iPhones and AirPods and Watches, Oh My!

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39:11When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. All right, welcome back. It is the week that all of the reviews for all of Apple's new products for fall have come out. And so my thoughts, as well as everybody else's who's been reviewing them about AirPods 4, about Apple Watch Series 10, and about iPhone 16 and 16 Pro are all now out there in the world.

39:55And so we can say that we've been testing them, using them, reviewing them, taking pictures on them, listening to the headphones, using the watch. Yes, this is a black Apple Watch Ultra that I quickly switched to after finishing testing the Series 10. And we have plenty of thoughts, random scattered rants maybe to share that weren't in the reviews. Let's start with the iPhone, the 16 and 16 Pros. the main two things that I think will come through in the review because as we're recording this I haven't made the reviews yet but the main two things are one these phones are unfinished they don't have any apple apple intelligence features at all at launch and two cameras are really interesting and I think the analogy that I'm trying to finish for this review for the cameras is that the way that a camera looks and processes images is kind of like EQ in music, in headphones, for example.

40:59The way that these headphones sound out the box, if you like them, great. If you don't, that's fine. That's just one of the ways that they can sound. Change the EQ, now they sound like this. Change the EQ, now they sound like this. And photographic styles on the iPhone are kind of there. so the power of defaults is very strong and the iphone still has a look with their default image but that's just one of the ways it can look and there are surfacing ways to remind you of different ways they can look i think those are my two biggest observations look you could probably buy this new 16 and be fine it's it's not that dramatic of a change from the 15 or the 14 the pros are better in the camera department and better in the screen department as they are every year great 4k 120 super cool but yeah that's that's basically new iphones in a nutshell i have a lot to say about photographic styles they so okay for those that don't know yet there are photographic styles first launched in the iphone 13 series the pros uh but they only had like a few different styles that you could have in it yeah like four or five or something yeah and you could like there There was a tone slider and a color slider, a warmth slider.

42:14But those are the only two things you could change. There were only like four presets. And you had to take a photo in the photographic style. When you took it, you couldn't change it. It was baked in. They made a big deal about how it's not just a filter. It's like in the pipeline, you know, which is true. Still true. Now, they have added a ton of different presets, which is very cool. I personally think the gold preset is like by far my favorite. It feels sort of like Kodak gold. It's nice. It's warm. It's contrasty. The interesting thing about photographic styles this year is twofold. One, the first time you open the camera app now, just the camera app at all, like the first thing that shows up is, hey, photographic styles.

42:57Look at this. Try it. Take a few photos. like it is in your face like change the way that you can't want the camera to work by default right now and i think that that is basically their response to people like me who complain a lot about this like raised shadows uh no contrast processed computational photography look where they're like all right if you want to actually get your camera to look the way you want to look set it when you first set up your iphone and it will always look like that you can go in and change it if you want but here which i think is awesome i just immediately set it to the gold one and honestly generally that's like good enough for me but the other thing is they now have this like they change the way the sliders look so they still have uh these like settings near the top but they have basically a touchpad where you you take the style and you can change this like 3d slider between saturation and like brightness where you can up the the like shadows and you can up the saturation in this like kind of 3d space or there's just a simple slider for saturation where it's like applying the style yeah um and i think that overall like giving people this much more control out of the box is like a very smart move from apple because they don't want to come out and say you know what you're right we went way too hard on the computational photography we're just going to change the default pipeline and it's going to be more contrasty and it's going to have less shadow detail and now they're saying you want something different?

44:33Do it yourself. Which I like that they're like shoving it in people's faces so that they have the opportunity to actually do it whereas photographic styles on the iPhone 13 was like not very obvious and also was not very customizable. Do you think it's more like when I just think of people complaining that it's computational photography and they don't want it versus people who like film photo styles are in style right now and giving them options like that. Like the Fuji? Yeah, like I mean, people are taking way more photos on film or at least trying to make things look like film. More recent. I think that's part of it.

45:09I wouldn't say that this is necessarily like filmy, but I do agree. I mean, it's getting into like a small style and I just feel like the general public of people who Apple would want to change something for probably aren't like this looks too computational photography yeah they also probably want people to less go to third-party editing apps and that's also their first party stuff yeah people and apple have both added like editing stuff in their photos app and now they're putting it directly in the camera yeah yeah yeah no there's there's a there's a lot of people who don't love the way that the new cameras look and the fact that this is built in and super easily accessible and the last thing is it's now moved to the end of the image processing pipeline so it's the least destructive it's the thing that you can edit after you take the shots so it's the thing that feels like the most encouraged for you to change after you take a picture but at the same time it's also at the front of the pipeline where you get to see in live view it's it's looking with that filter it's previewed in the actual yeah in the actual processing pipeline yeah it's like when you when you stack a bunch of things it's the last thing so that if you change it it is uh full quality change which is awesome but i think more people will use it because they get to see the preview of what it looks like versus like people are just normal people who aren't that super into photography stuff now are going to be like oh this looks fun as i'm taking it versus like oh that is there but i took the picture and i already forgot to go back and like add that filter and the more we talk about this the more it makes sense to me that apple not necessarily is so hell-bent against calling it a button but they do love calling it camera control and that's the theme for this iphone is camera control you have control over the way your camera looks and the way your camera works it's a great that's a great point it's still a button yeah okay just to be clear it's yeah i don't get why they're so i don't i don't either spatial computing they hate that people say button but yes it is it's control over your camera they're giving you control over your camera this year with the iphone 16s that's what's happening yeah so want to talk about the button that's totally a button the button's it's fine it's you know it's a little finicky for me it's kind of in this slight split the difference spot where like it feels okay in landscape and it feels okay in portrait but not great in either totally fine agree um but yeah you can swipe through i end up mainly using it for tone like just deepening the contrast in the shadows and like messing with that just so i can see the shadows in real time and taking those shots.

47:38Oh, wait, can I try real quick? Yeah. I haven't tried this yet. I think it's hard to use. I think the half press is harder to use than it should be. The half press takes some real, like, tact. Like, you have to get used to how much pressure you need. Wait, I see. No, you just took a photo. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was making sure that I wasn't doing it. I think the half press is pretty easy. You gotta double tap the half press. You gotta double half press to bring up the menu. And you don't even have to take, yeah, what you probably just did worked. And then you swipe back and forth. And there's a little bit of momentum with the swipes.

48:06So if you swipe like with extra speed, you can go two or three instead of one. There's the momentum's got some issues. I hate it. Yeah, there's a learning curve. I think they need better acceleration on the swiping. It feels to me like it's not sensitive enough personally. I think the half click's not bad, but the double half click is tough. Yeah, double half clicking is really tough. Yeah, it just doesn't feel intuitive. and it's interesting that they put this button on the regular iphone 16 as well i like when they're giving you all these additional settings like they're giving you like aperture control which it's fake aperture yep portrait mode yeah it's portrait mode oh in portrait doing this just makes me feel like i'm holding my phone yeah like in a very precarious way and that is going to fall out of my hand at any second yeah thank you i think with the iphone the power of defaults again is really strong here.

49:01I think I'm predicting that 90 something percent of people will never know what this camera control thing does other than if I press it, I take a picture. Yeah, I agree. That's what most people will end up doing with it. But there will be some pro tips and some YouTube videos that show you how to take advantage of it. And on the pro iPhone, this is something that people who are really into the smartphone photography will get into. You can do a lot with it and third party apps are going to build in controls for it as well. And it's going to be kind of powerful, but it only does things that you can also already do with on-screen control so it's not like yeah necessary watching you think try and use that in portrait mode i'm scared that phone is gonna fall it looks so all of your fingers are within the bottom 25 of that phone right now you know my take is they should have ignored portrait mode if this is if you are a pro video user or whatever you're turning the phone sideways even though that's technically not true anymore with all the vertical content online turn it sideways now you're using camera control which is why i think they could have put it just in the pro camera and they could have called it like pro camera and that's it yeah pro camera control and then that they have another differentiator to buy the profile i hate advocating for this no no yeah yeah screw both of you leave it in everything perspective yeah yeah because one of the themes this year is actually how good the standard iphone 16 is yeah yeah they've brought a lot of things it has eight gigs of ram now just like the pro phones it's got a pretty good i mean there's still a gap between the cameras but a pretty good set of cameras um it has the camera control like the pro phones now as well so there's a lot of things that they've done with the base phones that make it convincing i personally and i've said this probably every time i've talked about this iphone can't use a 60 hertz phone in 2024 i can't sorry i just can't do it but if you can then the only difference between this and the pro phones is going to be cameras and bigger screens it feels like every two-ish years there's the year where like the pro and the regular have this huge delta between them and it seems really obvious and then two years later it's like these are almost exactly the same except for promotion and one extra camera and they just keep going back and forth on this this feels like one of those years where you really need 120 hertz and the extra camera or else there's no point there are a lot of like small things that if you're a really hardcore pro user are useful like the usb transfer on the regular one is still usb 2 whereas it's 3.1 on the on the pro phone stuff like that yeah there's also other stuff that they didn't explain very well that i didn't even know until we talked to them in the briefing but it was like both of these phones the main camera is 48 megapixel and both of them they call it the fusion camera we had to get like clarity on what that fusion camera thing means and it's effectively i couldn't get them to say this directly but just like they wouldn't say it's a button it's basically just a rebranding of their like 2x optical quality mode that they had in the last one which it's basically using the inner part of the camera's pixels to do a 2x zoom but the photo sites are not as big so you're not as getting as much light so it's not optical quality that's like misleading it's still good but it's effectively yeah it's like pixel binning sort of right it is pixel binning it is pixel binning yeah yeah it's negative pixel binning uh it's not pixel binning it's negative pixel binning pixel binning would be four turn into one correct this is cropping yes so it's not pixel that's why i said negative pixel it's the same amount of effective pixels but the photo sites are way smaller right so you're getting less light intake anyway the fusion camera thing is basically them just branding that and they're saying well it's different because the sensor is bigger but something that they never really mentioned out loud is that the sensor in the pro phone on the main camera this year is a lot bigger than the main camera on the regular 16 yeah they basically did not say that anywhere so it's noticeable yeah to me like shooting photos and videos the iphone 16 pros have a nice shallow depth of field yeah like when i'm shooting and i noticed and i didn't really notice it that much before yeah it's really nice in these pros and you'll also get better low light performance so if you're concerned about those types of things the pro makes a meaningful difference for that right the ultra wides both fine for me i'm not finding a huge difference there and then obviously So you have a telephoto on the Pro and they're 5X on both sides Pros and not on the regular because there's no telephoto.

53:35But yeah, I don't know. 4K 120 is nice. Yeah. And that's also only on the Pro because there's 2X the transfer speed on this new sensor that is not on the regular one. Yeah. And you can cruise through storage with 4K 120. Yeah. Like for real. So keep that in mind. I think it's like a gig a minute. Yeah. The conspiracy theory. No, dude. the conspiracy theory like i i was in glacier a few weeks ago and i was taking a bunch it's just everything is beautiful and i was just taking a bunch of prores log footage just to like you'll just cruise through storage i got a notification like as soon as i got back that's like your iCloud storage is full and i was like i thought i was only using 120 out of the 200 gigs or whatever and i took 80 gigs of storage from like 20 prores log clips that weren't even that long yeah so my conspiracy theory is that they're trying to make you use as much cloud storage as possible you can shoot directly to an external thunderbolt uh drive on the pro phones and usb3 will transfer fast enough to do that i suggest you do that because if you don't you're gonna just blast your storage however there was a thing because there's like a i don't know if it's anchor or somebody made some sort of attachment that goes on the attaches via magsafe and it goes into the usb port and it's supposed to be able to like you can record directly to that we had one right yeah we have it don't we i think we were using it for autofocus yeah oh really for a little while well apparently the sd card transfer speed or something is like not fast enough to not drop frames or something like that so yeah there's an article in dp review about it that i would read just before you buy that kind of stuff we i shot a couple autofocus videos directly to an external drive and it was fine yeah it wasn't pro it wasn't uh prores log though it was just 4k 30 hdr prores yeah i think the external drives are fine it's when you use the micro sd cards that's when it gets oh yeah yeah i can see that yeah cool anyway uh yeah other than that not a ton i mean i'm going to review apple intelligence separately from the phones there's just nothing to say new here that i didn't talk about in the ios 18 video so like in six months how long does it take to come out like this is gonna long time before it's all out but when it's all out i'll review it it's just not out yet so i don't even have much to say about that c review for rant um but then we can talk about airpods and apple watch series 10 which should we do first uh airpods okay well airpods four and there's two versions active noise cancellation and non-active noise cancellation I can now say that I really tested a lot of back-to-back AirPods Pro versus AirPods 4 with ANC.

56:16they're only 20 30 difference between them but one of them has silicon tips one of them doesn't wait $179 for AirPods 4 with ANC. $250 is the MSRP though. You can get them on Amazon easy for$190 right now. That's true. And that's like everywhere. So I'm just counting them as$109 headphones. Okay. And I rated the AirPods Pro noise cancellation like an 8 out of 10. It's really good. The fit in my ear is great. And then I would switch immediately to the AirPods 4, the hard tip, and felt like it was half power. Like the noise cancellation is simply not as good. Physically speaking, it makes perfect sense.

56:58There's air gaps around the outside of the hard tip, like noises are gonna get in anyway. So the tech is working. It's just, it cannot possibly work as well without a perfect fit in your ear. So I said it was like a four or five out of 10. People got really worked up about that. I'm standing by that. Like it's not as powerful. But if AirPods 4 fit like a glove in your ear, good for you, it'll work better for you. That's true, right? And then you get a cheaper pair of AirPods. Yeah, I watched the Dave Tootie video about it, and he was like raving about the ANC, but it's probably just because they fit well in his ears.

57:29Whereas when we were recording the review, like you nodded your head once and they fell out. Dude, every time. Like I put them in my ears, and this is like the first thing I do every time I get new earbuds is I put them in my ears and I just see, does it feel like they fit or not? And sometimes there's just this feeling of it's like, it's slowly ejecting itself from my ear. Slowly, and then like 60 seconds later, they just fall out. so if i get that feeling i know that the fit isn't great and if they're silicon tips i can size up size down i can adjust it with the hard tips it's like these will not stay in my ear period or i will just have to adjust it every 60 seconds and i'll hate it yeah so that's just me like i said in the beginning of the video there's two types of people they either work in your ears or they don't so uh yeah if if airpods 3 worked in your ears then i suggest checking out airpods 4 because they're they're pretty close yeah they're pretty close i think they put anc in airpods 4 because they were looking at the airpods line and they were like this price ladder isn't tight enough i actually think that's a big part of why they have this stratification now if you if you were gonna get airpods 4 and you're like oh well i mean like i gotta get them with noise cancellation spend another 50 bucks you're like price ladder for sure but then for another you know another 50 60 bucks and only really 20 because they're the two are always on sale and then at that point you're you're two rungs up yeah i would i was gonna mention in the video i think 99 bucks would have been killer for the base airpods but they're 129 yeah i wonder how long it takes for them to go on sale for 99 but i think that would have been a nice price for those uh there was a lot of competition around 80 90 bucks though for that type of product you do get also a case with wireless charging and a speaker for those$50 more temptation for the price ladder if you haven't seen that short watch it it's it's everything that Apple does um but yeah that's it AirPods Pros are not different they just have a software update they can make them a clinical grade hearing aid which is cool which did get FDA approval this week yes and I think that's also starting to push as well which is nice uh same with sleep apnea detection in the watches I think it's also beginning to push.

59:38It got FDA approval also. Which is great. Actually, funny tweet by Quinn, Snazzy Labs. He said, I was making fun of it and then I tested it and it said, oh, I have sleep apnea. Well, and then he went to a doctor and got tested and has mild sleep apnea. So that's super, super quick turnaround and he's going to be in the next Apple keynote. That was a joke, right? And still not get invited to the event. Yeah. I have like no thoughts on AirPods, except for I really appreciate the thumbnail it was like pure throwback to old MKBHD thumbnails where you used to take two pieces of poster board and like just make you physically made the like color separation in person photoshopped and what's funny is it practically made the stroke because all like poster board on the back is white and since the camera was wide enough you would see a little bit of the white stroke through the middle like and shadow it would be like the white side and the shadow yeah you definitely made an airpods video that is like that for sure yeah it was like in a little person remember wait yeah there's no photoshop in this no no that one is that one was done with photoshop but in the theme of the ones that we used to do with practical effects like this i remember those those are fun oh yeah oh yeah so okay apple watch series 10 it's thinner it's bigger okay moving on um yeah that's kind of the review i don't know i mean I think my favorite thing about the Apple Watch Series 10, honestly, is just the fact that it now has the 1 hertz display.

1:01:09Because I like things that are digital but act as much like an analog thing as possible. Oh, you like that skeuomorphism. That's right. But in hardware design. Skeuomorphism. Skeuomorphism. As hard as you can. Well, that's still software. You're talking about the second hand? Yeah, the second hand. yeah like even though it's not something that i'm constantly looking at i just like that it's more like a real watch i think that's cool i agree it's good it's good uh and they didn't put that in the ultra 2 what the hell apple all you did was give us matte black you thought i would shut up about it just because you gave us matte black look i appreciate the matte black that band looks really good too matte black and the black band and everything but i've got this i switched to the same watch face that i had on the ultra 3 and it doesn't tick ultra 2 ultra 2 and it doesn't tick so yeah well it's oh you're right and it doesn't have the brighter off axis uh viewing or anything like that this new screen is nice on the 10 the off axis thing is also a thing that is that is useful i don't really notice it but you know yeah i would say that this year the series 10 is like as close as it's ever been to the ultra because the size is almost the same yeah it now has the depth gauge and the water temperature sensor um yeah it's like they are very very similar watches now it's sort of just like do you want the sportier one with dual band gps yeah and auto track detection and a compass and basic waypoints yeah yeah i really don't need this i just think it looks cool like the scent the 10 in jet black really really good watch and totally usable to anyone who doesn't use the Ultra features who just buys it.

1:02:50It's just the battery difference at this point for me. I do think the Ultra looks way better, though. I like the Ultra. In general, I think it looks way better. I don't disagree. The 10 is so cool. The 10, it's just sleek. It's so shiny. It's so sleek. It is really shiny. It's my favorite Apple Watch. It's ugly. No. Take it back. It's not ugly. Take it back. I agree with us. All the people, at the end of the review, I said like a rotating bezel or a circular shape or a meaningful improvement to battery. Any of these things that we were like kind of hoping for out of series 10 would have been the biggest change to Apple watch ever.

1:03:24Yeah. They didn't do any of those things. Yeah. They did a bunch of small incremental things that add up to a nice year over year improvement, but it's not like some crazy dramatic new watch. It's, it's an Apple watch. It looks fine. I feel like they're trying to make the Apple watch more like a dress watch. Yeah. The Apple Watch Ultra is like a brolic diving watch. And then they have like the cute little like Sacre Passage or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could dress up that watch with a nice band face. Yeah. Than Ultra. Yeah. That's true. I have a funny Apple Watch thing that I discovered.

1:03:56Because I started wearing an Ultra. I love the Ultra. I think it's super cool. So I, video viewers know, am not particularly brolic. have very, very low muscle mass on my body. And in fact, I'm so scrawny that my wrists and my forearms are very flat because it's just bone, no muscle, no meat. And so the crown of the Apple Watch like digs into my wrist. When I turn it, like I take it off at the end of the day, there's like a little like divot in my... Yeah, I... Wait, it's not just me? No, if I... Marcus is brawler. yeah okay i thought it was just my if i bend my wrist a certain way especially when it's on the other wrist i literally turn the digital crown and if i'm doing like a push-up or like bear crawls or anything on the ground it holds it down and i think that activates the siren after a while oh god so i turn that off i turn the siren off because i was like there's no way wow well yeah i think it says a lot about your uh your humility marquez that you're like no i'm not that strong but when I'm doing bear claw bear crawls it's part of our what I'm doing bear claws guys it's not that it's not that crazy I also do have to note um they said that it now charges to 80 % in 30 minutes I tested this three times every single time 65 % okay wait I want to say that in the announcement it said up to 80 % which I remember seeing and being like that's weird and then I think we never mentioned it and I was like am I just wrong but I'm like 99 % sure it said up to 80 % in 30 minutes.

1:05:31Well, technically it does charge up to 100 % in 30 minutes. Yeah. It, I think the thing that I noticed is it charges faster at the beginning of the charge. Yeah. That's the one, like if I was wearing it, I remember back when I was wearing it and doing the sleep tracking with it, I would basically only get to charge it while I was showering. Yeah. And I would take a quick shower and it would be at like some red number, like 9 % and I'd go shower and come back and it would be at like 13 i'm like that's weird i have to leave it on the charger longer and i come back 45 minutes later and it'll be nearly done but this one i can put it on the charger and come back in a short period of time and it's already started rapidly adding battery so i think that's where i've noticed the most difference yeah yeah i haven't measured it scientifically but that's my observation also psa you need a fast charging apple watch charger um which they started shipping in the series seven but if you have like an old like nomad charger or something you're not magically going to get more speed you have to buy an updated charger that supports fast charging um good call out yeah yeah very apple very apple and the iphone 16 and 16 pro also now charge 25 watts on the new magsafe pucks which look exactly like the old magsafe pucks but you have to buy the new ones so that's also annoying but there you are um that's the watch and the watch is the same but if you're gonna buy a new one you might as well buy the the new one the newest new one yeah the newest new one with the biggest face and the brightest screen and the thinnest thin tail as old as time yeah you have it there you have it all right we've got a game to get to and we've probably already been going for like 17 hours so we'll we'll cut this here go watch the videos if you haven't already for the full polished uh tightly considered thoughts uh before we take that break though one more trivia question trivia dude so we were talking about snapchat earlier and when those spectacles came out the gen one it was pretty hype i remember going to get the first spectacles from a vending machine in the city from one of those pop-ups which was my question i want to say if you guys remember that it was vending machines but clearly you did so next question david said the video was basically 180 degrees you know like when you're looking at it on the phone but that wasn't the field of view of the actual camera itself what was the field of view of the camera itself the one that's on the spectacles yeah field of view of the of the output not necessarily like what the smartphone camera well every different smartphone camera has a different field no it wasn't a smartphone camera it was the one oh the spectacle sorry yeah oh wow so you put them on to get first-person video it would occur a circular video and it has a certain field of view yeah what was this field of view angle okay interesting i'm gonna be guessing can we also prices rate that one because sure yeah yeah without going over i'm not gonna get the exact number okay i have a guess cool all right we'll think about that answers at the end like usual we'll be right back

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1:09:52Our team can help you every step of the way. See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit lowes.com slash holiday install to get started. Lowe's. We help. You save. Basic install only. Date restrictions apply. Subject to availability. Install by independent contractors. See associate for details. contiguous us only all right welcome back with our last section of the podcast today we've got a bunch of rapid fire things but i have a little game i want to play because they all kind of feel like they're in the same vein which i'll i think i'm gonna give credit to the verge cast for at least putting me onto this idea which is something or nothing there's various other podcasts that use the same format but there's a headline that feels like at first it might be something like a huge deal and then you think about it a little longer and you're like maybe this actually isn't anything at all i want to just get your guys general thoughts and reactions on each of these headlines and we can feel it out and figure out if it's something or nothing i think there's some in here where you don't even think you just know it's definitely much quicker all right first one iphone pre-order weekend demand was lower than expected now that at first seems like it could be a big deal but some details overall iphone sales were down 12 and a half percent year-over-year versus iPhone 15 sales at this same point.

1:11:06Pro Series is the main slump. They're down 27 % and Pro Max is down 16%. But the base 16 plus was up 48 % and standard was up 10%. So they're kind of clearly the base ones are more popular this year. But the Pro Max is still the most popular by far. Something or nothing? Something. Something? Because we talked about how the regular phones are really exciting and clearly the industry is like regular people are agreeing sales volume agrees even if they don't like listen to our podcast yeah they do though right all the people who buy these phones listen to the pod i think yeah yeah feels even though it's funny because you say that and you're like oh regular one is up 48 and the right and the pro is down 27 but still the pro max uh the volume shipped was 17.1 million units and the regular the regular unit was 7.3 million so it's max is a runaway the pro max is like insanely popular wow yeah okay yeah nobody's buying the plus huh no one is buying the plus which is really no actually crazy yeah only 2.6 million because they climb the ladder and they're like in the middle of the ladder at that point that's true Like if you have the base iPhone, you get the base iPhone.

1:12:25That's true. If you're already thinking about climbing the ladder and you've gone up, is it$100 or$200 for the plus? It's$799 to$899? It's$100. So it's$100. You've already gone to$899. And with just another$100, you're on a Pro phone. That's true. That's true. So I get it. Yeah. Yeah. But then you want to, if you're going to climb again, you're just going to get the biggest battery and the biggest screen. Okay, just get the Pro Max. Yeah. All right. Andrew, any something or nothing thoughts? sounds like nothing sounds like a whole lot of junk food the Pro Max is$200 more than the regular Pro it is because it starts at$256 instead of$128 oh the regular Pro starts at$128 everyone starts at$128 except for Pro Max got it so they made$1 ,199 and$256 to start got it so they really hike you up the last rung of the ladder pretty far we might as well come up$200 Andrew what do you think it feels like it's nothing I don't know it's still an iPhone and it's still controlling 80 % of the American market or whatever so yeah I think it's I mean it's interesting to see more people buying the regular models and if you bought a regular model tweet at us because I want to know if you bought the teal one because it's the best color yeah Apple never does color breakdowns I wish they did I would love to know the color breakdown the pink is probably going to be really popular you think so?

1:13:49every year we rave about some of these colors and then people buy black and white phones phones it's like cars yeah like the most popular car models by country are either black white or beige at the same time it's only the pro models that usually have the boring colors and they do make a lot of colorful base model phones my out of nowhere hot take is that if they made a colorful pro no one would buy it true it would be immediately the least popular yeah because the people who are spending more on it want the black and white phones. You don't think the people spending more want to be flashier? No.

1:14:28I was almost going to say maybe the reason this is down year over year versus iPhone 15 is because - There's no titanium color. Well, there's no really flashy physical thing that screams, I'm using the newest iPhone because it's all this Apple intelligence stuff that's coming in three or four months. People care more about, hey, this person knows I'm using the latest iPhone. Beyond the colors, too, they changed the camera array on the standard ones, whereas the pros look exactly the same. Wow. Interesting. So, good point. All right. Good point. Here's another one. Another one for you. Flappy Bird is coming back.

1:15:03Dot, dot, dot. But it's crypto. I don't know if that was the headline or what I wrote, but still. It's not the headline, but it's what's happening. Flappy Bird coming back. Huge. I remember Flappy Bird. I didn't play that many games back in the day on my phone, but I do remember like five of them and one of them was Flappy Bird. Yeah. And it had a moment. Everyone knew what Flappy Bird was. And I guess the IP is being purchased and resurrected and it's coming back. Not really purchased. Kind of stolen. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So this story is really sad. The original creator of Flappy Bird, I don't know if you guys remember this, but he voluntarily took the apps off the app store because he said that it was too addictive.

1:15:45he had the opportunity to like be a billionaire with this app and he was like i don't like that people are being really addicted to this i'm gonna pull it off the app store so he pulled it off the app store immediately some sort of firm decided to like challenge the ip for it because it got pulled off the app store way back in like 2014 nothing really happened with it and then recently a couple of years ago they basically filed a motion with the u.s trademark office that they should have it because he wasn't using it and because he lives in vietnam he didn't get the notice to respond to the notice so he didn't and then they basically took the rights for the ip wow um just for the title so they can't like use his like assets or music or whatever okay but uh they are now they now have this whole new flappy bird is back website where they have like new birds you can play with and new levels and at first it seemed very cool until you look into like the company's history and all of the stuff they've done with crypto in the past there is also this flap token that is like inside of the code that they and you're going to be able to connect it to a freaking crypto wallet everything you say from here on out sounds like a parody i really wish silicon valley 2 would be amazing that's all i have to say like only crypto this could have been an episode of silicon valley oh my god this humane pin in silicon valley would be so funny that's true yeah uh i'm gonna say it's nothing because i don't think people are gonna care when it real when it relaunches especially with the crypto stuff agreed yeah nothing also like something like flappy bird that could have been a phenomenon in 2013 people it's not it's not flashy enough anymore like yik yak was popular back then there are a zillion apps like yik yak there's a zillion apps like flappy bird like free flappy bird there was there was a game on like uh what are the old flash game websites that i can't think of new grounds mini clip like it was just a helicopter doing the same thing way before flappy yeah but that was before you had like things that were better than it that were that accessible yeah like what i'm just saying is like it felt like its own phenomenon not even because of the mechanics or the way the game played like it just all hit at the right time and i don't think you can hard you guys uh you guys clearly haven't been on the website.

1:18:09The Flappy Bird website? The new Flappy Bird website because there's new characters. There's a Super Mario style overworld. There's a bunch of mini games. I mean, it looks cool. The Flappy Bird, the FBCU is upon us. It looks relatively cool, but as soon as the crypto thing gets inserted... Oh, I didn't say it looked cool. I just said it exists. Well, their SEO sucks because it's not even the right page when you first go to. I do like the Super Mario overworld. That's cool. Yeah. Anyway. I'm also going with nothing. Nothing. Yeah. I'm going to be the only one saying this is going to be something.

1:18:48I think it's going to be news for one day. I don't think anyone's going to care that it's crypto. They're just going to hear Flappy Bird's back and start playing it. I hope it's something. And I hope that something is a giant dumpster fire. Yeah. I hope they get investigated by the FCC and CoffeeZilla. And then it gets this. Oh, this is going to make a sick coffee. This is going to be an epic episode. Crypto Zoo? How about Flappy Bird? Flap Token. All right. Speaking of things that read like a parody, here's another one. Wordle is now available in virtual reality. Something? Huh? Less than nothing.

1:19:27Huh? In the ground. Anybody still playing Wordle? Yeah, apparently. There's an official Wordle app for MetaQuest headsets. And I first read the headline and I was like, that sounds cool. maybe i'm just like lobbing like letters into a box and like a basketball game it's just like a screen floating in midair it's nothing it's definitely nothing you don't even have to yeah not only that and the new york times is too lazy to also add connections and some of their other popular games it is only wordle yeah it speaks to like the people i think the nostalgia cash grab is my personal least favorite like lazy tech thing that happens every couple months and you're just like hey remember this you liked it well it's back it's like okay i need something more than that this is that this is like hey wordle and speaking as the probably the last person here who still plays wordle like almost every day this ain't it i also think that things being labeled as vr when it is just a screen of the thing floating screen is not really vr yes agreed like this needs to be like my task app idea like like the the thing that you can do with vr is you can raise the stakes man like like like i think you get you get your first word wrong bro and like maybe like something slightly scary the gun shoots you in the head like a wall one of your wall oh my goodness so one of your like walls in your house like falls down you know what i mean and by the time you have one left you should be like in mustafar bro like there should be lava and dinosaurs and And like, it should be high stress, high stakes Wordle.

1:20:58There's so much opportunity for old 2D games to be put into VR and make them fun. I want VR Tetris where you're standing at the top of the game board and you have to. No, no. You have to jump down the chute as the piece. Like you're like parachuting out of a plane, except you're standing on top of the 3D space. And you have to make the shape with your body. Yeah, and you make the shape as you go down and go back and forth. I'd be a bar every time. You know? Bar. Bar. The funny thing is, like, Tetris moves so fast. How would you possibly make this book move faster? It would be slowed down for VR.

1:21:35So disorienting. That would be like, did you guys ever play Speed Halo back in the day? It'd just be like that. Speed Halo? Speed Halo? No. Oh, my God. Do we have time for this tangent? I played Halo 2. Let's save it. Okay, we'll save it. If you played Speed Halo back in the day, I see you. I just pictured somebody wearing a VR headset doing, like, the ray gun dance. of just like trying to make a shape on the ground oh good times okay so that's yeah that's nothing definitely nothing okay here's another headline uh beats by dre make iphone cases now we have two of them right here they have uh support for the apple uh camera control they are 50 they show every fingerprint you've ever had something or nothing unfortunately something Oh no.

1:22:22Because the name brand alone will sell a lot of cases. Number one, I think. Wait, do they sound good? Hold on, I have a question. It has the MagSafe logo on the back. Do you know how easily this could have just been the Beast logo and still match up with the MagSafe logo? Damn, bro. Where were you when they had these meetings? Andrew, that is a genius idea. It's right here on the side. That could just move this line right here. That's the Beast logo. We could have had it slightly differently colored to show the MagSafe portion. Damn. Oh, my God. Missed opportunity. Nothing. That shows how much thought probably went into these cases.

1:22:56They were like, hey, wait, we got to like seven or eight cases. Y 'all, could you like spin up two or three more? Yeah. There you go. Do you think they were like, oh, we've got this new material for Apple first party cases, but they're really fingerprinty, but we ordered way too many. What do we do? They're like, oh, Fine Woven was Apple branded and it didn't go well. So if we just brand it something different and it doesn't go well, we're not really liable. Sorry, that was Dre. Yeah, if you go to Beats' website, it's headphones, headphones, headphones, headphones, headphones, earbuds, earbuds, earbuds, speaker, case.

1:23:28That's so weird. What do you want them to make next? Dude, make a backpack. A VR app. Do something crazy. A VR app. Crypto. Crypto. I say, unfortunately, something because I, even though I don't personally think that the brand matters, a lot of people probably do um it's the same price as the apple tpu cases and you're getting the beats brand um yeah that's about it you think that we'll see more after this i think this is a trial run yeah it could easily be a trial run i agree with david as in these will sell but i'm interested as if they will progress yeah yeah okay yeah we're in between something or nothing last one um youtube has announced a new feature and i'm not really sure what it's called but it's a place where they've accumulated the top 100 most hyped videos by small creators let's just call it youtube hype or the hype leaderboard is what it basically is the hype list i think that's what they're calling it the hype list called hype hype okay hype yeah the features The future's called hype.

1:24:40Okay, so what happens is this is a top 100 list of videos that are all under one week old and all uploaded by YouTube creators with less than 500 ,000 subscribers. So it's a place to surface videos by smaller creators. Heck yeah. And the way that they rise and fall on this chart is by being gifted hypes. and everyone everyone on YouTube has three hypes per week that they can give to a new video by a small channel so the videos at the top have the most hypes in this one week period and there is a top 100 sorted by category I think that's everything there is to this you know we don't have 500k subscribers so if people want to give a wave form true so the new waveform episode could show up here the last oh the last thing I think is which is why you should subscribe so that we can't use this save us the last thing is if you run out of hypes let's say you've given your three hypes already and you come across a banger waveform episode you can buy another hype for two dollars so microtransactions I have a hot take about this um one that's what the gosh darn like button is for you idiots two this is just a way for youtube to like they looked at what reddit did with reddit gold because reddit gold was a similar thing where like it didn't really do much but you paid real money for it and it was a way to like say thank you this was really good content and even though i think they got rid of reddit gold which is insane by the way because that's like that was a really good free money maker for them they also did it semi on the sense of like how wikipedia asked for a donation is like you're not getting anything out of it besides these little things but like it used to be it used to say you've helped fund this many server hours yeah of like when people cared about red well when it was more about the community and less about steve huffman's pockets exactly um Yeah, but my hot take is that YouTube looked at that and they were like, oh, yeah, like you'll feel like you're supporting a creator if you hype them because you're buying hypes for$2 a hype.

1:26:58And it's like, OK, but then you're just paying YouTube, which, by the way, is not like a small website that has to be funded by the community. And you could just pay the creator money. Yeah. Chances are they have like super chats available if it's a video. Yeah. and it feels it feels like this is also my concern about this is that it feels pay to win like you could just the bot accounts that are just being spam created you could just pay a bunch of dollars on all of these bot accounts at least in that case YouTube makes money yeah here's a theory that's what they're aiming for that's yeah because no way that$2 or however much money you'd have to spend to be on this leaderboard that no one's gonna look at is worth the amount of views you're gonna get out of that leaderboard yeah So is the way this works just like the most hype videos show up on the leaderboard?

1:27:47Yeah. That's so messed up. It's literally pay to win. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you get three free hypes and then you get to use those. Yeah, I guess the theory is most hypes will be the free hypes, hopefully. Sure. Here's my other conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Okay. Miles has been talking about those bots that just post six names. Have you seen those? it's like in the comment section it just will say like six names. It's another new wave. Yeah, somebody was making the theory that that's like unflaggable comments and that it gains trust in the user creator. It was me. It was LSEA. So now my thought is those people knew this was coming.

1:28:27So they're trying to make as many accounts that are now trusted because they have multiple comments that are not flagged that they'll get their three free hikes. And they can bot those all on the same one. On a crypto video. i think on a live elon musk crypto video i feel like i can verify the first half of your conspiracy theory which is that uh look i'm going to the creator summit this week there's always questions about spam accounts that come up and every time youtube has it to address it they basically say the same thing which is spam accounts will always be a thing yeah because there's always something to gain from them spamming.

1:29:04And from YouTube's end, it's basically a giant game of whack-a-mole. We develop a new system to help determine which comments are real and which ones are spam. And then spammers figure out that system and then figure out a specific hack to determine a way to make their account look real again. Then YouTube, whack-a-mole, develops a new system to find a way. So they're just going back and forth, trying to cover up spam over and over again. And I think what you're saying is totally valid, which is one of the newest systems YouTube probably developed was a way to go, look, if you just created an account yesterday and you've left 100 comments on 100 different videos, that's probably spam.

1:29:43But if you have a four-year-old account or you've left a bunch of comments on a bunch of other videos that didn't get flagged as spam, then you're probably a real person. So we'll give that a little more benefit of the doubt. and so what they've decided to do is just leave a bunch of not so spammy innocent looking comments on a bunch of random videos to gain that algorithmic trust so that they can then go spam so they're generating reputable looking accounts so they can go spam i think that's that's actually what's happening that's that was ellis's theory and i think at some point youtube will take credit for it yeah youtube will have to figure out a new thing maybe it's like comment frequency or or style of like repeating the same comment over and over maybe that will get you flack like there will have to be new systems that youtube develops whack-a-mole then they will continue to develop new spam ways to get around that it's just something we constantly see in like i feel like it's like six week windows so yeah this is a new wave um i i have like two two takes about this hype thing one is it will be dead in a year yeah six months six months not even a year the other is this kind of does exactly what youtube always says the algorithm is supposed to do which is surface content that you like based on engagement and like you said we have a like button we have a comment section youtube's supposed to surface videos no matter how small or how big the creator is to the people that want to see it yeah this is like a nice way of us of like feeling like we have the power like yes uh this is a video that we brought to the attention but that's also the like button but that's always been true with our own engagement so i'm like yeah it's it's kind of just like it's like a cash grab to me yeah do you know what the algorithm can't do make you pay 2.99 yeah i guess it's a win for youtube youtube gets to feel like they're giving us a little bit of power like oh yeah see you made this video chart yeah because the trending page was never our direct input but now also they make some money from hype so yeah i'd rather have three free super dislikes.

1:31:45Super dislikes? Wait, I'm on board. Describe a super dislike. If I super dislike a video, now I can see all the dislikes and then people get to see it. I thought you were going to say it nukes a video. Well, if enough people super dislike something, later. I think about that, YouTube, that there will be major drama around this within two weeks of launching because there will be some exploit that some channel does and there will be a crypto video in the top 100 hyped videos within the first two weeks um and then my other prediction is that it will be gone in six months yeah yeah i think it's lit i think it's really cool i think i i don't know what you guys are talking about this who are you hyping first look because dude i've got so many channels i'd love to hype because when when you're i live on the sub 500k subscribers side of YouTube.

1:32:37Like that's my sort of bread and butter. And I notice a lot that like when you're a small channel, you're not making a ton of revenue off of it. You go on hot streaks. You know what I mean? Where you'll put out like five or six videos that just smack. They're so good. And then you'll go back to, you know, you're sort of like average level. And the feeling I get as a fan when I watch one of those videos where I'm like, yo, this dude's on a hot streak right now. like everything is like kind of flames and i would really like the ability to signal that i'm someone who's very familiar with this person's videos and this one is a special video that i think has the potential to reach a broader audience and that's something that the like button doesn't do because if you're not part of that creator's established audience and you get served the video you you can like it and it does give the algorithm like valuable information the algorithm serves me great content but i really like the ability to say like yo here i'll do courtney victoria's last video that hit she only has 30 000 or 50 or whatever how many you know small channel like that person is not going to get traction and the algorithm without people who know the content being like i disagree well here's the problem it's a list of 100 people a week the competition to get there is extremely high 30 ,000 and this can go up to 500 ,000 they've lost already they're not going to have enough people versus the 400 ,000 well maybe if I open my wallet and that person I got you Courtney yeah she'd be so much happier if you just did the thanks button or paid her and gave her two dollars and said this is a really sweet video I super appreciate it or join the membership aspect of it that would benefit them so much more way more fun if it was like creators below 50 ,000 subscribers.

1:34:25Well, yeah, they have to put the line somewhere. There's a lot of shorts channels that are like - They claim in the thing that 500 ,000 is where things really make a change. Which is a very 2024 number. I think that would have been lower years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I think you have a good point and that's what this feels like it's for. I just feel like the algorithm is already doing that because of the signals that everyone gives it. If people who haven't watched the channel before show up at a video and they're like, oh this is sick i haven't seen this and like it the algorithm goes oh you like that i got all the latest bangers from this channel surface for you yeah you're right so and also not to destroy my own point but all of these small channels i did find on the exactly yeah so so granted but i still think it's tight and i will be hyping i'll be high to swap i'll be hyping you uh tons of small channels so get ready all right we'll see when this launches we'll see what happens we'll see if waveform gets any hype yeah hype us yeah let's get the 500 000 before and if you're gonna pay money to hype us uh don't instead of paying money to hype us just like him give the algorithm what it needs push us past the point where we can be hyped go to your family member's phone enable rcs update and then like and subscribe to waveform and then hype waveform well let's get till we can't anymore the funny thing about the algorithm is if you subscribe to a channel and then don't watch the videos that come out that's actually a negative signal to the algorithm really yes oh that's my super dislike yes got him dude so just keep that in mind anyway i think we've reached the end of our six hour podcast which means it's time for trivia i'm sorry adam melina this is the longest podcast of all time all right so rcs is officially here on the iphone google did it or someone well the european union did it the european union yeah apple did not care about what google was i know it was that was a so that was anyway um yeah but it took a really long time to get here and a long time ago in the very universe we exist in today, the GSMA, which is a Finnish mobile handset cellular organizing industry body, announced to the world, they announced to the world, we have this thing called RCS, we're developing it, we have this huge list of industry players that are on board and get ready for RCS to be on your phone.

1:37:00What year did that press release come out? Could I have said the question any more clearly that time? Yes. Also, it's Price is Right Rules. What's RCS? Price is Right. Wait, this is the question I had. You said furthest away from. It's Price is Right Rules. So if you guess a year after the year. After the year. You are disqualified. Yeah. Oh, I don't like my answer anymore. But whatever. Let's try it. Wow. Yikes. Great answers on the board, guys. Who wants to go first? Horrible. Um, let's go from lowest to highest. Okay. I have 2005. 2005 is under the year, so you are not disqualified. 2007. Also under the year, not disqualified.

1:37:472013. Unfortunately, Marquez. I think it's 2008, right? 2012. It is, in fact, 2008. I thought it was 2008, but I didn't want to go over, so I did 2007. Anyway, before I pass the mic to my lovely co-host, Adam, let's recap the scores real quick, because they're looking a little crazy. Falling behind. Marquez, 17 points, third place. Beth, the listener who wrote to us about textiles, one point. David Pierce, one point. Ellis, carry the one. Google, actually in last place with minus three points. And Andrew and David tied. Oh! With 21 points. Exciting. I did have some support for my blue healer. Just saying.

1:38:33What were they saying? That I'm totally right. That one was on the fence, but when I have a guy as smart as Adam next to me, I gotta defer to him. Anyway, Adam, take it away. I'm making this podcast 25 more minutes now. Blue Heeler. Next question. What was the field of view of the original Snapchat spectacles?

1:38:56Google YouTube hype. Oh wait, no. That just came out today. It is already It is already Episode 300 It could happen Air power The Nexus Q The Nexus Q Alright Flip them and read Closest without going over again I keep doing the smallest one every time What did you say Andrew? 147 I wrote 167 167 David 170 the answer was 115 so none of you got it because you were all over significantly over that is brutal 115 degree field of view can we do closest without going under no not going oh hour six of our pod this has been great thanks for watching thanks for listening also thanks for subscribing thanks for hyping thanks for liking and we appreciate you for all those things oh no that's going to be a new call to action.

1:40:03Thanks for hyping. 100%. Hype my video. If I get 100 ,000 hypes on this video. I will give away a product and do an illegal lottery. And then I'll immediately pass 500K and then I cannot abuse the system anymore. Thanks for updating your friends and family's iPhones to iOS 18. Thanks for doing that too. Okay. Catch you guys next week. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina who's very happy about this episode. Ellis Rovin and we were partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our interactive music was created by Vane Still.

1:40:44Can you guys add my kazoo noise? No, David. It's so funny. Okay, yeah. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.