rest of the week, they're allowed two per team. Yes. Interesting.
Starting point is 01:17:58 That's exactly what my thought process was. Did you know that, or did you just get a nice little guess? Well, I originally wrote two, and then Ellis said they go up on game day. I almost changed to four when he said that, but I didn't. I assumed one for each side of the bench and one for the coach, one of the coaches.
Starting point is 01:18:12 Marques, take us home, please. Thanks for watching. We appreciate you guys. Please suggest topics for future questions so that we can catch up to David. Yeah. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
Starting point is 01:18:26 Bye. Way From Us produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro-outro music was created by Vane Still. Thank you.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.