Modular Tech is Cool Again!
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the Rivian already kind of proves that the R1S and the R1T are the same thing, just with a different top on it. Pretty close, yeah. So, like, this is just the cheaper, different version of it. Don't you dare sneeze, Ellis. I'm sorry, I tried to stop it.

Yo, what is up people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast. We're hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew and I'm Nintendo switch. It's not funny anymore. I think we did it one too many times. That's fair. Now too too many times. Too too many times. Switch too many times. I'm David.

Today, we've got... Damn, this is good SEO. Nobody... No, we have a lot of stuff. Attention grab. Everyone's unhappy about this, including me. Insane intro, guys. I don't know how we're going to get through this pod. No, there was a lot of stuff this week. There was a lot of headlines. There was some new phones. There was some new EVs, new companies, new headlines, new disasters. New IO. New potential clowns and crowns. All kinds of things happening. Yeah, new IO. Yeah. So it's been a lot.

But I do want to at least ask, did you guys actually pre-order the Switch 2? Because the date has come and gone. Yes. I remember...

You did not. No. You did. You guys all were talking about it and I had some FOMO, but then I also didn't feel like opening my laptop. So I must not be that interested. It was at midnight ET. So it was pretty, pretty annoying. I remember. Yeah. I remember I was, I was somewhere on the West coast and I remember seeing that the work slack was popping off at 9 PM. And I was like, that's kind of weird. Isn't it midnight over there? And then I was like, oh, it's because the switch. Yeah. Yeah. So pretty much every single website exploded as usually happens when things get dropped, the orders get dropped. Um,

Ironically, I think that these websites were releasing batches of orders. So like Walmart at 1225 randomly, you could just start buying them again. And I actually had ordered one through Target and then they canceled my order 20 minutes later. So then I had to go to Walmart.

Anyway, ironically, a lot of people had the most success just going to the physical stores because GameStop was open at like 11 the next day and people just went to the GameStop and there was like eight people in line and everyone's like, oh.

People are not used to you like buying things. I think that actually more would have been the smartest route Yeah, go to a GameStop at 11:00. Yeah, cuz they have certain allocations. So Anyway, we probably won't talk about this again until someone actually out Yeah until it's actually out but at least one switch has been secured. So that's great. Yes Okay, we got to talk about this slate truck. I

We got all, we have so many thoughts on this slate truck. I was trying to come up with an analogy actually for it. And I think there's actually like four or five correct analogies. One of them I think Ellis will really like.

I think it's the iPhone 12 mini of trucks. I need to hear this out. I also think it's the Zenfone 9 of trucks. I also think it's the Project Aura of trucks. Yes. There are many things. But first we should just explain what it actually is. I said the Spirit Airlines of trucks. That's another good one. The Spirit Airlines of trucks. Oh, that's true. Choose your own adventure.

so the slate truck what it is it's fascinating uh they started making headlines uh as it was fully unveiled out of like stealth mode nobody kind of saw this coming yeah but it was a new company with a new proposition for a vehicle it's a electric truck but it is the ultimate most bare bones truck possible and then you can customize your way into the truck that you want so this base truck will be 27 000

after incentives, maybe about 20 grand. Will be. Will be, allegedly. Allegedly. And it'll be completely empty, bare bones, no stereo, no displays, no tow hitch. It has no paint. It's just plastic, molded plastic. And if you want to change the color, you can wrap it. And if you want to add a display, you can add it. If you want to add a speaker, you can do that. If you want to add power windows, you can do that. But it is fully blank to start.

So the appeal is obvious. It's cheap and it's customizable. Yeah. It's also small. Well, that's debatable. It's small for sure. So it's a two-seater with a small bed, but you could actually even potentially do the add-on that turns it into a sedan. You could like bolt on like a roof and some more seats. Like a crossover. Like a crossover, yeah. I also would argue the bed's not, it's a five-foot bed. It's...

Bigger than a Rivian bed. So a five foot bed, but only a two seater cab. Yeah. So yeah, a small truck. Same size as a Rivian truck bed?

give or take the rivian's like a four and a half foot bed it looks very small which makes me very happy because in japan they have all those tiny trucks and i really want there's like the they're called key trucks i was looking this all up this morning yeah they're so cool there are so many people that like the subaru ones that are the subaru ones awesome it's like the subaru san ham i think or something um but like people import these into the u.s because they're like

fairly cheap. They're manual. They're easy. The truck bed is big enough for a lot of things that wouldn't fit into the back of a big SUV. It's pure function. I think someone said they're banned in New York State.

the imported i've seen in my town new jersey yeah in new york city i forget the exact rule but you're not allowed to have them yeah in new york city and they're pronounced k trucks k trucks yeah okay a video i watched said key truck so well they are kei so so just a couple other like baseline specs to get it out the way the essential baseline version is rear wheel drive single motor

roughly 150 miles of range. You can upgrade to an all-wheel drive drivetrain. I think that's something that they would do, not you. You can also upgrade to a larger battery, which can get you about 240 miles of range. Yeah, it's actually an additional battery that they put in there. They just add battery. They added an additional battery. A whole other battery.

And yeah, there's just, if you go on their website, you can play with the customization. Oh, wait, they do have that? I want to make the most expensive slate possible? Well, so that's the thing, Andrew. Oh, you can't do that yet? You have no idea how expensive the most expensive slate is because you don't know how much the extras cost. All you know is that they cost extra.

So they give you the base price, which gets the headlines really going. And so, oh, this is a $20,000 truck. Yeah, sure. But we don't know. I mean, I assume the business model is higher margins on accessories and eventually building you up to a $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 truck when you spec it the way you want. But, you know, that's not the appeal. The appeal is it's customized. It's exactly what you want. It's not too much. It's small.

I would love to go through the analogies now of why this is the insert blank here of trucks. Spirit Airlines, I think, is the obvious one because, you know, the Spirit Airlines thing is... The basis of it is I want a...

a vehicle that drives and has a bed and every other thing out the spirit airlines is i want to fly to a place yeah yeah do you want to keep your shoes on probably another 30 bucks like that bag four inches too big

More monies. Yeah. Would you add power windows back? No. You keep the rolling windows. I love rolling windows down, man. What? Manually hand cranking that shit. Actually? Oh, yeah. I said the same thing. Everyone said I was crazy. No, it takes me back to a simpler time. I think. When I was in my dad's truck and I had to do this, you know? Okay, one, how often are you opening your windows? All the time. It's warm out.

Dude, it's getting to the point where windows open and highway driving is like definitely not worth it. Not on the highway. One, two, it's almost too hot already. The other thing is it's about to rain and your passenger side window's open. You gotta pull over. Just reach across. One foot on the wheel. One foot on the gas. One foot in the grave. You know what I mean?

It's plastic. That's what they say. You can just wipe it right off. Yeah, that, it's, okay, that's an option. Yeah, you probably add the stereo back, I'm guessing. You probably add. I forgot the stereo. That one's pretty gross. Yeah, it doesn't have a stereo or a touchscreen, which is very funny, but it does come with a phone mount. And you can, it also has a speaker mount, so you can just put a JBL flip in there. Which is, you know, that's something you could do. That's fine. I gotta say, their website is like, so cool. Yeah.

There are 25 options right on their website showing all the things that you can do with it. And there's definitely one of these that will appeal to every single person on the planet. Yeah. Which is very cute. Everyone except people who buy trucks. Okay, their SEO is terrible because I literally cannot find the website. I'm trying. Oh, it's because Slate is also a publication. And it's also just like...

pulling everyone else's slate.auto just type that in okay thank you yeah so okay spirit airlines analogy makes perfect sense okay here's why i think it's the i'll go next with the uh the iphone 12 mini i would love to try this one okay let's hear it um and this is similar to the zen phone but

In the U.S., where most people buy trucks, where the most popular vehicle is the Ford F-150, where the second most popular vehicle is the Silverado, and where people buy massive trucks all the time, not because they're forced on people, but because that's what people just want, a small truck like this will have a very enthusiastic niche community that loves it.

But that community will not be large enough to keep it on sale for long enough to sustain, just like the iPhone 12 mini. It lasted two generations and then it was canceled for what? A plus, a bigger phone because people buy bigger phones.

And in the U.S., which is where this company is apparently supposed to be based, where the factory is going to be, where manufacturing is going to be, where they're going to start selling. People just don't buy small trucks. I have a counter argument. Yeah. But I also have a counter to my counter argument. I'm ready. Okay. My counter argument would be a lot of the people in the U.S. that buy trucks don't use the truck anymore.

Like they don't use the value of the truck. Most of them. Everyone who buys a truck in the U.S. does not use it. Not everyone. Carpenters. 99.9999%. Correct. And I think that like the basis of this car is that it's a truck, but that's only because you can add things onto the back to make it a different kind of car. You know what I mean?

So it starts as a truck, but you can turn it into a crossover. You can turn it into like a roll cage thing. You can turn whatever you want. So it's like, yes, it's a truck, but it's also everything else, which I find interesting. Also, people in like smaller, well, not smaller cities, but people in cities who kind of like want the flexibility of a truck.

but they don't want to use the truck all the time. Like having a smaller one like this is really cool. I just love that idea in general. I like, wait, sorry, were you finished with that? I forgot my counter to my counter. Oh, I thought that was the counter to your counter already. I can give you the counter to that counter. Well, I think like going off of what he said almost is the counter to his counter where it is like this because it's cheap and because it's super bare bones. If you're someone who like,

does need the bed of a truck times like right now my brother-in-law parks this like 1995 f-150 in my yard because both of us use it here and there and he bought it for like two grand and it's falling apart but it just you know it keeps you on the road for like a couple hours of like one day every two months you need it yeah like if you were to buy a

of like sedan that was your everyday commuter car and then this you could get that for way cheaper than an f-150

And like this, this bed space is a little smaller, but I think most people using the bed space of a truck don't need the giant one. If you're towing, this is never going to be your tow truck. So my question also becomes like, how difficult is it to take off the attachments and stuff? Because most of the time I would probably want to use it to look like kind of like a Subaru, like a crossover. Yeah. But then sometimes if I was helping my friend move, I'd be like, time to break out the truck part. So I don't think that one will be easily removable. I think if you're turning it into a giant,

Jeep, the way it kind of looks, I think that's a more permanent alteration, kind of like the drivetrain alterations. They said they wanted to make it easy to do your own modifications for the car, except for things that had high voltage. My guess, if it's... There's a back that looks kind of similar to the old Bronco, which is a bigger version of this, but kind of similar to where it was a truck where it had this detachable roof on the back, and the seats could come out and it could kind of be... So I think there might be one of these...

You know, they're just showing a bunch of different ways to do this, but some of these...

enclosures in the back end seats looks like they may be possible to get taken out maybe yeah and then this is all speculating because they kind of don't have answers for us on the website yeah I wish there was a builder I wish I would play with this for hours if there was a full where is it the builder appears once you reserve one I have to pay $50 to play with it which I did I reserved one same and so they sent me a link to play with the builder hold on Slate hear me out okay

add the builder before the reserve thing and I can guarantee you will get more reservations. There's like keyboard sites that do this where you can customize all the different parts and I play with it so many times that eventually I just bought one. Like I had customized one like 50 times and went, I just have to press buy this time. But they need the $50 to pay for the server calls to run that builder. I bet you it would

result in more reservations if they let you customize all the things even without showing prices just like an idea and messing around with it yeah so it is so that is the thing it is a 50 reservation yeah i think they will get a lot of 50 reservations judging by how often i've seen it on social media and how often i've seen people talking about it there's already plenty of people reserving it i'm interested in this and you can get in line for 50 if you don't like the price at the end you can cancel but it's just like 50 bucks yeah sure let's throw in let's see what happens

I was going to say, where can you cancel? Because I was looking and I cannot find it. I haven't looked yet. Maybe it's really hard to cancel. I don't know if you can. I think you have to do the whole contact us, go through the whole process. I'm sure once they come out with the builder and you realize the price of the truck you want is $40,000, they'll have to give you a way to cancel.

We'll see. Maybe I'm just out 50 bucks. I really hope. I mean, the 50 bucks is gone. I don't think I'm going to get that back. This is NACS as well, right? Yeah, it is. That's pretty cool. It's funny. There's a couple EVs I've started to see shipping that are finally...

allegedly nacs native the new ev6 refresh is nacs native yeah i'm getting off topic i was going to give you the counter to your counter oh which is you you said uh counterpoint most people in the us who buy trucks don't use it as a truck yeah and my counter to that counter is that's never stopped anyone from buying yeah yeah you're forgetting me

They just buy the truck and that's true, so it's not like oh, you know I just realized I have this truck But I don't really use it for truck things. Maybe I'll get a smaller one. No they all just I mean they have a really cool comparison thing here where they show it versus a Silverado a Maverick and a 1985 Toyota SR5 pickup and it shows like a size comparison It's like it's only like two-thirds of the size of the Silverado Yeah, and it's smaller than the mass smaller than the Maverick which is already a small truck and

And then it's about the same size, slightly bigger than the 85 Toyota SR5. So, I don't know. I could probably park this in Brooklyn is all I'm saying. No, you could. Okay. My other two analogies real quick. Okay. It's the Project Aura of trucks. Yes. You remember Project Aura. Oh, absolutely. What happened to Project Aura? You know, Google happened to Project Aura. Can you explain Project Aura? Project Aura was the dream of a fully modular smartphone.

where you could, you know, parts would get old and you just pop it out and pop a new piece in. Oh, speaker got old? Speaker upgrade. I'll just buy the new module. Oh, it's getting a little slow? I'll pop the CPU module out, drop a new one in. Or storage. My counter argument to that is that like,

we all know that those really specific techie parts don't work very well together where like something like an EV just needs to be a good base and then you pretty much can just put stuff on top because like the Rivian already kind of proves that the R1S and the R1T are the same thing just with a different top on it pretty close yeah so like this is just a cheaper different version of it don't you dare sneeze Ellis

I'm sorry. I tried to stop it. I agree. I think the modular part that is closer to Project Aura is that, again, it's mostly a small niche group of people that actually care about and buy with that in mind. I guess all I wanted to say is I think this is a better chance than Project Aura did. I think Project Aura has zero chance ever. Oh, yeah. That's fair. That's very fair. Project Aura was...

Like a nerd's dream, but it was a nerd's dream because we are all like, this is very unlikely to actually work technically, but it is still a cool idea. Project Aura was like the pinnacle of Kickstarter campaign. Cool videos back then was in like the peak of that time. It was like, you can sell on the market and you can sell different pieces. You can 3d print things. You can do this. And I was like, this is the ultimate.

Yeah, but there's just not a market for that. Yeah, it was kind of the same thing where it was such a cool, universally approved idea that the video about it went viral outside of the regular tech community. And people were like, oh yeah, modular phone, yeah. The iPhone doesn't do this, Android phones don't do this. We all think this is a great idea. But when it came time to actually support it and buy it,

- There just wasn't enough. - Yeah, I got a couple things about this too. I know that it says it's $20,000. There's just no way, like both, one, they're trying to get rid of the federal tax incentive, so by the time this actually comes out, that'll probably be gone. - 27, so it'll be 27,000 without the incentive. - Yeah, right, 27,000. - You could get a Ford Maverick brand new right now for like 24. - Yeah, but is it electric? - It's a hybrid.

Also, like the whole point is that it's a blank slate that you can add on things onto. And so they're selling you this dream of modularity. But again, they are not saying how much any of those pieces cost. So it's getting all these headlines because it's like, oh, $20,000 modular truck. By the time you actually kid it out the way you want it to be, it's probably going to be over 40K.

Like I'm thinking, you know, I mean, there's a reason they're not telling you the price of the modules right now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then last thing I just wanted to know, it's it is interesting that they are doing it this way because I was reading about this and apparently different parts of the process of making a car are expensive in different ways. And one of them is like

painting is apparently an incredibly expensive part of the process. And so, you know, you would look at car modifications like when you're buying a car and it's like $2,000 for paint. What the heck? Apparently it costs a lot of money to paint cars. So not even painting these cars and then just giving you like the bare bones, like injection, like plastic instead of having metal everything. So yeah, I mean, I think it has promise and I think there's a high probability that they will actually ship this thing.

which is not something I have...

I think I've said about almost every, any electric startup before. Tell me why you think that. Because I've done a good amount of digging now and I've read about this company and about the fact that they have a factory building that they've acquired that they're going to tool up. And apparently it doesn't need as much tooling to do the plastic as the metal. But you really are convinced. I mean, they're saying winter 2026, which to me sounds... That is soon. To me, first of all. Okay. Yeah.

Slate is an anagram for Tesla. I know. And I just need everyone who's been making fun of the Tesla Roadster not coming out for seven years and then it's suddenly on board for the Slate. I need you all to realize the irony of that, please. I need you all to understand that they're the same thing. Yeah. The same thing? Okay, but...

One's a company that definitely could have put that out already, but they just keep your money, $50,000. Yeah, Tesla had a history up until that point of actually delivering what they said they would as far as hardware. Slate doesn't. And so to me, they are currently in the same exact category as Canoe, as Fisker doesn't really count. No, I would compare Canoe perfectly. Like the companies that never got there.

And I would say that, you know, we want to believe in them. But the Tesla anagram is so funny to me because it's like, OK, this is it's a slate. It's a new slate or whatever. But it's the same letters as Tesla. Yeah, that's funny. It is very funny. But yes, I I'm rooting for it because I think they have a chance at actually shipping this. But I'm curious how confident we can actually be in that. Guys, what if I told you there's a car on the market right now that is expensive?

It doesn't have quite as low a baseline, but it's just about as configurable and customizable and modular as the Slate truck. It has an extra five, excuse me, it has an extra 45 inches of space in the back. It can have as many seats and two extra seats added as part of its modularity. And it can tow 6,900 pounds with the right engine option. It's a buzz.

No, because it's only 40 inches longer than the slate truck. It's a small bus. 40-ish inches. This car exists. Four feet is pretty big. It's still smaller than an F-150. What is this car? It is the Ford Transit Van, baby. Oh, the Transit Van. So it's not electric, but I think it says a lot that...

People are geeking about this truck when people you really needed all of these things Yeah, it's been on the market since the 50s. I think but it has a roof to it. Yeah It's you can't turn that in vertical space that you don't get I think that's I don't think that's the truth just because like here's the thing right when you go to Europe and

Where there are just as many plumbers, there are just as many carpenters and electricians. You never, ever, ever see a pickup truck on the road. Ever. Ever. Nowhere. And it's because that, quote unquote, like, I think you could argue it actually get more vertical space.

I physically do not think you can argue that. It literally has no top and a top. I know, but you can't just stick things infinitely up in the air on a truck bed. Not infinitely. I know, but a lot of Ford transit vans are almost tall enough that you or I could pretty much stand up straight in it, right? You're not going to get something six feet sticking out of a truck bed without it being really annoying to drive. Also, flex for six feet tall. Okay.

If you say you're coming, you're not really six feet. But you know what I mean? I think there's just like an aspect of freedom in that where there are things that happen in there that you couldn't fit in an enclosed space. And I know what a transit vent is. Yeah. Maybe an open trailer is better than both.

I think the vertical space limitations of the van are vastly overrated. I don't disagree. Think about what driving a truck with seven feet of pallets in the back would be like. I'd so much rather have five feet of pallets with a roof over that and no air flowing through it. Yeah.

I think that people just really like the idea of modular anything. And it is much easier to get funding when you can say, look at your freedom. You can do whatever you want. Oh, yeah. Look at these pre-orders. I think there's also...

In that sense, the separation from a truck bed and a transit van where you're all inside, like I'm going to bring this up just because this is the best mock-up they have on this. It's mulch ado about nothing. A fake mulching company where having things in the bed of your truck like

manure is better to have outside of your truck than inside of your car. I think, and I just want to say that because I think the way this succeeds is for smaller local companies that can buy a like absolute baseline of this truck, wrap it in their company logo and do things like handymanning with a ladder sticking out of the, like handymanning, landscaping, small things like that that don't involve towing, do involve a bunch of, you know,

crappy tools and stuff that you don't that are dirty in the back of your truck if it's a really good platform like and it's a business expense in theory like you'll save so much money on repairs that it actually makes a lot of sense but i do feel strongly that if you're the kind of person who needs these things in a vehicle that vehicle already exists and you probably already own it

Yeah, I think the best case version of this, if it succeeds and they actually ship this thing in a year or two, however long it takes...

I think one, it could be a little commuter for people. You know, 150 miles of range is not much. You're not going to do road trips with it. But I think you could use it as a small commuter, especially in, you know, going around New York City and like actually parking the thing and not having a huge truck. Yeah. And I think two, yeah, like the local business who needs to actually transit like a small amount of things. It's not going to tow people.

five lawn mowers like a 10,000 pounds or whatever but it can actually be a functional truck bed and you can be the the imaginary because again like very few people actually take advantage of a giant truck like yeah very few people and uh as a counterpoint to your your van thing can you tailgate in the commuter van i don't think bro

Are you kidding me? You could put a disco ball in there? You could throw a party in the back of your van. I don't want it to be air conditioned. I want to feel the sun on my skin. Haven't you ever seen anything from the 60s with the VW vans? It's like they're party machines. Sure, fair enough.

enough but I want to sit in the bed very important all right I love how that was like 30 ish minutes on something that may or may not come out yeah yeah I think it's I mean it's super interesting I think it's like really hard to not

find this interesting in some sense i'm just excited for people to get really mad when they announce the prices of everything oh yeah yeah would you say it's closer to project aura in that it never ships but has a lot of interest or closer to a zen phone 9 or iphone 12 mini where it does come out starts to ship and then we discover exactly how small the demand actually is b uh

with B because one thing we didn't mention is this is backed by Amazon right it's backed by Bezos allegedly I don't know it's got some money behind it it seems like I think it will release I just think that it's not gonna be as like good or cool as people think

make it out to be. Also, this is one of those things where people are like, yeah, take out all the stuff. I don't need that in my car. I don't need that in my car. And then when you start driving around without a screen and without a stereo system. The light phone rolling those windows up. Hey, I'm down for that, okay? That's the one exception. Okay. I gotta get those arms moving, you know what I mean? Don't go,

Yeah, you got to work it up so you can watch all those YouTube videos. Exactly. Of course. Like I posted a video, by the way. Dude, it was so sick. You got to crank in the car so you can crank at home. You know what I mean? Okay. All right. I think that's our best way to move on to the next one. Zero segue. Did you see OnePlus backed off their price hike of the OnePlus Watch 3? I did see that. And they're refunding people who paid it.

Yeah. So it would be a $500 watch, and then all the headlines came out, and they were like, whoa, $500? What's going on? And some amount of people did pay the $500, and then they decided, okay, we're actually going to walk it back to be $349 up from $329. And so if you pay the $500, we'll give you your $151. Maybe some people paid the $500. I'm wondering if anyone did, right? Because it's possible they didn't sell any. Two or three people? Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, but they...

Moved it up by $20, so now it's $349. And they said that they figured out some supply chain adjustments that

So that they can keep the price where it is. And they said they are not going to raise the price anymore, which is interesting. So they're basically just saying, even if tariffs come for us, we will eat the cost. I think it's like a goodwill thing. Like this was a pretty horrible move by them. And I think moving it back and then saying it will stay the same price now. Yeah. It's just a move from them to not get people really angry at refunding people as a classy move to. Yeah. I mean, definitely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Good job, OnePlus. So that was funny. Speaking of tariffs and prices. Speaking of tariffs. Okay. This is a funny story because I saw this in the Slack when it first was like hitting the news, which was Amazon's going to start showing how much the tariffs are increasing the price of the things you buy. And my immediate reaction was,

I thought I said like two weeks ago on the podcast, there's no way anyone does that. So this is really crazy. Amazon, this is really crazy. And now it turns out it doesn't seem like that was actually real, but it is still something that people started talking about, which was what if they did it?

might have been real it's kind of hard to say from what i've seen it seems like it was only ever for amazon hall which is like specifically a timu kind of that is according to amazon representatives okay yeah yeah i never saw what that was and the reason it blew up is because someone asked in a press briefing yeah that's gonna do this they said it was a hostile and political act and then all hell broke loose on all of it it would make sense to do it on like amazon hall because that's

like we've all seen Teemo and Teemu and stuff like that where it's just like

straight from china super super cheap and like that's obviously going to get hit the hardest yeah um yeah what they had apparently considered doing it with amazon hall this is allegedly from the amazon spokesperson that they had had talks about maybe doing that for amazon hall but it was never approved and they were definitely not going to do it for regular amazon yeah according to amazon i just yeah that that makes sense i you know okay a direct from china thing we'll

like label things that are more expensive with tariffs, but I just can't see them ever doing it on main Amazon because that almost removes one of your levers to like changing prices. When people see tariffs go down, they'll go, okay, now the price should go down. Right. And when tariffs go up, they'll understand the price goes up, but they'll want you to drop it down again. Once the tariffs go down, it would be nice. It's kind of like how the price of everything went up during COVID. And then a lot of companies just kept the prices high because they knew they could. Yeah. So,

Which is why they'll never show it. Exactly. Yeah. That's why the groceries are expensive. That's why the eggs are $1,000. Yeah.

Speaking of tariffs. Yeah. Oh my God, there's so many. Okay, one more story. This was, it showed up in my inbox. There was a, I got an email from Bowers & Wilkins. Yeah. And you know Bowers & Wilkins, they make like high-end audio products. BMW. They make speakers, they make headphones as well. Yeah. Have you seen some of their headphones? Oh yeah. For like five, six, $700. Yeah, the PI8 in here, PIX8. Really pricey. So they emailed me and they said, hey Marques, here's some information about these new headphones we're coming out with.

They're called the PX7 S3. I said, oh, I've heard about the S2s. They're really expensive. I'll see what's new. I read through the email and they tell me everything that's new with them. And then they say, by the way, we are not announcing a price.

And we aren't because of the uncertainty of the tariff situation, and so we're not going to be giving that information at this time. Yikes. Instead, we'll have a notify me button on the website, and as soon as we have them on sale, you'll get an email. Yikes. And that's the first time I've seen that happen. Probably a smart move, to be honest. Well, yeah. I mean...

When I think of Bowers and Wilkins and $700 headphones, I think that they've priced in quite a bit already. I don't know that they're on like the thin, razor thin margin of like, have we accounted for the tariffs or not? But the tariffs have been that crazy. So maybe that is going to affect them. But yeah, that's the first time I've seen a product announced where they're straight up going, here's a new product. Here's all the information about it, except for the price. We don't know. Tariffs are going crazy. What about the slate truck?

Well, they have a base price at least. Yeah. So, and then to round it out, Ellis, you had a tariff story you wanted to... Oh, yeah. Tariff corner. Yeah. So I just bought this new camera and I needed an adapter for it. And so I bought the adapter on eBay. Wow.

and was not paying very good attention and didn't realize that I bought the adapter from China. And on May 2nd, it is currently April 30th. At time of recording. On May 2nd. Friday. Yeah, 12.01 a.m. While you're listening to this. Friday, yeah. De minimis, supposedly. I don't know if I even understand what's going on, to be totally honest. It's so confusing. But it seems like de minimis exemptions are going away. Okay.

which means the $8 adapter I ordered will be subject to a $100 postal fee followed by 141% tariff. So it'll be like $100? I think that's changed. Isn't it 54% now from China? It's going to be different every time we check. What?

You will be paying between 20% and 200% on that. Well, I will definitely be paying the $100 postal fee. So the last I heard is Sunday at 3 a.m. China time, the international flight departed. That is the last tracking notification. No, no. So I believe it is in the continental United States. It's whenever it goes through customs, I believe. So I have approximately...

36 hours for this thing to go through customs. Otherwise, I will be paying. You know, it's weird. I swear someone told me that China was going to pay for these things.

But, you know, I guess it'll be me. Just keep your receipts. Expense it. I'm just picturing a guy. I'm picturing a guy who has customs, like, scanning things at 11.59, like, boop, boop, boop. And then he gets to Ellis's and it turns to 12 o'clock. He's, like, waiting. Puts it back. What's even so nice is, like, God forbid this, like, adapter has the wrong, like, flange distance or, like, there's something weird about it. Because then even if I return it, I can't...

I can't get the tariff money back. Yeah. It's Schrodinger's payment. Yeah. Until you open the package, you don't know, man. You're paying $8 or you're paying $128. So, yeah. That's the world we live in right now. All right. Well, speaking of the world we live in, we also live in a world where right before our ad break, we do trivia. Yeah.

That's a crit. We also live in a world where sometimes we ask people to subscribe earlier, but we didn't. But now at least there has been 40 minutes of rambling that you can decide if you ever want to listen to again or block us entirely. Also, someone's going to ask me. I'm going to get ahead of the game. This is a Nikon 1J5. I was going to say you should tell people. Nikon 1J5.

and I got it because I wanted to shoot all of my 16mm film lenses on high megapixel camera. Yeah. So far, it seems pretty good. I took a really funny picture of Adam with a flash earlier. We'll put that in the... No, right here. It's over my face. You're looking at it right now. Very nice. Guys, today's trivia question is a little bit experimental. I don't know how it's going to go. We're trying something new. Okay. Just like, actually...

We tried something really experimental that came out on Wednesday. The bonus episode, Your Creator's Favorite Camera, which we should have mentioned. If you haven't listened to that, go listen to it. We tried something really different. There might be more like this in the future. There might not be more like this in the future. But if you like it, let us know. And subscribe. Because we're really interested in maybe doing more stuff like that again. And if you...

Who all was in that episode? We got Casey Neistat in that episode. Becca. Becca Versace. Brandon. Brandon from LTT. From used to be LTT. We got, yeah, we got a lot of really, really cool. Marques Brownlee. Marques Brownlee. Whoa. Yeah, he was in it too, yeah. Experimental trivia question. Number one. According to Wikipedia, Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogenous, metamorphic rock. Mm-hmm.

But I also found through my searching that there are 10 million things called Slate. 10 million? 10 million. And so over the course of this episode, slash whenever, you know, we do this music, I would like you guys to write on your whiteboards every single thing you could think of that is called Slate. I will accept places. I will accept concepts. I will accept historical events. I will accept products. Phrases? Phrases. Oh.

Okay. So we do need a marker sooner than we thought. So we should just be writing over the course of this episode as the slate names hit us. Exactly. Okay. Okay. So not the official name of it. Just be called slate. Yeah. Be like, like, like slate. I'll give you an example. Yeah. No, no, no. What if that's the only thing I've thought of so far? If you know this one, I will be just shocked. Okay. There is a city in Kansas called Slate, Kansas. That was yours? Oh, you were born there. I forgot. Uh,

So yeah, stuff like that. Okay, cool. Yeah. So one point per answer. One point per answer. What? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's all right. Whoever writes down the most gets the point. What in the world is this? Okay. Okay. Like I said, experimental. This question might fall flat on its face. Fair enough. But there are so many things called slate. Okay. So many. What if you get all 10 million?

Then you get one point. Yeah, they get one point at one point. And if two of you get all 10 million, no one gets the point. Bet. All right. Well, we'll think about this. We will be writing all episode long. So you can catch us and answers will be at the end. Like usual. We'll be right back.

Support for the show comes from Shopify. Shopify wants to help you get that upstart business you've been thinking about become the dream you've always envisioned. But we all know that journey's not easy. So when we started this podcast, some days it really felt like we were swimming upstream. But this podcast has grown so much. We went into it with very little experience. We learned how to edit audio and the process of publishing. And we did a bunch of interviews and didn't have experience with that, but then sort of looped it all in.

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Tell me if this sounds interesting to you. A pickup truck with no screens, no stereo, no paint, no automatic windows, basically no features of any kind.

But it costs less than $20,000 and you get to decide almost everything about it. That is the story of the Slate truck from a company called Slate Auto. And it might be the most interesting car we've seen in years. This week on The Verge Cast, we talk all about the Slate truck, plus what's going on in the antitrust trials against Meta and Google, and why the app store on your iPhone might change forever. All that on The Verge Cast, wherever you get podcasts. ♪

All right, welcome back. It is time to talk about the budget phone company's budget sub-brands pro phone. That's right. And it's called the CMF Phone 2 Pro. Not that there is a phone 2. This is something nothing and CMF have a really hard time with is naming products in a way that's understandable for everyone. Yeah. There's a 3A Pro, but there isn't a 3 Pro. You know what the problem with the 3A Pro is? Okay, it's a budget brand's budget...

A series. Pro budget. It's the budget brand's pro budget phone. Because the A series is the budget one. Yeah, it's supposed to be. So now there's the budget phone nothing, which has a sub-brand called CMF, which has a phone, and this is the phone 2.0.

but it's the Phone 2 Pro instead of the Phone 2. So there is no Phone 2, it's the Phone 2 Pro. Sub-brand, sub-brand, pro phone. This hurts me. Anyway, this is it. It's actually really good. And that's the crazy part about it is I'm reviewing this phone right now. It may be out by the time this pod is out, maybe not, but...

Spoiler alert, I really like it. It's pretty. Now the phone one, the nothing, the CMF phone one. Not the nothing phone one. Right, the CMF phone one, when it came out, had a lot of interesting things going for it. It had this modular, fun, interesting design. Not the best specs in the world, but it was kind of cool that you could take the back off and replace it with another back.

Those modules don't all still work with this phone. The Lanyard still does because they use the little thumbscrew design at the bottom corner. But the rest don't. But instead what they've done here is they've changed the system to a sort of accessory back, which is this thing right here, which has...

Two really cool things about it. One is it has a mounting point for camera lenses that will go over the top of the primary sensor. Cool. And two, you see this magnet right here in the shape of the MagSafe magnet? How does that work? It is the strongest MagSafe magnet I have ever felt.

Ever. I've attached this to random other various MagSafe accessories, wireless chargers. The phone doesn't even wireless charge, by the way. I'll just pop it on a wireless charger just to attach it, and it is so strong. So this back is really cool. You take the screws off the back of the Phone 2 Pro, you pop the white back on, you put the screws back on, tap the thumbscrew back in, and then you can pop any one of... Well, there's currently two lenses that they've made. CMF made a macro lens and a fisheye lens. Yeah.

So the concept is now here. I was looking back at the last phone. Some people made some third-party accessories for the first CMF phone. They didn't make any new ones after they launched it. CMF didn't. Yeah, there was a couple cool backs that people made. So I'm curious if that's going to happen again with this, if we might see some other phone lenses people make for it. It kind of depends on how well the phone itself does, but...

In general, it's a roughly $279 phone. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's a 5,000 milliamp hour battery. It's a 3,000 nit, 1080p, 120 hertz display. It's AMOLED. It's got 33 watt charging. It's 128 gigs of storage.

It's very responsive. The software is great. It's got all the same features as a nothing phone. It still has the essential space too with that extra button. Triple cameras is like, I think the reason they're calling it pro. But it is just a 1X, a 2X and an ultra wide. The 2X, let me be honest, I don't really find it that useful. It's a dramatically worse sensor than the primary and it's only 2X.

And the ultra-wide is also a tiny sensor, and it's 8 megapixels. But if you want to shoot ultra-wide, at least you have one. But yeah, it's just a really all-around solid phone to use. Nice big display with very small bezels. I think in general, I find it a great value for money. What is the point of these notches, the screws here? Those screws are simply there to hold the new back on.

So you, they sit there all the time. Yeah. You can take those screws off. This goes on top of the sit back. Continue to use the display, but they add that white back goes on top of the existing back. You don't take the back off anymore. I have a couple of questions and complaints. Yes. One, why didn't they just put the magnet in the phone?

I've asked that about many phones in the past. It seems like I'm just going to leave that back on the phone all the time. That sucks because this color sucks. Yeah. White. This is beautiful. They're not other colors. I assume there are other colors. There's an orange, there is a black, and then there's this light green. But they're all matte, right?

Yes, the orange is kind of like this half tone. Okay. Half matte, half glossy. Could maybe be interested in that. But it's very pretty and it's kind of sad that you're just covering it up all the time. Like I don't really see the point in having these mount screws because it's like it already looks very nice and then you have to just destroy the colorway, you know? Maybe people will make other better looking backs.

since it's just like a modular system that's true but then if you did that you wouldn't have the magnets yeah really those magnets are good yeah they hold up uh in the car dash super well very strong it'd work well in the slate auto truck for sure yeah

So tell me about the accessories that they made for this phone. - So there's a couple. There's one, the lanyard is basically the same as the last one. So if you wanna have your phone on a lanyard, which I learned from the comments of the last CMF review that apparently in Japan, very common. There's also a wallet. Now this was my beef with the Apple wallet. You know the MagSafe wallet on the back of the iPhone? I said in the video when I first reviewed it, like this is way too weak. I do not trust this. I put it in my pocket, it pops right off the back of the phone. And I got heat for that.

I still stand by that. It's too weak to be a wallet that I trust. This one, they also did a wallet for it and it is rock solid and I actually would trust it. It holds like two or three cards and then it also has a folding kickstand mechanism. So it's a wallet slash kickstand that magnetizes to the back. That's pretty cool.

I think that there's one more. I don't even remember what it is, but that's kind of it. It's just the lenses they've made for the cameras, the other accessories. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of sad that most of the other accessories from the phone, the CMF Phone 1 do not work on this. Yeah. That sort of highlights the pain points of modularity and like modular systems. This always happens. Companies come out and they're like, look at this. We're going to have this awesome ecosystem. It's going to be so cool. But has it been like

to 10 months since the CMF-01 came out and it's already replaced and you can't do anything with the accessories. Yep. That kind of sucks. Yeah. Okay.

Kind of sucks. I was kind of thinking they were going to make the screw in the bottom the main point that everything would attach to so that it could truly go across generations. But now they're not doing that. Yeah, I think it looks pretty solid. Interesting. I think it looks great. The price is very good for what you're getting. So the last CMF phone was like $200 roughly. It was great. It was plastic. Oh, there's a couple things that they improved though from that CMF phone that I think they heard from people that kind of make it...

worth upgrading like the first day my phone had no nfc this one the first thing i noticed is it asked me if i wanted to add my card for payment and i was like oh they added nfc to this phone so you can do mobile payments and all the things that come with like mass transit mobile stuff they added that it's nfc in this phone which is great yeah um they still don't have wireless charging but i'm just happy it has an ultra wide at all so that's awesome it's uh only the bottom

Only the bottom camera. Oh. So the primary camera, if you add one of these add-on lenses, it only goes over the primary camera. And it just pops right in. It doesn't even have a thread. Just like push in to add the camera. Okay, got it. And then, yep. I think that's potentially a... I don't know. It doesn't feel... I know you can use the outside parts of it, but I feel like a...

pushing in means you're probably smudging the lenses every time, which you can wipe it off quick, but I feel like a thread would be nice. How much do these lenses cost? I don't know. One thing that annoyed me about the... Three things that annoyed me about the lenses...

One, I don't know how much they cost. Two, they do smudge very easily and are not easy to clean. And three, they don't come with a case of any kind, so they're kind of just loose in your pocket or something. Like you have to figure out a way to carry them with you. Yeah. Because you're not going to just leave it on the phone all the time. That's awkward. Yeah, because this would not slide into your pocket very easily. It wouldn't. And you also don't want to take all your pictures in fisheye. Yeah. Yeah, it is hard to carry. This is in Thrasher Magazine.

No, I don't know what that is. It's an old skateboarding. Old skateboarding and fish eyes go together like spaghetti and meatball. I just... Lamb and tuna fish. It kind of feels like they could have allowed you to do all of these things without the cover. Like if they had put the magnet in it, inside of it, if they had just added, I don't know, they could have made the lens a little bit thicker or something. Mm-hmm.

I'm very curious about the person who is actually interested in buying the fish eye and or macro because people famously do not

care about macro lenses at all. Yeah. That's the cheap part that companies throw in the phones when they want to add a third camera. They're always like, and a two megapixel macro lens. For sure. The first thing I pictured was the person who buys a Moment lens for their iPhone. Yeah. And obviously that's a much higher end system. Like an iPhone camera plus a Moment lens is going to be different from the CMF macro and whatever's going on here. Yeah. Which is actually a line in my video, which is

I don't know if it's right to ponder a high-end version of this because maybe we've already seen it. You remember the Moto Z and the Hasselblad mod on the back of that thing? It's like, we've tried this before and it doesn't really sell. But it is still cool that it's a thing you could do. And if you ever want to spend however cheap it is and have some fun with a macro or a fisheye, you could do it. What about the Xiaomi phone with the telephoto adapter thing on it? Yeah.

Yeah. That was the actual or the Viva. Was it Vivo that had the glass? Yeah. The glass thing attached to it. You know, there's higher end phones that have a fisheye and a macro built into the phone. Yeah. And they have the magnets not necessarily on the phone, but that's something we would like to see more of them do. So, yes, I agree. It would be nice if it was on the phone. I have some prices that I found on a nothing forum post. OK. Universal covered 25 euros. Which is this. Yes. Twenty five dollars for this. Euros.

but yes. Similar. Interchangeable lenses. So I'm confused. It says interchangeable lenses, fisheye and macro. So you get both. I think this is both. 40 bucks? 40 euros? Are you looking at my screen? 100? No. 35. Very good guess. Okay. Wallet stands. Do you want to guess or do you want me to just... I think they might upcharge a little more and go...

I think they might go 40 just for that. 35. Okay. Okay. So there's a bundle. There's two bundles. One is the cover and the wallet or lenses bundle.

are you still got there uh 55 euro 45 45 and then there's a bundle too which is the cover wallet end lenses all everything 60 uh 55 65 dang it those are like i feel like a bundle of a cover wallet and all that like basically everything 65 euros doesn't sound that bad but just the cover at 25 feels

Yeah, you're not going to just get the cover. I mean, you could just get the cover just to stick it on magnets. Or if you want the different colors of the cover. True. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting strategy to be like, we're making a quote-unquote modular phone, but we're charging a ton of money. It's the slate truck. It's the slate truck. It's the slate truck. Charging a ton of money for all the components. This is funny. So this is another slate truck. I don't know. It seems like a pretty good phone on its own.

I'm really glad that they brought NFC to it. No, it really is. So, I mean, I've used this phone for a couple days now. It is all the same stuff as a nothing phone. And it's 120 hertz and it's responsive and the display gets plenty bright and it's 1080p. And I feel like when I use this phone, it's very easy to think it's a $450 phone. Yeah. And it's not. So, that's the good thing about it. Okay. So, yeah. Shout out to the CMF Phone 2 Pro.

Speaking of companies that used to be OnePlus, OnePlus. I used to. I still am. But I used to, too. I used to as well. Hey! Good reference. Well, OnePlus has announced the OnePlus 13S, which is supposed to be their slim phone. Is it slim or is it small? That's a good question. Because I see the headline is powered up, sized down.

And so to me, S means small. Introducing the OnePlus 13S, a powerful blend of performance and proportion, our first ever compact flagship. But does that mean slim or does that mean small? I think it means small. The picture is the perfect way to create this debate because it's two phones at a 45 degree angle with everything from the bottom cut down.

I'd argue that those buttons look like there's the same amount of buffer as a usual side rail, which makes me think it's approximately the same size. Yeah. So, yeah, a big phone these days is like 6.6 to 6.9. It says it's compact. And also this photo makes it seem way smaller than I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, it's small. They're trying to make it look small. Yeah, 6.32 does not seem that small. No, it's not small at all. How big is the iPhone Pro? 6.2...

Oh, the Pro? Oh, yeah, 6.2, right? iPhone 16 Pro screen size 6.3. So it's the same. Yeah, because they shrunk the bezel 6.27. So it's got to be slim then. And they're calling this compact. It's the same picture. Maybe it's not slim. Okay, because I had a whole rant ready for this if it was slim.

Let's hear it anyway. Why don't we rant the two possibilities? Yeah, do the rant anyway. I want to hear it. Okay, I'm going to do a rant for two possibilities. All right. This is world number one where 13S means slim. Yeah. Okay, go. Okay. All these companies, Samsung, OnePlus, allegedly. Apple. Potentially. Well, no. No.

are trying to release the slim phone because they know that Apple is making the slim phone. But nobody actually knows if the slim phone is the thing that people want or that if it'll be a hit from Apple. Remember when the iPhone 13 came out and they made it thicker?

And everyone, or was it 11? It was either the 11 or the 13. I think it was the 11. When the iPhone 11 came out, they made it thicker with a bigger battery and everyone was like, oh my God, incredible, amazing. Thank goodness, bigger battery. I'm glad it's thicker. Is anyone actually asking for a slimmer phone? No. No.

I'm ready. With silicon carbide batteries, Apple is going to be able to make a really big deal about this razor thin phone that still has great battery life. And I think they're forecasting Apple making a big deal out of it and are trying to get ahead of that so they can say they did the thing first. I agree with that. It's ironic that both Samsung and OnePlus just say coming soon and

none of them have release dates for any of these things. - S25 Edge is just in limbo. - Yeah, nobody knows when that's coming. So I don't know, I feel like it probably will sell, like the iPhone 17 Slim, I think it will sell well just because it's a different looking thing. - Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out. - I think it's just a good, it's another product in the Air category.

If they call it air. If they call it air, it just fits really well. They should call it air. But I agree. I don't know if it serves much more of a purpose. And also...

We've said this forever, but can we stop making things smaller but keeping the same battery life when we come up with battery improvements? Yeah. Can we just have really awesome battery life? Please. Maybe that's what the Pro will be this year. Yeah. I would love that. That would be amazing. I don't... Yeah. I kind of doubt they're going to use the silicon carbide batteries with the Pros. I think they're only going to use it in the Slim, and then maybe next year they put it in the Pros. Okay.

But I bet you it's a much more expensive technology to use. Yeah. I mean, I've seen it in a good amount of phones already this year, which is why I'm hopeful. Obviously, Samsung skipped it with the S25 Ultra, but a whole bunch of, I mean, I guess this is what we've seen before, like Oppo phones, Vivo phones, silicon and carbon, 6,000 million powers, 6,200 million powers in regular size phones. Even we just had the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. So, yeah.

I want to say it's available. Maybe not at Apple scale, but it's out there. Yeah. So, yeah. We'll see. Yeah. It is. Oh, right. It's silicon carbon, not silicon carbide. Right. Right. Right. I was getting grilled for that. Somebody yelled at us for that. Silicon carbon. Yeah. Silicon carbon. Silicon carbon.

Yeah, so they just have a notify me button where they just don't say when it's going to come out or what the specs are besides the size. So that's interesting. I kind of wonder if... I don't think it's going to be a tariffs thing because I don't think this is being sold in the US. I think it's mostly for India, I believe. What's the size of the OnePlus 13? Screen size? It is...

6.82 inches. Okay, so I guess 6.4, you said? 6.2. 6.2. 3. 3. That is smaller than this, but to call it compact feels...

It feels like a stretch. David do you have a rant for if it's a small phone? Okay, if it's a small phone nobody will buy it. End of my rant. Which we already knew, but we still are cool with them making it. And it probably is a small phone. We'll enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah, the Zenfone was a true small phone. 5.9 RIP to the OG. We're never getting that back. We're not getting that back. So I guess 6.1 is like the compact now. Yeah. Last little thing before we take another trivia break.

The Android show is a mini Google IO just for Android that is coming next week. So this is IO. Yeah, this is what we care about. I think that most of IO is going to be Gemini oriented, just like the last two years. But yeah, on Tuesday, as of time of recording, Google is doing a little Android show IO thing where they're just going to talk about all the updates that are coming to Android, which I'm very excited about. So next week we'll be talking about that on the show.

Is it a stretch to say that that's the only thing I care about? Like if I watch that, why would I watch regular Aya? Well, imagine what if Google announces their Gemini glasses for sale at Aya? What do you think? Whoa. Well, the same reason people love the meta Ray-Bans is like the reason people would buy a Google Gemini version of that. Yeah. I think Ray-Bans have the camera also. And we don't know. Do we know if...

I imagine they would. We don't know necessarily, but I still think having Gemini available and having maybe some little text in front of you and having all the access to your phone that an Android thing could have...

Has potential. If done well, it will be cool. But I think the Ray-Bans are a success because it's a camera, not because it's AI. And it's Ray-Bans also. And it's Ray-Bans, so it looks nice. So if Google does a thing and it's just Gemini, I don't know. Can Google launch a camera on a face again? Yeah. Only one way to find out. Gen 2, baby. That would be the best if it's not called Google Glass. I think it should be called Google Glass. Google Glass 3 is what they should call it.

Because they already kind of had like a developer reboot. Yeah, they had the developer reboot that lasted a little bit. Oh, yeah. New Gold Glass. New Gold Glass. Google Glass 2025. It's coming. Nice. It's coming. Yeah, I mean, that's coming eventually, but we'll see if it comes at I.O. Anyway, I'm going to watch I.O. anyway because I'm going to go. It's going to be fun. Nice. Yeah. All right. With that, I think we should do trivia Gen 2, although ironically we're still writing slate names. Yes. Slate. Can you hit the button?

All right. Trivia. So. Can't hit the button. The first OnePlus phone came out in 2014. Sticking to the spirit of Ellis' experiments, we are trying a new format with this trivia question as well. Oh, no. So fill in the blank. What other phones came out that year? The iPhone. Blank. The Samsung Galaxy Note. Blank. This is going to be hard. The LG G. Blank.

And the Nexus, blank. I'm just going to say you guys probably shouldn't write all of it down because you have to flip your board before. I've got to cover it. I'm just waiting. One more time, what are the four? The iPhone, blank. The Samsung Galaxy Note, blank. Note. The LG G, blank. And the Nexus, blank. Which phones came out the same year as the first OnePlus phone? Oh, I'm toast. No point.

Should think of more slate words. Definitely, yeah. I'm going to have to think about this one. The first one plus one. Is it like a sort of one point per correct answer type of thing? I'm debating. I'll see when we get to the end. It might be one point per correct answer or whoever gets the most correct gets the point. I don't know. We'll see. All right. That's interesting. I'll brainstorm. Okay. And so will you, reader. You will brainstorm as well. Reader? Reader?

That's the only thing people are not doing with this podcast. They're watching, they're listening, but I don't know if they're reading. Subtitles? Consumer. They're consuming the episode. User. So will you, user. Hey, we'll be right back. Music.

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The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift.

Welcome back. If you used Google Shopping before, which you probably didn't because not a lot of people did,

you would be excited to know that OpenAI has just announced their own shopping experience with buy buttons and recommendations. I actually did use, I have used Google Shopping a fair bit. Yeah, I was being a little mean. Oh. I think it's warranted. People do use it.

It's just not. It's when I want to buy something that I don't really care where I buy it from. I just want to sort of shop around prices and then figure it out. Like, I don't know exactly what I'm buying. I'm looking for a general item. And then I use Google Shopping to narrow it down. My biggest gripe is when you type something in that's very obviously a product and it defaults to shopping, which then I just wanted to look at the images of it. And now it's changed all my other things. And I click on the anyways. The experience for Google Shopping has never been fantastic. No.

Now OpenAI is trying to integrate that into ChatGPT, which is interesting. I think that people are starting to use LLMs for many different use cases at this point. And OpenAI basically said that people were already searching for items through ChatGPT already, which is pretty interesting. Effectively, what this is supposed to do is it's supposed to give you product recommendations based on your preferences, as well as reviews from around the internet.

So the buying experience is going to show sources on the recommendations. So at least if you click on a recommendation, it'll be like this is this information comes from Wired and then you can go to the Wired article or whatever.

And probably the biggest thing of all is that none of the products or recommendations have sponsored placements. And that is the big thing that Google has been yet. That we know of yet. That's the big thing that Google has been really pushing Google Shopping for because they know that, oh, this is another market opportunity for us to put sponsored links in.

in these areas, right? They pushed Google Shopping a couple of years ago and they just continued to push it because like this is a huge market, but no one wanted to use it.

That is really interesting. I'm very curious how the system is going to decide exactly what kind of products to show you. It's supposed to be heavily based on your preferences and the things you have asked ChatGPT before. Because now, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, they opened up the context window to be infinite. So now you're basically talking to a system that just remembers everything you ever tell it. Which is super interesting. Which is super interesting. Have you done the thing where you ask ChatGPT

now that you know everything about me tell me something that like i might not know about myself tell me a blind spot that i might have tell me a way that i can improve my life based on what i don't know

And it does? That would send me down such a dark road. I have not tried it yet. I have tried this. I don't use it enough. It would just say you have anger issues because you get mad at me every time I try and do something. I asked it to describe me. It was very, very accurate. And I asked it for some like life advice. It was pretty good. Did you just go in and manually tell it like everything that you think you know about yourself? No. No?

I didn't tell it and I didn't do any new like information giving. I just, I saw that on Twitter and I was like, let me try it. And it just did. How often do you use chat GPT every day? More than Gemini? Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. That hasn't written a review in six months. I'm not using it to write. I think I use Gemini and chat GPT roughly the same amount. Basically. Interesting. Yeah. Huh?

Yeah, I think that the big question here is going to be how does affiliate revenue work anymore? Because when you click on these links, they are, I was like, this has the opportunity to be another honey situation because open AI could, they could, they could say we don't have sponsored segments, but we automatically generate affiliate revenue links to everything. And that's a huge market for them. But they said that none of the links are sponsored. They said that none of them have affiliate revenue on top.

But when it's pulling the information from the websites that do have affiliate links, but then it's giving you links to the products directly without the affiliate links, that kind of screws over like all of the publishers. Yeah. Which is pretty rough. Do you think it would pull like if it pulled a Wired article and then that had an affiliate link in there? Do you think you would see that link and then decide, oh, I'm going to.

not feed that link, I'll feed it directly to the product? Yeah, I think it feeds you direct links and no affiliate links, which is tough. I also have no faith that this won't eventually turn into affiliate links because the minute I read this, I said...

Is just the end goal for everything on the internet to be an affiliate link aggregator? Yes, 100%. That's like what most websites on the internet are. Is the crab version of every website is affiliate link? Yeah. Affiliate link-accusation? It's been happening. That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, they have the opportunity to add the value of honey.

on top of their existing product, which is a very big opportunity. They say they will evaluate the opportunity for affiliate links in the future. Oh, they said that? They already said that? Sorry, I think I misspoke. They said they're going to explore later down the road how affiliate links are going to work. They're adding more? We have concepts of a plan. Yeah, which to me tells me that they're just going to generate their own. Oh, for sure. So that's pretty crazy. Yeah.

Do you guys feel comfortable asking an LLM for product recommendations? I'm not there yet. Actually, I'll take that back. Asking for product recommendations, yes, but not fully trusting it and going to the purchase. I still will then go do my own research after to go to the purchase. But if I'm just starting from a baseline of...

what mulch should I buy? I live in this area of the world and I have these goals. I will start from there and then do my own research after. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's kind of the case. It's like when you go to any website and you, you can be recommended a product, but you want to read the reviews to make sure that it's like, you know, positive. Yeah. Um,

So, yeah, it also says that it's using Reddit as a source, which is pretty interesting because it is actually scraping what people are recommending. And there's been so many reports of companies just basically going on Reddit and recommending their own products as if they're regular users. So I feel like there is a lot of. I also don't know if I trust like an LLM to understand the nuances of how.

what Reddit comments are. Like what is just someone being an asshole and sarcasm. Right. Yeah. I have a general philosophical question about LLMs. Here we go. An hour and 30 minutes. Are they conscious? I don't judge. What is consciousness? We have all, you know how there's a generation of people who grew up before smartphones and then there's a generation of people who grew up never knowing what it's like before smartphones. Yeah.

What if the same thing is true about LLMs and hallucinations, where when we were starting to get into these AI tools, it was very, very early and they were notorious for getting things wrong all the time. And so built into our conscience is an inherent skepticism for like, when I asked for these product recommendations, I'm going to double fact check everything just because some of it might just be a lie. And then at some point there's a generation of people who's going to come online and

And we'll never have had to think about if the LLMs lie to them or not. I think that there are already a significant amount of people who don't know what a hallucination is. I was watching some video on YouTube a couple of weeks ago and someone was trying to make a point and he goes, and I know this is true. I looked it up on chat GPT and he was not joking. Yeah.

- Yeah, yeah. - Grok contacts please. - Exactly. - Yeah. - Yeah, I just, I think most people think this is basically a search engine that talks to you normally. - Yeah, that's tough. - So I don't even think it's a generational thing. I just think it's like most people. - It's just already happening. 'Cause people who were like early adopters got to see all the hallucinations and downsides, but now people who were not even paying attention then are just like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll just use chat GPT to look it up. - Yeah, totally.

People are worried about TikTok replacing Google. I think it's more of a concern that the LLMs are replacing Google, which is why Google was so terrified and had to get Gemini all kickstarted. Yeah. So they made the right call there, I got to say.

Yeah. Researching this camera, I gave it a whack with LLMs, dude. Nothing useful. Nothing useful. In fact, I would say it was like wrong 85% of the time. Like, does this camera have focus peaking? Absolutely. The focus peaking on this camera does not have focus peaking. Like every single question it could have gotten wrong about this, it got wrong.

Yeah, it was interesting. I was using an AI thing, asking it to make me a pop quiz about a product that I knew a lot about. And then I filled out the quiz because I knew all the answers and it got me.

some of the corrections wrong. Like I'd said the answer was the actual answer and it was like, actually this is the answer. And I was like, yeah, that's just wrong. So it was like nine out of 10, right? But still, like I still see that happening. So it is something that I think about. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. Speaking of AI and LLM model stuff,

Meta I just had its llama con which really doesn't sound really They really called that sound like if I also have a question about this. Okay, what sound does a llama make? I've heard that before it's true. Okay So they have decided to release the meta AI app which is a dedicated app and

that is focused around voice interactions. Marques is showing it right now. - Can I tell a story about this particular app? - Sure. - I'm watching the live stream, because it was yesterday, the day before, and they're like, "Oh yeah, you know, we released this meta app, the AI, blah, blah, blah." And I put it into Slack, and I'm like, "Okay, I gotta add this to the doc so we can talk about it, whatever, blah, blah, blah."

And Marques just turns around and is like, oh yeah, by the way, Adam, I've had that for like two weeks now. And I got like, I've had that for two weeks now in real life. He just turned around and was like, yeah, no, I've had that. And I'm like, oh, shocker. Yeah, of course. So in case you're curious. Yeah, tell me about it. The Meta AI app, it's a hub. So now, so there used to just be, you'd have the glasses and you'd have the app for like MetaView or whatever it's called for the glasses. Yeah.

Then you've got an ass in your Instagram and an AI messenger so this is like the hub for all of it and So you can just like talk to it and ask you questions as if it's chat GPT or whatever Gemini But there's also a discover feed where you can scroll through the image generated results of other people's prompts kind of like Sora remember you could see other people's images and what it was generated from and

And so if you've ever just wanted to scroll through AI slop for a while, this is the perfect place to do that. This is what OpenAI said they were doing with their social media thing, right? Well, they didn't say specifically what they were doing with that, and they never even confirmed they were making this. Oh, golly. No, the social media app that OpenAI was reportedly working on. It would look kind of like this. It would probably look like this. And it's like it has shares and comments, and there's people going like, oh, yeah, this is cool. This is...

tiny New York City in a sphere and it has 171 likes, 12 comments. - Can you read the comments? I hope they're AI generated. - They are. - Don't tell, no. - The first three are people re-imagining the prompt with different results. And then you scroll down a little bit and it's people saying, "Wow, cool, love this, these are nice."

You just know every time there's a new social media platform, the influencers jump on it and they're like, I got to get on this in case it blows up. And if you're getting on the meta AI social media platform to try to be an influencer on there, you need to get some help. Right here, David. Yeah. I just, I don't know.

Yes, agreed. Yeah. I've never agreed with you more, David. Thank you. Thank you. It is a full-on social network of AI generated. I think that Meta is banking on the fact that this is free and like ChatGPT Plus is $20 and Gemini...

Ultra 2.5 Advanced with Deep Research Pro is $20. New, new, new, new. Have you noticed that? If you go on Gemini, you have the model selector. Every single model selector

says new and they have always all said new I also have thoughts on that that are probably too long for this podcast because I was going to ask like how do you select what model you use like first based on what your question is do I go to perplexity do I go to deep seek do I go to a certain version of chat GPT or a certain version of Gemini yeah do you guys even pay attention to that or that sounds like a great app that's just like a six-sided die

A virtual six-sided die with all the different AIs on it and you roll it before you. Yeah, the Raycast app for iOS just came out and it's like, you know what Raycast is on the Mac? Yeah. So you can like tab over and use AI chat and like pick between your models and the settings. This one is literally just pick your AI model and talk to it. And there's a selector and there's like 15 of them and you just jump in and you go, I like DeepSeek right now. I'm feeling lucky, buddy. Perplexed right now.

I guess, probably. They're all competing. And yes, some of them are better for code. Some of them are better for specific things. And I get that there are advantages to them. But aren't we all working towards them all being amazing at as many things as possible? And nobody should have to know, like, oh, I'm supposed to use this one for code. The goal is, like, I'm going to use a search engine and they're all going to eventually get me there. Well, even if you don't know, like, for example, Gemini has 2.5 Flash Experimental, which says use for advanced reasoning.

And then it has 2.5 Pro Experimental, which is best for complex tasks. Both of those tell me nothing. Yeah. If I'm trying to differentiate between them, which one do I use? I love that there's 2.5 Flash, 2.5 Pro Experimental, deep research with 2.5 Pro, and

There's also GPT-4.0, which is great for most tasks, but there's also GPT-4.5, which is good for writing and exploring ideas, which is also what I use it for. There's also O3, which uses advanced reasoning.

So I guess I should use that. There's also 04 Mini, which is fastest at advanced reasoning. 04 Mini High. What? Great at coding and visual reasoning. Okay, so they're not going to combine them all, but I don't even know how to pick between them. People should not...

You should just talk to the thing and it knows what your prompt is and it picks the right model to do your prompt So the next AI is going to be an AI that decides which model you should use for the prompt you have But what model does that AI use? That's where we're going David ML 2.5 Pro Experimental Experimental Flash with deep research With Marquez Research Advanced Reasoning I'm going to start asking AI models which ones I should use

Yeah, no, that's it. We'll continue to keep an eye on Meta's AI app. Will we? I don't think we will. I don't really think we will. Marques has volunteered for the job. It's on my phone. It's on my phone. For now. Sorry. I'm not looking at that social media network ever.

Okay, last thing that is just fun and I want them and Ellis doesn't like that I want them, but I really want them Okay, there's these new headphones by km5 They kind of look like those costs headphones that are like really lightweight and really like small and They very much look like something that like nothing would release kind of teenage or teenage engineering X nothing

But basically, if you know what the Koss headphones are, they're those 80s style headphones that are on ear. They're really small. They've just got a metal band that gets your hair stuck in it and pulls your hair out. But they have all the advanced capabilities of a newer pair of headphones. So they charge with USB-C. You can plug them in with USB-C. They've got

good Bluetooth capabilities. They somehow have active noise cancellation, which I do not know how that works when they're on ear headphones. Spoiler alert, it doesn't. Probably doesn't. They just seem really cool. And this company also makes this CD player that looks freaking amazing. David, what is the price of these? They're $189. Okay, it's not as bad as I thought. Not that bad. And look how pretty they are. They're just pretty. They're pulling directly at the nostalgia level.

Heartstrings of a specific generation of people. Yeah, but they're USB C. Yeah, remember those things What if new and modern? Yeah. Yeah, and I want it It's a Ford f100 but electric I'm really a Volkswagen bus but electric I almost impulse bought these yesterday They also came out on my birthday. So what are you gonna do? You know, wait wait

Thank you. I just blew myself a birthday. I don't know that there's anything superior about these headphones other than them being maybe lightweight. But, you know, good for them. Good for them. They look cool. I just wanted to mention these because they're cool looking. Shout out to the Cam5. All right. Well, I think that we should do trivia now. It's about that time. Have you been brainstorming? No. Andrew's brainstorming right now. Okay, I have a question. Yeah.

Do you get a point off if we have something in there that's not? No, I won't be added to your total slate count. So I'm going to give you guys 90 more seconds to shore up these lists. 10 million? It's like how specific do I have to be? That was hyperbole. Oh, really? Yeah.

Oh, because I heard that and I was just like, I can just guess things. I thought you actually meant 10 million. 10 million, exactly. Well, there we go. I'm just going to leave it where I'm at. You know how when you get close enough to infinity, you just say infinity in math? Close enough to infinity? I feel like in math, that would be the time where you don't do that. In math, you would say, as the limit approaches infinity. The limit does not exist. The limit does not exist. The asymptote. The asymptote. But it can't approach infinity.

Yes, it can. Marquesas is a big list. It totally can. If there's an asymptote, it's not approaching infinity. It's approaching the asymptote.

Anyway, I don't know you're right something. I think I know that a math Who wants to who wants to slate first are we flipping them what we don't - you could flip them? Okay, I'll read my slates First you said the slate truck doesn't count the slate work does not count. All right, so scratch that yeah, I have pixel slate Oh, I have slate gray paint perfect and I have a

I think this is a made up one. I think there was a Google Slate product. Well, there was the Pixel Slate. But was there like a whiteboard product or no? I think I'm imagining this one. That was the Jamboard.

That was Jamboard. And there was a Microsoft tablet called the Slate PC. That's not what I was thinking. Really? I was thinking of like Jamboard. Okay, so I got two. Not bad. Not bad. All right, two. All right. I have a production slate, like the thing we clap. Oh, that's a good one. I have a Pixel Slate. There you go. So you said Slate.

Paint? I said slate the color. That works. I'll take it. And then I have a guess. And I can help look it up, but I didn't want to look like I was cheating. Yeah, yeah. If there's a disc golf disc named the slate. Because I know there's one named the slab. So I have to... So there might be a slate. If you don't know and you just start guessing, does that... I... I'll...

It would have to be called the Slate. I see Slate Disc as an option, but it's zero disc in stock. Yeah, I don't think there's one. That's a good name for a disc. Maybe you should start a company. Not taking. Trash Panda does offer their discs in a slate color. Trash Panda does, but unfortunately... I already put Slate colors. That's three. All right, that's three. David, what do you have? I have Slate Kansas.

No, no, no, I can't. No, no, you don't. Well played. There are two other towns in the United States called Slate, though. Did you get any of them? Wait, so Kansas is not a real place? No, Slate, Kansas is real, but I can't give it to you because I said it out loud earlier. Oh, OK. That's all you had? Oregon? I don't know. You have to write it down. What did you write down? I wrote Slate the website.

Awesome. Yeah. Oh, we literally talked about that. Yeah. Great. Um, I wrote slate the color. Great. I wrote slate the car. Uh, no, I can't accept that. I know. I know. I know. I put, I put tail slate. I will accept that as a production slate. Yes. Uh, I put blank slate, the song by Taylor Swift. Not a song by Taylor Swift. Not a song. I think you're thinking of blank spaces. Oh, is it singular? Circular? Okay. My bad. Oh, okay. Um, I put slate the rock.

We talked about that. That was the opening example. I can't give you that one either, unfortunately. I put the bird. There's a bird called a slate? I don't know, but there probably is. Wait, you just... You're right. I did do that to you. No, there's a slate-colored bird. Well, I also put slate the color. Yeah, but we already got that one. Did we? Yeah. Oh, okay. They already said that, right? Did he already say that? Yeah. Okay. And then I put S latte, like small latte. Okay.

Wow. I want to give you that for creativity. I think a lot. There's two T's. It is, but yeah, you can't get it. It's close. It is close. Is that the tie? Like, how do we break this? Is there a slate bird? There's no slate bird. Slate colored solitaire bird. Yeah, but that's the color. Oh, you're right.

- Solid. - I think it's a good point. - Yeah, I don't know what that is. - So pretty good guys. We'll give the point to both Andrew and David. - Nice, nice. - Good. - All right. Quick update on the score. Marques with 18, Andrew with 10 after that correct point, and David with 22 after that correct point. Next question. So the first OnePlus phone came out in 2014. What other phones came out that year? Fill in the blank edition. The iPhone blank.

The Samsung Galaxy Note blank. The LG G blank. And the Nexus blank. 2014. Which, what? 2014, yeah. 2014. What are those other phones? All right, flip them and read. What do you got? Man, I can't, I can't. Wait, oh, f***. Who wants to go first? David, put the marker down. Okay. Who wants to go first?

I'll go first. Oh, I screwed this up. I thought it was me. Okay, 2014. I said iPhone 6S. Correct. I said Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Correct. Oh my gosh. I said LG G5. Wrong. And then I said Nexus 6 and 5X. Correct. Okay. So you got three. That's pretty good. So the only chance I have is the LG G3. You said LG G3? Yeah.

Okay. Correct. And the rest are wrong? Oh, very nice. Well, Galaxy Note 6, iPhone 7, Nexus, unless the 6P also came out, which I don't think it did. That was later, yeah. Okay. So you got one correct. I messed up when I started working here. David? Okay. LG G6? LG G6? Nope. Wait, really? Yeah, it was the G3. G3, apparently. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I put the Nexus 6. Correct. Thank God.

I put the Galaxy Note 8, which I was very wrong. And I don't even want to say what my iPhone was. Say it. I forgot all the S models. Oh.

I put iPhone 8 slash 10, which was 2017, not 2014. Yeah, almost. Yeah, I'm bad. All right, so you got one as well. Nice. So I think I'll do each one of you gets the points. So David and Andrew get one point each. Marques gets three points. What? So for 6 and 5X, do I just get one point for that? Yeah, it was just one point. Okay.

Alright, I feel because he said six but he didn't get 5x. I feel like I should get a point for five Well, wasn't it the 6p and the 5x came out at the same time? Yeah, we 6p and the LG Yeah, the Nexus 6 launched on its own release year because they were so it is just the six. Okay, nevermind. Yeah, nevermind. No 5x. Okay. Well, no, it doesn't change anything. Yeah, it doesn't change anything. That's fair. All right. But Adam

That's fine. Man. I'm just being a baby. That was fun. Okay, fun new format. Yeah. Maybe that helps us catch David because his score is really high and we need lots of points to catch him. When does the extravaganza? You're counting down the minutes until the clock runs out? Yeah, I want to win one. We have to catch you. We have to catch you at like 30 or something. Yeah. Okay. That's it for this episode. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing especially. I know we didn't ask as early as we would like to, but we're asking now. If you haven't subscribed already, definitely make sure to do that.

And we'll catch you guys. If you haven't already watched the bonus episode on all the favorite creators' favorite cameras, we'll have a link to that below because the bonus episodes come out and sometimes people aren't washing dishes at their normal time on Friday and they don't know to expect that. So go check that out as well. We'll be back next week in our regular scheduled programming. It's going to be May. Catch you there. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Irvin. We're partners with Vox Media Podcast Network. Our intro and outro music was created by Vain Still. Bingo. Bad. No, don't do that.

It's called lubricant because it doesn't work. Really?