Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Waveform Podcast Live at SXSW 2025!

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

It's bonus episode time! Marques, Andrew, and David took the stage at SXSW 2025 this past Saturday to live in front of an audience for the first time! They started with the news that Apple Intelligence is getting delayed (again) before talking a bit about Digg making a comeback. If you don't know what Digg is, don't worry Andrew explains it. Then they took a bunch of questions from audience members with topics ranging from podcasting to AI and health tech. It was super fun to do our first live show and thank you do much to everyone that came to check it out! We had a blast and can't wait to do another one. Links: Bloomberg - Apple Intelligence delayed Verge - Digg is coming back Music provided by Epidemic Sound  Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What you're about to watch is not recorded in the normal waveform studio or at a normal time or place. It's recorded on a stage in front of a live audience in Austin, Texas at South by Southwest on the Vox stage. First live show ever. First live show we've ever done. It was fun.

We tried to involve the audience in some parts of it. We also had some tech news to talk about. Just kind of playing with the format, having some fun with it. This is, we'll be right back to your regularly scheduled programming on Friday, but we figured we'd share this as well, so you guys could hear it and enjoy.

The trivia question goes crazy. It's a good time. So yeah, I think without any further ado, throw it to South by Southwest versions of ourselves. Take it away. south by southwest versions of ourselves. I didn't do that on purpose. Welcome to another episode technically people of the internet. We figured this would be fun and we love all the people here at South By so we're going to do this.

We actually want to involve you guys a little bit in this episode recording so we're going to ask two things. I want to make sure I get this perfectly right. So first, we are going to ask for questions in the second half. So if you guys want to start brainstorming of any questions you want to ask us about tech, about YouTube, about being a creator, about any of the stories that we've talked about, start thinking about that. Two, I see a lot of you guys have your phones.

This is perfect. Go ahead and open up the web browser and we're going to ask you to fill out a quick survey and that will be part of the trivia for this episode. So we're going to trivia quiz ourselves on what you guys answer. So if you can go to waveformsurvey.com. to quiz ourselves on what you guys answer. It's basic questions. What are the priorities you have in buying a phone, stuff like that. But yeah, that's basically it. Yeah.

Thank you all for coming. This is kind of awesome. We're usually trapped in a little tiny room with the best sound at the office, and this is far, far different. At the office, it's freezing here. I am just really sticky. It's just very humid. This is Texas.

We usually record in the Northeast. So everyone's busy typing away and making sure to answer the questions real quick. Just the first thing that comes to mind, you see the question, you answer, make it honest. recording in the Northeast. the stories of the hour, the gadgets. We talk YouTube, we talk creator stuff, all sorts of that ecosystem. Lucky for us, there's always news and always stuff happening. One of the things that I feel like we do want to chat about is I think it's funny because we always talk about how news gets released on Thursday or Friday, and it takes us a week to cover it. So being here today, I think this got released before we hit our plane yesterday.

Some news with Apple Intelligence, you know, the iPhone 16 was built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence. So we've always had this quote that we say, Apple Intelligence. 25 hands, that's interesting. And then the rest of you just don't use it at all. So I think the interesting thing about this story is the one thing that is delayed is maybe the most useful part of Apple intelligence, which is an upgraded Siri. So I use Gemini on my phone a lot. the voice assistant pretty useful. Not like a creep, you know, like I'm stealing people's money. I don't use it at all.

I think Gemini is low-key incredibly impressive. So Gemini Live specifically, which is it's just a conversation with the assistant and it can take over and see anything else on your phone. And if you want, it's multimodal and you can let it see your camera feed. And so I can literally open it up right now and point it at the camera. I can point it at this audience and ask it, what do you see? And it will add, it'll describe what it sees, hopefully, which is maybe not super useful right now because I know what I see, but let's see. Let's see. Let's see what happens.

Ooh, good noise. So, uh, what do you see right now? Okay. Oh, good noise. So what do you see right now? Okay, I see a large crowd of people and what looks like large. Are you here for a specific event? Yeah, this is South by Southwest. What should we do for these people? That's so cool that you're at South by Southwest. Thanks for tons of things to do there.

From film and music festivals to tons of different interactive media events. What are you hoping to experience while you're there? I want to entertain the crowd we're looking at right now. Well, if you want to entertain the crowd, you can start by telling a joke or a funny story. That's right. Also, try some magic tricks or juggling. You can juggle.

Can you juggle live on the pod? I didn't bring anything to juggle. very, very useful, potentially even underrated. And then the Siri thing is supposed to be at least more able to punch in and do things on your phone, and dive into apps and change settings and things like that. And that's the useful thing I've been waiting for, and that's the thing that's delayed. So now Apple Intelligence kind of has this weak reputation where nobody uses it or cares about it that much. Yeah, the news said that they are going to release it by the end of the year, I believe. or cares about it that much. and pulling them out in the coming year. That's like the rabbit R1 killer whole thing. That's the whole thing. If you don't have as many APIs on all these apps anymore, because they're all closing down their APIs,

if you can just have your assistant do stuff for you. So AI assistants being able to take action is kind of a cool idea, right? Maybe if you even had like a piece of hardware that's dedicated to an AI assistant that can take action for you and it's just always available. Maybe it's like attached to you or something. Maybe it's like magnetically.

What if I had like a projector? And like, yeah, that would be kind of interesting. Did anybody here buy a humane pin is what I'm trying to ask. One hand. We got one. One hand. Did we make, you said what? Oh, he also returned it. You returned it, yeah. That would be kind of interesting. cool though still. Does anyone here use Genmoji? Oh, oh, oh, okay.

I've used Genmoji once, and it was while I was making my video explaining what it is. If you've noticed, they've changed all of the billboards in Manhattan that used to say, Hello Apple Intelligence, to genmoji it. Wow. So the writing tools just get no love. I mean, the writing tools are. The iPhone 16 is now the genmoji phone. That's right.

There we go. So we were kind of expecting this in iOS 18.4, which now the developer is out. Which now supports RCS on Google Fi. You're expecting a clap there, I think. Come on, let's go. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, Alex. on Google Fi. You're expecting a clap there. I think. But come on. Let's go. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Ellis. Thank you, Ellis. I think with getting this announcement, is it safe to say we're not getting it even in iOS 18 and potentially iOS 19?

That's a big question. I mean, it would be a big move if they just dropped it in iOS 19 in June. A big move? Yeah, I mean, it would be a big move if they just dropped it in iOS 19 in June. A big move? Yeah, I mean, it would be funny. It would be funny if DubDub just re-announced everything that they announced that last DubDub. Oh yeah. I agree.

Yeah, so DubDub is going to be summer, right? So summer is when we get... It's not that far away. Yeah, June. Yeah, it's not that far away. And so we'll get a bunch of iOS updates and we'll get maybe some early betas and maybe we'll see some previews of how that stuff's going to work. Are we even excited for it anymore? Yeah, it's not that far away. even went so far to say that people within the Apple AI division believe work towards Siri might need to be scrapped and rebuilt completely because of how poorly it's been working. That's bad.

It takes some time to make things. I guess my question to you all is, do we see the new Siri's features in 2025? right? versus Siri, which wasn't that good back then either, versus Bixby on Samsung phones versus Alexa. But the thing about Bixby, because this was something Samsung was building into their phones, was it already had a specific ability to dig into apps on your Samsung phone and flip switches and set options for you and things like that. So I could ask it to turn the flashlight on or set an alarm, for you and things like that. We are not developers, so we do not know how hard that actually is. We just like to pretend for a little bit. They acquired Siri a very long time ago,

so the question becomes, did they ever completely rebuild it from the ground up, or did they just build on top of really old code? problem. We can air power it, we just never hear about it ever again. Well that's Apple's public facing trend, is they never publicly announce that something is delayed or not coming out anymore. Which is why it was surprising that this happened. This though is a statement to a paper. So this thing we told you about, it's delayed. We'll see. All right, it's time for a real quick break. When we get back, we're gonna dig into, dig.

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Through deeply personal stories like Burnett's, Sensory Overload highlights the urgent need for spaces, dental offices and beyond that embrace sensory inclusion. Because true inclusion requires action with environments where everyone feels safe. Watch Sensory Overload now, streaming on Hulu. All right, our next story we wanna talk about because news just keeps coming is the new DIG. Yes, can I take over this one?

Yes, because I have never used DIG in my life. Can I do my audience poll? Go for it. Who out there was an old DIG user? Cool. because I have never used dig in my life. Can I do my audience poll? Who out there was an old dig user? Cool. All right. fun, which it has not been lately. Yeah. Um, but within the last week, we got an announcement that dig is being updated. And, uh, purchased, they purchased it. We actually looked at him and I this morning, looked back.

So the dig nation podcast has come back. They, about six months ago started redoing it. I think the previous episode before that was 13 years ago. So it's, it's been a while. One of the first things they said in the opening was if you go to dig right now, it's been a while. Isn't Reddit a top 10 website on Planet Earth? Top five. I actually think it is top five. Top five.

For those of you who don't know about DIG, I'm going to do a very quick TLDR about what it was. Catch yourself. Yeah. It was a previous competitor to Reddit, kind of like front pages of the internet that relies on community votes to see, you know, what is the most happening story these days, rather than up-fills and down-votes, they had digs and buries, I realized when I said this to Adam this morning, bury B-U-R-Y, not the fruit. So that was your way of going up or down. When you're digging, aren't you like going, you're burying something, right?

No, I've never thought of it quite like that. I thought the same thing. I thought the same thing. Sorry, I just, they should have thought about that before they named the platform. Maybe that's why it went away. But so back then there was certainly like this kind of sibling rivalry between if you were on Reddit or if you were on Dig. I know you were. They should have. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

But it wasn't just between users that kind of had this rivalry. There's actually an email in 2005 of Alexis Ohanian emailing Steve Huffman saying, meet the enemy with a link to Digg. So they clearly were competitors in this community aggregated news site. And it was a fun time back then. But Digg had a bunch of issues, a main one being power users. So back then, if you were a very frequent user of the site, essentially your votes counted for more.

And then you could be in a group of power users and essentially sell links aggregated to the top. And what Dig did to combat that is they created, I think it was Dig 4.0 back then, which made a bunch of changes, really disregarded the community, and everyone left. Never good. It's never good when you're trying to make a whole bunch of money on something on a community-based

website, it feels like. So everyone kind of moved to Reddit. I remember being on Reddit back then and being like, Reddit won. We did it. Which is really lame to say out loud in front of a bunch of people right now. We did it. Which is really lame to say out loud in front of a bunch of people right now. But within the last week or two, Kevin Rose, the founder of Dig, he is collaborating with Alexis Ohanian, former co-founder of Reddit,

who left in 2020, and now they're launching the new dig. So this is like Magic and Bird coming together to launch a... Who? Bird? Sorry for that. Sorry. A bird? Do you want to do an analogy? Uh... It will come back to you on that? It's like... No. Okay, cool. I think that wouldn't have worked.

Somebody understood that, right? Okay, thank you. Magic? Sorry. Old rivals coming together to launch something new today. Is he not dead? So Magic? Magic, Johnson, Larry Bird, big rivals back in the day would be like crazy if they collaborated

on something. That's kind of my equivalent. Like if they were on a different team. This is basketball. Basketball. It's a sport. Sorry. And then they were enemies.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. Why were they enemies? Different teams. Okay. What about the like, that new kid that everyone's into? Michael Jor- No, the trade thing that you guys are trying to explain? Oh, this is new.

Yeah, sorry. I'm back in like, old school basketball, but that is also basketball. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. Sorry, Andrew. No, no, no, don't worry. That's okay. That's Okay. Yeah. All right. Sorry, Andrew, can you continue?

No, no, no, don't worry. That's okay. That's the waveform podcast. That's how it goes. We usually cut that out. I'll try and wrap this. So there's not a whole bunch of stuff that they've released so far, minus Kevin Rose saying I want to take out and read it directly, but it does seem like they're launching a

new one. They're also doing a Dignation Live podcast at South by. Tonight, I think. Is it tonight? Yeah, I think it's like tonight at six. So if any of you are interested in that, that sounds like a pretty cool time. like they're launching a new one. and that I think there will be third-party apps, really messing up a lot of moderation tools. As someone who uses Reddit sometimes, I'm excited for Dig just because of how much I feel like they've messed it up in the last year or two. Yeah, it feels like they saw a lot of opportunity with things that Reddit did wrong, and they put those things all on a whiteboard and they said,

if we do that, then people will switch to our thing and then we eat Reddit's lunch. Maybe that's the way they thought about it. we eat Reddit's lunch. good things for moderators, for communities, So maybe, maybe, maybe. Cool, okay, so never mind. Dig is screwed, nothing is going to happen. The other thing about these sites is they are so dependent on community, kind of like social networks, so they kind of require at least some mass migration of them to have a bunch of users, who is interested in Digg, Digg doesn't exist without a whole bunch of people there.

So that's a barrier that I see, but at least they're here, they're doing stuff. Yeah, I'll be interested to see what they say tonight. What are we announcing? Good question. Our first live event happened 20 minutes ago. That didn't do very well. Cool. I have, let's move on, I have one more quick question before we get to audience Q&A, which hopefully there's some people interested in asking questions. This is our first time at South By.

We've been to plenty of other tech events. I know both of you, I've never done Mobile World Congress, but you guys have. And we've done CES, and we've done kind of everything. And I think, you know, if you're watching the video, you don't get the general vibe about what's going on at those events. So I want to pose a question of what is the coolest, most unique, or weirdest thing you've ever witnessed at a tech convention? It can be someone trying to sell you something. It can be a piece of tech that looked really cool, but when you got closer to it, it wasn't quite as cool.

Or it could be one of the coolest things you've ever seen and you wonder where it went. I would think that came to mind. That's probably not where you were thinking, but it works for me. The first, I've only been to Mobile World Congress once. This year, by the way, was a really interesting lot of stuff happening there. But it's in Barcelona. It's every year. And the one year that I went, I had no clue what I was in there. of Barcelona back. Oh no. No, it was, and nothing happened. Oh good. And it was great. It was cool. I saw all sorts of architecture and all sorts of parts and I had some good food and it was a good time. And that was the coolest part of that Mobile World Congress for me.

So that's- That you walked? Yeah, that I saw a new city and it was like a cool experience and it had nothing to do with any of the tech at the show. We are really bad at experiencing new cities because like we flew in. When we landed at six last night, our plane is at five today. So we're really bad at experiencing and Austin's a really awesome city. I wish we were here a little longer.

Speak for yourself. Yeah, you're staying. But do you have a fun experience or. Oh, man. Hmm. I can. I like the ping pong robots at CES. They were there every single year. I feel like the first year they were there, Oh man. this roped off area around it And then immediately it was incredible. I have one small one, maybe a second funny story if we have time. We were looking at a BMW experience in one of their new autonomous,

I think it was like an i3, it was a smaller hatchback. It was kind of on the floor at the BMW booth with a wire around it, but they were nice enough to let us go in and film it with a bunch of people around. So Marques sits in the back seat to get a shot, and he goes to scoot over to the other seat, and all the BMW employees are like, no, no, hold on. That middle seat is actually cardboard underneath, and if you scoot across it, it will collapse, you'll fall into there. And so we had to walk out around. But that's just like, on video, all of this stuff looks really cool. and if you scoot across it, it will collapse. But that's just like, on video, all of this stuff looks really cool.

A lot of the stuff at these events are held together with twist ties and chewing gum. Many of the things at many of these events are not real. That's kind of the sad part about it, especially with cars. from a fellow YouTuber, good friend, I think it's 7,000 pound towing, 1,700 pound cargo capacity. a future at CES. 2015? I don't even know how long ago that was. 2017, and that never came out. But we got a really cool working car in person, and it turns out it's really, really easy to build one. And then you can roll it around CES or South by South, wherever you want.

And then it's really, really hard to build 100,000 of them. And so that's been my new philosophy, like when Tesla rolls out this robo van and they're like, trust me. We'll see. Ellis is over here and Adam, where'd Adam go? Adam's back there. They're waving their hands and they have microphones in their hands. Can you hear me now? Add Ellis. So, if anyone has a question.

Does anyone have questions? Who's near? Adam, I think this is a you. You've got the talkative side. This is a you problem, Adam. I see someone, hold on. Coming over. Oh, scary.

Scary, scary. We're gonna try and get as many questions as possible too. Yeah. Hello, my name is Tree Wendell. I'm from Ohio University. This're gonna try and get as many questions as possible too. Yeah. Hello, my name is Tree Wendell. I'm from Ohio University. This is also my first time at South by Southwest. I'm very excited to see you guys here. My question for you is if you had unlimited resources

to invent or create a ground-pacing piece of tech, no matter how futuristic or unrealistic, what would it be and why? Crumple phone. No. Thanks, Ellis. Well, unlimited resources is huge. I have a really quick one, if you guys wanna think of it. Thanks, Ellis. I have a really quick one if you guys want to think about it.

I just had a child, she's like 14 months old. Every piece of baby tech is absolute garbage. I would completely reinvent baby tech, make the apps actually useful. It does. There's a lot of babies out there. Dang. I never thought about that. Do you think there are as many babies as there are like non-babies?

No. I don't think so. There's a lot of babies though. There's a lot. All right, we got one over here. Unless, did I miss? Wait, they didn't have an answer. I want to hear an answer.

One is Marquez's. Unlimited resources. My brain weirdly went straight to like, Wait, they didn't have an answer. that has a personal understanding of everything in my phone, even though that's kind of impossible, and then can be super useful for me. I'm going to maybe do one of my senior projects in college that I got an A plus on by the way, so it's a good idea. Are you pitching this right now? We are at a place where I can do this. Okay, so imagine this, right? So it's an ISP, but for people's homes, okay?

And it's called Wi-Fi. This is already all built out. It's called Wi-Fi, so it's Wi-Fi, obviously. But it was right after the Google home, no, the Google home, no, the Google Wi-Fi first came out, where they were like, oh, mesh networks, we're going to do mesh networks. So imagine you have a node in your home, but it's like two gigahertz.

It goes super far, right? of other people's homes. So the whole idea is like we give everyone in the world free internet, but then you have like local ads that are running from like local businesses if you don't pay for the internet. But then if you're at home, you get to say, I don't use my bandwidth from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. So I'm going to give 85% of my bandwidth to the community. And then you get money off of your payment every month, the more bandwidth you give out.

Great pitch. So it's a pitch. Comcast stole this idea from me. Comcast did steal this idea. You have to be a Comcast customer in order to use the internet, and I think that everybody should have it. Not just Comcast. Man of the people?

Man of the people. Well, there's the answer. Okay. That does require unlimited resources. Thank you for the question. Yeah. Hi my name is Darius. I love the recent video called our foldables cooked. Great title. In the US, foldables really haven't gone mainstream. Do you think that Apple releasing a foldable will change that considering the premium they'll probably charge or do you think that Apple releasing a foldable will change that That's a part of the video I left out of the video, actually, Yes, I think Apple jumping in with a foldable will reinvigorate all of the competition,

all of the attention, all of the eyeballs, and will make that interesting again. But the premium that you mentioned is also real. all have this massive premium, So good question. This all works great for an audio medium. I've seen a lot of them on the subway. The category's growing, and that's even on non-Apple phones, which in the United States is a very low number. I think if they be a bigger super cycle

most popular iPhone in the United States because everyone gets a carrier plan and it's like three dollars more a month. They'll do it. Everyone will buy it. Cool. Next question right here. Hey, how's it going guys? I've been following you guys for a long time. Appreciate you guys.

Thank you very much. Do you think Apple will ever come out with a touch screen device like a Mac or even the studio display, because sometimes you're trying to edit and stuff like that and it sucks to not be able to just go there. What's the matte screen called? Nano texture? Nano texture would hate that.

They have a nano texture iPad. Yeah. Is it the same as that? Screens, your screen, like you accidentally touch it once. My Pro Display XDR is the messiest thing on my desk. I have a lot of thoughts on this. Is it the same on screens? if they gave something like a MacBook Air, for example, a touch screen, then iPad Pro with a keyboard not good for their other stuff. that they think exists. So no.

Next question over on this side. personally useful uses of AI, means. And Claude did something crazy for me last week where I'm building a website and a web builder that's really cheap and doesn't support tables. Oops. And I needed a table to build a table in it. So I'm building it in HTML, CSS style, like no idea what I'm doing. And my idea was like, oh, I'll use Google Sheets that'll like maintain the table and then I'll download the HTML, throw it in the embed. Google Sheets, when you download HTML, the table in the embed. That's what I'm using AI for. that we can dive into on YouTube, and suggest versions of that that could work for us. on something that has one total source on the internet

and it's from a forum from 50 years ago. And just asking it a question that I like, I can take the time to read a math book and dissect how it works, or I can have it tell me in baby talk how it works. and then I read the math book I don't really use AI at all currently, but Adam did use it the other day. We were thinking of a name for a segment in the podcast where we say the best thing and the worst thing of the month in tech. And it came up with the idea of crown and clown, which I thought was actually super creative. I could have done that. That's why I don't use AI. I have David.

That's right. You can't spell David without AI and a few other letters. That's why I don't use AI. and storytelling is top tier. And I would like to know how do you translate what you learn doing YouTube video into your podcast? How does one make a great podcast like that? We, yeah, I remember. So when we pitched the pod, when I pitched the podcast to Marquez, everyone on YouTube was kind of doing it. And I really wanted to make sure that we did it in my eyes, like correctly. So we went audio first first because in our eyes, and we're still very bad at this, but we wanted to be able to describe things to audio listeners. And we thought we needed to go through the audio version first.

So we did that. And I do think we learned a lot as, you know, now that we're on video, we've probably gone back a few steps. But that was our main goal of doing that. And then since then, in typical MKBHD fashion, we're shooting in the most unnecessary high definition and have way too many people working on it. But I think we've like been not way too many people, sorry, Adam and Ellis, I think we're going to do everything.

I think we're crazy efficient in terms of how I hear a lot of other podcasts. And I think keeping it close has let us of how I hear a lot of other podcasts. And I think keeping it close has let us do that and let us really grow the show organically and get to test new things and see it directly in the numbers. Yeah, I think when you are building other YouTube videos, you probably just develop strategies and concepts. It's kind of like making a normal YouTube video in a lot of ways. Because I've talked to people who do podcasts and they've only ever done a podcast and not done YouTube videos. And they're like, oh yeah, we record for three hours and we get 25 minutes of useful content.

We record for like two and we do like an hour and a half show, which I think is a pretty good hit rate. And in general, I think a lot of the production quality stuff that we do on the think because of that, it's just conversation. We're all friends and I think it's worked out really well from that. Even though everyone tells us we interrupt each other all the time, but. Sorry.

All right, we'll take one more quick break. But when we come back, many more interesting questions and all of the answers. Support for this show comes from Smartsheet. Do you ever wonder how many times a day you toggle between different screens, applications, and windows on your computer? Maybe 20 times? Okay, and windows on your computer, maybe 20 times? Okay, maybe 50 on a bad day? Try 1,200 times a day in a single day.

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that doesn't make your head hurt. With tools that allow your team to manage their workflow all in one place, you'll spend less time toggling and more time driving results, fostering creativity, and scaling to new heights. to manage their workflow all in one place. Thank you very much. First of all, I love your videos. I've been watching since I've been in elementary school. My name is Sarvesh. Feel old yet?

Feel old yet? How old are you? I'm 19. I am anxious. Returning to dust. My name is Sarvesh. I'm from the University of Tulsa and also the founder of Aura Patch and Glauq AI.

As a 19 year old in med tech, I wanted to ask you how can we integrate healthcare and also the founder of Aura Patch and Glauque AI. That's like the big next frontier of what all these there is a heavy emphasis on like, you have these devices on you all the time and we're in your pockets already, so we might as well be collecting and creating as much useful information for you as possible from that. And that works in the ecosystem of Apple

and the stuff that they do. So that makes it difficult for those outside to create something that you also carry on your person every day and also gives useful information. the stuff that they do. good job. as possible with the sensors and the things on your person thinks that I slept, which is crazy to say out loud. Long story short, yeah, there's a lot of data being collected and I'm pretty happy about a lot of the value I've gotten out of that. Yeah, I think that's pretty above my head. I know nothing about med tech or anything. I don't think I have a specific answer for that. I mean, I'm a very health anxious person. So if there are things that could help with that anxiety, I would love it.

Yeah, I mean, especially in the United States where healthcare is a bazillion dollars, it's very clear that the next kind of frontier there is preventative health. And I think that's what all actually have to go to the hospital and then go into bankruptcy. That'd be great. We have approximately six minutes before we want to do our trivia. So if we want to do some kind of rapid fire questions. Okay, yeah, right over here. Or quick ones or if you want to point them at somebody.

All right, hi, my name is Thachal. I'm from UT Dallas. This is my first time at South by Southwest, so it's pretty cool to see you guys in person. So yesterday I attended a talk by the CDO of D-Wave, so they're invested in quantum computing. So right now everyone's talking about AI, and it kind of reminded me a few years ago, nobody really understood AI, but now everybody somehow understands AI. And I feel that we're on the frontier of quantum computing, especially with what Microsoft did, I think a couple of weeks ago.

So just based off that, what's your opinion of quantum computing, and do you see it being relevant in the next five years? I'll leave this to you, too. So just based off that, with Cleo Abram and I went to IBM to my parents I could say, and theirs, but how do I tell people for 50 years. I remember reading Wired Magazine when I was six years old, and they were like, next year's the year. We're going to change everything, everything's going to be better.

And I know that there are huge advancements being made in this field, and we're getting up to these insanely high qubit numbers that we didn't have before, Marques, tell me what that's actually useful for. And then also, is it real? It's not very consumer facing. That was part of what we talked about in the video. It doesn't really touch the end consumer. every time they pass this milestone qubit number, Hey, I'm Phulket. I'm I work at a privacy tech startup based out of New York called Cloak. I had a question around AI hardware What do you think is the final format of AI hardware on body that would win out? Would it have to eventually be baked into a smartwatch or a smartphone or do you think there's space for a

Rabbit oven or a human AI or a meta ray band to eventually win out as well? Can I just are you recording on your glasses right now? I think glasses is the answer and I think you're the exact reason why that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I think there are so many cool ideas of things that seem like naturally they could work. Glasses are obviously one of them. The pin, I'm not against the idea,

like a little simple garment that you hopefully can charge up. Like that stuff could be cool, but they are so up against the limit of how much data they can get from your phone. like a little simple garment that you hopefully can charge up. and is useful to you, But it is a serious challenge. Yeah, I think the absolute best way to drive adoption of a new technology is to integrate it into an existing piece of hardware that people already use. So AI, for example, on smart watches, on earbuds, on your phone,

they can all sort of interact with each other. A lot of people are watches, most people use earbuds. Last question. Adam can do his and then we'll do one more. I'm Cody from Austin, Texas. I'm wondering if you had unlimited resources, what kind of technology or product would you want to create and why? Crumple phone. If I had unlimited resources, I think I would want to make my own

ideal phone for myself, Thanks. Thanks. From London, anyone? Well, shout out. Anyways, so thank you for the last question. Yeah, you spoke a lot about AI and stuff. I just wanted to know for YouTube itself, do you feel like it's going to help the creativity?

Because I want to enter that field just graduated. So just, yeah, do you think it's going to boost creativity or kind of just make the content really similar? So yeah, just a think it's gonna boost creativity or kind of just make the content really similar? So yeah, just a quick one both Yeah, so I think the trend since I started making videos online has been that the barrier for entry has gotten lower and lower And lower so it's easier and easier for anyone with an internet connection to make something which is awesome. That's exciting It's made the masses of like tons of YouTube videos being able to come out super super cool with an internet connection to make something, right after this, where we're talking about, a YouTube video just like that.

And I think using AI as a tool to brainstorm and think of new unique ways to do things and come up with ideas that have never been done before, and then how to execute on them and using all these tools to try to make something that's never been made is raising the ceiling more and more. So I think it's both. I'm hopefully using AI to do that one. But I understand that everyone wants to make YouTube videos and I think that's going to be something we see a lot more of with AI too. Yeah, I think it's a combination of there's a lot of AI slop being thrown on YouTube right now, which is really destroying a lot of the stuff on there. a good human that is making human content

And if you have watched waveform, you know, we like to have a little bit of trivia on the show. So what we're going to do is have Ellis pull up the answers to your trivia questions. I have the answers. And I don't think we have the one thing we brought for this trip was our whiteboards and we did not bring them. We forgot the lights. Cool. We will just say our answers out loud at the same time.

We'll each say our answers and then Ellis will be the judge of who wins a trivia point. Who knows this audience the best? Okay, we're gonna, we gotta speed through these. We're running out of time. So get ready boys. Adam, hit it. Adam, hit it. That's right everybody.

Welcome to trivia. All right. We asked everyone in this room, do you have a case on your phone? David, what percent, prices, right rules of people in this room have a case on your phone? David, what percent, prices, right rules, of people in this room have a case on their phone? Prices, right rules? Prices, right rules. 81.

Fantastic. Andrew. 95. 95. Marques. 75. Marques gets it, it was 80. I'm sorry, David.

No! Oh my God! You said 81? You said 81? Wow. You said 81? $80,000. $85,000. Marques gets it. It was $80,000. I'm sorry, David. Oh my God. You said $81,000? You said $81,000? Wow. Question number two. What is the number one feature people in this room look for when buying a smartphone between performance, camera, battery, build quality, and the display?

I'm going to go camera. Camera. Battery. You're all wrong. It was performance. Wow. What? They're all good. You can buy any phone. Alright question number three what was the worst piece of tack released in 2024? I'm gonna do as many of these as we got time for. The humane pin. The humane pin. The humane pin. Marques? Somebody... yeah it's the humane pin. It's the humane pin by far. But notable answers include Apple intelligence

and someone put blue sky. Didn't like that. Wow. Let's go. Find David. Wait, wait, someone. Wow. Rude.

Final question, guys. Yeah. Who had the worst takes on Waveform in 2024? Oh no. David didn't know this was a question. Andrew. Andrew? I was a question. Andrew. Andrew? I'll say Andrew.

Andrew? I think they said it was me. No, the answer is me! You're all haters and I love it! Were there any other questions? That was way faster than I expected. Do you think more people in here do video or audio? Oh, listen to the podcast video or audio? Yeah. Any other questions? Oh, wasn't there a third option of I don't want to wait for him and I'm not sure why I'm here right now Number of you have never heard of waveform. I don't know if that was I think there's a QR code to subscribe on the side Yeah, just say it's not there anymore. They're all here for today explained which is coming up next. Okay, they're here. I'll go audio

The answer was video. Let's go. I'll be real. I was not keeping track of who got points So we're gonna need to review the tape But as of this season, David is still crushing. And I will crash and burn in the extravaganza for sure. Yes. We have four minutes. Is there like one more? We have four minutes.

We have four minutes. Is there one more question? Because we cannot go over that a lot. Oh, there's a lot more. I'm really sorry for everyone else. Speed questions. Speed, yeah. All right.

You had your hand up earlier and I missed you. Hi y'all, doing Alfredo from San Diego. Let's cook through some speed questions. Speed, yeah. All right. You had your hand up earlier and I missed you. Hi, how y'all doing? Alfredo from San Diego. I have a really fast question. So I'm a long-term SE user, Rother SC Wave. Ayo. Touch ID love, hate the notch.

Where do I go next? Because... I'm sorry to say that touch ID is gone. It's going to be gone. because. I'm sorry to say that Touch ID is gone. It's going to be gone. You might as well go 16E, which is a crazy recommendation. It depends on your budget. is a thing, you can healthily go with almost any of the newest three iPhones. The breaker was no.5 selfies.

Yeah, that's tough. Are you opposed to Android? I kind of figured that. Cool, another one real quick. Yeah. Also, 12 minutes is a lot. Hey, JT and Austin. So, Mark, going back to your first test model last when you did videos, you had an antidote of being at an intersection, car

coming up to you from back and you felt your Tesla was moving a little bit nudging. And so there's other consumers at the time. It seemed like that was kind of a thing that testers were able to do. Going back then and what you know now do you feel like that was a feature that it was doing or is just it? Well that was a long time ago. I don't remember exactly if I know. So I'm a fan of like the car having sensors and being able to intervene when it detects

something happening and has done that in multiple directions and multiple times over the course of my ownership of those cars. So I'm generally a fan of that. the car having sensors and being able to intervene All right, thank you. My name is Jack. I study mechanical engineering in Germany and I use ChetBT for almost everything when working on my car or learning from math or physics or anything. And I just think I submit so much data and we're all talking about getting AI on the phone and I just think when it's in the app and maybe on my internet browser in my photos and in my WhatsApp and everything, what is your take on this whole data privacy thing? You know what I mean? Like isn't that like at least a bit concerning? We're always talking about getting more AI,

more on the phone, on the glasses, on the pin. I just think about yeah, maybe data privacy might be a thing, yeah? I just, yeah that's my take. We have 10 seconds to answer, so's my take. My high level take is that there is constantly a question that these companies and all of us are asking about the direct trade-off between how much data you have to give up and the convenience that you get back from it. And the more they push that envelope of, well, you have to give up more data, but you get more convenience. Okay, you have to give up more data, but you get more convenience.

to offer more things in exchange for our data. We are over time now and before we get physically kicked off of the stage, thank you all for coming. This was super fun. All right. That was it. That was a lot of fun. Thanks again for the people who were there, for submitting all the answers to the survey and for everyone who gave us ideas on what to do, we thought it turned out pretty good. But there is one thing that we didn't get to do on stage, which is Andrew, you didn't get to read us out. I didn't read out live, a little sad, but huge thanks to the Vox Media team who set all of that up and let us do our first live show. Totally no issues at all.

It was awesome, smooth sailing and Slido actually helped us with the survey thing. That went really smoothly too. Definitely recommend that for a live show like that. And other than that, Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Rovin were partner with the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by VeinSingh. Thanks to Smartsheet for their support. Wherever creativity is showcased and thriving, that's where you'll find Smartsheet. Like at South by Southwest, which attracts a diverse audience of forward thinkers and change makers.

And whether they are reimagining an industry, scaling a business, or creating art, Smartsheet is there to ensure their work flows. Smartsheet's workflow tools facilitate unmatched collaboration, allowing your team to thrive. Let your team reach their greatest potential with Smartsheet. Smartsheet, where work flows. Learn more at smartsheet.com slash Vox. Vox Creative.

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