Are We Getting MagSafe for Android?
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All right, what is up people of the internet? Welcome to 2023, the season premiere. This is another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And today's episode, let's see, we have a couple of fun little bits of tech news to start the year. We have not one, but two Pro Display XDR competitors recently that we'll talk about.

Pixel 7 is randomly exploding. Also some new Qi 2 information. We're trying to figure out what that means for the future of Android and iPhone wireless charging. And also we'll wrap it up by bringing CES to us.

It's a banger to start the year. Bangers only. Yeah. On this podcast. Dot what again? Dot net. Dot net. Of course. Bangers only dot net on this podcast right now. But the first thing you have here is AirTag's luggage, and I'm going to let you explain because I haven't seen this story. It was really quick, but I just thought it was funny. Pretty much, do you know how like two weeks ago we had this crazy weather in the U.S.? It was cold.

tons like we had flights canceled to the point where I think Southwest was like losing their employees like they didn't even know where they were anyways lots of delayed and canceled flights lots of lost luggage and surprisingly a ton of tweets and stories I saw about people finding their luggage only because of their air tags when the one instance was somebody at the airport them saying oh your baggage is

is somewhere else and then like walking up to a door and saying like, no, this it says it's right behind here. And then I'm opening the door and finding a bunch of luggage for people waiting. So I put air tags in our tripod bags because that's the only thing that we check under the plane when we travel. I swear to you, it's the number one first place you should put an air tag is in your luggage that goes into the plane because you are separated from your belongings and you just have to trust whatever they say about where your belongings are. And they're usually wrong.

And that's been so, so helpful for us. It's actually been helpful with one of our trips already. Yeah, I think like it's, what are they, $29 or something? Yeah, something like that. You get a pack of them. It seems super worth it, especially if you're traveling often or traveling with expensive stuff. One of these other stories that kind of blew up was

a woman who put it in her luggage. They said it was with a distribution service. She saw it in the dumpster of a... Next to the dumpsters of this apartment complex because apparently United used some third-party delivery system to deliver the bags, but they delivered it to the wrong place outside an apartment complex and claimed it was delivered and then...

only because she could say it's not delivered I see where it is did they get that back and get it to her eventually and um so not only are air tags helping you if you lose it but maybe airlines will realize they can't lie quite as bad or they just won't care and their airlines and

Yeah. There are some viral videos on YouTube already of people tracking packages with air tags. They'll like ship something and then the package will do this weird route and they'll call and ask what happened and DHL will give them an explanation that is absolutely not what happened with their package. And I just find that hilarious. Yeah.

I think AirTags are a good-- if you haven't got one for a holiday gift, it's probably a good thing to grab if you're going to travel. Great stocking stuffers for-- That's a really good point. --12 months from now. Yeah. Yeah. Get on it now, because I know you're going to forget in December and not order it on time. Get your Christmas shopping in early, January 2023.

All right, we've got these Pro Display XDR competitors, I guess I'll call them, that I want to talk about. Yeah. Should we start with the Samsung or the Dell? Let's do the Samsung because it's kind of... Remember a while ago they released the... Was it the M8, which was like the studio display competitor? Yes. The smaller one? So now they stepped up and they're doing like the 32-inch Pro Display. Actually, I don't know if this is 32-inch, but the like 5K...

webcam included. It's called the Samsung Viewfinity S9. Great. And I'm assuming a lot of these announcements are coming off just because it's around CES and they're just like, here, here's some new stuff we came out with. So this is a new monitor. It's a 5K 27-inch monitor. It's got

Actually, that might be wrong. And I think you're looking at the 27-inch for the M8. There's not a lot of information on this because it's getting released at CES this week. I just see 5K with a 4K camera can be used through Thunderport and supports USB-C for data transfer and viewing and everything. So it's 5K Thunderbolt webcam included. Like that's the main kind of things for it. Also, I agree with you. Viewfinity S9, maybe not best name, but it

in the scale of monitor names. That's true. Probably S tier just because of how bad all of them are. A162789Q. WFP. I will take Viewfinity S9 a hundred times over. Which we, I guess we should probably just have an explainer video as to what those things mean. I almost did that. Generally, they do have a format for like, this is the year, this is the screen size, this is whether or not it has anti-glare. That's how I always remembered what model of Dell Ultra Short Monitor I had because they had a very explicit system. It was like the

WFP, which is wide format panel, and then like 3700, and that would be the screen size and then the resolution. It would all just be coded in the model number, which that should be the model number, not the name. Totally. Branding can be a thing. You don't have to just use model numbers for everything. The Samsung actually looks just as good as a pro display or a studio display. It does have a pop-up camera on the top.

Which is a little different. Which is like if you're going to add a camera, this is about as good as you can do that. Guess what? The camera sitting on top of my Pro display looks worse than this. Yeah, this looks great. So this looks good to me. Is that a 1080p camera? It says 4K slim fit camera. 4K. Sure. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. I think good. It also has a little like IR sensor on the bottom because Samsung seems to...

do with all of their monitor, their bigger monitors lately that they're all, it has all Samsung smart TV capabilities. Yeah. Cool. Kind of cool. The stuff Apple's display does not do. Yeah. So that's the Samsung that's classic Samsung. I do appreciate that. And that is something I think I will actually really like to see.

Should we swap to the Dell then? We can. We should actually get this though because we never got the M8, the smaller one, to actually try. We should really try this one. I think this looks really cool. Let's see if the monitor is good or the webcam is good because the webcam, the Pro Display doesn't have a webcam and the Studio Display has an okay webcam. Yeah. Like a very okay webcam. After many software updates. Yeah. It took a lot. Yeah.

lot to be okay yeah okay so then Dell has one Dell has a new 32 inch 6k ultra sharp monitor it is HDR 600 certified so this isn't like pro display XDR type HDR but as far as the rest of the things the panel will do it has a webcam built in it has dual 14 watt speakers it has noise cancelling mics it will charge a laptop up to 140 watts if you're plugged into it three USB-C ports two USB-A ports HDMI Ethernet mini display port um

And two of the ports actually face forward. They'll pop out. Oh, they pop out. That's kind of cool. That's like a solid amount of things that Apple's display doesn't do. But then you look at it, which like a monitor is something you have to look at. Let's be honest. Like you want your... If you want your desk and your setup to look nice, you have to look at your monitor. Yeah. And I think this is...

I don't know. Maybe you disagree with me. I think this is much uglier than the Apple one. This is Dell, which means these are probably going to be used in... When I worked at Intel, we had all Dell monitors, right? And if you're working in industry, you probably don't really care what the monitor looks like. This is clearly made for video conferencing because that webcam at the top is really, really prevalent and it probably has really good mics and everything. So it's probably made for...

business use cases. I should also note that the Dell 4K webcam that came out either last year or the year before, that was like the best webcam on the market for a very long time. And it's still considered one of the best webcams on the market. And the Opal C1 was kind of the webcam that was kind of fighting against it. That webcam is $200 on its own. So if you buy a monitor that has hopefully a similar styled webcam or a similar quality webcam, then like you can

theoretically take $200 off of that theoretical price. But again, I think that this is mostly going to be for industry. Yeah, right. So the big difference is who it's for. Like the Pro Display is an imaging-focused display. You're getting it because you're concerned about color. You're going to be image editing, video editing like we do. And that's the primary focus of getting this. You get a bunch of these. They all match. Everyone can see the same media looking the same way.

This one's not for that, but if you do want a bunch of pixels and a bunch of surface area and a webcam built in and high wattage charging for a machine, like that's what this is for. I don't think there's a price yet. I see the 2023 launch, but I don't see a price.

If I'm guessing, it's going to cost less than Apple's. I got to say, there's no way this is not used outside of business because the specs are like 140 watt charging for laptops. When you work at a large corporation, everyone uses a laptop and just docks into a display. It's got a security lock slot. I mean, you're not going to use that at home. This is definitely going to be for large corporations. There's no way anyone else is using this. That's fair. They're not slotting Protos Play XDRs in there. No. Fair enough.

Okay. No, but I think I prefer the Samsung. I really like the Vufinity S9 despite its terrible name. It's got a big bezel on the bottom, but not as big as the Dell's top bezels. Fair enough. I hear people say that's a big bezel, but I look at it and it's black and it kind of fades away for me. It is bigger because it's bigger than the other ones, but I don't mind it. It's not bad. I guess we should talk about pixels exploding.

Yeah. Did you see this online at all? I did not. Did you, David? I didn't really. I think I saw an article headline. Yeah. There's not too, too much to it. I kind of just want to like throw it out there because it seems to be like a decent article.

I want to say a decent handful of people on Reddit and Twitter have had this problem. Not enough to where I like, I think everyone should be worried about their pixel, but like, I feel like it needs to get out there enough because it doesn't seem like Google doing anything about fixing this right now. But people are posting pictures of their pixel sevens and seven pros, I believe of just these, the like an exact circle cut out around the camera lens, just

imploding essentially and cracking and missing the glass. They're not exactly sure what's happening. It seems pretty random. Some people are assuming it's weather change, but like despite it being cold in the US, I don't think there's any outside weather that should cause enough of a change to where a phone shatters from it. Yeah, that seems kind of crazy. Yeah. Also in that exact circular. It is like perfectly around the camera. I

I kind of just wanted to talk about it really quick because it seems, I understand that it's hard for a company to say like, oh, here's a broken piece of a phone. Is this user error? Is this something we messed up? But this flaw seems so obvious and so perfectly like the user error of shattering a perfect circle out of a screen like that should be obvious enough to where it's like, this is our flaw. We should know about it. We should fix this. You're looking at even more pictures and it's just circles around the lenses. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, my first inclination was like, is it a pressure change thing in the glass? Because that's like, there's a very small amount of glass that covers the sensors now that they have that metal camera bar.

So it's either that the glass is more fragile because it's smaller or... Like less of it. I mean, temperature change can do stuff like that. We had that cabinet in the office years ago that just shattered. Oh, that's a thousand... Have we told that story on the pod? I think we have. Probably. Long story short, we had a tempered glass...

cover on top of a cabinet and it was sitting in the sun in the corner of the studio and we left to go do something in a different room and came back and it was completely shattered. Wow. And I'm like, what happened? That's kind of weird. It was just sitting here and nothing happened and we walk back to the security footage of the studio while we were gone and it's just video footage of the empty studio and you just hear it shatter. Okay.

Nothing happens. It was simultaneously in the sun and under an HVAC unit. Yeah, under air conditioning. It's like if you go to the subreddit for battle stations on Reddit, you'll see people that are just like, well, I went to work and I came home and their entire computer desk is just in pieces because they used one of those tempered glass desks and their computer is just everywhere and their monitor is broken. Yeah, yikes.

Yeah, if your desk is just the tempered glass, it'll just shatter right through. This one was just like a cover on top of wood. So it was like the glass shattered, but then it was just sitting on top of the wood. It was really eerie. Anyway, this kind of reminds me of other gates that we see in phones where it first starts in very small numbers.

And you kind of have to, obviously, everyone who's seen this problem will do their due diligence and find everyone else who had this problem. And the question will be, is this issue common enough that Google should do something about it? Now, anyone who has the issue would say, yes, of course, Google should. But think about like when the Galaxy Fold screen broke and it was like, oh, there's two of us. Oh, there's three of us. Well, that's three out of the nine phones they gave out. That's a huge percentage. They figured it out. It was a problem. But then it would be like,

Some random tiny manufacturing glitch with an iPhone or something someone has a problem with a phone and it turns out There's a few of them, but it's not really that common. It's not a reason to not buy the phone It's probably not going to happen to you if you get yours no problem But Apple should still remedy it with like some sort of warranty help. I

I don't know where this is for the Pixel. I've never seen this issue. It hasn't happened to mine, obviously, but it's one of those things you'll keep an eye on. We'll see how many people come together. Remember when Samsung's phone started exploding on the Note? It was like, all right.

I understand that only a few of them exploded, but it exploded. Yeah. That's kind of like a little heavier on the, uh, on the priority list. And then the airlines banned them. Yeah. It only takes like three of them exploding on a plane from them and be like, yeah, no, this is, this can't keep happening. So this is not a threat to safety, but it does like people are posting their support tickets saying this is not included as part of the warranty where I feel like that maybe should change. It's yeah.

I don't think you should not buy a Pixel for this. I don't think you should be worried that much about this, but it does seem like it's pretty obviously not user error and a flaw in the device. Yeah. We'll see if they find a way to, well, first of all, find out what's happening and then find a way to fix it. Yeah. All right. Well, before we go into ad break, as you know, it is 2023, which means it is time for the beginning of our next season of trivia. Yeah.

There it is. Yeah, baby. All right. So as we kick off season three, not a whole lot has changed. We're going to actually keep track of games played now. Yeah. Why did we call last season season two? I realized I can't remember. Because we did it. Because Andrew and I decided to.

No, we wrapped up a season at one point before that. Was I here? Yeah, we started changing things slightly when you came, so we were like, let's just call it the end of season. Oh, right. Yeah, we added the music. I think the start of the whiteboards was season two. Oh, the whiteboards. Oh. That's right. So whiteboards were season two. Yeah. And now we're just going by year. Sure. Just so you know the lore of trivia. All right. Season three. We had to change it to match up with the year we're in, kind of like how...

Oh, 2023. Samsung did that. Yeah. So this is season 23 is what you're saying. Sure. Sure. Yeah. We'll go with that. Yeah. I also want to note that I'm very happy that I get to start at zero with the rest of you. Start. Start. Yeah. Wow. All right. So to kick off season three, I've got a banger here for everyone. Bangers only. Dot net. Dot net.

You're going to sell that by the end of the year. I did see a large traffic spike over the weekend. I want to say that. Nice. Yeah. I don't have ads on it, though. Anyway, continue. Which of the following is not a flavor of G Fuel? What? I'm going to read you four real flavors of G Fuel and one fake flavor of G Fuel. And you can tell me which one is which. Number one, Spicy Demonade.

I hope that's not... Spicy Demonade. Number two, clickbait. Clickbait flavor. Oh, I mean, I don't know anything. Number three, Blaze Potion. Number four, Battle Juice. And number five, The Juice. Fun. Fun.

Wow. V juice? I've never drank G Fuel in my life. I've tried it. It's terrible. No one should ever drink it. Max Weinbach would like to have a word with you. That's disgusting. There are a million other energy drinks to destroy your body without there. Oh, I don't know if this makes a difference. These are all tubs. I don't even know what that means. But someone on Reddit was like really clear. Like, these flavors are only tubs. You won't find them in... I think it's because they started making cans that they sell at Walmart and stuff. Is it...

Fizzy? That's not a question I was expecting you to ask. Fizzy clickbait? If that's the real one. We're lost. We'll be right back. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Procrastination. Putting it off. Kicking the can down the road. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done.

We'll be right back.

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all right welcome back we need to talk about wireless charging because i'm a little bit confused actually by this new headline and we'll get into this but the headline and it's actually just a press release is

New Qi 2 standard for wireless devices ensures enhanced consumer convenience and efficiency. Now, I read this press release, and my understanding of it is Apple has worked with this consortium on a new wireless charging standard. We have Qi chargers now. We'll have Qi 2 now.

And the benefit of this new Qi 2 is it integrates magnets like MagSafe. And so now any device that uses Qi 2 will have a MagSafe-like experience with wireless charging. And that sounds very straightforward, but the reason that confuses me is why would Apple want to just give people MagSafe? I thought that was kind of their thing.

So let's jump into it. We can kind of go through some of the more interesting paragraphs in the press release, but I don't know. You want to break it down? We should probably just start with what She Too is, which to my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is...

chi again, but with magnets this time. Correct. That's kind of it. To my understanding, that is what it is as well. So I like the magnet part because that helps you. Basically, the benefit of that is it's going to help you align things on your charger quickly. So how often do you put your phone down on the wireless charger at night? You wake up, it slid by two millimeters and your phone woke up with 12% battery because it didn't charge. Right. So you slap it on the magnet.

perfectly on the magnets because of Qi 2 you wake up with 100% because it's efficient it charges as smoothly as possible it didn't fall off the charger it was all great some magnets sound great to me and I've never had my iPhone fall off a MagSafe charger so good looks yeah that sounds so like nitpicky but

I feel like there's not a lot of people who went to MagSafe and have gone off MagSafe already. I got the M-Force case for my Pixel 6 and started using MagSafe accessories and loved it. I don't have the case for my Pixel 7 yet. And that happens to me all the time. And I am dying to not have like...

M-Force is... M-Force is Moment's MagSafe case. So I can have MagSafe on my Pixel. So if you have an iPhone, you can slap it on any MagSafe charger and it will align and snap in place. If you have any other phone that doesn't have that array of magnets in the phone...

It won't stick, but what you can do is get a case that has that ring of magnets to align that charger so that it will still wireless charge your phone and snap in place. There are very few of them. Moment's one of them. Yeah. And they don't make it for that many models, but I just wanted to say that it sounds minuscule, but going from something with the capabilities of it to then not having it, I've

You appreciate it. I'm really sad I don't have it anymore. Yeah, so the magnets help a lot. It's underrated. For sure, I like it. So the question is, what does Apple get out of helping to make it available for everyone? Yeah, I don't really know. Yeah, I think that there are a lot of people that are speculating on what is happening here because in the official press release, it says that Apple is contributing the foundations of its MagSafe technology, which to me, that seems super vague.

Contributing patented licensed technology? So the thing about MagSafe is that it's not just the magnet ring. It also has a microprocessor that says it does a handshake with your device and says this is a legit MagSafe accessory. And that can enable other things like the MagSafe wallet. If you have it on the back of your phone, the new one. The old one didn't have this. The new one, if you like...

If you take the wallet off, your phone will add a little tag. Like this is exactly where the wallet was last seen. So if you lose it, like it doesn't have an AirTag capability, but you know the location of where you last saw your wallet, right? Yeah. So MagSafe is a little bit better than just magnets and cheat tapes. Right. And MagSafe specifically will charge your iPhone at 15 watts because it knows it's perfectly aligned. It's the most efficient. Whereas if you wirelessly charge your iPhone, usually it only charges at like 7.5 watts. Yeah.

And I think a lot of that beyond Apple wanting to sell more MagSafe accessories is that just like the Wireless Power Consortium said in this press release,

if you have the device perfectly aligned with the magnetic charging coil, it's going to be much more efficient and charge faster. The fastest available. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's like a lot of people speculating right now as to like why Apple would possibly contribute to this. One thing I was thinking about is I went and did a briefing, had dinner with the Connectivity Standards Alliance. And an interesting thing to me about that alliance is that these are not people that

This organization is sort of like a bunch of people from a bunch of different companies. And it is to a company like Apple or Google's benefit to have people on the CSA board. Because if you get to help contribute to a standard, you have influence over how you want that standard to work.

Right. So my assumption is that Apple saw that they made MagSafe and they were like, oh yeah, we got MagSafe. We're going to make a ton of money at MagSafe. And maybe this will be the foundation of all iPhone charging in the future, possibly. But... No port. Yeah, exactly. But if they're able to...

Sort of like take chi which is this standard that everyone's been using for like a decade now Yeah, and they're able to like build the next version of chi under their kind of like foundational technology that they already produce It's easier for them to

manipulate the spec in the future and then also like you know all of their devices already kind of work with this one really interesting note though that this article from the verge that talks about chi 2 was stating is that the magnetic power profile which is the branding for magsafe the open source magsafe or the open standard magsafe does not have the exact same magnetic array as magsafe

And they asked the guy that wrote the Business Wire article, which was the press release about this, like what's going to happen to the iPhone 12, 13 and 14? Like, will it not work with G chargers? And he said Apple has not disclosed that information. Yeah. Okay. So that's kind of confusing to me. And I wonder if like, I wonder if Apple basically just contributed like the, like,

I wonder if they had some sort of patent around a magnetic array with a microprocessor. And then they were basically just like, okay, standards body, you can add a microprocessor to your magnetic array, but MagSafe is still gonna be different. And he says like, he assumes that the iPhone and Samsung phones and like all these Android phones will work with Qi2 in the future.

But there's no like, it's really vague. Everything about this press release is very vague, which is fair because it's actually not even coming out until the holiday season. I think that they just wanted to release something at CES. Yeah, but my assumption would be that Apple wants to get ahead of

They want to sort of control the standard a little bit because it is to their benefit to be one of the bodies that actually contributes most of the technology. Both from a PR perspective and from a how can we create devices tailored to us in the future perspective. That would be my assumption.

Yeah, I I my if I'm just like putting together pieces of what I think I know about sheet charging and what I seem to have observed over the time we've used iPhones about Apple is like we kind of see this trajectory towards them moving towards wireless charging for the default for the standard, maybe getting rid of the port. Right. So they make a lot of money on iPhones, lightning accessories that.

doesn't exactly exist right now with MagSafe. I guess you can say they're still made for iPhone through making MagSafe accessories. But if you're still able to, like if Moment keeps doing what they're doing with a magnet, Apple doesn't make money from that necessarily because it's not made for iPhone. So if they can contribute to this Qi 2 standard, which has some of the parts of MagSafe, which is the magnet, which is great, it's an improvement. But

But then they can say on top of that, they do this extra thing where if you want to make it made for iPhone, we have the chip inside and we have the things that like talk to the iPhone. Then they can say that anyone who wants to make a made for iPhone accessory can

MagSafe will make money from that and then people who want to get special Highlighting in our store or won't want to sell a lot of things should probably include that if they want to make an iPhone accessory And then Android will just have magnets and we'll say we contributed to that which is cool And they'll say they also probably contributed to less waste. Yeah energy efficiency, etc It's a good look for Apple

that is something they noted they were like in the business wire article they were like this will reduce waste from cables and it's like oh we're also going to have more wireless cables sitting around and like like the magsafe like brick that you have to plug like the puck that you have to plug into a port anyway yeah wired yeah i i guess it's just that they're saying which is

And you told me this before we were talking about this earlier. My first thought on this is like, oh, they're allowing all of this to happen. Is this their kind of step towards the like, they're getting trouble in the EU right now because they don't have a common charging port. It might be too late already because I think you mentioned that the that EU law says it needs to be USBC.

maybe this is something in the future getting ahead of that so they don't wind up creating MagSafe and then the rest of it goes portless and then they have to create something else. I don't really know there. I also think on top of what both of you said was like they're getting ahead of the game is ultimately these are just magnets in the back of a phone. I don't think they can really protect that for so long. We're seeing cases do it already. I don't know. So I would say that's there's a difference between in the case and in the phone.

And I think the thing that makes MagSafe so good is there's a magnetic array alongside the coils in the back of the phone, and there's a magnetic array that matches with opposite polarization in the charger. So they just connect really easily. And if you have those magnets in just the phone and not the charger...

It works okay, but if you have the magnets not in the phone, like if you try to put a pixel on a MagSafe puck, it doesn't stick. It just works like a normal wireless charger, but it might slide just like any other wireless charger. I don't know copyright law. I just can't imagine getting magnets in a phone.

could be that hard to get around what the patent of it is. - I would be surprised. - I would probably be surprised. I still don't think it would be that wild. - Yeah, I guess-- - It's magnets. - You could do, so these, the way I, we put the magnet paper up to the back of the phone, you can see the charging coils, and then you see what Apple did, which is like there's a circle of magnets, and there's also a vertical line so that you can orient it in that direction. So it lines up on the coils and then snaps in that vertical orientation.

their patent is probably on aligning orientation. So it's not just specific about the shape. I bet we could find this patent, but it's basically just about like, oh yeah, we use magnets to make sure it aligns with the back of the phone. And that's it. We do that. No one else does that.

That's frustrating. There's no one else patent on Apple's thing So the Apple is in charge of doing that in phones I think they have the microprocessor as part of the patent too because if you look at here's and we can show this on the podcast, but this is basically the manufacturer sample part that you have to use if you use magsafe and it's the ring but then it's also got like the microprocessor in here and so

I think that is also part of the patent. I don't think that a microprocessor is specifically part of the Qi 2 standard, though. Right. Just the magnets. I think that processor is going to be the differential, to differentiate the MagSafe, the Apple MagSafe and the Qi 2.

the wireless standard, the Qi 2 standard. It is also confusing that the MagSafe and the Qi 2 standards have slightly different magnetic arrays, though. I just, like... I don't know. This is all so vague. I'm also confused about, like... I feel like they use the term array because array doesn't necessarily mean just size. It could be how all the magnets are placed and the strength of all the magnets and everything. So, like...

Maybe if Apple has some sort of patent on a specific array, which to them is the perfect amount of resistance, but also sticking capability where a different array might

Connect a little harder which then is more annoying to take off the puck off and stuff or not enough so then it's more annoying to Attach to a car mount or something like that array feels so vague and like you said this is getting announced end of the year I think they're it's just the easiest way to pretty much say nothing Yeah, I also want to say I emailed the Wireless Power Consortium because this article came out Or the yeah, the business wire press release came out yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon. Yeah, and

this is all so confusing and vague. I emailed them to sort of try to understand like, what is Apple contributing exactly? And how does this change for other devices that are not phones? And they said that the specification focuses on the charging characteristics. The size of the magnet is a design issue and design issues are left to members to determine as they see fit, which makes me think like,

Could you have Qi 2 earbuds that use a tiny circular magnet? But then if that was the case, you would need a different Qi 2 charger. So I think all that Qi 2 is really adding is saying it does wireless charging and it has a magnet inside. And if you can use...

You as a manufacturer, if you're a Qi 2 member, can use whatever size magnet you want for your product. Because obviously if it's wireless earbuds, those are going to be way smaller. Like the AirPods that now have the wireless magnet. Use the Apple Watch magnet charger. Because obviously the whole size MagSafe charger doesn't fit on it. So I think all the spec of Qi 2 is saying is that it has a magnet in it.

for better alignment and then you know less power loss better efficiency heat loss so yeah quite confusing it's I'm doing air quotes for audio listeners it solves I think the biggest problem with Qi wireless charging which is that it's not easy to align everything on the first try and make sure everything's charging perfectly efficiently but

Put magnets in it. Yeah. Great. And I will say like it would be really dope to see Android phones. I want it so bad. So bad. I want my next Pixel phone to have this already in it. G2, all the things. Yeah. Also Apple's for sure looking forward at a world of no wired chargers. And they're like, how do we own this? Yeah.

There's definitely something in the backgrounds that they're doing. This is not for pure altruism. Tim Cook doesn't just contribute for fun. There's obvious motives. I've heard this so many times from people that are on these alliance committees. The

The companies that come contribute to the alliances do it for a reason. Oh, yeah. They do it because they want influence. You're not a trillion dollar company. Yeah. Without knowing every single thing that you're doing. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah. But if I get magnets in my phone, I'm going to be a happy camper. Yeah. I'll shake Tim's hand. Thank you, Tim. I found the patent for original mics. See if it's different.

Oh. Like in laptops. MagSafe. Laptops. Oh. Oh, that. Yeah. Also, interestingly, this Verge article says that it caps out at 15 watts, but I don't think that's true because I'm on the Qi Wikipedia page right now, and Qi 1.2.3, which was released in 2017, added class zero, which allows for 30 watt max from the charger. Okay.

- Could Qi 2 potentially be changing standards? - I doubt Qi 2 would move back to 15 watts because that seems lame. And also it's been six years. - Yeah. Bigger batteries charge faster, please. - Yeah. But the guy from the Standards Alliance did say that they will add significantly higher power profiles in the next version of Qi 2.

The next version of Qi 2. Yeah, I know. Qi 3. I know. Qi 2.1. Why Qi 2 when we can do Qi 5? Qi 2 Mark 2. Sony Mark 2. It's just funny because they had Qi 1 and then they had Qi 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.3, 1.2.4, and then 1.3.

But then they did an entire leap to change to Chi 2, and all they are adding is magnets. It makes sense if you don't think about it. True. Correct. 1.3. I'm trying to look at what was 1.3. 1.3 added, it was released last 2021, which is not last year anymore, completely restructured specification documents with 15 thematic books describing different aspects of the system. What?

They added fun books for kids. Support for authentication of Qi-certified wireless chargers. Oh, they added a microprocessor. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Apple's all over this. You know what they're doing now, baby. Wow. Improved foreign object detection, which is basically like if you have a type of metal that could potentially heat up due to wireless radiation. Restrictions on the negotiable power levels. Oh, maybe. Maybe.

Oh, yeah, because 1.2.3 added Class Zero, which allowed the consumer to negotiate up to 30 watts from the charger, and then 1.3 restricted the negotiable power levels, but just doesn't say to how much. So 2.1 will be 30-watt Chi 2. That's a lot of data. Mark my words. That's a lot of data. And then 2.2 will restrict that 30 watts. Chi 2 electric boogaloo.

There we go. I think Adam wants to do trivia. Yeah, it's a great place to end that. Well, this is yet another thing to keep an eye on. It's like one of those, okay, we'll find out in 12 months what that actually means, but she too. I was going to say, if you guys zoned out for that, I don't blame you, but also in 12 months, this will be interesting. This will be. All the headlines now are like, Apple gives us MagSafe?

Question mark? - Yeah. - And it's like, we don't know the answer and Apple gets a lot of that nice pat on the back for 11 and a half months till we figure out what the real answer is. - Until everyone forgets. - I get a magnet. That's all we want. - We want the magnets. - We want the magnets. - All right, let's do trivia.

All right. First of all, I want that on a t-shirt. We want the magnets. I just want to say David and I just said that like at the exact same time. I didn't make that a soundbite. Anyway, Apple AirTags were released April 30th, 2021. Now, I didn't know if you guys knew this because I didn't, but there's a limit as to how many AirTags you can attach to your Apple ID.

What is that number? I think I know this for some reason. It was recently increased, right? Oh, I wasn't aware. I think how Justine figured this out. Wait, you hit the limit. So is your answer the old limit or the new limit? I will find out after the break. We'll find out.

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All right, welcome back. It's the beginning of the new year, which means CES, which usually means we're going, but we're not. This is the first, kind of the first CES you've missed in a long time, right? I was just thinking about how many I've gone to and then the streak breaking in 2020, 2021. And then, but yeah, I've gone since like 2012 in this. I'm fully not going to CES this year. Yeah, and what makes this harder about on Waveform is

the show starts thursday which we release on fridays so that's also very hard so we pulled a couple strings and we actually brought a little ces to us yeah shen from hcc vive uh stopped by on your way to ces to show us a little something welcome

I'm really happy to finally be on this show. Yeah. I think we've been talking about this for a while. We have. We've seen sneak peeks. You've like flashed it in the studio a few times. This is something we've spent a lot of time on. Now you're going to show it off at CES in its entirety. What is it? What's it called? What should we know about it? What are you going to tell people at CES? So I'll give a little bit of a background to it. So we've been working on VR headsets for...

Eight, nine years now. MARK MANDEL: Vive is very popular. PAUL LEWIS: Yeah. And the mobile space is also growing a lot. So we released two really big mobile VR devices last year. So one was VI Focus 3, which is our enterprise headset. We kind of built the best technology in there. So that's things like software, tracking, optics, displays, all of those things.

And we also came out with another device called ViFlow, and it was like the first immersive glasses. And that's the kind of the form factor that we wanted to reach when it came to consumers. So for the past two years, we've kind of been working on this

alternative which we thought was ready for consumers. So it kind of has the best of both worlds. So it has the tech that we built for the past few years and also all the learnings we have from building like these really elegant smaller headsets. So I have like a pre-production one with me.

This is where it would really help if you're listening to audio version, if you just flip over to the video version on YouTube. For a minute, yeah. You can see what we're looking at and talking about. But OK, this is it. Yeah, so this is Vive XR Elite. So this is what we're announcing at CES. So I guess by the time people hear this, it's already announced. Probably, yeah. And this is kind of the amalgamation of a lot of work that we've done for a very long time.

We have so much research into things like ergonomics and there's so much tech in here. I can kind of go through it one by one. So one, you'll see that it's really small. It's also really light. So it's around 625 grams. So it's lighter than a lot of headsets that are out there already.

Can you real quick hold up the carrying case for it? Because when you first showed this to us coming in today, that's the carrying case for the Flow, correct? Or very similar? Yeah, this is the carrying case for Flow. And it's kind of like a... It's what I'm using to carry this with me. Oh, okay. So one really cool thing is we kind of built on top of the Flow in that this can also become a glasses form factor. Okay. So the back is kind of a battery. Yeah. Um...

and you can fit these temple pads on and they turn into this glasses form factor.

Interesting. So now there's no battery, you have to plug in. Yeah, so this is really cool in a form factor if, for example, if you're on a plane or if you're sitting on your couch, you want a more passive experience. You don't have something on the back of your head causing discomfort or pushing your head forward. Or disabling you to lay back onto a pillow or something, because if you want to lay onto a pillow, you'd rather... It's kind of something I feel like with headphones a lot of the times too, if you lean on your side on the plane...

It's annoying because it's there. So rather than giant battery on your back, now you have nothing on the back of your head. Yeah, exactly. So we built this. This is very similar to Flow in that it can also fold up.

And it ends up being this size that's incredibly portable So I've been using the flow case and we'll have a case for this as well. Okay, it'll be a little bit bigger So it fits better, but it actually it still fits and this is what I use to carry around with me all the time. Okay and coming from you know, we've we've had a lot of headsets and headsets generally take up the entire space of your backpack and

Whereas this one like is basically the size of a water bottle. Yeah, like a good hydro flask. Yeah. Yeah, right solid. How'd you flask? Yeah that so that's one of the things that I remember when we first got to look at the oculus quest pro the meta quest pro I should call it which was it had no ability to fold at all so it was large and it had the battery on the back like this one and it was You know comfortable to wear and the weight distribution was better but then if I wanted to bring it anywhere and

That would be a huge pain. It would take up my entire backpack. That's what I like to see. It's a little more flexible than actually having to take that huge thing everywhere. Yeah, there's a lot of... So what's really interesting about this is that in these two different form factors, it...

The wearing and like how pressure is spread across your face is very different. When you're wearing it, it is kind of, this bit's kind of just resting on your head. So it's not putting too much pressure on you. It's also putting the headset a little bit in. So it's actually...

There's not much pressure here. When you put on the cradle, it's kind of just kind of clamping to your head. Then that's why like we really had to work on weight. So this headset, especially if I take off the gasket, it's like it's really thin and it's around, this is around 240 grams. To put that in perspective,

So the glasses form is around the weight of an iPhone Pro Max. Yeah, 240 grams. I was going to say, what's the freedom units of that? Same as an iPhone. And with the battery, it's lighter than the latest iPad Pro.

So it's a standalone headset. So all the compute is in the front, around the ears, and also I'm assuming there's some in the bands on the sides. Maybe there's some speaker type action in the sides. Yeah. Let me put the battery cradle back on. And this is the full standalone configuration. So when it's in a standalone configuration, the battery's at the back. There's also some cool battery tech in here. So we use a--

battery chemistry called lithium polymer gel. So what you traditionally find in phones is lithium polymer liquid. It has its differences. So when it's a gel, it ends up being a lot safer. It's more leak resistant, it's swelling resistant. And considering like we have a battery on your head, we want this to be as safe as possible.

And then at the front is where you'll find our new displays. They're 2k 2k. So 4k across both eyes 90 Hertz we have and Snapdragon XR 2 inside powering all of it and One of the hardest things about achieving a form that's like this is thermals Snapdragon XR 2 is actually quite a hot chip so we

you know, we have a heritage with smartphones. So we're really good at calling things and getting like as much juice out of them as possible. So that's like using the Snapdragon XR2, 12 gigs of RAM. It has four tracking cameras. So it has a really wide field of view to track hands, controllers, the headset itself. And at the front is where it has some newer things we've never put in a headset before. So one is a depth sensor. Nice.

So it basically sprays out infrared dots and then the tracking cameras can see them. And it allows you to build like a mesh of your room so you can get really cool mixed reality experiences. And for mixed reality, we have a 16 megapixel high resolution pass-through camera. We actually do some pixel binning to improve the image quality. But this is what I've seen is the best solution.

color quality and image quality of headsets are out right now. So yeah, we're really excited about this because not only is it an amalgamation of all the tech that we have in existing headsets, but we also built in a lot of the new R&D that we've been working on. I think one of the things that I always think when I go to CES and I look at all these interesting cool new technologies is

How do you plan on it being used? Or, you know, what's the typical customer of something like this? I don't know if you're going to have a price that you're announcing it with. But obviously with VR headsets, I typically think about gaming first and then all the other things that it happens to be able to do alongside gaming. What do you picture the ideal experience with this new form factor being?

So this headset is priced at $10.99. Okay. One of the reasons is VR in general isn't cheap to make. And we're a company, we have to make money on our products, right? And we're also not a social media company. So we don't... And we have no plans on having a business model of, you know, selling personal data either. So, you know, we're in a position where we kind of have to make money and...

With all the tech that we built, you know, we want to build something that's high quality You know, there's a lot of race to the bottom going on in the VR space and What we want to give is something that people can upgrade to something that has You know, not the know the features that aren't cost compromised. Let me put it that way so

Of course, people will buy this for gaming. So we've been working with developers now to bring things like gaming on board, like existing games, new games. With some of the new features like mixed reality, we also not only bring in new content that has mixed reality, which you can interact with your space or you can learn to play a musical instrument because you have things overlaid onto your real world.

But we also have mixed reality coming to existing games and existing content as well. And because of how lightweight it is, I carry this with me all the time now because it's my travel buddy for fitness.

as well, so like there's standalone content that you can play there's also PC VR that you can play with this as well and we have really good streaming technology that it can work wirelessly and This is one of the few headsets that also supports Wi-Fi 6e. So like very minimal interference as well So I think one of the things that we've been trying to do is also go beyond gaming right gaming is table sticks and

but we want to go beyond gaming and bring things like fitness and also things like productivity um we think more and more people are going to start potentially working in vr one of the things we designed this form factor for was that um we wanted to be super light and super comfortable that you can you if you wanted to you could wear this for hours and work in it um i don't expect people to immediately

I don't know, Ellis kind of wants to do that with the podcast. He's been talking about editing a whole episode in glasses, so we'll see. Put it to the test. What is the battery life on this if you actually try to wear it for a few hours? So on a full charge and really active use, it will last up to two hours. But you can also just keep it plugged in if you want as well. And one of the really cool things is I think for...

Alice's use case, you don't need the battery pack. You can wear it in glasses mode and it's super light on your head as well. And if you want to, you know, if you want to look at your real environment, you can have it in pass through or double click. Or if you just want to take it off, you can just take it off like a pair of glasses.

I will say I've been using completely unsponsored. I've been using the N real glasses. That's what they're called, right? Playing and those are just you plug it into your computer and it's like a monitor. Those with for playing piano are the best.

Like, being able to have sheet music up in front of you, and you can just, like, rock your head in whatever direction, and it's still, like, right there. Amazing. There's a really good piece of content called Magic Keys that we've been working with, and they have pass-through overlaid onto your piano, and you have, like...

Have you seen those like piano YouTube videos where there are things coming down to the keys? It's exactly the same. So it comes towards the keys and you have to press it on time. That's so it's guitar heroifying your actual piano or like heads up display for your piano of real time. Like when you mentioned instruments before, I was like,

Oh, because I keep thinking what in terms of mixed reality is something that's not work related. Like we saw with the Oculus, it was the triple computer screens, right? But there's so much more and mentioning instruments and working out are things that do make sense where it's like you want your room environment in, but like an instrument, a piano, it literally could essentially tell you how to press all the keys in the right order and right pace, right? Yeah. Yeah.

That's kind of awesome. Yeah. And that one not only does computer vision, but it also does MIDI detection and also sound and pitch detection. So you can use it on a real keyboard or real piano. Or you can connect a MIDI keyboard. That's so sick. That's really well thought out. I've heard a lot about pass-through. And I obviously want to try it, because I've heard other headsets also say they have the best pass-through.

This is using a single camera at the front for pass-through, right? Yeah. It's using a single camera. And then the depth sensor adds depth, gives us depth information. And then, yeah, the tracking cameras also can give depth information there as well. One of the biggest challenges with pass-through is there's so much data. What you find with tracking cameras is they're generally low resolution, like VGA level.

And black and white. So it's minimal amounts of data, enough to get tracking data. And it also means it's low latency and very responsive. So one of the key things we've been working on was trying how do we get high resolution color data through and at a low latency. And that's something we kind of finally accomplished with this. MARK MANDEL: So is it over-- it's combining that information from all of the sensors and the depth sensor.

MARK MANDEL: But also showing you the pass-through of the single camera on the front. MARK BLYTH: Yeah. We do some modifications so that there's some warping so the depth looks right. That's the downside of having a single camera, which is if you don't put the depth data in, it just feels like a wall. Everything that's really far looks really big. Everything that's really close-- sorry, really far looks really small. Really close looks really big.

So, yeah, there's a lot of wizardry there as well. Yeah, and it's tough. The parallax effect sometimes, there's a couple others we've tried where the parallax effect is very different from stereo, where like the Quest Pro does stereo, and so it feels a little more natural, but it's a little lower resolution and worse looking. So there's different pros and cons you have to weigh, so I'm curious to try this one. Yeah, I think, one, you kind of have to remember that this is, like, everyone is kind of limited by a mobile chipset, right?

Right, so everyone has their own ways of approaching it and their own sense of trade-offs. Right. Right, so for us, we felt visual quality was really important.

So not only is it things like color, it's resolution. It's also dynamic range. One of the really cool things about this is when I'm wearing it and I get a text or I see a message on my laptop, I don't have to take the headset off anymore. I can see text on my phone or my laptop screen. And that just just that alone means that our resolution is good enough and also the dynamic range is good enough.

Yeah, being sharp enough to read. That was one of the things. So I had the triple monitor setup, which is like, okay, this is a really cool idea. If I can put this headset on anywhere, you know, in a car, on a train or on a plane, and I get this monitor set up in front of me and it's cool and I can like plug it in and use my mouse and keyboard. But one of the problems as I went into and you use the headset is when you actually try to use it, it's not the best quality. It's a little bit glitchy and things don't actually work super well.

So it's always fun to see how far you can push this chipset. Is this the same chipset that's in the Quest Pro? It's the XR2? It's a little different. Or a modified or similar chipset. They're different versions. So this one is XR2, and that one's the XR2+. There is a slight difference, but there's no--

The only difference is that on XR2, it's built like a smartphone. So you want a really small footprint. So you stack memory on top of the chip. The upside is it's small. The downside is if it's not called well enough, it will throttle. So you kind of have to downclock everything if you can't call it properly. So XR2 Plus is literally the same chip, but memory is separated.

So it has a bigger footprint. So you can call it better. But we've never had thermal issues. So we opted for the previous one, well, the existing one, which ends up being just as performance, but also allows us to achieve this really small design. Nice. Yeah, I want to try it. I definitely want to try it.

So I guess you have the controllers also here. The tracking level of what you're able to do with just putting your hands out in front of the Quest Pro, which is-- I keep comparing it to this because it's the one I tried most recently-- is pretty cool because you don't have to have the controllers in your hands all the time. What are these controllers like? So these controllers are ones that we've had with Focus 3. The reason why we're shipping with these is because they're really robust. They're well-tested.

And the tracking quality on these are amazing. And the thing about controllers and hand tracking is, yeah, our headset supports both of them. And they're both really important, right? There's a reason why when you're using a laptop, or just people using tablets, they still use styluses or a mouse. Because with certain tools, you get more precision out of it. You get tactility. And especially with these, you get haptic feedback as well.

Right. So there's, um, they're kind of different requirements that I think for more passive experiences, hand tracking is great, right? You don't have to carry controls with you and it's just much more natural. Um, but when you're doing things like, I don't know, if you're drawing, if you want a lot of precision, if you want, um,

Feedback. That's where controllers become really important as well. I remember we were talking about this previously. So the way hand tracking works to select something is you essentially aim at it and then pinch your fingers together, right? I think you told me something. I was wondering why that was the way you do that. And I think you told me it's because you're getting physical tactility when you click your fingers together.

I thought that was kind of crazy because it feels like a weird motion. Yeah, if you press buttons in midair, you get no feedback. That always bothered me about movies where you just have a huge virtual screen in front of somebody and they start poking things and typing. I'm like, it looks really cool, but if you think about that for a second, like trying to type on a keyboard where your fingers press at different levels. Anyway.

I always thought that was never going to happen. So I think you do need some sort of a tactile thing for that to be real. Yeah, there's some cool tech with things like ultrasound and stuff like that to give you mid-air feedback. Never tried that. There are a bunch of people working on it. But yeah, that's also really cool to give you that feedback. But yeah, having a little fleshy button to push gives you the right feedback.

People have been able to mimic it with mid-air ones with touch. Sorry, with sound. Okay. And some visual feedback, but it's just not as good as this. Reminds me of driving a car and trying to adjust the air conditioning on a screen. It's like, I want to be able to just grab it and point it at me instead of having to do this whole dance with the touchscreen. Yeah. It's just the simple things, yeah. Can we try it on camera? Yeah. Okay.

Actually, I haven't got room set up on here. Oh, that might be tough. I'm sure we can try in this small space right here. I'll try it. I'm willing to try it. We should put the blinders on. One eternity later. I like the fact of just like sunglasses mode plug-in.

while working on like a computer or something if you want to do something like that versus big battery crushing your head all the time. It does. I'll try it, but it does look and appear to be meaningfully smaller and lighter. It looks way smaller. I mean, it's got a very like steampunk glasses. We're just going to talk over Shen setting this up for us to try out. But like the form factor itself does look far more. I mean, it's very ready player one, I feel like. Oh.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. A little bit. It seems like less... The Quest Pro felt like a disc around your head. Like...

rigid around the entire thing which was it's like it's better than like the quest 2 obviously was great but the fact that all of the weight and all of the compute and all the batteries on the front of your head it just has this like weighted feel to it so if you whip your head around it's just like you're there's just all this weight on the front of your face so the the fact that it's more balanced makes perfect sense when you have that much hardware on your head so that i'm not shocked that like makes good sense to me now i just want to see like

as we race to make the technologies better and to make all these things smaller and lighter and maybe have longer battery lives and all that, like how, which direction do we go? Do we get these small batteries or small glasses with a big battery? Do we get, you know, which direction makes the most sense? And just like battery in the back is obviously a weight distribution thing. And when you're doing things, like you said, whipping your head around, it's going to hold it back there better and feel better in a sense like that. But

sitting back in a chair, laying down on a pillow on a plane ride or something like that, that is obviously in the way. Being able to just plug into USB-C through a power option, which if you're sitting down is probably not an issue, than having the ability to do that without crushing your skull. I haven't done this yet, but at one point I will, I can't wait to sit down on a plane and put a VR headset on and watch a movie and

In the VR headset, I think it's going to be the best plane movie ever. It will be because you have a 300-inch screen. So if you took every screen in first class and put it together, it would combine to maybe be close. And then you get your headphones on, and you also have the blinders on, so you don't have someone two rows in front of you opening the window, blasting light all over your screen. I think that's going to be great. I think I mentioned this when we were talking about the Vive Flow is like...

- Or you're watching a movie on the plane that you don't realize has a scene that feels inappropriate for the passengers around you and then like, I think I watched Wolf of Wall Street and then within like 20 minutes I was like, no. How many people can see me watching this? - You're watching the movie on your screen but then the person next to you is watching a different movie and then you like get distracted by their movie. - And you're watching theirs instead. - And then the person in front of you is watching. Yeah, it's a lot.

I told myself that I would watch a movie with VR glasses on the train last time I took it to Philly.

And I never got over the embarrassment. I made it maybe 30 seconds into the movie before I was like, ugh. It's got to be a plane where you'll never see those people again. Yeah, exactly. It'll become more popular and less ridiculous eventually. You just don't want to see yourself on Twitter later. Yeah, exactly. Like, who's this guy? Also, I notice way too often when I'm in the VR space, my mouth is open for some reason. Yeah.

I'm just like totally wallied out. I feel like we're, I don't know, if I can't see people making fun of me, they're not making fun of me. Unless you're on Twitter later. Or you can turn on posture and see if people are taking photos of you. Or I can turn on posture and then see all the people making fun of me. I think it's going to become more...

especially in first class. Quiet comforts used to be the like, I know that guy travels. I think headsets like these or even just more like AR or like the Nreal where you look at it, have your own screen is going to be the new quiet comforts of like that guy travels, that guy's in first class. If we turn back time to maybe 12 years ago, right? Phones, any phone over like five inches was too big. So people were like mocking, like having a tablet on your head. Yeah. But like,

Now look at it. Now there's seven inches. Yeah. Good point. All right. You can give this a go, and it's on OpenRush, so it's a painting experience, but I have past returned on. So you can see your surroundings. You can kind of paint on the desk itself. All right. So I'm putting it on now, and I'm going to try to tighten. How should I?

Yeah, there's a little dial. Oh, okay. There's a little dial on the back. Yeah. And pass-through is turned on right now. And right away, this is the brightest and best-looking colored pass-through that I've ever seen.

It does have a little bit of the, it does suffer from being only one camera. So the perspective is not perfect. But as far as like drawing on objects around me and grabbing- I guess in terms of, you're saying not perfect, but taking, in terms of affecting your-

reality of it. Yeah. Minimal? Minimal. There's a little bit of just like wide angle choice, like choosing which focal length to use for it. Seems a little narrow. I can't see my hands over here, but when you get in here, bright and colorful and looks great. And yeah, the tracking is really good on these two. So I'm going to try to draw something.

What do I, I'm going to draw a logo. You're going to have to guess what logo. Guess what logo? It's like the Disney channel logo thing. I mean, yeah. It's the MKBHD logo. Yeah. This is also off topic. Our logo is so hard to draw by hand. I've been working here for six years now and I probably couldn't even make a good one by hand. It's because you're not in AR. How dare you? Do you think I want to see you draw? Well, I'll see you draw one in a minute. Um,

Yeah, no, I... It's hard. You'll see the screen recording after you remember. The... It's the angles. The proportions are tough, yeah. It doesn't... It's so simple and at the same time really tough, I think. I tried it once. I can't remember why. But if you're off by, like, 10 degrees, which is minimal, it looks either really big or... Draw the waveform logo. That'll be even harder. Oh, no, I'm not going to try that. With the slots? I think I did pretty good. You'll see the recording, which...

I did okay. But that, no, it is very, the tracking, like you said, is really, really good. The tracking of the controllers is great. I'm seeing the object in front of me. I almost want to, like, grab it and move it around. It's like,

Very solid. One thing you'll notice is we kind of make this, we made this headset back heavy. So the weight distribution is where your neck is. So if you turn your head, it doesn't feel like there's anything hanging off the side. That is, it's like very, the pivot point almost like a, yeah, it's really well balanced. Like exactly what you're saying. Like the, when I turn my head around, I feel like there's the exact same amount in front of me and behind me, which is it. Can we turn the volume down? Yeah. I don't know. Where is that? And then the controls.

Oh, it might be the fan. Oh, is that it? I can hear it from Marcus's headset. It's pre-production hardware. Yeah, so pre-production, you can still hear the fan, but it's not throttling. So that's good. Can you potentially try on the...

the adjustment, the no back adjustment. I know it won't turn on unless being plugged in, but just in terms of feeling, distribution and comfort. You also notice that we didn't put a top strap on this. I was just going to say for Marques's hair, I'm sure he appreciates that a lot. Yes, I much prefer headsets that don't have a top strap.

I don't think I'm alone in that. But yeah, that is a huge win. Yeah. During our research, we found a lot of people have aversion to it. Like girls, it might ruin their hair. Like various people. Like we have a few people in our...

in our European office who wear a turban. And having this is also something that's really inclusive for them. So that's also why we try to make this design. We'll have a top strap in there just in case people really want to, maybe they want it really loose or they have a really small head. Well, they're getting really into Beat Saber. Yeah.

I was about to say, the tracking is good because I am our tracking team's worst enemy. Because every time they release something, I test it on Beat Saber or something else. I'm like, this is off by a centimeter. Beat Saber is that one... My wife makes fun of me all the time because I'll be playing it and she'll just see me swing around. I'll be like, I hit that! That was off! I know I got that one! She's like, yeah, I'm sure you did. I'm like, no, no, I need to recalibrate these. It's totally off.

Yeah. So I'm currently, if you're not watching the video version, I'm now wearing it without the battery on the back. And you would have with this USB-C port, I imagine, a battery plugged in with a cable in your back pocket, something like that. It is great if you're going to lie back, I would do this.

But you can definitely feel the weight of it now on the front of your face just like a Quest 2 or anything like that. And I much prefer having the back strap and the battery on. So if I'm leaning back, this is fine. But the second I want to move around, I'm doing the back strap. Can I try real quick? Yeah. We'll try with a hat on too. Should it still work with the hat? Yeah, it works fine with the hat. It looks cool with a hat. I forgot I wasn't going to see anything. It looks cool with this hat, by the way. Just saying.

One of one you can't have a link to Yeah, you can feel it on the bridge of your nose a bit yeah, we tried a lot of We went through a lot of designs and we really like this sunglasses style design And it if you really look like we tried to hide the cameras so they're not too obvious even the speakers we deliver a lot of a lot of volume a lot of clarity a lot of bass, but we still try to make it as hidden as possible and

Because we want it to really do look like glasses. Are the speakers on the strap that's going behind your ear? Yeah, they're like right next to your ears. But it's not bone conduction? It's just a speaker? Yeah, it's just a speaker. Is that it? Yeah. So if you get really close to your ears, that's how you get bass. Yeah. Because bass just falls off so quickly. So even compared to like Vive Flow, we halved the distance between the speakers and the ears. And we also made the speakers bigger.

So the drivers themselves are bigger as well. It's wild to me that you're holding a VR headset in a frame like that. Yeah. I mean, you still need the battery, but this is good. This is really nice. I'm excited about the future of where these things go. Like every time we get to try a new VR experience, I'm looking for kind of two things now. One is visual fidelity. Yeah.

And overall, just like how immersive can it be? Which is always great when you're not doing pass-through and you're just like in the game and you see everything. But then when the pass-through mode is really good, I think that's the new thing to focus on, which is really fun.

And then two is just like, can I be comfortable in it? Is it lightweight? Does it look insane? 'Cause the early VR headsets, speaking of CES, the first time I ever tried a VR headset was an Oculus Rift at CES. And I just remember like the whole setup process, plugging it into the computer,

All of it was a nightmare until I put the headset on and I was like, whoa, this is kind of cool. This has real potential here. So we've seen it evolve over time and I'm now looking forward to the next versions of it, but this is really cool. I think a lot of people are going to really like it. Yeah, I think a lot of the user experience is something we've been working on a lot. We want things to be pick up and go. Even with the Vive, there was a setup process. And it was kind of worse when we had dev kits because that's when...

Microsoft didn't have official support for it, stuff like that. Developers and us used to kind of joke, which is like, we'd have a process of making, of booting up a PC. You plug in a USB, you wait until the Windows logo before you plug in the HDMI, and then you wait until like five seconds after the start menu appears, you plug in the power and then pray to, you know, some deity and hope it works. So I'm really glad we're past that. And I think with mobile headsets,

If you plug in power, it'll just get up and go. And we put a tiny battery in here, which also allows for hot swapping. So if you are using it for fitness and you want to use it for more than two hours completely wirelessly, you can have a second battery back. Or you can have an existing power bank and you can go into glasses mode and just attach it to here. That is a really good idea. I didn't even think of that. Obviously, having the ability to pop off the battery is new, but well thought. Well played.

Sick. I have to ask one more question.

Long, far off future, where do you see VR headsets in general? Do you see the ultimate goal of these being like a super small like glasses thing that's super immersive that everybody wears all the time? Or do you still see it as a separate experience from the normal everyday work life, work and play? Because I feel like there are companies out there who make it very clear that they think we should spend all our time in VR. And that's kind of hard to see for me right now, but I'm curious how you guys look at it.

I think there's a goal that everyone thinks is viable, which is like super small glasses, maybe 5G connected with cloud computing. And that's kind of a really nice goal to have. But the challenge isn't thinking about what the goal is. The challenge is thinking how you get there. Going back to the smartphone example, we're at seven-inch smartphones.

But smartphones went through this period, well, phones in general went through this period of going, being really big and getting small and being big again because the user experience ended up being better with it being bigger. It was really good with dumb phones when they were really small. And I think VR will probably go through something similar. And it's about what features do you pick, right? How do we, you know, as you have more adoption, all those costs come down as well, right?

You know, when we started making VR headsets, we ended up, you know, some of the first prototypes we worked on with Valve, they're like smartphone displays that we like glued on. But now things like these, right, we have custom displays in these.

The reason why like you have $100 smartphones now is because there are so many off-the-shelf components you can pick. So I think we'll get to a point where that will become a thing, but we're trying to build out all the technologies needed to hit that, right? Like if...

If I went and got all these parts and sold them together, if I don't have the software, none of it works. And it's not just like it runs a custom Android operating system, but also all the tracking algorithms. They have deep learning algorithms in there as well. And all of that just takes also time and a lot of resources to build. And we're just talking about the basics here.

I think with things like the metaverse, there are so many other fundamental basics that we have to build together to really reach this goal of having people want to be in there. There's a way of... It's not something you can force people to go in. There has to be some value for people to go back into it. 100%. Yeah. I think we'll keep looking for that killer app and that value that people really find the most compelling. Yeah.

but until then the demos are really fun so yeah can you also um you've been playing vr for a long time and you're great at beat saber for the vr gamers out here can you give us a couple i find my hardest thing playing vr is finding a game that i enjoy and going back to the same two over and over again so any uh any suggestions okay not well known besides super hot and beat saber okay um

It's also very well known, but Pistol Whip is also really good. Okay. And if you're someone who hates doing squats, it makes you do squats. Okay. Because you're dodging bullets all the time. I could use some squats. Dodging bullets. But aside from the music-based games, one thing that is really cool, and we're actually going to show at CES, is called Kayak VR. Okay.

it's exactly what it is what it sounds like you are in a kayak and you're kayaking around but it has some of the most beautiful scenes it has like Antarctica with penguins it has like fjords in northern in Norway it's really nice to just go in and chill is it like high-definition shot or is it so graphics it's it's PC VR as well so it's only released on PC VR because it needs that horsepower okay

But you can connect this wirelessly to a PC and it just it gives you a really nice experience that I would love. My mom loves VR. I would love to sit around the ottoman in my living room and just let her kayak around. I mean, I could do that all day. That sounds. Yeah, my mom kind of likes VR too. Your mom loves VR. When your mom came over, she played Beat Saber and was like screaming Star Wars references. It was awesome. Yeah.

I might have to. Yeah, we'll get her set up with one of these. Sick. All right. Thank you again to Shen from HTC for the time and the demo. And with the last few minutes, we do want to go over the trivia answer. So we're back with David. We have our whiteboards and we have the two trivia questions to reconsider and figure out our answers for. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, gamers. Yeah. Oh, the G Fuel. Which one of these flavors is fake?

Yikes. Oh my goodness. Number one, Spicy Demonade. Number two, Clickbait. Number three, Blaze Potion. Number four, Battle Juice. And number five, The Juice.

Why did you say it like that? I don't know. The juice. Just for the record, I've never had G Fuel in my life. Yeah, just for the record, I'll be happy no matter what happens here because I get a point. Or I don't know anything about G Fuel. Yeah, I've never had G Fuel either. Both wins. Flip them and read. So I said number one. Demonate with spicy demonate? Spicy demonate. That is wrong. I said blaze potion. I made that one up.

Oh, I said clickbait. No, there's an actual G Fuel flavor called clickbait. I did write in parentheses, clickbait is a good name. If you were curious, clickbait tastes like cherry pomegranate. I thought it'd be clickbait because that's not like a gaming term. It's more of like just a internet term. G Fuel's kind of

gone to the point of like pat like just like they're like the rage shadow legends of uh energy drinks doesn't g means gamer fuel maybe it did but uh who knows what it means also look at all these pop-ups that come up when i go on this sale big sale end of year bogo sale still has two years two days left i feel like i'm on mushrooms looking at this website yeah

The reason I picked Blaze is because they're partnered with FaZe, and I assumed those two couldn't coexist. That'd be FaZe, actually. Yeah, you're right. The FaZe flavor is all of the word FaZe in them. There is one. There's a few that have the word potion. That's not a tech trivia question. It's a gamer. It's tech-adjacent.

Damn. We make the rules. Fine. Second question. Also, we're not interested in a G Fuel sponsorship. No, yeah. Any G Fuel people are watching, we are not interested. Do not email us. Okay. How many AirTags can you attach to your Apple ID?

Quick update, Andrew is in the lead with one. Oh, nice. I've written mine through the back. Also, I know there is a number. It sounds crazy that they would limit it because one, it's making more money for Apple. Yeah.

I think it was, well, I'm kind of giving away too much information here, but I'll say it anyway. I think it was kind of like they just didn't expect people to get that many and they never bothered thinking about it. But also Justine hit the number. I'm very confident some YouTuber has hit that number. So like a obvious number or it's like a really high number? It's a reasonable number for someone to hit. You know, I have an idea.

Mr. Krabs, I have an idea. I, in my account right now, have four AirTags and two other Find My Things that have the... My wallet is one, and I have AirTags on my keys and the tripod bags. So just... Anyway. Why the tripod bags in particular? Because that's the only thing that we check under the plane. So it's like if we depart...

with our belongings. That's the only thing we can lose. Because remember those stories? We don't want that happening to the cameras. Yeah. Anyway, alright. I have my answer. Wait, wait, wait. Is this closest delta? Or is it... If we all get it wrong... No. If we all get it wrong, it should be closest delta. Let's do it. Here's the answers. What did you guys say? Andrew and I both said 30. I said 10.

Oh. Wait. Marquez is the closest, though, so he gets the point. Is it nine? The answer is 16. 16. Yeah. So they raised it to 16. That seems very low. That seems really low. That seems super low. But, like, think about it. Like, who has 16 air tags? Wait. Do they? I might. You have 16. You have 16. I currently have. You don't have 17. I can tell you that. I think I have nine. Okay. Okay.

Wait, why? Oh, they're in your cameras. I have it on all my expensive cameras. Yeah, that makes sense. If you just think about like someone who might have just like way more than usual, just like going, oh, I'll put an air tag on all of my X, Y, and Z. You might get to like 12 or something. Adam, can you fact check that to make sure they didn't know? Oh, I spent like the last five minutes fact checking. I could see a scenario where you're a parent and you have air tags on your things and now the things of your kids where you could hit 16 very easily. You know what I just found out about?

There's a piece of wearable technology that you give a kid that is basically a phone. It's like a bracelet, but it can make and receive calls from pre-programmed numbers like the parents or friends.

And there's an app that the parents can use to log in to track the location of the bracelet all the time and can call the bracelet. Did you know about these? No. I would just have my kids swallow an AirTag. Just like a kid AirTag. It's a kid AirTag, basically. Picture you're out with your friends and stuff, and it's like 7.30. You're a little late. Your mom's probably wondering. And then your mom starts coming out of your wrist like, yo. Yeah.

I don't want to say how, but I saw an app of one of these and there is a setting where you can have it bypass the ring and just open a call. Just push to talk. Wait, like what is the targeted audience at this? Because when you said kid, I thought 10. But when you started talking about like out with your friends. Kids too young to get a phone.

Too young to get a phone, too old, old enough to leave the house, too young to get a phone. You're not like at the eight-year-old club. No, you're on the coldest side. Yeah, exactly. Kids don't go outside anymore. Born too late. The ones that do are plugged in. I'd be so mortified and embarrassed if my mom pushed a talk down. That would be such a flex.

I'm gonna troll my wrist real quick. Give me a sec. Imagine this you're drinking G fuel with your gamer friends You just down a quick click bait your paint your you're playing fortnight down in some clickbait Marquez Can you end this and suddenly your mom the storms closing in? Hey, Jimmy, do you want me low for dinner tonight? Mom, I'm playing G fuel gamer. No, I'm trying to clutch this victory royale. Oh

Wayformer is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roman. We are a partner of the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro-outro music was created by Vane Sill.