If Apple Made a Camera, It’d be the Sigma BF
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You understand tech. You already use a VPN, a password manager, and an ad blocker. Surely you are not exposed, right? Find out for sure by going to cloaked.com slash Vox. That's C-L-O-A-K-E-D dot com slash V-O-X. There you can plug in your phone number to see if any of your personal information is vulnerable.

Kevin Hart here. This basketball season, Chase Freedom Unlimited is helping me cash back on everything, even the sound system that auto-tunes the game. Curry from way back.

downtown will the owner of a red sedan please visit guest services bet you've never heard cash back and sound like that cash back like a pro with chase freedom unlimited chase make more of what yours restrictions and limitations apply cards are issued by jp morgan chase bank and a member fdic i'll start with the crown because i think this one's just fun rivians

Tan update. I think it's sick as the crown out of left field Marquez I don't think there is anything negative that anyone could possibly say about it and therefore it is my crown if a new color is the coolest thing that happened in February New color it's a new trim package. Did you see the seats? You saw this they look like tests also in your color sick. Did you see that? You know dual tone color

So I want you to see the picture of the seats. They look great. They look like Tesla. But how sick are those seats? What is up, people of the Internet? Welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And can I turn my headphones up a little bit? Absolutely. Absolutely.

just a tiny yep perfect thank you alice uh today's episode we have oneplus uh did a thing that they didn't mean to do uh sigma did a thing that they meant to do and it was really interesting also we speculate on iphone 16e pricing and have a little bit more thoughts the review is out by the time you watch this and we're trying to figure out what's good with alexa ai

because that's also brand new alexa come join us also it's the end of the month like literally the last day of the month as this goes up so we have a new crown and clown of the month that we'll have to figure out and agree on at some point

But first, actually first we have a quick correction on Google Tasks. I have a couple of corrections. A couple, okay. And an answer to people having issues with Pocket Casts. This whole first segment is just like corrections and wrong things. Yeah, it's our corrections and other people's corrections. Okay, perfect. That's perfect because I actually have one from last week too. Sick, okay.

David, do you remember last week when I said the new Google Tasks browser was out and you said, I've been using this forever? Yeah. So I found out what the difference is. Previously, you could have a page dedicated to just your Google Tasks, but it was inside of the calendar URL. So if you go to calendar... So just the URL. So pretty much you can switch between calendar and Tasks. Oh.

which I did not know about. I did not know that either. Now, when you go to tasks.google.com, it is its own. No, you weren't using this. This is new. All right.

It looks the same. It does look the same. Look, it is the same. The only difference is that the top left says tasks now and is dedicated to tasks. Why? And you can't go to... Why did they make a separate website? I'm glad they did because I had no idea this was here. Somebody at Google probably got an email being like, quick, name five things you did this month. And they were like, uh, I made a website for a thing that already existed. Yeah. The basis of what we talked about last week was...

that Google has not forgotten Google Tasks, and that still remains true. Hashtag blessed. Hashtag blessed. Honestly, that's huge. Yeah. Okay. And then I also have one other correction. Last week I said our Vox podcast at South by Southwest was 11 a.m. CST. It is at 10 a.m. CST. So if you're at South by Southwest, come watch, listen live. It's the first time we're ever doing this. Come live with us. Also,

For people who heard this and thought to look up South by Southwest tickets just to come, they're very expensive. Yeah. It's more if you're already at South by Southwest, then, hey, here's a thing happening at 10 a.m. Yeah. We would love to do this again later, but this is our trial run because Vox is setting it all up.

with their stage. - Think of it like this. If we can pull this off and this goes really well, then we can maybe do some other version of this with more people in the future. So with this smaller group, we'll test some things out. We'll try some stuff. We've been reading your comments. There's some good ideas in there. Keep going. But yeah, then we'll experiment with more later. - The next one's in Tahiti. - Yeah, wow. Heard it here first.

That's a leak. It's at Fyre Festival 2. That's the next one. Okay. I also have noticed a lot of people saying that they were having issues with waveform on Pocket Casts. I love Pocket Casts. You do? Yeah, I've been using Pocket Casts. I haven't had any issues. Marques and I found out the issues along with some help from our subreddit. Essentially what's happening, people were saying within the last couple weeks, Pocket Casts, when they try and download the newest episode, they're getting failed to download. Yeah.

So what we figured out is that the inside of Pocket Cast, there's the correct waveform RSS feed. And then there are two more feeds that are actually this company called Listenbox downloading our YouTube video into audio and posting it on Pocket Cast. That's not us. That is not us. They can just do that? Apparently. That is one of the questions I have in a minute.

So I've, I read that some people enjoyed that because it would also download the video so they could listen in pocket cast. And if they wanted to reference really quickly, the video, they could pop it up, but we're not the people doing that. And if you go to listen box right now, it says they're pausing operations until they can reliably bypass YouTube blocks.

Spoiler. You're not supposed to be doing that. Until we can break terms of service reliably. So the way to tell the difference is if you go to Pocket Cast, the correct feed, which is audio only, is waveform colon the MKBHD podcast.

Waveform Clips is obviously not this, but there is a feed for Waveform Clips. And just Waveform is not the correct one. So that will not be working. So the only correct one is the one that has the Vox logo at the top. Correct. To be clear. There's only one correct feed. Yes. Right now, we only have video on YouTube, audio through RSS feed, wherever you can get it. We've thought of some other ways of doing it, but we just haven't found the correct way.

for that. We do, we keep an eye on it. But I have two questions here. If anyone from Listenbox is out there, do we still get view or download credit for that? I'm assuming no. No.

No, they're just stealing. To be very clear, they're just a service that operates to let people create a podcast feed out of thin air by downloading a bunch of videos that show up on a YouTube channel. If it's not your YouTube channel, you don't get to make that podcast feed. You're stealing and putting it up and claiming to be us. That's what I assume, so we will try and find a way to fix that. Thank you to everyone that called this out on social media.

It's funny because it breaking and not working, which is also that's part of the reason why this kind of sucks for us, because we have a bunch of people like, how come your guy's thing isn't working? It's like, well, all the stuff we did is working correctly. We did not do that. And now this stuff's broken. Yeah. So Pocket Cast people. Oh, I guess I think there's a way to deal with it through ListenBox, but not cool. ListenBox, you probably should get permission from the people you're downloading from. Also, it's illegal.

Well, it's not illegal, but it's against terms of service. Allegedly. Shades of, what was her name? Ray? No, Mira. When they ask her, like, Amir Marati. Yeah, are you downloading from YouTube? I can't say we're not doing that. We're using publicly available data. Yeah, totally. Okay, my car is publicly available. That doesn't mean you can take it. Did you see the, like, the meta Slack message about the people feeling bad that they're

They were torrenting all the books inside of like on meta campus. No. It's like, that's bad. I feel pretty bad that we're doing this like on meta Wi-Fi and then like Laffy face. I mean, they should be doing on meta Wi-Fi because if they were doing it on their own, they would be liable for it. Which meta probably would prefer. Zuck is the one that should take responsibility. All right. Let's go to a correction not from us. Oh, yeah.

So this is funny this kind of developed over the past couple of days slash week or two But you may have seen the headline the one plus watch 3 which is out now Had a tiny typo on the back it is basically meaningless the watch is totally fine But the typo on the back says made in China except instead of made its MED a made in China and

It's just like the text is whatever. It's Italian. Somebody messed it up. It's a made in China. The text is wrong. And so like people, including me, took a picture of it, got a little laugh out of it. It's funny because it almost doesn't matter at all, but it is weird that it would make it to the final product because then it makes you think, well, what else gets past these people and makes it to the final product that they didn't mean to?

Not sure. But the correction that they're issuing is they are allowing for returns and letting people. Obviously, you can keep it if you don't care. I would want to. But yeah, maybe it's a limited edition thing. Keep it. Misprints are always worth more. Yeah.

I mean these aren't gonna be worth more probably yeah Yeah, they said that you could send it in for a full refund or you could just keep it as a limited edition product Apparently they are ceasing selling them again until sometime in April. Yeah, so get seriously two-month delay now That's thanks. Yeah, that's like

Damn, how did this make it all the way through? Yeah. This is kind of wild that it made it. And they've probably made a lot of them by now. Probably. There's probably a lot of inventory sitting around with that text on it. What are they going to do with it? They can't sell it. They should sell it for like $100 off or something like that. It would still be, they'd still make more money than just throwing them all in the landfill. It's better than e-waste, yeah. Does this feel like an overcorrection? Like, does anyone care? I feel like it's an overcorrection. I mean, better to overcorrect than not do anything. That said...

Are they legally allowed to say things that don't say their origin? Does it have to say made in China? Why does everything say where it's made? That's a question. That's definitely a legal thing, and that's a good point. Really?

But sometimes it just says China, right? So is the meta in like not even matter? Could you make the argument that it's obvious enough that that still means made in China? Like from a legal perspective? Or even the meta, yeah. Sounds like we need the Eagle team. They did not pay me to say that. Yeah. That would be an interesting deep dive question.

To quote Rick Ross, I don't have the answers. I usually got all the answers, but I don't have the answers. Is that the walnut of the almonds? It's my favorite clip. Yes. Yep. I also heard that this watch is quite good. Yeah, I've heard good things. It has like seven day battery life. That's the main thing. I've heard the biggest upgrade from the Watch 2 is the Watch 2 had the rotating digital crown that didn't scroll.

They added scrolling. And also everyone, apparently, I forgot about it, but the Watch 1 was like... Horrible. Terrible. It was really bad. So yeah, people seem pretty impressed by this already. Yeah, the Watch 1 was the one that just came with all the built-in fitness features, but that's basically all it could do. Yeah. And it was just bad. So it's good that they've...

Made it quite a bit better. I will continue to use mine with the typo on it. Real quick, there are multiple laws requiring made in said country. So maybe that's why they ceased operations. Interesting. Turned out it mattered. Yeah. So thank you to French-speaking anonymous listener who wrote me an email. Do you want to read the email? I do not want to read the email because...

I was right. Okay. But I did. French. I did. No, no, no, no, no. I misspoke. Okay. And I can, I can explain. I, I led our dear listeners down the wrong path because last week I implied that the French word tonneau translates into English as ton, which is not true. The French word for ton is get this.

Yeah. What I was trying to say is that the English word tonneau is borrowed from the French word tonneau. And the French word, the modern French word tonneau is derived from an ancient or medieval French word, also called old French word that I have written in all my notes here to make sure I don't get it wrong this time.

Oh, the old French word is also ton, like T-O-N-N-E, which is the same as the old English toon or the medieval Latin tuna. So all of these words are related because they all mean the cask, the barrel thing, right? Like they all used to mean barrel because you used to measure how many barrels could fit on a ship, which is where we get the idea of the ton. But Marques, unfortunately, we have to take your point away.

And Andrews, right? Wait, wait, no, just Marquez's. Didn't they both get it? Shut up, David. Oh, you also got it right? I think so. Okay. Who's that guy? How do I ban this guy from Wave 4? I'm terribly sorry. This one is on me, but you guys have to suffer the punishment nonetheless. In the words of our listener, I will maintain my healthy five-point lead. I

lead. I just want to say that I spent so much time researching medieval Latin only to misspeak in game time and blow it all. We've all been there. My apologies, country of France. You miss every shot you don't take, Ellis. Thank you. Alright, want to talk about some Sigma stuff? I want to talk about

The Sigma... The grind set. The Sigma boyfriend. Yeah. I wanna talk about the Sigma camera. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, Sigma announces BF camera. This thing looks sick. And I'm choosing my words wisely. It looks sick. It also looks like it feels great.

um so if you get to look at the images can you describe it yeah you'll see that it looks it is essentially a unibody aluminum like mirrorless camera sized body but with a full frame 35 millimeter sensor inside sigma's canon or sigma's lens mount on it what's l mount l mount sorry which they have an alliance with but also the buttons

are all metal and the jog wheel is metal and textured and the front of the body of the camera is half knurled and half clean matte it's so sick there's a black one and a white one i just i want this to be a good camera so that i can use such a beautiful camera

It looks incredible. Sigma is beautiful. Very well known for making really freaking weird cameras. And lenses, to be honest. I've long appreciated Sigma's sometimes ability, sometimes persistence at making weird cameras. They are the only ones that make a wide angle zoom like the 18-35 and the 24-35 that I use. So shout out to them. They also randomly, I think, approached me with like, yeah, we also have...

Like a 9mm f1.8. So just crazy lenses. Yeah. That, yeah, I appreciate. They're the only ones that make them. You post on social that this is like the most Apple camera that could possibly be made. Oh, totally. I think more like Johnny Ive though, you know. For sure. Yeah, Johnny Ive days Apple would have made a camera like this. If you told them to make a camera, it for sure would have had no memory card slot. Yeah.

only internal memory now look I like internal memory the Hasselblad has internal memory but to also not have a card slot is an extra step that they didn't have to take so this has like 230 gigs of built in memory I mean with this like unibody metal like aluminum

Putting a SD card slot in there would one, take away from the design and two, probably cost so much more. They have a swappable battery. The battery does come out. Oh, so it could go in the battery spot. But it doesn't close. It's not like a door. It just pops out of the bottom. So it becomes unibody. It becomes flush with

the body. Like the Hasselblad? Yes. Yeah. Just like the X-T8. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I actually approve of this, of not having a memory card. So would you rather have had like external storage, like larger storage option versions of the camera? I think this is enough. 230 gigs? 230 gigs is like thousands of raw photos. This camera shoots 6K video. Yeah, if you're doing video, then you have a problem. Two and a half hours.

But I don't know if this is necessary. Like this, people aren't using this to vlog, you know? Yeah.

It is also HEVC video. Yeah, it's compressed and highly... Two and a half hours of video, it says. Yeah. You don't think that's enough? Your longest A-rolls are like an hour. Yeah, but that's A-roll. If I'm running around and I already have 100 gigs of stuff and I haven't dumped it yet and I go out to another thing I want to shoot, now I'm thinking like, oh, I haven't dumped the other stuff, but I don't want to shoot too much now because then I might not have enough for later. I actually have to think about it. I have...

Something that I need to disclose. I have a one terabyte SD card that I've been using for about five years and I have never wiped this card. So my point exactly. That's a terabyte. Yeah. Four times as much as which is why I'm saying I don't like the Hasselblad has a terabyte of built in memory. That's awesome. Flash storage is really cheap. Yeah.

They should have done 500. Exactly. Agreed. I will never say no to more, but I think 256 is more than enough. That is my argument. It's 230. 230. Okay, more than enough. Because the OS is on it, that's why. I feel like for people that are...

Content creators like you're going out and you're shooting multiple events. I could see your argument Marquez Yeah, but this is for people who buy like us and just go shooting on the weekends Yeah, I was talking to us and have our yep on the way in this is kind of like the affordable version of a Leica Because it the whole thing is about the experience the build quality the fact that it's a single piece of aluminum Has no tilt screen, you know, the like is the same way. It's just a single LCD and

The thing that really kind of kills this for me is that there's no viewfinder and it's just the screen. Yeah. The fact that it doesn't tell it's an LCD. I don't know how bright it gets. So like out in the middle of the day might suck.

Might suck. It might. It's 24 megapixels, which I do approve of. Wait, before we get too far. Yeah. Can I just talk about the SD card thing? Oh, yeah. I feel like we've gone so far. Sorry. I was talking to Vin about it, and I think we came down to the biggest issue with it is if something happens with your storage, now it's sending it in to get fixed versus if something happens with your SD card. That's why it's so Apple-

It's so Apple. I think that's what makes me the most upset about it. Do you remember the flip cam? The thing that I never stopped talking about? I love the flips. Do you remember how you got the videos off that thing? Plugged it in. Yeah, it had like the switchblade USB port. Yeah, that was epic. Yeah. Sorry, dude. Go back. Sure. And no one ever complained about that? Yes, they did. Are you kidding me? No, no, no. I can't hear you. I also think this thing has a sub-bezel.

The screen yeah, it does. It's got a giant. It's a screen encased in the body Which is not flush, and then there's a sub bezel they try to hide it in the render I like the one corner you can tell the other ones are dark enough. Yeah, I'm surprised they even show that yeah You know it's it's like okay. Here's the here's the thing about it. So pretty it's called the Sigma BF You might think that stands for boyfriend

No, BF stands for beautiful foolishness. Does it really? Yes, it does. Wow, I love that. That is really good. They are basically admitting that this is a ridiculous camera. But beautiful. But it's beautiful. Damn, Sigma. So it has like a lot of things about it that are like impractical, but. Damn, Sigma. Yeah. Is that really what it means? It is really what it means.

Yeah. I believe it instantly. It has two hour battery life. It has a nice metal shutter button. I came in here the other day when it was announced saying that I was like super obsessed with this and wanted to buy it. And then I thought about it.

I think a lot of people are gonna go through the same process Where you start to realize the important things that you need in a camera that this does not have yeah like I think a flip out screen is like Yeah, why does this not have that I need that that's not even a nice to have at this point. I need it It's hard to do with and especially when you don't have a viewfinder mm-hmm

It's just so even the Leicas at least have an OVF, an optical view. It feels like if Apple made a camera like this, they would make similar sets of concessions of things that seem like you have to have. But then they would try to engineer their way out the other side of like it's the brightest screen ever in a camera or something like that. We have a 18 chip camera.

so that you have zero latency between sensor feed and viewfinder camera. They would try to engineer their way out of it, but they would totally be like, yeah, also there's no viewfinder. And you'd be like, this camera, it needs a viewfinder. So that's why I thought it looked like an Apple camera. Also the UX.

looks kind of bad. Sebastian DeWitt, who makes Halide, had mentioned that this is the reason he got into UX design in the first place and app design is because companies make an absolutely beautiful piece of hardware and then the software is terrible, just like cars. So yeah, we also didn't mention it has a status monitor right above the jog wheel, which is basically a little micro LCD screen that shows you aperture and stuff like that.

It looks cool. I love that there's like a very small amount of buttons the lenses they now also make in silver to make it work you know with the camera and

Yeah, I think it's going to be for people who want something really pretty that is better than their phone. It's $2,000, which is not unheard of. Yeah, I looked at the B&H pre-order listing and saw $2,000, and I was like, I think I expected higher, actually. I mean, I've never shot with a Sigma mirrorless camera, so I feel like I was thinking about Sony A7 type of range when I saw full frame, and $2,000 is...

Not insane the other thing about this is that people were hoping that it would have a foveon sensor and what a foveon sensor is is a sensor that has all three color filters on each pixel so instead of having to do D mosaicing where you like do this process to actually show the color it every single pixel gets all the color So it looks a lot better. It's like sharper, and it's like three yeah, it'll be much They're much harder to make

And they used to make them they stopped making them after a while But yeah, but unfortunately does not have a phobia on sensor. So if that was a trivia question, sorry, it was not okay But I do want to say I and I every time I look at the BF. I can't stop thinking about it like The feature set is not that far off for my EOS M Like obviously this is a dramatically better camera but at the same time

The EOS M is 18 megapixels, so I'm only missing six of them. I don't have a full-frame sensor. I have an APS-C sensor. But other than that, same viewfinder status. Around the same size. It's around the same amount of memory. And the EOS M has expandable storage. Bingo. And, get this, with Magic Lantern, I can shoot raw video on the EOS M. Checkmate, Sigma. The Android of cameras. This is great. Who's the Sigma now?

They are. On that note, we should take a quick break, but I do think we should also do trivia. The pause is back. The pause is back. Segway! Yeah. All right. First question. Okay. In 2014...

Invites were given out through a promotion known as Smash the Past, in which 100 users would be selected to win an opportunity to purchase, for $1, what smartphone? Marques, that was almost awesome. Almost. I'll just write it now so I don't forget. Audio listeners, he tried to flip his marker into his hand. What company?

Don't say. I know. I can't say. That's the point. Wait, we're only naming the company? Company, phone, all of it. There was a, in 2014. In 2014. That's a good hint. The promotion was Smash the Past. Oh, yeah, I know this. Smash. Nice. No. No, no, no, no, no. Well, hey, think about that. We'll think about it, too. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back.

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All right, welcome back. I'm holding the iPhone 16E here in my hands. I've been using it for a little over a week now. Now that you're watching this, the review is out. I can't wait to watch other people's reviews because I assume they will also have some of the same thoughts as me. But in general, to summarize, iPhone 16E...

Kind of replaces the iPhone SE, but not really. It's its own new segment. It's just not a budget phone anymore. The SE iPhones were in the $400 range. This is a $599 iPhone to start.

This phone that I'm holding here that I'm testing has a storage upgrade. This phone costs $900. So I'm testing a $900 iPhone 16E. And I'm supposed to evaluate it in the landscape of other phones you could get for that money and the landscape of other iPhones you might be considering if you're upgrading from an older phone.

And my conclusion, my review, if you've watched it, you already know, is I can't think of anyone who should start with this phone. I think if you have $600 to spend and you have an old iPhone right now, there's a listing on Walmart.com for a refurbished iPhone 16 or iPhone 15 Pro.

Everything about that phone is better than this phone. And it's cheaper? And it's the same price, $600. Wow. Brighter screen, higher refresh rate, triple cameras, similar battery life. There's a whole bunch of things about that phone that are great. Apple intelligence. Apple intelligence, exactly. Oh, wait, sorry, that's a downgrade. But here's the highlights of the 16E that I think are at least a little bit interesting. One, it is the A18 in the body of an iPhone 14, basically. Yeah.

So it brings at least the cheapest new iPhone up to a modern size and shape and look.

Two, the battery life is great. It has a physically larger battery than the iPhone 14 otherwise would have because three, they've introduced a new part called the C1, which combines 4G, 5G, satellite, and GPS, I think, all into one chip. Except for millimeter wave. No millimeter wave. So you don't get that. By the way, the 15 Pro does. But you get all of that in a new, smaller, more efficient chip.

that allows for even better battery life in this phone. And we expect to see, at least I expect to see that in future iPhones and other devices as well that have 4G, 5G satellite GPS, but that's debuting in this lower volume iPhone. And that's kind of it. It's an iPhone. It has an action button. It has a single camera on the back. Oh, this has a lot of parallels to the Pixel 8a.

Because it came out when the pixel a pixel 8 was already really pixel 9 god I want to There's so many things yeah, but it came out when the higher end base pixel was already discounted right and was basically the same price Yeah, and this smaller camera sensor. It's not that much worse, but it is a different look kind of similar to the pixel a yeah And it's just yeah if you if you want a cheap and

You know, new iPhone. This is that phone, but also it's not cheap. It's lighter. It is lighter. It is lighter than the Pro. If you value that, get this phone. There you go. You found the person. They also took out Wi-Fi 7 for some reason. Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 are not included. Which, whoever buys this won't care, but.

No ultra-wideband, no millimeter wave 5G. A lot of little things. No MagSafe is probably the biggest thing. Oh, I forgot about that part. Yeah. That's the worst part. So there's like a bunch of little things that stack up on top of each other. Some of them I honestly don't think are going to matter to this buyer. Yeah. Like Wi-Fi 7. They don't have a Wi-Fi 7 router, so it's fine. Even the single less GPU core, that's not going to matter. But yeah. It's all the things that you could have cut out.

At $450? That no one would have cared about? Yeah. It's not all the things you can cut out. $450. Yeah. So my exercise for you guys is what price is this phone a good deal? Because I think right now, the phone itself is actually totally fine. It's just a bad deal. At what price does it actually make sense to buy this phone?

If you had to buy it outright. A lot of people just get a carrier deal or whatever, just walk in and go, what phone am I going to get for free with an upgrade? And it doesn't even matter. But if you were spending the dollars, this is $599. What price does it make sense to buy this phone? So the old SE was $429 and before that was $399.

Yeah. So it's already a massive jump. Yeah. There's so many people, sorry to cut off, but like there's so many people who kept saying, stop comparing it to the SE. This isn't the SE. Yes, it is. It's the cheaper iPhone that comes out at a totally different time than all the other iPhones. Why would it not be compared to this? Where's the S, bro? I don't know.

know explain that okay they renamed it yes but effectively the iphone se was old we want to give you the cheapest new iphone available so what we're going to do is parts bin this thing we're going to give you an old iphone body with the new chip in it so that you can have a future-proof cheap phone for a while that's exactly what exactly what this is this is the iphone 14 body this is the a18

This is the same formula. I think it's the reincarnated SE where we might potentially get them more often because now we're linking it to a number, but I still think this is totally reasonable to compare it to the SE, especially because of release date timing. Okay. Yeah. The MagSafe thing is a big thing for me. Yeah. So pricing-wise...

Okay, tariffs we talked about. Now there are going to be major tariffs. Whether or not that influenced Apple changing the pricing of this last minute and how much it might have changed the pricing. If this thing had come out at $549, how would you feel? Still be kind of tough for me. I think they could do $499. $499 feels right. Yeah. Match it with the Pixel A series, right? That's at $499 now? I think so now. It's a more competitive price segment. Yeah.

They had been cheaper than the A series in the past, right? How much was the pixel a series when the se was se three was they're all playing around. I mean the first, the pixel for 29, the pixel for a was three 49 at one point. Yeah. So just saying, um,

Yeah, I don't know. The thing about the United States, well, one of the things about the United States, is that the price of things, the price of phones, like, does not matter in the United States. Because the difference between buying the SE at a carrier and doing a 24-month contract and buying the regular 16 at a carrier and doing a four-month contract is like $8 a month. Wow.

Which is why you see that the most popular iPhone is the Pro Max. Yep. Because it's just a few extra dollars per month on your carrier deal and you're going to get a trade in and it's just the way phones are here. Yeah. Yeah. So I would love to know how popular the old SE was for that reason. Maybe those buyers bought the

bought the phone outright because it was an amount of money that they felt okay just spending the money outright. But I don't think most people are going to feel okay spending $600 outright, so I feel like this is not going to sell very well. - Yeah, I would say in the markets that people do buy phones outright, and hardware is very competitive,

For $600, you could get a phone with triple cameras, 120-hertz display, 5,000-milliampere battery, fast-charging wireless. Like, there's going to be a ton of better specs. Oh, yeah. So the argument for the iPhone SE has always been, well, this is the cheap iPhone. Yeah. You want an iPhone, and so this is the cheap one. So the cheap iPhone is just way more expensive now. There just is no...

And in those markets, everybody uses WhatsApp and people are not locked into the Apple ecosystem either. So you can buy a nothing phone 2A or whatever, 2A plus, whatever it was called. Yeah. For cheaper than this. Yeah. So I think in hardware competitive markets, this price, this phone, no reason to buy it. No. I just don't think there's a reason to buy it in any market.

Yeah, I think that's where that's where it kind of landed with the review. The opening for the review, if you haven't seen it, is a sketch where a world's most honest carrier employee has to talk to someone who wants the iPhone 16 really bad and tries to get it recommended. Awkward. Yeah. I'm going to end this with a compliment.

Okay. I love the back of this. It's matte. Matte black. Ultra clean. Super clean. First of all, maybe I love it because I helped Brandon with the robot shot of it. It was way easier to clean than all those smudgy phones whenever we do it. But...

Matt single care. This is just clean. Yeah, it's like this is the de facto default iPhone right here And they did a good job with it. Yeah, I called it super clean For some reason Ellis does not like this phone. That thing sucks. What's wrong with this phone? The back of this phone looks so... It looks like you it looks like an iPhone without eyebrows like it's like an iPod It's so me know it's it's completely if you asked like a four-year-old to like Ham-fistedly draw an iPhone. That's what they draw.

It's not it. I also have another thing. The notch by now just looks really outdated. I don't know. I don't think it's that bad. I think that the old iPhone SE, because it had a home button, it was different enough that it didn't necessarily feel like super outdated. And it was a different input mechanism. But this is the same input mechanism, but with a worse notch.

Okay, I feel almost the exact opposite. Wow. I feel like now that I've used this phone and it's the same size as my 15, 16 Pro and everything, like I don't notice the notch. It feels the same as a Dynamic Island. If it had the cool software bubbly features, that would be nice, but it doesn't, whatever. But when I look back now at the three-year-old SE with that huge forehead and a huge bezel at the bottom and the home button, I'm like, oh, that's...

Way worse. I guess that's fair So it feels like we brought the iPhone the cheapest iPhone into like the age of modern iPhone I just really don't want to teach my mom how to use Face ID Well, you'd have to with no matter what you do, you know SC with a notch or with the home button She just uses her that's fair her fingerprint. Yeah, the home button was easy for the most people. Yeah. Yeah Well, there's no more home button on anything anymore. So pour one out. Yeah rip home button Okay, I want to end this with a question

There are several reasons why this phone may have been more expensive, right? R&D on the C1 chip, tariffs, overall strategy, whatever. Do we think that the iPhone 17 lineup at the end of this year is also going to get a price hike in some way?

Yes. Because I am starting to feel like we should brace for that. Definitely. The other thing about that is that if there's a price hike and there's also the slim, which was rumored to be potentially expensive, and that's got to fit in there. And then if there's an E for the 17 as well,

There's going to be too many iPhones next year. So I don't think they're going to drop the E in September. I think they'll keep this same release date. So that means in September they're going to adjust the iPhone lineup. You know how every year they drop some out and add some new ones in? So in September it's going to be 16E at $599.

17 which I guess might start at 899 which seems insane they I there's also rumors they're gonna bring promotion to the base iPhones but probably 899 999 1099 1199 or 1199 1299

$1299 for a base 17 Pro Max is a lot, but I feel like they could do that this year. And then fitting the slim iPhone somewhere in there. Maybe it's in between the E and the base or above all of them. I still think if there is slim iPhone, it takes the place of 17 Max.

Oh, you don't think they're adding to it? You think they're replacing the Max? I think they'll still be two base non-pros. Oh, the Plus. The Plus, sorry, sorry. Oh, so you think 17 and 17 Air instead of 17 and 17 Plus. I think that's right. I think that's right. I think that'd be my guess in there. Because I just think five iPhones is too much. Yeah. And then I do think 17E, if it comes out, would come out later. Although I do think it should come out at the same time, possibly. But...

Confusing. Wait, so with this price increase on everything, do you think we're going to have a similar... Because this increase from the SE3 was 2022. It came out at $429. I looked up Pixel 6a was $450 then. So it was cheaper than 6a. Now it is $100 more expensive than the Pixel A series. Yeah. Well, we'll wait to see what happens the next couple months when the Pixel 5a comes out. What if that's more expensive too? Bro, if Pixel...

9a right thank you yes i don't know they did increase the price on the pixel 9 as well remember because like pixel 8 7 and 8 were super this is like this feels like the opposite of was it pixel 6 yeah where like the 6 versus 6 pro the 6 was such a good deal it's a hard dollar delta yeah this feels like the cheap one is such a bad deal it's dumb not to do the extra 100 yeah yeah

100% damn max there because et news reported that it seems like apple is about to finalize their part suppliers for their hypothetical passport fold do you think they're making room for the 18 who et news it's like a entertainment television entertainment tonight it's a korean like electronics industry so you're saying they're they're you think their foldable might come out next year

The word on the street is that, yeah, 2026 is... Bro, if the 16E costs $600, what is the Fold going to cost? $2,000. It's going to be more expensive than every Fold we have now. And all the Folds we have now are $1,800. Yeah. Unless it's a flip. It could be $1,999.

Ellis specifically said Passport. It's going to be a Flip, right? Wait, Passport? Well, Flip is first, but this rumor he's talking about is from the Passport one that's rumored to come out after that. Got it. Can't confirm Mark Gurman co-signed this report. Okay, so final guess. Currently, iPhone 16 lineup is $799, $899, $999, $1199. Do we think iPhone 17...

Goes up by $100. $100. So that makes the base iPhone 17 $899. Yeah. Then $999. Then $1099 and $1299. Or they just say hell with it. And remember when the iPhone X was $999? It was like one of the first $1,000 phones. Everyone made a huge deal about it. Yep. Maybe they just moved the baseline up to $999.

And then this is $599. So then the gap is bigger. If you work at Apple, delete this part from your memory. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm trying not to give them ideas. I just think that's already on the radar. Years ago, we called the non-pro version like the new 10R. Like it was like the cheaper version. And now we're talking about potentially starting at $1,000. Yeah. That's wild. I'm going to go against the grain and say they don't raise the prices this year. That'd be crazy. And do you think the Air is the top price?

Or they're going to slot it in between somehow. The Air is the same price as the regular Pro. Isn't that what the Plus is right now? No. It's $100 cheaper than the Pro. Right now, it's $100 more to get the Plus. Okay, I'm going to say it's the same price as the smaller Pro. And replaces it. No, it doesn't replace it. $100. There's 17, 17 Slim, and...

17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, and the two in the middle are the same price. Oh, because it's thinner? Yeah. Interesting. That might be. Or $100 cheaper. I don't think they'll ever do two phones at the same price. I think they need to walk you up a ladder and they need to spread them out. Is walking you into Slim a ladder, though? Yes. Or is that like an off-the-side reach? I mean, Samsung...

i mean samsung did the slim and that's you know we don't know the prices of that yet either yeah that was just hanging on like a banana stand although it's true i have a question for you guys yeah do you think that the 17 air or slim or whatever it's called will also not have magsafe

Think that would be a really convenient way to put it right between the e and the baseline phone and have people walk their way up the ladder Oh, we couldn't fit it on this phone, but magsafe is like good enough for the thicker phone Yeah, and the e the 16 e not having magsafe is getting people primed for oh not every iPhone needs magsafe They're just gonna throw it in a case anyway. Yeah, what if they start putting magsafe in the case? So in this world

16E, $599. 17 Air, $799. 18, $899. Right? So the two cheaper ones don't have MagSafe and they walk you through the thin one up into the 18s. I hate that that would make sense. Or 17s, yeah. Anyway.

All this is speculation. We have no idea what's going on, but keep an eye on it. Go watch the iPhone 16 eReview if you haven't already. There was also an Amazon event this week. It was not live streamed, but there was plenty of coverage of it from journalists who did go to the event in New York where we got the new Alexa, the new Alexa Plus, AI-driven Alexa Plus. It's generative, it's talkative, it's got a personality, and it's allegedly going to be way better for $20 a month.

Or included with Prime. Or you have Prime and you get it for free. Well, included. Yeah, included. I see what you mean. I already have Prime, so it's free. Definitely not free, yeah. But yeah, well...

girl math it's free i don't i just get it uh yeah i think a big thing panos seemed to because we didn't there was no live stream like you said but he talked a lot about how like when you're talking to smart speakers whether it's alexa or google or anything we kind of like have all developed this language on how to get the correct results from it yeah and like i swear they said this last amazon event but i remember nothing from the last amazon event so um

So generative AI makes sense here because you can be more conversationally based and hopefully I can understand that better. So you don't have to talk like a caveman to your smart speakers. Yeah. They talked a lot about why it will be better. They didn't seem to talk a lot about how it's going to work to be better than that. So we'll see. What do you mean by that? Like the LLMs and all the... It just seemed to be a lot like this is... What did Pano say? This is every once in a while you get something...

you get a technology that genuinely will change the world. I guess it's generative AI. I guess it's generative. Yeah, never heard. Um,

Think the easiest way to go about this is how we listed out a bunch of examples They gave on what you could ask the new Alexis stuff sure and we'll just go through them all and say if we think they're cool Or not or if you would use them, okay cool asked to order groceries for you. No would never do that All right, send event invites to your friends through Apple invites Probably not through Amazon your Amazon invites what you can't use it because you don't have Prime. Oh

Send Amazon event invites? No, no, sorry. It just says event invites. It's not a real Amazon invite. No, the invites come in like that bubble wrap envelope thing. No, it comes in a six-foot box, and it's got a piece of paper in the box, and that's it. Yeah, I've never...

asked my smart assistant to do that I don't think I would no cool verify reference local businesses through Yelp and is able to book dinner reservations that I could do that I could see that I would need to confirm all I really care about is does it actually book it and is it gonna be like at the exact time that I asked for

Because other than that, what do I care? Like, am I picking a table? There's nothing really else to do. So I just, I feel like that's it. Indoor, outdoor. Yeah, something simple like that. I don't know. That sounds good, except are we all still worried that actual hosts are going to pick up the phone and hear a robot and be like, shut up and just hang the phone up? Well, it's through Yelp.

right no they're just using yelp as their reference to if you ask about a business wait calls for you and then i'll book the reservation afterwards which i'm assuming is wait it calls for you it doesn't just do it online online through an api i'm not i was gonna say because if you'd make more sense if they use like a resi sort of api that was what the google assistant demo did at io years ago and people freaked the hell out yeah calls that's just what i assumed because that's what i'm thinking

What if it did what Rabbit does and it teaches an LAM to use an app? That actually is, it does do that. Is that what Alexa's gonna do? So they have partners where it will click around on the partner websites to do things for you. Hmm.

It's agentic is what they call it. Yeah, this is the real future of these AI assistants is them doing things for you. Like actions. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I like that. Continue, sorry. No, no, don't be sorry. I wasn't sure what that was. I'm going to skip through. Oh, read study guides and test you on answers. Hell yeah. If you're in school, I think that sounds pretty cool. I like that.

unless it just lies to you about what you do. Yeah, right. Alexa told me the dinosaurs. Okay. Here's the one we've all heard before. Research trips and create your itinerary. Oh,

Oh, I don't think it says book for you. It doesn't say book for you. Okay, cool. I'll take that. Hopefully they learned a lesson from everybody else and realized nobody wants to just blindly book an entire vacation. Yeah, that makes it actually usable for me. Because I will never let an AI book it. Yeah, but it makes a sample itinerary that I can look at and then book accordingly. Yes. Or maybe adjust it. Okay. Again, I'm going off this of articles that were written probably...

while still sitting in their seats because they didn't live stream this event for whatever reason. Find songs with relatively vague descriptions.

I like that. We could have used that this morning. Google can kind of do that. You can hum songs to Google. You can, and it's really good. This morning, it could not find, although I doubt Alexa would have found the royalty-free song you were looking for. I wasn't that good at humming it. I was going to say, I walked in, and Marques and Andrew were just humming a song randomly, and I was like, what is happening? You guys know that song. You guys know that song.

You know that song. Cool feature about Spotify is you can just put in some lyrics and it'll pull the song for you. Oh, really? Yeah. And the search bar. Oh. Well, that's if you get the lyrics right. That's a good point. Yeah. Okay. You can...

Jump to a movie scene which I read they tried to show on stage and it failed multiple times. Hell Yeah, I like the idea of that if you're like referencing something you want to show it to someone But how will the clips on YouTube get a zillion views? This is Amazon library video. Yeah, it probably only be prime video This would work perfectly for the current season of love is blind, which is the most boring season that's ever happened So just like jump to a good part of it, but I digress

This is the thing I thought was the coolest. You can ask, has anyone walked the dog today? And it will reference your other smart cameras around your house to see if the dog has been taken out at any point. Specifically ring cameras, which Amazon owns. I'm assuming. Yes. I'm assuming everything in here is pretty Amazon specific. That's another good one if it doesn't hallucinate.

Because it's for sure going to see squirrels outside. It shows you the video, though. Okay. As long as it cites its sources. If it's like, oh, yeah, you walked the dog today. You're like, okay, great. And it just saw a squirrel walking outside and thought that was a dog. Then that would be bad. Is that easier than just being like, Andrew, did you walk the dog today? Yeah. That's also true.

I like how you can spend this much time to see if the dog has been walked when you could just take the dog out for the walk really quickly. And if it gets two walks, I'm sure it won't be that upset. No, you can't walk the dog twice. Obviously. That's a joke. You can walk your dog twice. It's fine. Encourage it. I'm glad. I think you added the rest of these. Yeah. Okay. So it uses both the Amazon Nova model and Anthropic models. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic, by the way. So that's probably why.

Yeah, and then we talked a little bit about it is agentic. So they have partners where if you ask it to do a thing, it will go to the website and click around the website for you and do those things. We'll have to see how well this works. We've seen demos of this from Anthropic before, and it was quite bad. Hmm.

ChatGBT also now has a thing that does this. It is also quite bad. So, you know. So Rabbit was onto something, but theirs was also quite bad when they first started, but now they're developing it. Theirs was exceptionally bad. Yeah. But, yeah, at least... But they were earliest. The other thing is that, like...

These are partners so it will the rabbits problem was that they were like hard coding the Destin the like click locations and then the website would just like slightly change the UI and then it stopped working they didn't have partners and they tried to do it with AI and

And make it smart. Sort of. Yeah. It's confusing. I feel like they've said a lot of different things, so I don't know if they would dispute that or not. But I think the easiest way to say is it didn't work at all. It didn't work at all. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So because they have these partners, maybe there's a higher chance of it working better. Also, it seems more likely that maybe they would use some sort of computer vision method to actually know what buttons are what.

I would argue that if you have partners that you're working directly with you don't have to teach them anything novel You just show them how to use your partners service Yeah, and you don't really need any but also I don't necessarily think these partners are gonna be like Every time we update our website at all We'll let you know and you can update your Alexa thing first like that seems like a lot of work. I

But we're partners. Yeah. Okay, other thing is there's now going to be Alexa.com is now going to exist as a place for long-form work, they say, which I believe is similar to the ChatGPT long context window where you can sort of tell it things about you and it'll remember those kind of things. So I think it's just going to kind of be their version of a portal where you can do everything. They're also releasing a new phone app.

that you'll be able to use similar to the chat GPT app or the Gemini app. So we can bring back the assistant battle. This was always true. Yeah. The assistant battle has been interesting in the past because we would do like Google assistant versus Siri and

And then we'd also throw in Alexa, but Alexa would be running on like an HTC device that they partnered with. And it's like it didn't have as much access to reach into the phone and do stuff because Siri plugs in to Apple's OS and Google Assistant plugs in to Android. But Alexa couldn't really do that. So it'll be interesting to see what that sort of comparison looks like again now. We have Gemini, we have Siri still, although that's still not updated. And we're still waiting to see...

Oh, yeah. What that ends up doing. The other thing was that the Deep Siri was supposed to be in iOS 18.4 and it just isn't. It's not better. Well, it's not out yet. Right. Yeah. Siri's still bad. It's still bad. The funny thing with Amazon is that Alexa was basically first. Alexa was like the first smart assistant on any of these devices. And then they just lagged so hard and took forever to release these generative models for themselves.

Which is kind of ironic when Anthropic has been their partner for a long time. I feel like they could have integrated that faster, but apparently they had problems. So I wonder what a ChatGPT versus Alexa versus Gemini versus Siri looks like when they're all at their best on phones. Yeah, that will be fun.

Yeah, a lot of people were thinking they were also going to announce new hardware at this event because traditionally at these Amazon events, they've just been like, and now the clock has Alexa in it. And now your razor has Alexa in it. Remember that one year there were like 200 things? Here's a toaster. Here's a microwave. Here's a wall clock. Here's a toothbrush. I picture you like walking into your kitchen and being like, Alexa, and like a whole chorus of just like, yes! Everything lights up.

It's pretty much like, it's like Toy Story when he closes the door and all of them just like come up. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm excited to test that. I think it'll be cool to compare them all against each other. Well, speaking of excited. You know, someone mentioned that you stopped doing the segues, so I'm glad you're doing it. Last week I was on point with the segues. I could have done better this week, but I'm excited for trivia. Yeah.

Trivia, dude. You said you wanted excitement. Well, boy, do I have something for you. Because this question's about Amazon. Woo. Thrilling. I tried. Who says woo? Woo. In 1999, Amazon acquired a San Francisco-based company called Alexa Internet Inc. What did Alexa Internet Inc. do? Like before they got acquired? And after. Oh.

In 1999. In 1999. 1999? 1999. 1999? 1999. 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 1999? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100? 100?

This year, people born in 25 will be 2,000. What? Feel old yet? You got to scroll so far. Sorry. Okay, you can take it to breakdown. Well, yeah, we'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Get that Angel Reef Special at McDonald's now. Let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and a drink. Sound good? Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. I'm participating in restaurants for a limited time. I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger. So I can get in more squats anywhere I can. One, two, three.

Three. Will that be cash or credit? Credit. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do you. Get yours at Samsung.com. Compatible with select apps requires Google Gemini account results may vary based on input check responses for accuracy.

Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now. It pays to discover. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen Report.

All right, welcome back. It is the last day of February as we're publishing this, and it's right before the last day of February as we're recording this, which means it's time to do our crown or clown February edition. Crown and clown. Crown and clown. Someone brought that up, and they were definitely right. Okay, crown and clown, where the objective is for each of us to bring a clown of the month, and we all have to agree on the worst thing of the month, and a crown of the month, where we all must agree on the best thing of the month.

Would anybody like to start? Whoever starts gets to pick if we do crown or clown first. Okay, I'll start. I'll start with the crown because I think this one's just fun. I'm throwing out Rivian's tan update. I think it's sick. As the crown? Out of left field, Marquesma. I don't think there's anything negative that anyone could possibly say about it, and therefore...

It is my crown. If a new color is the coolest thing that happened in February, we had a rough February. It's not just a new color. It's a new trim package. Did you see the seats? You saw the seats. They look like Tesla. Also a new color. They look sick. Did you see that? New dual tone color. I want you to see the picture of the seats. They look great. They look like Tesla bought.

How sick are those seats? New wheel colors, new wheels, new carpet trim, the whole thing. It's great. It's beautiful. It looks good. I'm not against you saying that it's a good thing. I just don't know if it's the best thing. Well, I'd love to hear what you guys have that's better than that. This is like, I'm going to count it as February, even though it may have started like in the last day of January or something. But do you remember that thing, the minimal phone? Yeah. Yeah.

That has started shipping to backers. Let's go. Minimal phone users have the phone in their hands. The E-Ink QWERTY keyboard Android 14 revolution is upon us. It will be televised and get ready world because we are going to be emailing like crazy. Did you buy one? No. No. Sick. I was going to say it's on the exact same level as the Rivian. I also didn't buy one. But

We think it's good. I'm going to buy one right now. Watch me. Oh, that would put it above the Caribbean. Okay, I have one as well that I am also not going to buy. $400? He's not buying it. Not that much. The Apple Find N5. I think that is the best thing that happened this past month. Because it's thin? It's so thin and it's so good.

Do you like to you are you using it? No Marquez use it? Yeah, I don't know if it even came out this month, but I kind of do want to kill I think it came out this month. Oh the clown part of that though. I this is exactly what I was not even launching in Europe Oh really? I thought there was a global version my crown from clown part of it was gonna be this stupid embargo it had oh yeah, which is Annoying and should have never happened. It's not even coming to Europe. Oh

If the indoor 30 article headline is the world's thinnest foldable forgot the global part of its global launch So yeah, it's only coming to like a couple countries, okay, that's unfortunate but the phone itself though is Pretty sick. Yes. I think that's fair my clown

Is the iPhone 16-y? Clown or crown? Do crown first. We're doing crown fall? I'm also trying to find a crown right now. Oh, oh, I have one. You guys won't care. Someone will care. Can I do it anyway? Someone will care. This is actually related. Okay, well, sort of. It's a meme. Okay, so in Dota 2, there was this big event that happened for like multiple months and it just ended in February, early February. It's called winter. It was called, it was called crown fall.

by the way. So it's my crown. It was one of the best events Dota 2 has ever had. What did it do? Yeah, what is it? Can you explain this? Okay, yeah. So generally in Dota 2 you play these matches and they're like 45 minutes long and it's 5v5 and it's blah blah blah. But it basically introduced like sort of like this like mini game aspect to the matches where you would have to play matches in order to get items to like make your way through like a roguelike map kind of thing and acquire other things.

And they did a really good job with it. It lasted a really long time. Ended in February. It was called Crown Fall. So that's my crown. You guys probably won't agree, but it was dope. Moving on. Oh man, I don't think I have a crown.

How about... I don't know what... Can I just say the Michael Reeves video where he scams a bunch of people on Facebook? Ooh, that was a good one. It was really good. That was really good. What was the video? He built a bunch of bots with generative AI and different personalities to lowball people on Facebook Marketplace because he wanted to eventually buy a motorcycle for cheaper. Okay. And...

It was pretty awesome. I think one of his biggest... He constantly gets blocked by Facebook, though, and has to buy a bunch of Facebook accounts and spends most of his money buying fake accounts instead. But it's very good. And for a Michael Reeves video, it's only like 15 minutes long. So that'll be my crown, even though everything else is tech-related and blows it out of the water. That's a good video. But the minimal phone gets it, though, right, boys? Right, we're agreeing on that. So our choices are Dota, Michael Reeves...

The Rivian color. The Minimal Phone and what was that? The Apple Find N5. This is a cursed lineup. It's either Minimal or... This is not our best. Are we bad at this? Nightmare blood rotation. Are we not good? February is a pretty chill month. It was short, you know? This was not a chill month. What about the Sigma? Well, yeah, that's what Clown will be for. The Sigma camera...

You guys didn't like it. I don't not like it. I just don't. You want to make it your crown? No, I don't want to make it my crown. No, crown fall. Wait, wait, no, I have it. The announcement of Waveform going to South by Southwest for their first live show. Well, if this is foreshadowing to our live event. No, that's whoops. Oh my God. They're all the same color. Okay, use that one.

Well, in March, that will definitely be our crown. It will be. Yeah. Let's go through our clown and we'll... Maybe come back for the crown if we think of something good that has happened. I think I'll start with the most obvious clown. Oh. The end of the Humane AI pin.

Literally the end because by the time this episode is out, all you will be able to do with that 800 piece is check your battery level. That's true. Epic. I think that's the pretty obvious one, but I'm open to more of them.

Yeah. Well, we're open to more of them because that's what the game is. It's true. It's not my choice. Do you guys see the Y Combinator tweet on Monday? I did not. Tell me about it. That was my that was my clown. I don't know when they deleted it, but by Tuesday it was it was taken down and it was a promotional video launch video. I don't really know much about the accelerator world for a company that they're invested in or they're accelerating called OptiFi.

The premise is that it uses computer vision to make this productivity dashboard for factory floors. Seems reasonable at the outset. And the video they tweeted were the company's two founders who are these college kids. They're literally still in college.

just berating someone for not being efficient enough. It's essentially like, one of the kids who's supposed to be the factory owner,

opens the dashboard and is like, workstation 17 is really not doing well. And so he just yells, he's like, number 17, what's going on? And then another kid who's supposed to be worker 17 is like, sorry, it's just been a rough day. And then the first kid is like, more like a rough month. You haven't hit your quote at all. Whoops. They posted that? It's just, you know, we like to joke about

Sort of a tone deafness coming out of Silicon Valley sometimes and and boy, you know Yeah that so that's I think that deserves 10 million clowns Clown emojis in the chat fellas. All right. I have a I have a clown It's gonna take me a bit of a rant to set this up. I'm ready. Oh, I'm saying but my rant is the

What do you call when there's an inside job and it's like the corruption. Nepotism? The corruption of Groundhog Day. Yo, what did they do to Phil? Pucks Tony Phil. I got a couple words for Phil the Groundhog. First of all. Wait, wait, wait. You got to explain what this is for our international listeners. People outside of America have no idea about this. Perfect. I'm glad you're tuning in.

Here in the United States, we have a holiday called Groundhog Day. Holiday is debatable. So every year since 1887, a Punxsutawney Phil groundhog comes out of the ground and predicts either an early spring or six more weeks of winter. First of all,

1887. That's a long time for one groundhog to be alive. It's clearly not the same groundhog. It's apparently a lineage of groundhogs that all have the same name that we trust for some reason. Talk about nepotism. We'll get to that. Second, this groundhog is almost never correct. Yeah. Ever.

I just want to point out that the inner circle, I'm reading from the Wikipedia for Punxsutawney Phil because he has one, in keeping with the suspension of disbelief, claims a 100% accuracy rate. What? Unbiased sources have him pegged around...

25 to 35 percent not great i don't know about you but if your job saw that you're doing a 25 to 35 success rate at your like a rough month

I will point out that this year in 2025, Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. No. It is currently 56 degrees outside. Yes. I don't believe you, Phil. You didn't see Sunday's forecast, did you? It's like 20 again. It's fine. It's fine. He's wrong, again. So Phil was wrong this year. I will also point out that he almost always predicts six more weeks of winter. Matter of fact, for a stretch of 30 straight years, he predicted six more weeks of winter.

All he's really doing is seeing his shadow. Of course he sees his shadow. He's a groundhog. For 1903 to 1933, every single year, he said, yeah, six more weeks of winter. I can only imagine how many of those times he was wrong. This winter, I'll just have you take a guess. Do you think our total snowfall was above or below normal?

How... What is normal? Yeah. In what range of time? That's exactly... This entire winter, the average amount of snowfall that we get in inches. Versus how many in the last few years? Yeah, because the last few years we didn't get, like, any. Right. So, the last few years were below normal. I would say this was above...

It was below normal, but it was above the last few years. Yeah. It was notably above the last few years, and it was 10 inches below normal. Yeah. It was definitely not a heavy snow winter. Correct. Yet here we are, six more weeks of winter from Phil, zero more snow. Phil.

You're just wrong all the time. So I'm just going to put all those things into this one pot. He predicts the same thing every single year. He's almost always wrong. This weird Nepo thing happening where he has his lineage picking up the slack, and then they're wrong every time too. And then their accuracy rate being somewhere under 40%. And this holiday that we keep celebrating, I just don't understand it. I don't think we should keep doing it anymore. I think we end Groundhog Day. But since we did it again this year, it is my clown.

You would hate the movie. Oh. The movie is great. I've seen the movie. It's fine. Marques, you should be a little bit careful putting that out in public because one of my favorite Groundhog's Day movies

Fun fact is that the organization that maintains Puxtani-Fillsboro and checks on him every year and does this whole thing is officially referred to as the Inner Circle. And they all wear top hats and tuxedos. I'm not scared of them. They seem like not people. And they're right down the street in Pennsylvania, bro. They could be here at any second. I've seen the pictures. Those top hats don't scare me, bro.

I think it's about time that inner circle wrapped it up. Phil, come on this podcast and defend yourself. You know where to find me, Phil.

Clown of the month. All right. That's a good one. You know, I think I'm with you. I was going to go with Andrew, but hearing that rant, you've convinced me. What do you think has a better success rate, Puxatani Phil or the Humane Pin? What is the Humane? What constitutes success? The correct answer. A successful query. I would say they're probably neck and neck. Yeah, like 30, 40%. Yeah, 30, 35% sounds about right. That's close.

Yeah, man. How quickly can Phil see his shadow? Because the humane pen took a notably long time to do anything. Sometimes Phil's dead. Sometimes? Yeah, sometimes they go, time to see what Phil thinks, and Phil's dead. Wait, so does he actually live in the ground? Otherwise he'd just be a regular hog. It's a groundhog.

Nice. Yeah. I thought that they would, like, wine and dine him for the rest of his life. Seems pretty cushy for someone who has a 35% yoga percentage. Okay, so what are we deciding? What's the crown? What's the clown? Wait, we only have two. Yeah, but those are two really good clowns. Yeah, I think so. So, clown of the month. I'm going Ponce Tony Phil. Over the humane pen? Yeah. They have to work at HP. What?

At least they still have jobs. In the printer division. Hey, hey, hey, hey. What do you think the P stands for? Printers. She's in printers. You made printers. Yeah.

That is a tough way to go out, but at least they're going out with some dignity. Phil has never had any. I really, but you know what? I give Marquez some points for being so vitriol about this Groundhog. I just feel a certain way. I've been waiting until February. I love the amount of vitriol you have for this Groundhog. I feel like that gains you some points. I think it's great.

The groundhog? Yeah, I do. I think... What on earth about this groundhog could possibly compel you to say such a thing? Because I just feel like it embodies who we are as a society so well. Which is also awful. Yeah. Not just useless and awful, but like...

As stupid as it literally could possibly be. Yeah. Yeah. Some might say the opposite of correct. Matter of fact, if he just flipped a coin, he'd be right more often. Mind you, his rules are if I see my shadow, then six more weeks of winter. Yeah. If I don't see my shadow, it's probably snowing.

In which case, early spring, Phil. Okay. What are we doing? Counterpoint. Philip. Shouldn't we be blaming the people who made the rules? Because whether or not he sees a shadow. I'm taking down the whole organization. He's not like, I will look at my shadow and communicate to the people. Oh, that's what they say he does.

In fact, they say he writes it on a scroll. In a language called Groundhogese. Yeah, it's a lie. Dude, the more you look into this, it's horrible. It's lit. It's awful. He lives in Gobbler's Knob. There's no good things about this groundhog. He lives in Gobbler's Knob? No. By the way, the groundhog is probably not even thinking or doing anything. It's just against his will being held up into the air and blamed for the incorrect. That's what I'm saying. And I think that by itself is awful too. Yeah. There's just nothing good.

nothing good here clown you might i'm gonna vote groundhog day thank you so we can get to trivia i will never turn my back on that groundhog i'm sorry so your hp humane pen uh no i'm gonna give it to yc oh but i'll go with the groundhog just to move us along it seems like groundhog wins by commission all right we will we will try and um workshop crowning clown a little better i think it's the n5 i like the n5 also yeah

What was the other options? The minimalist phone. Or Dota. Mmm. It was called Crown Fall. That was the name of the event. All right, so official crown, oppo N5, official clown, crown dog day. Sure. All right, there it is. Thank you, February. It's time for trivia.

Trivia, dude. So... David's shooting like 90%. Seriously. It's crazy. After taking away Marquez and Andrew's points from last week... Dude, his lead is... Quick update on the score. There's no way I blow this lead. Marquez with 5. Andrew with 3. David with 10. Oh, oh.

Double digit David. Unbelievable. Triple D. You're carrying the one in the two spot. Okay. Question number one. In 2014, invites were first given out through a promotion known as Smash the Past, in which 100 users would be selected to win the opportunity to purchase for $1 which smartphone? Can we just do the brand?

No. Okay. How about we do one point for brand, two points for phone, three points for any additional specifics? Just so we can try to even these scores. What are the additional specifics? It was a Monday. You tell me. You tell me, tech boy. It was 47 degrees Fahrenheit. Puxatony Phil just saw his shadow. Flip him and read. What do you got?

David, you go first. Oh, you're probably right. I put Nokia 3310. How do you smash that? Well, it smashes things when you drop it. How about one plus X? Half, right? One point. Marques? Yeah, it's a one plus one.

That's all the points. It was a one plus one. I remember this. They got so much backlash because people would smash their phone and then not win a new phone. Oh, I remember this. Andrew got one point. Marquez got two points. That's an insane event. Oh, that's the one plus X. Two points. Yeah, the one plus X was their little ceramic one. Oh, wait, no. What about my lead? Okay, yeah. I don't know why I thought that was the first. My diet doctor lead?

I tried to pick the first one, and for some reason I thought the X was the first one. No, the X was like their cheap model once they started not being as... I'm only going to call it Twitter. It says it was 2015, so it wasn't far off. It was in the beginning. Yeah, like...

They tried to do like a cheap one and an expensive one. So the OnePlus X was cheaper and the OnePlus, I guess, 2 or 3 or whatever was... OnePlus 3 was fire. Question number two. In 1999, Amazon acquired a San Francisco-based company called Alexa Internet Inc. What did Alexa Internet Inc. do? 1999 is nuts. Yeah. There wasn't even like TV. Nothing. Nothing.

there wasn't tv wow it took me a little bit i was thinking what did they do what did they do yeah i don't know oh all right who wants to go first

Three very different answers. I'm wrong. I'll go first. I said music streaming. That is not correct. I said scheduling. That is also not correct. I put voice recognition software. That is not correct. Unfortunately, the correct answer is browser. Who's the closest? Closest Delta. Is it a browser? Closest Delta. Is it a browser company? Internet Inc.? They did web traffic analysis. Oh! I was going to put that. I totally forgot about it. Okay, Alexa...

Oh, Alexa rankings. Yeah, rankings. Oh, that Alexa. Maybe. I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, yeah. There used to be Alexa rankings for every website. Yeah. You know, is it similar web?

I don't know. Yeah, Alexa ranking. When I worked at Android Authority, every month we would look at our Alexa ranking to see if we were bigger or smaller than our competitors. Damn, I forgot about that. That was crazy. So yeah, nothing to do with Alexa. I totally forgot about that. Wait, Amazon bought that company? Yeah, Amazon owns them. They own them the whole time. But they began a partnership with Google in 2002. That's weird.

And then they got shut down. No, I think they got shut down in 2002. I guess Amazon wasn't really competing with Google in any way in 2002. They got shut down in 2021? Yeah, I do remember that. At least they got shut down. Instead of being drawn out for 200 years, getting it wrong every year. Or being sold to HP. Seeing their shadow.

Anyway, that's been it. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Continue to leave your comments for suggestions for stuff that we should do live in person for when we do that episode in person at South by, but otherwise catch you guys next week. See you later. Wait for him was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Riven. We're part of the Fox media podcast network. I'm going to come up with my crown and clown on the fly. Support for this episode comes from Microsoft.

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All right, Sean, you can do this promo talking about all the great Vox Media podcasts that are going to be on stage live at South by Southwest this March. You just need a big idea to get people's attention, to help them, you know, keep them from hitting the skip button. I don't know. I'm going to throw it out to the group chat. Kara?

Do you have any ideas? In these challenging times, we're a group of mighty hosts who have banded together to fight disinformation by speaking truth to power, like the Avengers, but with more spandex. What do you think, Scott? I'm more of an X-Man fan myself. Call me Professor... Can I read minds? I can't really read minds, but I can empathize with anyone having a midlife crisis, which is essentially any tech leader, so...

Minds are important, Scott, but we're more than that. I think that you can't really separate minds from feelings. And we need to talk about our emotions and explore the layers of our relationships with our partners, coworkers, our families, neighbors, and our adjacent communities. I just want to add a touch more. From sports and culture to tech and politics, Vox Media has an all-star lineup of podcasts that's great in your feeds, but even better live.

That's it. All-stars. Get your game on. Go play. Come see a bunch of Vox Media All-stars and also me at South by Southwest on the Vox Media podcast stage presented by Smartsheet and Intuit. March 8th through 10th in Austin, Texas. Go to voxmedia.com slash SXSW. You'll never know if you don't go. You'll never shine if you don't glow.