Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Would You Watch YouTube at 4x Speed?
Episode Date: February 7, 2025This week, Marques and Andrew kicked things off by trying to explain to David the absurdity of the Luka Doncic trade in tech terms that he would understand. After that, it was all about the Pixel 4a b...attery update issue. Then they discuss a new app that Apple just dropped and a new app that Adam is really excited about. They wrap it all up talking about Meta trying to make the Metaverse happen, YouTube experimenting with 4x speed, and Andrew ranting about streaming services. There was a surprising amount of news to go over despite not having any new gadgets to discuss. Enjoy! Links: 9to5Google - Pixel 4a Battery Update Verge - New YouTube 4x speed feature Apple Invites app Partiful app Business Insider - Meta article Tapestry app 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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Bye bye, Partyful.
Hello, Apple invites.
All right, I'll jump in.
Wait, Apple rhymes with Partyful.
You could have just...
Not really.
Apple, what?
Bye bye, Partyful.
Hello, Apple.
That rhymes way more than what you said.
It's missing a syllable. Party. It's missing a syllable.
It's missing a syllable, but it rhymes.
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 this week, we've got a new Apple app that
actually looks pretty solid.
We're going to talk about why Meta is considering 2025
a make or break year for some reason.
Pixel 4a update that's doing way too much for some reason
as well.
And also-
What is going on in the episode?
And we've got a new app in the timeline app category
Adam is excited about.
And then we'll end with a rant.
We'll end with a rant from Andrew.
But first, the biggest news of the week,
the NBA trade deadline is coming up.
Sometimes news transcends the niche that we're in.
It really does.
And I think we need to talk about
Luka Dantjic getting traded.
Absolutely, unforeseen.
I know David, you probably saw this news
and were immediately like, whoa, huge trade. Crazy. The only thing that I know David, you probably saw this news and were immediately like, whoa, huge trade.
Crazy.
The only thing that I know about this
is that they posted it on The Verge.
Which makes no sense to me.
Yeah, actually, that's hilarious.
But I didn't look into it.
Perfect, I figured we would explain it to you
in other terms.
In tech terms.
In like tech terms.
And then hopefully you will understand better
how shocked you are.
Cause I remember where I was when I found out.
I read it on the R hockey subreddit.
Like I was just on my phone and it was like,
how would you describe the Luka Dantius trade
in terms of hockey players?
And I was like, wait, Luka got traded?
I know him as, he's a really good Overwatch player.
This traded just means that they offered him more money, so he went to a different team.
No.
That's signing.
So there are contracts and company owners.
So here's the actual, let me find the actual trade just so I can make.
Yeah, while you find that, it seems like every niche of the internet is doing like a,
how do I explain the Luka trade in X terms?
So is that big of a deal?
It's a huge deal, yeah.
So we're going to try and do it in tech terms.
Just one guy though, right?
There's a couple other things,
but the main meat and potatoes of the deal
is like one player for one player.
And we're gonna talk about mostly those two players.
So they usually do it. There's all sorts of packages's there's all sorts I feel bad for the other guy because they're
only talking about the Luca guy does nobody care about the other guy well
well explain to you about the other his name is Anthony Davis that's the first
time I've heard of that he's like sorry Anthony an amazing basketball player he
played in the Olympics for Team USA this year.
Did they win?
Totally dominated.
Dominated, yeah.
That's cool.
Great basketball player.
Okay.
So the thing is, give me the-
Top level, like face of the franchise players
typically do not get traded.
Doesn't LeBron move around like all the time?
LeBron moves around on his own accord.
He chooses to.
He doesn't get traded.
So he'll decide to sign a contract with the Lakers.
And then now the Lakers own his contract.
This might be a good point.
The difference between like trading and signing
as a free agent.
So like your contract goes X amount of years.
And if it's within that X amount of years,
you go to another team,
it means teams agreed on a trade.
And you have to move?
Yes.
So your contract can be traded.
Wow.
But if you wait till the end of that contract
and you go to free agency, then you get to choose
if a team offers you money, where you go.
So this is a trade.
Luca, did Luca know about this?
He didn't.
So nobody knew about this.
So that's what I'm saying, like franchise players,
like some of the biggest names in the NBA,
you think like Steph Curry.
Like when you think of Steph Curry,
you think of the Warriors.
The Warriors will not trade Steph Curry.
All of the fans would be mad.
All of the teammates would be mad.
Wherever he goes, they won't, like the fans,
it would just be weird.
It just wouldn't work.
What's another NBA player you know?
Just like a big name. Kevin Durant, have you heard of him?
A little.
Giannis?
No.
What about Joël Embiid?
Joël, Yao Ming?
Yao Ming, okay.
So he was on the Rockets.
And he wasn't, you know, he was a franchise, sure.
Franchise player, let's go with that.
Okay.
The Rockets fans love this guy. They wouldn't trade him, even if you offered another franchise player, let's go with that. The Rockets fans love this guy.
They wouldn't trade him,
even if you offered another great player,
sometimes they'll offer two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight players, future draft picks,
a whole bunch of other assets,
and they still won't trade this guy.
Luca's that guy for the Dallas Mavericks.
Okay, so he's like Steph Curry.
Yes, exactly.
Let's do the tech version of this.
I think Mark has brought up yes, yes, no earlier,
which is an old segment from Reply All.
We're gonna describe this to you in tech terms,
and then we'll see if you can explain
the severity of the trade afterwards.
Okay. And see what that means.
Can I go first?
I have a pretty simple one.
Okay, so the trade is Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis.
There are a couple other small assets involved.
I'm gonna do Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis
and a first round pick.
Because that is part of it.
There was a couple other players.
And I think what's important here
is who initiated the trade.
It was the team that Luka's on, the Mavericks.
They wanna get rid of him?
Well, they did get rid of him.
That was Anthony's reaction. so what would your reaction be is if I have an s24 ultra, okay?
and you have an
s20 Fe and galaxy buds and I said from the same year so you're comparing Anthony whatever
20 plus yeah
Anthony Davis to an S20 FE, S20 plus. It's not bad.
And I come to you and I say, I want your S20 FE and Galaxy Buds.
I will give you an S24 Ultra.
Oh.
Will it be my reaction?
Yeah.
No.
Really?
Wait.
Oh, yes.
Sorry. I was thinking the other way around.
So like in my eyes it's.
Cause the Galaxy Buds are not that expensive.
They're not that expensive.
They're fine, it's a nice thing to have.
The S20 FE or I could even go S21 plus maybe.
Maybe S21 plus.
But like a phone that works totally fine for you.
Yeah, but S20 for Ultra is like.
Exactly.
Much better.
It's good, you know, we're getting to this point of security updates
are seven years for Samsung phones now, right?
So like you're kind of as taking the old phone.
Is the security updates like the contract, you know,
seven years?
I'm thinking of his age because Lucas 25, Anthony Davis.
25?
31 or something.
25 years old?
Yeah.
So like I'm giving you
I'm turning to dust you something that's,
you know, it's gonna lose security updates
in like three years, but it's still a good phone right now.
But you're giving me a phone that's better
and also is going to get security updates
for six more years than...
Are you talking, no, I would get that.
Sorry, you would get that, yeah.
I would get that, yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Okay.
Because he's 25. Yeah. So he's, unless he like breaks his leg. Yeah, he would get that. Yeah. I mean, yeah. OK. Because he's 25.
Yeah.
So unless he breaks his leg.
Yeah, he's got a bright future ahead of him.
I have another version of this.
OK.
I see that you have an M4 MacBook Pro.
I would like to trade you my Intel i9 MacBook Pro and AirPods.
What do you think?
No.
Come on.
Why would I ever do that? It's pretty good. Although do you think? No. Come on.
Why would I ever do that?
It's pretty good.
Although this trade would be not.
You are.
The i9 is famously a not good MacBook.
The i9 is Anthony Davis.
It's fine.
It's great.
It's pretty good.
It's overpowered but you gotta cool them down.
Yeah, it sometimes isn't the healthiest.
Yeah, and the battery's gonna run out at some point.
And it's probably got a lower future light.
If you put it in the freezer it works better
Yeah, yeah, and when you first got it, it was like the best thing ever best. Yeah, okay
I got one for you. Okay, the Fuji X 100 6 okay for the Sony a6500 plus a memory card
Well, they 6500 at least is
It has interchangeable lenses.
It does.
But no.
It's a good camera.
Plus a memory card.
Plus a memory card.
Do I get to have a memory card at my own camera?
No.
You have to buy your own.
Well, then it won't work.
You have to buy your own.
You have to buy your own.
Oh yeah, no.
Wait, so why did they trade this guy?
Okay, the word on the street,
I mean, cause nobody saw this trade coming.
This was a very, you know, trades that are this big
typically leak a little bit.
Like people start talking about, oh, this guy
is not happy with the team he's on.
Maybe they'll get moved.
Nobody saw this coming.
The players didn't see this coming.
The coaches didn't see this coming.
The owners didn't really know about it.
Wait, so the GMs made the trade.
What's a GM?
A general manager.
Grandmaster?
General manager of the teams.
General Manager.
Essentially they run the team and the organization.
Okay.
And they quietly, these two organizations
had conversations with each other
and no other team made the trade and that was it.
And typically, a big player like this,
you shop him around.
Like, okay, this is it. Everyone wants Luca.
Everyone would take Luca.
Is he the best player in the NBA?
He's one of the top five best players in the NBA.
And he's 25?
And he's 25.
Wow.
And if any other GM had known that he was available,
they would have offered everything to get him.
So is this like a backdoor deal?
It seems like the only rumor is, you know,
he was scheduled to get a $350 million super max
for his next contract, and he's sometimes a little bit
out of shape in the off season.
Which I understand because he is top 500 rank
in Overwatch 2.
He is nasty at Overwatch 2.
Wait, really?
And Overwatch.
Wait, he's top 500?
How does this man have time for both these things?
How are you elite at two different things?
That's crazy.
There's a lot of athletes who are really good
at video games sometimes.
That makes sense.
There was a hockey player who got traded
because they said he played too much Fortnite,
but he's like one of the best in the league.
My argument would be Luca could show up
with a pack of cigarettes in his mouth
and I would still take him because he's so good at basketball.
So my question is, why didn't they shop him around?
That is everyone's question.
No one knows the answer.
That seems sketchy.
Yeah.
Yeah, just one of those weird things that happens at the NBA trade deadline
and more weird trades have happened.
It's just one of those weird news headlines.
Even if he got 350 million,
do you think he could have gotten more?
So that's the super max that you're eligible for
when you play with a certain team
for a bunch of years in a row.
So he's been on Mavericks his entire career and
How long has this entire career?
Five years so far.
And he would have been eligible for
He started at 20 years old in the NBA?
Yeah, and a top draft pick he would have been eligible for- He started at 20 years old in the NBA? Yeah, and a top draft pick and would have been eligible
for the most expensive contract in NBA history,
which honestly, you pay the man, he's worth it.
But for some reason, they didn't feel like paying him.
I'll throw one more tidbit out there.
The Mavericks just announced that they're refunding
season ticket holders who are bad enough. About the trip.
Holy crap, dude.
There were like people with signs outside of the stadium.
No way.
Really?
Wow.
Look, there's a reason the Lakers said yes.
Well, okay.
Oh, they got traded Lakers.
Yeah, so the Lakers got Luca.
And look, if you're the Lakers and you have Anthony Davis
and somebody calls and goes,
hi, we'd like Anthony Davis.
You're like, no.
And they're like, we'll give you Luca.
Like, he'll be on your front step tomorrow.
Yes, of course.
I'll personally drive him.
Do the Lakers still have LeBron?
Yes.
Yes.
And so you know who LeBron is, that's important.
I think everyone knows LeBron and LeBron's one of the faces
of the league and he's 40 and he's been
One of the legends of the game forever
He's probably got one two three more years left and the Lakers is looking forward to their future
We're like, this guy's gone. Who do we have? Yeah, nothing and the Lakers have always been a very famous team
They've always had some franchise face right whether it's Kareem or Kobe or Shaq.
Like they just, now it's LeBron and who are they gonna have?
Luca.
This is like the Lakers looking forward and being like,
who can we have?
And then someone knocks on their front door
and hands them a briefcase full of money.
It's like they didn't even go out looking yet.
Yeah.
And it just came to them.
So now just to test your understanding,
just to make sure you understand the trade,
can you explain the Luka AD trade in Pokémon trading cards?
Do I have to explain how the game works?
You just have to...
It's card for card.
It's like trading Golem, who's very good, for...
Who else is pretty good?
I feel like it's almost like trading,
if we're talking just about like strength in battling,
like Golems, I would say like Charizard EX,
because Charizard's the big flash,
flashy like bright card that everyone wants,
but in terms of battling, it's not really that good.
You have to evolve so much.
That's a great question.
First level Charmander's not very good.
You have to evolve Golem a lot too.
You do, but it's so much easier.
And Geodude and Graveler are not very good cards. The new Graveler's not so bad do but it's so dude and Graveler not very good cards
There the new Gravelers. Maybe this is a bad
This one way down
So much health though, and you just played drug it on I mean, it's a hundred else. It's not like a ton, you know
but anyway, I
Think that's a salad. I know that's pretty good. Yeah, okay, yeah, we'll say that. Well, and just real quick, any, well, okay, done with NBA.
If you want to come back to the Tech Podcast, we're here.
We're back.
Did you pull anything good in the new packs?
Yeah, actually.
Oh, did you?
Yeah, so I did one of the, I saved up a bunch of hourglasses and did one of the 10 cuts
at once, which was a bad decision.
Don't do that.
Always is, I remember that one. Delayed gratification, my friends, is worth it. Always.
They have this option where you can just open 10 packs at the same time,
and it's just like super fast. That's lame.
So I completely disagree.
Wow. That is how I play basically every game.
I just hoard all of my gold until I can buy everything.
That's like so not fun though.
The progression isn't there.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like hard, hard, hard, hard, hard,
now you're super overpowered.
And then I'm awesome.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Like doing all the side quests
before you go after the first boss
and then just one shot them.
Yeah.
I don't know, I've gotten a lot of cool cards.
Yeah.
I don't know this one as well.
I think I got one good like
What's like immersive
Dragon type guy or like I didn't get an immerse on a source kind of guy But then I also got one like that looks like a lawnmower and I just don't it's real time on is doing any in the fourth
Generation there's this rotom Pokemon. It's an electric ghost Pokemon and he goes inside household appliances
All the rotom cards are bad, but they're cute and fun.
So I think that's the point of them.
Same.
I'm just going to cut this off right here.
Anyway, so yeah, Luca and AD got traded, a whole bunch more trades are happening, NBA
deadline, all sorts of fun stories there.
Anyway, this is a tech podcast, allegedly.
So there is an interesting tech story
that I didn't find out about until today.
That is plaguing Pixel 4a.
I don't know if you guys have heard of this.
You know who you are.
So Pixel 4a, a couple years old,
but apparently Google has started pushing
a software update to it that has dramatically lowered
the battery capacity by up to 40%.
Yeah.
Now reading this headline seems kind of insane.
Like why would that happen?
Yeah.
And so if you go back,
it seems to read that there was some sort of battery issue
starting to pop up with old Pixel 4a's
and probably enough of them started to pop up
that Google saw a trend slash pattern
and just to be safe decided to just nip it in the bud
and dramatically lower the charging capacity for Pixel 4A's
for everyone who owns them.
Yeah.
Which is a bummer if you own one,
because now your phone has a little over half the battery
it just did the day before that update got pushed.
Yeah.
But at least it won't explode now.
Yeah, Google has been very vague about why
they're pushing this update, but they
said it was apparently related to battery concerns.
But every single thing that they did
indicates that these batteries were probably going to blow up.
It would just be a safety concern.
You just don't want a safety concern.
Yeah, they noted it as a emergency maintenance release,
and they cut the voltage of the battery from 4.4 or 5 volts to 3.9
5 volts which doesn't sound like a lot but that cuts the usable charge down by about 44%
According to testing from Android Authority. So has anyone checked on the 5? I mean the 4a 5g
Yeah, but it might have just been that specific battery cell.
They are also offering free battery replacements,
Google store credits, and a cash payment of $50.
So it seems like they're really trying to motivate people
to swap out their battery.
Do we have a 4A?
Probably.
I don't think so.
I thought we had every Pixel.
Yeah, we do.
We might.
I'm going to go check and see if our 4A is doing anything weird.
Loved the 4A.
It was such a good phone.
It was $350.
I think it's on top of the cabinet or the bottom.
I'll check after the bottom.
I'll check after.
Okay.
And if there is anything weird about it,
I will insert a clip.
It's definitely not on fire.
Well, unless it happened in like the last 30 minutes, but.
Some other crazy things about this,
this update also gets rid of the adaptive charging feature
if you didn't have it on before.
And if you know the battery indicator and the status bar,
you can either just have the picture of the battery
draining or the actual number.
If you didn't have the number on before,
it gets rid of the option to even have the number on,
which is crazy.
Yeah, it seems like Google is very afraid of these phones.
If you have a Pixel 4a, let us know if you got this update
or if you've noticed anything weird about your phone.
And I'm curious to see what we see.
Honestly, I know it's cool that they're doing
a battery replacement.
At this point, for whoever's still using one,
if you can prove it,
they should just give you the latest A model.
Yeah.
Like, this is probably not that many people,
like a couple thousand maybe, just give them the update.
I don't know.
That was a very popular phone.
It was a popular phone, where what?
40 million.
Five years.
Five generations past it, and it's already the
like more middle-range one so maybe not I'm sure there's plenty but I think like
at this point if you're giving $50 credit and batteries I think you should
just give them a free upgrade. Yeah that's true so yeah if you're out there
be careful. Stay safe out there friends. Don't put your Pixel 4a in your pocket.
Don't go to sleep if your Pixel 4a is plugged in.
Next is something that's very dear to mine and Adam's hearts.
Very much so.
Do you want to talk about it, Dave?
You psychos.
We are certified speed consumers.
Absolute animals.
Yeah, so Adam and I famously consume content at 2x speed.
Famously?
Yeah.
OK, nice.
Maybe infamous.
Depending on who you ask.
YouTube Premium is testing a bunch
of new experimental features.
Not on my account.
Wow.
Do you have premium?
Yeah, and I wish I had this feature.
I didn't get it.
I've been checking, refreshing every day.
Wait, you're right.
I have a CD.
No, it's a Labs feature. You have to turn it on, which I what's rushing. Oh wait. You're right. I have a seat. Oh, no, it's a labs feature
You have to turn it on. Oh
Which I did not do I was the feature. So, okay
There are many features there may features one of them is that you can now watch videos in up to 4x speed
iOS and Android
That is a little I've been trying to train myself
for 3X, like I've been working on it.
2.5 I can still do.
3X, you know how your brain takes in information
and processes it, right?
Yeah.
You know how it does that.
Okay.
Famously.
Famously.
Famously.
I feel like when I'm consuming things at 3X,
it's like 5% too fast for my brain to be able to understand what's happening before the next thing is coming in.
Yeah.
Do you know how to read fast?
No.
There's a way to read fast where instead of reading each word out loud in your head, you just let your eyes scan it, because your brain will catch up and process it.
That's how you gotta start watching these YouTube videos.
My brain doesn't work like that.
Just stare at the screen, glaze over,
and just let it all come in.
I was just editing a short,
and we were trying to get our shorts under 60 seconds.
And sometimes if we record the whole short
and I edit it and it's all good and I get to the end,
it'll be like a minute and four seconds.
And the only way I've like trimmed all the air
and I've cut it up perfectly.
And the only way for me to get it under a minute
is to speed it up by like 5%.
And I'll go and I'll highlight the whole thing
and I'll set it to 105% and I'll play it back.
And it'll sound just a little bit too fast.
And I don't know if I want to publish that,
because it doesn't really sound right,
it's just a little bit too fast or whatever.
You guys are telling me you listen to videos
at 250% speed of what they were meant to be watched at.
And want more.
And you want more?
Well, I don't know if I want more.
I mean, it would be useful to have 300, you know what I mean?
What's an example of a video that you would watch? I don't know if I want more. I mean, it would be useful to have 300, you know what I mean?
What's an example of a video that you would watch?
Bro, the Met on YouTube is like four hour videos right now.
But, watching that is?
So those videos, I feel like,
aren't really meant to be watched the whole time.
You kind of listen to it in the background,
you watch some of it, you glance over,
maybe it's like a podcast,
like it's like on the Bluetooth in the car.
Yeah, that's not a good example.
For when I'm researching something,
I need to like watch as many videos as I can.
And I like just consume the information, you know?
I'm like, take it in, take it in, take it in.
Just leave it on 2X.
And I have to watch multiple different videos
explaining the topic to kind of get it
in multiple different ways in my head and so the faster I can
Ingest that information the better I get that I guess it's just that those probably are not very visual explainers
Because I can process the audio at 2x. I absolutely don't think you can process well you could pause it
You know so like yeah, I'm just letting
Then it's zero
Like pause it and then it catches up
I'm watching an explainer about something and I'm really confused about like a graphic on screen or something like that
I'll just pause it and then I'll like wrap my head around it like okay go on and then continue
Mm-hmm. I wonder if the amount of time you would have taken up
Watching at 1x or watching at 2x and then pausing. I mean I'm not sitting there for four minutes looking at the graphic
You know, yeah, but that's how much time I save watching 2x. I pausing for graphics. I mean, I'm not sitting there for four minutes looking at the graphic, you know?
Yeah.
But that's how much time I save watching 2x.
I guess just as a video editor, my feathers are ruffled.
OK, here's a question for you.
Yes.
Do you edit videos at 2x?
I do.
What?
Yeah.
No.
If you press L in Final Cut, it goes at 2x.
This podcast is only edited in 2x.
I do that.
Let's go.
Editing a podcast is really good,
especially editing a podcast you were part of,
because you kind of know what's happening.
That's how I used to do first passes when I edited.
A first pass maybe.
The main way I edit videos is ripple trim back,
ripple trim forward, and add edit.
So it's like it cuts out everything behind it,
adds an edit, or cuts out everything in front of it.
And so you're just like,
oh, here's a part, ripple trim back.
Here's a part, ripple trim back, add edit, move forward.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So how do you, I mean, you edit at 1x speed.
I do, I edit everything at 1x speed,
very meticulously, and I make
You're still quite fast.
eighth of a second, 10th of a second,
fraction of a second adjustments to cut.
I do that too.
Yeah.
Well, you could still do that after you have the rough draft.
Yeah, first pass.
First pass.
He's saying like first pass to find the takes.
Yeah, although I will say I probably never watched a video at regular speed before publishing
it.
I think you should because of how many other people will.
Yeah, that's true.
Also this has bitten me in the butt before
because there's been times where like you guys
drop in a frame link of a video that's going live
and I'll watch it on like 1.75x speed.
Why does-
For those that don't know, Frame.io is a service we use
to like leave comments on each other's videos.
And it's limited to 1.75.
Yeah, it's limited to 1.75.
Stupid. Perfect. But even still, I've missed certain weird cuts
or things like that because in the speeding,
it just won't play that back.
When you're playing back at 1.75,
you're going to miss frames.
It has to skip frames.
Yeah, but I start feeling-
So if there's a flash frame or you miss
or something extends for one or two too many frames
into the next scene or something weird happens like that,
you'll just miss it in the edit
and you have to watch it at 1x to catch that.
I feel like I always catch those in frame
even after multiple people have watched
and now I'm realizing, because I'm the only person
that I feel like watches things at 1x.
I watch at 1x.
Okay.
I'm a 1x person.
I'm too ADHD, dude.
If I'm trying to watch back a 17 minute video
that I'm trying, you know, it's like,
I'll get kind of antsy and then I'll have to pick up my phone.
It also depends on the video.
Check Tiktok.
Check Tiktok.
2X speed.
You can start spelling Tiktok.
Like some people talk really slow.
So when you put it at 2X speed, it almost sounds like now they're talking normal.
Well, and when you're used to watching 2X content, 1X speed feels like it's taking forever.
And real life goes so slow for me.
You guys sound so slow right now.
When you...
That I can't do.
Yeah.
In re...
Yeah.
You know, fair.
I'm broken, Marques.
Fair.
I just feel like you wouldn't watch a movie at 2X.
You wouldn't watch a...
That's art though.
You wouldn't watch a Kurtzgesagt video at 2X.
No, I wouldn't watch.
I do.
You watch those at 2X? Yeah. I don't watch movies Kurtz-Gazard video at 2X. No, I wouldn't. I do. You watch those at 2X?
Yeah.
I don't watch movies at 2X.
I watch anything that looks like I'm supposed
to be taking artistic value from it.
I watch those at 1X.
Same.
But it's information based.
So waveform 1X.
I aim to make videos.
2X baby.
I watch waveform at 2X.
I aim to make videos as a creator
that people watch as intended.
Yeah, that makes sense.
But if this...
What if your intention is 2x?
Then publish it at 2x.
Publish it?
Oh, I see.
Then just make a 2x export and upload that.
And then just title it, watch this at 0.5x speed.
If you need to be real time, yeah.
I want to do this so bad.
Don't ever do that.
Can I do a clip?
This whole conversation will be a clip.
Be short at 2x, 4x short.
Publish this at 0.5x.
And say watch at 2x.
And tell people to watch at 2x.
That's actually a great idea.
So this is like a 30 minute clip.
That's a great job.
Okay, so back to the story.
So apparently they're going to allow 4x.
I don't know what this is for.
That's scary.
You would be a superhuman
if you were able to consume at 4x.
I feel like it's more for rushing forward in the video,
but I don't know, you don't just click around in that case.
You just hold.
You can just hold.
Hold space to fast forward.
Yeah, but does that go to 2x?
That does 2x.
So, oh, it could do 4.
Maybe it's for that then.
Yeah, but it's only on iOS and Android for some reason.
Other updates that are in YouTube Premium
and they are in testing currently
are smart shorts downloads on iOS.
So it automatically downloads shorts for you.
How many?
Great question.
Probably like five.
I mean, there's value to like,
I'm on the subway and there's no-
Yeah, but that's assuming you're watching
every 60 second clip to the fullest but that's the thing about it has
to download every single one yet yeah majority of things in a short speed that
I actually watch to full is like 5% exactly that's what I'm saying so it's
probably gonna download like a hundred I can just swipe through 45 seconds a
hundred be like I would love to know that. Maybe not quite that bad, but.
OK.
There's also shorts picture in picture on iOS, which is,
you know, there's that meme of watching subway surfers
while doing everything else.
A shorts while you're doing something else on your phone.
Shorts while you're on reels.
Yeah.
That's a little crazy.
That's a little crazy.
There is going to be high quality audio for 256 kilobyte
per second sound on iOS and Android.
Somewhere else is shaking his fist at the sky.
Why?
Wouldn't he like that?
I don't know.
We'll find out.
OK.
Also, jump ahead, which is this awesome feature where if it notices that most people
sort of skip to a different part of the video,
generally that's to avoid sponsors.
One of the most useful features.
It's pretty awesome.
I gotta say.
Yeah, it's basically.
Almost every time I see the Jump Ahead button on YouTube
and I click it, it's right at the end of the ad.
Yeah.
It's really good.
Except for this podcast.
Obviously. Everyone watches these naturally.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know why they're making these limited runs
or why they didn't have that on web in the first place.
These are all experiments.
I would just assume on web,
people don't double tap the screen to move forward.
They move the timeline. cursor. The timeline.
Playhead.
Yeah, but the jump ahead thing is like a little thing
that appears in the corner that you can tap.
Yeah, but I thought it only happens on mobile
when you start skipping.
Like if you skip and then the first 10 seconds
it realizes in the part everyone skips,
then it does jump ahead and lets you skip all the way.
I'll have to see how it works today.
All right, well, we're gonna take a 1x speed break.
We're gonna take...
No, no, no.
That's why.
I don't talk in that slow.
I'll tell you a quick break,
but before we do, trivia time.
Trivia, dude.
Trivia, dude.
All right, first question.
Do you remember what the code name of the Pixel 4a was?
Not Shamu.
That's the first thing I thought of.
Quite the opposite.
That's the one everyone thinks of.
That's the famous one.
Iconic.
I remember some.
But I don't know about this one.
The names are fun, because companies don't usually
talk about them.
Yeah.
And usually they're not actually related to the product,
except for Shamu that was related to the product.
Project Muhan is related.
Technically true.
But it's like public.
It's like being public.
Yeah, they are.
Yeah.
They called it Project Moon.
Infinity.
Like an infinite canvas.
Even though we don't have an infinite canvas in the world.
But you can prove it.
Yeah, OK.
That's a good question.
Well, we'll think about that.
And the answers will be at the end, like usual.
We'll be right back.
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All right, so welcome back.
Apple released a new product this week.
It's an app.
It's an iOS only app.
Now it's an iOS only app that you can invite Android friends
to participate in the experience of.
Whoops.
But it is an iOS only app.
And it is, in my opinion,
the most Apple way that you could possibly do this.
It is an invites app.
So those of you who are my age
probably remember Facebook events
where you'd have an event
you wanted to invite a bunch of people to,
and you have a bunch of Facebook friends.
So what you do is you make a Facebook event
and then you invite all of the Facebook friends
to the event so they all know when and where it is.
And then you all go.
This used to be huge.
Right, that's how people my age used to do this.
If you were Andrew's age, you remember letters.
Yeah, if you're older.
If you're younger, you probably use this app called Partyful,
which is a lot of the same thing.
It's literally just for events, typically parties, sure.
But you just invite anyone from their phone number
or their email address and then they get an invite.
But it's cool because you can send text blasts
and partyful so people can say they're going maybe
or not going and then you basically can send updates.
So you're like, oh, we're moving to this location.
Yeah, and it's been true about Facebook events
and about all the previous events things
where it's like you need to send a message
to everyone who's there. There need to send a message to everyone
who's there.
There used to be a wall.
Anyone who's invited could write on the wall
and everyone gets a notification.
If you changed the time, everyone
gets a notification blast.
So Partyful is the newest, hottest version of that.
There's an app.
Yeah, so I'd never heard of Partyful till yesterday.
And I realized when I tried to figure out what Partyful was,
it literally says that it is
the Facebook events for hot people.
I don't know why it says that.
That is weird.
But I realized why I never heard of it.
That is true though.
Yeah, we're not hot enough, so that's fine.
I literally just, as we were recording this podcast,
got a Partyful invite and the person was hot.
That means you're hot.
Dang, you're hot now.
Oh, shoot.
I think that's how it works.
By extension.
And we haven't gotten one, so anyway.
So that's what's, you know, that's the current state of the landscape.
So Apple comes along and they're like,
you know what, we're a service company,
we could make an app here.
They make the most Apple possible version of this,
which is the app is iOS only, iPhone only.
Check.
Anyone who has an iPhone gets a beautiful,
glassy, well- out experience, RSVP,
you know, notifications, comments, all that fun stuff.
You can add an Apple Music playlist.
Apple Music playlist.
Just want an iPhone and iCloud Plus
in order to create an invite.
Well, to create an invite.
To create an invite.
Yeah, but you can accept one without iCloud Plus.
Yeah, if you go to invite a bunch of people,
everyone who has that app will have a great experience.
But if you want to invite a friend with an Android phone,
Uh-oh.
I guess you can, and they'll get like a web link or whatever,
and they'll be able to RSVP through the web link,
but they probably can't add to the Apple music playlist
or anything like that, and they won't get notifications
probably as easily.
They'll have to probably return to that invite link.
There's just a few things that don't quite work
as beautifully for the Android friends.
We tested it yesterday, because I'm on Android.
Adam sent me an invite as a test.
It does bring up a web page.
It's in your browser.
The thing that's annoying right off the bat is you need an Apple ID to sign into it.
Wait, really?
I needed to log in.
Or no, no, no.
An Apple ID to RSVP.
Really?
And I have an Apple ID, but I think there are plenty.
Maybe I'm missing something there, but when I said it, it said like, log into RSVP.
And it's an Apple ID sign in.
If you're an Android and Windows user,
you just can't RSVP to these events.
It's just like accessing stuff in iCloud.
Like, you know when you're not on a Windows computer,
I mean, when you're not in a Mac computer,
you're on a Windows and you're trying to access your iCloud,
you have to do it in the web
and log in through your iCloud that way.
Yeah. Wow.
Which is annoying. That's wild.
Yeah, they definitely put their ecosystem in the front here.
You can add to a Apple Photos library,
and everyone can add to it live.
That's awesome.
Works super well for your iPhone friends.
Super well for your iPhone friends.
Now, your Android friend took pictures at the event too,
but I don't know, man.
Don't want to see those, I guess.
There's the Apple Music playlist that people can add to.
Also cool.
Also cool, but they have to, again, have Apple Music.
Wait, so that one's funny, because there's
plenty of iPhone users who don't have Apple Music.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a good point.
Yeah, it's just one of those things where they were like,
somebody else is doing this thing that we technically
could take control of because we own everyone.
It's so social.
Yeah. It's a very social thing.
I think it's even a step further of
we control everyone in our ecosystem and keeps them in there.
And then this is one more thing that has that friction
of your friends that don't have iPhones.
Yep. Let's jam it in there.
Exactly.
Think about the FaceTime experience.
They finally added FaceTime on the web,
so you can invite Android users into your FaceTimes.
And it's like, OK, great.
Now we can all join a video call.
My aunt has an Android phone.
What did she do she can join?
But she can't start a FaceTime.
And also, it's going to be in the web browser
and probably won't have all of the same features.
And I doubt she's going to have the Memoji face.
There's going to be things that aren't quite as ideal.
Yeah.
But it technically still works.
When did they launch that?
2021?
Have you ever FaceTimed with an Android user in that?
Uh, once.
I'd never have.
I tried it with my sister.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Same reason there is green bubbles and blue bubbles.
They can say it's there, but they don't expect anyone to use it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And this is a very US thing.
If in the US, this social peer pressure thing that happens with iPhones is so clear and
so obvious, and it's so obvious what they're doing here, and many other countries are like,
well, I guess I just won't use that dumb app then.
It's pretty stupid. So this is, yeah, not multi-platform.
Other features it has,
you can use Apple Maps to go directly to the party.
I believe you can add it to your Apple calendar.
And then also, it plugs into Image Playground,
which I find Image Playground generally really stupid.
However, people do put pretty dumb photos
as their party full photos,
so I could see this being relatively handy.
Did you see the picture that I added to this event?
No, because I didn't join the one that you invited me to.
The podcast.
You didn't join?
No, he doesn't like me.
Oh, you're not invited to the podcast.
I'm sorry.
No, I got invited, I just did an RSVP.
Oh, so, yeah.
You probably have to go home. What? Wow. I just did an RSVP.
Adam made a podcast event on the invites app.
And the AI generated photo is a couple microphones.
Three microphones.
And slightly out of focus ones are a little bit convoluted with the buttons. They don't really mean anything. It's fine.
It doesn't seem to want to do anything. It's just spinning in circles.
It gets the idea across.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with you. Image playground is kind of weird, but...
And even with some past Samsung phones, they've done this where it's like the image generation...
For an invite, I could see that being like kind of nice.
It's like, let's get a general vibe out here that doesn't need to be super specific. And I will say, as a person making the invite, I could see that being like kind of nice. It's like, let's get a general vibe out here
that doesn't need to be super specific.
And I will say as a person making the invite,
it was helpful because like podcast episode,
what do you put for that?
They had a bunch of balloons,
they had like all these other things,
but I was just like, ah, whip me up some microphones.
It's the equivalent of this is like OpenAI is partyful
and Gemini is Apple Invites because OpenAI doesn't have
access to things like your Gmail or your calendar or any of this stuff. And it's like it works
on any platform and it works for everything. But then Google swoops in and is like, but
we can plug in our ecosystem. And it's effectively the same thing. And I think you should just keep using Partyful
because stop, you just don't want to isolate anybody
and we need to keep these platforms open
and Partyful doesn't even have ads.
Good luck.
I was gonna say, where's the Google version of this
that does put in calendar, Gmail, Maps.
I guess it does have Google Music, but like Google could do all of this.
And I'm sure most iPhone users have a Gmail account.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
But would they make it Android only?
No, no way.
I don't know what any of them.
They'd know.
You know what?
They'd make it pixel only for six months.
Yeah.
And then it would be available.
It launches with the S26 Ultra.
Yeah.
It's enabled by the Tensor G4. And then it would be available. That's way too long. It launches with the S26 Ultra. Yeah, it's enabled by the Tensor G4.
And then it would be available on Google Photos.
For everybody.
The new feature pipeline.
Okay, anyway, if you like this feature,
you should let us know.
If you hate it like me, you should let us know.
And I love it.
Wow, you don't even have an iPhone.
I love it because it gives me one more plausible reason
to accidentally ignore an invite that I don't want to go to
and be like, oh, sorry, I'm on Android.
It just didn't really come through, Craig.
Sorry, I missed that.
Bug or a feature.
But yeah.
Adam's like, I'm going back to Android.
That is the greatest excuse ever.
That and a child, but I'm not ready for having a baby yet.
So.
Sorry, my baby can't go. Just get it. You have a dog. A dog is a greatest excuse ever that and a child but I'm not ready for having a baby yet. So I Sorry, my baby can't go just get it. You have a dog a dog is a great
Excuse. Yeah, but people don't accept it as much as a baby. What I could be like, I can't leave the dog at home
They're like, okay, so go home early. I could be like no, I'm not going at all
I have a baby and everyone's like, okay, I understand. I say okay, so go home early
Babies fine.
Yeah, what did they do in the middle ages, Adam?
People still went to parties, okay?
Did they?
And the babies were all fine.
All of them.
Famously.
Famously.
Famously.
Okay, yeah, no, there's another app though,
or at least something that I haven't heard of,
but I think is an app that Adam's gonna talk about.
It is an app.
I think you might like it, honestly.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's called Tapestry.
It is a new app that combines a lot of the things
that I do on the internet into one timeline.
I'm interested.
Yes.
Do you know how I know Marcus is gonna like this?
The two people I've seen talk about it
are Adam and David Pierce.
The third trifecta is the only person missing.
It's a Fediverse reader, by the way.
Basically, yeah.
It's like Surf. We talked about Surf a few weeks ago. Basically, yeah. It's like Surf.
We talked about Surf a few weeks ago.
Yeah, yeah, it's like Surf, but Surf,
when you open it up, the homepage is more like a magazine.
It's like a pretty kind of,
like it's very inspired by Flipboard.
This is just, it launches you straight into a timeline.
A feed, yeah.
Like a feed.
So you can just start scrolling
and everything is color coordinated.
So like if you plug in your Macedon account,
it'll be purple.
If you plug in your Blue Sky account, it'll be blue.
You can add in. RSS feeds and YouTube channels. Yeah, it'll be purple. If you plug in your Blue Sky account, it'll be blue. You can add in-
RSS feeds and YouTube channels.
Yeah, regular RSS feeds.
The YouTube channel one is low key
my favorite feature of this, which I-
Because YouTube is RSS.
Yeah, it's RSS.
And I don't think it's super unique to this app.
It's not.
Surf has it too.
Well, I mean just RSS feeds in general.
You could just plug in a YouTube channel or whatever.
But it made me realize how little
I use my subscriptions box
in YouTube.
Because for the longest, I just go and I,
like the algorithm's pretty good now
at like giving me something interesting
that I wanna watch right on the homepage.
So now I can actually just add this into the thing
that I'm using every day anyway.
I'm always on these like social media apps,
scrolling, wasting my life.
So I could just put a channel
that I actively want
to keep up with in there and it'll pop up.
This could, you can put Twitter in this, right?
No. I don't know.
I know you can only put things that have open protocols.
What's Twitter?
Oh really?
Yeah. So yeah, it has Macedon,
blogs that are open via activity pub or RSS or whatever.
I was gonna say, I wanna put the couple Twitter's
beat writers in the NHL that haven't moved to Blue Sky yet.
Throw them on that so I don't have to actually
oh, you don't have to say that anymore.
You have to use their API, which they shook at.
I mean, this won't be able to work with Threads either.
Not yet, no.
Yeah, because Threads hasn't opened.
If Threads ever decides to federate.
They won't. They said ever decides to they won't they won't
They said they will David won't David stop putting that into the universe. They will federate whenever anyway this app
I've been using it since
24 hours ago ish yesterday. Yeah yesterday
It's actually like I
Really enjoy it for two main reasons one the YouTube thing like I really enjoy it for two main reasons.
One, the YouTube thing, like I said,
you could just throw it in and then anytime a YouTuber
that I care about publishes a video,
it pops up in my feed like in real time.
The second thing is because it's more of a reader
type situation and I have my Blue Sky plugged in,
I can't really interact with people,
which I guess some people would see that as a con.
You would have to like, you click it and it opens up the blue sky app and then
you can like interact with them or whatever.
But I like the fact that it's just like a one way thing.
Like I'm just keeping up, making sure that I know what's happening.
Yeah.
And I'm not actually like going back and forth with people or anything like that.
Like for that, I just open up the blue sky app and do that dedicated over there.
Yeah.
I asked if you like, if you're on the Verge or 9to5google or something, can you get posts
from one specific author?
Oh, I believe so.
If they have RSS feed turned on, it depends on the site, I guess.
Okay.
Because I was even wondering like, Verge was popping up on here, but I was wondering about
the paywall.
That's what I did.
So I was like, I don't know how that would work.
This would most likely just show the thumbnail.
Well, the title and the header image, right?
And then you would go into it and do it.
But that'd still be good,
because if I went to nine to five Google
and being like, I just want to see
what Ben Shoon's writing about
and have his stuff pop up,
because the Verge posts so much.
Or any of those blogs post a lot,
but if there's someone specific you're following.
Well that was, going back to my YouTube example,
my subscriptions box, I was thinking about the reason why I don't use it,
is because it is just plastered with IGN videos.
And I subscribe to IGN, I like their videos,
they do make great content, but there's so many of them that it kind of,
and NBA too, NBA is another one, they will post like a million videos.
So I just lose everything in my subscription box.
I unsubscribe from the big ones.
I unsubscribe from most of the channels
that like mass post like that,
because the homepage is so good at just showing me
the ones that I would have watched.
Also, I don't think we even mentioned
that the name of this app is called Tapestry.
I did, but yeah.
You said that?
Yeah, yeah.
It is not a totally original name. It's made by by the person for the app company that made
The client yeah, so they know what they're doing icon factory is the name of the company
Yeah, so good stuff quite cool. I like these readers are cool and more people should federate anyway
I guess this was kind of like your Fedover's corner
Shoot you took over my Fedover's car. There's only room for one of us in your Fedover's Corner. Shoot. You took over my Fedover's Corner.
There's only room for one of us in the Fedover's Corner.
All right.
One other thing to talk about,
after Elite Memo from Meta,
or I don't know if I would call it a memo,
or like Meta has a private forum apparently,
and this was a post in the forum.
Bosworth, Andrew Bosworth?
Yeah.
Andrew Bosworth.
How'd you forget Andrew? I know, man, I don't know. It's a long day, man. Andrew, weird man Bosworth? Yeah. Andrew Bosworth. How'd you forget Andrew?
I know man, I don't know.
It's a long day.
Andrew, weird man.
New source of an A.
Wrote a pretty long post about why 2025
might be the make or break year for the metaverse.
I thought it was kind of interesting
because of how deep into the metaverse we are, sort of.
I completely misread this title into doc
and this whole time I thought it was about the Fetaverse.
So I was ready for David to go off
and now I'm just realizing just now it's the metaverse.
I'm gonna read, I have a couple questions about this
that I wanna post to you guys
and I'm gonna read the opening paragraph of his post.
I'm ready.
So it says, 2025, the year of greatness.
Next year is going to be the most critical year
in my eight years at Reality Labs.
We have the best portfolio of products
we've ever had in the market
and are pushing our advantage
by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables.
We need to drive sales retention
and engagement across the board,
but especially in MR.
Mixed reality. Mixed reality, yeah.
And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out
for long-term plans to have a chance.
If you don't feel the weight of history on you,
then you aren't paying attention.
This year likely determines whether this entire effort
will go down as the work of visionaries
or legendary misadventure.
First of all, bars.
Bars.
At the ends there.
And your bar is worth.
Yeah.
God.
Nice.
Dang.
But I guess he goes on then to talk more about
like how much of a pivotal moment this is,
how people should be doing the best work of their careers this year, and then also how small teams can also succeed,
which sounds like a, hey guys, I know we laid off a bunch of you, but you still can pull this off for us. And it just felt weird. And I guess my question is,
we see meta so recently really focusing on this like AR,
VR, XR, whatever you want to call it.
They're super deep into Quest.
We saw the glasses not too long ago
that they feel like they're kind of ahead of the curve on.
When he says this is make or break for the metaverse,
what are we talking about?
Are we talking about XR in general?
Are we talking about the physical meta world?
Horizon worlds would be it for them,
like the virtual world?
Or are we talking about goggles
because maybe they're moving more towards classes,
which is way more focused on augmented reality
and your own world with things on it.
So I was interested in this.
It feels like when you just read the title, it's like, that is freaking out
about anything XR related, but I'm starting to wonder if it's more about
like the creepy Mark Zuckerberg.
He's talking about this.
Yeah.
Metaverse.
He's talking about Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Eiffel Tower.
No, I think it's a legless.
It's kind of a combination of some of those things.
So we have seen some advancements lately
in the world of mixed reality.
We just showed Samsung's headset, the Project Muhan,
which is, again, this weird thing
where a bunch of companies feel the need
to show us products before they come out,
or that in some cases aren't even coming out,
just to flex that they are working on this,
it's coming soon.
And I think that this is along the lines of believing
that they will finally ship something that
feels like it's a usable, real pair of AR glasses.
The Snapchat Spectacles are a developer kit, essentially.
The meta glasses that they showed us,
the glasses glasses.
Orion.
Orion are not a real product, but they showed them off
just to get them in front of people,
look, we're doing this.
Project Muhan, Samsung, prototypey coming later this year.
Again, there's a bunch of movement
towards a bunch of companies all poised
to ship something they just haven't yet. I think it's interesting you go straight to Orion glasses though
because to me this feels like Orion is their focus but like the rest of reality
labs and the horizon worlds esque VR esque stuff is like this is our last year
to prove that this might be a thing. Because Meta before we saw Orion
was super focused on the digital world
that you would be in and how it's so much better
to work in this digital world.
It's better to do all these different things.
It's how you're never alone.
You always have the option to be with people
and in this cool environment.
And I feel like this post, to me,
feels more along the lines of like,
hey, all of this stuff that we've been working on for a while
We may have just we may just totally pivot at the end of 20 yeah and kill the rest of
the Met the metaverse as a right like place
I think the metaverse is more of an umbrella term. I don't know. I don't know
I don't see Orion glasses as the metaverse you don don't. Yeah. But it is like part of the mixed reality thing.
It's like XR.
The way I see it, they went all in on the metaverse.
That's why they changed their name to Meta.
And then when AI happened the year after,
they were like, oh.
I hadn't thought of that.
Maybe that was, yeah.
Well, no, but I hadn't thought of like,
they literally changed their name to Meta,
and now it's like, well we might give up on the Metaverse,
are they gonna change their name again?
Well that's why you're saying this year
we'll determine if this entire effort,
AKA naming our company Meta,
and tripling down, quadrupling down
on this VR, AR, Metaverse thing,
will go down as the work of visionaries,
because they were early to doing this, and they really committed to it,
or legendary misadventure.
The world moved on without them, and people
didn't care about it.
Well, what they were trying to do before
was make the next browser or the next Google.
They wanted to be the next platform.
So Mark was like, oh, we can quadruple down
on being the next version of the internet,
and then we'll own the platform, and we own the OS
that we can license out and all of this stuff.
And I don't think anybody has used Horizon Worlds or cares about it.
It really feels like they never fleshed that out to a level that people actually gave.
Do you not remember when we played the Cheetos Halloween world?
Oh yeah.
That was revolutionary.
Right.
You don't remember?
There was like in Horizon Worlds horizon Chester the Cheeto
Cheeto the Cheeto like haunted house world because
Remember for the like eight months where every company was like we have a metaverse division now
And people were buying real estate in the metaverse officer
Yeah, and Disney had a chief metaverse officer and then they got rid of that role like eight months later.
I think that was back when Meta went around convincing
everyone that they were going to be the company that
made the Metaverse a thing.
And now it's not so clear that Meta
is the only one who will have a stake in this new platform
that we're putting forward.
But I feel like the Metaverse as a platform,
Meta originally foresaw as mostly a digital world.
Whereas now, it feels like everyone's like,
oh, AI is enabling all of these other things
that are just XR experiences.
And so they're pivoting hard to mostly XR stuff,
because the RayBans are actually a hit.
The RayBans are actually selling units.
Whereas the Quest, everyone knows what the the quest for it's for VR gaming
So I think they're basically like if we cannot make our original 2020
Metaverse version of what we were going to do happen this year
We basically need to pivot the entire company towards XR
I think even a quest is starting like they started making way better pass-through with it when they killed the Quest Pro.
We're like, oh, cheaper version,
let's do a lot of the pass-through stuff,
a lot of the functionality in your own world kind of things.
So even that, the thing that was their
moneymaker metaverse thing is even pivoting towards.
And they are doing that to,
originally we're doing that to compete with the Vision Pro,
but now they're like, oh, it just turns out that people want this
more than they want to be fully encased in a virtual world.
Did they destroy themselves
by releasing a hit with the meta Ray-Bans?
No, I think it just became more clear what people actually want.
Yeah, I think they...
It's one of those things where nobody knows what they want
until they try it and they like it.
So like, meta is trying a bunch of different things
and they have the Meta Ray-Bans and they have the Quest
and they're gonna make glasses
and they're just doing a bunch of different versions
of the thing and one of them will be a hit, hopefully.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But enough of a hit to like justify this crazy investment
that they've been doing. Yeah, they want it to be.
I mean, they want it to be the thing that everyone...
Every company wants the next iPhone,
which is probably pretty unrealistic,
but every company is thinking that way.
We want to be the ones that pioneer the next big thing,
and it will be worth pivoting our whole company,
because we are now the ones that control
and have made this thing that we can profit from.
There's a strong irony where Meta is constantly talking
about making like llama open source
and how like open source software makes everything better,
but yet they won't open up the threads API.
So, you know, when it benefits you, I guess.
Waveform's been around long enough
to watch Facebook change its name
and potentially regret changing its name.
Bang.
Meta is still kind of a banger name though.
Okay.
Banger?
Could be a banger, could be legendary misadventure.
Legendary misadventure is an awesome way of saying, wow, we spend way too much money on
this.
And you're all getting fired. He's like, we are either the people who have charted history or we are losers,
but we're going to say that in a much nicer way.
Legendary misadventure.
What would a success look like for them?
We would all be in, people would be watching Waveform inside.
In headsets, right?
Like that's such a hard hit product.
Yeah.
I know.
Hit products or experiences that are sort of familiar to all.
Yeah.
Like success for Android was like a whole bunch of people using Android phones and now
Google can build inside of Android and everyone gets these things.
Hit for Apple with the iPhone was pretty obvious,
like huge market share takeover in a bunch of regions,
and now they're a services company building on top of the iPhone,
like it's this thing that they control, it's a platform for them.
Success for Meta is hit product
that they can then build a bunch of things on top of slash around
that they control.
So is the product the headset or the horizon?
I think what we're talking about here is they really, I really think they thought the product
was horizon worlds, what slash the metaverse slash the digital worlds you kind of live
in.
You got to buy a product to access that.
Yeah, but I think there's more money in that being the default. Like they want it to be the
Android basically. I think they wanted it to be the new internet pretty much. Yeah, the new Android.
Where you spend all your time. Yeah. Yeah. But now Android XR. New browser. Sure. Literally Android.
Yeah. I still don't really know what it's for. It's for all the headsets that aren't running
I don't really know what it's for. It's for all the headsets that aren't running
Metas or Apple's OSs.
OK, but here's a question.
When have you ever seen someone use a headset?
And a list does not count.
On my flight back from San Antonio on Sunday,
I sat behind someone who was wearing a Vision Pro who
was gesturing wildly for two hours on a flight.
Interesting.
I've never seen that before.
That's the first time I've seen it.
But it's a thing.
And I imagine that $3,000 headset will not be seen
in the public very often, but way more of the cheaper
two, three, four, $500 headsets will start to show up
over the next couple years.
And if you're a company like Google or Meta
and you know that that's true, and you know that this hardware's coming down in price and here comes Project Muhan over the next couple years.
I was a VR reporter specifically. And I just remember like BMW was like,
oh, we are using HTC VIVEs to model the inside of our cars.
And I'm pretty sure they weren't.
And that they had given one engineer a VIVE
and said, try this so that they could make a press release
alongside HTC to make it seem like people cared about VR.
And I just, this is like the fourth time that we've had this VR.
Actually, it's probably more than the fourth time.
Yeah.
I think, and I resonate hard with that, the same exact thing
happened with me.
I visited Lucid, and they were like, here,
put this headset on.
And you see we design the cars with the headsets.
I'm like, no, you didn't.
No, you didn't.
You did not.
Every company wants to seem, one, ahead of the curve
or early to stuff.
So if this seems like it might be the future,
they'll just proclaim that this is what we're doing.
And two, if you are wrong,
then it's just legendary misadventure.
You just move on.
I'm gonna call every mistake I've ever made.
The title of this podcast,
Waveform Episode 272, Our Legendary Misadventure.
Anytime I make a mistake, I'm gonna like miss an exit
and be like, we're going on a legendary misadventure.
It does sound like a choose your own adventure book
that they just picked the wrong task for you.
That sounds like you're blazing past the exit.
Like, we'll be good, we'll be good.
Banger.
All right.
Yeah, cool.
Well, we got a little more to talk about,
but before we do that, we should take one more quick break.
But before that.
Trivia time.
So Apple invites is for iCloud plus subscribers.
Like you can only create one
if you're an iCloud plus subscriber, correct?
Yeah.
Interesting.
What year did Apple announce iCloud? I don't know. iCloud at all? Yeah. Interesting. What year did Apple announce iCloud?
I don't know.
iCloud at all?
Yep.
When did clouds start forming?
When indeed, with the precipitation.
When did Apple become a service?
Back when the atmosphere was invented.
Remember when-
When Steve Jobs invented the atmosphere?
Remember when we first started having things in the cloud
and people would just be like, oh, it's in the cloud.
And everyone was like, whoa.
There was like a, there would always like kind of look up.
Yeah, and some guys in the cloud.
Everybody knows you can't have clouds without air.
So think about when the air came out.
Oh, which air?
Five billion years ago.
The MacBook Air? I was there when it was unveiled. We'll think about when the error came out. Oh, which error? Five billion years. The MacBook Air?
I was there when it was unveiled.
We'll think about this one.
We'll think about this one.
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All right, welcome back.
I want to present you guys with a rant slash take slash I'm probably wrong and recency
bias has frustrated me, but I'm going to go on a rant anyways and you can tell me how
wrong I am.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm going to open it up with a comment.
I think therefore you're presenting an argument to Congress.
The state of our current technology, in the year 2025,
it is harder to watch television than it was 15 years ago.
The counterpoint.
15 years ago.
Counterpoint.
15-ish years ago.
I'm stealing this counterpoint directly from David Pearce because he had this exact point
on the first cast.
Okay, sorry.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Okay, so it's just cable again.
Yes.
Which is annoying because we entered the state where it wasn't cable again and you could
watch things on like a couple platforms and it's awesome.
And now there's so many platforms that it's like it's basically cable then.
But it is easier to watch because you can now watch it on more things.
Like you used to have a satellite dish
to be able to watch certain channels.
Yeah, I agree.
I think I'm most likely going to be wrong about this,
but I think the vast majority of different things
has created also this weird competition inside of where everything gets posted
that it's also caused issues.
So I'm gonna tell my story very specific.
In the greater metro area,
we have a sports channel
that hosts four different sports teams.
It's called MSG Networks.
It hosts the Devils, the Islanders,
the Rangers, and the Knicks.
There are cable packages around here, called MSG networks. It hosts the Devils, the Islanders, the Rangers, and the Knicks. It's here at the CIA.
There are cable packages around here.
Oh no. Generally, Fios,
Xfinity, Optimum.
And you have to have a,
the MSG networks is feuding
with like half of these cable networks.
So. Oh gosh.
The only networks available in my home right now
are Optimum and Xfinity.
MSG networks is not on either of those.
So my options then start going to the internet.
I think I have to be able to watch a sports team.
There's so many different ways I can watch this.
Now you go on the internet and there's things called blackouts because they're
local sports teams and they have these local things.
So my options then started turning into ESPN plus has hockey games, but since it's blacked
out I have to run through a VPN.
Then ESPN is constantly trying to fix you being able to go through that.
So my final decision after the last three years of trying to do this is I bought DirecTV
Stream because DirecTV still has a partnership with MSG.
But now that I'm streaming and not just a cable plugged in,
I'm watching hockey overtime last night at what feels like
360p because for whatever reason,
my 800 down internet is like, nah,
this is a little tough to watch right now.
Like no matter what, when you're streaming,
it feels like you have the opportunity
of buffering or low quality footage.
Even though our internet's fast.
Yeah, and in live sports or anything live,
that's really annoying.
I can't just pause and let it buffer
I'm trying to watch something live.
So I'm just so frustrated at the point
that I used to just be able to like plug my TV,
like my TV just had a cable,
a coax cable plugged into it, and I watched live sports
because everyone just carried live sports pretty much.
And now cable is like this insane thing of like,
even if you have cable and has like the VODs,
that half the time is like, oh, in order to watch that,
you have to go log into Peacock now,
or like you have to, that's on Paramount Plus.
We have all these different streaming things.
Everything is so segmented,
and the fact that there's all those different segments,
now those companies are like making deals with everyone
and not having the deals.
MSG just reported that they're possibly going bankrupt soon,
and they're still not agreeing to terms
with Xfinity and Optimum to give people their packages.
So they're literally dying and still not,
I don't know why.
It's so frustrating.
And I think whether I could watch it on my phone
or my iPad or whatever,
I still think ultimately it's harder to watch.
I think that's a good take,
and I think you're right and I rescind my
Yeah, which side was David Pearson?
He was basically saying it's very annoying It's more convenient his guest was saying it is it is easier to watch it in more places
Because you can be like at a friend's house and as long as they have internet. Yes, you still have to have the like
Right cable bundle, but the cable is now not a cable.
It is now a platform.
So it's easier to do in that sense,
but I agree with you that it feels like the platforms
that are carrying certain types of content
are changing way more frequently.
There's having all these deals happen behind closed doors.
And it's like even shows that you're used to watching,
like, oh, it was on Netflix yesterday,
but now it's on Hulu.
Netflix gets like the exclusive rights
to stream like a football game.
And then Netflix doesn't know how to stream anything.
Yeah.
And that goes down or Amazon Prime now has like MLB
on Thursdays or whatever.
It's impossible to just watch the
you need to make like a
couple of sports games.
It's like you need to make a 40-step flow chart,
but that flow chart needs to change every three days.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's classic fragmentation.
It would be nice if you could just have one place
to watch everything, but...
That's a monopoly.
Yeah, it's fragmented.
It's fragmented across a bunch of different services,
and sports is a perfect example for that.
I tend to agree.
I happen to be able to get the channels
that I need to watch the teams that I wanna watch.
I have Verizon Fios and I don't watch that many MSG games,
but whenever I watch a team, it's typically on some channel.
So yeah, that is, I think that's fair.
There's a funny meme that's like,
oh, I can't watch that, I don't have this thing.
And then the response is like, what do you mean, man?
It's literally on Fubi.
You can watch it with a trial on Hubu.
If you go to dido.net, you can see it on TB.
Accurate, yeah.
Yeah, totally fair.
I don't know where all these random streaming platforms
popped up from.
They all sound real.
That could have been the trivia question of like,
which of these are real streaming platforms. Because literally it's like exclusively on Tubu. from like all sound real that could have been the trivia question of like
Because literally it's like exclusively on tubu and you're like when was tubu a thing like I've never heard of those it's to be
Superball commercials there's gonna be a couple more that you never even heard of
So that's my rant I hope
Some people in the tri-state area feel me on that one because this MSG stuff's been brutal.
What happens if MSG goes out of business?
Is that MSG Madison Square Garden?
Who gets the rights?
Yes.
Yeah, but they have their own network.
Their own network.
Who would get those rights?
They gotta sell that.
I thought the thing I read was that Amazon might pick it up or something.
It's gonna be on Fubu.
Freebie.
Easy.
Just have a trial.
I kind of hope they go out of business, though, they're saying. or something. It's gonna be on Fubu. Freebie. Easy.
Just have a trial.
I kind of hope they go out of business
and they're saying, but.
Yeah.
It almost feels like it's at the point of like,
do you remember when Linus is like,
I pay for games and then I pirate them?
Yeah.
Because I want to support it or whatever and not do that,
but the pirating aspect is easier than the actual
just doing what you're supposed to do.
Yeah. Dang. Yeah.
Dang.
All right. Wow.
That's how we'll wrap this episode up.
Okay.
Go Devils.
Yannis or whatever.
I don't know.
Is that who got traded?
Honestly, close enough.
It's basically like that, yeah.
Okay.
I'll take it.
I think it's time for trivia.
Trivia. So quick update on the score. Okay Marquez with five points
Andrew with two points
David in the lead with seven points. Oh
Yeah, all right first question. Do you remember what the code name of the pixel for a was the 21st day of September?
Do you remember?
I wish we had code names. Can we have code names? Teebo.
Tibby. Shubu.
I can't even think of a code name because now all I'm thinking is like, triby or fraba. Flip him and read, what do you got?
You wrote nothing?
Nope.
I'm joking.
You asked, do you remember the code name was?
So I wrote no.
I don't.
Good one, though.
I put sailfish.
Sailfish?
Close.
It was sunfish.
Sunfish.
At first glance, I thought you wrote sunfish.
So I was ready to give you the point.
And then you said sailfish.
Yeah, Google Nexuses and pixels have always been fish
I kind of like the font you wrote in. Yeah, what is it? It's like how did you all it's like short and tall at the same
It's David Sands
Sands David
Yeah, it's funny cuz it kind of sounds like David's hands
Which wrote the text anyway Wow, but if you type it then it's not my hands
Interesting. Okay, David's keys. What year did Apple announce iCloud? the text anyway. Wow. But if you type it, then it's not my hands. True.
Interesting.
David's keys.
What year did Apple announce iCloud?
And we're calling it iCloud.
iCloud.
With iCloud, you can get clouds in your eyes.
Isn't that just prime?
I almost wrote sailfish again.
You almost wrote sailfish again.
You almost wrote the wrong answer.
Looking for a year.
I'll do closest delta.
Without going over?
No.
No?
Closest delta without going over.
Flipman Reed, what do we got?
I wrote 2010.
2010.
I wrote 2008.
2008, Marques? I wrote 2010. 2010. I wrote 2008. 2008, Marques?
I wrote 2005.
Was it 2009?
Was it 2009?
The correct answer was 2011.
David gets the point.
Let's go.
Did they announce it with iOS 5?
Well, because that's when they added, iMessage got added in 2011.
So I'm wondering if iMessage only became possible because of iCloud.
It was announced at dubdub 2011 during the keynote.
I'm pretty sure that was around the same time.
Yeah, that's when they announced iOS 5.
Did they have cloud storage before iCloud? Like under a different name?
Yeah, the dinosaurs had cloud storage.
But they started them in actual clouds.
Oh, mobile me, dang it.
Mobile me?
Anyway, okay, that's it for this week's episode.
Let us know again if you have a Pixel 4a.
We're really curious.
We really want to know.
I want to know.
Hopefully you're not actively charging it.
In your pocket.
Thanks for watching, thanks for listening,
and we'll catch you very soon in the next one.
Peace. Goodbye.
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If the quarterback throws the ball
and it doesn't get caught and it gets,
and it hits the ground, incomplete.
It just restarts, yeah.
If the quarterback throws the ball
and the other team catches it before it hits the ground,
Interception. Interception.
Okay, yeah, I knew that one.
If somebody who's not the quarterback starts running
and drops the ball. Even the quarterback.
Even the quarterback running,
that's what he did right there.
Yeah, if somebody drops the ball, then the quarterback running, that's what he did right there. Yeah, that's true.
If somebody drops the ball,
then the other team can pick it up.
Fumble, recovery, can go run.
Interesting.