Apple Drops New M2 MacBooks and Mac Mini!
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All right, what's going on, people of the internet? Welcome back to the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And this week we've got first some Apple news. It's pretty short, but we might end up having a lot to say about it. So there's some Apple stuff at the beginning, but also...

some potential VR stuff we want to talk about with a rumor. Then we've got our musings on reviews and review systems for things. We review things, but there's more to it. And this is the conversation we were having before that we just brought into the podcast room because it was kind of existential and interesting. Anyway,

Let's start with the Apple stuff because there's two main new announcements. They kind of went into press release mode. Apple's done this thing before where they had some products that were ready to be refreshed, but they weren't really enough to be their own event. So they just go one day at a time with new press releases of new products. At the time of recording, it's Wednesday. So we had yesterday MacBook Pros and new M2 chips and today HomePod.

Which should we talk about first? I think some people think it's a press release because it was supposed to come out in November. That would be like, that would follow the MacBook Pro general timeline, right? So they did do this like YouTube 18 minute video, like pseudo event type thing for the MacBooks anyway. The HomePod was just a straight press release, just a piece, like a one-sheeter, which is kind of all it needed. But we do have some interesting things here. So I'll just go over the laptops first. So...

16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pros are now updated with the new M2 generation chips. So before they had M1 Pro and M1 Max. Now they have M2 Pro and M2 Max, which are sort of incremental improvements, bumps over the previous generations. These laptops, which I'm still – this is my 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro.

Prove it. It's exactly the same as the new one, probably. Break the embargo. You probably can't read that, but it says Apple M1 Max in About This Mac. I can tell that that HDMI port is 2.1, just so you know. The internet's going to be able to tell. Oh, this is the old one. This is 2.0. Sure. Yeah, sure. Either way.

Those old machines, old in air quotes, they're one year old, are still amazing. So like my take on these is this isn't for people who have the M1 Pros already. This is for people who have older machines to be upgrading and now have a better option. As you mentioned, HDMI 2.1 is also new, which was kind of a head scratching omission from the M1 Pro and M1 Max. God, these names. I know. A lot.

The MacBook Pros before, but we get that. We also get Wi-Fi 6E. Yes. And a little bit of a performance boost. Up to 96 gigs of shared video memory and RAM. For a lot of money. For the highest end M2 Max chip. Or very expensive. Pretty sick. Do we know what the Max that is? I'm looking at that right now. Same prices, I think. No.

way for 96 gigs oh for the max yeah but the starting prices are the same oh yeah yeah 96 is what i have on my mac pro at my desk which is back then it will it was the smaller end of ram for the mac pro which is kind of funny but so laptop prior it added 400 to go from 32 to 64 gigs of ram and now it adds 800 to go to from 32 to 96

So it's another 400. So if you're an absolute animal and you need 96, here's the thing is I edit videos on this laptop. Like I am doing a lot of heavy work on this laptop and I will not be upgrading mine. I mean, well, I'm going to review it. I'm going to check it out, but I don't feel compelled for the first time in a long time to upgrade to a new piece of kit for work. Yeah. Which is pretty sick actually. I'll try it for you. Sure. I'll take it. I'll give it a good home. They also get a new,

color matching MagSafe cable. Put it in quotes. Put it in quotes. Color matching. On the front and in the middle. I guess the thing is these laptops are only in space gray and silver. So it's not as, you were mad about the power cable and what they did with it. Which,

- Why, explain why. - On the air. Well, 'cause it's like quote unquote matching because the MagSafe aspect and the braided cable match the computer chassis, but then the USB-C port on the end is white, which like on Space Cray looks terrible. I think it looks worse than if it was all just white.

Yeah, it looks even worse on the Air, which had the midnight color. So it would be a nice dark cable and then just the white plastic on the end, which looked dumb. I will say the white cables that everyone got with the last year's models, they get dirty really easily. So they look kind of yellowed pretty easily because they're braided and they just get dirty. And it would be nice to have a different colored cable. However, it is just a cable. Functionally, I do not care. You don't like that patina?

Speaking of cables and functionalities, does anyone know what the difference is between HDMI 2.0 and 2.1? Yes, I do. How dare you even ask me? How will you ask? Adam. This is a tech podcast. You should have used this for trivia because I do know. I just wanted to explain it for the audience. Oh, I was

It was a setup. Are you going to explain it? No, you explain it. Oh, me? No, you explain it. Oh, okay. I don't know what the difference is, legitimately. HDMI 2 got 18 gigabits per second of pass-through, whereas 2.1, I believe, is a quarter of that. Way more. 48. 48 gigabits per second of pass-through. Oh, yeah, 2. It also, as Ellis taught me a couple days ago, has, what is the audio term for this? EARC.

Can you explain this? Isn't that just syncing a... No, it's pretty cool. So, like, you know, typically an HDMI cable is one of those cables that you plug it into an out jack and you plug it into an in jack. And it's not necessarily, like, bi-directional in any way. But let's say, hypothetically, you have a setup where you have a game console plugged into a, like, stereo receiver. And then you have that stereo receiver plugged into your TV. But...

You have a smart TV. Yeah. So when you're playing games, you're sending audio from your game console to your stereo, then from your stereo to your speakers, right? But when you're streaming, the audio needs to go the other way. The audio goes from your smart TV to your stereo. And you're not going to go HDMI out of your TV into your stereo.

That doesn't make any sense. So eARC adds an audio return channel going the opposite direction on the HDMI cable. Yeah. So most people have had to deal with this for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. 2.1 also adds support for variable refresh rate displays, which is nice.

Um, I'm not actually completely sure if that means like, because the, the MacBook pro is variable refresh rate. Yep. It goes up to one 20. I don't know if that means it'll just like mirror it. If you have a VFR like separate monitor, I'm not totally certain about that.

But it can also carry 4K at 120 hertz. 8K60 if you want. And 8K60. 8K60 through one cable. Yeah. So if you have an 8K monitor and you're playing 8K content on your MacBook, I think that means it could. 8K content out from the HDMI. Marques, that's not worth it for you?

Well, I don't use HMI. The thing for me is that it should have been there last year. Yeah. And so it's just good they're adding it. And then also Wi-Fi 6E because there's all of these Wi-Fi 6E routers that are starting to come out now. It's funny. We even have Wi-Fi 7 now. That's the one thing that I did kind of think about. I mean, the Wi-Fi is great. I go home and I get like the best speeds on this computer out of any other device on my Wi-Fi network. Yeah. But it would be cool to have Wi-Fi.

Yeah. But whatever. Yeah, like I just bought a Nest Wi-Fi Pro and that is specifically the 6E router. It's one of the first 6E routers and it would just be nice if like the computer... We just upgraded the studio here to Wi-Fi 6E routers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So glad we have 6E for the like 30 down we get. Yeah. ISP. It's so much fun. I'm not going to buy a new MacBook just to get Wi-Fi 6E. I'm just saying it's great for the people that are buying new MacBooks. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I'm just saying the last time Marques said you weren't going to get something, we then had a plaid like

Three weeks later. That's not the last one. I've been very good. I said I was going to get a matte black trash can and I didn't buy it. I just remember getting a Slack message in like the random chat with Marques just saying, okay guys, hear me out. And I just knew what was about to happen.

- Speaking of things Marques has said in the past while we're on the subject, I do have a little link here in the doc from something that you said the last MacBooks that came out. And I think there's a little promise you're gonna have to keep good on. Can we play the audio? - Paying attention to what's on the screen

It disappears even more than it did on the smaller screen of the phones. But that being said, if the next version of this laptop still has a notch this big and doesn't add face ID, I'll wear socks and sandals for a day like Linus. Like they gotta be planning on putting it there eventually, right? It almost feels useless to talk about how-

It's not that big of a deal. Have you not been getting tagged in this like a million? I've gotten multiple tags on Twitter and Reddit about this. I've gotten tagged about this. To be fair, since Tweetbot and Flamingo died, I have not been on top of my mentions. You're having a rough day. Yeah, I lost my favorite apps for keeping track of these things.

No, I think, well, okay. I guess my question is, does this count as the next version of this? Because it's basically just a chip bump in the same laptop. They added other stuff, too.

They added HDMI 2.1 and they added Wi-Fi 6E. And they got an extra battery life. They're not going to refresh the chassis of this until like the M4, I would guess. I guess that's kind of what I'm... Maybe... Yeah. I'm just trying to weave my way out of this. It's not that big of a deal to wear sandals. Fine. Width sucks. Come to California. I said for a day.

For a day. I think that's a bold... I think you should eat a sandal. In the winter. I think I considered it would be winter. That would be more... That's a fair point. I have a compromise. What if you can double or nothing? So when they do change the whole design, if there's still no face ID, then you have to wear Crocs. Yeah, if there isn't...

For a week. For a week. Crocs? Double or nothing. I was going to not let him get out of this. Double or nothing. Crocs for a week. I don't think I want to take... I think my logic behind this was like, if you look at this notch, and obviously all the technologies Apple typically puts inside of a large notch is like all the Face ID stuff. And this gigantic notch in this laptop...

only has a webcam and like the ambient light sensor and like maybe the microphone and that's it and i was like okay they're clearly going to do more they're gonna like you know start doing notches across the whole you know all their lineups they're gonna do notches and all these things and they want to add face id at the same time get us used to it but i i just can't believe yeah they're clearly going to there's no way they just did this huge notch which is so unsightly just for the webcam yeah

There is a cool Mac app though called Hand Mirror where if you bring your cursor underneath the notch and click it brings up like a little video preview of what your camera sees.

So if you need like a quick, yeah, you have to click behind the notch. So it's not just accidentally swiping by it. Just catch a glimpse of yourself. Yeah. So if you, yeah, if you just like need a quick, you know, and they're decent webcam. Does anyone know if there's a windows app of that? Cause there are some times where I'm just like, I kind of wish I could see myself at my webcam real quick without having to like open up OBS or some, why would you want that?

You never know, man. I don't know. Check your hair before a podcast. Yeah. Or if you... I don't know. Everyone just thought it was cool when it was on the MacBook, but now it's Windows and it's terrible. Yeah. Wow. It's the notch, man. It's the notch. It'd be cool if you could ask Siri and be like, yo, Siri, do I look okay today? Siri's like, yeah. There are times I want to make sure the webcam's like,

plugged in and working and everything or like not dirty before a call. Yeah. Yeah. Typically I just like open quick time and, but that's convenient. I usually want to check if I'm dirty before a call, you know, that's why I need my digital webcam to confirm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't see myself without it, you know? Fair. Well, I mean, you know, new laptop, it's got the notch. I'll, I'll figure out, I'll, yeah, I do not want the Crocs bet looming over my head. So I'll, I will find a way. Yeah.

That's not the only new machine, though. There is also maybe a more interesting machine, which is the new Mac Mini, which got me thinking a lot about the poor iMac, the M1 iMac that's just kind of been like sitting unupdated for a while. And we have a new M2 chip, but they haven't put it in the Mac yet. Why? I don't know. But the Mac Mini, which had an M1 and an M1 Pro, now has an M2 and an M2 Pro. I don't think it had M1 Pro, did it?

Oh, sorry. Yeah, it didn't even have M1 Pro. It didn't even have M1 Pro. It just had the Apple Silicon M1 Mac Mini. God, these names. Okay. I know. So now we have the Mac Mini with M2 and the Mac Mini with M2 Pro, which is nice. It's a little higher end. No Ultra. That's, of course, for the Studio. The Studio comes with the Pro and the Mac. Or for the Ultra. The Macs and the Ultra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Mac Studio has the Macs and the Ultra. Yeah. Which is why we don't have a new Mac Studio because there's no M2 Ultra yet. Yeah.

But we do have like... I thought all the base M2 stuff would be done. Like the M2 iPad is out. The M2 everything else is out. Why is there no M2 iMac? Did they forget about the iMac? I think they've got leftover M1 chips left and they just need to put them somewhere. And people that buy all-in-one computers are not the people that...

Like if you pick up a Mac Mini or like a Mac Studio, you're choosing your own display, which means you kind of care about your peripherals. So that means that is an indicator that you're more of a professional. But if you buy an M1 iMac, you're probably using it as like a family computer or something basic. So those people most likely don't really care about that like 30% GPU bump or whatever. True, except same with iPad. Yeah.

Well, okay, iPad is just unnecessary in every way, although at least they have Resolve on it now. Yeah, I figured they ship a lot more. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they ship more iPads than they do iMacs. I'm sure. Oh, almost definitely. So if they really wanted to get rid of M1 chips, just...

Put it all the iPads they still are like fire sailing the m1 iPads all the time true Yeah, I think they're still trying to get rid of them, but for a leftover m1 chips in general I would bet you they're putting them in and when I'm X plus they come in a lot of fun colors You can put them kind of anywhere. Yeah, they could move a lot of units look these are these are gonna be good computers I'm pretty sure I mean we're gonna test them We'll have reviews when they're ready but I feel like my initial reaction is like wow these m1 machines if you can get a discount on them and

are still amazing. This is very rare. Everyone I've talked to who I've recommended get one of these M1 Pro or M1 Max MacBook Pros loves the thing. If you can find one on a discount, I highly recommend it. It's going to get software updates the same way the M2 does. I don't see any downside.

So unless you need HDMI 2.1 or Wi-Fi 6E, keep an eye out for those discounts because that's going to be good. A $600 M.2 Mac Mini, that is like kind of the most interesting to me. Sneaky great deal. That feels like there are some very niche people out there that probably are like, oh my goodness, that's a killer price. Yeah. I just had this memory. I remember, I think I saw on Twitter maybe one or two days ago as of the day we recorded this of like,

This is the eighth anniversary of like Steve Jobs pulling the MacBook Air out of the envelope or whatever. I don't know if you saw that. And that was like a crazy thing to do for a computer. It was like mind blowing that that much compute could fit in a manila envelope. And now I'm just thinking like,

Yeah, an M2 iPad would fit in that envelope and be dramatically more powerful. If I had this M2 Mac Mini back when I was doing the fastest Mac Mini in the world project. Not in the envelope, but I did the fastest Mac Mini in the world project and tried to cram as much power into a Mac Mini as possible, this thing would just obliterate it, and it's $600. I think about that Manila envelope moment a lot because I was in seventh grade in the audience for that moment. I was there when that happened.

And I had no idea why that was important. I was just like, okay, he's pulling a computer out of an envelope. My brain was just mushed, so... I kind of feel like I do remember being really impressed, and I was like, I wish it had ports, because I would totally use that laptop. I'm glad that you...

obtained consciousness before that i yeah before i did i was awake i was online i was not i was just like i like ipods i was just thinking like what is going to be the next moment that they do something like that and i was low-key thinking what if the glasses what if like the whole time someone's on stage they're wearing glasses and then they're like these are actually though that's tough like that is crazy everyone will notice that immediately yeah because every time someone comes out on stage yeah they get analyzed from head to toe yeah like

if you have a watch being rumored, everyone who goes on stage has a little sliver of a watch sticking out under their sleeve and that thing is all over Twitter the second they walk out on stage. What if everyone wears glasses the whole presentation? That's even more obvious probably. Tim Cook always wears glasses on. They're like,

Everyone at Apple. If they're all different frames, that would be tough. Tim Cook does usually have glasses on. Yeah. They just find all the presenters, they make sure that they all have these diatisms and they're just like... Okay. You'll fit it. Usually have glasses, so I'm not sure what's happening right now. I don't know. There was that like...

There was like a few events in a row where it was like, this is our new camera and video capabilities are great. And this whole live stream has been filmed in it. And that like, see, it's pretty obvious when that happened too. But none of them have been as shocking as like the earlier technology demos when like

you have no idea what's happening and they just pull out a whole new technology. Like that's what was always so incredible. It's increasingly rare to be mind blown. Leakings making that so much tougher also. Like we know all the products before. I think it was so iconic because even if the computer did leak, that moment of pulling it out of an envelope on stage could not have been leaked. That moment of a smart presentation moment was pretty iconic, I think.

right well there's another apple product we got to talk about the best one it's the home pod two second second gen second one the home the second generation home pod gen two okay so what's new about this home right and ad break i'll just say to set the stage for the home pod the first generation home pod

was discontinued right okay so this was a 350 dollar siri smart speaker and wait it was a cool sound it sounded pretty good right yeah it launched 350 remember yeah and then they dropped the price to 300 yeah and then that didn't work and then it discontinued but it was like okay we're gonna bring the home pod back what are we gonna do with this home pod

So this second generation HomePod, it is $299 at launch. Same size, same size. I'd be losing money if I didn't buy it. So here's the difference is the screen on top, which was this like cool animation, like LCD touch sensitive area for volume and triggering Siri is bigger.

It's a full coverage of colorfulness now. That's why you didn't buy the HomePod, right? Yes, absolutely. The reason. Yeah, that's new. It has an S7 chip inside. It now has a temperature and humidity sensor inside. So you can ask it, what's the humidity in this room? Why would you do that? People do that.

Apparently that was also activated by a software update for HomePod minis, which were secretly also carrying the sensor the whole time. Yeah. It's being updated next week. But you wanted the bigger one. So, you know, they they wanted the $300. But you wanted to sit out one. So that's new.

There is also a software feature where, because there's microphones, it can always be listening. It will recognize the sound of a smoke detector or carbon monoxide alarm. And if you're not home, it'll send a notification that it heard that sound to your phone. So you'll, I mean, that's also a software update for the HomePod Mini, but come on. I do like that. It's a cool feature. It's a good feature. Is it?

Yeah, I actually do like that feature a lot. Is it a good feature? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I thought it was dumb because if I'm in the room and I hear a smoke detector, I don't need my HomePod to tell me. Yeah, but if I'm away. Yeah, you call 911 and you have them go to your house. Oh, yeah, true. Nest has been doing it for a really long time. I was going to be like, do they want you to race home? Like, what are they? It's like the Apple Watch where it's like, if you don't have this product, your house could burn down. Yeah.

yeah like that would be what if what if like we were chilling recording the podcast Wednesday and I'm like like oh sorry guys my apartment's on fire I do good to know good to know I think like in the city where it's like your apartment somebody would probably call the but like if I'm even if I was just like walking the dog and I got a notification that your house is on fire and I'm like a block not even a block I'm in

middle you turn around and you're like yep well it's like call 911 and like run back yeah i don't know yeah i think it's cool and nest does it but apple doesn't have any security cameras right so this is their way of being inside the home with a microphone it's their way of always listening but returning the favor by giving you convenience yeah you know thanks yeah yeah yeah i actually do like that so that's that's the stuff it's it also now has matter um which i think is great

But as we learned, yes, the old HomePod got matter in October of last year. Yes. However, it didn't have a thread radio. So the only difference is like you can do matter over Wi-Fi or thread, but thread is the thing that allows for that like intranet thing where it creates a mesh network inside your house that it doesn't have to go into the Internet. So it's, you know, it's more secure and it's local and all that stuff. Yeah.

That's good. I think that more expensive home smart speakers are going to get thread radios with Matter in the coming years. And it also can be a thread border router, which is good because you need at least one in your home if you want to have a thread network. But yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's back. It's going to be it's saved. We did it. This is OK. This is going to flop so hard because it still doesn't have Spotify support, which is freaking stupid because every other smart speaker just supports basically everything. And I don't care if I'm an Apple music user specifically, but like.

if people come over to your house or apartment or whatever and just like can't cast the music, they have to go on to, like it's just annoying. - Yeah, if you live in the Apple ecosystem, it's like a moderately cool product. Like you hold your phone up to it in NFC and like you beam your music from Apple Music. It's like kinda cool. If I'm not in the Apple ecosystem,

This product doesn't really make me want to be in the ecosystem. You can airplay Spotify and things like that, but it's not the same. The seamlessness of me asking my assistant, I won't say it so I don't trigger everyone's, I just say, hey, Google. We get so many comments every time we do this.

I'm like, hey, G, play this song. And I literally can in the home app tell it, okay, when I ask for that, I want you to do Google Play Music or Spotify or whatever else. And it will use YouTube music, whatever I want. And it will log into my account and stream it from the internet. All I have to do is say the command and it does it. It's like that's what people want. Just like let me say the thing and it just plays wherever I want it to. Yeah.

So it doesn't do that. I'm also open to being proven wrong, but historically expensive smart speakers have not done well except for Sonos. People don't care about audio quality. Well, the Google Home Max did so bad. Like that did really badly. I'm serious.

Like, I'm serious. Yeah. People don't want to pay $400 for a smart... Well, it's $300, but... Yeah. LSS2 on pre-order right now. It's not that audio quality is unimportant. I really like a good-sounding speaker. But as we're just saying, like...

The reason the Echo Dot and the Google Home Mini and the HomePod Mini are much more successful than the HomePod Max and the Google Play, Google Nest Hub Max, HomePod 2, the big expensive ones is because most people are just doing the convenience thing. And if it's loud enough to fill the room, then that's fine. If I want speakers, I'll get speakers.

And that's where we're at. This has happened with Google multiple times, too, because it's not just the Nest Hub Max that sold like not very many units. But when they originally did the Google Home Audio, the big speaker, what was it called? I thought it was just the Max. That was the Nest Hub Max. It was Google Home Max. I'm pretty sure. Google Home Max. Google Home Max and the Nest Hub Max both sold really poorly. Yeah.

But any smaller versions that were like affordable and you could place anywhere sold really well. The only thing that could probably change my mind is if I listen to it and it sounds awful.

tears just run down your face for how beautiful it is. If it sounds incredible, that would, and it is an updated sound signature. If you want to do the Dolby Atmos pairing, you do need two of the new one. It won't pair like one of the old and one of the new. So annoying. So that's a thing, but you know, I'll listen to it. I'll give it a shot. Do you use Apple music? I do not. I use Spotify. So it's going to be, it's going to be annoying. Okay. It's going to be annoying. I'm going to ask Siri to do things. All right. And Siri is also like the most,

commonly accidentally triggered a person I'm shocked that it hasn't like woken up over here because typically we'll have like the the the home pod will sit in the studio for a week and it after enough like random quiet

Like an, like a air conditioner will squeak and it'll just go, huh? Wake up and you're like, why you, do you think I'm triggering this? I'll just unplug it. I think that's my favorite is that it does. Huh? Yeah. Chill. I like that a lot more than the Google. Like, sorry, I don't understand. Just the, huh? It's more natural, but it is weird when nobody said anything. Yeah. And just a corner of the room voice goes, huh? Who was that? Where did that come from? Yeah.

Yeah. I don't, we'll see how this goes. Okay. But it's, that's the home pod too. Yeah. Cool. That's the Apple press release week. Yeah. And I have one more Apple rumor just because this tweet was kind of funny to me. So I'm just going to read it to you guys and we can talk about it for like five seconds, but

Apple has indefinitely postponed development of its standalone AR glasses and is planning a lower-cost mixed reality headset for next year as a follow-up to the first version coming this year. Move your red thread around to where we're going there. Wait, I need you to read that again. Just because we all know about the current Google...

Google headset, right? Wait, Apple headset? Yeah, I'm just kidding. It's not Apple. This is a tweet talking about delaying an inevitable rumor or a rumor that's then going to make the second version of where the first version is a rumor all

So we've seen none of this. They're indefinitely delaying the standalone glasses. Yeah, I think like the Google, the Apple Google Glass kind of. And then they're planning a lower cost version of the headset that they are going to release next year. Where then this year's headset is the higher expensive version? So this report is just basically saying the second gen of the thing that is coming out next year, which is not

Standalone glasses, but a headset. Oh, yeah, this year. This year is... Oh, my goodness. I'm sorry, Avi. The Mixed Reality headset, AR, VR, I'm assuming, like, Oculus Quest Pro and Vive. Yeah, competitor. Competitor, whereas...

then the AR glasses are indefinitely postponed. Which is so disappointing. But we are going to get a cheaper version of the Mixed Reality. It's so disappointing. These are all just like... It's like rumors about products that don't exist and how they're reorganizing. None of this will actually affect anyone until they actually come out. So I'm just waiting for them to come out. It is kind of, to be fair, anytime you go to a VR or AR event or where anyone is ever talking about this, sort of looming in the background of every one of those conversations is...

well, Apple hasn't done their thing yet. And it's sort of, when are they going to, they're going to jump in eventually. Have you seen what Apple's working on? Even when I talk to people at Meta, they're like, have you seen what Apple's doing? And I'm like, no, nobody has, but we're all expecting something soon. So-

They talk about the second mover advantage, but they're like the eighth mover advantage. Yeah. I'm just imagining Apple's VR home screen when you log in is just a solid white room. Normally it's like a cool fancy living room that makes you feel at home. Apple's is just...

Walls of white with like no quarters depending on the time of day. There's a AR Tim Cook and he goes good morning Good evening. I would log out all the time. Just tell me good morning over your shoulder is just a Johnny Ive sitting in a chair When you look at the aluminium of your home screen we knew that it was time for you to log off and

It's perfect. And the battery's dead. Your battery life is low. Have you considered voice acting? That wasn't bad. Okay, well that's the Apple stuff for this week. I think we have enough to talk about after the break, so let's do trivia.

Trivia, dude. Trivia with lights. Trivia. So quick update on the score. Marquez has three. Andrew has two. David has two. Oh. Close. How long is this season? However long we want it to be. Let's go, brother.

So we have a comfortable lead on David. And then they'll give me the chance to catch back up again and I still won't catch up. Okay. All right. In 2000, Tristan Lois first proposed attaching audio and video to RSS feeds. In 2004, the word podcasting was coined in a Guardian article by Ben Hammersley. In what year did Apple officially add podcasting to iTunes?

I feel like this is one of those things where as a podcaster, we should know the history behind the, uh, rough idea. Do we have to get the, oh wait, I'm going to do this. I already forgot the question. I barely remember.

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All right. Welcome back. I have a rant and it's not really my rant because this is a rant all three of us have had before on the side a long, long time ago. I think I pitched it as a long form podcast episode. And then as we talked about it, we felt too long for a podcast, which was kind of wild. But but anyways, it all resurfaced as a shower thought. And I'll explain why. So

I ordered a mirror for my shower. Why? On Amazon. Because I wanted to shave in my shower instead of having to clean all the beard hair off. That's really smart, actually. Yeah. It would be harder if I actually could grow a beard. So it's not that important. But so anyways, I get it. I put it in my shower and it like flows.

like fogs up immediately despite saying it is a no fog mirror and like using a mirror in the shower that's bogged is pretty much useless. So I thought to myself, I was like, I'm not just going to return this like,

Would we all agree when we get a bad thing on Amazon, the first thing we do is just return it and then forget about it? Get our money back? Because that's the most important. Either that or I forget to return it. And then just eat it? Yeah. I put it in the microwave and then I eat it. You've got to warm it up first. Okay. So I was like, instead of just returning this, I'm leaving this a bad review. Because I felt like I have not been leaving things...

bad reviews lately. - I need to give more negative reviews. - I need to give more negative reviews. And then I just thought, I just need to give more reviews in general. And that online review system is broken and I feel like if I can give more reviews,

I can help that system. Because this thing had 30,000 reviews and an over four star rating. Welcome to the rabbit hole, my friend. We settle in. This has been a series of like a web of thoughts.

that we were at some point going to try to make a video with. Like I try to, I try to come up with like a structure when we have a thought that's worth a video, we try to come up with like a title that's sort of, at least in my head, I can picture like a branching out into either a flow of ideas with a beginning and an end or like arriving at a conclusion, like a funnel. And this one is just like a bunch of things that I, that are all interesting and have all something to do with reviews. But yeah,

Here's a place to start. All right. When you go to buy something from Amazon, like a product, you always have a choice of like a couple different options. Would you rather pick one with 12 reviews, 4.9 stars or 780 reviews, 4.6 stars, all other things being equal?

And there's always a tipping point where you're like, oh, well, maybe if it was 4.7 I would do it or maybe if the price was different. But that's one of those things where it's always like, hmm, reviews online are mostly just us deciding what to do with these numbers in our heads. Sometimes you look at the distribution of ratings. So two things could both be 4.7 stars. But if one of them is mostly even...

and one of them is mostly five stars and then a bunch of one stars, that's a different vibe. You know what I'm saying? And like, how do you process this information and make a decision? It's all fascinating to me and I have no answers. Let's answer that question first. What would you, which one would you pick? I would pick the slightly lower reviewed one with way more ratings. I agree with that. I think my reasoning for that is, is I feel like Amazon tries to game like,

they try and get people to put good reasons. So more ratings, more ratings to me feels like less of a chance. Like they're going to get 500 plus a thousand plus with not many reviews in general feel suspicious. And it's sort of like how you can create any shape from triangles or squares. If you like have enough of them, even though triangles, you can create a circle, right? You integrate under the curve and then you get this like really filled out.

Yes. It's harder to get 784.6 stars. I was like, what are you talking about? I'm going to accelerate out of this analogy so we can forget it. I give that analogy a three star out of five.

I just think it's like it's harder to get 780 4.6 star reviews rather than 4.9 stars. Fake reviews, yeah. No, if you just like have a good enough product, people will review it enough that you have 780 reviews. Where like I could get 12 4.9 star reviews like pretty quick.

But it also depends so much on the context. Like, is it a restaurant? Or is it skydiving? Is it an Uber? Or is it a hotel? Like, if I see an Uber that's 4.6 stars, something bad does bad. What happened? Sorry. I was just going to say really quickly, if you're an Uber with 4.6 stars, you might not even show up on someone's account. Because...

In Uber, you're basically a 4.9 or a 5, and if you're not, you're probably just not showing up and you've lost your job, which is insane to me. The stratification of acceptable changes based on the context of the thing. If you're going for an Uber ride, it's basically like 4.8 stars to 5 stars is the range of acceptable, and 4.8 is the lower end of acceptable. If you're going to a...

Theme park it's like 3.5 stars is probably fine I'm gonna see a movie like I'm not like Rotten Tomatoes people go to 2 2 out of 10 Rotten Tomatoes movies all the time But if it's skydiving, I don't accept a 2 out of 10. Yeah, what happened? So the context now like your lace is reviews yeah my yeah, oh, yeah Lacey Lacey I would give my Lacey a 10 out of 10 and

But here's the other question. How do you give a rating? Because we have this one system in our head for evaluating existing ratings. And then we have another system in our head for you got the shower mirror. Hear me out. Technically, only one thing was wrong with it. It worked. Yeah. Yeah. It attached to the shower.

It just didn't do the one thing, which is fog. So like it didn't do the one thing that made it usable. It did reflect. So it reflected you. It was a mirror. You took it out the box. It was packaged. Well, like nothing was the same way as the picture. Okay. So this is kind of what I wanted to talk about in the sense is like,

I think the way we review things should be different in the sense that we should stop using the only ones and fives. Like it feels like we're in this scenario of like, I either hate this thing, therefore it gets a one and I'm putting no other thought into it. Or like, I really loved this and it's a five, but I think we should stop giving fives because for five, it has to be perfect. Like what was the last thing either of you guys bought that was like,

a literally perfect thing. Like you had zero qualms about it. That's not very often. The, uh, and this is not a joke, the fogless shaving mirror in my shower. Well, I need to get a, do you have an affiliate link for that? Yeah, it's sweet. It's awesome. Okay, I'm going to actually ask you for that, but. Is there any part of that that could have been better? That's the question. Well, that's a,

So slightly different question because I think something can be perfect and still could be better. Really? I think that's possible. Really? Yeah. I think there are products out there like right now, imagine a super simple product like a hammer.

Sure. I could go to Home Depot right now and for $20 pick up a hammer off a shelf and it's heavy and it's weighted and it's got a nice grip and I hammer in the nail in one shot and I'm like, this hammer, nothing wrong with it. Five out of five. But it could have a nice carbon fiber weave on the inside to make the handle lighter and that would be better. I'm not going to

give this hammer a four now because it's not even better. Like, you know what I'm saying? So that's like, that's like, that's like reviewing in a vacuum versus reviewing against like everything else that's available, I guess. Right. But then you have to take like the price into account and like all of this stuff. The price has a lot to do with it. My thing is like my MacBook Pro 16 inch, I, to me is,

except it could have Wi-Fi 6E. It could have HDMI 2.1. Which technically was still true before this new one came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And it has the notch. That doesn't have Face ID. So it's like, I love it, and there's nothing that I'm like, it's so annoying that I don't want it. But what's wrong with giving that a four? A four is a great score. I...

Because it was the best available thing. A four is a fantastic score. I think we should... The hard thing is everyone needs to move to your system, which I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm saying they should. We need a hashtag. It will be difficult. That solves everything. Yeah, because people do need to be more kind of critical because right now ratings are... Five star to ten tar... Ten tar. Five star ratings are pretty binary. It's like you either get a five star or even if you get a four or a three, that's basically a one. And then it creates... Especially when you have like

all of these reviews that created like a 4.2 4.3 like even if you have a 4 4 star and a 5 star there are 10 systems in between that yeah that's what's confusing about yeah a 4.1 star is just a matter it's just a function of how many one stars you and what you're comparing it to a 4.1 star compared to a 5 star is a 1 star versus a it's a 1 star versus right 0 star versus a 1 star yeah this is like another one of those thoughts it's like a 5 star

If something is pretty good, but it has like a 4.5, that means it got a certain number of one stars. But if it's a 4.2, that means it probably got more one stars than the 4.5. So yeah, that's another thought. They're binary. But yeah, binary is another thing. So a lot of rating systems for evaluating...

I don't even think products anymore, but content a lot of times has turned into binary because it's just a simple, quick thing. Like YouTube used to be a five-star rating system. Not that long ago. I mean, for me, I was around back then, but like a couple years ago. I'm pretty old. Okay, boomer. I remember.

I remember back in my day asking for a five-star rating on a video, and that was cool because people would leave five-star ratings, but my video would end up with a 4.9 because some people gave it a 1, some people gave it a 2. Very rarely did anyone give it a 2, 3, or a 4, but that was a real option. But no one really used those buttons, so YouTube just turned it into like or dislike.

If you want to train your algorithm, you either hit like to see more or you hit dislike to see less. And maybe that supports the creator. You can't even see the dislikes anymore, which is funny. But now it's like on TikTok...

It's almost less than binary. Maybe we're not reviewing content, but I can like it. But also, if I just watch it till the end, that's positive signal. Yeah. That's the same on YouTube, too, though. I mean, Netflix, too. If you watch something all the way to the end, they assume you like it. Netflix, I recently saw, added a love button. So there's a like button.

Have you seen this? There's like a heart for like. Do you like me or do you like like me? And there's a dislike, but there's a love button. So now it's like...

Yeah, you watch something that gives it a positive signal. Do you guys ever like stuff on Netflix? I don't. Netflix really needs validation. I like stuff. Do you really? Yeah, sometimes. To feed the algorithm? Yeah. To be like, more of this, please. Also, I share it with my girlfriend. So sometimes it'll be like a movie that I really don't care about. And if she's liked it, I'm just screwed. So I try to like push it back in my direction by pushing the like button. It's a constant battle. I also want to make a really quick note about YouTube removing the dislike button. I know we already had this conversation. The button's still there.

Right, the counts count. Oh, okay. I was just going to say, if they removed the button, it wouldn't change anything. Because liking the like button or not liking the like button is the same thing as liking or disliking. My only pushback would be people have to really... The ratio of likes and dislikes on YouTube is like most people don't press the button at all. Yeah. And...

The default for any engagement for most people is to hit the like button. Yeah. Only in the strange case that people really don't like the video, you end up with a lot of dislikes or something went wrong. So if you remove the button, you kind of remove the difference between not hitting the button and really disliking it and wanting to signal that you dislike it. So that's like, it's not quite a binary. It's like a three tiered rating system as it currently exists.

There's also the snowball effect like on Reddit, like voting versus downvoting things. If you see something that's really highly downvoted, you're more likely to downvote. To pile on. Yeah. Or upvote. That's aware of all of our videos on our Android. It's pretty much like was the first couple of comments good or bad? And now the entire thread. Trend because nobody wants to be the like nobody wants to be the person that doesn't have the same opinion.

Yeah, I've noticed that actually. I don't know. I don't have a name for it yet, but I could probably write a thesis paper on like momentum of sentiment analysis. That has almost definitely been like heavily studied, probably through Reddit specifically. Yeah. We have the benefit now of like we publish content on YouTube and we get instant feedback. But I even I will notice now on our own videos or on videos in my sub box, if I check very early for the sentiment of comments within the first two minutes of a 10 minute video,

those sentiments can drive the rest of the video unless it's a pretty dramatically terrible video. It usually will just set it in motion. So yeah, it's all about, that's another blob in my head of review momentum. And if you're an Amazon seller, you need to get as many reviews as possible and they need to be five stars because the second it starts turning,

It's turning. That's one of my problems with Amazon, though, is now imagine that momentum carries on year after year after year. Imagine you made an updated version of, let's say, state of 4K, and rather than a new video, it replaced it, and you kept all the old comments. So, like, on Amazon, you could have...

let's just say like the Galaxy Watch 4, that's a bad example, but like the Galaxy Watch and then the new generation comes out, it stays under the same- - In the old listing? - In the old listing. - Oh, that's terrible. - So now you look at reviews and they're from like 2019 and they're great, you sort by frequent and they're like one star is like the new version of this sucks.

i like never buy it but that's not what you see unless you dig for it it's easy to do people like that like having having new product listings taking advantage of the momentum of old ratings there is one place though where we we actually accept that which is software because if if you have an app in the app store there's constantly new versions coming out and they just keep all the old ratings like we have a podcast

And the ratings, when we put up a new episode, don't go away. They stay. And we just continue updating it over time. They've always been five stars. Yeah. But if you sort by most recent, then you can get a better idea of the newest version of the product and how it's going versus older things. This happened really recently. I don't remember if it was Sony earbuds or a Sony phone or something. But I remember some Xperia product, I think it was, hadn't even come out yet.

And I looked on Amazon to see if it was like available for preorder and it already had like thousands of reviews. And I was super confused and I looked at them and they had just swapped out the like existing listing of the previous version of the product. So it kept.

all of the same reviews. But it was a new product that hadn't even come out yet. Yeah, for a tech product, that seems insane. Yeah. I think it was a Sony product. I don't particularly remember, but it was really weird. I was like, how are you even allowed to do that? This is not even the same product. It's weird. It's like,

more common when an existing product that is like technically the same model number but they like change some of the materials which are worse now and they change the manufacturing process or something there's a threshold for how much change is allowed before you need a new listing basically yeah that's why I was surprised by the Sony thing it was weird it's like the another thought in this pool of thoughts this is a rant yeah is like the more complicated a product is the more

More lenience you give its flaws So if you again just to use a hammer example you buy a super simple hammer it only has one job Right. So if it fails at the one job, yeah, I guess it's one star like it doesn't there's no Legit, I mean you can't really could fail it. This is the thing is I'm just simple. Yeah. Yeah, it could be like

uh, the hammer could be too small for a, like an exterior deck nail versus like a finishing nail for adding stuff in. Yeah. I'm just trying to go like all the way simple, like a brick. If I'm reviewing it, like it either works or it doesn't. Didn't break through the window of my enemy. I find it difficult to give a three star review for a brick. Right. But then we, we sit here and we review like electronics and gadgets are very, very intricate and nuanced. And so like,

When a phone comes out, it might have a really nice screen, but it might have not the best processor. But it does have a lot of RAM, so it's future-proof. And the company has a good record for software updates. So we're teetering at four stars. But then the camera system this year is really bad. So now we're back to 3.8 stars. Phones are so complex. But for video quality, it somehow does really well. The stabilization and the features they added this year are great. So it's back up to 4.1 stars. And so you have all these things competing for dragging it in different directions. Yeah.

And you end up with a review somewhere in the middle. So you almost never end up with a perfect five or a perfect one for an exceedingly complex product. So you probably don't have to give that many fives or ones, but nobody gives threes unless they have a mid experience. Give threes. Threes are not bad. A 3.5 is a seven out of 10.

If you think about it, that's not a bad score. That's not bad. C minus. What's wrong with 7 out of 10? It means it did the majority of the things right. I think that's why this whole... Did you get on a plane that worked 7 out of 10? I'm gonna... As a score, not bad. I... Yeah, I just...

Give less ones, give less fives. I mean, here's what I'm going to do. And everyone can join with me if you want. I'm going to review every single product I buy on like Amazon, Etsy, any online store gadget. I'm not going to do this because we've gone on a million tangents about restaurants and everything being different. Everything I, every product I buy, I'm going to review.

And I'm going to limit myself to one five-star review per month. I only, like, I don't think I should be giving out that many fives. I'll do this with you. Thank you. One five-star. Trade our reviews. I don't buy a lot of stuff, but I will. I buy way too many things. That's really interesting. You're a homeowner, though. Here's my. I'm always afraid I'm going to get evicted, so it's a little different. Here's another no-cad. This eviction. Two out of five. Look at this.

Here's another node to add to this pile of thoughts. Which reviews do people actually pay attention to? Because for a product, most people, if you can actually sort by reviews, and this applies on YouTube, whether it's like a phone comes out or just like on Amazon...

A lot of people sort by most helpful, but you can choose to read just the three-star reviews if you want to. But I think most people choose to read the one-star reviews to see what's wrong with it and the five-star reviews to see what's good with it. That's exactly what I do. And so if you don't give a five-star or a one-star review, most people won't ever see your review.

Which is kind of what happens with the stratification of like sensationalism on YouTube, which is like a new phone came out. It's all right. But no one's clicking my video if I say it's all right. So I got to say it's terrible or amazing. Like that's a real force effect. I could also write a paper about which is like most products are fine. Most products are just three stars and that's fine. Yeah.

But no one wants to say that. Like even the Motorola phone. This is kind of a point of like that Moto phone, the Moto G 2023 that we just did. It's like it's a smartphone. Like smartphones are incredible. It's amazing. Maps works on it. It can like get you around the world. You can make phone calls. You can browse the internet. You can order from Amazon. You can do like technically this is an incredible piece of technology. It's just like.

In a vacuum where that's the only thing that exists. Yes. As soon as you have context of other devices. Or the price. Or the price. Any additional context and you're like, okay, let's step back for a second here. Yeah. Yeah. Put the context in your review that you leave, that you know. I just think if you leave a bunch of three and four star reviews, you will...

I don't know if you care about this, but no one's going to read those reviews. I do. How about why don't we end this with what are some best practices you guys use when you use reviews? You said you like to look at one and fives. I actually think three and fours generally have a lot of truth to them. They usually do. Somebody leaving a three to four star review probably feels pretty strongly about the things that they liked and the one or two things that they didn't like. It's probably the best review. Yeah. So I like to look at stuff like that. And I also like to sort by more frequent. I like

that are more recent that I know is going to be the exact thing I get from Amazon or Etsy or whatever? On Amazon, you can sort by most helpful. So you can sort by reviews that have the most reviews. So you can leave a thumbs up on a review and it's like, oh, this review is helpful. And so when you go to read the reviews on Amazon, you can sort those reviews by the most reviewed reviews. So if a review is all reviewed, you'd review the review and you'd,

The people that review the reviewer's review are often the people that have not reviewed the actual product. Would that have to be a verified review to review the review? No.

Anyone can review the review. Yeah. Anyone can on Amazon, anyone can review the review. Yeah. That's what's frustrating about like tech reviews is that there's so many people who like to review your review and they're just like, right. Good review. But a lot of the time, can we wrap this up, please? Okay. I'm just saying like, there is a way for a review to be a good review, even if you don't agree, like agree with the reviewer because it,

covers everything, right? If you talk about the things that are important that people want to hear about, that's technically a good review. Your opinion about that device is subjective.

But it's the people that say like, oh, this is a terrible review. I don't agree with you even though I've never touched the thing. That's what's so frustrating about the reviews. People reviewing the reviewers' reviews of the reviews. One thing I'll say is I've always strayed away from giving – we review lots of things here, but numerical ratings –

especially for tech because tech improves over time. And so a theoretically, let's even say four star product from years ago, the older it gets, the more context you have about new things that are better and you'd never get that thing today. That thing that was four stars is now one star. That thing that was a nine out of 10 today, the iPhone four S might've been a nine out of 10 when it came out. But today,

Yeah. It barely works. It's probably a three out of 10. So I I've decided I don't like giving numerical reviews to things. It's always just the feelings and the experiences and sharing that with people. Yeah. And ideally, that's the most helpful thing you can do. Yeah.

And since you're on Amazon, you have to attach it to a star rating. I don't know if you're going to account for star inflation over time. Will you adjust your reviews in a year when the new Shower Mirror comes out? Well, when stars inflate, eventually they lose their energy. They collapse, become black holes. Someone cue the trivia music, please. Before we do, I have one thing I want to throw in here about reviews. Okay.

Just one last thing. If you're ever shopping, and this is what I do, if you're ever shopping for pro audio gear specifically, this just applies to pro audio gear, and you want to know if a product that you're buying is going to be durable, specifically if you can bang it around, take it with you, and it's not going to break, look for someone in the reviews that says exactly this.

We have this at my church, comma, and we love it. If someone has written that in the reviews, it means that thing is getting banged around and treated terribly and it works week after week after week, which means you can trust it. That's a good sign. Ellis' pro tip. And without... Wait, fun fact. U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday was actually written about pro audio gear at churches.

Because they bang it around so much. Trivia. All right. Okay. Okay. Anyway. Trivia question number two. Yep. U2's Bloody Sunday. No, no, no. So at the beginning of this, we were talking about a lot of Apple products like HomePods and whatnot. It reminded me of the original iPod released in 2001. What?

What does the pod in iPod stand for? 160 by 128. No one will ever get that joke except for us. And you, yeah, we're not going to tell you. Here's an ad break. Support for Whiteform comes from Coda.

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All right, welcome back. We don't have much else to talk about, but I do want to show you guys a video. There is only one YouTube channel that when they drop a new video, I literally stop what I'm doing and go watch it.

whatever whatever hour of the day i'm afraid it's not that one yeah i mean i'm subscribed i got notifications turned on i got the bell the whole thing you know andrew does not have notifications turned on to the waveform podcast fake fan but with this one not only do i have notifications turned on i could be in the middle of something i could be driving and if i see that notification i pull over and i open that notification and that is the boston dynamics youtube channel

Because when they drop a new video, as they did this morning on the day of recording, it's Wednesday, you just know you're going to see something that's going to change your whole day. I thought you were going to say I pull over because I need to watch if they finally drop the video of like, this robot will kill you. Start running. Do I need to turn this car around and save my family? Very important information.

So, yeah, I wanted to show you guys the video they put out today because this one is life-changing. And just like the rest of them, it's really well done and really interesting. And I want you to see it. So I'm just going to turn this towards you. Life-changing in like a life-threatening kind of way? Your life will never be as safe as it was before. You never know. All right, here we go. Can you describe it, by the way, for audience? What do you think the rating of that hammer is? With a hammer?

Three out of ten, Amber. Okay. And now there's the Atlas robot, the humanoid-shaped one at the bottom of the scaffolding. Okay. Runs over, grabs a board. Great cinematography, by the way. Yeah, that lens flare. That lens flare. Spins around, puts the board in place. You can see where this is going. Why is he dancing? Man.

run to the foot of the stairs instead of yeeting the tool bag up to the top of the scaffolding he runs up the stairs jumps up ducks under turns around yeets the bag is it an OSHA violation if it's a robot he needs to get down double fists punches the jumps to I don't this is insane and then he shows off a little bit

gainer yeah off the box nice with the tiger woods pump yeah

And that's the video. Dismount, 8 out of 10. Wow. Ladies and gentlemen. That dismount was pretty good. Boston dynamic. You see the dynamic except that twirl? I could not do that fluid of a twirl, and that's a really heavy robot. These robots have been doing things for years that I honestly couldn't do myself. Yeah, definitely not. My main thought was also when seeing this, like one half of my brain, I think I tweeted this before, like one half of my brain is like,

It's fine. It's fine. It doesn't, it's, it's totally fine. It's just a pre-programmed series of moves that somebody with a controller told the robot to do. It's not alive. It's fine. It's just rehearsing something that they built a robot to do. But then the other half of my brain is like,

"Oh my God, this thing is gonna take over the world." It's clearly capable of things that none of us are. It's aware of its environment. It's sentient. It's picking up things. It's wild. - Sentient. - It's not sentient, but it does bring up an interesting question to me, which is how much of what it's doing is pre-programmed? You clearly set up the scene. You put the board there. You put all the scaffolding there so it can climb up everything.

And then when we spent time with the spot robot, if you like steer it at an obstacle, it will walk up to the obstacle and climb over it. Even though I didn't hit a climb button. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it is aware of the obstacle and it knows that with its set of legs and with the things in front of it needs to do the certain things to climb over it. Yeah. With this humanoid one, what is it?

program to do versus how much of it like when it does the gainer off the box and then it lands and it does like a hop or two to like get its like balance yeah that part is i was just gonna say that it didn't stick to landing yeah like it yeah lost balance but the gyroscope adjusted itself the gyroscopes are constantly being pinged like a thousand times a second like they're they're in real time like evaluating right weight distribution if i had to guess also before like

we get fact checked on if it's a gainer. It's not a gainer. It's like, I don't know. I don't know exactly what it is. We're just saying gainer because it's front flip. It was like a 180 front flip or something. Anyway, fact check us live on the podcast. Yeah, I know the parkour. Anyway,

Like, okay, so it grabs the board. If I had to guess in the whole scenario, I'd say there's like a couple things that are pre-planned. Like, I don't think it's smart enough to grab a board, like to see the gap and grab the board to fix the gap. I think it's like, grab this, put it here, and now here's your walking path. In that walking path, you will react to what's in your way. Yeah, there's definitely like a mix of computer vision with pre-programmed movements. And in terms of the like,

It wouldn't think, I need to get down over here. Let me push this block off, jump onto it, and then do a 180 front flip off the end of it. But I do think... The programming was walk up to this box, push it, walk up to wherever you think the edge is. Evaluate. Evaluate, then do this jump move. Then do the flip, yeah. And then the landing again is like, land as best as you can. Yeah, and it still needed to use its cameras to get to the edge of that block to then do the flip off of it because...

Because it pushed the block off, it wasn't in an exact coordinate that you could program. And so you don't know how far that's going to slide forward or backwards. You still need to clear a gap and then do a flip. Yeah. So it's like if I... We need Boston Dynamics. Yeah, we need someone to tell us, someone who's worked on this probably. I just imagine like the controller for it, like you...

You point it at a set of stairs and you just hit forward and it just starts running up the stairs. Like, oh my God, it's running up the stairs. Like it had to figure that out. You pick a face and you just push chase. I believe what this is probably doing is similar to like a production line. You know, this production lines where they're like putting cans on soup or something and they're just like, whoops.

Well, that has minimal intervention variables. Exactly. That has no computer vision. But imagine there's computer vision attached to this so it knows where it needs to stamp. It sees the can, it identifies the can, then it stamps it. Sees the can, stamps it. I imagine that this is doing a similar kind of thing. It's when it's able to make its own decisions that we need to start worrying about it ripping out your spine and then fist pumping. Yeah.

Yeah. I also, I like your tweet. That's like, like, I just want to imagine your first tweet is the motto for Boston Dynamics. She's like, Boston Dynamics. It's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. It's totally fine. Everything's fine. Yeah. This, uh, it's fascinating. I'm, I, I kind of want to play with the Atlas one. I don't. I'm

I'm scared. I just want to know what happens because it was still, it was so cool when we had Spot and it was like, all right, would you like to play with it? They hand us the controller. It's like, go ahead. In like 10 minutes, like no training. And so I would just like, I walk up a curb and I turn around and I hit forward and it just walks up the curb. And I'm like, I didn't tell it to go up. It just looked at the curb and decided to step up. Like all these little things, I want to know what happens with Atlas.

Anyway, that's all. I just wanted to show you the video. I also think it's cool that Atlas from Portal is like the same shape. It's like the humanoid. That might be its inspiration for the name. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. If you haven't already subscribed to the Boston Dynamics YouTube channel,

highly recommend it just to stay on top of your robots and happenings you should probably stay on top of them before they stomp on top of you it looks like since this morning they also released another video called inside the lab taking atlas from sim to scaffold and it's just like how they did this oh really yes yeah oh from a couple hours ago well i guess i guess we'll be watching that after this we'll still bring them in yeah i'm embarrassed to say i haven't seen this video yet well when did it came out why we were recording potentially okay so then i'm going to watch it okay okay

Okay. But... Okay. Either way. Trivia answers. I bet Atlas can't get any trivia answers right. Ooh, that's a good question. Let's find out. It probably could get all of them, actually, but...

All right, get your boards ready. Don't jump at once. Don't everyone get all excited now? Are you guys ready? Yes. All right. Update on the score again. Mark has three, Andrew two, David two. So you're saying there's a chance. There is a chance. First question brought to you by Ellis.

Hey, that's me. In 2000, Tristan Lois proposed attaching audio and video to RSS feeds. In 2004, the word podcasting was coined in a Guardian article by Ben Hammersley. In what year did Apple officially add podcasting to iTunes? Can you say the dates again of the other things? I was too embarrassed to ask that. Is this the closest person or is this specific only? And then you said 2004, didn't you?

In 2000... 2004 was the year that... David? Sorry. You said it in the thing, didn't you? There's a lot of dates here. Okay. In 2000, Tristan Lois first... Okay. In 2000, the idea of attaching audio and video to RSS feeds proposed. 2004, there's a Guardian article that invents the word podcasting. Okay. In what year...

Did Apple add podcasting to iTunes? Cue the music. David's searching things on his computer. What? No, I'm not. I'm not searching anything. Sorry, I'll move away. Close your computer. My thing's already down. All right, I got it. I'm going to be plus or minus one year. I know that for a fact. Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm interested in your answer. Should we do closest or should we do get it or not? For this one, let's do closest. Okay, we're doing closest. Okay.

All right. Who wants to go first? Here's my answer. Read them out. Wait. I said 2003. I said 2004. Took a risk there. I said 2006. Was it 2005? It was 2005. I knew it. Andrew and I both get points. Andrew. Oh, my God. That makes the score threes. Wait. What date was it in 2005?

Oh, don't do this. First half or second half of the year. Don't do this. No. Don't you want to be tied with Marquez with me? Take the point where you can. Well, I'm either, I could be tied with you or tied with Marquez or all three of us. No. You're saying either David gets the point or I get the point. Aren't you and I tied right now? No, you and I are tied right now. Yeah, we're tied. Yeah. I like to throw a wrench in things. Why do you do this? Oh man, are you guys ready for this? I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose this. It was June 2005. June 2005.

technically that's the first half of the year take the point take the points let's just take the point dude come on i just want to say that i i thought it was going to be a fun trick question i kind of did too that's why i just went with the same year yeah okay yeah i got to remember i remember on my computer in my class in my like before school computer class in 2006

opening up iTunes and seeing the little iPod logo and being like, "Oh, they have podcasts on here for the iPod."

And I guess I was just like, I guess they must have released it the year before, but I only noticed that the year after. I wasn't aware that podcasts were something that Apple didn't come up with themselves. I kind of thought they did too. That's why I picked the same year because I thought it was just interlocked or something. All right. Question number two is brought to you by Podgod the Third. Thanks, Podgod. Hi, it is I, Podgod the Third. Are you ready? Yeah.

So, what does pod stand for in iPod, not Pod God the Third? Aren't they the same thing? Yeah. I mean, I... Should I cue the music? Yeah. It's taking some time? Well, I mean, just always cue the music. When we cue the music, that gives you 30 seconds. That means there's a countdown. I'm done, but I'm wrong, but it's okay. You know what I mean? Sure. Sure.

That's called being a chill dude. It's either stupidly obvious or I have no idea. Exactly. Can I give you guys a hint? That's what... We all have the same idea. It is not stupidly obvious. Okay. Oh. So we're all wrong. In that case. Wait, should I just change my... Okay, change it. Wait, do I have more time then? You got three seconds, my guy. Two.

One. Okay, whatever. I mean, I'm not going to get it. Whatever. Two and three quarters. No, I'm not going to get it. One and a half. Flip them. And read. Mine's a fake word. I said pocket. I said patio on device. Wait, that's a recursive acronym. Do you know what a recursive acronym is called? Is it a word for that? Yeah, you have talked about it on trivia. It was a trivia question. It was one that I wasn't here for and I listened to on my road trip.

Me? You were there? Yeah, you talked about a reverse acronym. An acronym? An acronym. Oh, we did talk about that. It was like, it was... Wow. It wasn't originally an acronym and it got made into an acronym through it. All right, just because I'm mad none of you remember, whoever remembers gets a point. No, shut up. There's a free point floating out there. Also, David, you're wrong. Oh, I do remember. I remember now. David said, should I tell you first? Should I tell you now?

Yes. Bacronym. Bingo! Let's go! Okay, so David's in the lead with four. Marques and Andrew tied with three because David remembered what Bacronym was. The answer to the question, by the way, portable open database. Pod. Portable open database. Well, that's it then. Thanks for tuning in to our rant on reviews and ratings. I do want to say I feel enlightened today.

about that trivia answer because I really thought that iPod stood for iPodcast. Like portable podcast. I thought podcast got named because they were on the iPod. That is correct. It is a play on the word broadcast. Yeah. I didn't even realize that. But the Guardian termed it. Yeah. Weird. So...

Ben Hammersley termed it writing for the Guardian. But yeah, the whole idea is that you're broadcasting via an RSS feed to iPods specifically. Yeah, I'm up in line with vlogging, which is video logging.

Yeah, is it not video blogging no video? Well, it depends on who you ask because there's both. Yeah, because blogging both are things blogging is be logging, you know Yeah, really? Yeah, I don't I don't really know. I don't know Most people would say it's video Blogging but people who did daily vlogs would call it like video logging their day and

So I'm sure both answers exist. Anyway, thanks for listening. We appreciate you. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks for hearing us out. Peace. Bye. Don't forget to rate this podcast, but ignore everything I said about five-star ratings. You should definitely rate this one five-star and then like on Amazon and go use your threes and fours or whatever. But Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro-outro music was created by Bane Sill.