iPhone 14 Pro Recap and Pixel 7 Predictions!
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Hey, what's up people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast. We're your hosts. There's three of us today. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And we got three of us today because we're talking about a bunch of stuff. First of all, the iPhone 14 pro review is now live on the channel. We can get into that a little bit.

There it is, it's purple over there. We also have our first look at some of the stuff I predicted in that video, one of which is a little dynamic island on Android, kind of, sort of. - A little. - Yeah, a little bit. We're also looking forward to a Google event, and then we're also gonna wrap it up by talking to a few professionals that let us know what they think of the new Apple Watch Ultra.

But first, a quick shout out to the hoodie. This is so long overdue. I'm so glad it's finally up. So Andrew's holding it. If you're a video watcher, you can see it. But the new MKBHD edition Chevron hoodie. People have been asking me where to get this thing for so long. So we finally went and just made the thing. So MKBHD.com is where you can get the thing. It's about to be hoodie season. I just checked the weather. There's like

six more days of 80 degree days and then it's gonna start plummeting and it's hoodie season officially. - So get it fast, yeah. - And this is a warm one, it's good. - Yeah, I think funny story about this is like, this is based on the old avatar you used to have of an Amazon hoodie that you bought.

But this quality is so much better. Yeah, the Amazon one I got is literally like, I would wear it in the winter, but then I'd wear a jacket over it because it was the thinnest, cheapest material ever. So we basically just made a better version of the hoodie I've loved. There was a time where Brandon, Vin, and I

for a joke, wanted to dress up as you. So we all ordered the hoodie. We all ordered it from the same listing on Amazon and we got three different companies. Like all of them had different tags. They were slightly different colors. Yeah, different quality. Yeah. Ironically, if you search and I remember this being a thing for years. If you search MKBHD hoodie on Amazon, it comes up with the one that you always used to wear. Specifically the blue one, but I think they have multiple colors. But I see people wearing these occasionally and I'm like,

There's no way you just randomly bought it. Most of the reviews on that mention MKBHD. Yeah. Well, this one is a great way to support the channel. It's also way better. It's way, way, way better. So I'm really pumped about that.

But yeah, okay, so iPhone 14 reviews are out, at least ours, so there's iPhone 14s as well. I started with the 14 Pro and it turns out to be the one that people are most interested in and it also is easily the most interesting one because there's actually a couple new things about it, those main three being internals, display, and cameras.

So the general gist of it, to basically summarize, I mean, go watch their video. It's a 20 minute review of all this stuff. But the internals are a slight bump up. The cameras are a little bit of a bump up. And then the display is the most interesting part and the most unique and the thing that most people will notice about the phone.

But honestly, if you have a phone from like the last three or four years and you get the iOS 16 update, that's most of the new experience right there.

But I'm curious, you guys, David you've tested the iPhone 14 Pro Max. I actually want to ask you specifically about one thing. Battery life? How has your battery life been and have you compared it to a previous Max phone? Yeah, so the Pro Max is good battery life obviously. It lasts like almost two days. But last year we did the same thing where you reviewed the Pro and I reviewed the Pro Max.

And last year it was a solid two straight days. Yeah. And I noticed that on this one it was still good, but it died on the second day at like at like 4 p.m. Whereas last year it died like at midnight on the second day or like a little bit into the third day, which is crazy. It's still good, but still really good. I think that always on display is having a little bit of an impact or and or.

the fact that the brightness gets up so high, especially outside. Yeah, I think it's like, it's possibly three things. The third being the A16 Bionic is a little extra power hungry and maybe that, all those things combined mean you'll get slightly less battery. But yeah, you know, the always on display, this is the one thing you can kind of see it now. It's like,

I've looked down at it so many times thinking my phone's still on. Same. And it's giving me notifications, a nice big bright time, and my widgets are updating and all that stuff. And it is very much the Apple way of,

But I prefer some other ways, to be honest. I don't like that it feels like my phone is on all the time. We talked about this a little bit before, but the way that most Android phones do it, specifically Pixel, I really like the Pixel implementation, is that you just see the time and then a few icons for the apps that you have notifications on. Whereas Apple, intentionally, like you said in the review, it fades from being fully on to being...

kind of like really dim. Like half on. So you still see your wallpaper, which I don't like because if I'm trying to go to sleep especially and even the minimum brightness is like a little bit too bright when you're in a pitch black room. Yeah. It kind of illuminates. Oh, do you use focus modes though? So the thing about the sleep focus mode, I know that the always on display turns off when you go into sleep focus mode. Yeah. But my sleep focus mode always turns on at like 10 p.m. So I just turn it off and then I always forget to turn it

back on when I actually go to bed. - That's hilarious, yeah. Well you can push it back, you can make it turn on at midnight or something, just as you're falling asleep. But it also just, it's uncomfortable feeling like my screen never turns off. I really hate that. - This looks like it's on right now. - I know! - I thought this was on. - It does. - I don't know what I'm doing to make it actually turn on. - Basically, all you have to do is touch it. But it basically looks like when you turn your brightness all the way down on your lock screen, that's on.

And that's always on. It's slightly different. I don't like it. It's slightly dimmer. I'm also realizing right now, looking at it, is, like, at an angle, you can see there's a huge difference between the, like, digital hole punch and where the actual cutouts are. And I totally see now why all the renders previously had the eye shape, because that's what it is. And the pixels in the cutout are, like, there's a lot of them there. You can catch it from certain angles. You can really, like...

It's crazy how much you can see that and how much of that is screen but not screen. Yeah. I think from straight on when you're using the phone, it looks the best. That's what I'm saying. I didn't notice this at the event when we were shooting it, and now seeing it, I'm really noticing it. You can also tell that the actual cutouts are not totally flush with the digital cutouts, and I heard that's because Apple had trouble creating exactly uniform notch cutouts on the original notch. Yeah.

And so now when they wanted to make a digital ring around it, there are actually more just black pixels surrounding the cutouts so that if the cutouts are not perfect, you still get a perfect digital circle. It is a pretty consistent, nice pill-shaped thing. Yeah. And then the animations, all the things that it does, this is the part that I think we're going to get into in a second, but that we're going to see copied a lot, which is...

All of the stuff that the dynamic island...

I don't want to say that anymore as just all this stuff that the pill does all the animations that it does are really crisp and like Precise and high frame rate and like friendly and alive and bouncy and it's like oh, that's really cool I didn't I didn't think I would care about that at all and honestly most of the time you're using a phone You're not touching it. You're not interacting with it, but you just notice it up at the top and it's like oh, yeah That's a nice thing that they did up there. It's really friendly. Yeah, like it it

There's something that the pixel does that makes it feel like the friendliest phone and the animations that Apple added to dynamic island feel very like delightful Yeah, I really I definitely prefer the pixels always on display. Yeah, like when I go see the animation Well, I don't have any notifications but the animation that it does when it like fades down brings the time in and it'll like throw up the notifications right under the time and

I like that better. I also really like OnePlus is always on display. This is my least favorite one, Apple's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Am I in the not norm here that I just hate always on display for everything? I think you might be scarred from the previous Pixel, which would just wake up all the time. Yeah. Right? I just generally don't like it. I miss, I just miss my Note 8's notification LED. Like, that was perfect to me. That's...

A yellow flash for Snapchat, a blue flash for text, a green flash for emails. Like, that's all I ever want. I think you need to get the Sony Xperia 1 III. The only phone shipping today that still has... Shipping today? Yeah. Are you sure about that? Well... Well, Mark IV is not shipping today.

I don't know what's shipping anymore. One of the Sony phones because they all have the notification LED. And that's the only one I can think of that still does it. I think Motorola does. Why would the new iPhone not have a notification ID? It has all the pixels there in the notch. Why can't they just brighten one of those pixels as a notification LED? I would love that. Or any phone could do that. Remember when the S10 came out and whenever it turned on the camera, it did that little...

digital ring animation around the circle. Apple should really do that for this for notifications. I bet an Apple come out that does that. If Apple allows it to. I know on the Pixel they allow you to, like, there's this really awesome battery health feature

Oh, circle. It goes around the camera and it's like lit up only as much as your battery is for the ring. Yeah. I think we're going to see more people doing that to their Android phones that don't have it built into the software. Yeah. I don't know if Apple. I would love that as a lock screen thing, though, like.

on my lock screen than just have that ring light up as different colors for notifications. - That would be sick. - I would love that. That's all I want in a-- - So when you plug in the phone to charge, you do get a little animation. The pill extends and it shows you a circle with the battery percentage. And when you put your AirPods back in the case and close them, it shows you the battery percentage of your AirPods. So it kinda does a lot of that stuff already.

But I guess the point I was going to make is a lot of the first party stuff already works because it's Apple stuff. And then third party apps that don't use call kit and now playing API will be able to come up with other cool things they want to do with the pill.

But as of right now, like the podcast app I use, Pocket Cast works, Spotify works, all the stuff I typically use already works, which is great. One thing that I found really cool is and it's really, really small. But like when you are playing back media, say I'm playing the Vox Media show Today Explained.

It's a yellow album art. So the waveform that plays next to it is also yellow. Yeah. It's like just a little like. I haven't put that because when we did waveform, it was red. And I realized it matched, but I guess I just assumed the default was red. And I haven't tried a different one. So that's pretty cool. If you play a song, it just matches the album art of the song. It's so cool.

cool that's really neat i mean it's just again nice little things they added into i mean what they did i saw someone describe it on twitter really well is like rather like apple's using its software to make the hardware limitations feel really good and that's a gradient and everything i put i pulled up the graduation album from kanye west it's not just a purple waveform it's like a purple and bright the like gradient waveform yeah that's so awesome it's really nice

It's such a little, again, it's like there's just these little things that make it feel delightful. And I know that Apple has been working on this for many years and they even put a dedicated display engine just for the notch area, which they definitely want because I think they really want to make sure that you don't have like a glitchy notch because that would ruin the whole experience.

Like you said, Andrew, trying to make that hardware feel more like software. Because if you can make people believe that the notch area is just a cool extra software display, they'll forget that the hardware even exists. And I think that's the point. Yeah. I think probably somewhere someone at Apple looked at the pill before they did this and they were like...

That looks kind of like a hack, the whole punch. You got to do something about it, make it look better. Yeah. And then this whole project was born. Okay, I have a question for you guys about this. We've seen, you saw on Twitter, there was like a Xiaomi mod of like a MyUI, a MIUI. MIUI, yeah. Like notification thing. It kind of looks like the dynamic island, but it didn't like actually touch the selfie cutout. Which company will be the first to,

to actually copy the dynamic island in their own software. Oppo. Oppo. I could see that. Oppo ships features so fast. I could see that. They're probably working on a phone right now. They're like, yep, we're shipping that with a phone. They've probably been working on it since the leaks came out. Okay. Yeah. Would you bet money on a different company? Well, when we talked about this app,

at the Apple event, I said Samsung, but then someone tweeted at me saying how Samsung is so adamant about making reachability a thing and how they make all their software to be pull down. So now I don't think it's gonna be Samsung, although I don't know if it would totally stop them from doing it.

also the one thing about the MIUI ones, there's two, there was one that's not connected cause it was a left facing hole punch, but they had another one on a different Xiaomi phone with a center hole punch that actually did come out and looks really nice. Um, but, but again, people were tagging us. That was like theme developers, not actually me doing that. Um,

So our predictions are still out there. These still could happen. Oppo's a great pick, I think. I don't know if Samsung would do it. I'm going Xiaomi. I'm going to go with Xiaomi. I think we just see that happen in their communities and then they go with their next phone. Yeah, I guess you guys like that, so here's an option. It'll be way more optional. They'll give us customization and actual options, but that's my prediction. I saw someone saying,

that i disagree with that android's focused on eliminating the whole bunch why apple's focused on making it into a software thing why would they do that and the simple answer there is that it's way cheaper and way easier to put software around a whole bunch than it is we've seen a couple under display cameras they're rough yeah and also android is like 30 companies and they're all doing different stuff

But yes, there's a concerted effort by a bunch of them at the highest end to get rid of the hole punch. I think everyone would like to get rid of the hole punch. Yeah. Just...

The limit is there right now, and they haven't figured that out yet. So I'm sure eventually Apple will ditch that and not have Dynamic Island, but we're a long time away from that. Apple is really good at taking hardware limitations and making them fashion. Because they turn... That's deep. Yeah, well, they turn the notch into...

fashionable thing it's how you knew that you had the new iPhone it was the signifier that said I have the new iPhone and then what did they do with the notch they put it in the MacBook and it doesn't even use face ID yeah so like I'm staring at one right now exactly computer it's another way that they're like I have the new best thing yeah and now they're doing it with the island so how long till there's a dynamic island on the laptop

I don't want to put that into the world. That's a little too far ahead. It would have to be touchscreen, right? Oh, true. Well, no. I feel like it would not be worth it without. It could just be a notification center. Yeah, you're right. It could just pop in. You never know. I think we're going to see the dynamic island for a long time on the high-end iPhones for a little while because Face ID is Face ID. That is an interesting thing, though. If they're going to put that much work into this,

this, it's probably going to last a few generations, which means we're probably not going to see a full screen iPhone for at least like four more years. Yep.

Yep. I agree. As unfortunate as that is. Before or after 2030? 2030? You could say before 2030. Before 2030? But if you said 2025? Okay, how about this? Both models, the lower model too, totally full screen iPhone before 2030? Because right now we definitely are seeing a trend of pro models are getting things quite a bit. After. After 2030? Yeah, because they love, more than ever, and I'm going to talk about this in the iPhone 14 review.

More than ever, they like to separate the pro iPhone with the non-pro iPhone to give you more reasons, more – because the mistake they made earlier was not making them different enough and people would just go with the cheaper phone. So now they're like, okay, it's an extra camera. It's a dynamic island. It's the ProMotion and it's the new chip. And now they all – they look different. They feel different. I think they would keep a full-screen iPhone forever.

More expensive and a non full-screen iPhone less expensive for how long many years really many years I think so how long do you think it's gonna be until the cheaper iPhone has dynamic? I want to know that too

- As soon as the most expensive iPhone has graduated from Dynamic Island. - No way. - That's the Apple move, right? - It only took like one year for the, 'cause iPhone 8, iPhone 10 came out at the same time, right? iPhone 10 was the only one that had the notch. The next year, the XR, which was the cheaper one, had the notch. - Okay, so think about what iPhone SE is doing in the background. We've got this old iPhone 8 body,

And when we're expecting the next iPhone SE, which I think will be next year, we're expecting that to graduate to the XR, which is the notch, but it's the like rounded, not squared off phone. So they've got rounded, not squared off phone with a notch, square phone with a notch and then dynamic Island. When they move up,

One all of the rest can move up with it So when the highest end phone goes to totally notchless Then they can move up the mid-range phone to dynamic Ireland and they can move up the se phone to square offside wouldn't that just be more reason that next year they cheaper iPhone will have dynamic Island because they are moving up the mid-range one to dynamic Island well, they won't move it up until the the highest end one moves up out the way and

I have a middle ground where I disagree with both of you. I don't think it'll be next year, but I don't think it'll... I kind of... I agree with you that it needs to create some sort of separation. I think we're so far away from totally full screen that there will be some other feature the Pro gets that...

that the normal one doesn't have and then the one under, then the 14 or, you know, the base model will get dynamic. So the pro will have two years of, I don't know, two years. Let's say like USB-C portless, something extra that the top one gets. USB-C is a,

A pipe dream. It's not a pipe dream. It's an example of something. So like it's something new that it will get the bottom one doesn't get. And then it'll get it. I think they legally have to make all of them. USB-C is a funny example because they probably have to do all USB-C across the board at the same time. Bad example. If they had the option, they would put it only on the Pro next year. They would. For sure. Just like the iPads. Yeah. Like what's the iPad situation right now? We have iPad Air and iPad Pro or USB-C and all the cheaper iPads are still lightning.

Wait, really? Yeah. The baseline iPad is still lightning. The mini is still there, right? The mini, I think, is also still light. Let me check. Let me double check. I guess what I'm saying is the Pro will get a new feature that the normal doesn't have, and then the normal, I think, is allowed to get one of those features. Like one of them? I think it'll be Dynamic Island. I wish it was ProMotion because it's still absurd that there's an $800 phone with 60 hertz, but I do think they...

screwed themselves over by calling it pro motion so it'll probably only ever be oh yeah the pro that was the other question i was gonna ask is like okay before after 2030 where we get a 120 hertz non-pro iphone if it like it's at the point where we've talked about it for so long we've just stopped worrying about like yeah i just don't think they're gonna do it and i

It's sad, but at a certain point... They might just get rid of the name ProMotion. Maybe. I could see that. Maybe they'll just get rid of that before they put it on the cheaper phone. But they always, in the back of their head, will have something that they want to keep separate for the pros. For sure. 100%. They've got to have enough of a list. Yeah. I mean, it's still...

like a big difference using the two different phones. I think they want to keep the experiences noticeably different. Also, I've looked it up. The mini does have USB-C, but I believe I'm going to check that standard iPad. I think it's still lightning. iPad for education. Yep. Oh, the education one. I could see that. Yeah. So that's probably lightning.

So they can sell lightning connectors to schools. It is still lightning. So why? Damn. Taking advantage of the teachers. So anyway, I think they're going to keep the iPhone Pros as far from the non-pros as possible. And I don't think we get a full screen...

of both the pro and non-pro at the same time. All right, we will write down these bets after the podcast. It's a one-year bet. It's a lot going on. One-year bet. Anyway, yeah, stay tuned for the iPhone 14 review. I'll try to succinctly wrap up all these thoughts that I have about the way Apple repackages things.

But we do have a headline here now. I still don't know how inside baseball this is or how early this is to judge. I think it's early to judge, and that's why I want to talk about it. Okay, so the headline is from MacRumors, and it's a quote-unquote, Ming-Chi Kuo, saying the iPhone 14 Plus pre-orders are worse than the iPhone 13 Mini. Therefore, the product strategy has failed. Or...

Does the Mini just rock? Well, okay. I have some thoughts. I mean, I already love... A lot of people know that the Mini is very popular in a small group. It's like the vocal minority, classically. To see the iPhone 14 Plus pre-orders being even worse than the 13 Mini suggests that it's doing pretty bad. But also...

First of all, the 14 Plus doesn't come out for another month. That's going to impact pre-order numbers, obviously. When people go to a store or realize that their carrier is going to let them pre-order and they can't get the iPhone 14 Plus, that's going to hold it back. But two...

I don't know. Pre-orders to me feel like a little bit more bleeding edge than what the masses eventually get. And I think the masses are going to get the 14 plus. They're not pre-ordering phones, but they're just going to go into the store and see the bigger, cheaper phone and get it. And that's why I think it's not a failure. And on top of, like you said, pre-orders are for bleeding edge. Most people aren't going to pre-order the

14 because it's basically just a 13. And also the 13 is still available for sale for $100 less. What's going to happen this holiday season? There's going to be a bunch of carrier deals. There's going to be a bunch of people being like, oh, I'm still on an iPhone 8. I should probably get my son or daughter a new iPhone. And then they go to the carrier and they're like, oh, this is the newest one, but it's also like the cheapest. Here you go.

Yeah. They're going to sell a ton just because it is there. When it's just the new iPhone in a carrier store, these numbers change completely. And I do think that's when the Plus will outsell the Mini because people might be like, oh, the newest one. Oh, that's the cheapest. I can spend a little bit more for the bigger one. Yeah. Bigger screen. And the Mini came out at the same time as the others last year. Like this, we can't do this analysis. Way too early. Yeah. Way too early, guys. So I believe that the numbers are lower now, but I don't think they can say it's a failure yet. No. Yeah.

Okay, we'll take a quick break. We got a bunch more to talk about, including some other companies. So let's be right back. Oh, don't we have a new thing happening to trivia? Oh, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Oh, yeah. We'll save it for the end. We'll save it. All right. But the question, of course, how could I forget?

I don't know. How could you forget, Mark? I was just so amped to move on to Google stuff. It's an exciting week. We've got all these new toys in the office. You know, there's a lot on our mind. But I do have some good trivia for us this week. All right. In June of 2021, Apple began offering the ability to stream lossless audio via Apple Music. Which model of AirPods are able to play Apple lossless audio?

2021. Alice just complained about this to me the other day. Complaining about it all week. If you guys actually listened. If Alice is complaining. Yeah, then it's not the obvious one. Noted. Who's to say? We'll come back after the break. Imagine what's possible when learning doesn't get in the way of life.

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All right, welcome back. We have Google's October 6th event on our dock to talk about today.

I wrote this up, so let me explain what I want to talk about. I don't know if I have anything to talk about. I think there's a couple interesting points about this. First of all, October 6th is the official date, which is like the new thing that we did get from last episode. It's in Brooklyn. I believe it's a live event, right? Is this actually going back to live? It's in Brooklyn. That's a good question. I don't know. The rumors say live.

I'm not sure if you got an invite yet. I'm not sure if you're allowed to talk about it. I don't know anything. I don't have an invite. I don't know about invites and I don't know anything about the event. Interesting. The rumor is that it's a live event, whether that's like a hybrid live like Apple's doing, which I kind of like because I love the pre-produced stuff.

But I also like going in the show floor and hands-on experience and stuff like that. So we'll see about that. Wait, can we talk about that? Sure. I really... Okay. As a consumer and an enthusiast about tech, I love the pre-produced video. I love watching it. I enjoy the presentation of the features and how well they're able to succinctly wrap everything together.

But as someone who's taking notes and has to make a video and remember all the specs and everything that's happening, I much prefer the live event in which you have time because people have to breathe and walk off stage and walk back on stage and like actually say things instead of just

a drone whizzing to the next thing by the time you're writing down. You know what I mean? Like, it's actually easier to take notes and handle a live event as a press member. You know what's crazy is, like, if you think back to just pre-2020, everything changed in 2020 when all these pre-produced videos started happening. Everything before that, from the very first Apple, like, iPhone event up until 2019 was basically a PowerPoint. Yeah. It's Keynote. It's, like, literally just a slide show. They had, like...

individual project managers that would come up and say, we're proud to announce this. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. It is really great because it has this feature. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. And you had time to like type down things. And then they did like, let me do a live demo. And then they roll out a table. Yeah. And then they go, here are the products. And then they, let's start the demo. So as you can see, I'm using the product here. And you're like, yes, okay, how does this work? But in the produced video. It's just like, boom, boom, boom. It's like, yeah, it's just. Yeah.

- Quick. - Yeah. - It's really quick. - It's so fast, it's just like feature, feature, feature, feature. - So I can appreciate both, but I don't know what I want from the Google event. I really don't know. - I think you should learn how to type faster. - I type pretty fast. It's just like I'm typing my notes and I'm tweeting,

Like, okay, here's my workflow of an Apple event from the audience, right? We were gonna like try to vlog this a little bit. I was like, I promise you I'll be locked in. I won't be able to vlog. Okay, I've got my laptop in front of me. The event starts. I have Twitter open on one side 'cause I live tweet the thing.

and I have my notes open, and I have a live feed of the keynote playing in the background on maybe like a 15 second delay, 20 second delay. - Oh, that's actually a benefit. - So, when the thing gets announced on stage, first thing I do is live tweet if I don't need an image. If I do need an image,

I will see the thing happen on stage and take a picture of it. And if that's too late, if I miss it, then I'll switch over to the tab with the video playing, take a screenshot because I know exactly when it's going to happen, then put that in my tweet. While all that is happening, I also need to take notes for the video later. So I need to make sure I get all of my numbers and facts and specs straight while I'm also reacting, giving my feelings on Twitter. So there's like three brains happening at once.

- For two hours. - For a long time in a row. And then often they sort of move on so quickly from something that I'm still reacting and haven't written down the number yet and I'm trying to remember the number while I'm reacting and then the next thing's happening and it's just, it's a lot. - It's chaos. - It's a lot. So I guess what I'm saying is as a journaler, MKBHD really wants it to be like a live presentation but then it won't be like a cool video.

I guess Google's videos weren't that cool. Google never really makes the hype videos. They kind of make their videos basically slideshows. Something that I noticed is the videos that Google shows off on stage are generally their TV ads. Yeah, Apple does the ad at the end of the product presentation and Google will do it like...

Google throws like the same videos that they have in the presentation they put on TV. It's like rather than a drone shot transition, they're doing the like beauty B-roll transition of the product and then talking about it like a stage event where Apple's like showing way more and then they have their own transition. They've got this sort of pseudo formula where there's a new product. It'll be like...

Higher up executive going we really think a lot about this product category That's why I'm excited to show you the newest thing and then they'll pass it to an executive who's in charge of that exact division and then They'll be like we're proud to introduce new product name and then you'll get like a splashy 30-second epic video right with like shadows and coming out of water or something crazy and then it'll come back to that executive and they'll do the keynote and then before the price they'll dive back into the commercial we see the commercial and

We come back to the executive, they go, it will start at this price and it'll be available on this date. Back to you, executive. And they go back up to the top. I promise that's exactly the format of the last like five Apple announcements in this exact way. But yeah, in the Google way, it's more of...

Here's a cool thing. Here's how it works. Here's some slides. I can kind of I can I can rock with that. That's like a nice hybrid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then they usually have like a product specialist or the engineer that designed the thing, like come up and talk about like the engineering problems around it, whereas Apple would never do that. Well, somehow Apple has a

unlimited amount of excellent presenters that also worked on the products. It's kind of unreal. - Yeah, we were joking that the turnover must be insane because I've never seen the same executives on stage except for Phil Schiller and the main guys. But for the product managers, it's always a different product manager. - I see head of product for a while. The iOS people are the same every time. The Mac people are the same every time. Or the same couple of people, like Craig is head of software. You'll see him in the Mac events.

But yeah, they just go from person to person. And that was the other thing I tweeted in the middle of the event. I was like, I don't know how they're capturing audio. It seems too perfect. It's like kind of way too good. Where's the microphones? Are they doing this like dubbed over in post? What's happening here? And I had an Apple executive come up to me in the hands-on area like, hey, by the way, all the audio is live.

And I was just like, dude, how? - 2000-bit audio. - Where's the mic, dude? I need to know. - Not just where's the mic, they're in a giant empty room. It should be massively echo-y. - It should be reverb. They're outside sometimes and they're just in the middle of a desert and they're talking and it's like, how is there no wind or anything? Nothing's messing up your audio. It's perfect every time. The presenters are calmly speaking fluently to the camera every time.

And that's just not true about every company. That's just facts. Yeah. So Apple's got unlimited great presenters. That's what I learned. And money. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so Google event. Google. What are we expecting from Google? Well, so one thing that I find really interesting is we always make jokes about how Google leaks everything and they basically have been doing their own leaks. Yeah. But then I went to go look at what we know about the Google event and I know like nothing. So has...

Wait, don't we know everything? We know it's a Pixel 7. We know what it looks like. Do we know anything else about it? Well, that's all there is to know. They just have to give us a price. We could have special features. No, there's plenty of stuff. But software features don't really leak. I mean, specs and stuff like that. All the stuff that could leak has leaked.

I don't know about that. I feel like we've gone into Pixel events or other Android events with way more knowledge than this one. Also, remember at the Google event last time at I.O. when they showed off the future glasses thing? No one had heard anything about that. But that wasn't real. They were testing it.

- Oh, they can internally test all they want, but they weren't gonna build a thing. - Yeah, it wasn't like a product. - Yeah, when stuff leaks, I guess, you're like, oh, you're going to a supply chain, you're getting it approved by the FCC, all that stuff. - True. - So when, for example, Apple's gonna have an event, the September event, we all kind of know what, hopefully, we're gonna get. I think it's gonna be an iPhone, probably a watch, and whatever.

Then we find out in person. So when the Google event rolls up, it's going to be like, all right, we're going to make a new Pixel phone. It's going to have the next generation Tensor chip. It's going to be called the Pixel 7. Here's what it looks like. And we're all going to sit there like, yeah, we already knew all of this, actually. And so all they have to do is tell us a couple of software features they worked on and a price. Mm-hmm.

And that's it. But the tagline is it's all coming together this fall. And I know that that probably means we are building out our ecosystem, which is probably specifically a reference to the watch. And maybe they will show more about the tablet that's coming out early next year, especially because there have been a lot of updates to Android recently to make tablets a lot better. However, maybe we'll see another hardware product that we weren't expecting as part of an ecosystem. Is it possible that Google has made a hardware product and

and not had it leaked that's the is it possible billion dollar question it it could it could happen yeah i mean it happened i feel like they released the pixel buds pro kind of early like it would have made sense for them to just release i'm surprised giant ecosystem it's not in here especially if like you said the the tagline is coming together this fall i figured it would be everything i mean there are there's some rumors of a new nest

Oh yeah. Nest camera and, uh, Oh yeah. True. That's true. That's true. And a new Chrome. Okay. That could be a good point. Yeah. Oh yeah. Chromecast HD. Cause when you say it's all coming together, it's gotta be more than two. It's going to be a lot of smart home stuff. Yeah. And how they can all maybe connect better together and,

I mean, like, they want a drive-home ecosystem. I think Google is really leaning into, like, the smart home ambient stuff. Like, they're way better at it and more into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm working on a video about this, too, but, like, yeah, the Nest doorbell

I mean, yeah, new speaker, new doorbell, new camera. Sure. Nest Audio, maybe a new Nest Hub Max or Nest Hub. Yeah. What do you want out of a new Nest Hub? Because I have the Nest Hub Max. The screen is okay. Maybe I'd like it to be a little more responsive and faster, but I don't touch it that often. I yell at it across the room and ask for timers and weather. What would you want out of a brand new Nest Hub Max other than faster? Yeah.

Can't think of anything. Yeah, I don't know. I mean they already have like they already have solely I want a better design somehow I like stuff actually so sick if it was a picture frame somehow No, no like one day you hang on your wall and can like hide the wire like that would be how sick like the Samsung frame Yes, that's the back Ram TV, but a nest hub. That would be pretty intense I think it would limit how many people could get it. I

True. But if it's the Nest Hub Max, I think. They want this thing in every kitchen in the world, I think. Like, plug it into the wall, put it on the counter, boom. Yeah, they still have Nest Hub Mini and all that stuff for other rooms. But one that could be like,

The screen that's somewhere in your main living room or in your kitchen or something like that. I think looks way nicer I still think the original Google home is the best looking mmm Google like home their oppression or impression it's because it actually fits with other things it does it's really casual and it's all ambient versus like imaging this is the biggest Problem I have with my new routers. This is super side note into the weeds, but I got so I was using a Google Wi-Fi mesh system the routers for like

month and I was like, I don't know I'm paying for pretty fast internet and I'm just straight up not getting it I wonder if there's like a better router solution out there and the Wi-Fi things the little pucks also are Google assistant hubs So you can ask it questions. It's a little speaker on the bottom, which is cool And it plugs into the Google home app and everything but then I read all these reviews about this netgear or be system There's a bunch of really good ones. I got one of the higher-end ones and

The thing is five times the size of a Google HomePod. It is unbelievably obtrusive and ugly. Oh, wow. And I get...

amazing internet speed. So like, I don't want to not use it anymore because it's the best internet speed I've ever had. For like universities where you hang them from the ceiling? Yeah, I don't know. It just sits looking like an eyesore at every spot. I have three of them. One's in the garage, one in each spot. I don't know. But I got my first one gigabit per second down test. Over Wi-Fi? Over Wi-Fi. I was like, I can't switch back. I was getting like 250 from the Nest, which is like really good, but I'm paying for 900. Yeah. So I, that's,

I would do that just for it to not look as good for sure. Yeah. I don't know. I think that overall the Google event is going to be leaning more into ambient stuff, like home stuff, and just being able to make ambient more part of your world. And in fact, I'm going to make a hot take. I think a big part of TensorFlow 2.0

is going to try to be enabling more ambient features throughout your entire Google ecosystem. Because that was sort of the whole point of Tensor 1 in the first place, was like better speech-to-text and speech detection in general. I think they're going to try to take that to the next step. Because that's their master plan. We all know that. Yeah. That would make sense. So is that the theme officially? It's all coming together? Yeah.

You know how disappointed I was when Far Out from Apple didn't have any astrophotography? I'm hoping Google delivers on this one. Yeah. I'm hoping. Yeah. We'll see. Do you want to do a couple Pixel 7 speculations, like price or maybe like one random feature we don't think? Okay. Price is up. Let's do price first. Price. Same. So there's going to be a 7 and a 7 Pro. We're pretty sure. How about...

Tensor 2 Pixel 7 is $699. And 7 Pro is $899. How about that? So more expensive. Yeah. But like they're still undercutting some stuff. Yeah.

I think last year everyone liked the price of the Pixel 6 but not the Pro because you didn't get that much more in the Pro at all. A lot of people complained about the $899 price. I think they either they're going to do $599 and $849 or $599 and $799. I

I could see $799 because a $300 Delta is massive. It's gigantic. A $200 Delta is more acceptable. The iPhone only does a $100 Delta. Okay, yeah. So what's the difference going to be between Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro? They're going to have the same Tensor chip.

Telephoto camera. Or are they? Oh, wait a second. No, they'll both be Tensor 2. They'll both be Tensor 2? Yeah. Okay, because I was going to talk about how everyone's going to start copying Apple and the lower end silicon and the new phone. Because even the 6A has Tensor 1. That's true. Yeah, that would be rough. I think Google will just put Tensor in everything. Okay, so they have the same chip. Yeah. Do they have the same primary camera? Yes. So you get maybe no telephoto? That's...

In the smaller one? Okay. That's the case right now, I think. Smaller flat screen, lower refresh rate, smaller battery. Is that enough? That's not $300. That's what it was last year. That was the problem. So do they have to add some new feature to the Pro or take something out of the smaller one? What do they do to...

Or do they just lower the price of the Pro? I don't know. It seems like they're too far apart. I think they'll lower the price of the Pro. I think it'll be $799 or $849. And that the low one will stay at $599 because everyone loved that price and it moved units. It was a really good price. Okay, so lower the price of the Pro. Yeah.

- Yeah. - I like that better. I like that better than my prediction. Let's go with that. - Okay. - $599 again and nice little price drop. - $799? I can see a $200 Delta, but $300 was way too much. - $300 is way too big. - Yeah. Even though I'm still using the Pixel 6 Pro. Well, I say still. I switched back to it like a month ago or something. What else do we not know about the Pixel 7s yet?

battery size, wireless charging. We pretty much just have a picture of the back, right? Yeah. Anything different on the front this year? Hole punch under display? No. We haven't seen anything? Not expecting much. Yeah, I'm expecting hole punch again. I hope the build quality is a little bit better. Better fingerprint reader would be nice. Yeah. Pretty slow. I weirdly, I like and don't like the new bump on the back. I like that it's metal and it has like a contrast.

but i hate that it has circles for the holes i don't like the holes they're really at all the eye shape kind of weird yeah i don't know i would love to see cool new ambient stuff that we're not expecting so who knows would be great ambient computing yeah dot dot dot cindar walks on stage here at google with my sweet jacket we've been talking a lot about how to be the most helpful company in the world and we've it's all finally coming together take it away rick

Good morning. Anyway, that's pretty much it. That's our Google predictions. What does Rick say? Does he have a catchphrase? I don't think he, no. When I was at Motorola. He does. I mean, he does have a vibe, but I don't think he has a catchphrase. Yeah. He's got a vibe. I like Rick's vibe. Yeah. Yeah.

Rick is my favorite in-person presenter. Just like, yeah, he's fantastic. He's just like super passionate. Him and Craig have the same like dad energy, I think. Yeah. Oh, man. That's true. They could be next door neighbors. Easily. Yeah. I could see that. And they're just like waving their phones over the fences like, this phone's better than yours.

Well, that's pretty much it. We do have another trivia question before our break, and then we're going to actually come back and talk to some professional athletes about their thoughts on Apple Watch Ultra. These are people who haven't used the Watch Ultra, but who have witnessed the event just like we have and have reactions to it as well. I'm...

I play sport, I run and bike a little bit, but I play Ultimate Frisbee and I'm thinking about the watch purely in terms of Ultimate. But obviously there's a bunch of different sports in their videos. You have diving, mountain biking, all this stuff. That would be really cool to talk to people who actually do that heavily. So we'll talk to them after the break. But before we get there, one more trivia question.

All right. So for this next trivia question, we're going to take a trip down EV lane. So before Ford got in the way, what was the Tesla lineup supposed to spell out? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we know. We all know this. Yeah, right, Andrew? We all know this. No, I know this one. Well, I'm confused by the wording of the question. Yeah. It still spells it out. It kind of spells it. Whatever. Okay. All right. We'll get back to it.

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It's January 6th and Congress met today at 1 p.m. to certify Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election. Four years ago, you may recall, Congress was meant to do the same, but the certification was delayed when thousands of Trump supporters marched on the Capitol. The president-elect has said repeatedly, and he told NBC again last month, that he's going to pardon at least some of the insurrectionists. Those people have suffered long and hard.

And there may be some exceptions to it. I have to look. But, you know, if somebody was radical, crazy, there might be some people from Antifa there. I don't know, you know, because those people seem to be in good shape. Whatever happened to Scaffold Man? You had to be there. Antifa was actually not there four years ago, but members of several extremist groups were at the Capitol on Jan. 6th. And today on Explained, we're going to ask, whither American extremism on the eve of a second Trump administration?

Today Explained, every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Now we're going to do something kind of different, kind of interesting, kind of fun. So in the Apple Watch Ultra presentation that they showed off at the event, they specifically called out three key extreme sports slash features that they think that the Apple Watch Ultra can actually replace dedicated hardware for. Those three extreme sports were...

running, like ultra marathon running and extreme running, diving, which I think they kept using the term recreational diving is what they kept saying over and over again. I don't think they wanted to make sure that it's not going to go insane. We also want ultra to be a great tool for recreational scuba divers. And then also like mountaineering. So extreme mountain climbing will not climb. I keep saying the word climbing. It's not climbing like this with your arms going up and down for the listeners, but it's

Hiking. Hiking, yes. Going up a mountain. Going up a mountain. That takes a long, long time. Ascending. Ascending and descending. Well, hopefully descending. Yeah. Sorry. Oh my goodness. Okay. You have the SOS feature. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. So I went out and I talked to three people that do these more extreme sports.

So which one do you guys want to start with? We got the swimming, you know, diving. I'm least familiar with the water sports. Maybe we start there. The diving stuff. Yeah. I want to hear mountaineering the most. I also know who you interviewed for running and he's awesome. So let's start Scuba and then... Okay. Okay.

So, we interviewed Danny, and he is a scuba instructor off the coast of Italy. My name is Danny. I'm a scuba diving instructor, and I'm working on the island of Sardinia in Italy at the moment as a guide and diving instructor. Which is really sick. He told us that he actually dives like twice a day. Sounds like a fun job. That's awesome. Yeah. He dives twice a day. So, he was overall extremely excited about this watch.

He uses four different diving watches/computers right now. At the same time? No, not at the same time. Just like for different use cases, depending on what he's doing. Okay. But he said that his most common watch that he uses right now is a Suunto watch. I dive every day, multiple times a day, and I would use it 100%. The one I have right now is a dive watch from a company called Suunto, which is pretty famous in diving.

and the battery lasts it's not with any color or anything so the battery lasts I don't know one year one year and a half and the Suunto has a battery life of one year which is pretty crazy that's pretty good but

Of all of the different features that the Apple Watch had, he said it could pretty much replace everything that the Suunto did for him except for the battery life. Okay. Which is pretty awesome. And for people that don't know specifically, the Apple Watch Ultra has all of these different diving features. It's rated for up to 40 meters for recreational diving, which is actually the limit for recreational diving before you get into technical diving.

And then Apple says it can, it is also water resistant down to a hundred meters, which is like pretty far into the technical diving stuff. Mm-hmm.

I specifically asked him, what do you need for this kind of stuff? And is there anything that the Apple Watch couldn't do that you would need to use something different for? And he said that it can almost do everything because it has stuff like decompression time. They worked with this diving app company that already has an app on the iPhone, but now it's going to be on the Apple Watch.

Called oceanic plus yeah, they were in the keynote. They were in the keynote Yeah, the diving computers that people are using right now The UIs are pretty awful and they're these big hunky even bigger than the Apple watch looking devices on their wrist and

But he said basically the only thing that it can't do is the hardcore diving computers can mix different types of gases for you when you're diving really deep. I would definitely replace this one with the new Apple Watch Ultra and not the other one just because the other one is for technical diving. So you can change gases while you're diving and do different things, which is not recreational diving anymore. So that's the only reason why.

Because when you're just going to 40 meters, you're able to just use regular air.

But as soon as you get deeper than that, because you don't want to build up nitrogen, you have all these different things, you have to mix different gases. And those watches have like a special Bluetooth connection or something that will allow it to mix the gases for you. So it's talking to the rest of your equipment. Right. Where the Apple Watch Ultra does not currently talk to your equipment. He was saying that he's hoping that maybe at some point they might add integration. I could see that. It could be like a Peloton situation where eventually they build the software in and maybe that happens. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So this Suno that he's wearing, is this a... -Sunto. -Sunto. That's a watch he would wear all the time or he only wears it diving? -Only diving. -Okay. And so one of the most exciting things for him about the Apple Watch Ultra was that right now he has an Apple Watch Series 6, but he said he basically never uses it because he dives twice a day. And he also, he always needs to either be using the Sunto or maybe one of the other watches that he has.

And so he said like, "I just don't want to switch my watches all the time." And he doesn't use his Suunto out during the day because it doesn't really look like you're supposed to wear it. So he said something he's really excited for is that he can go do a diving session with some clients and then immediately get out and go meet his girlfriend for dinner and it won't look totally ridiculous on his wrist. And you can use it for the regular Apple Watch stuff. As you can imagine.

I stopped using my Apple Watch right now because I needed to use this one. And I just didn't want to take it on and off all the time. But if I only have one device that I can use when I go out with my girlfriend to have a meal and the next morning, and I use it to sleep, and then the next morning I come to work and I go diving and I don't need to take it off, it would be very, very good. I would appreciate it. It'll look less ridiculous. Less ridiculous. Yes. That sounds like the ideal candidate for...

for this watch. I don't know what EN 13319 certification is. They flashed it on the screen and I was like, huh, sounds official. Cool. And I sort of moved on. I don't know what that, like I don't know how many of these features or certifications are actually applicable to this. But I'll tell you what it reminds me of.

When I went out to shoot the Ascension project with David Blaine, he was strapping a bunch of balloons to his arm and ascending upper into the atmosphere where the air gets much thinner and he would have to monitor his blood oxygen levels. And at a certain point during the pre-rehearsal, he was like, Marques, the new feature on the watch this year is a blood oxygen level sensor. Shoot.

should I use that to like actually monitor my blood oxygen and then hopefully don't go hypoxic and pass out and die while strapped to the balloons? Is that something I should do? I do not want to give you medical advice about this. And that, basically my reaction was,

Okay, it's cool that it can track that, but I would use a dedicated watch that just does that because this is actually a matter of life and death and I wouldn't want you to just, oh, the watch glitched out. It turns out I'm going to die in a minute. And so you wouldn't wear that particular instrument as you come down and land and go off to a date, but the Apple Watch, if it worked well enough...

could be reassuring, you know, if it's giving you the right info. So that's what it reminds me of. I don't know how life and death some of these things are. The decompression times and all these things are obviously very important for diving. The switching gases, that's only usually used past 40 meters, you said? Yes. You don't need other gases until you get into technical diving, which is past 40 meters. Basically, in your tank, when you do recreational diving, you just have normal air compressed.

So just compressed air, normal, taken from a compressor from the outside and put in a tank is exactly as they are you breathing right now. And technical diving, you might have different gases in your tank because you need to go more, for example, deeper, you need to stay longer at a certain depth and know the compression limit that I was talking before.

If you exceed this number, let's say, then it's considered technical diving. It seems like, I think, to make that connection with what you're saying, it feels like the Apple Watch is fantasizing

for everyone who's doing, and probably why they kept saying recreational, like you said. If you are a professional doing technical diving, you're probably okay with pulling out the big guns that you're only using for that. So it honestly makes perfect sense. - Yeah, recreational is the perfect word for what Apple usually calls pro.

I was going to say that. It seems interesting because Apple sort of marketed this as the, like, are you the most hardcore person in the world? But then they use the word recreational all the time during the keynote. Yeah. It's like the edge between normal Apple Watch users and actual hardcore professionals with dedicated equipment is this blurry line of, like,

I don't know. I ran like a, I do a triathlon in my city every weekend, but obviously the watch won't last the whole time. So I, I don't use the Apple watch or like, Oh, I do actually like do some pretty intense hikes pretty regularly every summer. And it would be cool if the watch could get way points. Cause as of this current time, I don't use the watch for anything. It's like that, that gray area. It's like above average. It's above average, intense recreational, but not, you know,

100 meters down scuba like technical diving or like hiking Mount Everest. I don't think the mountains that they're showing in the keynote are necessarily the highest end, most extreme. I need three or four instruments on my wrist to keep track of if I'm going to die or not.

But I believe it's like more intense than like a hike up the mountain in Hawaii or something. Yeah. And it seems like they can do like the Apple Watch Ultra can can do like 95 percent of what the most extreme of these sports need. It's just that five percent is very important when you're in the top, top, top part of it. You know, makes sense. But we're talking about.

I don't know, 5% of the people that dive do technical diving. The other 95%, they just go, they just do diving when they go on holiday or they just do it in, if they're at least close to the sea or close to a lake or something like this. So technical diving is for very few people. And yeah. But he was extremely excited about it. He said he is definitely going to get one. Okay.

And he can see a lot of these selling, which is surprising. Oh, I can see. For divers. Yeah, but even for all of them and for the same purposes, why GoPro sells so well, and we've made the comparison, is like...

I have no doubt that it'll sell well. I want to see what the people who actually are using it, how they compare it. So I can't wait to see when he gets it and then compares it to his Suunto or whatever he's using. Yeah, the Suunto he's using now is a few years old, he said, and it's $250. I was going to ask, yeah. Yeah, but it's also quite old. He said they can get up to about $800 to $1,000. Probably you can get this one, which is still okay right now. It's pretty old, but it's still okay for maybe...

So $300 or something like this. I have another one which I use just in particular cases, a very expensive one and it's really big. It's like a big square on my wrist. Wow.

For a single-use watch. So, $250 is not crazy. Yeah, but it's kind of old. It's like three to four years old, he said. If it can mix gases and he trusts it to go up. No, it can't mix gases. Oh, it can't? The Suunto cannot. Okay. Yeah, the Suunto is going to be completely replaced for him by the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch will do everything the Suunto does and also a lot of other stuff. Okay, cool. Right.

So yeah, he was super stoked about it. He basically was like for everything that I do on an everyday basis, this is going to work. Awesome. I would definitely buy it. All right. So check in the box. Yep. All right. Who's next? Do we want to do running or hiking?

I'm curious about the running. Running? Yeah. Okay. So we interviewed Hella. He actually has a YouTube channel. He ran across America recently. He runs every single day. He's on his like 1,500 and something day of running right now. My name is Hella Sidibe and I am obsessed with running.

I've been running every day since May 15th, 2017. And after I run today will be my day. 1,946 consecutive days. I've yet missed a day. And I've also run across the US. I ran from Los Angeles, California to New York City, New York.

And I just recently did my first 100-miler trail, ultra, elevation, whatever you name it. The thing I found crazy, he finished his run across America, and then he ran the next day. We met him at the Apple event. Okay, when someone runs across America like Forrest Gump, they're taking breaks every night and then just running a bunch of miles every day? Yeah, he said he was running about 14 hours a day of running. I'm spending 8 to 14 hours a day on my feet running. Oh, wow.

Yeah, he did it in 68 days or something. But this is just high-level recreational. He's not a professional runner. I don't know what that means. I mean, if you're racing...

That's one of the sprinter. Yeah, if you are running high-level recreational way more than a normal person Which that sounds like he is then maybe he's in that blurred area Yeah, I mean he's not in the Olympics doing sprinting like 100 K's or whatever But he does he does run races and he he made sure to bring up that yeah The Apple watch ultra does have some features specifically that would be good for right? Okay, so some interesting features they're adding they're doing track racing

track monitoring detection, which is interesting. He said that that would be possibly helpful for training, but that he doesn't really run on a track. The main things that he's really excited about are things like the action button, because he mentioned that

When he's running a lot, when he's running far distances, he sweats a ton. His fingers get sweaty, he's wiping sweat off of his forehead. And then when he's trying to change things, it's all button, it's all like soft. - Touch screen. - Touch screen button based. - Yeah. - He like can't, sometimes it doesn't register. - Can't relate. - Has problems. - Yep. - So having the physical buttons was really important for him.

If you're really running and you're tired, you're sweaty, sweats are getting in your eye, you find yourself doing this, the action button is very important. I think that should be familiar with anybody active, whether you're running, you're outdoor, trail, hiker, whatever it is, just making it simple. Oh, the biggest thing, though, is like...

So when he's about to run a race, like he's gonna run a marathon or something, the Apple Watch, it's a very specific thing, but it has this countdown where you press start exercise and it goes, okay, we're starting. Three, two, one. Yeah, so this guy wears four watches because he wants to compare all of them all the time and have the data on every single. Oh, he's intense. He wears four running watches. All of the other ones have a similar action button thing. You press it, it goes.

But this one, he's like, all right, on a marathon, I got to press it three seconds before they blow the horn. You see runners on the line right before a race. Everybody has their hands on their watch, right? To hit the start. But with Apple, you got to time it where three, two, one goes by the time they blow the horn.

Or shoot the gun to go. So like when I was at New York City Marathon race start, when they were like five, four, I waited till I heard three, then I hit start. So it counts down. So it starts exactly versus waiting till I hear one. When I hear one, I can just hit boom and then go. Those watches do that. Apple doesn't do that. He also really likes the dual...

frequency GPS because he runs through cities, especially when he was doing his like across America thing. He was going through cities and stuff. When you're going through cities, the GPS is terrible. Yeah. And he loves his metrics. I'm actually excited about the new GPS also as well. The L1 plus the L5 because now you can have accuracy when you're in buildings. And sometime I will say as much as I love the other watches,

Especially Garmin, the GPS sometimes when you're in a building, you're like, there's no way I'm running at this pace. You just know it with your feel. And you're like, Apple seems a little more what I feel like I'm running by feel right now. Even though it's not picking up the GPS maybe as much as it should, but it is a little more on what you feel like your body is moving at that pace. Interesting.

big thing he loved was the battery life expansion. Actually, when I saw 36 hours, I was like, thank goodness. Like, that is big. And then when I saw the 60-hour extended potential battery, I was even like, whoa. He basically said that, like, when he was, both when he was running across America and then he also did an ultra recently, which is about 100 miles. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. It's crazy. It obviously, the watch obviously wouldn't last that long before. So it took 27 hours, 44 minutes and nine seconds.

Okay. I know. Yeah, it was... Okay. He literally passed off the Apple Watch, the dead Apple Watch, to one of his teammates who was like driving alongside him. They took it, charged it for him, and put it back on him at like mile 60. So 60.9 miles, 16 hours. That's when the Apple Watch did the 10% warning sign. So I left it with my crew at that point to charge it up, and I picked it up around mile 80-something to finish the race with. Yeah. Yeah, because it takes a while to charge. Yeah. It would take like...

a full 40 minutes of however much running you're doing. Yeah. Wow. Which is crazy. So he thinks that he would be able to do a full ultra with this, especially with the 60-hour low power mode. Which is coming later this year. Later this year. We'll have to check that out. But he was already just stoked about the 36 hours of normal usage because...

He said like 90% of the stuff he does on a day-to-day basis that will work for. The biggest thing that was an issue with me with Apple Watch was the battery life because as I got my runs longer and as I'm doing longer distance, ultra distance, the battery doesn't last as long, even the run across America.

I had to get a different watch because I don't have time to keep charging and it's wasting time because I'm spending 8 to 14 hours a day on my feet running. So to wait an hour, two hours to charge the Apple Watch was taking daylight from me. Which probably means 99% of most of what everyone else is doing. Yeah, or like 99.9, yeah. I'm getting the feeling, okay, I'm getting the feeling that the Apple Watch Ultra can cover more battery.

Close to the absolute maximum use case than it did in diving and running mm-hmm like what is the absolute peak

like critical information of like running and training it's like okay i need to measure exact timing of things it's a stopwatch it's maybe gps location and splits and pace and things like that and like the watch is already really good at that and now the dual frequency gps will be better at it battery life and battery life for long runs and if it's good enough for this guy who's running 14 hours a day across the country i don't see very many runners who

Need a separate dedicated even better running watch. Yeah, so that's tracking pretty well for me right now There's like garments and stuff that are also used for that But he's like I don't know this could he said basically the only thing that garment and a couple of the other companies he uses has over the Apple watch is

mostly battery life because those last for like weeks at a time yeah so i run with corals apex pro that's one of them and i did the transcon with this which is the garment phoenix 6 pro and then this is the wahoo element rival and i will say this one does best with a battery because i can go two weeks without charging this but the the diving was also like

It does most of the things that you want to do in recreational diving too. And the UI is way better. So yeah, I think the edge case might be a little bit wider because there are probably more recreate. They're probably more technical divers than there are people that the Apple Watch is not ultra is not enough for them for running.

Yeah, exactly. You can go beyond the diving capabilities of this watch, but it's really hard, it sounds like, to go beyond the running capabilities of this watch. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. Sorry, my guys. I was going to say, is he going to get one or not? Oh, yeah. He said he's absolutely going to get one. He was at the event.

We talked to him. Oh, and he's going to be on. They're sending him one, but he said he would absolutely, he was going to buy one anyway. Okay. Yeah. This doesn't really have to do with his running per se, but one thing he said that I thought was kind of interesting is that when he's, you know, he talked a lot about how

Most of the other running watches don't function well as a straight up smartwatch, which didn't matter a ton to him. But he appreciated that if you're out wearing a Coro or something like that, it's like a clear, clear running watch. People look at him and go, oh, you're a serious runner. If you see a Coro on my hand, you might think, oh, he's an active person. He probably runs or he probably, or Garmin, he's probably...

But if you see an Apple Watch, you might not even guess. They might just be like, oh, he just likes to have Apple Watch in his wrist to have time. Maybe use it when he needs to. But it's like a sleeper because you might think you can guess who I am, what I am, but you never know because I can be either or. So that's also fun. And he likes that if he's wearing the Apple Watch, people won't all of a sudden assume all these things about him. He said it's kind of like a sleeper and it's fun because people don't really know what he's about. Yeah. For now. Yeah.

I think that might change when the commercials show up on TV, but for now, that's an interesting... Yeah. Some of the other things, too, was that he really likes the compass and he really likes the waypoints because that was the other feature that one of the other watches had was...

If you were like going on a run that was basically also kind of a hike because you're running through a forest or something and you're doing trail running. Sure. Yeah. He said that another one of his watches has a literal like map that shows you like which direction to go.

Whereas some watches are just like go in this general direction, you know? And so like having the unlimited waypoints that you can just drop with the action button if you want to, and then having it be able to guide you back to each individual waypoint or just do a backwards. Yeah. Like it'll just take you back the same way. Backtrack. He really, really liked. But I have a reroute, like bring me back on the Garmin Corals. I just hit the Garmin one and you see yourself on the path of the map.

So I think that's really cool. It's not a compass can help, but like seeing yourself on an actual path. I think that's very important. Also the 68 decibel, like emergency 86. Yeah. I heard it in person. It's very loud. Yeah. Oh really? Yeah. Really good. Yeah. He was pretty excited about that. Cause he was like, I just feel like that if, you know, if I'm running in the middle of a forest, uh,

And I trip and like break my leg. It's a good peace of mind. It's a good peace of mind thing. So he was extremely stoked about this thing. He was going on, I think we talked to him for like 45 minutes. But it had one thing that I love, that pinging SOS. If it's like a fire station, whatever area, they can be like, this person needs help. Like they can tell that this is like a, I need help kind of noise. He was just, he was so amped.

Have you ever used a compass? Me? Like really used a compass? I haven't. On like long hikes, there are moments where you know a general direction you're going is supposed to be one way. So when you come to like a trail that's not marked very well, like it could be beneficial to think like, I know in general I'm supposed to be heading north. This trail that looks like it's heading east is probably wrong. And I just like the extra...

knowledge of that just like makes you feel a little better knowing you're probably going in the correct direction. Got it. I'm exposing how little trail hiking. I think it's like when you go a little deeper into the wilderness and like things are 10 plus miles. It helps. Okay. I'm not really an outdoorsy person, but my watch has a compass built in and I use it all the time when I'm getting off the subway in Manhattan. Oh, I know.

I need to walk north from this stop. Wow, that's really smart. So as I'm going up the stairs, I can be like, that's north. That's actually probably going to be the number one use case for me. New York City, completely like uptown, downtown. Sometimes you have to walk like half a block to know which direction. Yeah, because the GPS is so bad in cities. Like walk one block north and you're like, okay, well, what is that? You just check your watch. The double 360 to get your iPhone compass. You pick the wrong way every time. It's like USB. You just immediately walk the wrong way.

Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds like we should talk about the last one, which is hiking. Yes. So for hiking, we talked to someone named Guillermo and he hikes in Mexico all the time. He does like really intense mountaineering throughout different mountains in Mexico. Well, my name is Guillermo. I'm based in Mexico city professionally and I'm an environmental engineer. So I work on environment related stuff and

And as a hobby, I love mountain hiking. So I've been doing that for almost three years now. It started as a hobby, kind of like a pandemic hobby, I guess, early in the pandemic when everything was closed.

And, yeah, I started going out on the mountains and it has gotten pretty serious in the past year. Generally, he does like single day hikes, but he has done multi-day hikes as well. And he was pretty amped on it as well, specifically like for a lot of the same reasons as the running stuff, specifically like trail running kind of stuff. Waypoints. Super excited about the waypoints. Also, the fact that you can track...

that you route and add set points to it that's really useful in case you're doing hiking someplace you don't know the backtracking back to your spot really really really useful

The same like 86 decibel thing, you're a lot more likely to get potentially very injured like going on a mountain. So that's super important, especially since there can be multiple trails. And so if someone's not on your specific trail, but they're on a different trail, they can still hear your emergency thing going off. This alarm or siren that goes off or that you can just click a button and have the alarm sound for a

And it can be heard around 200 meters from where you are. That's really interesting. SAM NICHOLLS: Same battery life thing. It's like, if I'm doing a day and a half hike or a two-day hike,

I can actually, this will actually last. Within the mountain hiking people, you don't see a lot of Apple Watch on the mountain because battery life just sucks. I was really excited about the bump in battery life, 36 hours. I think it's more than enough for, you know, not professional, but kind of people that are more into mountain hiking and that, you

tend to be in the mountain for a whole day, I guess that 36 hours will be enough. Is there a previous type of watch that someone doing these hikes was most likely to use? It seems like Garmin kind of wins the running and the hiking and apparently also the scuba diving category right now. It's my smartwatch. It's a Garmin Forerunner 645. I bought it in late 2019, if I'm not mistaken.

And it has been my best friend since for hiking and keeping track of everything. MARK MANDEL: Garmin's quaking. FRANCESC CAMPOY: Right. When we said that-- when we did that episode last week or the week before, and we were like, is this the Garmin killer? I think Garmin's actually freaking out. MARK MANDEL: Well, Garmin sort of stepped a little bit, funny enough, down into smartwatches a year ago or earlier this year.

And so I think that was a little bit of foresight of them going, you know, when Apple steps up into a more sports-focused watch, that's going to take a bite out of our watch stuff. So we need to step in first. So that was interesting to see. Garmin's a name I definitely see.

see the most in this type of stuff. I don't think that, you know, they need to be completely afraid because, again, the Apple Watch only works with iPhones. And the rest of the world, iPhones are not nearly as popular as they are in the U.S. Massive point. So it actually might be to Apple's advantage at some point to allow some sort of linkage between an Android phone and an Apple Watch device.

Wasn't there a feature? Maybe it was just the SE. Wasn't there a thing where you could just get a new family member just a watch? Yeah. Yeah. And that was if you already have an iPhone. Yeah, it's for like kids, I think. The SE like cellular and it gave you like some basic, I don't know if it's going to go do waypoints and stuff like that. Yeah, the calculus they need to do now is basically like our iPhone

Is people wanting this watch going to also drive the sale of iPhones or is it the other way around? Because like I could like all of these people, basically all of these people told me the Apple Watch Ultra is going to replace my dedicated thing except for my super crazy dedicated thing for the like top 1% of what we do. So it sounds like they're going to sell a lot, but again, only to iPhone users. Yeah.

Which is kind of a weird calculus, right? Yeah. Do you see Apple ever changing that? I don't really see them. Probably not. Yeah. Probably not, but AirPods also work with Android phones, so there's that. But I guess they're Bluetooth and that's more of a standard. Yeah, that's the simplest version, but as soon as you get into the watch level of complication, uh-huh.

Then you end up with like, it's more of a beacon to come over this side of the wall in the walled garden. Oh, would you like to use this cool watch? Well, come over here where the iPhones live. Oh, would you like to make FaceTime calls? Here's like a little web version for Android, but like come over here. It's nicer over here. But internationally, it could be kind of hard for Apple to like move people over to an iPhone just to be able to get the $800 watch. Right. So, yeah.

Could be a thing to think about. Do you guys have any questions about any of the specific sports? Well, I'm just fascinated. I know that they showed a lot of sports in the presentation. They had the Ironman, which is like there's biking in there, swimming, running, obviously trail running, hiking, climbing, diving, all this stuff.

So as someone who only does a small fraction of that, it's cool to see that this is actually pretty promising. I went on YouTube channels of like each of these different extreme sports, like the biggest people that do each of these sports and pretty much all of them have a video about the watch ultra. That seems like the perfect enthusiast recreational group. Yeah. Seems like it's a, and I think that Garmin and, and Suunto need to actually start getting nervous. Yeah.

So they're definitely thinking about it. They're thinking about the Apple watch. Yeah. Sick. All right. Well, definitely stay tuned. I do plan on eventually reviewing the Apple watch ultra. And of course it'll, I'll go through practice with it. I'll try to get it muddy and see what happens. Um, but until then,

That's it for this episode. That's it for this week. Well, we do have one more trivia thing to do. No, we have answers. They're whiteboards. Are we finally revealing? Spoiler. Are we going to reveal the whiteboards yet? Yeah, we are. Take them out, everybody.

Now introducing the new Waveform Media podcast, Whiteboards, made by our friends at dbrand. These are the hottest non-products of the fall. You can't buy them, but you can stare at them beautifully on our video podcast. Now introducing a new level of fairness into Waveform trivia, for now and forever.

The timing on that was impeccable. Thank you. I was waiting so long to hear the full version of that song. Yeah. That was good. Only for special moments. I have the beta tested whiteboard that doesn't have the waveform thing on top. We should really get four of these. Wow, this is good. Look at this. Hold on. I'm going to write a word. See that? So you can read what I wrote and then... Wow.

It works. Literally everything is deep-rendered. The pens, the erasers. This is kind of next level. Okay, I'm ready for the... So, we'll get to write our answers. Here's how we're going to do it. I'm going to reread the question. All of you are going to write your answer on the whiteboard. Okay. And then, one by one, you're going to flip your boards around and read the answer you wrote aloud. Also, make sure when you flip, do not flip like this. Flip like this. Right side up. Okay. Is there a time limit to how long I have to write?

uh fifteen seconds or something sure yeah okay about 15 you know we'll play with it all right all right let's do uh the softball one first so before ford intervened what word was the tesla lineup supposed to spell out david why don't you uh flip it around first right at the camera for the audio listeners what does that say can the camera even see this i don't know if i can see it you gotta write bold letters it's

Oh, that's out of focus if you hold it too far forward. Oh, that's true. But yeah, we can crop in on you. What does it say? Sexy. Correcto. Wonderful. Andrew, another sexy. Sexy, yeah. There's my answer right there. Sexy. Oh, and even pointed at the three Ns. I feel like my confusion was...

The Ford interrupting it? So Ford has a patent on the Model E. Oh, okay. So they couldn't use E, so they did 3 instead. But the Model 3 was supposed to be called the Model E. I did not know that. Wait, really? Yeah.

Yeah. Why isn't it? Because Ford sued them. Yeah, you can't use it. Oh, sorry, Model 3. Sorry, yeah. Ignore that. I thought you meant the Ford, the Mach-E, not the Model 3. But wait, no, now there's Cybertruck and Roadster, so now it's S3XY Roadster. They ruined it. Cybertruck, SemiTruck, RCS. RCS. Sexy RCS. Sexy RCS. Oh my. Now you know. Now you know.

The real plan for Elon this whole time. Elon loves Google. Bring RCS back. Elon loves Google. All right. All right. Question number two. In June of 2021, Apple began offering the ability to stream lossless audio on Apple Music. Which model of AirPods are able to play Apple Music lossless audio? Okay. I've written my answer. All right.

Marques, you want to flip around first this time? Sure. Here's my answer. AirPods 2. AirPods 2. Oh, that's the wrong number there. Andrew, you want to give it a shot? I have AirPods Max with wire. David, you want to? That's so annoying. If I don't have that answer, do I lose? Still got to flip it around. AirPods 3.

- Wow. - All right. - Maybe, we never know. We'll come back to that later. - This one was supposed to be a trick question because the answer is actually none of them. Because lossless audio over Bluetooth is a thing that only Qualcomm chips can do. But Andrew came through with the wire, AirPods Pro Max can in fact do, are they not Pro Max? - No, they're just Max. - AirPods Max. - Oops. - Is it just, is it any service?

Yeah, it's any service. Anytime you're using wireless headphones, you are listening to lossy audio. I just want to note, though, that to do lossless with the wire with the AirPods Max, you have to do a lightning to USB-C and then either USB-C into the computer or USB-C to headphone jack adapter. Yeah. Don't they come with a lightning? It's a lightning to headphone jack. No lightning to lightning.

Oh, do they come with a lightning to headphone jack? No, no, there's a lightning to jack. Yeah. Oh, they do. Does it come with that cable? But you're right that your iPhone doesn't. Wait, they come with a lightning to headphone jack adapter? Because the iPhone doesn't have a headphone jack. Yeah, but the iPhone doesn't have a headphone jack, so. This is so dumb. Yeah, so the headphones are lightning and the phone is lightning, but there is no lightning to lightning. Yeah, but you can listen to AirPods Max on things other than an iPhone. But you can't use Apple Music. Yeah.

You can only use Apple Music on a Mac or a... Yeah, on a Mac. Oh, on a Mac. Either way, Andrew still beat my trick question. Why wouldn't they do lightning to lightning so that you could directly connect to your... Yeah. They hate us. I guess they just really don't want people to plug in. Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much. Which is funny because we were plugged in at Apple Campus for the podcast. I didn't see the other end. There was a connector behind it. Wow. I almost pulled it out. Well, the more you know. Well, that was fun. We got our points. I'm falling behind now. Dang, Andrew. Yeah, final score. Marquez, seven. David, four. Andrew, nine. Am I four because I just haven't been on enough shows?

What? Like, did we balance my score? No, these are unbalanced scores. Oh, wow. We don't have your percentage. We don't have your make percentage, but you have your total makes. So that's pretty good. Yeah.

Anyway, well that's been I'm glad we did the whiteboard thing shout out to the comments that suggested this as a way to act Oh, yeah, I YouTube username burn. Yeah, this was your idea You had this idea in late May so it took us a while, but here we are baby I hope that you're watching again. We did it Apple style We took a minute and we properly executed on the idea and thank you for to dbrand for Yes for everything. Yeah, I

appreciate you thank you for to tim for making that oh yeah and tim for designing him help design it these are beautiful yeah thanks i can't wait for more trivia questions we should do just a trivia episode where we just rock oh my god yeah yeah i have a plan for that before right okay perfect well until the next one thanks for watching and thanks for listening to this episode it's still tech timber so there's a lot more around the corner and a lot more to get into in the tech world it's a good time to be a nerd catch you in the next one peace wait for

waveform is produced by adam molina and ellis rovan we are partnered with vox media podcast network and our intro outro music was created by vane sill