Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Thoughts on Pixel 7, Pixel Watch, and Meta Quest Pro!

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

The reviews are in! Marques, Andrew, and David all had the new Pixel phones and watches so they were able to each talk about their experiences with the products. After that, they get into the new Meta Quest Pro and talk about the metaverse and of course Among Us in VR. There's a lot to get into this week and of course, we have trivia questions! Hope you enjoy. Vox survey: www.vox.com/podsurvey Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Shop products mentioned: Google Pixel 7 at https://geni.us/mSSXkQf Google Pixel 7 Pro at https://geni.us/fQwcGw Google Pixel Watch w/ WiFi at https://geni.us/EHdG9KQ Google Pixel Watch w/ WiFi + LTE at https://geni.us/hXSRf0G Twitters: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/durvidimel https://twitter.com/adamlukas17 https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ 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

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All right, 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 it's Google week because we just got well the last video this is it doesn't happen often but the last video on the channel that was a main video was the first hands-on impressions of the pixel phones and the watch and all the new stuff and the next video is the review of the pixel phone so that's something we're gonna talk about a little bit also we want to go over some experiences everyone's had in the studio because as you know with review units I

have my experience but we have a bunch of units here and everybody else has their experiences too there's also some funny stories with the Apple watch and roller coasters and Google killing cloud gaming but not really and also there's some new VR headsets so let's jump in. Where do we start? We probably start at the funny stories, the quick hits. Yeah. Yeah. We want you guys to have more watch time on this episode. So we're going to save the good stories for last. Save the Google. Okay. I like that. All right. So let's start then with, I actually tweeted this a couple of days ago, Apple watch crash detection, accidentally being triggered by people on roller coasters

i was kind of wondering like when people were testing crash detection like what are you even testing like apple said if you're in a car and it detects that you've been in a car crash it'll notify emergency services yeah you test that you're just okay i'm gonna go crash a car now and then it either works or it doesn't work, but it turns out the opposite was true. Sometimes you can accidentally trigger it while you're not in a car crash. And it turns out the perfect use case is I am on a roller coaster going 60 miles an hour and it does some crazy maneuver and probably hits the brakes suddenly. And the watch thinks I crashed. We were talking at the event. We were like, what could accidentally trigger this? Like if you're running around or like skateboarding or biking or something like

that. And it seems like this seems to be the, now the perfect scenario, because not only is it decelerating super fast, it's also like you're originally moving very quickly. There's generally screaming and loud noises going on at the same time because i think it's no remember it said it used the microphones to like i think it listens for an impact for an impact but like an impact and screaming you're probably it kept showing a wooden roller coaster so i'm assuming the noises probably help that loud yeah yeah also also the g forces that you experience when you just do those intense drops, I bet it's definitely using that. it yeah um so yeah it kind of hits the the perfect storm and apparently the amount of call dispatch centers like for emergency services that have been getting called around theme parks

is greatly greatly increased so what's happening so they're getting a phone call and it's turning on the mic and you just hear people on a roller coaster and you're like oh it's another one of those the problem is is as an emergency service you have to investigate every single one of those calls. I believe the Wall Street Journal was able to get a hold of a couple of different phone calls that were dispatched to emergency services. And you just hear like roller coaster noises the whole time. But aren't roller coaster noises just like metallic chaos and screaming? It sounds like a car crash. Yeah, a little bit.

It kind of probably sounds exactly like an ongoing very long multi-car car crash and i'm sure that there are already a disproportionate amount of emergency calls coming from theme parks for a bus um but i posted a few pictures apparently even with just like apple watches doing it previously like there are now signs at in front of roller coasters that say to please turn your watches or phones on airplane mode or to just disable the emergency services. And then you have to turn it off. I think if you put it on airplane mode,

they said it won't call because it can't call. Oh, okay. I guess. I'm not 100% sure about that. Because I have Wi-Fi calling on and Wi-Fi stays on when I go airplane mode on the iPhone. You're probably not going to have Wi-Fi on a roller coaster at six flags or something like that but yeah i guess most places generally ask you to keep your phones not on you during the roller

coaster you're not supposed to film with it and they don't want loose objects but yeah everybody's gonna leave it in their pocket and um i think the only really way for apple to try and avoid this is to just assume that there aren't going to be a lot of car crashes at an amusement park and through geolocation, like disable that. That is tough because there will be car crashes near amusement parks. Yeah. I wonder how precisely they can get. Geofencing out like the exact area of a roller coaster so that nobody responds to SOS calls from. But what if you do call SOS on there? What if you're stuck upside down on the roller coaster and you call SOS? I feel like if you manually call 911 versus like auto triggering, that's like a different scenario. Oh, it doesn't know the difference? I have no idea.

get stuck upside down a roller coaster i hope you know the person running the roller coaster might call the police or someone in the line i mean like if you're sneaking into an amusement park maybe and running the roller coaster yourself yeah then you call the police then yeah i i have no idea also ironically there were actually people crashing cars to try to test the seduction and it wasn't it never worked i saw a couple videos um one of them it did work two of them it did work the rest it didn't uh and i think there were a lot of good reasons why it didn't work some people were crashing remote control cars so they weren't going nearly fast enough some people uh the ones that i did see work were wall street journal video and tech tech racks okay he just put it in a car it was actually extremely irresponsible i put like a

gas pedal and oh my drove a car at power lines through an open field at power lines don't do what wait no way like power lines i think the video might be taken down i think it should be taken down it's not a good idea but it did actually trigger so there's that nope the video's still up that's wild. Anyway. Anyway. Okay. Let's all agree we can stop testing crash detection

on the iPhone now. We've figured out the full gamut of things it works for and doesn't work for. And that's that. Also, Google has had crash detection for a few years. Oh yeah, they were quick to point that out. They just never, yeah, they pointed that out at the Pixel event.

They never really made a big deal about it. I think there was like a blog post about it and they do they do similar stuff with um they have earthquake detection as well which can tell you when an earthquake is coming that i thought was amazing sick was that at io a couple years ago i think i think that was just a random blog post i think i saw when i talked about it at io but i associate some visual with it but basically like an earthquake happens a bunch of people's phones around the area all feel the earthquake therefore they all can use that cumulative data to know that there's an earthquake and people around the area who are about to feel

the earthquake will get an instant notification that an earthquake's about to happen yeah that's crazy it's super useful yeah and it's like a thing. So it's not using any of your personal data. You're just a random node on the, you know, on the string. So yeah, very cool. Very cool. Random safety stuff that these phones can do. Okay. What's the other, the other quick hit is.

Oh God. The next one is, I just, it's kind of funny. I also kind of think it's cool, but like within a week of, I don't think we've talked about it on the podcast yet but stadia's dead rip um no big surprise i hope we don't get made fun of or yelled at for saying that but i i don't know i've never been a big stadia believer uh personally neither was google apparently um but like within a week of google officially announcing that stadia was over um they also announced a bunch of chromebooks that now do cloud gaming so that's

kind of weird chromebooks for gaming yeah super interesting i've used a couple of these before so they're like higher fresh rate screens and like rg RGB backlit keyboards and like big batteries and good processors. So like a few of them. There's one that is around $400 that has a like 165 hertz refresh rate screen, 17 inches, good keyboard, a ton of ports in the side. And that I mean, to me, that kind of makes sense. You know, if you if you can just carry around like an Xbox controller with you and then you have good internet in a number of places, and you can just stream your Xbox games from Game Pass. Certain type of customer.

Yeah. It's very specific. You're narrowing down your user base a lot, a lot, a lot. However, when Stadia closed, the amount of people that came out saying, this sucks, I actually use used this surprised me a lot that's the thing about stadia it surprised me but it still wasn't enough of an outcry for me to think oh they made a mistake yeah i don't like this was definitely a financial decision i bet the

yeah like stadia is going to be one of those google services that a bunch of people start using but it's not enough to justify continuing to spend money on it. So they eventually shutter it. And that amount of people who probably loved it isn't big enough and they all just lose what they were using. Yeah, classic Google. This has been a problem that's been like for every product that Google launches. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because Google shuts down so many projects because they are incentivized to launch projects.

They have a huge incentive to actually launch because that gives you like points at Google and it allows you to move to other teams and other people like want you to work for them on other teams. So launching things at Google is like very highly praised, but actually maintaining something and it's like updating. Nobody cares if you're just the guy that's like adding the features that you promised when you actually launched the thing. era when everything, all of your information and data is poured into like one or two or three services. How am I going to get everyone on Telegram if Telegram has a, Telegram's parent

company has a track record of shutting down every single app that they make, you know, Allo, you know, everything. Stadia actually had a bunch of really interesting cool features and this is the other thing about being a YouTube creator you have to pay attention to what YouTube sort of leans into like if YouTube makes a public announcement that they're going to be prioritizing something you should pay attention to that that's really important for a person whose business is built on YouTube and so yeah when they go oh we're gonna have cloud gaming where you can watch a live stream of someone playing a game and then just like from that YouTube video, click and just jump into that exact spot in the game. It's like, that's a genuinely cool thing that I've never seen

anywhere else. That's really interesting. Yeah. And then, yeah, that's just all it's all gone now. Just disappeared. I think like Stadia dying is kind of it's similar to why a lot of people are worried about buying digital downloaded games because you're buying this stadia and all these games in it and while google's doing a great thing by like giving a ton of refunds which i'm very surprised they do by the way if you have stadia look it up if you bought from the google store you can probably get a full refund yeah for it but now all these people have these games and especially these save games and and campaigns they've been working on that are just going to disappear yeah so that's why so many people love buying hard copies and are still really really scared of of keeping things on a cloud or just the internet

in terms of these new laptops i feel like they make less sense than what stadia did because i think most people playing games on computers especially with really really great specs are generally looking to be a little more like zoned in less lag maybe even more competitive-esque stuff where i feel like more single-player games and it's hard a lot of people do it on the computer but i feel like if you're not worried about like a 3090 the best specs ever you're probably fine with like an xbox or a switch or something like that i think it goes back to the question of like is cloud gaming really a strong option for people like if maybe you have a couple games that you play that are available and by the way these laptops will work with other cloud gaming services

so nvidia geforce now xbox cloud gaming and amazon luna so no stadia obviously but like yeah maybe there's a game that you play and instead of spending nine hundred dollars on a gaming laptop you can spend five hundred dollars on a gaming chromebook and get a lot of those same experiences and also the chromebooks useful for other stuff that could be a person. Yeah. It's a super narrow. So I can see it as somebody who wants like a little beefier laptop has a good enough internet connection at the hotel that they're traveling to for work and maybe wants to load up a game that they're in the middle of a campaign for that they're playing at home because so many TVs now also have Luna and xbox cloud gaming or you just have an xbox at home and you're like i want to do some side quests in skyrim or something you can you got

to get that little that laptop xbox thing that we should what i would call it because obviously a chromebook you can bring places in an xbox you can't but like hey now you can i do see that as being like maybe pretty cool it's way easier to bring a laptop than that. And also in some senses, this kind of reminds me of like the ROG phone where it's not as good as a lot of other things, but because it has a lot of these spec bumps, this is just kind of a nicer Chromebook in general,

a better spec Chromebook for a little bit more expensive. I mean, all the ones I have listed are 600 to 700 here, mostly Core i5s, 8 gigs of RAMs, high refresh rate, 120 to 144, and good Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. So they're pretty nice Chromebooks. Something that I think about is the reason that I want a fast laptop,

usually the reason that I'm always trying to look for a fast laptop is for video editing tasks and creative tasks and photo editing tasks and if you're a person who doesn't do those things but you do game every now and then and you don't need your laptop to be fast except for when you want to game then this could be a cool option right yeah it's still a very very narrow set of people but there is a definitely very huge majority of people who don't use video editing apps or photo editing apps yep and you know there there's also like lightroom mobile and lightroom online so you don't always need horsepower for that either yeah what is the most uh popular cloud gaming service now that stadia's

gone i think game pass i think Game Pass will be. Game Pass is a great idea for Xbox. It's really what's keeping them in it. I feel like the PlayStation 5 was more popular than the new Xbox, but Game Pass is awesome. And the fact that you can do PC games and Xbox games on your Xbox, between all of it, get it on your computer,

I really, really think Game Pass is a great idea. And now doing cloud stuff also. With so many smart TVs having cloud, like the Odyssey Arc, or no, what's the crazy monitor that we just have? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that has those Luna and Game Pass built into it, and you can hook a controller up through Bluetooth

and just play it on your TV. I think that's where cloud gaming is going to be better yeah i read a lot of comments of people being upset about stadia they were just saying i i literally travel so much i want to travel as light as possible and the ability for me to carry my like chromebook or chromecast ultra with me and the computer and plug it into hotel TVs as long as I have good internet and just play some games. It's still a small set of people,

but to those people it actually mattered. So hopefully they'll move to a service that's more stable. Before I end this, I'm going to pitch this idea one more time. I think I've said this probably before, but Expedia but sorting hotels by internet speed right like shouldn't that be a thing just add that as a toggle in expedia expedia add it as a toggle or another site build all the infrastructure do all the wi-fi testing and then sell all your data to expedia so that i can just use that easily um because every time we go to an event and we want to like edit the video in the hotel

that night and upload it, and then I do a masterful job uploading or creating this really great video, and then I hit upload, and it says it'll be three hours. I just want to throw it out the window. So yeah, that'd be cool. That'd actually be a great partnership for like Verizon Fios or Google Fiber or something to like, I could see Verizon like partnering with certain hotel chains and just saying, we offer gigabit internet. Millimeter wave right outside. Yeah. Just walk out to the parking lot, hold your laptop up to the antenna, upload your video.

Perfect. I would do it. I'd pay extra for that. All right. Anyway. Cool. All right. Let's do a quick trivia question and then take a quick break.

All right. Welcome back, everyone. So for today's first trivia question, what is the correct pronunciation for the acronym for the American Standard for Code Information Interchange? That is spelled A-S-C-I-I. I Google this all the time, and it's one of those words I've seen and never had to say out loud, and now it's a trivia question, and I should have probably looked it up. I think I know this, but the fact that it's a trivia question makes me think that

it's a common misconception. That's probably what's happening. I'm going to be upset when I hear the right answer. We'll see. We'll be back. I am so dreading groceries this week. Why? You can skip it. Oh, what? Just like that? Just like that. How about dinner with my third cousin? skip it. Oh, what? Just like that? 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? 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. our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. All right, welcome back to the moment you've all been waiting for, which is us going deep into the weeds of talking about all of the Pixel phones and the Pixel watches that we've all been testing for the past week and change or so. Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro. So if you've seen the impressions video,

we talked about that. Also, the watch is out. We'll probably get to that a little bit after, but the phones we've had all these, I mean, I've had all these high hopes for. We've sort of been waiting all year. We knew they were coming. Google's been telling us about them and showing us pictures and videos of them, but now they're finally out and they're in our hands. How do we feel? I've been using mostly the 7 Pro, but I do have to say I really like the 7.

I really like the flat 90-hertz screen. I really like the matte aluminum instead of glossy. Big fan of the 7, but I love me some 1440p 120 hertz, so that's the one i've been using tell me about your experiences because the review is up now people know how i feel how do you feel do i go first yeah go first oh okay i'll go first oh man it's up to you oh did you say do you want to go first yeah i heard do i go first no no you can you go first okay sure yeah okay all right um yeah i really like this phone i think i felt very similarly last

year that i really liked the pixel 6 but the pixel 7 feels like a really refined version of the pixel 6 i think i've heard that before i think i said that exact sentence about the iphone it's a refined version of last year's phone. It's very similar to last year. Yeah. Do you like the metal over the glass visor? Yes. It makes it, in my opinion, feel a little bit more premium. I love that it blends into the side now because the Pixel 6.

So much better, yeah. It's like a three-piece suit. You know, you got the front part and then you had the sides. I like that. I never thought about that. Yeah. But this is like a one-piece suit. Whoa. A onesie. What is a one-piece suit whoa a onesie what is a onesie okay all right we'll go with that yeah but it's it's the same metal material the same aluminum that is around the sides of the phone so it feels

a lot more cohesive it's like you've got glass and then you've got this um matte aluminum they had some special word for the type of aluminum it was but i don't know i like it a lot more i get what people are saying when they say that the the pro possibly looks more like jewelry i like matte aluminum better but i guess if you're going for like a fashion jewelry kind of look this definitely looks more like jewelry especially in like the gold color it's what the companies keep saying and i i get it like the stainless steel iphone pro looks more like jewelry, especially in like the gold color. It's what the companies keep saying. And I get it. Like the stainless steel iPhone Pro looks more like jewelry than the matte. But the matte looks better.

Yeah. It takes less fingerprints. It's easier to keep cleaner. Yeah. This phone, especially the white and the silver. If you hate the look of fingerprints and the dust that accumulates around the bar, get the white and the silver. It's the only one that doesn't show that stuff.

This color, lemongrass. Yeah. Actually come around to it i hated it at first and now i like it a lot i hate it it's very polarizing a lot of the qm pi a lot of my friends that i um that have seen it really like it as well which is surprising um personally i think that the two cameras looks better obviously for like the ability of what it can do is way more important than the looks but I just like I think it looks a little bit more cohesive it's the dynamic island with one background task and a dynamic island with two background tasks yeah yeah um I like I like the flat screen in the side the size more the they definitely made the screen on the pro less curved

than last year which is exactly what samsung did from the s20 ultra to the s21 ultra which was like perfect this is way better it's grippable um it it feels a lot better and it's not just like obscenely curved and then the battery life has also been pretty killer and that's the one thing that last year i was like a little bit unimpressed with it wasn't terrible but it just was kind of this has been pretty solid battery life like i'd wake up at 6 45 in the morning at about and then i'd get home at like 12 30 in the morning and it would die like exactly at 12 30 yeah so full day battery um you know not a lot of bugs on this one it's been pretty good so i love the flat screen i I love the 90 Hertz. It's brighter, 25% brighter. That's really huge. So yeah, no, I've been loving this. I used about, I used each of them for about three days. And

I think if I were to buy either of them, I'd probably buy the seven over the pro personally, but I know a lot of people really like zoom and the zoom enhancements are awesome. Okay. So I, so as someone who I bought the pixel six yep and i've only used also i've exclusively used pixel since the three i have not used any other phone as my daily this is why people want to know what you i just like so i just want to say that out loud for some people if you don't think i'm a pixel user i've only used since the three um this phone i think like my way of describing this is if you were interested in the pixel 6 because you saw the 6 liked how it looked liked all the things it was offering saw reviews

got worried because of battery life bugs stuff like that and then didn't buy it buy the buy the 7 the 7 is just what the 6 kind of should have been like it's just the six where everything is fixed i've had essentially nothing wrong with it i have my only little tiny issue is sometimes i have to do tap to wake twice i don't know why i honestly think it's a me problem i don't like saying that but like but every time i try and show it to you guys you guys double tap and it works fine and i go and it doesn't come up and then when i try and show it it seems to work so smallest smallest little thing but like inter modem issues have zero of them way more it just took two tries okay cool i'm glad somebody got to see it once but like some of the biggest issues i

had on the six i just do not have on the seven i've had no modem problems issues I had on the 6, I just do not have on the 7. I've had no modem problems, which are just... On the 6, that was the absolute worst. It happened daily, I would say. Zero of those problems. Battery life has been fantastic. You said, like you said, the 6 battery life was not great. On the 7, I had the... On my 6, I had the Moment M-Force.

And so, like, it would MagSafe onto a... I'm going to call it MagSafe because that'sce. And so it would MagSafe onto a, I'm going to call it MagSafe because that's what people know. It would MagSafe onto the charger at night and I missed the charger because I wasn't paying attention. Woke up at 45% battery on a Sunday and went to bed around 10 with like 10% left. It still lasted me the day on like half battery. You got through a whole Sunday starting at 45.

Not the busiest Sunday in the world, but I started at 45. So I've found battery life to be just like miles better on this one. In terms of my other big issue, I had this bug on the 6 where I would probably once a week use the Google search function on the homepage and everything would be in light mode despite my whole phone being dark mode

and I'd have to restart. And I would also get a bug once in a while where lock screen would not do tap to wake at all so i've just had like i don't know this just feels like what i wish my six was you had a buggy and it looks better and this is a much improved i'm so happy with this um i do have to say face unlock super super fast when it works in the light. I've been debating how I want to use it, though, because at first I was doing face unlock, skip the lock screen straight to my phone. But then I realized I was missing a bunch of lock screen features like media controls and now playing.

So now I have face unlock as just opens the lock screen, unlocks it for me, can still use those things when i'm climbing and my fingerprint doesn't work um then other than that i kind of use my fingerprint a lot i think it's like slightly better than last year's i don't know it's definitely not s20 with two ultra like fingerprint sensor but it feels good i think something that i noticed that i also really love that they added the face unlock and i currently do have it so it skips the lock screen because if if raise to wake works you literally raise your phone to use your phone and you can just start using it you don't have to touch it at all before you can start using it but

when you do payments when you're about to go do google pay if it unlocks your phone with the face unlock and then you go to tap your phone to pay it sends the terminal an error that you haven't biometrically biometrically authenticated your phone and then the system is like oh it could not work please try again and then the person that you're paying is like what's wrong and you're like ah they have to lock your phone you have to unlock it with the fingerprint so that combination is like not that is a little that is a little weird it's because like it's so fast sometimes you can't get your fingerprint in there which is like a weird problem a super niche problem to have um but yeah that is but i also get why it shouldn't use face

unlock because this clearly is just camera face unlock um i have to say if you turn off the um eyes have to be open feature so you can use sunglasses it still works really really well sunglasses in good light the minute you're out of good light the face unlock is not very good yeah even in medium light like if i'm driving home in my car and it's 6 30 and the sun is just sort of setting behind the cliffs and everything it's not enough light so and it it also says like face unlock failed please try again which seems like it would just I don't know I love that they offer both the face unlock and fingerprint though like the fact that you can have both as an option is amazing yeah also can I just say that in the docs right now for this section, David and Andrew both have extensive notes on what they wanted to say.

Marques's notes just say, phone go brr. So I'm really curious to see what Marques says. Marques also wrote four and a half pages of what he wanted to say. Yeah, that's fair. You know, we made a whole review video. I will say I've been a pretty big fan of the Pixel experience and, like, being the smart smartphone. Like, I love call screening. I've been a pretty big fan of the pixel experience and like being the smart smartphone. Like I love call screening. I get random calls all the time. Some of them I actually

have to take, which most people just ignore any phone number. They don't know sometimes they're spam, but sometimes they're just like a random delivery person. Sometimes they're like a person who's swore they would call me from a briefing that I forgot about, whatever. So call screening, I use that a lot. Um, the being able to like fast forward through automated systems where it just shows you the numbers and what they're about to say before the robot voice even says it love that uh and then just google assistant everywhere so my big bugs with pixel 6 pro which was like i wanted to keep in my pocket as long as possible but it had these major like performance hiccup bugs and those were big.

And then on top of that, had a bunch of weird glitchy UI bugs. On my 7 Pro, I have observed a few glitchy UI bugs, but no performance bugs so far. That's also how my Pixel 6 Pro started. So I'm sitting here as a happy camper, very like enjoying the Pixel 7 Pro experience, really looking forward to keeping it in my pocket,

but keeping an eye on how that evolves. Because I showed in the video a few little bugs, like the now playing just didn't show up for a while. I had to reset the phone or restart the phone. Also some weird connectivity bugs with the watch that we'll talk about in a second. But that might be more the watch than the phone. So generally pretty happy with it but

keeping an eye on it i do have to say after seeing you guys use the pro doing the pro review yeah i still think and i think we're all in agreeance here the seven is like an incredible price like if you're interested in the seven and that price seems good to you, get it. I think it's fantastic. I do think on the Pro, the Super Res Zoom looked better than I was expecting when you were testing it. Some of those shots look a bit better. Still not fully up to what I want out of a telephoto. It's halfway to the phones that actually have several telephotos, which is fine.

It costs less than those phones. It's better than I expected. Sure. phones that actually have several telephotos which is fine it costs less than those it's better than i expected sure so i do think that there's a little more worth there than i originally expected but i still think i would suggest the 7 over the 7 pro every day of the week i like the flat screen i like the size better so you'd suggest the 7 over the 7 pro but would you buy the 7 over the 7 pro david yes you're nodding your head yes okay Okay. Would you spend the $300 extra for this? No, I would not spend it if somebody gave me a 7 or 7 Pro

and I didn't have to spend money on it. It's still a hard decision, but I would probably get the Pro. That says enough. I like the size better and I like the flat screen. I know there are people who will like a bigger screen

who will like the size. or do you get the Pro? No, no, I'd get... You said you get the Pro. You get the pro you get the pro still yeah but i'm saying it's a hard decision because i still like like the size like the flat screen i don't think the 30 hertz is like a big difference like with the iphone that difference is big because it's 60 to 120 the difference from 90 to 120 is different huge compared to the

difference between 90 and 120 yeah 90 is great for this phone. Yeah, it's really great. 60 is rough for those $900 phones. You know what I'm talking about. Also something I know we mentioned we liked, I don't know if you mentioned in the review, I think you did, but you won't notice this if you go from 6 Pro to 7 Pro

because the ultra wide selfie is very close, but the selfie on the Pixel 6 was 80 degrees, 84 degrees, I think. And it's 94 or like 93.8 or something like that on the 7. So it's better. And I'll take a wide selfie all the time. Yeah, it's awesome.

There's a little clever piece of UI. You went from having on the 6, a 1X selfie and a 1.4X selfie to having a 1X selfie and a 1.4X selfie to having a 1X selfie and a 0.7X selfie. So you basically gain an ultra-wide selfie angle with the new Pixel 7, which is solid. Yeah, honestly, I'm putting it on the short list of best value phones of the year.

I kind of massage that category a little bit. It used to just be like best cheap phone or best budget phone. I'm just going like best overall value. If you have 5.99 to spend on a phone this is a pretty hands down top pick i think yeah yeah it's good for me um i would actually buy this if they were the same price and i that's probably most people wouldn't do that because you're intentionally giving away features you know like it's nice to be able to Zoom. For me, I'm always carrying around a separate camera,

and I only take photos on my phone that I need to send to people for information density use cases. Like if I'm sending them a menu. You don't take pretty pictures? No, not on my phone. I know that people can. I just hate the UI experience of taking pretty pictures on the phone personally so the zoom stuff to me is not as important and then I don't really take macro photos those are for people that like those things that can be super important I totally get it

but because the phone camera experience is not that important to me because I like the flat screen because I like the smaller phone I think those are the things that are more important to me than the camera experience. But I totally understand that most people are going to want the camera stuff. I'm happy the battery doesn't suffer too much going to the smaller phone. Honestly, it's really good. It's fine. I love it. Yeah. Real quick on that, I do find it kind of funny.

I really liked, there was a Reddit post talking about how we talk about telephoto lenses and they called it a tool rather than like a camera. And that's where I would see the telephoto being good. So the way you described it, I would pick the pro. As having a tool to send information, I would like the 5X not caring about photo quality quite as much. But if you don't care about photo quality, you can just crop the 1X.

Yeah, but it's still gonna be way better on a five times. Yeah, but if you're just sending information, quality, you can just crop the 1X. Yeah, but it's still going to be way better on a 5X. Yeah, but if you're just sending information, then it doesn't need to look pretty. There's a certain point where you will lose something that you need to know. Like if you're looking at a sign further away or something like that. I do think as a tool, I like that. But as the 4 or 5X, I think if I'm trying to post it as a photo that I think is pretty, it doesn't look like that but as the four or five x i think if i'm trying to post it as a photo that i think is pretty yeah it doesn't look like that so if i'm using my camera as a phone i don't care about the

or phone as a camera i don't care about the telephoto as much because it won't look pretty but if i want it as a tool then it feels this is like super niche and obviously like i think i just thought it was a fun fact that the the smaller phone will get as much done as you can possibly need means you don't need the bigger phone and you prefer the smaller phone then just get the smaller phone yeah that's basically the the thought process i think for a lot of people yeah so yeah it's good i'm gonna keep it in my pocket quick we'll see question yeah so i was thinking about this i don't like suggesting people upgrade year over year because i usually think they're incremental changes i kind of think this time around if you have stuck with your six and just constantly been like oh this is

kind of annoying i feel like you should trade it in and spend the 200 to just get that experience in a way better package without the annoyance anymore yeah i feel like that's valid i think i know people i have a friend who bought a Pixel 6 and even watched our review and was like, I was really excited for it. And I asked him how it's going. He's like, I wish I could tell you it was a good time. And I'm going to tell that guy, get the 7. That was the problem with the 6,

is all the reviews are very positive because the phone was mostly very positive and it just got buggier over time. And they did eventually squash it, but I'm just really hoping that stays the same for this so i'm gonna stay on this like a for like at least six months this is funny like i've been i've been burned before i've been hurt before i've got history repeats itself confidence for some reason i'm ready for it take all the stadia developers and put them on pixel the thing is the modem was always an issue six though right

yeah and that is that was hands down the biggest problem i've oh yeah also i keep 5g on this because the battery is actually so good the first thing i did on my six was turn off 5g because it was destroying my battery yeah i love it i love the seven yeah yeah me too i really yeah i really really like the seven well let's uh let's change gears a little bit and go to something that we might not have as much of a universally positive experience with. And that's the watch, the Pixel Watch. We have a Google Pixel Watch. Okay, so this podcast we're recording on Wednesday,

it'll be out by Friday. So maybe or maybe not by the time you see this, the Pixel Watch review is also live. But in case it isn't, let me give you my upfront two cents about the watch, which is that it is a pretty good first gen, slightly overpriced, but still nice experience for a Fitbit slash Google smartwatch. And I can elaborate on any of those pieces that you want. but basically it's pretty nice.

Wear OS is pretty nice. It's a nice OLED. It's small and really light. That's the thing that I noticed most about it. The battery life is the biggest weakness to me. If you actually look it up, it is about the same physical size battery as an Apple Watch Series 8 battery,

but it is an up to 24-hour battery life, which is, as you know, best case scenario. Always on display is off by default when you take this watch out the box. And it's a charge it every night type of situation. I had to charge it twice in one day once. The nice thing about it is it is such a small battery that it charges very fast, much faster than the Apple Watch. I don't know why. I think the charge curves might be different because I found like I'll put the Apple Watch on a charger and I'll go away for like 20 minutes and I'll come back and it'll gain like 9%. If I go away for 20 minutes, this thing is gaining like 45%. Huge difference. So, you know, it's got the Fitbit stuff. It's got

the heart rate constantly going. I say first gen a lot in this review that you'll eventually see because there are a bunch of things that it just strikes me that Google is just finding out in their first generation of a smartwatch. One of the things is like, it's pulling my heart rate once every second. Why?

I don't know. I don't need to know that like it's cool there's a cool feature i have a complication that shows i'm at 60 bpm right now that's just 58 60 that was just 63 64 it keeps going but um apple has known and learned over the years that yeah pulling heart rate and gps a lot. So specifically, the watches in low power mode will just pull way less often. Like that's how you get more battery out of it. I haven't found an option to pull heart rate less often in this watch. I mean, that's just a first gen thing.

The charging situation is funny. It does work with an Apple Watch charger if you line it up perfectly, which is kind of funny. Sort of. It's almost impossible to do, though, because the magnets are opposite. uh an apple watch charger if you line it up perfectly which is kind of funny sort of it's almost impossible to do though because the magnets are opposite magnets repel so it doesn't it doesn't sit on the middle of the charger but it it will still sit on it and charge slowly but i wouldn't i think you have the nomad base station right i have one yeah where you can lay it flat it stands up so i think like the friction of the base standing vertically will push it back. That's about the only way it'll work, yeah.

But I don't know. I'm curious what you guys think of this watch. I have not had the connectivity problems that others have had, but I have heard from almost everyone I've talked to about this watch a pretty terrible story of trying to get it connected or once it gets connected, having a hard time keeping it connected or having to reset it, and that sounds pretty annoying. What's your Pixel watch experience been? This is my black one, you have the gold one.

You have the silver one. We've made Daft Punk helmets now out of our watches. How's it going? I'll go first this time? Okay, cool. I've heard the stories of the bad connections. Mine connected perfectly the first time and the only thing i can think of i mean it might be an issue austin when he came over said

a lot of people were connecting it before they got that first uh over the air software update for reviewers i think that didn't go out till like later that day or something got it later that day so i think that may have been some of the early issues. I'm not 100% sure. I did though have the issue that you mentioned, which was getting disconnected. And I don't know if this is a Pixel watch thing or an Android thing,

but essentially what happens is your watch says you've disconnected from your phone and you have to completely factory reset the watch in order to get it connected again. But this happened with me on my Galaxy Watch 4. So I think it's an Android issue. But it is the most annoying issue possible because you have to literally reset up Google Wallet, redo all your notification settings.

And one issue I have with this, if you're going into your phone apps that you want to do for notifications, they're all defaulted on and you can't trigger all of them off to then just turn on the ones you want. You have to go down the list and unselect every single damn app. There's like a hundred.

It's really, really annoying and now I've had to do it twice because of getting disconnected. Other than that, I actually like the size i like it smaller i think it's comfortable i kind of i'm not i don't dislike the gold i actually kind of dig the gold i think black looks better i agree it's matte black by the way these are glossy yeah i would like to see the other bands in terms of i'll save my battery life hot take

till later and see what you guys think of it. Oh, wow. Okay. I've made it through a whole day, no problem. I'm not a sleep tracker though, so I always charge it at night. Okay. Very different for me, potentially. And I have brought it rock climbing once for a quick trip. I have like three little nicks on the top of it.

My only issue is like I was only climbing for like an hour and it already has scratches like that because of the dome shape similar to the apple watch which my series six apple watch is destroyed from climbing i think this thing's gonna get messed up pretty hard yeah i've seen some other people have scratches and dings on the watch pretty quickly uh we'll see it it it does seem like i really like the design and i also have a feeling it's designed to be like a sort of a like i wish there was a bigger one basically this is a nice small single size and a nice oled with a mostly black ui and it's got the google assistant thing in the time it's high resolution it's bright it's a nice looking watch but i don't imagine it as something i would go play a sport in even though it is a fitbit yeah it feels more

like a really a nice looking i like the size i love the size actually i would not want it bigger it feels more like a um like an everyday smart watch where you do like some physical activity like walks or runs and stuff like that not the really extreme stuff um one more thing before i let david go over his notes is i don't it so it does we found out it doesn't have auto workout detection i don't mind auto workout starting not having it but i really really wish it had um to like check if you're still working out auto detect end. Because most of the time, if I don't start a workout,

I probably was just doing like an outdoor walk and it's like, oh, you're doing an outdoor walk. Do you want to start it? Sure, I wasn't really planning on starting one. But the amount of times I'm tired after a workout and just go like sit on the couch and don't stop it is very often. You don't stop it immediately and check the calories and read all your stats?

I've already had like three workouts that are half an hour longer because I just went and sat down. And then like when I checked my watch later, I saw that I was still in the middle of a workout. So I wish it had auto stop somehow, which seems pretty easy, but yeah. Yeah, something I feel about the Pixel watch is similar to something that I felt about the pixel 6 and pixel 7 and that is i think the pixel 6 was sort of like a gen 1 for google a second try at a gen 1 because they were

going they're going for that look they're going for material you like everything about the pixel was reinvented with the pixel 6 and a gen 1 of anything is fairly rough right it's got kind of like unfinished stuff because they're trying to rush deadlines they're trying to fix problems and the gen one of the pixel watch is like a good first attempt that makes me excited about gen two because everything about it is i think it's got the right moves, but it just needs a little bit of refinement. The Fitbit integration, for example. I think, and I think I've said this before, but they just need to rename Fitbit to Google Fitbit and then use the UX design from Google Fit. Because currently, the watch sort of feels like an Android Wear watch that has a layer of Fitbit on top.'s like bolted onto the side yeah it's like bolted on yeah that's how i would describe because it's when you do any

of the fitness stuff it shows like the calories or the steps but as soon as you tap it's like launching fitbit yeah whereas it's not it doesn't feel like a native application that is google fitness you know and if you're going to use a Pixel watch, it's kind of weird that it has all this business. I don't think they should get rid of the Fitbit name because as a lot of really strong brand cache for people that have used Fitbits in the past. And I think they are potentially going to sell a number of these to people that wanted a Fitbit that was more of a watch. But they really need to fix that because it just, it just doesn't feel cohesive enough. It's also slightly annoying and confusing having to go back and forth between two different

apps to check on stuff. Well, when I was talking to the manager of the Google Pixel watch at the event, he was like, yeah, we're not really like recommending that people download Google fit. Like you could, if you wanted to, but it's not part of the setup process. And we're not really thinking about Google fit when we do this. And it's like, you just did an entire campaign like a year ago like get fit with google trying to get people to use google fit because they like redesigned it and it's still tracking things in my pocket with my phone i have google fit on the phone so i have google fit on my phone tracking

steps on and whatever else google fit takes tracking of but then there's also the watch app which is like my watch faces my watch settings all those things and then there's also the watch app, which is like my watch faces, my watch settings, all those things. And then there's also the Fitbit app, which is where it keeps all of my fitness data and my sleep data. Which is actually technically also what Apple does, even though they're all Apple

apps. So there is a fitness app for closing my rings on the iPhone. And there's also a health app for all the health information and sleep information. It's just not a separate logo company type thing for what it's worth i also think that apple should just have all of your health and solid stuff into one app and it's like if you get an apple watch it adds a little tab that's like apple watch stuff you know it's it seems simple but who knows maybe it's not real quick if you do want to do that and i didn't get to test it because when I set it up,

then my watch needed to get reset. There is an app called Health Sync where you can sync all your Fitbit recordings into Google Fit. So that, it's another app, a third-party app you have to download. Kind of sucks, but I'm sure there's someone out there who might want to do it, and you can do that and have Fitbit throw into Google Fit. Yeah. how long does it just kills google fit like they killed stadia just make it google fitbit i really think that's the best come on it's it saves everyone

time and energy i just i'm terrified to like invest that much time into like tracking my entire life in google fit and then google is just like yeah yeah, I'm going to not. Yeah, exactly. Google Fit for sure. I mean, Fitbit's been around for long enough and it's its own, like they have so many Fitbits. I don't think Google ever, well, I don't know. I don't know. Who knows? But I feel like they would be more hesitant to like completely kill off Fitbit than they

are to like kill some random Google app, you know? But other things about the watch, I think that the watch faces are gorgeous i think that the bezel is not a big deal at all in the renders it looked chunky the ui is specifically doing a good job of making you not think about the bezels too much yeah all the watch faces are completely inside of the bezels so that you go right up to the edge but never see overlap if you ever scroll through lists and stuff yeah you'll see the bezel when you scroll but it's like fading things into shadows in the corners the ui is mostly black in the background yeah they've thought a lot about this i'm sure future versions will have smaller bezels but i'm not as concerned as someone i think this

is the the perfect use case of something where people on the internet see an image of it and can complain about it but they don't actually use the product. It's like the notch. If you're not using a product, you stare at that thing and you're like, that is ugly. But if you actually use the product, you're looking at the contents on the screen and it's not a big deal. It's the fold crease.

Yeah, it's kind of the fold crease. The fold crease you actually have to touch though. So yeah, but yeah, I think it's easy to ignore the bezel. I love how light it is um the way that the latch works for the bands is smart but i feel like they did it backwards because you currently have to press in with your index finger and then press against your index finger with your thumb towards what you're pressing into which kind of hurts a little bit i feel like if they did it the other way where the button was here and you could just slide

your finger that way, it'd be a little better. I don't think it would work that way though, because you're, the reason you're pushing in is because that's the piece blocking it. Right. So you have to push down the thing. It slides over. I'm just saying they should do on the other side. Oh, doing that with my thumb, I think would be easier than my index finger.

That's like a minor thing. The latch seems cool, and it makes it feel like it's coming directly out of the watch, which I think is very cool. I really like the way it connects. Aesthetically, very well done. Yeah, and I like the look of this watch a lot. It is a nice, lightweight little computer on the wrist. Yeah.

I had switched to an analog watch because i feel like you can see an apple watch from a mile away and i think there's a use case for a wrist computer that's why i actually like the apple watch ultra because the bigger higher resolution screen is like this is a better wrist computer if that's what you want it does all these computer things and a watch i feel like is more of a accessory. And obviously it shows time. And obviously this is a smartwatch that can do things. But as far as being a computer, it's less efficient at doing that because it's circular.

But I feel less weird like going out into public and hanging out with people and wearing a circular watch than I do a square watch. Yeah, I think it's the best looking one yeah I think it's really great looking the silver I think is probably the worst color only because it kind of looks cheap compared to the other ones like even the gold looks higher quality than the silver I would agree yeah yeah but the matte black is awesome so as usual I think it's a really great first attempt the software is great um there's a tiny bit of lag occasionally in random things. If you're going from always on display to not always on display,

sometimes it stutters open. The apps will stutter open, but it's not that much. In the future, I would love to see a cut-down Tensor as the Pixel Watch chip because that's what Apple does for the Apple Watch. That would be cool. Yeah, I think it would be good for them too because they can make the unit price of Tensor go down.

Keep printing Tensors, baby. Yeah, I think it's a good first choice. The battery life thing, really quick, for me, battery life is great during the day. I usually end the day at 25%. Problem is if you don't put it in sleep mode or bedtime mode when you go to bed

it drains 40 battery which is nutty and then if you do put it in bedtime mode it drains 20 or that's what i what i got um having to manually put something into bedtime mode every night is not good because i will forget they need to put a setting if i haven't found it i'll let you know if i find it. But the Apple Watch, I just have like a time every day where it just switches at 11 p.m. for me automatically. I would hope that I can do that here too because I'm going to forget one day and it's just going to die.

Yeah, and it's like people always say like, oh, just charge your watch when you're showering. I shower in the morning, the first thing, before I put the watch on. And if it's going to die in the middle of the night but it's supposed to do sleep tracking, then I can't do my sleep tracking if it's going to die in the middle of the night, but it's supposed to do sleep tracking, then I can't do my sleep tracking. It's going to die then.

I will say if you find yourself about to go to bed and realize it's at 20% and it's going to die overnight, plug it in for seven minutes and you'll have more than enough. That's annoying though. It's just annoying. It is, but it's like I brushed my teeth and I came back and it was full.

It was like ready to go. Yeah. So that's my little pro tip, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Okay.

Can I end with my battery hot take? Yeah. Oh yes. I want to see if you guys agree with this. I would love to hear this. Okay. So, oh man,

I hope I don't get that. It's not that bad. So as someone who doesn't sleep track and maybe that's the key point here, I think I'm getting to the point where as a watch, I, it either needs to have one day of battery life or over two days of battery life.

36 hours to me feels pointless because if I'm not wearing it to bed, I just need it to last through the day. And then if I want something more than that, I want it to last like a whole weekend. So this like past 24, but not quite 48, feels the same to me as just 24. And I don't think there's really any benefit.

Like, I don't think the regular Apple Watch battery life is that much better in this comparison for everyday use. I get the logic. I think for peace of mind, having you end the day at 35 instead of five is nice. And if you do happen to have a heavy day, you work out, you, you go for a hike, you do a bunch of stuff, you'd kill this watch rather than having 5% left on the Apple watch. But I get the logic of like, I'm going to charge it every night anyway. So I hear you.

You said like 24. If you take it off the charger, say it's a Friday, right? You got to get up at 6 a.m. to go to work. You take it off at six, you wear it to bed, but on Saturday you don't have to get up till eight. So if it's 24 hour and then it dies at 6 a.m. but you're still sleeping.

This is assuming not sleep tracking though. So it would be on the charger at night. Oh, I see. So that like, in that case, yeah, I just need it to last during the day i've had no issues with that i've had double workout days and i haven't had to charge it again i know you had to twice once i had a double practice weekend but for one of the weekends i like woke up got in the car did a road trip had a practice um and i think by the end of the practice, I was low enough that I had to put it on the charger.

And then I had enough time to charge it back up to like 60%, and then I ran it down again through the end of the day where I needed to charge it again before I slept. So it was like just not quite enough battery to just peacefully go about my day. But that's the price you pay for, know a little bit of first gen i do have to say i quickly disabled the battery charge percentage on the home screen of this because yes it was making me anxious i don't i don't have that that's something i've always done on my

garmin and my galaxy watch and i do not do it on this let's end this by saying what all our battery percentages are right now all right i'm 67 57 62 that's literally a five percent delta between all of us what time did everyone wake up this morning seven six forty six thirty oh wow we're all yeah i mean we're all like almost exactly yeah so i slept tracked woke up and charged it up to like 88 before i got here oh do you guys find anything interesting in your sleep tracking uh no but i get a score now which is huge for me because i can competitively sleep now there we go that's all you need 77 and then i got an 82 last night let's see definitely getting up tonight it's already difficult for me to compete with you yeah who's on the sleep high

scores here i'm gonna sleep for like nine hours i'll get the highest score you've ever seen don't come into work phones on the other room all right i think we're ready for trivia yeah who's on the sleep high scores here i'm gonna sleep for like nine hours i'll get the highest score you've ever seen don't come into work phones on the other room all right i think we're ready for trivia yeah let's do trivia and a quick break all right trivia side note meanwhile my whoop is yelling at me constantly that i don't sleep enough do you have a score uh it does give you a score it's only like one to ten though so i don't know what that would like translate to i think my score right now is like a 4.8 or something oh come on i do think whoops is really important though because whoops whole shtick is like your recovery yeah anyway so the name bluetooth comes from this is multiple choice all All these history questions. A, it's an acronym for Bilinear Utility Transmission onto Other Technologies Hardware. B, in World War II, England used a technology called Blue Sonar to, quote, give it to them in the teeth.

So they renamed it to Bluetooth in homage. Or C, it was named for Danish King Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm, because an Intel executive thought it sounded cool. Those are your options. Is all of the above an option? Yes to them all. Dragonath

of the fire domain thought that it would make him have superpowers. All of them sound reasonably possible. I would make him have superpowers. All of them sound reasonably possible. I'm not old enough to know. We'll be right back. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it.

Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite.

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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. 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. The guide is free to you at NetSuite.com slash waveform. NetSuite.com slash waveform. All right, welcome back. I think we've got a little bit more we want to talk about. Last quick bit here is we did get a meta event and a Microsoft event this week. We can eventually talk about the Surface stuff, but I do want to dive in a little bit to the

meta stuff. And maybe this will eventually be to dive in a little bit to the meta stuff. And maybe this will eventually be summarized in a video, but new meta headset, Quest Pro, $1,500, 12 gigs of RAM, new Snapdragon chip, 90 Hertz refresh rate, one to two hour battery life, 50% better performance than the Quest 2, designed for for enterprise give one to your employees and they will work in the metaverse and have meetings with each other as they all wear headsets and see each other's avatars with legs are we sold with legs with legs with legs legs legs legs legs no but in honest in all seriousness it is a improved design so they moved some of

the electronics to the back the battery to the back so now you have weight on the front weight in the back and then it is comfortable we i did get to try this headset we wore it for a little bit um so we're working on a video about this stuff but i think generally my thoughts are more curious about just like who believes in this future accenture clearly accenture accenture bought 60 000 of these did they buy them or did they just get them from mark for a for a promo exchange for promo i don't know i just think it's fascinating that there is this huge bet from all angles at this future of everything being in the metaverse from meta and part of that of everything being in the metaverse from meta. And part of that includes, um, working in the metaverse. I I've seen, I've seen pros and cons of it. I've seen

upsides and downsides. It's generally, here's how I'll summarize my thoughts. I think it's a good idea and there are real benefits. I've seen a pass-through where you have a laptop in front of you, you put the headset on and it turns your laptop into huge multi-screen like operating environment. You can do a whole bunch of stuff in there and you can take the headset off

and take that with you wherever you want, on a train, on a park bench. That's, I get it. It's super cool. Being in a meeting with nine other people instead of a zoom call and you can just like turn to the person next to you and go hey did you can you read what he's writing on the board i can't quite see that and like the person next you can hear you even though it's in vr you couldn't do that on a zoom call okay i get it that works but looming over all of this is you

have to convince people to make an avatar and hang out in the metaverse and like spend meaningful time wearing a headset during the day getting work done. And I don't know if that's possible. Do you think it's possible? I don't think you have to convince people. I think you have to convince the people running the enterprise that they're trying to sell to to then force it onto all of their employees you have to convince the bosses because they'll buy them but then you have to convince all the employees to use them to actually use them you know it's funny b2b is always like the plan b solution when something is

not working every company that like sells like ibm great example ibm was the computer manufacturer everyone was fighting against them apple was fighting against them everyone was trying to beat ibm eventually they lost what did they do b2b baby business to business and like that's what everyone does and it just makes me wonder like of course quest 2 is selling incredibly well, considering the entire landscape of virtual reality. They sold a ton during COVID. They've sold a lot because of like Beat Saber and all these other things.

But up until now, and even during the MetaQuest Pro presentation, they talked so much about VR gaming. And it seems like VR gaming and work are the only two use cases that they've been able to bang against the wall. I disagree. I feel like they've thought of every single thing you could want to do in VR.

You can make your own house in VR and hang out with your friends in your VR house. So they're like, hanging out with friends, that can be in the metaverse too. Work, that can be in the metaverse too. Work, that can be in the metaverse too. Watching a movie, that can be in the metaverse too. You can watch YouTube videos together. Like they're just, basically they'll think

of every possible thing you could want to do with traditional 2D screen experiences or even non-screen experiences and then just throw as much money at the companies in the space as possible in order to turn it into a viable vr experience yeah you know how like tesla used the super expensive car medium expensive car cheap car model to like get cash injections for each subsequent model i think that could like as far as ar goes they've obviously sold a crap load of quest twos to you know a ton sold during covid because people wanted to do exercise and beat

saber was very popular and they're still like one of the most popular consumer headsets but they are standalone they're not hyper powerful and they added a lot of stuff to this meta quest pro that they'll eventually want to put in say a quest 3 like a consumer version of that so if they sell a ton of these to consumers they are sorry not to consumers so if they sell a ton of these to businesses they'll get a cash injection to do r&d to eventually put in a consumer version of this but obviously enterprise is going to be where you can pull the most cash from people at once in the beginning.

And it's pretty easy to convince IT managers and also the people that are, they have a budget for what they want to do. I mean, it's not easy, but there are people whose job it is. Easier to get $1,500 out of somebody. Yeah. You can get $1,500 out of 1,000 people faster by convincing one business IT manager of somebody. Yeah. You can get 1500 bucks out of 1000 people faster

by convincing one business IT manager. Right. Okay. There are people whose jobs it is at these companies to be like, how can we make our employees more efficient? And they go to, that's like what expos are for, right?

Conferences and expos are, how can we make our employees more efficient? Yeah. And if they can convince the people who run the business that this will, that's a big cash injection. You just get on stage and you say, meetings in VR make your thing more immersive

and everyone's 3% more efficient. Yeah, and 3% you just do like, what does that translate to in terms of actual revenue? Boom. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait to play Among Us in VR. Oh, Among Us in VR looks like so much.

Here's the thing. I love VR. I, Among Us in VR looks like so much. Here's the thing. I love, I love VR. I love Beat Saber. I love this new game that Ella showed us called, I believe it's pronounced Acron, which is basically you're a tree and get attacked by a bunch of squirrels that people are playing on their phone. So like fun party game. I love showing older generations it. Honestly, when we're all old, VR is going be awesome like i feel like we're gonna get to experience a million things in vr later the business aspect of it i'm still not totally sold on with like meetings in such a vr i i i get what they're thinking of like zoom kind of sucks and there's probably a better way of doing it and a more interactive way of doing it. It's not anywhere near there yet.

And I am getting, it's hard to convince with the examples I'm being shown right now. They're just slowly, this is gonna be a video for sure. They're slowly just spending as much money as they can to be the company responsible for the VR future. And whatever examples they can think of, of like, what would be more fun? Or what's another reason we could get people to use VR?

Let's put money into it. So if you're thinking gaming is one of those examples, all right, let's pay to make Among Us in VR happen. Let's pay to make this other game and that other game happen. Developer Studios, boom. Okay, what's that? you want to do work in vr right of course microsoft ceo come on or cto come on stage satya nadal ceo ceo microsoft join us on stage let's get office 365 in there let's get microsoft teams in there people will get real work done in vr oh what else people are going to do uh they'll just come up with other things and just pour money on it to be the company responsible for vr happening so that's what's happening i don't even think it's an equation of like how many times can we get 1500 bucks out of people i think it's just like we have x billion dollars

to make this the future let's do it an x runway before our company is dissolved yep and it's either gonna happen or it isn't and if it, all the money they'll make is probably mostly from software rather than hardware. Just all the money you have to spend inside of that VR headset and subscription bases and subscriptions. In summary, everyone tells them

fetch is not going to happen, but they are trying their best to make fetch happen. Absolutely, fex. That's a great place to end it can't wait to spend 30 on my avatar's clothes in the metaverse uh yeah but you can buy pants now with your legs that's true legs legs i think we need more more legs and vr works four legs vr is the thing eight legs 12 legs why stop there i'll sell that to you we'll just uh turn hard left into trivia

all right get out them whiteboards it's time for waveform trivia is this mine i go it is now all right i decided to mix up the colors today make a little fun also i turn into like the d brand color oklahoma tractor farmer every time we do trivia. I'm like, it's time for trivia. Bring it on down. All the horses. All right. Question number one.

What is the correct pronunciation for the acronym ASCII? Now you realize we're writing pronunciations. Yeah. So we're trying to explain how we would say it. Yeah, just write it in a way that reading it out loud is intuitive, it's smart, it's easy, breezy. Beautiful. Cover girl.

Hell yeah. Yeah. All right. I got it. So you want to flip it over? Yeah. Let's go. I'm going to have to blur mine.

Okay. Well, oh, I'm wrong. I always thought ascii same ascii i did like the fruit asai asai no the answer is in fact ascii let's go man i'm glad we both are yeah thanks for getting us demonetized that is what your point it's's written. That's how it's written in my sheet as well. So glad we're all on the same page. Sacrifice this monetization for this episode. Adam, would you like to read question number two? Yeah, this is insane.

This question is nuts. Question number two. Quick reminder, the score right now is Marques eight, Andrew eight, David six. David is catching up. I'm catching up, boys. Watch out. All right. Question number two.

The name Bluetooth comes from? It's multiple choice. Yep. A, it's an acronym for Bilinear Utility Transmission onto Other Technologies Hardware. B, in World War II, England used a technology called Blue Sonar to, quote, give it to them in the teeth.

So they renamed it to Bluetooth as an homage. Or C. It was named for Danish king Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm, because an Intel executive thought it sounded cool. Oh, man. Do you want to know my strategy for picking this one yes what do I think would be the hardest for Adam and Ellis to make up as an answer that's kind of my same train of thought

is it obvious no I want I want it to be C so bad they're all very good but I really think it could be C I don't know I think it could be any of them the Gorm thing's kind of throwing me. I hate that. Gorm feels made up.

I'm giving no shot at A, because there's just no way that long of an acronym turned into a word. You're confident in that. I am pretty confident in that. I did ask you the question about, what's the Sony thing? There's a pretty long one.

Vivitron? No, the TV tv the acronym for their bravia bravia is an acronym yeah that's that's bluetooth bluetooth is so long there's no way all right i have my answer flip them over sorry so david says c i already know andrew says b yeah marquez what do you say? I said B, but maybe C. Except David. Watch out, boys. I'm coming for you.

The answer was C. A Danish king heralded Bluetooth, son of Gorm. Is Gorm an alien? It sounds like he's from the Hitchhiker's Guide. The ancient runes for his initials are actually the logo, If you want to look at the waveform slack just now. Yeah, check the waveform slack. And I'll put the picture up on the screen. Weird.

It's pretty cool. This is all made up. David's answer is it's C, duh. No brainer, duh. All right, history questions are my weakness. Bluetooth was sort of like a code name when the project was in development. And then when it was time for marketing to come up with the real name for it, a bunch of things got passed around.

One of them was called RadioWire, and there was sort of a problem with each one, and then they couldn't do trademark checks on other names. And finally it was time for their product to come out and they had to be like, I guess it's Bluetooth. I guess that's what it is. Wow. That is really interesting actually. That's crazy.

I'm glad it's, I remember the first, the age of like early Bluetooth headsets of like being the weird guy in New York City who's talking to no one because you're one of very few people with a Bluetooth headset on and you look like a psycho, that was a good time. That was a good time.

Also, I threw the son of Gorm thing in there because it just felt like really obvious until I wrote son of Gorm. Who made up the giving it to him in the teeth? That was Adam. That was Adam. That's all that was Adam. I just was like, I know it's definitely because

an Intel person thought it sounded cool, but the rest threw me off. So, well played. I hate Gorm. Well played. Well, that's been it for Waveform this week. I hope you enjoyed the rest of your Techtober. We'll catch you guys very soon next week with much more

to talk about. Until then, see you later. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Alice Robin, but if they keep giving hard questions, I will stop shouting them out at the end of this podcast. We are also partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro after the music was created by Vane Syl. Thank you.