Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Worst Tech Event of My Career, Tesla's New Cybertruck, & the 16-inch MacBook Pro

Episode Date: November 29, 2019

This week, Marques talks about the disaster that was the Motorola foldable RAZR unveiling event, Tesla's new homage to Blade Runner, and his first impressions of the new 16-inch MacBook Pro. Finally, he wraps it all up with a regularly-scheduled Listener Q & A and the one thing he's most grateful for this year. Show Links: RAZR Impressions: https://youtu.be/UCv7qwuLpHs A Conversation with Philip Defranco: https://youtu.be/aUdCojP0yDc Austin’s event video: https://youtu.be/V-YpbuFO5QQ 108-megapixel smartphone camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wegxoNTw0_I Cybertruck Impressions: https://youtu.be/oTZ84U-K_5k Why I’m buying a Cybertruck: https://youtu.be/OX1xG0a4TVo 16” MacBook Pro Review: https://youtu.be/ctWDAdQ81B8 The 31” iMac rumor: https://twitter.com/rubenohl/status/1198026111793483782 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, live 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. Hey, what's up everyone and welcome to episode 10 of the waveform podcast. So I'm your solo host today. Andrew is on his honeymoon this week. He just got married. Huge congrats to him on

getting married. Definitely hit him up and congratulate him too on Twitter if you can. But yeah, this this may be the most I've talked into a mic in a while, but we'll do it anyway. For some reason, I do have a lot to say. We'll start with a little friendly competition, then get right into why Motorola's Razr event may have hit bingo for the worst tech event of all time, maybe. And then we'll get into Cybertruck, of course, and then the rest of the tech of the hour. So there's some good stuff. Then we'll do some Q&A.

Let's get it. All right, so I want to open up by telling you guys a little story. Got a little story time on the podcast since it's just going to be solo. And this just happened the other day, yesterday. Okay. So I was at the studio yesterday. At the time I was recording this, this was on Wednesday. I was editing the MacBook Pro 16-inch review after we finished shooting. Got a Twitter DM from Linus, from Linus Tech Tips. He's the man. We don't see each other that often. He's usually up in Vancouver, where his spot is, which I've never been to, but he said he was in New York City and just wanted to know

if I was in town. I was like, sure, I'm in town. So if you ever want to grab lunch or something, whatever, let me know. He's like, yeah, I'll let you know. Cool. So later that afternoon, he messages me, hey, actually, I actually need a favor. I need to borrow a 5G phone, if you have any. And I actually do still have the Verizon Galaxy S10 Plus 5G that we did that 5G explained video about. I don't know how long I'm going to hold on to that, but I still have it. So I was like, hey, Linus, I actually do have this phone. If you want to borrow it, you know, making a 5g video, I get it. He's like, I'll get it back to you tomorrow. I just need a 5g phone. Can I just come over and, and grab it? Uh, yeah. Okay. Sure. Uh, I'm actually also working on a 5g video, so it sort of made sense. So yeah, come over. Yeah. He gets in a, I guess an Uber or whatever.

I don't actually know, but he says he's on his way. He's 20 minutes away. So he's coming over from New York City. So he comes over and he hangs out for a bit. We chatted up. I give him the Galaxy S10 5G that I just now factory reset so I could just hand it to him. But he's wearing his typical attire. You can imagine how it went. Linus came over, sort of points out some loose cables and does the Linus thing. But, yeah, we chat for a bit. And then he gets this message, turns out, you know, from his guy. I think Colton messaged him and says, oh, turns out he did get a hold of a 5G phone. He didn't need to borrow mine.

So he just hands the Galaxy S10 right back to me, and he's good to head out. He doesn't actually need to borrowG phone. He didn't need to borrow mine. So he just hands the Galaxy S10 right back to me and he's good to head out. He doesn't actually need to borrow my phone. Okay, cool. So we still got to catch up, which is nice. For a couple minutes, I show him the door and I go back to finishing the MacBook Pro review. So yeah, I go edit that. I finish it. That goes live in the afternoon. And of course, you guys probably saw that. Then I get back to working on some other stuff. And I leave the studio at like midnight that night. So I'm walking out to my car at around whatever. There's no one else in the parking lot, like midnight, something like that. And weirdly, my car has some weird stuff on it.

And it's kind of dark, so I can't really see very well. So I'm walking up to my car, and sure enough, there's a fake license plate on my car that says, Sub to LTT. Huh. It's printed in Comic Sans, and it just like attached to my actual license plate so now my car has a sub to linus tech tips license plate and three pairs of linus tech tips underwear on the hood of my car the new car too phantom the one that just got wrapped that i'm like trying to take a super good care of. Yeah, he got me. I mean, there's no other way. This is no way anyone else would have

happened to do that the same day Linus visited. I'm trying to figure out did he when he left? Did he do that? Or was it? What was it? Did he do that on his way back to New York City? Or when he got here? When did that happen? And the best part is this is this is on Phantom. So this new car that I just got has those extra cameras and the dash cam and sentry mode. And I had just turned off sentry mode, so I don't have the footage of it. But I DMed him, you clever. You got me. And yeah, it turns out it turns out linus's entire reason for visiting the studio that day was to distract me so he and the rest of his team could go pull that prank while i was not near a window to see my car and he was successful so on one hand while i'm not a fan of vandalism

well done linus well done, Linus. Well done. I see your gamesmanship has stepped up in this race to 10 million. I kind of wish I had that sentry mode footage. But yeah, long story short, we can't trust Linus, guys. We can't trust Linus anymore between now and 10 million. Don't listen to anything he says. It's okay, though. I don't think we're going to be needing those underwear because we got to race we got to win that race to 10 mil sub to mkbhd don't sub to ltd we can't let linus

win and i also may have some retaliation in the works so don't worry we won't get bullied like this we'll make sure uh we'll make sure we get the way but yeah so if you want to if you want to go ahead and tweet at linus that that's a clever guy, feel free to do that. But yeah, you got me, Linus. Good job. Anyway, let's take a quick break, and we'll go ahead and talk through the latest in the tech world. I just felt like sharing that. The race to 10 mil is, of course, very close, but let's get back to it. All right, welcome back. So there's a whole lot going on in the tech world. Of course, it's been two weeks since the last episode. And in those two

weeks was a couple of things. And I want to start with the the Motorola Razr folding phone. And for me, the phone is, of course, really interesting. We were like looking forward to this for a while. But the focus shifted so much for me from the phone to just the event that they hosted the phone at. I talked about this on Philip DeFranco's podcast. He had a podcast called A Conversation With. Shout out to that right now. I'll have it in the show notes, but'm saying possibly, but I'm gonna go ahead and say this is the worst tech event of my entire now 11-year career of going to tech events.

And this has nothing to do with the phone itself. That's the thing. I have separate thoughts on the phone. I'll share that. And we saw the video, but the event. Let's talk about the event. Okay, this hit bingo for all the things that can go wrong about the event. Okay. This hit bingo for all the things that can go

wrong at an event. I actually, I think the, the, the compilation on top of this was, I was really tired going into it because I had just flown from, let's see, what did I do? I flew from New Jersey to LA, then back to New Jersey to take delivery of Phantom, and then back to LA, all that in like two days. So I was like, I'm here for this Motorola event, which is going to cheer me up. It's going to be amazing. Let's get it. The event. So a lot of companies throw their events during the year. We see CES getting smaller and smaller because everyone realizes their phone can have their own event. Huawei, Samsung, Apple, everyone has their own style. Everyone's sort of copying a little bit from each other. But as press, as media, as a YouTuber, as someone, as an enthusiast who just

wants to make a cool video about this phone, there's certain things that you look for in a tech event. And some companies are even really receptive about asking what sort of things you like. Having a hands-on area. That's always awesome. A lot of, pretty much all of them do that now. Having that hands-on area be well lit. Having it have a lot of devices, not just like four devices. So everyone's like unable to use them. having them be plentiful be uh aesthetically pleasing you know all this stuff is optional but you generally want it to be well organized charismatic uh just a an overall well-structured event okay so having said all that motorola you can tell it's been a while since they've thrown a particularly high profile event

you know they still have phones coming out they have have their Moto Gs and their Moto Zs. And these things don't necessarily make a big splash, but they don't really do these huge events. And this was easily the most anticipated phone from them in a while, this folding Razr phone. So we get to the event, and it's actually, I'm there with Sam Sheffer's there. I'm waiting in line with him. Austin Evans is there. We all sort of end up just chatting, waiting in line. The email we all got said, plan to be there from 7 o'clock to 10 o'clock. And this is West Coast time, so it's already much later than most events.

That's 10 p.m. on the East Coast that this is starting. So I get there at like 6.50. We're all waiting in line. Sam's there. He's got his original razor. He's pumped. Austin and Ken are there. They've got their cameras. They're ready to go. We're ready to see this phone. We're going to make some videos. And 7 o'clock rolls around and we're still waiting outside of this building because they're not letting anyone in. The line's sort of piling

up. 7.05 rolls around. Nothing. 7.10. 7.15. And don't get me wrong, it's like a cool venue. It's in this container yard. There's imagery of the Razr everywhere. They're really leaning into the nostalgia of this phone. But 730 rolls around. We still haven't walked in. It was about 735, 740 when they finally opened the doors and let people in. So fine. You know, that's like, that's not a huge deal. Things are allowed to be late, but that's just one little strike to keep

in mind. So we all go in there's a, there's the area where you sort of see this exhibit of the old razor. You can see a like old razors and freezers where like, Oh, I get the pun. You put it on ice. You're bringing it back. Cool. Cool. We walk past that through another door and we're back outdoors again. And basically there's just a DJ playing loud music. It's pretty bad actually. Not that that's objective, but I thought it was pretty generic. My Apple watch is telling me this music is really loud. You don't want to damage your hearing by being around here too long. I'm like, whatever.

So we all get in, Sam, Austin, Ken, and I, we're all in there. And it's this sort of like open area with a stage in the corner. And the DJ is on the stage. And then there's just a bar on the side and a bunch of people already in there, some of them wearing suits. I guess they're executives just kind of hanging out, getting drinks and chatting it up. Well, yelling it up over the music. Just sort of confusing. Like what?

There's no seats. Are we going to? Is the presentation happening on the stage after the DJ? OK. we going to, is the presentation happening on the stage after the DJ? Okay. Naturally, Austin and I sort of are poking around looking for where the hands-on area is going to be because that's what you do at a tech event. You sort of, you want to optimize your placement. You want to see the hands-on area. You want to get a chance to know when the event's ending. You can wrap it up and move over there with the camera and get to work. So all this is happening.

We're not finding a hands-on area in our poking around. So it's just sort of like an empty outdoor space. Luckily, the weather's nice, but we're already sort of murmuring under our breath, like, is this the worst event of the year? This is the worst event we've been to this year for sure, right? Yeah. And I don't want to put words in Austin's mouth, but we're kind of on the same page here. So yeah, eventually at like eight o'clock, finally the music sort of dims down and a Verizon executive and a Motorola

executive both walk out on stage together and they do this sort of presentation about, hey, and it's not even a presentation. It's more just tapping the mic like, hey, is this thing on stage together, and they do this sort of presentation about, hey, and it's not even a presentation. It's more just tapping the mic like, hey, is this thing on? Hey, thanks for coming, everyone who's here. I see y'all. We just want to say how impressive and important this collaboration is, and they're just saying this because this phone is a Verizon exclusive. But, yeah, we're really pumped to be collaborating on this milestone project

and this incredible new smartphone that's going to change the world, blah, blah, blah. And then they get off stage and the DJ comes back and the music turns back up. And what? There's still no chairs. What are we supposed to be recording? What's going on here? Yeah, so the music's back up. We're looking at each other like,

what if there is no hands-on area? Like, all the things that could go wrong, this event being an hour late, the hands-on area not existing or being terrible, this onstage performance being weird. It's just checking all the boxes and bingo uh we get this like random brief imagery on the screen behind the stage of like super close-ups of the phone so i guess at this point this is the reveal of the phone to everyone here but like

everyone's just sort of still mingling around with loud music uh all right and then uh we're checking twitter and we see uh michael fisher tweets something like that he's uh ready for an embargo with some like hint at a folding phone video and we're like oh okay great so they pre-briefed people not us and now we're gonna have to hopefully have a hands-on area maybe while everyone who got pre-briefed just post their video okay this is great this is great motorola is checking all the boxes here. Awesome. Uh, finally in like the corner or the side of this, this event, this sort of garage door looking thing opens up and I, I swear to God, I'm not even messing with you. A fog machine is inside. It's like blowing fog

out from this area and strobe lights and stage lights are like inside like directing you to this crazy new pitch black area with fog machines and lights and so we sort of is that is that the hands-on area oh my god that's the hands-on area? Oh my God, that's the hands-on area. Okay. All right. I brought the red camera and everything, but this isn't exactly a low light camera. Let's go see it. And over this incredibly loud music,

I think Jaime Rivera was also there. We all walk over. And sure enough, that is the hands-on area. There's no lights in this room. It's dark. It's at night. It's after sunset. There's loud music, so audio is just about impossible.

And the phones are in the dark where you can pick them up and hold them. But then if you want to make a video about them, good luck. So at this point, we've kind of checked all the boxes. I'm going to link Austin's video below because his video gives about the best idea of the vibe of the event as he yells into the microphone over the loud music and attempts to get well lit footage. And it's just grainy because it's so dark. But yeah, overall, that event in particular happened to basically strike bingo for like

everything that could be other than not having a hands-on at all which hopefully isn't everything we have to deal with uh yeah that was that was the worst tech event i've ever been to other than that the phone itself okay let's talk about the phone because i've just ranted about their event for so long the phone is actually kind of cool um even though i've never owned the original razor i've I've seen it. It's Motorola's best-selling phone of all time. They know that. We know that. They're leaning into it. Um, and they've made a folding phone with a folding screen that still has the same satisfying close with the magnets. Uh, so I can't wait to hang up on people with this thing. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's $1,500.

So if you watch the impressions video, you know about how it stacks up. It's not the highest end specs. It's a two year old CPU, probably because they've been working on it for two years. Six gigs of RAM, a pretty decent OLED, but it's foldable. So you know, no crease, but also not the best screen ever. It's funny, because it's in this weird place where at 1500 bucks, it's more expensive than all the best traditional phones, right? The iPhone 11 Pro, the Note 10 Plus, the highest end Pixel, everything. It's more expensive than all those things. So you could get a OnePlus 7 Pro, a Pixel, an iPhone, whatever you want, and it would be cheaper, probably half the price of this phone.

But it's the cheapest folding phone. The Galaxy Fold is right up around $2,000. The Huawei Mate X, which I guess is kind of already on sale now, is $2,400. And so this is looking like a bargain of a folding phone but a very expensive regular phone but the concept is new it's this vertical slider so a lot of a lot of interesting things if you want my general take on how I feel about it it's a below average phone wrapped in this nostalgia where if you feel that if you connect with that nostalgia, you're just going to want it like inexplicably. You just want this thing that you're so familiar with that you're used to. But if you didn't have a Razr, uh, like me where, you know, this, this subpar screen and tiny battery and low end chip and poor camera, uh, do not speak to me. And I don't think I would use

this phone. So that's my, my hot take right now is this is, this is going to speak to me, and I don't think I would use this phone. So that's my hot take right now is this is going to speak to people and suck a $1,500 hole out of your pocket if you do feel that nostalgic package. But as a phone, it's probably not that great. But it's also a first-gen phone, so I keep giving it like a nitpick pass. I don't want to nitpick it because I'm sure the second and third gen of these folding phones will start to refine these things. They'll get bigger batteries, they'll get better cameras and specs and higher end stuff

and be more durable. But yeah, this first gen Razr, it's a weird one. It's a weird one. I'll leave it at that. It's a weird one. Okay, after that, we had a video covering the Xiaomi Mi Note 10's 108 megapixel camera. Didn't review the whole phone just for clarity.

That was just about the camera because I was so fascinated with it. And not really a whole lot to say about that one. I was really just sort of pumped about it because it seems to be the sensor that Samsung plans on using for the Galaxy S11, which is pretty exciting that we're gonna have multiple 100 megapixel cameras in these phones.

And compared to the 12, 14, and 20 megapixel cameras we have in our phones today, yes, there is a noticeable, excellent detail and sharpness improvement with the 108 megapixels. Of course, it looks really good sometimes. It can take some awesome photos. And it's a huge sensor too. It has to be, obviously, but it's a huge sensor. So you get like

a nice, actual soft depth of field and background. But that 108 megapixel mode is not ideal for low light. And I think something that a lot of people commented about, which is actually, thank you for commenting about it, is I should have gone more into the 27 megapixel mode, which uses pixel binning for those low light photos. So you're not going to get 108 megapixel crisp, clear stuff at night. Those pixels are too small. But if you want to take a low light photo, go back to regular photo mode, pixel binning gets you a sharper photo at 27 megapixels, which would have compared better to the ones I compared it to. But yeah, generally, I'm pretty pumped. I'm excited to see how a high-end phone with like the latest Qualcomm chip,

because this Xiaomi phone is not a high-end, like bleeding edge phone. It's a not high-end phone. You get the idea if you watch the video. But how will Galaxy S11 handle this sensor? Will it just snap a photo like instantly like we've seen in a 12 megapixel photo? Yeah, a lot of questions, but those answers are coming.

And I think that just generally falls in the theme of I am excited for phones in 2020. And I know you can always say this like every year, but the iPhone looking like we're finally gonna get a redesign and maybe USB Type-C and maybe ProMotion and maybe all these other things. And then Galaxy S11 having a hole punch through the display and having a bigger battery and having 108 megapixel camera and all these things.

And also some other pixels rumors have come up. So there's a lot of other stuff to think about for 2020 phones. So I'll just leave it at that. So check out that video of the 108 megapixel smartphone camera. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it.

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in advance. See Uber app for details. And then I'll just go right to Cybertruck. Cybertruck happened and that was a, well, if we're going to talk about tech events, a totally different event. The truck itself, one of the most polarizing products of the year. Um, the truck itself, one of the most polarizing products of the year. I actually, I'll, I'll say it replaced AirPods pro as what I would call like the viral product of the year. Like right when AirPods pro came out, I was saying like, look at, look at the view counts on videos of AirPods pro people just want to know if they're good or not. Like as soon as my video of AirPods pro went up, people instantly were like, I got to figure out what this is about. Everyone knows about AirPods already. They got to see AirPods Pro. But Cybertruck, I think is now, well, I know is now, and even more

talked about. It's kind of owned the internet for like a week now. The memes, the people talking about it, and the event itself, if I can talk about that briefly, Tesla events are sort of unlike any other tech company. They're a car company, of course, but they're still sort of in the tech world. So tech people go and yeah, there's a lot of fanboyism. You know, Elon on stage, anything he says, people will cheer for anything they do. Franz gets on stage, they lose their minds. And this was kind of a funny event because it was going really well until that glass-breaking demo. And then the whole sort of mood of the presentation went down, but everyone in the crowd was still pumped because this truck is still sitting on stage and it looks wild. But yeah, if I look back at all the Tesla events we've seen in the past,

they've managed to keep this thing a total secret, just like the Roadster. No one outside of the company had seen it. They had the one working prototype. They gave test rides in it. Everything sort of went according to plan, except for the glass breaking. And the internet has been talking about it nonstop ever since. I'll say, watch the video I made of my first impressions

and then watch the video I made right after about why it's important and why I pre-ordered one. And I don't even know if I can call it a pre-order. It's literally just a $100 deposit to reserve your place in line to eventually place an order when they start production, which is, it's so little. It's hilarious. $100. Reserving a Model 3 is, I think, $1,000 and maybe $2,500 at some point. Reserving a Model S has never been that

cheap. Reserving a Tesla Semi. Reserving a Tesla Roadster was $50,000. So I think they sort of knew that this design was such a big barrier to wanting to get it that they didn't want to make the deposit another barrier. And they also want to have as high numbers as possible that they can share. So they made it 100 bucks to get in line. And over 200,000 people have gotten in line so far. And I am one of people have gotten in line so far, and I am one of them. But yeah, if you watch those videos, I talked about why I think this would be a pretty sweet production vehicle for specifically car videos. And I talked about this a little bit with John from TLD. So we made a video just sort of chatting it up talking about

why we're interested in the Cybertruck. The design is not really the reason we're interested, but a utility vehicle in general, that's something John already has, and he's sort of used a Tesla Model 3 and a van for various car videos, and I've used my own car, and Andrew has a Subaru hatchback that we sort of hang out the back of to get camera shots from car videos, and we've shot out of the back of an Acura SUV and out the side of a sliding door, and there's all sorts of ways to get camera shots from car videos. And we've shot out of the back of an Acura SUV and out the side of a sliding door. And there's all sorts of ways to get car shots. But the Cybertruck in a lot of the things it's good at, and this isn't a normal reason to buy a pickup truck.

This is just like my very specific use case. Seems like one of the best possible vehicles to get for this. Number one, it's silent, which means you can actually mic up cars from away from the car. So if you want to get like real time audio, and block the wind, and not have to deal with the exhaust of the car you're driving, you can actually hear like a nice sounding car. And then second of all, it's probably it's probably as fast as any car we're going to be doing a video about

if you do the triple motor the zero to 60 of that cyber truck is 2.9 seconds and it's going to haul and it's going to keep up and we've done videos on a track with uh an Acura SUV where we're trying trying to like you know modulate our speed with the Acura NSX this is when we were doing the autofocus on the NSX and And it's just not easy. So I think having a truck that happens to also be fast is incredible. And we thought about having a sliding door on the side, you know, will allow you to get side shots. So if you have a van, you get a sliding door van, and then you can sort of hang out the side of the van to get a side profile shot of a car. On the the Cybertruck, that's more of like hanging over the side of the van to get a side profile shot of a car. On the Cybertruck, that's more of

like hanging over the side of the bed, which might be interesting. I don't know if that's as good as a regular pickup truck, better, worse, you know, the rails are higher, but you can sort of strap people into the pickup truck bed. And we also shot some of that Lamborghini video with a different pickup truck where we hang out literally the back of the pickup truck bed and you can get the camera and the stabilizer all the way down to the road and it looks really sick so bottom line a lot of good stuff about the pickup truck it also has 220 volt outlet on it or 110 volt if you want so you can charge up your camera batteries while you're shooting you can charge up your computer while you're dumping footage all this stuff is great it has a dual cab so it's got two rows,

so you can fit more people and more gear. It's just, it seems like a pretty sweet production vehicle. It's got a lot going for it. So that was my reason for getting in line. It's a work car, basically. But I know there's a lot of people who want to know towing capacity and how much it can haul and all these other things. And that's, of course, not why I'm getting the truck. But I'm super interested in if it actually comes out on time and does everything it says and how it'll do and seeing it on the road is going to be wild. But yeah, viral product of the year for sure. The Cybertruck has gotten the most attention that I've seen and also most polarizing product of the year. It seems like people still, also most polarizing product of the year. It seems like people still, you know, 40,000 comments later,

either love it or hate it. And here's actually, here's how I started. At the Cybertruck event, it gets rolled out on stage. I'm immediately turned off. I don't want it. I never really wanted a pickup truck in the first place, but I was just sort of interested, like, what does this Blade Runner thing look like? Then it comes out on stage. I'm like, well, I don't need that. You know, they go through all the specs and a lot of the most interesting stuff as they talk to real pickup truck enthusiasts, you know, Zach from Jerry Rig, everything was there. And we talked about the specs and how they compare to his Tacoma. So it looked pretty cool. But obviously, the design is pretty wild. And then the test drive, which for Tesla is notoriously effective. We did that test drive and I was actually, like I said in the video, first in

line for the test drive. So I was, you know, right in line to get in right after Franz got out. We did that first lap around. It had a hot little zero to 60, about four seconds, turned around, went on the curb, did all this stuff. I mean, it's a pretty impressive test ride as an electric truck kind of has to be. And then I went back to the hotel and sat down and made my video and flew back and it sort of slowly grew on me. I didn't immediately decide I liked it, but it slowly, slowly grew on me.

And this is something you're gonna see in comments all around the internet in a week, in a month, in a year, it's growing on me. But it slowly grew on me. And I think it was probably I think two days later that I said, or yeah, it was like a day and a half later where I said, I guess, as a production vehicle, as I as I weigh the pros and cons, this makes sense. It's about the price of the the van we were going to get anyway. And here's the thing, I'm probably going to get some sort of a van in the meantime, because it's still two years before the Cybertruck comes out. And we're going to want to make some car videos for the next two years. So we won't have the

Cybertruck, we'll get something else. But then when we do get Cybertruck, we'll sell that. But yeah, it's it's slowly growing on me. A lot of people love it. A lot of people hate it. I may be like one of the only people slowly moving between those two sides. So there you have it. All right, we'll take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk 60 inch MacBook Pro and then we'll do some Q&A. 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 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 All right, welcome back. So last tech product of the hour. We had 16-inch MacBook Pro come out and we had our impressions and then the full review has gone live. And I really like this computer. I am not a big laptop person. I've always preferred like a 12 to 13-inch laptop

type of size, a little bigger than a tablet, but not too big. So I can take it on a plane, but also type in the back of an Uber or just, you know, use it wherever I want. But this 16 inch MacBook Pro has been a joy to use. Really, the theme of the review, as you probably saw, is they're listening. What they changed was all the things that were the most complained about in the 15 inch MacBook Pro. So that was the keyboard, and they really did fix that keyboard. So I'm happy about the keyboard, the thermals. So the laptop is legitimately thicker, has bigger ventilation, has more room inside, and does not thermally throttle nearly as fast. We had a bigger

battery, it's 100 watt hour battery. And we have a bigger display, we now have a 60 inch display, and much smaller bezels. And we also get some bonuses like incredible speakers. And you get that little high signal to noise ratio microphone. So it's a lot of good stuff. So on the theme of things that I wanted to get better and did, theme of things that I wanted to get better and did, I had some suggestions for more things that I want to get better. And those things were more USB ports, because I know they're not going to bring back full size USB. But if you don't, you can at least add some more USB type C. So maybe like two more six USB C ports would have been cool. And SD card reader. And this one is really, ports would have been cool. An SD card reader. And this one is really, really like every,

every professional I know uses SD cards. And I don't think that's, I don't think I'm alone in that. Like I could, I could say that's just anecdotal. Like, well, only the pros I know use SD cards, but you know, photographers, videographers, vloggers, YouTubers, just people who use media in general at all, which is so many people who use MacBook Pros, constantly use SD cards. I shoot most of my videos to SSDs, and you would think I don't need an SD card, but sure enough, when I shoot audio, like I am right now, it's going to an SD card. And just having the SD card reader back, just like we have it on the back of the iMac and the iMac Pro, it would have been pretty sweet to not have to bring that dongle around because bringing a dongle around really doesn't make the experience great. So I would have liked to have seen more USB Type-C, an SD card reader,

and LTE would have been cool. Not a necessary thing. I still tether to my phone when I'm like on the go with the laptop, but having LTE like the iPad Pro would have been nice. And then I just wanted like a real black or other color option because the space gray honestly really just looks like a darker silver. So a darker, like a black, matte black, like the Surface laptop would have been sick. There are also some other pretty good comments. A lot of people mentioning in the comments actually HDMI, which I don't use HDMI very much,

but a lot of people who do presentations off of their laptops often use HDMI, and they have to have that dongle. That could have been interesting, but I also don't see them bringing that back. And what was the other one? I guess that's about it. I really just wanted them to apply everything they just did to the 13 inch MacBook Pro, because that's still my preferred laptop size of choice. And as I switched back to it, because I still prefer it, I'm like, wow, these bezels are big. Wow, this keyboard sucks, and it's mushy. Wow, I really wish, you know, this had the incredible speakers and the

high quality mic. So yeah, I'm hoping they do that in the next year with the new 10th gen Intel processors. That seems like a likely thing for them to do. All right. Well, that's, that's pretty much it. That's the tech of the hour. I think we'll get right into some Q and a cause, uh, why not? It seems like a fun time. So I asked you guys what you wanted to know on Twitter, on the waveform Twitter. And you guys of of course, have some questions for some new stuff. Let's see what you said. Okay, so Peter H says, will regular truck guys like F-150 and Silverado buyers buy the Cybertruck in your opinion? That is probably the million dollar question right now, right? Tesla wants to appeal to as many people

as possible because pickup trucks, if you didn't already know, are the most popular vehicles in America right now. A lot of F-150 buyers, a lot of Silverado buyers, a lot of Dodge Ram buyers. And the funny thing about the Cybertruck was so many people at this event who are, you know, Tesla fanboys basically, don't have any need for a truck, but suddenly want a Cybertruck. And I think as it grows on people, we'll start to see the opposite happen where so many people who don't have a need for a Tesla

get interested in a Cybertruck just because of its merits. Ideally, that's what happens, I guess, if you're rooting for Tesla. I've only spoken to a couple of truck guys. Like I said, JerryRigEverything, Zach was one of those people I spoke to. And the specs are the most interesting part. Obviously, the design is not.

But I would be curious. I'm not sure. I think that's a million-dollar question. Well, I like this question. What Sean Sira, I should really stop trying to say names, but asks, what kind of everyday tech products do you use at home? And I don't really do a lot of home tech videos, but you can probably imagine I do have some home tech. Stuff that comes to mind for me is because I have like a pretty simple actual living situation, but I have a Nest.

My Nest thermostat is one of my all-time favorite pieces of tech. I can control the temperature from my phone whenever I want. And I also have a Google Home Max at home, which is like, I ask it every day, how's my day? And it tells me what's on my schedule. It tells me the news for the day. That's like how I kind of know what happened in the last 24 hours of news. And then it will, you know, play music and do all the other stuff Google Assistant does. But those are the two main things. And then the rest is pretty standard.

Okay, there's a question from Stefan Sawyer. What are your thoughts on the $100 reservation price of the Tesla Cybertruck? I feel like 80% of people reserving it are just doing it for the meme and clout and will cancel well before its release. They should have made it a reservation price of at least $500 and non-refundable. So we sort of mentioned this, I touched on this earlier, but the strategy for Tesla here by making it so low and refundable is to give it a chance to grow on people, I'm pretty sure. Like I said, it's notoriously been much higher for Model 3, Model S, and Model X, and even Roadster and SemiTruck to get a reservation.

It costs more. But if Tesla wants to show big numbers of reservations, they just make it a low price and a lot of people get in. The question is gonna be, and this is gonna be two years delayed, what percent of people cancel those pre-orders? The tweet said 80%. One number I've seen recently is about 25% of those initial huge number of Model 3 pre-orders did cancel. 25%. Which means they had a 75% conversion rate, which I think is pretty great for a car you've never seen. But I think Cybertruck's conversion rate,

because so many more people are just getting in for $100, will be, I'm going to say it's going to be, I think the over-under is at like 50%. Will more than half of the people who put money down go for it or less? I think right now I'd bet on the over. I think over 50% of people will cancel. Now, 50% is still a lot. It's still a car that most people have never seen, never ridden in, never driven. It's still a $40,000 plus investment that they're converting people on. But yeah, that's the strategy for Tesla is, hey, look, investors, we just got 200,000

people interested in our truck. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. Someone says when the Mac Pro becomes available, would you guys travel with that instead of the iMac Pro to edit content or stick with the iMac Pro for traveling as it's easier to ship around? Yeah, well, I think when we do still need to do mobile production of like high end stuff, like with red, it's still going to be iMac Pro, because it's worked incredibly, and the monitor is attached. And so when I when I travel with the iMac Pro, I was just looking this up to tweet it at someone, I put it in a Pelican 1630 case, which has foam cutouts. And it's specifically in the shape of an iMac. And you can slot a keyboard and a mouse in there and your SSD reader. But basically, you put the whole iMac in there, you roll it out, it barely fits in the back of a Chevy Suburban,

and you go to the airport and you check that bag, and you cross your fingers. And so far every time you seem to be able to I mean, if you know Pelican cases, you can sort of beat it up and it will survive and whatever's inside is good. I still never, ever, ever check camera equipment because it's literally glass. I don't want to check that stuff under the plane ever, so I always have that with me. I actually have a funny story about that. But, yeah, the iMac goes under the plane. And depending on the airport you're arriving at, it'll either be an oversized baggage since it's 70 pounds,

or it'll just show up with the rest of the bags, which is actually what happens at Newark when I get home. So it's great. But yeah, my funny story. I've had a couple times where I was boarding a little bit late to a plane because that's kind of what I do. I get to the airport right before boarding, skirt through security real quick, and then just get

right in line. I got there late. And the rule with a lot of stuff is you only have a certain amount of time before the overheads are filled up and there's no more space. And if you have an overhead bag, you have to check it under the plane. And this was a plane I had like a flight, I think leaving either CES or something that I had booked at the last second. So I was like in the middle seat in the back of the plane, and I just got online and I was in boarding group two or three or something. This was a while ago. And I got to the near the front of the line and they said, all right, the overhead stuff is full. So good luck. We're going to check every bag from here on out. If you have a roller bag, it's going under the plane. And I'm standing there holding my roller bag with the 50 something

thousand dollar red camera, three or four lenses, all ton of glass, the mixed pre three, all this memory, there's no way I'm putting this under the plane. I refuse. No, can't do it. So I get to the front of the line. And I'm like, Hey, this, this is really fragile. I can't really put it under the plane. Is there any way I could check for extra overhead space? And they're just kind of like, no, yeah, this is going to have to go into the plane. So basically what I did was I switched out the stuff that was in my backpack, like the stuff I really wanted to have, my laptop, my headphones, my battery, the stuff that I wanted to have on the plane with me, and I put it in the roller bag. wanted to have on the plane with me. And I put it in the roller bag. And I took the red camera and the three lenses and like wrapped my sweatshirts around them and like my shirt around

them and put it in my backpack. And I literally just walked on the plane with the red camera in one hand and the backpack with glass in the other hand and walked to the back row of the plane, sat right down and just held it in my lap for five hours. So that I could not have that stuff go under the plane. Because I don't trust the way they treat those bags under the plane. So yeah, fun story. Haven't had to do that in a long time. I hopefully never have to do that again. But that is not ideal, of course.

Oh, someone says, any thoughts on that 31-inch iMac? Oh, wow. Okay, so this was about a week or two ago also, but I don't know if you saw it. I'll try to link in the show notes on Twitter. There is a Tim Cook interview, where in the background of one of their shots, there was what appeared to be a very large iMac with much thinner bezels. And immediately people were like, Oh, is this a 31 inch iMac or something like that? 3032 inch iMac, there's new rumors. But I, I really doubt that that's what we just saw. Like, there's almost no way Apple lets cameras into a room with unreleased products,

and just lets them set it up and just have them in the background of a shot of Tim Cook. So you know they had to like approve a lot of the stuff they're doing. There's just no way you end up with an unreleased product that massive in the background of a shot. And the other thing I notice is when you blur out a background,

it tends to glow things that are light and shrink things that are dark. And that's sort of what happened to the bezels in that shot. I really do think if you look at this tweet that I'm linking in the show notes, it's really just a regular iMac. But because it's blurred in the background, it appears to be larger than it really is because of the glow of the screen. Yeah, I don't think there's any way if it is a 31 inch iMac, that is one of the weirdest, like leaked things I could possibly imagine happening at Apple. Um, but yeah, I'm gonna go 99% confidence.

That's just a regular iMac. All right, I got one last question, which is, what are you thankful for? And I gotta go, I gotta go super corny on this one and say it's you guys, and I'm not just saying that because that's like the obvious answer, but the fact that we're even in a race to 10 million subscribers on a YouTube channel where we just talk about tech products

and obviously this is sort of a dream job that you guys have enabled. And the fact that we have this podcast and we can talk with you guys about it and have this Q&A and this back and forth in the comment section, all of that has enabled like the greatest job I could ever imagine

and makes me wanna do it that much better every day, every week, every week, every month, and every year. So that's what gets me pumped about 2020. Not to get super sappy or corny, but it's definitely all of you guys that I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for my family and for the ultimate that I get to play and for the teammates that I have and for family and friends, of course.

But yeah, I got to give a shout out to you guys on that one. So anyway, that's pretty much it. We'll go ahead and cut it there. It's been a fun solo episode of lots of talking. If you guys wanna, you know, the show notes, that's all the links for today and all the fun stuff. And we'll catch you guys in the next episode. Thanks for listening.

See you soon. Waveform was made in partnership with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.