iPads Get More Expensive and Austin Evans Guesses Smartphones!
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What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Way Performed Podcast. We're your hosts, Andrew. And I'm David. Marques is out this week, so you guys are stuck with me, baby. Let's go. Let's do this. Today's episode, we have new iPads and some of their...

quote accessories we have Google messages update that I think you and I are both pretty excited about and then we're going to wrap it all up we pre-recorded a fun game with Marquez and Austin Evans and they're going to see who knows phones better by touch oh but first I

I have a piece of news and then a giant rant that you're going to have to sit here and listen to me. Okay. Okay. So did you see the Nothing Ear Ones are going to have a price increase? 50%. 50%, baby. That's a lot. Yeah. So they're going from... Carl tweeted this himself, but they're going from $99 to $149. Yeah, that's a lot. That is a huge, huge increase. But the last two weeks, I keep coming back to the Nothing Ear Ones because...

They fit in my ears really, really well. And I think the AirPods Pro would also fit in my ears well, but I use Android. Yeah. I also like how they look. Yeah. I think they look pretty nice. Yeah, they look good. I've switched between a bunch of them, though, because people send us earbuds all the time and I just keep coming back to them. But so the last two weeks, I've had the worst experience ever with them. And I just want to kind of talk about it because I find it hilarious that

After another day of going to the gym and not being able to listen to music, I see that these earbuds are now 50% more expensive. And I think that's crazy. So I'll try and keep this short because I ramble a lot on this show and I don't want to. So stop me if I go too far. So I come back to them last week. I grab a pair that I hadn't used in a few months, plug them in overnight because I'm going to go to the gym the next morning before work.

I get to my desk the next morning, grab the case. They won't connect because the case is at 100%, the right earbud is at 100%, and the left earbud is at 10%. And I'm just like, huh, that's weird, you know?

Maybe I didn't. I started second guessing myself. Maybe I didn't plug it in. So I plug it in for the day or something. Possibly. It just feels strange that like the cases, when you see the case at 100% and an earbud at 10%, that feels weird. Like the case is supposed to be charging. It's not just supposed to hold 100% battery for no reason. So I plug it in next morning, go back, same issue, won't connect. Weird. I went and grabbed another pair that we have at the office and

plugged in it at night or plugged it in that day and then tried it a few hours later and had the opposite problem. Case 100%, left ear 100%, right ear 10%. What? Couldn't connect it. What? Find that weird. So because we're lucky enough to have a bunch of these at work, I decided to grab the left ear out of one case, the right ear out of the other case and put them in a case together. And now at this point I have two at 100% and a case at 100%. Weirdly enough, that worked. Okay. I got connected. Strange.

I got connected, tested and everything, go to the gym the next morning with that set, left ears at 40%, cases at 100%, right ears at 100%. Still enough to connect. I got to listen to some music that day, but throughout the workout, I would say it probably disconnected or just paused.

like five different times without touching it without pressing my media controls without anything and then the next day left here ten percent case a hundred percent right here hundred percent you know what's funny is like the the airpods pro won't even let you swap the airpods with a different case they chime at you and they're like this is the wrong this is the wrong one case

So, yeah, that sounds a lot like, do you remember the original Pixel Buds? They used this. The ones with the wires? No, sorry. Not the original Pixel Buds. The Pixel Buds 2. The original Pixel Buds 2. Okay. They had this dynamic battery switching thing where one would be the main Bluetooth connection and the other would be connected from that.

And theoretically, they were supposed to switch which was the primary and which was the secondary dynamically in order to drain battery evenly. Okay. Because draining, getting a Bluetooth connection from your phone and then to the other earbud used a different amount of power. And so often, but they had this bug where it would not work very well. Like the dynamic, like switching would not work. So you would get one earbud that was like 10% battery and it would be like 80% battery. Okay.

And it's like if they drain at the same time, at least you can charge them together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is even weirder because you charge them overnight. Yeah, this is very strange. And I don't know if those use the same things. I also just like, in general, the sound quality in these, they're fine. I don't care that much. I mostly like them because they fit in my ear. The other problem I've had with these is just the connection. It seems...

I've put them on the desk between Marquez and I, and throughout the day, Marquez and I will just get random pop-ups that are like, do you want to connect your nothing year ones? And it'll go back and forth through us the whole day. And then I'll also have it connected sometimes. I will walk hundreds of feet away from it on the other side. I was in the kitchen the other day, and I had something in the microwave, and when I tried to pull up a video on my phone, it said it was playing in the year one across the room.

While I didn't even think they were connected. Like, I couldn't get them connected in the gym, but then it was connected. Right. I don't know. I'm just... It's funny that it happened on both, like that same 10%, 100% thing happened on both. That makes me think that it's a firmware thing. I just... So before everyone jumps on me for that, I did upgrade firmware and...

all in the app and everything on both of them wow and nothing it was actually a pain to upgrade well i spent a whole morning in the gym upgrading firmware between my sets one day so um and then just wrap all of this up nothing's also releasing a new pair of earbuds yeah the ears stick they've actually been teasing this for a while in a very strange way with nothing like hyper fashion hyper hype thing where they

They have all these models with these fishnet outfits on with the ear stick. It's so weird. It's like the stick is inside of their fishnet, bulging out of the fishnet. It's really weird.

Yeah. They're going to be cheaper, I assume, because they look like... That's what I think. When we were talking about them at the studio, the main difference you can see now that the newer... Because before they were just teasing the stick, which now we found out is the case. I kind of thought it was going to be this like...

At first, I thought it was going to be this weird. Remember the old Bluetooth stick earbuds? I thought they were going to look like that, and I was very confused. That would be funny. For phone calls, though. But it looks like the stick is the case, and they showed the buds themselves, and it just looks similar, but without the silicone tip. I think they look like AirPods 3. Yeah, they look like the...

Because AirPods Pro at least have the small tip on the front, and then they sort of bulb out. But the 3s are just kind of hard plastic. And nothing always talked about the Ear 1s being the AirPod Pro equivalent. So I think it seems like these are going to be the AirPod equivalent, the lower tier. Quote-unquote lower tier, and they're probably just going to make them the same price as the AirPod. Right? That's exactly what I was thinking. It's just like, oh, we bump these up.

You think they're going to be $99, right? I think they're going to be $99. It's going to be so funny. It's like, we have to do this and then we're also releasing a cheaper pair that's not going to be the same price as the old ones. I think Carl said that the price of materials for the ear ones ended up costing more than they were selling them for, which...

Sure, that's believable considering the economy and inflation right now. I don't really know. If you're putting a new product out, does it really cost that much less? Especially when the ear ones didn't sound that great in the first place. Their sound was extremely mediocre. I liked the fit a lot, like you said. But the sound was just...

No, I agree. I'm not the best sound quality person in the world. And to me, like I'll take fit over sound quality. And that's why I kept trying to go back to what I consider a nightmare of an experience lately. But yeah, and to me, these will just be terrible because the regular AirPods have never fit.

in my ears. I've always... Whenever somebody asks me, should I buy AirPods? I was like, you should go to a store and try them. Or you should just get their pros with the silicone tips off and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they go on sale all the time, too. Exactly. Yeah. I still...

Yeah, the AirPods sound really good. I've been using the Bose QuietComfort 2 earbuds. Like, I see these real quick. I don't think I've actually seen these. The case is kind of big. That's a big old case. They don't have wireless charging. No, but they have kind of like a wing tip. But I love the seal. It's not really a wing tip. It's like it just seals in your ear really well. It's more grip. Any more rubber, I'll take. And the active noise cancellation is by far the best I've ever used in any in any earbud. OK.

And they sound pretty good and they have a good app. So like, yeah, I've been enjoying them. I do wish that, yeah, I don't know. They kind of, they have this like old style look, like wireless Bluetooth headset look. Whatever. But it's fine. I like them a lot, but I think they're really expensive. I think they're like, Oh, are they? I think they're like 350 or something, 300 or 350. Oh my goodness.

But they are very good, and the ANC is insane. That's awesome. The only thing is I've been looking for something to run with recently. And because, like you said, fit is more important, I was using the OnePlus Buds Pro for a very long time. Okay, yeah, yeah. I literally used them until the sweat from my running broke them. They now just screech when I put them in.

Amp you up for your run. Yeah. So I bought some BeastFit Pro because those work like the same with Android and iOS and they're supposed to be really good. They have great reviews. But the wingtips hurt my ears so badly. So I realized that the OnePlus Buds Pro slash AirPods Pro slash Nothing Ear 1 style is

is what I need to use. Like, I can't use things that have wingtips because they hurt my ears. I'm with you 100% on that. I know people like to make fun of the AirPods as looking like an electric toothbrush head hanging out of your ear, but there's something about that stalk hanging down in the crevice of your ear that just feels secure and...

My main issue with a lot of earbuds is they stick so far out horizontally that when you're running, every step feels like it's wiggling a little more just because the center of gravity is further out of your ear. And it just feels closer and closer to falling out. And then it's like, oh, now my run involves me losing...

for a earbud on the ground. Yeah, I mean, even with the OnePlus Buds Pro, I would constantly have to like push them a little bit further into my ear, but it still is better than the Beats Fit Pro are pressing against the cartilage of my ear for so long. It hurts a lot because I run for like over an hour at a time and I can't do that. Can't say I do that. Well,

You at least like work out for an hour, right? Sometimes it's a little easier for that. Yeah. So anyway, I'm currently looking for some good running earphones because I don't want to use these to run because I don't want to break them. I will be continuing to look. We'll take considering buying AirPods pros to use in my pixel. Adam's trying that right now and it doesn't sound like it's going great. It does actually work now. Oh yeah. I fixed it. So someone tweeted at me and you have to go into developer options and

and turn certain things on and off. And then they work all of a sudden. That's annoying. Yeah, it's really weird. Do they sound just as good? Oh, yeah. They still sound fine. Okay. Because it's still AAC, which is like...

whatever yeah it's not like aptx or anything like that yeah the airpods don't support i hate wearing airpods pro just because it's the absolute most common earbuds that i see around the city but if they sound good they're so good if they're good for running then i might just get them to run weren't your oneplus buds pro white sticks oh they were black okay i had the black

ones all right i was gonna say everyone thought you were wearing them anyway i know i looked into um color wear but if you want to get new airspods pro on color wear they're like 450 dollars they charge so much to do it anyway i don't want to stick on this too long no that's fine i like that also if anyone is looking for those tips from adam for using airpods pro and enjoyed if you're a psychopath like him tweet at him i have a microsoft laptop now

An iPad mini and a Pixel phone. I'm living in all ecosystems. We live in purgatory for the viewers. For viewers like you. Okay. Let's talk about the new iPads. Not a ton to talk about, but they did get released. First of all, what do you think of how they got released? Marques had a briefing in the city, and then all of a sudden... His briefing was actually after they got publicly released. Yeah, we all knew about them before he did. I...

I think it sort of makes sense to do stuff like this. I remember in, it was either 2018 or 2019, I'm like sitting in this hostel in Rome and day by day Apple just drops a bunch of press releases. Oh yeah. And I think it was like every day for three days or something like that. It was either that or three at once, but I think it was every day for three days, which was kind of cool.

It was kind of nice being able to just have press releases for products you could buy right away instead of having to do this whole build-up thing. And I think for smaller updates like this, it makes a lot of sense. So we got two new iPads yesterday at the time of recording on Tuesday. The rumors seem to be true that it was a press release, but it was still very out of the blue.

And the iPads are... They're basically upgrading the baseline iPad. Yeah. Which used to be $329 and is now $449. Yes. And then we also got a new iPad Pro. So do you want me to go over the baseline? Yeah, can you go over all the specs? And then I think there's like...

two fun things we want to rant about a little bit. Okay. So a lot of people are sort of praising this new baseline iPad. Personally, I feel like it's sort of a downgrade in a lot of ways. I think the praise is just that it's finally getting the like updated design. It's like, cool. The lower tier looks more up to date. So first I'll just kind of go over the specs and then I just want to point out a couple of things. Yeah. Uh,

It's got the design change, so it looks just like the iPad Air now, right? So it's got, they say like bezel-less design. Full screen. All screen, yeah. I think Nilay was like tweeting like, I don't think, words don't have meanings anymore. Yeah, 10.9 inch LCD. It's got the A14 Bionic, so it's not getting the M chip. That's still, I guess, reserved for the iPad Air and the iPad Pros. Mm-hmm.

There are new colors. So silver, blue. There's like this electric Pikachu yellow. It looks just like Pikachu. I love it. I love it too. And a pink, which is interesting. The baseline iPads always used to sort of be like the education iPad. So I think that's sort of why they're going that route. Now the front facing camera is landscape. So instead of being at the top of the iPad, it's now in the center. And I think that they probably just realized that people are using them as cutouts.

computers shocker a lot more than they were before because there's so many apps and they have touch support and USB-C and which thank God because yeah I think all their iPads are USB-C now there's no iPad left and also they introduced a new $250 magic keyboard like folio case okay which sort of makes it look like

a Surface, a Microsoft Surface, because it's got the back that slaps on the back. And then it's got, that has a kickstand. And then you can also magnetically attach this keyboard whenever you want to use the keyboard portion. Okay. It's like a separate part. So it's a two-piece part. It's still...

sitting like on the ground though it's not like that floating levitating okay okay it's not floating it's just it actually is like extremely similar to a surface okay uh it also has a 14 key function row oh by the way holy cow all the function keys so it's like we say this every single time they release new ipads but every time it's like this is five percent more a laptop five percent more a laptop

And it's just funny that they did this all to the baseline iPad. But again, they raised the price to $449. Now, favorite part of this announcement that you brought up, your favorite part. I think everyone's favorite part. Everyone's favorite part is that it does not support the Apple Pencil 2.

It only supports the Apple Pencil 1, which is absolutely an artificial limitation. But in order to charge the Apple Pencil 1, which charges via lightning, and prior you would plug in the Apple Pencil to the bottom of the iPad to make that giant lollipop. Now, because there's no lightning port on the iPad, they include an adapter, which you can also buy for $9. But you have to plug that into USB-C, so it's...

It's male USB-C. Yeah, so the adapter's double female. Double female. Yeah. What? So, yeah, when the adapter first came out, you guys were like looking at it and I walked over to Ellis' computer and I was just like,

but I don't get it. Yeah. Why is it double female? Cause I'm just assuming, Oh, if it's Apple pencil gen one, it's going to be that lollipop thing. Like you said, which would then be, it'd be lightning in male USCC to female lightning. So you could plug in. Yup. And then it would just have like, you know, a little extra space. Yeah. It'd be a bigger lollipop. Yeah. So this instead is like a, if we're comparing something, it's like a balloon now. Cause you have a string attached from the end of it with a pencil at the end. Yeah. Um,

Which just seems insane to me. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And something that someone pointed out to me on Twitter is that this iPad is just the iPad Air 4th generation with like a couple of tweaks. It's the like exact same body design. Yep. Same display, both using A14 Bionic.

Both USB-C. The only difference is that it has the landscape camera, which is a higher resolution 12 megapixel with center stage versus the 7 megapixel camera on the iPad Air. Okay.

And that's like it. That's it. And then the iPad Air actually had like an anti-reflective coating. Well, it had second-gen Apple Pencil support, too. Oh, yeah, that. Second-gen Apple Pencil support. So, yeah, this is 100% an artificial imitation. They don't want to make it too similar to the iPad Air.

Because then people are just like, I don't really care about the M chip. I'll just get the cheapest one. It's like the same. They're just trying to keep it away in certain ways. And I guess the lightning Apple Pencil is the way they do it. The dongle empire needs to prevail. Funny enough, Ellis brought this up to us to the point where I honestly didn't believe him. But he was like, they had a similar adapter for the old one because...

In the old one, you also could connect a wire. Or I think actually, though... So we, funny enough, had an Apple Pencil first gen that was unopened here. We opened it, and it's in there. It's in the pamphlets inside of the first gen Apple Pencil. But it's actually...

double lightning female so i think actually you wouldn't be able to attach it to your ipad because that would be lightning to see right yeah so this would be you actually plug your pencil into the wall i guess but because of that nobody like would really wanted to do that and even the picture on the pencil case which we looked at shows like it plugged into the side of the ipad plug into the wall sounds like a tension issue like it's not it sounds like that

Oh, I wasn't even... Funny, I didn't even think of still using it. So...

Yeah, I just thought of like, oh, you're plugging it in to the wall, but now you have to have the charger. You can't just charge it on your iPad if you're on like the train or something. You know, what's funny, though, is like when dongles first started, everyone that had to use the dongle, it was a their most expensive products. Right. Because when the MacBook first came out with like the MacBook Pro that had the four USB-C ports and you just had to use dongles to be able to do anything, you

It was always like the most expensive stuff. But now the dongles are for the cheaper stuff. No, for the cheaper stuff now, because now the MacBook Pros have ports and the cheaper MacBooks don't. And then the cheaper iPad you have to use a dongle with. And then the more expensive iPads that have Apple Pencil 2 support, you don't.

So it's crazy. It's like they're now making the people that want to buy the cheap stuff, they're making their lives harder. Not necessarily spend more, but they just are making them have to jump through more hoops to be able to use their product effectively. And yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, and even like with that, like...

I get, you know, let's just say, sure, for some reason, there is a real reason why it has to use Gen 1 pencil and you have to include some kind of adapter. Why not just make it similar to like the iPhone headphone jack adapter, which was just like lightning with a one inch cable and a wire there and then just plug the pencil into that. And then you have it charging there. You don't have this like you don't need a three foot cable to charge your Apple pencil. That's insane.

It seems like they just intentionally made this much more difficult for everybody. It's so funny. And then they also released a new iPad Pro. I forgot. I literally forgot about that because I was so heated about that stupid dongle. It's a few just like very simple changes. M2 instead of M1.

They've gotten improved Apple Pencil support now with something called Apple Pencil Hover, which is basically the same thing that Wacom tablets have had for a long time now where you don't actually have to be touching the surface in order to see where the pencil is going to be. And this is very useful for when you want to do things like changing the size of your tip or the size of your brush because prior, if you tried, you know, if you did the double tap on the pencil to make your brush bigger. Yeah.

You weren't really sure that it actually made it bigger unless you touched it. Yeah, you weren't seeing the like active feedback on the screen of like what was actually happening. Yeah. So that's useful. It supports Wi-Fi 6E, which is actually amazing because the MacBook Pros don't even support that right now. And that can do like two gigabit Wi-Fi, which is awesome. Yeah. I mean, if you can push it. And then also they do ProRes video. Yeah.

Which I made some jokes on Twitter that we should shoot autofocus with. I hope one day we see Marques shooting videos or photos with an iPad. Boomer mode engaged. Boomer mode engaged. Welcome, Marques. Yeah, so it was a minor upgrade for the iPad Pro, but a lot of things that were super confusing were that a lot of the improvements that came to the cheapest iPad were

would have been nice on the Pro. Like that Folio case, I think a lot of people would have preferred having a full 14 key function row. I think a lot of people would have wanted, you know, being able to have that Surface style case because the iPad Pro doesn't support that.

Um, it's just really weird. It's just really weird. And it feels kind of a bummer that the cheapest iPad is now $449. I, yeah. Did they mention anything? I know it was a short press release, but did they usually have like, um, like, uh, education prices for things? Did they mention anything about that? Either way, I'm sure it would go up. I didn't hear anything about it, so I don't know, but either way, it's still up. And yeah, this is like,

For so long, if somebody was asking me what tablet they should get for their kids because their kids play a couple games, their iPad kids, let's be real. I still suggested the iPad because I just thought it would last longer. Yeah. Because at 329, it's pretty hard to beat. Mm-hmm. But...

$120 more expensive now, I don't know, get three really cheap Android tablets that'll just break over time and maybe they can watch Netflix on that. It sort of feels like they just came to the conclusion that they have no competition or very little competition. I don't think, I mean, Samsung's tablets are still very expensive. They don't have a lot of super affordable ones and there are some affordable Android tablets out there,

But the app ecosystem, just like everything about them is kind of, if you want to buy a tablet, most people buy iPads. And so besides the education sector, I don't think Apple really feels like they need to have a cheap one anymore. But we did get

DaVinci Resolve on iPad. I did see that. Was there an official announcement or was it more just like, hey, we're going to show it off a bunch of times? They showed it off a bunch of times in the video and then I think that if you go to the website, it shows it and everything. Cool. That's awesome. Which is great because a lot of people have been waiting for the day where they could do literally all of their work on the iPad and now people that use DaVinci, it works on Windows, Mac, and iOS now.

It's the most flexible video editing program there is. So, and it's a great, it's a great video editor. Yeah. So I think a lot of people are going to be pretty happy about that.

I'll be interested to see what people can create just on an iPad. I think we should do something on a studio channel or something like that. Yeah. But I think that these reviews are going to be kind of funny. If there even are reviews, I don't think we'll see a massive wave of them because some of these are pretty low-key. Yeah. And again, this baseline iPad is basically just the fourth-gen iPad Air, but with a couple tweaks. So who knows? Cool. With that, you want to take it to trivia? Hell yeah.

All right, trivia time. So the score, Marquez, who's not here, has eight. Andrew has eight and David has seven. So is this it where David catches up? Is this the one? Maybe. All right. So first question, a modulator demodulator is more commonly known as what? Sometimes I wonder how I have eight points. I don't know.

Did Ellis write this? No, this was mine. Ellis has a better one coming up next. Well, we'll go to the break and I'll bash my head against the wall trying to think of this. Perfect.

Support for Waveform comes from AT&T. What does it feel like to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with AT&T next up anytime? It's like when you first pick up those tongs and you know you're the one running the grill. It's indescribable. It's like something you've never felt before. All the mouthwatering anticipation of new possibilities, whether that's making the perfect cheeseburger or treating your family to a grilled baked potato, which you know will forever change the way they look at potatoes.

With AT&T NextUp Anytime, you can feel this way again and again. Learn how to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on them and the latest iPhone every year with AT&T NextUp Anytime. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Apple Intelligence coming fall 2024 with Siri and device language set to US English. Some features and languages will be coming over the next year. Zero dollar offer may not be available on future iPhones. NextUp Anytime features may be discontinued at any time. Subject to change, additional fees, terms and restrictions apply. See att.com slash iPhone for details.

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All right, we're back. So there were some really interesting Google messages updates that got announced this week. I had a briefing at the very beginning of the week to go over all of them. And it seems like they're going to make Google messages quite a bit better. Yeah, you were kind of mentioned this the other day. I haven't heard it yet. So I would love to hear about it as soon as possible.

someone who has to still sit inside of Google Messages all the time. And yeah, what happened? Yeah, so there were a lot of different changes. And my overarching sort of takeaway from all of this is that, one, they're still really trying to make RCS happen, which is good.

And two, for the people that don't have access to RCS for various reasons, they are just trying to make SMS conversations better as well. Okay. With a lot of really interesting kind of like workarounds and hacks. And that's nice because then Apple has no say over what Google does. True. So Google is sort of able to do this stuff without Apple just like making your life terrible if you don't have an iPhone. Right.

So this first thing is actually very deep and near to my heart. I was going to say, okay, so you told me you were like, I kind of want to talk about this on the podcast. I was like, yes, I want this to happen because there are times we'll be in the office and you'll just be like...

Something about Google Messages and iMessage. And then I'll just see you turn your head, put your headphones on and just like focus in on your computer. I'm like, oh man, David's going off about something right now. Yeah, I feel like every couple of months I just have a tweet storm about how much I... It's specifically about emojis and emoji reactions. Exactly, yep.

So this first update has to do with emoji reactions. And just to give a little bit of context, prior, way back in the day, which was only a few months ago, you had that terrible situation where if you were in an SMS thread with iPhone users and Android users,

iPhone users were able to send a tap back or react to any message in the thread, but then everyone would get this separate message that said, this person likes this message, or this person loved this message, or emphasized. And that was annoying for everyone, right? And I think the reason was, I mean, Apple needed to be able to send messages

the context of what you were doing because you can't not send that reaction in some form because then there's like literal information loss in the conversation.

But it was also useful for Apple because it made it so that when you would do that, it would annoy everyone and they would just bully everyone into getting an iPhone so that everyone could use iMessage and see stuff natively, right? Yeah. So Google built out RCS and they've been trying to get Apple on it with their whole get the message campaign, which is not working very well. It will probably not work. But Google just decided that they were going to hard code

Emoji reactions into Android phones. Okay so now if you were in an SMS conversation with an iOS user and they reacted to a message Instead of sending you the message that would say like this person loved this message It would intercept that message and instead of sending the message it would stamp that emoji Yep on the message. So all of a sudden how the turns have tabled right the

Android users now had a better experience because they didn't have to see that whole separate message. Yep. Right? Okay. That was step one. Then, when iOS 16...

there was this whole thing that happened where on Apple's website, they ended up sort of like taking credit for that change that Google made. And I personally think that they didn't do that on purpose. I think that this was a communication error because there was an actual change in iOS 16 where it would still send the message that said, this person loved this message. But instead of saying this person loved this message, it would say like, David, heart emoji,

Quote they just sort of changed the way that it looked and used the emoji instead of like writing out the okay motion right okay, and then Google recently just this week. This is the change that they made now in an SMS thread you can emoji react and

to SMS messages. So now Android users actually have the best experience even in SMS threads because not only when an iOS user reacts to your message do you just see the emoji, you can also emoji at iOS users

And now iOS users will get a separate message that said, Oh, they get the message now. Yeah, they get the message now. So Google literally turned the tables on this whole situation. That's fantastic. So now the only thing that Apple could do is now hard code in Google's emoji reactions. And then basically everyone just has emoji reactions, which is amazing. Yeah.

You might be giving Apple too much credit. Do you think they'd go that way? Well, so now the only thing that they are doing is pissing off their own users. I agree with you. I don't want this to sound like I don't agree with you. Do you honestly think that's what Apple will wind up doing? Or is there going to be like, okay, I'm imagining a world and I don't think this is that unlikely.

I am the iMessage user who's always been doing it, who always likes to make fun of green bubbles. By the way, if you are that person, shut up. It's so stupid. If you're arguing over bubble color, no one cares. Next time, at me. Yeah, at me. I get why it's frustrating. Yeah. Sure. But it's still dumb. It's still dumb. So I see a world where people in iMessage are now going to be like, you use Android every

And you reacting to my things are screwing up my messages and annoying me. This is your fault. Yeah, that's the only... So I see two worlds here. Either Apple says, okay, we just need to make the experience better for our users, or they just stick with their guns and they say, hmm...

Now we can make our users angry at Android users. Yeah. So it depends on whether or not they want to weaponize them. Yeah. And I think we both agree on what they should do. Yeah. But I also don't know if I would have like betting faith on if that were to happen. So I'll be interested to see. I really like that Google's doing something like this because it makes it feel less like

let's put a bunch of ads out and try and make everyone tell Apple they're wrong. Rather, it's like, let's take action. Let's throw this in their face, see how they feel about it, and see how they respond to it. Yeah, so for the listeners, I apologize if that was extremely confusing. I'm sure everyone had their imaginary red yarn out going from their heads. But I think we've explained the process a couple times over on the podcast, so hopefully you should get to that point. But essentially...

TLDR, correct me if I'm wrong, Android users can basically react to messages. And at this point, iMessage users are probably getting the short end of the stick because they're getting the text quote unquote message back to them that it's a react. Right. So now Android users can react to messages and receive reactions even over SMS.

But Apple users can only send reactions. But when they receive them, they're in text form. My family group chat, I'm just going to react to everyone because 30% of my family group chat is people reacting and text messages coming in on it. I cannot wait to raise hell back at them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm coming for you guys. Yeah. So that was only the first change that they did in this briefing. That was just the longest one because to me, it's the most important one. The most passionate. The most passionate that I'm about.

Second announcement, they're adding an inline YouTube player. Okay. Which is interesting. It's not like SharePlay where when you hit the play button, it's playing it for both of you at the same time. Okay. And that's, again, because it's like an SMS MMS feature. Like, it doesn't require an internet connection. Okay. So that's, I guess, better. It's like within the app itself, so it's not like it just opens YouTube. It sort of opens YouTube within messages. Okay.

And you can move it around, but the idea is that you can watch a video and be texting each other while you're watching the video. It's funny because it sounds almost like they're...

You know how they've tried to do multitasking for so long where it's like set up two separate apps on like the same screen, but I don't know a single person who really uses that much. I'm sure they are out there, but this feels like, all right, we're going to find the most common situations where we wanted people to do this. Now let's just bake it into the app. And I think that's a way, way better idea. Yeah. And Google actually told me that YouTube links are the most common link sent over text. I'm not surprised by that at all. Yeah. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah.

And so, like I said earlier, that was sort of the stuff that they're just trying to make the general texting experience better, even over SMS and MMS. But they're also trying to create feature parity with iMessage on RCS. So they have a bunch of RCS updates. So now you can reply to messages over RCS. So you can, like, you know, swipe right on it and reply to a specific message. I didn't even realize they didn't have that before. I didn't realize that. So, like...

Sorry, I'm trying to picture this. So similar to like in a Slack thread where rather than continuing the conversation in the group chat, you're almost like replying to a specific one line. It's still going in the chat. Okay. It shows what you're replying to. Okay. So that's really good for group conversations, for example. Yes, for sure. Multiple people are talking and you didn't reply in time. You can just reply to a specific message. So it doesn't look like you're responding to something totally different and off subject. Totally. And iMessage has had that forever. All right.

I did not know that. Yeah. Today I learned. Yeah. So they're just trying to they're really trying to bring RCS up to feature parity. That is super useful. They are adding voice transcription to the Pixel 6, 6 Pro, 6A and the Galaxy Fold 4 and Flip 4. And if you don't know what voice transcription is, it's basically at the Pixel 7 launch event.

They showed off this feature where in Google Messages, if someone sends a voice note, the other person can just read what they said instead of listening to it. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, and this was funny because since it was shown off at the Pixel event alongside all of these other features that were quote-unquote Tensor exclusive, I think a lot of people assumed that it was a Tensor-only feature. But it's not because it's coming to Pixel 6, 6 Pro, 6A, 6S.

and the galaxy fold for and flip for uh so i asked them like do you guys have processing requirements for this and they basically just said they're working with oems on a like model by model basis okay they just want to make sure that it's running a chipset that's fast enough to do that parsing obviously that's accelerated on tensor but you know the snapdragon 8 gen 1 is going to be able to do it fine yeah real quick about i'm trying to like at

At first when you say like voice memo transcription or not voice memo, but like voice sending a voice message transcription. First, I'm like, that's really awesome. It reminds me of like voicemail transcription pretty much, right? Like, I still think that's one of the best inventions on a smartphone ever because I hate listening to voicemails. But then I'm also like,

The majority of people, how many people still send voice memos rather than just voice to text, which is, I guess, essentially just doing this reverse later. Yeah. But like most times, I guess I could see it in a world where, as an example, I've had older people in family try and send voice to text and.

where you just get a whole lot of extra at the end because they don't know how to end it correctly. So maybe a voice memo is easier for them to send and then I can get it back in text. I would agree with you. I think that they are just trying to allow for as many different permutations of communication as possible. Which ultimately I think is good, sorry. Yeah, if some people want to, sometimes you want to hear someone's voice. It is nicer to hear someone's voice. However, I have a few friends that send a lot of voice memos. Really?

And I hate it because I'm very rarely in a position where I can listen to it.

I have to be wearing headphones to be able to listen to what you just texted me. Yeah, very true. To me, it defeats the entire purpose, but a lot of people like doing it. It is the only correct way to communicate. Adam loves it. He does it all the time with his friends. The more we're having this conversation, the more I'm feeling like an old man because I do not understand any of these communication rules.

things that you youngins are doing. We're like the same age. Well, shut up, Adam. I think that honestly at the end of the day, if you can have as many possible ways to communicate as possible, that's the best thing. I agree 100%. Yeah, because people like to communicate in different ways. So it is just ironic that

when you are sending that voice message, you have the option of either just doing voice to text or sending a voice memo. And then when the other person transcribes it, it's just voice to text. Yeah, it's like, would you like this to be text now or later? Or later. Yeah, so, you know. Options, yeah. It's another option. You can now also star messages to remind you to answer them, which is kind of cool. I would, I like that because I would rather that than my Google messages trying to predict the like, you haven't responded to this in four days. Like sometimes it's like,

Yeah, because I didn't need to. I don't know why you really thought I wanted to. So I'd rather be able to be like, I do want to respond to this later. Like right now I'm seeing it in a situation where I can't respond to it rather than...

the top of my inbox being a bunch of old random messages that I never wanted to respond to. Yeah, I think I'm definitely going to be making use of this feature. What's really funny is like Gmail a while ago added this feature that if you get an email and you open it but you don't reply to it, it'll say, hey, you received this a few days ago. Do you want to reply to it? Or...

If you send someone an email and they don't reply, after a few days it'll be like, you sent this four days ago. Do you want to follow up? And so now they're basically doing the same thing in messages, which is kind of cool. And I think that they're, in a way, sort of seeing email and messaging as sort of this ubiquitous kind of free-flowing thing because...

They already added in Google Messages three separate tabs for different types of text that you're getting. There's an all tab, there's a personal tab, and there's a business tab now. That's in Messages? Yes.

Sorry, I'm looking right... Oh. Yeah. You know, I've always seen that, and I've never actually done anything about it. Business is basically just all the spam crap that I get. Most people, their business messages will just be like spam stuff. However, this is also related to another update that they're making, which I don't know how much this is going to actually happen. Okay. But now in Google Maps, if a business...

supports this a business can chat with you over rcs um to me this feels like a very like five to ten years down the line thing when rcs is more widely adopted okay but effectively it's like if you want to communicate with a business and say like hey are you guys open today or whatever they'll be able to literally chat with you through your messages app sorry thank you

This is a pretty old iOS feature. Get out of here. Also, WhatsApp. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just use WhatsApp. Whatever. I like this. Just use WhatsApp, guys. Get out of here. Turn your mic off. I like it. Yeah. I mean, like Ellis said, I think iMessage has a feature on Delta that I use occasionally when I'm using an iPhone that in

Instead of calling them and waiting to talk to a representative forever or like waiting through their web portal, you can literally iMessage with somebody. Okay. Which is so much nicer. And like I totally agree with this because if there is a situation on like a support website where it is called

or chat live with somebody, I will click chat live 1000% of the time. And I would much rather do that. Yeah, we don't want to talk on the phone. Yeah, exactly. And now, like I said earlier, there's that starring thing where you can star messages to go back to them. There's also now suggested starring. So if someone says something like, oh, this thing is happening Tuesday at five,

it'll ask you, hey, do you want to start this? Or like, do you want to add a calendar event directly from this? And they actually have that in Gmail too. So I think that Google just thinks of communication as sort of like there are parallels between every form of communication and we should sort of add feature parity to Gmail and messages and whatever iMessage is doing. And it's sort of just trying to make it as ubiquitous as possible, which I like.

So yeah, my biggest takeaway is let's add iMessage feature parity to RCS so that people stop complaining about RCS. And for the people that don't have RCS in the meantime, let's make SMS messaging as good as we can with the limitations we have. For sure. Yeah. So that was a lot. I like that. No, no, no. I'm excited for it. I mean, I think...

In the tech world, messaging and Android have had a rift at all times. I still think they do have a rift. I like that they're working. What I really appreciate about this, especially with the Emoji React things, it's like we want people to go to RCS, but we know not everyone's there. Let's make their experience also better. So many companies will be like, we've taken the next step.

we don't care about the previous steps anymore. So this is like taking the next step and still supporting the old step. And I really appreciate that. And I think it will ultimately help the next step grow because then everyone's getting used to those features and going forward. And now they're also like,

making the other step over to the side a little messy and maybe make them take a step back so they can take a step forward but we'll all see how that I think this is going to put a little bit of pressure on Apple I don't think Apple is ever going to support RCS unless they legally have to I'm sure the EU at some point might do something that will be very interesting um

But for now, at least the SMS experience is getting better. Exactly. I'll take that. Yeah. I'm very passionate about messaging. I can tell. This is like, oh yeah, my favorite thing. Okay. Anyway, let's do our second trivia question. Yeah, let's do trivia. All right.

I had so much fun last week coming up with fake things, I decided to do it again. Fun. So today, I'm going to read you the names of four 2000s tech startups, and you have to tell me which one of them is fake. So again, three of these startups are real companies. One of them is one I made up. How far into making up are you going? Are these just names, or are you making up what they do also? Names and brief descriptions. Okay, cool. I'm excited. All right. All right.

Doostang. D-O-O-S-T-A-N-G. Doostang. It's a career networking platform originally intended for students of elite universities. I already hate that I don't know. I already hate that this is probably real. All right, B. Thoof. T-H-O-O-F. Thoof. It was a dig.com competitor that never really made it off the ground. C. Fairtelizer. That's Fairtelizer. Fairtelizer.

This is a company that provided an embeddable music player for independent musicians, Fertilizer. And finally, Toodaloo. T-O-O-D-A-L-O-O. Toodaloo. It was a combination of Nintendo's StreetPass, Google Maps, and Foursquare, where users would be matched based on frequently shared commutes. Jesus Christ.

We're going to get zero points for this. I have no idea. I have a working theory on that one that I am very excited to see how wrong I am. Can you name the names again? You don't have to do the descriptions. Yeah, no worries. It's A, Dew Stang. B, Thoof. C, Fertilizer.

And D, Toodaloo. Before we figure that out, if you had to wear a shirt from one of those companies, which one would it be? Doostang, for sure. Doostang, easy. Really? I want the foof shirt. Doostang. All right, let's take a break. And when we come back, Austin and Marques are going to face off on a fun little game we have. All right. Sounds good.

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Flows right off the tongue. Yeah, with your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. Andrew's here. I'm Austin. Hello. Our friend Austin is here. And that's going to make it more fun because Austin and I don't know the phones that are in this box that Andrew has. Andrew's going to give us the phones one by one. We're going to try to identify it behind our back and I'll pass it to you and then you can ID it. And we can sort of take it from there. See if we can ID the phones and remember stuff about them. So we did this back in...

2015 for Team Crispy Live on stage. Low key, great format. It was a lot of fun. Great format. We've also tried it in like, you remember IGTV? Yeah. When IGTV was a thing where like we should shoot some stuff with phones in vertical and it was like a little segment we would do

and we would just hand people phones. And it's actually really fun. - I feel like it's probably gotten harder now though, right? I feel like a lot of phones are a little bit more similar in sort of build. Like I feel like back in the day there's a little bit more flexibility, like oh, that's an HTC or that's a Samsung S4 or whatever. - Yeah, yeah, there were metal phones, there were plastic phones, there were glass phones. Andrew, I have an idea. You hold the phone up to the cameras while our eyes are closed first so the audience knows, and then when you're ready,

put it in my hands, and then we'll open our eyes. Okay. That sounds good. Eyes closed? Yep. You have full control over everyone. I'm closing my eyes. We'll probably have a caption on the screen to ID the phone, and then we'll attempt it. My hands are open behind me.

Now, this will be fun for audio listeners. Okay. This will be fun. I'm going to give it to you. Are you guys just keeping your eyes closed like the whole time? No, I'm going to open my eyes, but I'm going to not look at it. Okay. It's in my hands now. Marquez has the phone now. Okay. My eyes are closed. Talk it out. My hand is out. I'm going to try it first. Oh, you're fine. Okay. You can open your eyes. I'm just holding it now behind my eyes. So real quick, while you're doing this, are you going to guess right now or are you going to hand it to Austin and then you'll both guess at the same time? Internal guess. Oh. And then we'll guess at the same time. Got it. Makes sense. We're definitely not making this up on the spot. Okay.

Wait, I need to make sure. Okay. Okay. What are you looking for? Well, you're going to know as soon as you pick it up. Okay. Well, you'll hear something real quick. Oh! So you know what's happening. But I'm just trying to figure out generation. Okay. All right. Close your eyes. Okay. Yeah. Here it comes. All right. Okay. Got it. There it is. Okay. Well, I knew it. But okay. I'll do it with my eyes closed. I'll trust you. Okay. So, yeah. Certainly a little of...

Yep. That kind of action. Okay, so here's the thing, right? So I feel the camera, which is on the side. That's where I had to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, let me feel the hinge because obviously I'm used to a particular kind of this phone, but now I'm like, that's not. There's no way. Oh, no, but I feel the little, uh-oh. Wait a minute. So there's only two little rubber stoppers instead of...

Oh, do you remember which one has two and which one has four? I had to go cameras and then power button. Can you feel the color? Yes, I can feel the color. You can hear it too in the podcast. I think I know which one this is. Okay. All right. So ready? Yeah. Count it down. Three, two, one. Z Flip 5.2.

Well, the same thing, right? Z Flip 2 is a 5G one. Yeah, that's the first 5G one. Yes? Wait, ooh. Actually, it's not. It's the first one, isn't it? It's the first one. You guys actually confused me with that because I forgot there was...

The 5G. I also didn't pick these phones. Well, the 5G is the same design as the first one. Yeah. Just added 5G. Yeah. But this is the first one with the tiny front screen and the dual cameras. I believe it's the first one just because we would have saved the first one. Okay. We got it. So wait. So do we get a point on that? Yeah. We both get a point. Right? Okay. We heard the little checkmark sound. Yes. This is a good one because we know Austin likes his Flip. Are you still... So what's your Flip situation now? Flip is... I keep seeing you tweet pictures of it. Flip 4 right now. I've got the baby blue one.

I do need to get a skim for the back because I was flying recently and it was sliding off the airline table because it's so slippery. But I'm on flip four now. The math finish. We saw one in the wild for the first time. Yeah, in San Francisco, yeah. I've never seen a flip in the wild. I actually see a lot of them these days. Really? Like I was at like a tea shop the other day and I pulled up my flip and the bracelet, she's like, oh, dope. And she pulled hers out. I was like, yeah, let's go. Weirdest bonding moment. But totally, that's incredible. Yeah. Do you remember the flip? Yeah.

and hands-on experience. Yeah. That was the worst. That was the one where we were all in the same room and everyone only got five minutes with it, right? Oh, yeah. And they had a limited amount of units. So everyone was like over each other's shoulders trying to... This is back when Samsung were really terrified after, you know, the Fold had fallen apart. So they didn't trust any of us. Did somebody break a Fold? What happened with the Fold? You know, I think there was some kind of drama with that. It was a while ago, though. Couldn't have been me. Anyway. All right. Let's check the next phone.

I also, like when I handed it to you, fully had my eyes open. Next time I'm going to, well, you put your hand, how do I pass it without looking at it? I have to see where his hand is. We have to hold hands. You hold your hand out. I'll look at where your hand is and I'll look away and then hand it to him. Audio listeners, we love you. I promise. It's way better in video form. All right. My eyes are closed. Same. Okay. I got the phone.

So, is there a skin on this? Oh, no, it's not. There's a logo there. Ooh, antenna bands. Skins do have logos. Okay, yeah, I know which one it is. Okay. You feel that confident that fast? Yep. Uh-oh, okay, okay, I'll close my eyes. I'm ready. Okay, ready? Hand is out. Yeah. Okay, got it. Pass successfully. Oh, yeah. Wait, is this a trick?

I don't know. I hope not. Maybe. Let me just feel really quick. Okay, I've got my guess. Already? Yes, I've got my guess as well. Okay, same. Both quick guesses. You guys sure? There's a couple of quick identifiers for this one that I think are pretty good giveaways. Okay. So, yeah. Ready? I'm going to go three, two, one. iPhone 6S Plus. 6S Plus.

Oh, you did 6S. Oh, I did 6. Oh, okay. That's actually a good one. How did you tell it's an S? I don't. That was just my guess based on how long we kept the phones. Also, the 6 Plus was silver, and I felt pink. Get out of here. You just feel pink. Yeah, I felt, yeah. I didn't.

I just, oh, but look, it is the S. There's a little badge. I got it right. I didn't even know I got it right. I had to look at it. I was like going for like camera bump and then immediately, okay, I've got that. Then the home button and then the headphone jack. I started with the logo, which is glossy. And I thought there was a skin on the phone because it was, and that's how I realized it was metallic on the outside. So it wasn't a seven. It was definitely a six or six S. And then antenna bands. I felt the size of the plus and the, yeah, it was easy. Dead giveaway.

We shouldn't brag too much, though. He's about to pull out like something. Well, we'll see what the next one is. Infinix something out of nowhere. All right. Please don't. Eyes are closed. Eyes are closed. Got a phone. Jesus. I have not been putting these up to the camera. That's easy. I got it already. That fast? Yep. It's pretty obvious. Okay. Eyes are closed. Yeah, this is know it or you don't know it. Yeah, you pretty much instantly know it. Oh, good Lord. Well, hang on. So you say that.

Okay, so I've got like two guesses for this, but because you got it so fast, now it almost makes me wonder. So... I'm dying to know both guesses. Huge, huge. No, no, no. He said he has two. Oh, you're two guesses. So I'll say what it's not. I thought it was an ROG phone as soon as you handed it to me, but then I was like, no, because it's thick and large, but it's got the huge sort of thing in the middle. Yep. Uh,

I'm going to take a guess. I'm not super confident. You say it, and I'll say if I agree or not. Okay. Is it that Lenovo gaming, the Legion gaming phone? Legion Duel. Yep. Okay. All right. Yeah, that's a... The fans, the middle. The one that just... Zach broke twice. That's exactly what I was going to say. Is this the one he's broken half? In thirds. It broke on both sides of it. Don't do it. No, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it now? Okay. Sorry. I was thinking about it.

That's a real reason to subscribe to the video version of the podcast. Yeah, right? So what do we... We're pretty much three for three. Yeah, three for three. I don't know. I'm giving you credit for that. I might have to go find like one really hard one in there for a tiebreaker. No, we don't. Actually, we can just keep it easy. Wait, how many more are there? There's three more. Okay. Ooh. I feel pretty good. Halfway there. All right. Eyes are closed. Eyes closed. Yep. Okay. Got the phone. Uh-oh. I like that face. I do too. What is... What is...

Uh-oh. Okay. If you don't know, I'm going to have no shot. Am I? Is that the... It's hard to commentate because I don't want to give any extra hints if he's doing, like, the right thing or the wrong thing, if that makes sense. Oh, my God. Okay, I got it. You do have it. I got it. I got it. Oh, good Lord. Okay, you ready? All right, eyes are closed. Eyes are closed. Okay, got it. What is this? Oh, okay. So...

What is going on here? It took me a second to figure out the mechanics of what is happening. Yeah, because it feels like a flip. Oh, no, it's not. Wait, what? Is it a flip? Oh, no, it's sliding up and down right now. That took me like 30 seconds to figure out. Oh.

Oh, I think I know this too. Okay. Yeah. Once you figure out. This is your phone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to pry it open for a while. And then I was like, am I at the top or the bottom? Do I keep trying to pry it? So I think we got it. Yeah. Sorry. I was talking to Adam. Oh, you haven't guessed yet though? Well, we haven't guessed out loud, but I think we have the same guess. I thought sidekick for a second, but it's a first gen Moto Droid. Droid. Yep. First? Hell yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I felt the deep. There was a second gen of that though, right? No.

No. Yeah, there was a Droid 2, I believe. Droid 2 and then Droid X. And it still had slot... Actually...

This is for sure my first drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember getting this one. There definitely was a second one, though. I overclocked this phone. I remember that video. Overclocked it. Custom kernel, custom ROM. Part of the giveaway was I could feel how beat up it was. I was like, oh, this is the OG old phone. This is the one. I didn't think Marques. I saw him playing with it, but I couldn't tell. He was pulling at the bottom of it, but wasn't sliding it. Yeah, same thing.

I would have guessed like a flip phone. Yeah, once you get to the... If you slide it, you kind of know what's going on. You know what's wild? Completely off topic, but speaking of these old droids, Nier Gem I go to, they have a bunch of these sort of like advertising things in the windows. And there is one that has not been touched. It's an old Verizon one since...

So it's got a Blackberry, it's got a Droid X, and it's advertising Verizon's upcoming 4G service. Nice. It's all like faded in the sun. They must have forgotten about it, but they're still paying for it. That's incredible. And so I see like there's like a Droid X and it's like an HTC, whatever the Evo 4G. Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt, yeah. Thunderbolt was the first 4G phone. Yeah. Terrible phone. Yeah. Terrible battery life anyway, which is enough for me to say it was a terrible phone.

I remember testing that phone in school. I remember being in biology class in fifth period and the phone died and I was like dead before the end of the school day. That's bad. Maybe you shouldn't be on it during the school day. That's fair, but I was a dedicated reviewer in 11th grade. You got to do what you got to do, right? Yeah. All right. Eyes closed. Eyes are closed. Okay. Got a phone. Oh, that's an identifier. That's easy. Got it. That fast? Yep. Okay. Eyes are closed. Wait, where's your hand? Okay.

Okay. Ooh. All right. I've got it. Now that I'm thinking about it, I could be totally wrong. Yeah. I like seeing it, I'm not even 100% sure. It's not easy. No. So it's got a big round camera bump. That was the identifier for me. I can think of like four phones that have that round style bump. What companies are they from? Because I can think of two companies. Motorola. Motorola.

That wasn't one of mine. Wasn't there a Moto X of one generation that had the big round camera? Almost all of the Z. All of the Z editions have a round camera. Yeah, the Z had that. I'm also remembering Huawei and OnePlus. But it's not just one Z. There's a bunch of Zs. Z Play, Z something else. So here's the thing. I'm trying to feel. So it's definitely a more modern phone because I don't feel a headphone jack.

It's not a huge, huge phone. I think Xiaomi's probably, no, Huawei, I think is probably a good guess, but I'm not gonna know which one. - Okay, I have a different guess than you. - Okay, go for it. - I spent very little time with it, but as soon as I felt the camera bump, oh, I should, can I, wait, can I grab it again? - Yeah, yeah, here, here, close your eyes. - Yeah, yeah, I'll pass it over. - Put it in my hands again.

I thought you were winking at me. No, I just need to feel for an alert slider is what I'm doing. Oh, I didn't check that. Alert slider. Okay, I have my guess. Go for it. OnePlus 7T. Really? Okay. Wow.

Wow. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah. So, but yeah, Huawei did do the big circle thing too. I don't know. How do you feel about the symmetrical thing? Huawei or OnePlus has sworn by symmetrical phone designs up until this year. I forgot that. I actually, I daily that for a little bit. I totally forgot that it had the round camera bump. Yeah, it's kind of a little...

Not big enough to shelf. Yeah. But it is quite the looker. So I think you've just taken the lead here. Good color. I did, yes. I'm pretty proud of that one. And I remember it being blue and everything. I remember the thumbnail for that video. Why do I remember these things? Okay, one, two, three, four, five. So there's one more. Well, okay, we added one more. Okay, so there's two more. Eyes closed? My eyes are closed. Okay, I got the phone. That's interesting dimensions. Great. Okay.

Oh. Talk us through it. What are you feeling? So it's a small... You could talk through it. I could talk through it? Yeah, I would say... I'll be giving you hints, but I think I'll get it too. If there's anything that's like super obvious and might be your like, maybe don't say that, but you can talk through the rest of it. Okay, so at one point we bought every iPhone to do a review of every single iPhone. So I know we have every iPhone. Yeah. So I grabbed this. This is a small phone with a home button. So it's an iPhone. Yeah. And I think...

And I think it's a 5C. Remember the colorful plastic phones? Yeah, yeah, of course. I don't remember what color we got, but I think that's what this is. I can't think of any other phones. I'll close my eye and I'll take a look. But 5C is very... Oh, yes. I feel like I need like a...

flag in front of me because you guys keep looking at me as you're saying it out loud. I'm just like straight face. Poker face. Definitely 5C. It's such a unique feeling design because it's the plastic, right? And you've got the iPhone home button and everything on it. What color do you think it is? Green has the advantage on this one if you can remember. But if you lose this one then Austin should get two points. I say blue. I think we either got lime green or yellow. There are some bright colors for this one. I'm going to go with

Green. Okay, I'm going to say blue, but I have no idea. Okay. Green. Ooh, that is green green. Really green. I think we got it because it was so green. Is it on? It is on, and it's signed into Andrew's iCloud. Is it really? Hell yeah. There's nothing on there. I tried to charge as many of them as I could before this, and the only one that would not power on was your droid, sadly. Oh, no. What connector is that? That's fine.

Mini USB for the Droid? No, it's Micro. Is it Micro? Okay. Yeah, Micro's got its... I think my Ares was Mini. Ooh. Yeah. I think my Ares was Mini. Yeah. The HTC? HTC Droid Ares. My mom had that phone. I think I tell you that every time. Well, you had two. There was the Ares or the Moto Droid. Yeah. And I went the cheaper route, I guess. I miss these little bright colors they used to do. That is really bright. Every phone is like pastel and like barely colored now. Yeah. Yeah.

What is that? Oh, that's before the haptic engine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. What a weird phone device. Okay, we have one more. One of us? So what is it? I think Marques is up one now. Sure. Should we give it to Austin first? Oh, sure. Okay, so here, I can pass it. I'll put my hand all the way out here if you want to just pass it directly to me. My eyes are closed. Okay, got the phone, and it is hidden. Oh, what is this? Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, it's not.

What is this wacky thing I've got in my hand? Wait, so I will talk through. It's a large phone for sure. Okay. Oh, well, I felt this. Wait, something slid. Something moved. Hang on. Hang on.

I'm trying to keep the LG wing. I'm always thinking about that phone. Yeah, it's a wing. Totally wing. Oh, wait, really? Yeah. I just guessed. I was kind of hoping one of you wouldn't slide it and then it would be completely. I almost didn't because I felt it was like, oh, that's really big and thick. But then I felt a little something move like, wait a minute, something's wrong. The wings perfect for this, because if you forget to slide it, you're just going to think it's some like.

- Note maybe or something like that. - Yeah. - That's true, that's true. So yeah, I remember with this phone, I was like, this is such a small phone and I was trying to figure out, this is a flip phone, it's gotta be. And I kept trying to open it like a flip phone. So when I had that orientation flip, I was like, every phone now I need to change and check their orientation every time. But yeah, wow, the wing is the subject of the most viewed piece of content I've ever made. - Word. - Did you know that? - No. - It's a fun fact, I made a TikTok on it. - How many views? - Yes.

What's the most views you've ever seen on a tech TikTok? It's not that high of a ceiling. Tech TikTok, probably like 20 million views. 20 million on a tech TikTok. We found a good song. Andrew found a good song for it, flipped it open to the song, 35 million views. Oh.

It was a song that was insanely popular on TikTok at that time, and it had something to do with flipping or spinning or whatever. Swing. Oh, swing. And we just swung it open at the beat drop, and 30 million views. It was crazy. The short form world is a wild thing. I love it so much. You never know what's going to happen. I mean, I kind of had a feeling like no one's seen a phone like this before, but that was incredible. Yeah.

Do some really cool projects with these people actually take apart Yeah Because you can take off this top screen and you can turn it into like almost like a Gameboy style thing on the on the top and whatnot There's some modders to do a lot of really crazy stuff with the room. I figured this was a popular phone for emulators Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's pretty unique. Well Austin. I have one more question for you Oh, that's not that I haven't asked yet. Oh, how how fast can you type the alphabet? Oh, no

From A to Z. I have no idea. How would I know this? Well, that's a good thing. We have a keyboard and a computer nearby to figure this out. I should have known. I came over to say hi. I have my laptop here. I'm going to grab it. Hold on. Do you want to use a laptop keyboard or either of these keyboards here? I would say I am probably fastest on a laptop keyboard because I just spend a lot more time on a laptop keyboard. Some gamer you are.

Look, man, the amount of email versus gaming, that balance is not good. That's totally fair, yeah. I think I probably type better on the Magic Keyboard I have here than my gaming setup at home. Well, I think it's so much more so about, obviously, I think a nicer keyboard is ideal, but I think it's the keyboard that you use most is what you're always going to be fastest with. And a MacBook-style keyboard is what I'm on 90%.

I've stayed on the magic keyboard here because Marques used to always shoot A-roll at his desk. So I either would have to stop typing or keep something that's quiet so I could like still do work more. Marques did A-roll. Yeah. I have a click clack while I'm recording. Yeah. Well, I've opened it in front of you, the type test dot app.

I'll give you a little pro tip, or at least just to know. You go A, B, C, D, E, F, G, whatever. If you miss a letter, it will not continue until you hit that letter. So you have to hit every letter. When you get to the end, don't hit enter. Okay, copy. Just hit C, and it'll stop the clock. And so we have a leaderboard for this. So all our guests, you actually, you have been a guest before, but it was before we did this. It was actually, was that the last CES we went to? I think so. I think it was the last CES we went to. Yeah, that's the last one. It was 9, 20. Yeah.

20, yeah, yeah, 20. Before it all happened. Yeah, the start of all of it. It was the beginning of the end. But we have a leaderboard, so we'll take your best out of three, and then we'll throw you in there. So no practice. The first one I do counts. Yeah, we've had everyone straight into it. Okay. What kind of times, what's like kind of the rough spread of the board? I don't want to put any pressure on you or anything. If you want to know the times if you're ultra competitive, I can tell you, you know, the range. Let me do one, and then I want to know the time. Okay, sure. Okay, all right. So I just stretch, get the fingers ready.

Remember where all the keys are. I think... Start on home row. Make sure you're on home row. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to say... I'm not going to go that fast, but I'll give it my best shot. Do it. Ready? Okay. Okay. Ready? And... Oh, good Lord. That's bad. Okay. Okay.

11.1. That was rough. I think you'll be surprised at how much you'll improve next one. I can say 11 is not a great score. I am not surprised whatsoever. All right. My keyboard does not sound good on that mic. That's not good ASMR either, I can say. I can rotate around, but I'm sorry. I need optimal keyboard positioning. No, no, you do whatever you need. Okay, all right. I thought I was getting clever, but it didn't sound that good. I definitely got caught up, though. I tried to skip D. I was like, why is D not showing up?

Oh, because I need to press it again. Okay, okay. One more time. Ready and... Okay, 8.6. That's much better. A little bit better. Single digits is good. Not good, though. We do three tries. Yeah, we do three tries. Do you want to know any info or you just want to go right into the third try? I mean, am I last if I'm 8.6? You're not last. Okay, cool. Then it's already a success. Out of people you think may have been on the podcast, who do you want to make sure doesn't beat you?

Is there anyone you're like, I really hope I'm not? We've had a good variety. Quinn, Doug DeMuro, Tom Scott. I want to be Quinn. I bet Quinn was fast, though. I think Quinn's got a solid score. Marquez. Everybody in the studio's done it. Yeah. The studio scores are wildly ranging. But this is everyone's first try, not after practicing. Yeah, everyone had three tries. All right, all right. I'm going to go for the last one. Okay. Okay, I got to get the rhythm. Okay, ready? Okay, ready, and...

6.6. Yes, that sounded way better. Okay. It's a really awkward thing to type. It's so weird. It turns into one hand having to do seven in a row, and that's just not normal. WXYZ is tough. All right, so 6.6. Do we have the leaderboard pulled up? Yes. 6.6 what? 6.676.

You beat Colin and Samir by .001 second. Wow, that might be the closest we've had. Who's he? He beat Colin and Samir. Who's he like right after? Right after Colin and Samir? Can I just see the leaderboard so we can show them real quick? Yeah, I got to see this. What do you think the fastest time is?

I actually wouldn't be surprised if it's Quinn. I bet Quinn was pretty fast. Quinn was near the top, but he's not the fastest. He's the second fastest. Tom Scott's the fastest. 3.5? Oh, sorry. 3.5. 3.5. Tom Scott came in here and said, the first thing he said was, I'm very competitive. And just like locked in. He was ready to go. He was the one opposite of David Blaine who was like, I'm going to be slow. This will be slow. Oh, man. Okay, well, at least I feel like I'm kind of in.

- Slightly below half? No, slightly below half. But that's like average. I don't care about that. - In the median stratosphere right by Mark Rober. - Between Mark Rober and Colin Samir. - That's good company. - That's great company. - That's good company. - I'll take it. - Well, awesome. - I feel like we need to do the Top Gear like magnets. - Yeah! - Yeah, that's like, we'll eventually get there. - We'll figure that part out. Here, you even get a breakdown of like what your fastest and slowest keystrokes were. So which one took you the most time? X took you .6 seconds. - I took me a second to find.

Oh, that's huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I definitely got tripped up. I was like, where am I at? That's the problem with that test. It's like you don't think about it. You're almost reminding yourself, wait, what's the next letter in the alphabet again? Oh, God. I'm saying this song in my head, but WXYZ trips me up every time. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad we got to do this. Now you know exactly how fast you type the alphabet. Feel free to practice. Maybe you come back on the pod. Maybe you get a faster crack at it. Maybe you impress everybody with a 4.0 or 3.0 or something crazy. That will not happen.

Leaving the door open, you never know. But either way, thanks for joining us. This is fun. We'll probably do it again sometime. But until then, happy Techtober, Austin. I hope we survive. For sure.

Welcome back. That was, um, I always have fun playing that game. We've played it a bunch of times here. It's fun getting Austin over. And it's also just fun watching two people who've been at the game for so long reminisce about old phones. Yeah, for sure. This is definitely what we do when we like go out to coffee with people in the industry. All we do is talk about phones from 2012. We're definitely not giant nerds. Yeah. Yeah. Let's not admit any more of those. All right. All right. Let's go to trivia and prove we're nerds even more. All right. All right.

All right, trivia. So, all right, first question. A modulator demodulator is more commonly known as what? That's okay, take your time. I knew like four of the words in that question. Modulator demodulator. Modulator demodulator. I'm just, I have two. I'm just putting. Do you guys want a hint?

Yeah. Can we both agree to a hint? I think it's fair then. Okay, let's see. So you want a hint? Yeah. All right. It's not a router. David's looking at me like I just cursed out his mother. I was completely changed to what I thought we were going to do. It's also not a bunny rabbit. I can't tell how helpful this hint is or if Adam's just totally messing with us. A little of both.

Oh, I know the answer. Do you? I'm just kidding. I don't want the hint anymore. No more hints. Let's see if I'm right. I could be like...

really off from the angle that i have andrew is like sketching nothing there's nothing on his i'm like uh just moving my marker above it like it'll eventually write something by itself like it's a ouija board right now i want it to write the answer for me no i i think i'm right i think i'm right i mean i'm just going to go off of something what oh really you're gonna go off of something

I'm going off of nothing and getting on to the Beats Fit Pro. Thanks. I actually hated the Beats Fit Pro. I hated their fit. They're not the Beats Fit Pro. They're just the Beats Pro. Okay. Which is already a head-on. They're the Beats Fit Bad. Okay. Ready? Ready to turn. Okay, ready? Three, two, one. Oh, damn it. He's definitely right. Andrew says access points. David says modem access points.

Hey, baby. The correct answer is modem. I'm very upset I didn't get that after. I think I was thinking router, and I was like, what's not a router? Exactly. I also almost put access point, but then I was like, what is a router plugged into? Oh, a modem. Yeah, I'm glad you had the logical thinking. Modulator, demodulator. There it is. Modem.

I just want to say... I wish the camera could have picked up the physical light bulb that probably pinged above you as you read that out loud. Oh, ping! I just want to say the score now is all eight. Eight, eight, eight. Wow. Tied up. Let's go. I mean, we're both going to get this one. Actually, this one's... At least it's multiple choice, so there is the chance. There is a chance. So you're saying there's a chance. All right. Four companies.

Which one is fake? Also, out of curiosity, which one would you invest in, not knowing anything about them? A, Doostang, a career networking platform originally intended for students of elite universities. B, Thoof, spelled T-H-O-O-F. It was a dig.com competitor that never made it off the ground.

C, Fertilizer, an embeddable music player for independent musicians. Or D, Toodaloo, a combination of StreetPass, Google Maps, and Foursquare, where users were matched based on their frequently shared commutes. I feel like I would not invest in the last one because no one likes knowing that they're tracked by that many different things. I'd probably invest in the music embedding. The one that has...

The name Fertilizer. Fertilizer. Fertilizer. It's in a fair and fertilize. Yeah. I would invest in the, in Doostang. The name is terrible, but. Well, I guess you automatically just have, if it's elite college students, you just have money involved in it from the start. And I hope this doesn't reveal too much. Let's just, let's do our answer. What was the Reddit competitor? I mean, the, the dig competitor. Foof. Foof.

I have my answer. And? Oh, we both. Wait, so what's your reason? I have a very specific reason. Who if it's real? I have a reason and I feel like my reason may answer why it's real, but anyone who's comparing themselves as a dig competitor and not a Reddit competitor is automatically bad. This was probably before Reddit. What?

Was Dig around before Reddit? Yeah, Dig was prior to Reddit. They were pre-Reddit? Yeah. Reddit only exists because people got really angry at the direction that Dig was going. And then remember when Dig redesigned and then everyone went to Reddit and it was like Reddit doubled in size almost? If only Thoof were still around. Okay. I just, yeah, I mean, I would assume that someone would be a competitor to them. It's just that since Reddit prevailed, I was like, well, why didn't Thoof prevail? But I guess it's like Narwhal, right? Narwhal's trying to be the Twitter competitor.

Right? There's a couple. Is that normal? I don't know. So what is the answer then? I made up toodaloo. Toodaloo? Oh, really? Yeah. That sounds really real. Thanks. Toot...

I mean, it sounds more real than... Than Doostang? So, funny enough, Doostang is the only one of these four, or I guess the only one of these three, that's still around. See, my investment would have been sound. Yeah, you did it. Maybe I should invest. We should get a Doostang t-shirt, though. Doostang, if you're listening to this, we want some t-shirts. See, that actually makes sense because if you're a student at an elite university, like

you're already going to career fairs all the time, but if they had like a LinkedIn to just hook you up with jobs, like I could see so many. They had a LinkedIn without all the poor people on it. Dude, don't upset Doosting. Our t-shirts are on the line here, Andrew. No, I think it makes sense. I think it makes sense. I want to see the logo. That was a fun episode. I can't wait for you last year's CES. We...

did a game with Marques where we made up CES products and put them in with real products. So you will have a fun time this year. I'm very excited for that. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, David, for co-hosting with me today. That was a really fun episode. A very ranty episode. Very ranty episode. I feel like every topic was just like, we're both very passionate about it. Yes, it's built up rage that was ready for it. Hope you guys enjoyed that.

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