Pod Insights Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast Live at SXSW 2026: Can They Convince Marques to Shoot 24fps? About this episode It's bonus episode time! We went back to Austin this year for SXSW and got a chance to do another show in front of a live audience! Nerve-racking, but always a good time. First, the crew goes over some of their predictions from last year before getting into more Q&A.
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Transcript 13,053 words · 17 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Andrew Manganelli? This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, host Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring your fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episodes and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:33 Speaker 01 Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together, from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more. So, nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com.
1:18 Speaker 01 That's J-I-R-A dot com.
1:39 Andrew Manganelli? No tripping this year?
1:43 Speaker 01 All right, what's going on, people of South by Southwest? Good morning.
1:46 Andrew Manganelli? Good morning.
1:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, nice, nice energy. All right, so we are here to have our second ever live recording of our podcast, the Waveform Podcast. Some of you may already know us. To those of you who have seen us before, hi. If you don't already know us, the Waveform Podcast is a tech chat show about the stories of the week, about YouTube, about gadgets, and sort of anything in between. We're your hosts, I'm Marques.
2:13 Andrew Manganelli? I'm Andrew.
2:13 Speaker 01 And I'm David. And before we jump in, I actually want to ask two things of you guys. We've got about an hour up here today with you, and we want to make this a fun, interactive type of podcast, instead of just a normal episode of us chatting with each other. So, we have And Ellis and Adam are actually, where are they? They're in here somewhere. Yeah, they're over here. At the end of the show, or somewhere in the middle, they're gonna roam around with microphones and ask for questions from you guys. So start thinking now about what sorts of questions you want to ask us about tech, or YouTube, or being a creator, or gadgets, or anything that's in the news. And the other thing is, I'm giving you guys permission, right now, to take out your phones,
2:54 Speaker 01 and open up your web browser, and go to waveformsurvey.com. And answer those couple of questions, real quick. And what we're gonna do is, at the end, we're gonna have some trivia questions where we try to figure out what you guys said on that survey. So I'll give you guys 15, 20 seconds, right now, to open up waveformsurvey.com, and answer those quick questions. You don't even have to think about the answers, just blitz through them. What you think is the, I think one of them is, who has the best fashion? It's kinda just all across the board, but we're gonna try to answer those at the end. So waveformsurvey.com. And then, yeah, we can just sort of jump right in. What do you guys want to start with?
3:32 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah, I have a couple of things we can start with, real quick, before we get to there. I think, you know, we always joke about how things come out on Thursday.
3:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:41 Andrew Manganelli? So being a Friday today, as we're recording, we do get to talk about one thing, which is the Rivian R2 prices and timelines got announced. Which is kinda fun, because if anyone's here, Rivian is also here. I think they're up there.
3:53 Speaker 01 Very large sponsor of the show.
3:55 Andrew Manganelli? So you can go check out the R2 stuff later, if you want, but I figured we'd go over prices, and trims, and, most importantly, when they're projected to be released.
4:06 Speaker 01 Can I just set the stage for why we're getting the prices now? So I've already tested and reviewed the R2, which I think is probably their, it's arguably their most important vehicle, right? As we were testing it, we all knew-
4:19 Andrew Manganelli? How long ago did you test it?
4:21 Speaker 01 This was probably three weeks, three, four weeks ago.
4:23 Andrew Manganelli? Okay.
4:24 Speaker 01 And we're all testing it, and everyone sort of knows Rivian R2 is their lower-priced version of an SUV, it's their Model Y fighter, and everyone knows that the starting price is gonna be $45,000. But we also all know that tech companies do this thing, where they give reviewers the highest-spec trim, best possible version of the thing. This is in phones, computers, everything.
4:43 David Imel? I found 17E with a $900 price.
4:46 Andrew Manganelli? The 16E.
4:47 Speaker 01 With the most storage. So, we all know we're driving the dual-motor, performance-nice-trim interior.
4:53 Speaker 01 And we had a great time. It was a super capable vehicle, but we know we're not driving the $45,000 version. So now we're finding out how much did the version that I tested cost? And when is the $45,000 version coming?
5:07 Andrew Manganelli? Uh huh.
5:07 Speaker 01 So why don't you give that to us?
5:09 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah, I've got kind of everything here. So we're gonna have R2 Standard, R2 Premium, and R2 Performance. Performance is, there's also like a launch edition Performance, I believe, right?
5:18 Speaker 01 That's what we were driving.
5:19 Andrew Manganelli? Okay, so R2 Performance is gonna be starting at 57.9, so just under 60, which we all kind of expected. And that is 330 miles of range, 3.6 seconds 0 to 60, 656 horsepower, and most importantly, spring 2026. So no surprise, most expensive, coming out the quickest.
5:36 Speaker 01 We're in Austin, Texas right now. I see Rivians all the time out here. I feel like anytime I'm here, or anytime I'm in like Southern California, I see a lot of Rivians. And they're the R1s, they're the $100,000 trucks and SUVs. This being half the price, or 50 to 60,000 dollars, is obviously much more attainable. Quick show of hands, is anybody thinking about getting a Rivian R2? Is that, yeah, there's a couple of hands coming up, right? So this is, this is a, an exciting vehicle to be coming out. I thought it was really, really capable. I'm curious what you guys think now that you've seen, you know, the videos and how well it seems to drive.
6:11 Andrew Manganelli? I mean, I've been excited for this for a long time. I've always liked the Rivian stuff. And obviously, a more affordable version is really cool. Under 60, they actually seem like, because they promised under 60 two years ago.
6:23 Speaker 01 At least.
6:24 Andrew Manganelli? And they're, a lot of things have changed in the last two years, so I'm not surprised, or I am surprised they kept the pricing there. Kind of stinks the most expensive is coming out first. But R2 Premium is gonna be 53.9, so like 54, that's coming out late 2026. And then R2 Standard is the $48,000 one that is, uh...
6:45 Andrew Manganelli? Just says 2027.
6:46 David Imel? Next year.
6:47 Andrew Manganelli? Let's be real. We all know it's always as far away as possible in that time zone. So, spring 2026 will probably be, what's the last day of Q2?
6:57 David Imel? June 20th, 21st.
6:58 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah.
6:58 David Imel? The last day.
6:58 Andrew Manganelli? June 20th. So, it's cool that it's coming out. I mean, I'm excited to start seeing them. I think R2 Standard is gonna be the more, the most exciting thing, just the absolute.
7:08 David Imel? I'm just gonna blackout till R3 comes out. I just want, I just want the Subaru car, man.
7:12 Andrew Manganelli? You want what?
7:13 David Imel? It looks like a Subaru.
7:14 Speaker 01 But the R3, a lot of people, a lot of people forgot about the R3. The R3 looks nice and it's supposed to be cheaper than the R2.
7:19 David Imel? Marques.
7:20 Speaker 01 The R3 has been living rent-free in your head for a year and a half.
7:23 Andrew Manganelli? Well, if you don't think R2 Standard is gonna come out till 2027, let's assume end of 2027.
7:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:29 Andrew Manganelli? Do you think they need at least a buffer year after that? So, are we thinking 2029 is the earliest we might see an R3?
7:35 Speaker 01 I've, I don't wanna think about timelines for R3. I think, and I think you're right, it'll probably be as late as possible. This is also the Tesla blueprint. Like, when Model 3 and Model Y came out, they did the same thing. They were like, let's launch the highest margin, most premium, best trim version first, sell as many as we can there and work our way down and eventually sell a base rear-wheel-drive, cheapest possible model. That will be the most attainable and possibly one of the highest-volume trims, but I'm not expecting to see that or R3 anytime soon.
8:04 Andrew Manganelli? Before 2030?
8:05 Speaker 01 Before 2030, I think.
8:06 Andrew Manganelli? Both of them?
8:08 Speaker 01 29.
8:08 Andrew Manganelli? 29.
8:09 Speaker 01 Yeah. But I do think, like, Model Y performance, when it launched recently, that was like 62,000. And this Rivian R2 performance, which is equally as exciting, maybe even more so, I think looks better, I also think has a little bit more character, is 58.
8:29 David Imel? They're gonna sell a lot of these.
8:30 Speaker 01 That's pretty good.
8:30 Andrew Manganelli? I mean, the most important thing here is that they are matching up with Model Y prices, if not a little cheaper.
8:36 Speaker 01 Oh.
8:36 Andrew Manganelli? And better range as well with them.
8:38 Speaker 01 Slightly better range, but I have a take. Worst colors.
8:41 Andrew Manganelli? The worst colors?
8:42 Speaker 01 Worst colors.
8:43 Andrew Manganelli? Can you tell us about the colors? My problem with the colors is everything online looks super muted. Have you seen them yet?
8:48 David Imel? I've seen them. They are muted.
8:49 Speaker 01 I wish we could throw pictures of all the colors behind us, but the colors are light gray, dark gray, black, white.
8:57 Speaker 01 Dark green.
8:58 Andrew Manganelli? Greenish gray.
8:59 Speaker 01 Olive green, both kind of gray. And then the dark blue and then a light, slightly less dark blue.
9:05 Andrew Manganelli? It's a gray blue and then a purple.
9:06 Speaker 01 Purple. Purple. So they, there's no rivian red. I love the rivian red. There's no rivian yellow. So it's new colors for the R2. I think the R1 has much more bold poppy colors. I'm curious why. I feel like Apple does the opposite. The cheaper stuff gets the poppy colors.
9:20 David Imel? Probably the same thing that the phone companies do.
9:21 Speaker 01 The phone companies give the cheaper stuff the poppier colors.
9:24 David Imel? That's true.
9:25 Speaker 01 And now we're getting the cheaper stuff gets the pain colors.
9:29 David Imel? How many shades of gray do you think they offer?
9:31 Speaker 01 Not as many as you were hoping to make the joke, but.
9:34 Andrew Manganelli? Not even close.
9:36 David Imel? It's possible one day. Okay.
9:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
9:39 Andrew Manganelli? No, I think the, my problem with the colors is it's always yellow accents. So I want more, and the like darker, deeper blue looks better with the yellow. The deeper green looks better with the yellow. I liked the fun colors of our one platform.
9:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:53 Andrew Manganelli? These, the slate blue is kind of nice. What did the purple look like in person? Did you see it?
9:57 Speaker 01 It's a deep purple.
9:58 Andrew Manganelli? Your shirt?
9:59 Speaker 01 It's super.
10:00 Andrew Manganelli? How your shirt?
10:01 Speaker 01 My shirt's way brighter than the purple. I was gonna say Barney. Barney's brighter than this purple. It was more plum.
10:07 Andrew Manganelli? Plum?
10:08 Speaker 01 Even darker than that.
10:09 Andrew Manganelli? Have you ever had a plum before?
10:12 Speaker 01 Deep cut, deep cut. So yeah, that, I'm moderately excited about these. I think they're gonna sell well. We're gonna start seeing them in a lot more places than just, you know, the places we see.
10:20 Andrew Manganelli? And just South by Southwest?
10:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
10:23 Andrew Manganelli? I'm excited. I have a reservation. I don't know if I'll pull the trigger right away. I might wait for the middle one.
10:29 Speaker 01 We got some people at the studio who are very eager to pull the trigger.
10:31 David Imel? Cause you guys will live in New Jersey.
10:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:34 David Imel? I can't have a garage. I'm in New York City. Can't charge anything anywhere. There's like, there's like two charters in New York and they're very far away and very expensive.
10:43 Speaker 01 You can always come to Jersey and have a garage and charge stuff.
10:46 David Imel? Then I'd have to have a family. That's a whole thing. That's a whole thing.
10:50 Speaker 01 That's down the road.
10:53 Andrew Manganelli? All right, I have one other thing I thought we could kind of do that's fun before we start getting into Q and A, which is, we make a joke at the office all the time that tech moves so fast that us covering tech are horrible with timelines. There's so many times we write or talk on the podcast or are just talking in general where somebody will say, "Oh yeah, remember the humane AI pin? That was like five years ago, right?" And it's like, "No, man, that was like eight months ago." And since this is only our second time on a stage, it's at South by one year later, I re-watched, first of all, show of hands, was anyone here last year?
11:27 Speaker 01 Oh, we got...
11:28 Andrew Manganelli? That's awesome. I'm really excited that there's somebody here. So this might be fun, because I took all of the, a lot of the things we answered and takes that we had on current stories, and things have changed quite a bit. So I figured we'd kind of do a quick run through those.
11:41 Speaker 01 Is this takes from last year?
11:42 Andrew Manganelli? This takes from last year, or news, things that were happening last year. So the first thing we talked about, actually, was Apple Intelligence.
11:49 Speaker 01 Hmm.
11:50 Andrew Manganelli? I think the day before we got on stage was Apple officially delaying Apple Intelligence, which is a very...
11:57 Speaker 01 Which time?
11:58 Andrew Manganelli? I think it was the first official time.
12:00 Speaker 01 Okay.
12:01 Andrew Manganelli? So we were post-launching 16E, or sorry, 16 Built From The Ground Up for Apple Intelligence.
12:07 Speaker 01 With all the ads, yeah.
12:08 Andrew Manganelli? That didn't come out. Then this was after they deleted all the ads that said it was for Apple Intelligence, and then they delayed it. And I do believe they said, "Still coming out 2025."
12:18 Speaker 01 Wow.
12:19 Andrew Manganelli? It's 2026.
12:21 Speaker 01 And now Google's making it.
12:22 Andrew Manganelli? If anyone's, yeah, if anyone's following along, Apple Intelligence, I guess when we say Apple Intelligence, we mean, uh...
12:28 Speaker 01 Siri.
12:29 Andrew Manganelli? Siri.
12:30 Speaker 01 The improved LLM-based Siri.
12:31 Andrew Manganelli? The big thing.
12:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, because Apple Intelligence has been rolling out in stages, and a lot of the early stages that have rolled out have been some of the least exciting.
12:38 Andrew Manganelli? Image playground.
12:39 Speaker 01 Notification summaries, the emojis that are, like, the small, the image playground stuff. That's the stuff that they have rolled out. We've all been waiting for the better Siri, AKA the assistant that can take actions for you. There's a whole ton of things happening you guys will hear about all week about AI and agentic AI, people, you know, asking apps to be, you know, built from the ground up on their phone from a simple query. And meanwhile, Siri is like... Kind of not good at all. So we're all, we're all hoping for Siri to get good, but we're still waiting for it.
13:09 Andrew Manganelli? Everyone on the stage said definitely out by the end of 2025.
13:13 Speaker 01 How wrong we were.
13:13 Andrew Manganelli? Wow. Do you know what you said specifically, Marques?
13:16 Speaker 01 No.
13:17 Andrew Manganelli? So Siri, like we're all saying Siri's big thing was that it can, you know, you can speak to it. It can work inside of your apps on your phone. Your response to that was Bixby used to be able to do that. So if Samsung can make Bixby work inside your app, how could Apple not do it by the end of the year?
13:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, that was at the time, one of the more exciting things that we were hoping it would do, which was I want to ask, and this was something Bixby did. We would ask it for it to reach into an app and perform an action for us. This is called agentic.
13:48 Andrew Manganelli? That was like 2018.
13:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:50 Andrew Manganelli? 2018, 2019.
13:51 Speaker 01 That was one of the most interesting things that Bixby could do. And I was like, well, surely Siri also.
13:57 David Imel? Yeah.
13:57 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah. Well, uh, here we are.
13:59 David Imel? Apple kind of shot themselves in the foot with the privacy angle though. They don't have any of that data. They can't just, you know, make shit happen.
14:05 Andrew Manganelli? Do everything. Yeah. So, but if you weren't following along, what David said before is in January, uh, Apple announced that Google Gemini will now be essentially what's running Apple Intelligence. Uh, so we did get a step further, closer, but also further away from Apple creating it, I guess.
14:20 David Imel? Well, we don't really know yet. I think until it happens, we're not really sure when it's, uh, yeah.
14:26 Andrew Manganelli? And then the thing we were wondering was will Dub Dub last year just re-announce it? I think they just glossed over it completely.
14:33 Speaker 01 Right. So 2024 WWDC, Apple goes, Apple Intelligence is our new thing. It's going to be amazing. This is what AI has stood for the whole time. We swear. They delay it. 2025 comes and goes, and they sort of, kind of re-announce Apple Intelligence features.
14:49 David Imel? Casually.
14:49 Speaker 01 And sort of reframe it and, and give us that some of the stuff has come out and some of the stuff is still coming. WWDC this summer, they may do that again and re-announce Apple Intelligence and explain the things that are now out, which is a lot of it, but still that we're hoping to see this Siri thing soon, maybe this year. Maybe they've learned their lesson to not make a promise on when that's coming out.
15:12 David Imel? They should just drop it when it's ready.
15:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:14 David Imel? Honestly.
15:15 Speaker 01 I agree.
15:16 Andrew Manganelli? Every tech company should just drop things when they're ready. I think the world would be.
15:20 David Imel? But then how would investors invest in them? How would they raise fake money?
15:24 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah. Next thing we talked about, and I'll go really fast on this because Dig relaunched or got announced last South by.
15:33 David Imel? Oh, yeah.
15:33 Andrew Manganelli? We thought it was going to be this cool thing of the, you know, the the old arch rivals, because we had the founder of Dig and one of the co-founders of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, coming together to relaunch Dig. And, you know, I was really mad at Reddit last year because Steve Huffman totally ruined it. And I was really excited for Dig. And then when I was writing this, I was like, oh, yeah. What happened to Dig? And it launched at some point, I think, earlier this year, and I went to it. And the hardest part about trying to pretend you're doing well is when your whole website is based on votes and comments and activity is the minute you go to the front page of it, you can see how it's doing. I don't, I saw very few posts that had more than 50 votes and like more than 10 comments.
16:17 Andrew Manganelli? So it's basically just, I don't know. Are there any Dig users, new Dig users in here?
16:23 David Imel? I'd be shocked if I saw.
16:24 Andrew Manganelli? We got a hand. There was a hand. We got one hand. Okay. You'll have to tell me about it later. Because it didn't look like it was doing great, but the UI was kind of nice, I guess.
16:35 David Imel? Okay. Yeah, they haven't really advertised it at all. I haven't seen.
16:40 Andrew Manganelli? I forgot about it.
16:40 David Imel? They did the big launch, but then it was like $5 a month to use.
16:44 Andrew Manganelli? I don't think it was a month, I think it was like just to, the invite was $5 or something like that.
16:49 David Imel? That's too much, man. You don't know how it's going to be.
16:52 Andrew Manganelli? When you don't know what's going to, it kind of boils down to.
16:55 David Imel? There's no community.
16:56 Andrew Manganelli? That's the problem. It's community. And we talk about all these different social media platforms trying to take over other social media platforms because everyone keeps ruining social media platforms. And the hardest part, no matter how good your UI is, no matter how good all the features are, is the people.
17:11 David Imel? Yeah. Yep.
17:14 Speaker 01 Shout out to YouTube.
17:17 Andrew Manganelli? All right, let's go through some of the things we said in the question and answer. Someone asked if Apple launching a foldable is going to be what brings folding phones to the mainstream. We were all pretty convinced the folding phone Apple would do is flip style, so clamshell, kind of like an old folding phone.
17:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:33 Andrew Manganelli? We are all now seeing pretty strong rumors about a passport style folding phone from Apple coming out later this year.
17:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:42 Andrew Manganelli? One, do you think it's going to come out later this year?
17:44 Speaker 01 Yes. The rumors are now much more confidently aligning for this year.
17:49 David Imel? It's not a rumor.
17:50 Andrew Manganelli? Is there one in your pocket right now?
17:51 Speaker 01 It is technically a rumor. We don't know for sure until it gets announced. But yeah, we're pretty sure it's now it's like, kind of like Pixel Fold 1, or what was the first to Oppo Find?
18:01 Andrew Manganelli? Passport style?
18:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, the passport style. So it opens like a Galaxy Fold, but is a little bit more squat. So it opens to a widescreen. And I think that's going to be, it's going to make sense. What we're all curious now to see is what's the unique differentiating thing for Apple? Is it an iPad-like OS when it's open? Is it a really, really impressively flat crease and a like, you know, creaseless display? Is it both? Is it the, is it the fact that they charge less than anybody else? No. Is it any, what's their, what's their angle going to be?
18:32 David Imel? We're in a new era with Apple right now, okay?
18:33 Speaker 01 I have a sneaky feeling this is going to live at the top of the iPhone lineup.
18:37 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah. Safe bet.
18:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:39 Andrew Manganelli? All our bets last year were wrong, so.
18:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. So yeah, I, we expect to see it this year. It'll be a, we could probably place bets on the price, but it'll probably be a $2,000 folding phone. And we'll see what their angle is.
18:53 David Imel? It's okay. My uncle works at Apple, so he told me.
18:56 Speaker 01 He told you what? Is this breaking news?
18:59 Andrew Manganelli? He's going to ban you from Apple?
19:02 Andrew Manganelli? Also talking about Apple, last year, somebody asked us if we ever thought we'd see a touchscreen Mac or Mac display, and all of us were extremely confident we know. MacBook Ultra rumors are out now, touchscreen OLED, dynamic island later this year.
19:15 David Imel? They just always use the word Ultra when they're like thinking that something's gonna come that's not gonna do.
19:20 Andrew Manganelli? Did that part make it into Podlock?
19:21 Speaker 01 I don't think it made it, and I think I just need to say it.
19:23 Andrew Manganelli? Okay.
19:23 Speaker 01 MacBook Ultra is not a good name.
19:25 David Imel? Yeah.
19:26 Speaker 01 Here's why. And it's not like, it's okay, like Ultra makes sense for like the super high-end product, that makes sense. But they also have chips called Pro, Max, and Ultra. They do not put the Ultra chips, as of right now, in the laptops. That's in the desktop. So if you're gonna name it MacBook Ultra, but you don't put the Ultra chip in it, that's a little confusing.
19:48 David Imel? What about the watch?
19:50 Speaker 01 Uh, fair. But I just think if there is an Ultra chip available in the Mac lineup, the MacBook Ultra should have it. That's my number one confusion. And then, but yeah, it's supposed to be touchscreen, which is all like, I don't really know what to make of that. I'm assuming this is gonna be paired with the new redesign, the dynamic island, the OLED display, all this fun stuff. I saw a headline recently that it would be thinner, which I'm a little bit nervous about because you don't put an Ultra chip in a thinner body.
20:19 Andrew Manganelli? Because you still think an Ultra chip's gonna go in?
20:21 Speaker 01 I just, yeah, I don't think it'll have an Ultra chip. Anyway, I think they should call it the Studio. That's my take. But, uh, yeah, we'll see. It's supposed to be later this year, and it's supposed to have a touchscreen.
20:30 David Imel? Yeah.
20:30 Speaker 01 Would you, do you want, now that we're a year later?
20:34 David Imel? Yeah.
20:34 Speaker 01 And we do think it is coming.
20:35 David Imel? Yeah.
20:36 Speaker 01 Do you want a touchscreen MacBook Pro?
20:40 David Imel? Hmm, it depends on what the touchscreen does. I'm still like...
20:45 Andrew Manganelli? You can touch it usually?
20:46 David Imel? Well, I guess that would be a feature. But it, yeah, I don't know. They said that the UI is going to be like modular and change when you go to touch it. And like all these ambient things. I still think that they should have just made the, the touchpad, Apple Pencil compatible, and that would have solved like most of the problems. And then it could have...
21:05 Speaker 01 The trackpad?
21:06 David Imel? Pencils? Yeah, the trackpad.
21:07 Speaker 01 Uh.
21:08 David Imel? Yeah.
21:08 Speaker 01 Hmm.
21:09 David Imel? Because I don't know. I like doing this on Photoshop, you know? But if that's the only use, I'm not sure if that's worth, you know, $9,000.
21:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's gonna be expensive as well. That's a theme. But I do think Apple is specifically allergic to making the Apple pencil compatible with the Mac. And I know we were saying that about a touchscreen, but I do think this is very iPad related. They want to sell you a Mac and an iPad, not or. So the more overlap in functionality there is with Mac and iPad, the worse it is for that double purchase. So I think, yeah, the pencil is always gonna be just for the iPad.
21:47 David Imel? Next year, we're gonna find out.
21:48 Speaker 01 I'm gonna find out I'm wrong next year. It's gonna be great.
21:51 David Imel? Yeah, that's gonna be the show.
21:52 Andrew Manganelli? I'll run through a couple of these pretty quick. People asked us how AI was helping us in our everyday lives. And Ellis was talking about vibe coding something to where David responded. Is vibe coding like a term people use? That's changed quite a bit.
22:05 David Imel? That's different. That was a year ago. Wow.
22:07 Andrew Manganelli? I think vibe coding, my grandma probably knows what vibe coding is now. Ellis downloaded a local LLM for the plane ride here to mess around with, so.
22:16 David Imel? He was coining hard. Nobody gets that joke. It's a, it's a model, yeah.
22:23 Andrew Manganelli? And then the last thing we just kind of, you know, got a very firm answer to a couple of weeks ago, which is with, somebody asked us if AI is coming into everything, glasses, pins, phones. How concerned should we be with data privacy? And if for some reason you haven't seen the Meta Ray-Ban article about where your data is being sent and being seen by data annotators in different countries. You should really read that article. Lots of private stuff that you don't know fully is being recorded when you're using AI. Features are being sent out and.
22:55 David Imel? Yeah, we did a breakdown this week that the pod just went live an hour ago. So you could watch it right now if you want it. You could be double podding right now. It'd be kind of crazy.
23:03 Andrew Manganelli? I would not want to listen to me two times at the same time.
23:06 David Imel? We wanted to release it live on stage, but then we'd have to make the pod is late joke to Adam again, so.
23:12 Speaker 01 All right, we'll take a quick break, but after we come back, Adam and Ellis are gonna take some questions from the crowd that we'll try to answer. No pressure.
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24:58 Speaker 04 Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically-proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors, great tasting hydration no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade: Hydrates Better Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
25:27 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah, so I think that's everything from the initial thought we had, just covering a couple of stories. We're going to, I think Adam and Ellis wanted to do trivia first. Are they out in the stage? Yeah, they just moved out there. Fun.
25:40 Speaker 05 Do we think enough people have filled out? That's right. You hear the music. Thank you, everyone, for filling out our survey, which took a shocking amount of time to program that URL redirect. We asked you a lot of questions, and we are now going to have our hosts guess what you guys put.
25:59 Speaker 06 Also, thanks for filling out the room. Listeners don't know, but it is packed in here. There's like 3,000 people.
26:05 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, I can hear it. Listen to that.
26:08 Speaker 06 Crazy, yeah.
26:09 Speaker 05 Goddamn. Guys, also, 10 of you have never listened or watched Waveform before.
26:15 Speaker 06 Welcome.
26:15 Speaker 05 So thanks. That's cool.
26:17 Andrew Manganelli? Hopefully, subscribe after.
26:20 Speaker 06 You can hype us.
26:21 Andrew Manganelli? Not anymore.
26:22 Speaker 06 Not anymore.
26:22 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
26:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, the comments today were saying it's done.
26:24 Andrew Manganelli? This is for average listeners or people who listen to us a lot. This will actually, this is the one time a year that Ellis and Adam get their own microphones.
26:32 Speaker 05 Oh, my gosh. I didn't even realize that.
26:34 Speaker 06 I'm trying so hard not to talk over you.
26:36 Speaker 05 Guys, I love the port.
26:37 Speaker 06 Wait, but anyway, so as I was saying.
26:39 Speaker 05 Guys, we asked the room, however many Waveform fans there are here, who has the best outfits on Waveform? Do you want to guess who this lovely crowd said?
26:52 Andrew Manganelli? David.
26:53 Speaker 05 Ellis.
26:54 Speaker 01 I think they said David.
26:57 Speaker 05 Really?
26:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:58 Speaker 06 I have like five pairs of clothes, bro.
27:01 Andrew Manganelli? I guess, yeah, outfits is hard, but no, I think David's got the, it's David or Ellis.
27:06 Speaker 05 David was in second place with seven votes, but guys, it was not even close.
27:12 Speaker 06 Oh, shoot.
27:13 Speaker 05 Marques, 26 votes.
27:17 Andrew Manganelli? Wow, I'd be.
27:19 Speaker 05 Fashion icon, Marques Brownlee.
27:22 Andrew Manganelli? Shop.mkbsh.com.
27:24 Speaker 06 Andrew, why do you sound so surprised?
27:27 Andrew Manganelli? I don't know. Ellis, there's been like four Reddit posts about Ellis's sweatshirt.
27:32 Speaker 05 It's Abercrombie and Fitch.
27:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, people use Circle Search to find that out.
27:37 Andrew Manganelli? Wow.
27:38 Speaker 06 People only talk about us on Dig, so that's why.
27:41 Andrew Manganelli? That's why I'm missing them.
27:42 Speaker 05 Guys, we asked this crowd to rank our niche tech interests that are paid weather apps, Samsung decks, film cameras, VHS tapes, and mechanical keyboards. What do you think the top ranked thing in this room was?
27:58 Andrew Manganelli? Are we all just going to answer our own one?
28:00 Speaker 01 I don't know. I'm not.
28:01 Speaker 06 Definitely not.
28:01 Speaker 01 I think this room would think David's film cameras is the best niche.
28:05 Speaker 05 Interesting.
28:06 Speaker 06 It's weather apps for sure.
28:07 Speaker 05 It's weather apps for sure. Okay, Andrew?
28:09 Andrew Manganelli? I'm selfishly saying mechanical keyboards.
28:14 Speaker 01 If it's weather app-
28:14 Speaker 05 At number three,
28:17 Speaker 05 Samsung Dex.
28:18 Speaker 01 That's right, baby.
28:20 Speaker 05 At number two, mechanical keyboards.
28:22 Andrew Manganelli? Okay.
28:24 Speaker 05 At number one, David Amel.
28:27 Speaker 01 Really? Wow.
28:28 Speaker 05 Film cameras.
28:29 Speaker 01 I don't even think that's technology.
28:31 Speaker 05 We're living in the analog world, people.
28:33 Speaker 01 I'd be racking up the points right now if this is- Damn, yeah? If we were counting these. Yeah.
28:38 Speaker 05 Yeah. Guys, I think it's time for our new, I guess it's the second time, so now it's a tradition. We asked this crowd, who has the worst takes on Waveform? Last year, you all voted me.
28:55 Speaker 05 Which as the person who introduced these three people to vibe coding, you might be right. Who do you think has the worst takes? Or, excuse me, who do you think this room has the worst takes on Waveform?
29:09 Speaker 01 This lovely crowd of 3,000 people.
29:12 Speaker 05 3 million people.
29:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:16 Speaker 01 You know what's funny about that? I just want to interrupt real quick. Well, I mean, this room is what, probably like 150 people or something like that, which is awesome? And I always hear, like, people starting off, starting YouTube channels will always say like, "Oh, you know, I made my first video. I didn't get that many views. I only got like 200 views." Picture yourself making that video to a room of 200 people and it totally recontextualizes what you just did. Everyone's obsessed with scale and getting a million views, but like, just, if you're starting, think about that. Think about this room. Anyway.
29:46 Andrew Manganelli? I'm way more nervous on this stage right now than going into our podcast, which hits hundreds of deaths. I have no idea what to do with my legs. It's usually under a bed.
29:56 Speaker 01 Anyway, I think- We saw MSG like twice, basically.
30:00 Speaker 01 I think Ellis got the votes again for worst takes.
30:02 Speaker 05 That would be-
30:03 Speaker 01 Worst takes?
30:04 Speaker 05 Yeah.
30:05 Speaker 01 Ooh, it could be me, honestly.
30:07 Andrew Manganelli? I think everyone just wants to say themselves to be nice, so I'll also say David.
30:10 Speaker 01 To be nice, I'm being selfish.
30:12 Speaker 05 Andrew, you tied with Adam for the least votes in this question, implying that you actually might have the best takes.
30:22 Andrew Manganelli? I love you all. This is the greatest audience in the world.
30:25 Speaker 05 Marques, you only slightly came under him with six votes as the worst takes on the podcast.
30:32 Speaker 06 It's you, me, boys. One of the three of us.
30:35 Speaker 05 I, with my myriad of wonderful opinions, got a whopping 12 votes for the worst takes on the podcast, but I have been dethroned. The worst takes on waveform now belong to David Amel.
30:53 Speaker 05 Damn.
30:54 Andrew Manganelli? Which is funny because they love your film cameras, but don't like your other takes.
30:58 Speaker 06 But don't like my opinions. I like your pictures, but don't talk.
31:04 Speaker 05 Just be pretty.
31:07 Speaker 05 You guys offered a lot of hilarious answers to what the tech of the summer will be, everything from, I don't know, not the rabbit R1, something that people think is cool, AI companies offering OpenClaw as a service, whatever the Johnny I ChatGPT puck will end up being, Meta Glasses, the Neo, local AI devices for all my quiners out there.
31:32 Speaker 06 Thank you, boss.
31:33 Andrew Manganelli? Don't know what that means.
31:34 Speaker 05 I got you.
31:36 Speaker 06 Wait, can you explain that? What?
31:38 Andrew Manganelli? We don't have time for that.
31:39 Speaker 06 We really shouldn't. Okay, never mind.
31:41 Speaker 05 It's a, it's a local AMI model made by, I can't even remember who actually makes it, but I think they just laid off like most of their team. So it's sort of unsupported and free-floating and.
31:50 Andrew Manganelli? Okay, forget I asked.
31:52 Speaker 05 Jelly. And it seems like for the most part, you guys would not let OpenClaw touch anything in your lives, which is probably.
32:02 Speaker 06 Smart. A safe move.
32:04 Speaker 05 But now that we've heard the opinions that we've forced out of you, I think we'd like to pass some of these microphones around and have you guys ask our hosts some questions. Does that sound like it would be fun?
32:18 Andrew Manganelli? I hope so because we have 30 minutes and nothing else written down.
32:21 Speaker 06 I'm coming over.
32:22 Speaker 05 Vamp. Adam Molina is handing out the first microphone.
32:24 Speaker 06 First question.
32:27 Speaker 07 Hi, thank you guys so much for speaking. I've been a fan for almost eight years now, so it's kind of crazy, like, seeing you guys in real life. I was kind of curious, I took a robo-taxi here, and it got me wondering between that, I see a lot of Waymos on the street, would each of you be comfortable riding in an autonomous vehicle, and if so, does it matter on the brand? Are you waiting for it to get bigger, or have you done so since you've been in Austin?
32:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, so, when I first got to test the Tesla robo-taxi, it was still in this sort of very early beta phase of only people with invites could test it, but I did get my first taste of the Tesla robo-taxi there. That was also my first taste of the Waymos. I rode them all day, I don't know how many miles I covered, but we did a lot of shooting and a lot of testing in a whole bunch of different routes all over the place. At the end of that, my conclusion was, these are fine. And actually, as someone who's typically, like, I recently checked my Uber rating, and I'm like a 4.9 passenger rating, I feel like I'm the perfect Uber passenger. I just, I get in the back, and I just sit there, and I don't do anything. And it would be even cooler if I didn't have to talk to anyone, and it was empty, and I'm on the computer working, and it's fine.
33:34 Speaker 01 And I think a lot of people's dream is to just get into a little car that doesn't have anyone in there, doesn't have to, you know, you don't have to talk to anyone, so, I was totally fine with it. I would ride in any autonomous car. They seem to drive kind of like, like a grandma a little bit, like, they're mostly pretty safe about things, and I was totally fine with that.
33:54 David Imel? Yeah, well, I'm not supposed to talk, because my opinions are bad, so.
33:58 Speaker 01 Give us your takes.
33:59 David Imel? I've not taken the robo-taxi. I personally, I have a Model 3, and I do not trust its autopilot at all, because it makes really bad decisions. Obviously, I don't have a newer version, it's like a 2019 one, it's very old, so maybe I would do that. But, I have been riding Waymos for like, three or four years now, and the ones in San Francisco are crazy smooth. I love getting in a Waymo, and I love that it has my name, like, spinning on the top.
34:24 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, yeah.
34:25 David Imel? I don't like the idea of this insane consolidation of power between like, one to two companies that could completely just take over the entire taxi ride-hailing space if this tech gets more democratized, which there are really cool, like, open-sourced car-driving models now that you can, like, install in your car with cameras and stuff. Whether or not that becomes street-legal, I have no idea, but the Waymos are very fun. They're very smooth.
34:52 Andrew Manganelli? I have not ridden in either of them. I think I would because like Marques said, they're pretty slow and around, you know, they're testing in cities like this, which is gated and they're doing a lot of, you know, there's only so far you can go. And so as long as I'm not trying to get anywhere pretty quick, I'm fine with it. But also a regular Uber driver, I think as we left South by last year, Marques's Uber to the airport, when they got in, he said, I'm not your average Uber driver. And all of us went, oh, no, are we going to see them at that? So, you know, there's dangers in both of them. But yeah, I would get in one and try it around the city.
35:30 Speaker 01 I saw one near our studio a couple of days ago, and I realized there's an article, Awemo, that they're testing them in New York City.
35:38 Speaker 05 Yeah, which is insane.
35:39 Speaker 01 Which I couldn't decide if that made me very confident in them or extremely concerned. Because I've seen, has anyone driven in New York City before? You know that that's the ultimate challenge for these things. So if it can survive there, then I guess it can survive anywhere.
35:55 Andrew Manganelli? Can I throw an audio, a question to the audience real fast? So with this Cybercab.
36:00 Speaker 05 I was literally gonna ask.
36:01 Andrew Manganelli? Who, if you don't know, Marques has a bet. If Cyber, the $30,000, no steering wheel, two-seat Cybercab comes out by the end.
36:10 Speaker 01 Robotech.
36:10 Andrew Manganelli? Who here thinks Marques's hair is safe? AKA, do you think it will not come out?
36:17 Speaker 01 Okay, here's a bet. Here's a bet. Elon got on stage. Well, the bet was, okay, Elon got on stage, he said, we're gonna have this golden two-door autonomous thing, and we're gonna sell it to the public before the end of 2026. And I was like, of course you're not. And if you, if you do, I'll shave my head on camera. That's, I feel pretty confident that that's not going to happen. So if you think my bet is safe, raise your hand. If you think I'm gonna shave my head, raise your hand. Yeah.
36:47 Speaker 05 I feel so good about that. Has anyone here taken a Tesla Cybercab in Austin? Because they do run ostensibly in Austin.
36:56 Speaker 01 The robo taxis?
36:56 Andrew Manganelli? No, you're robo taxi.
36:58 Speaker 05 It's robo taxi.
36:59 Andrew Manganelli? No, it's robo van.
37:01 Speaker 05 Thank you. No, no, okay. We have another question back here.
37:09 Speaker 08 I've actually seen the robo taxi here, so I have a picture of it. It's definitely out there. My name is Will, big, big fan of the podcast. I watch pretty much every single one of them, at least tangentially through Shorts.
37:23 Speaker 08 So I was just wondering, what is your all's next big purchase? If it's tech or otherwise?
37:30 Speaker 01 I hope a home one day.
37:32 Andrew Manganelli? So you can have your Rivian?
37:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:36 Speaker 01 I have an answer.
37:37 Andrew Manganelli? I mean, we kind of teased one at the end of Year in the Life.
37:41 Speaker 01 Oh, that's the giant one. No, no, mine was gonna be a tech thing.
37:45 Andrew Manganelli? Okay.
37:46 Speaker 01 This video's not uploaded yet, so this is an exclusive. I just did a video of sort of a desk tour of reviewing everything on my desk. And on my desk is a bunch of things, a computer, monitors, keyboards, things that I've been using for like 15 years straight. And I know them really well, and I really like them, and I choose them out of all the choices I would have had. But sitting on my desk right now is two Pro Display XDRs and a Mac Pro. And the Mac Pro isn't technically discontinued yet, but it's pretty close. It's basically discontinued. It's an M2 chip, it's like a three-year-old chip, and they've had three generations since then. And the Mac Pro's not getting any updates.
38:28 Speaker 01 And the Studio Display XDR just came out and is better in every way than the Pro Display XDR, other than being slightly smaller.
38:37 Andrew Manganelli? And lower resolution?
38:39 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah, slightly smaller, but same pixel density.
38:41 Andrew Manganelli? Okay.
38:42 Speaker 01 So I think my next big purchase is going to be those Studio Displays to replace my Pro Displays, and then...
38:51 David Imel? I was talking about this earlier, like, I'm not sure if I'm gonna become the MacBook Pro guy that takes it everywhere and then plugs it in, or if I still like have like a Mac Studio on my desk or something like that. But that's, that's what I'm scheming right now, is my, my updated desk setup.
39:06 Speaker 09 Do you want Andrew?
39:08 Andrew Manganelli? Uh, mine's probably either whatever keyboard convinces me to preorder it and forget about next, or, I don't know, I probably won't upgrade a phone for a while because Google keeps screwing me over with this 128 base storage. It's annoying, so I'll probably hold on to this for a while. I actually don't have anything in-
39:26 David Imel? It's hard. It's like, my MacBook M1 Max is still kicking it pretty dang hard, so I don't really need to upgrade to my computer. I have a little apartment. It's got air conditioning sometimes during the summer. I don't know. I would say, I mean, I've been trying to, it does have to be technology, because I've been trying to convince myself to buy a Leica M7 for like six years.
39:47 Andrew Manganelli? That's technology. Raise your hand if you should buy a Leica M7.
39:52 Andrew Manganelli? White.
39:52 David Imel? Yes.
39:53 Speaker 09 Do it.
39:54 David Imel? Thank you, Al. That's probably it, honestly.
39:56 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah, I mean, I will probably get a Rivian eventually, but-
40:00 David Imel? A what? Maybe a cloud subscription.
40:03 Speaker 09 Claude Max?
40:04 David Imel? No. No.
40:07 Speaker 09 All right, next question, right back here. Hey, how's it going, guys? Big fan. Been following you guys for a while. I was just at CES this year, and I saw a lot of like autonomous lawn mowers and stuff. What was the, what was it from CES that really impressed you guys this year that you perhaps are looking forward to in the consumer space?
40:25 David Imel? Robot phone.
40:27 Andrew Manganelli? That was mobile-
40:27 Speaker 09 That's MWC, isn't it?
40:28 David Imel? Well, they showed it at CES first.
40:30 Andrew Manganelli? Did they?
40:31 David Imel? I think so.
40:31 Speaker 09 Yeah.
40:32 David Imel? I'm just kidding.
40:33 Andrew Manganelli? I'm trying to remember what happened at CES this year. CES is, CES is the perfect example of when I say we don't remember timelines, because I could mention something from eight years ago and it'll feel like this year's CES, because it probably stays at CES for years at a time.
40:47 Speaker 09 I will say the-
40:49 Speaker 01 This kind of ties into my weather thing, but the autonomous lawnmowers are interesting.
40:53 Speaker 05 Oh, God.
40:54 Speaker 01 We've got several major blizzards on the East Coast this year. And someone that I've been following, every time there's a blizzard, he posts a video of his autonomous snow blower clearing his driveway actively while it's snowing so that he wakes up to a clear driveway. And one of them went super viral and the whole world found out about autonomous snow blowers. And then we got another blizzard and it was too much snow for the snow blower and it was like, kind of, it had to go back to the dock and charge. It was interesting, like, seeing like, a real use case of that thing. And I thought that was, that was kind of like, the best case scenario of like, an autonomous vehicle that just silently, while you're not thinking about it, goes out and does work, earns you some time, and then goes back and charges and goes to sleep. And I thought that was pretty sick.
41:38 Andrew Manganelli? There was one thing that I'm remembering now, which was the Seattle Ultrasonics kitchen knife that is like, essentially vibrates to help cut things better. They did wind up sending us one and we tried it. There was a short Marques did on it.
41:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:52 Andrew Manganelli? It was, I wanted to love it, but I just did not quite accomplish what I wanted it to. And I talked to the team there and they were super nice and they're gonna keep trying, but I was a little bummed out by it, unfortunately.
42:05 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:05 Speaker 06 We learned that everyone in the studio has bad knife handling skills.
42:08 Andrew Manganelli? I learned that very quickly.
42:09 Speaker 05 Almost everyone.
42:11 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah, Ellis being number one worst knife handling skills.
42:15 David Imel? There were some really weirdly shaped, cool phones there this year. I think that the Clix communicator was very, very cool.
42:23 Andrew Manganelli? Oh, yeah.
42:23 David Imel? You know, so I want to try that. I want to have like, a little Weekender phone that I don't have to.
42:28 Andrew Manganelli? Disclaimer, David, disclaimer.
42:29 David Imel? Okay. The person who launched it was my old roommate.
42:35 Andrew Manganelli? That's a crazy disclaimer.
42:38 David Imel? I don't know what to say about that, but yeah, true.
42:40 Speaker 01 I'm also, to be, I also saw that at CES, or saw that from CES and I was like, I want to check that out.
42:45 David Imel? I am actually interested and I did actually put $400 down for a pre-order, so.
42:49 Speaker 01 Okay.
42:50 David Imel? And not only to support him.
42:52 Speaker 05 We have another question right here.
42:55 Speaker 10 Hi guys, so this is the second live episode that you guys do and the studio year recap, like getting cameras all over was great. So my question is like, is there gonna be any more live episodes like this? Something that I've been, I'm from Puerto Rico and like, one of the big things that we live in a little bubble in the US and just going out to other countries and seeing technology over there could be something different. Like I'm going to Japan in October and I'm like super excited about the tech weather now. So like, is that been any thought or like having more live episodes, mostly if something else out of the country too?
43:29 Andrew Manganelli? Sure. What's awesome about Vox setting this up is we get to do it without, they handle all the hard work. Like seriously, the people at Vox here who are setting all this up, kudos to you. You're doing an incredible job and we appreciate it. They deserve an applause. It's really awesome. We've talked about it. Having Harper on the team now gives us a little more flexibility of like possibly being able to set something like that up. It's just a huge undertaking. Maybe year in the life, if you have not seen it, it's an incredible thing our studio channel put out, just covering literally everything we did last year. It's an hour and a half long. We run on a really efficient and tight schedule.
44:10 Andrew Manganelli? I mean, most of us, our flights at four today and we got in at 10pm last night. So like, we do things really fast. So a show like that takes out a huge chunk of what Marques ultimately loves doing, which is making YouTube videos. So as much as we'd like to do it, I think the first ones would probably be around New York City or maybe at a CES or something like that or near an event on the West Coast. I mean, I'd love to go out of the country and do something.
44:40 Speaker 01 I will be campaigning hard for Puerto Rico, I'm just saying. I was gonna say, I do, I like what you said about like, we're ultimately in our own bubble, like location wise, kind of no matter what. And I got like a super huge dose of this. Last year I went to China to play an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, but ended up like, as soon as I landed, I was just like, this is a, there's, first of all, 90% of the cars are electric. This is insane. And like, being immersed in that culture and that space and realizing like, this is its own bubble, but... There's nothing in common. It's incredible. And so then we came back here and I reviewed the Xiaomi SU7, which was an electric car from China in the US. Just to sort of shine a light on that. And people were super curious about it. And I feel like we should do that more often is sort of poke out of our own bubble
45:25 Speaker 01 and into others and understand like the tech that's running in other places. And that's like more advanced than what we see in our own bubble. So I hope to do more of that and maybe we'll go back to China.
45:33 David Imel? Even with smartphones, it's pretty wild. Like all of the European phones that we're not even getting here that have insane future. Like the robot phone that we just, we just talked about a couple of minutes ago. Maybe not getting a global launch. So there's just a lot of weird, interesting technology in these other countries that we don't even like, it's kind of hard to even talk about it because we're not even going to be able to utilize it here.
45:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, that is actually the hardest part is importing a Chinese car into the US and getting a plate on it and register to actually drive it and test it. That same problem is true for every piece of tech that's not built for this market. From phones to computers to cars to everything in between.
46:10 David Imel? And the bands and the maps don't work and everything is like half broken.
46:13 Speaker 01 The entire language, one of the length, it's in Celsius and kilometers. I don't know what's going on, but it is worth the challenge to experience the tech that those places have to offer.
46:21 David Imel? Yeah.
46:22 Speaker 01 All right, we'll take one more quick break and when we get back, even more of your questions.
46:35 Speaker 01 Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. So AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools like threads and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying kind of blind. That's the problem Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all of these pieces together from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub and more. So nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping.
47:18 Speaker 01 Learn more at jira.com. That's J I R A dot com.
47:23 Speaker 03 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
47:53 Speaker 04 Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
48:22 Speaker 06 All right, next question back here.
48:25 Speaker 11 Hi, super cool to see you all. I've watched you guys' content all the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, David, especially for all the film camera and camera stuff. You've let me to get my own camera. But the question I wanted to ask was actually about form factors. I grew up in some of my favorite pieces of technology growing up were things like the iPod Nano and the very first iPhone and stuff like that. Seeing how much bigger things have gotten year over year. I remember I have a Flip now, which is the closest thing I could find to a small phone. But when I was searching, I was hoping that the trend would continue towards what the Asus Zen phone was like. But then the next version got bigger and bigger. I'm wondering if you guys predict or think that the market and tech space will come back towards smaller form factors?
49:10 Speaker 11 Or whether the trend to get bigger and bigger is just going to be matched by slimmer and slimmer to save our pockets?
49:15 Andrew Manganelli? Can I ask him a question real quick? Did we do was Flip Compact Phone Smartphone Award this year?
49:21 Speaker 11 I believe it was.
49:22 Andrew Manganelli? Do you agree with us that the flipping phones can start being in our compact form factor?
49:26 Speaker 11 I was definitely wondering about that because it's a square now, but it's still a chunky square. But I wonder if Apple's design choices to go towards passport styles are going to start encouraging the rest of phone makers to start looking at smaller phones? Or whether that bigger iPad space opening is going to be more the direction people are going to head?
49:47 Speaker 05 I have something to say about this because I used a small phone up until about three or four months ago and
49:54 David Imel? Mini.
49:54 Speaker 05 Yeah, the iPhone 12 mini and I was
49:57 David Imel? You had an iPhone 12 mini?
49:58 Speaker 05 I know, right? I was constantly shocked at how many things just didn't work on it. Like how many developers had did not take into account that a screen size even like could be that small. Even like when the Apple Sports app first came out, it didn't load because like things were off screen and I couldn't scroll a page. And so like, I want to see these things come back, but there's a part of me that's like, we've, we're already over the cliff. Like things would need to get re-engineered beyond just like different screens.
50:27 David Imel? I don't know. I mean, Android is like, Android is changing a lot to be adaptable to many different types of displays right now. And there's actually a little bit of a Android revolution going on in the small phone form factor world right now. There was a startup that just launched like a Square Android phone that everyone's been talking about for the last couple of days. There's the Clicks communicator, you know, I have to give my little
50:48 Speaker 05 Disclaimer David.
50:49 David Imel? Disclaimer, disclaimer, it was my roommate. And then there's, there's just like a number of weird form factors that are starting to come out in the Android space. And the current version of Android is specifically tailored to just kind of like grow and shrink and change. And I think that there's always going to be a market there. The question is, is it enough to mass manufacture a product like this? That's why we always see these companies releasing a small phone for like one to two years and then like, oh, well, same result as last time. Nobody wants to buy it.
51:17 Speaker 01 That's, I think that's the key is the, is how big is the market? Cause I think when you talk about small, especially small smartphones, it's one of the most interesting segments in tech because if you ask people, they all say, yes, we want a small smartphone.
51:31 Andrew Manganelli? Our people, we all want?
51:32 Speaker 01 We all want a smaller smartphone. And then when they put it on sale, the bell curve is all people trying to get the biggest phone they possibly can.
51:40 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah.
51:41 Speaker 01 And so it will be startups. It will be small market stuff, but the bigger companies are finding out that it isn't worth it to develop a separate small phone when such a few amount of people actually buy it. So it's a sad thing, but I agree. I want that Zen phone back. Like I love that phone, but it does seem like it is more niche than the super big companies are willing to put that effort in.
52:07 Speaker 05 I want to try and rapid fire a few because we got a lot of people who want questions and my guesses.
52:11 Andrew Manganelli? 13 minutes.
52:12 Speaker 05 13 minutes, okay.
52:13 David Imel? 13 minutes, okay.
52:13 Speaker 05 Sorry to cut you off, Andrew, but.
52:15 Andrew Manganelli? I miss smartphones too.
52:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, and you own this ad phone, so you're the worst person I could have cut off, but sorry. Anyway, what up here in the front?
52:22 Speaker 12 Hey, guys. Hi, nice to meet you. By the way, Mark, I thought you are way shorter for a while because of the photos you take with Justine and Saff at the Apple.
52:31 Andrew Manganelli? And my question.
52:32 David Imel? Oh, the Saff photos, I forgot.
52:36 Speaker 12 Did you guys ever notice, or did you guys ever have an inconvenience, or notice a bug that was like so small and so inconvenient, but you still remember and it's still annoying you to this day?
52:48 Speaker 01 The podcast went live an hour ago, but we just got done talking about this. There is, I've tested 300 cars at this point, and Andrew's car has a feature that I've never seen in any other car, which is when you change the volume, a full screen volume knob takes over the entire screen to show you your volume. So whatever, navigation, music, whatever was going on disappears and it says, here's your volume. That's insane. I've never seen that before.
53:18 Andrew Manganelli? I brought that up on this week's episode, hopefully you all listened to it after, to talk about for like two minutes. And I think half an hour into the episode, we're still complaining about it. So that's like my, my biggest annoyance right now is that.
53:30 David Imel? Yeah, I have an Android TV, but the way that it works is it's a projector and then there's an Android TV box that goes in the projector. And they have two separate volumes for some reason, but you can only access one. And it's kind of just like quantum, which one decides to get picked. Like one, at one point, it's like, oh, the volume's maxed at 25, but you can't hear it at all. And then you have to turn it off and turn it back on. And then maybe if you flip a coin, maybe you'll be able to turn the volume up. There needs to be a unified system there. Just put Claude on it, bro. Yeah, maybe Claude can handle it for me. All right, next question.
54:06 Speaker 06 Oh, hi, thanks for what you're doing here. I actually wanted to ask about, about phones, accessory phone devices. I think I was trying to search what the name of the latest one was, but I just saw an article about how people are getting like devices with their phones, like, you know, they don't have to pull out their phone. I don't know if you've heard of those.
54:28 David Imel? Like an accessory phone.
54:30 Andrew Manganelli? The Clicks communicator was the one in that article.
54:32 David Imel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Disclosure, Andrew's disclosure.
54:36 David Imel? What do you think of them?
54:37 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah, I-
54:38 David Imel? The palm phone, baby.
54:39 Andrew Manganelli? Hard sell for me. Well, Steph Curry had the palm phone, so it was pretty sweet.
54:45 Andrew Manganelli? I don't know. I kinda like the Clicks communicator heater. It's just a phone. It looks interesting. I don't think, Marques is a two-phone person already, so maybe that's something you could do. That part of the accessory is meant for working and more keyboards, and as a keyboard lover, you'd think I would like it, but phone keyboards don't interest me that much.
55:04 David Imel? I think the most difficult thing about this is text message forwarding. Is that like, if I'm taking a phone for the weekend, generally it can have data, but it doesn't have my phone number.
55:14 Andrew Manganelli? Yeah.
55:14 David Imel? And if everyone would just get on Telegram, then it would be easier. Signal. Or, yeah, probably Signal's better. I know, but... I know, but Telegram has animations and stickers. So, yeah, I mean, I would, I'd love the idea of being able to take something for just the weekend, but if people can't communicate with me, and that's even my concern about the Clicks communicator, too. It's like, it's a communication phone. Yes, it's great for Signal, and it's great for Telegram, it's great for Slack, but if people are texting me, which in the United States, people still text you a lot, it's kinda hard to justify something like that.
55:47 Andrew Manganelli? Totally agree. I think it has to be your same phone number.
55:50 David Imel? Yeah. Just use WhatsApp?
55:52 Andrew Manganelli? No.
55:52 David Imel? No.
55:53 Speaker 05 I was using a minimal phone for a few weeks last year until I met my girlfriend, and then decided to switch back to my iPhone because I thought I was less funny on a physical keyboard. So that's my opinion. We have one question right-
56:09 David Imel? We should redo that worst takes question.
56:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think we'd shift two votes over to me for that one.
56:15 David Imel? We get it, Alice. You got a girlfriend.
56:19 Speaker 13 Hey, y'all. It's lovely to meet you all. Thank you, Alice. I love y'all and the entire studio.
56:24 Andrew Manganelli? Thank you.
56:25 Speaker 13 I think, I have a couple things to say. I think I will open to access my ex's text messages. Maybe you can do something I can't. That's just me. Um, I want to know if, I want to know what your pre-production pipeline looks like, because I find that pretty fascinating. And also from me to y'all, from filmmaker to content creators, could we, the film industry, sway y'all to change from 30 FPS to 1?
56:50 Speaker 01 He will get off this stage.
56:52 Speaker 13 No. Because I think by default, it is the best FPS and should remain the default in best.
57:00 Speaker 01 Marques, let's talk, let's talk, let's talk. Can I get, can I just get why?
57:06 Speaker 13 It's just, to me, it's just most natural. It's just, you, you have films that's 24 FPS. It's just one more natural. To me, that's just, I just like it, like.
57:15 Speaker 01 Valid, valid, okay. Alright, you know, well, okay. So the pre-production stuff. Our pre-production is, uh, we've gotten it pretty streamlined over the years, which is very exciting to me, someone who loves efficiency. Um, I, I talk about the octopus analogy all the time. I don't know if you've heard it before, but I think everyone who starts a YouTube channel or really any creative endeavor kind of turns into an octopus where you're doing a lot. You're on camera, you're also the editor, you're also managing, uh, the thumbnails and still graphics, and you're also doing all of the backend and the emails and the accounting, and you're doing everything. And our job as a creator or a dream is to be able to like, cut an arm off and like, hand it to someone
57:57 Speaker 01 and have a small team around you that can kind of help with doing the things that they're really good at. And we've done that, which is really exciting. Uh, so I can do my job, which is writing, testing the tech. Uh, so I find that that's been, you know, my best way of visualizing it. Uh, that said, 30 FPS is definitely the move, and I'll tell you why. It looks, so I, I used to do a lot of, uh, slow pans in my videos and a lot of little slow orbits in videos, especially because I'm trying to show you a gadget or a thing so you can see it before you hold it. And Anything under 30, to my eye, when I start doing those slow pans, I start seeing a little bit of shudder, a little bit of stutter.
58:42 Speaker 01 And that was enough for me to go, okay, I can't do 24, it's gotta be at least 30. Then the argument for like 60 and above 30 comes in, and that looks a little bit surreal and video gamey to me. So that's how I land on 30 being the like ultimate, perfect tech review frame rate. If I ever do a short film, I might reconsider, but I'm probably gonna default to 30. Probably, probably gonna stick.
59:04 David Imel? I started doing 30 for the exact same reason, because good fluid heads that were affordable for a college student did not exist.
59:10 Speaker 01 Yep.
59:10 David Imel? And I just saw this kind of jumpiness. And my, now my take, which I heard from someone else, I'm just jacking it from them, is that TV is 30, and YouTube is TV, so YouTube should be 30.
59:23 Andrew Manganelli? I'll throw one more really quick thing in there. Pre-production, we were really efficient with, just because of, we've all been doing it for so long now. Post-production, one thing we're really trying to work on lately is, we have so many videos coming out of our studio because of the different channels. We're really trying to have multiple eyes on it as much as possible, because just when you're, you're hitting upload, it's going out to millions of people. We just need to catch things. And one thing we're really trying to working on is fact checking, making sure we're not breaking embargoes and stuff, just lots of different things in there. Other than that, if you haven't watched Year in the Life yet, it definitely has a lot of our pre-production stuff in there.
59:58 Speaker 05 It's, it's been in, because, you know, we're not, we don't make a lot of those mistakes, period. But as we've ramped up all the different channels and we're making so much more stuff, it's been this unexpected, like, oh, this is actually gonna take a lot more time than we, we would have expected.
1:00:13 Andrew Manganelli? Can I just get a quick time check, guys?
1:00:15 David Imel? 5:23.
1:00:16 Andrew Manganelli? All right.
1:00:16 Speaker 01 Perfect, question back here.
1:00:18 David Imel? Sweet.
1:00:19 Speaker 14 Thank you guys so much. I've been a fan since middle school, and to put things to perspective, I graduated college four years ago.
1:00:27 Speaker 14 I guess I'm on now.
1:00:30 Speaker 14 My question is, what's your guys' thoughts on how successful Android XR is gonna be? Do you think it's gonna be, have a similar marketplace like Meta Ray-Ban? Or is it gonna be something like VisionOS, which no one really uses?
1:00:43 Speaker 05 They just did the flight simulator thing. Anyone see that? No?
1:00:47 Andrew Manganelli? XR, are we talking about like the?
1:00:48 David Imel? The OS?
1:00:49 Andrew Manganelli? The, oh, the whole OS and like thinking of going into glasses and stuff like that later?
1:00:53 David Imel? Yeah, I think the Google Glass two, three, actually, because they already did Google Glass two, is going to use it. I think Android XR is just going to be similar to Android where it needs to be able to fit a number of different form factors. I think there'll be a very small use case for like the VR goggles, but ultimately what they want to look forward to is the regular glasses. That's what everyone is realizing now is going to be like the future use case. I think the reason that Google has not actually released anything yet is because it wants to skip over the whole step that Apple kind of stumbled over. You know, Apple thought, oh, we can just put you in a VR headset that's sort of also the world around you, but we should just have like a clear glasses display with extra information, ambient information.
1:01:38 David Imel? What Google Glass one was in the first place, just want to say, that were 10 years too early. But yeah, I think, I don't know, as a platform, I think it's going to be more about that singular use case, even though Google is always about making one platform able to jump around to multiple different circumstances.
1:01:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think just for that reason alone, the ceiling for it is higher than Vision OS, because there's the philosophy of like, make this incredible headset that you are in all the time, and then make it smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, or start with something like glasses and then make it more and more capable, more and more capable. And it turns out the glasses thing is what people are more gravitating towards, so I think we're going to see more of that.
1:02:18 Speaker 05 Do we have time for one more?
1:02:19 David Imel? Yep.
1:02:20 Andrew Manganelli? Three minutes.
1:02:20 David Imel? All right.
1:02:22 David Imel? Maybe two.
1:02:22 Speaker 15 Hi, Nitesh. Nice to see you again. And that's a whole different deep cut altogether.
1:02:28 Andrew Manganelli? Good seeing you again.
1:02:28 Speaker 15 Yeah. First of all, I wanted to say that you guys said a lot of stuff about the Vision, the MacBook Ultra last year and the other Siri stuff. So you said that last year on South by Stage, it happened this year. So maybe I think you should say things for Apple adds that to the development pipeline for next year. So that might be a thing. What I wanted to ask is that we have a lot of phones with AI now, almost every phone, and every company is trying to do different things, mostly with Gemini. And yesterday also, the Gemini integration for phone use came out yesterday morning. So how much of that stuff do you actually use in your day to day? And has it helped you or made things worse for you?
1:03:07 David Imel? Yeah, I think Gemini is quite useful in kind of all of its contexts right now. The actual phone use thing is only on the S26 Ultra right now, so only people who have that phone can even try it. And I think right now it's still limited to like calling an Uber and doing Uber Eats.
1:03:24 Andrew Manganelli? Pixels too, I think.
1:03:25 David Imel? Is on Pixels as well?
1:03:26 Speaker 01 Pixels are going to get, or it might be out for Pixels as well, yeah.
1:03:29 David Imel? Yeah. So I think Gemini is just kind of trying to entrench itself into all of Google. Like, they've said multiple times that Gemini is basically the new OS. And I think we're seeing that. Every new Android launch is just about Gemini, and it will become the entire platform. So whether or not you want to start using AI on your phone, it's just going to be the phone at a certain period of time. Whether or not we actually, you know, just go let it buy something on Amazon for you without actually checking it first, that's going to be a whole different story that we're probably going to cover in length once we get there.
1:04:05 David Imel? Yeah.
1:04:07 Andrew Manganelli? I don't use a lot of AI stuff. I'm still, I feel like it's making my regular Google Home worse. Because I just feel like they forgot about all of that stuff, but.
1:04:16 Speaker 01 Yeah. I use the Gemini stuff a little bit to brainstorm. It's just fun to chat with a brainstorm, like an early video concept. Can we do one more in 1:15?
1:04:25 Speaker 05 My, the action button on my phone opens, does a Claude chat. It's a, it's a, do we have time for one more in the back?
1:04:31 Speaker 01 One minute, we rapid fire.
1:04:33 David Imel? All right, let's rapid fire, let's go. One more?
1:04:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:36 Andrew Manganelli? A quick question. What are your guys' predictions for the PC space by 2030? How are people going to use personal computers? Depends on pricing, probably, at this point.
1:04:48 David Imel? It's kind of wild seeing how much Apple has gained ground in the last two or three years. Microsoft is, you know, they're kind of just forfeiting a lot of the personal computer space to Apple, and Microsoft is really, really entrenched in the business communication side of things and with the, with server sales and things like that. And obviously Lenovo issues tons and tons of computers to different industries, but, I don't know, it just seems like they don't care as much about the consumer side. And the, there's a huge shift that's happening in the personal computer side overall. What?
1:05:23 Andrew Manganelli? One minute warning. Can we do one more right here?
1:05:25 Speaker 05 Okay, I think this is the last one.
1:05:26 Andrew Manganelli? Really quick last one, yeah.
1:05:28 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:05:29 Speaker 16 Hello, so YouTube and other platforms have been trying to push more AI production tools into their platforms. And I think the general consensus of actual content watchers don't really like to engage with AI content. So my question is, who do you assume is actually consuming AI content? I know that we've seen like OpenAI try to make like slop content of a platform. So who do you think is actually watching this AI content? Or are they just trying to grasp at straws and hoping something sticks?
1:06:09 Speaker 01 I can, I can sort of end it with my take on the AI content thing. I think, I think the shape of AI content is one of these, of like viewership of it. I think right now, it's ramping up really quickly because the tools are super available and the barrier to entry is super low. And it's super novel. So people see an AI video and they go, oh my God, this is AI. And they actually watch it and they share it and it's interesting and it's spiking. But I do also think, and maybe this is naive and it won't play out the way I think, but I think that people will ultimately want to watch human made stuff. They value the human connection. They want the effort that a human puts into something and they want to reward that and watch that. And that's more interesting. And I think, once we get over the novelty hump, I think content, whether it's vlogs
1:06:54 Speaker 01 or reviews or whatever it is, starts to be prioritized as like, I want to watch the human version. And then it goes to the other side of that. So that's what I think.
1:07:02 Andrew Manganelli? The personal connections.
1:07:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:05 Speaker 16 Yeah. All right. Take us out, boys.
1:07:10 Speaker 01 Thank you, guys, for watching and for tuning in. If you haven't already subscribed to the Waveform Podcast, you can find us online, watch us, and hopefully you enjoy the next show that follows. Take it easy. Thank you.
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