The M2 MacBook Pro and Nothing Phone are WEIRD
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What's going on, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And today we've got a bunch of gadgets this week. We have some smartphone news, which we haven't had in a little bit. A little bit of that. I know everyone loves all the EV news and are like, more EV, more EV, all the time. Just me?

Just me. There is some a little at the end. But no, we do have a good amount to talk about, plus some laptops and stuff. I kind of want to start with the laptop stuff, actually. Let's do it. That's a good place to dive in. So was it two weeks ago we had WWDC, which was Apple's event where we got lots of new software updates, but also had a little bit of hardware. Two new laptops with the M2 chip. The MacBook Air M2, which is going to show up around July, I guess maybe August by the time it actually comes out. Probably July. Yeah.

And then the M2 MacBook Pro, which is a refresh of the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, very much the exact same laptop, just with a new chip. Yes. That one, very easy to make, so it's coming out first. So now the reviews are out, and a couple people have posted about it, benchmarked it, figured out what it's really capable of.

And it didn't really surprise us at all, which to me, as I'm watching the reviews, I'm trying to figure out, okay, I don't have one here, so I didn't get to review it, but I'm watching the reviews. I'm like, who is this laptop for?

It's a conversation we've been having at the studio a lot in the last couple of weeks of just like, we can't quite nail down exactly who would buy this. It is an incredibly slim sliver of a target demographic that should actually buy the M2 MacBook Pro. Okay, so here's how I'm seeing it defined. Okay.

And it's really hard because I don't actually agree with most of these. A lot of people are saying, oh, you want to get a pro laptop, but you don't want to break the bank. So it's the cheapest pro. Let's go. Let's like put it into context first on why it's hard to to pick or to like put someone in that category, because right now you have the MacBook Air M2 just got announced. So if you really want M2, there's a MacBook Air, which is cheaper, has the updated design, you know, notch, smaller bezels, the.

just the whole new redesign of everything, right? It's a better laptop. Exactly. And then, well, the only difference is like there's active cooling in the 13-inch MacBook Pro for M2. The 13-inch MacBook Pro M2's only advantages over the 13-inch MacBook Air M2 are active cooling,

a slightly larger battery. And if you really want a touch bar, you can get it. If you want it. That is it. Everything else about it is it's a slightly smaller screen with slightly worse brightness. It's slightly thicker bezels. It's less ports. It's an older design. Everything about it is lesser, but...

But it is the two advantages there. M2. But we also are seeing previously we have the M1 Pro and M1 Max versions of the 14-inch and the 16-inch MacBook Pros. The big dogs. Some of the best, most well-reviewed laptops I've ever seen. Obviously more expensive. But in those laptops, you're getting a much more capable chip with much better performance, but also much better screens. Yeah.

Yeah, it's the new design. It's the new design again. Real ports, an SD card slot, full-size HDMI, all this stuff.

MagSafe. And so the M2 MacBook Pro lives right in between them. Now, here's the funny part, because I actually, this is the weird thing that made me kind of scratch my head. In a vacuum, the M2 MacBook Pro is actually a really good computer. It is. It's a really good laptop. I reviewed the M1 MacBook Pro and really liked it. And a lot of people really like that machine. And in its time, ideal.

That is still true about the M2 MacBook Pro, but because of the machines that exist on either side of it, there's almost no reason to get that one. Yeah. That's the thing. And you sort of asked this question two weeks ago during the interview with a couple Apple people about Apple Silicon. I tried. And their biggest thing was that the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro was the second most sold laptop they had last year, correct? Sure.

Now, the issue with that is last year is it was the first MacBook Pro with active cooling Apple Silicon out. Right. Like it was at that point the most powerful because it had active cooling over the M1 MacBook Air. Right. So there are a lot of people jumping there like I want to try the most powerful M1 MacBook Air.

Chip out there. It was Pro at the time exactly and then the m1 Pro and m1 Max comes out which are better Now you're kind of doing the next version step up of the lower chip Which is still quite a bit less powerful than the upgraded versions of the previous one So now it doesn't really we're at the point where it doesn't make sense. It's kind of squeezed. So I on Twitter I called it the MacBook Pro se

because the formula is it's the same exact hardware, so they don't need to do any retooling, the outside, the chassis, the screen, everything is exactly the same. Just put in a new blazing fast chip and ship it. That's what they did. They didn't really plummet the price or anything, but that's the same formula, right? I can't actually think of a real person who,

Like an actual specific scenario where someone should actually choose the M2 MacBook Pro. I actually went through in my head and tried to. We've all tried that work. Because for most people, I'm going to suggest if you're looking for a Mac laptop, starting with the M2 MacBook Air. Let's just start there. For sure. And change based on that. So let's say I suggest the M2 MacBook Air. You're like, all right, it's pretty nice. Got the ports I need, nice screen. But you know what I need?

I just need it to be a little bit more powerful. Like the M2 just doesn't really cut it and I'm doing some longer exporting. I'm doing some graphical renders. I'm doing some stuff where it would suggest that I need more CPU, more GPU, a little more power. In that case, I would immediately recommend that that person goes straight to the M1 Pro, 14-inch MacBook Pro. Yeah. Straight to that machine. There is a bigger price gap.

but that's a better machine all around, and you're actually going to get way more CPU and GPU, way more performance. There are some reviews now, since the reviews are out, there are some benchmarks of the M2 MacBook Pro. I think Monica Chin's review at The Verge did a really good job. She put all of the benchmarks side by side so you can see. The delta between M2 and M2 with active cooling is...

this. And then the Delta between M2 and the last gen M1 MacBook Pro is a little bigger. And then the Delta between M2 and M1 Pro is big. It's a very big difference. So the amount of extra performance, the $300 gets you is really significant. So if that's the one thing you want over the MacBook Pro is extra performance, go straight to the M1 Pro. Yeah. Because even when you're looking at price-wise, like

The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro starts at $1,299, but that's for 256 gigs of storage, which I would never recommend to anybody, no matter what they were doing. Like, $512 should be absolute minimum. Yeah, you're a pro. You really need the extra power, and you're going to bump up to this laptop, and now you're going to get less storage, a worse screen...

less real buttons, less ports, all for like a 10% boost in performance. Just get it. And only really that performance for like prolonged activity when you need the active cooling and it's like actually peaking. But so you're thinking, I'm going to say the minimum 13 inch M2 MacBook Pro you should get is very confusing. We discussed this before earlier is like how you call these as well. Cause like M2 Pro is eventually going to be a chip. So you can't even call it the M2 Pro.

You have to always make sure you say MacBook Pro. M2 MacBook Pro, yeah. So we're looking at the 512 gig storage version at $1,499. And then you can get a 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro for around $2,000, pretty much. And that already has 512 gigs. So if you're the pro who needs that, you're probably okay spending the $500. Yeah.

It just seems the jump and upgrade design you're going to get to that is well, well, well worth the price. I even tried to go in the reverse direction where you're like, you're thinking about getting the 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro. And you're like, well, maybe I don't need that much power or maybe I don't need that much power.

that many ports. So I just don't need that much. Well, then you should immediately kick down to the MacBook Air. Yeah, exactly. Because you don't need that much. You're going to get great performance out of an M2. You're still going to get a nice screen, the new design, MagSafe, fast charging, new colors, all this new stuff. And you won't have to get a worse computer with the, you know, it's just such, it's such a squeeze. The only thing I could think of

And I think Rene Ritchie said it in his video, and even for this person, I don't know if I would recommend it, but the one person I could think of was they were literally just about to add the old M1 MacBook Pro to their cart, and

And then the M2 MacBook Pro just came out. So they should get this one instead. Yeah. Even to that person, I would say just get the MacBook Air. Just wait another couple weeks. Yeah. I could see that. Or if you are a hardcore Touch Bar fan, there were people when the last redesign came out who were like, I miss the Touch Bar. If that is your favorite part of the MacBook, then there you go. Now you have...

a little bit upgraded version if you had the M1 or, you know, it's going to be a really, really nice upgrade if you had the Intel version. Oh, for sure. So like, so that's it. If you love the Touch Bar, this is the computer for you. Hardcore Touch Bar fans. This is probably, ideally, the last computer they make with a Touch Bar.

So I'll say hardcore Touch Bar. Until they bring it back. They brought back the SD card slot. Now bring back the Touch Bar in seven years. Assuming they don't do that. I'll say, yeah, the person who literally just added the old one to their cart should get this. And the person who is a hardcore Touch Bar fan should get this. If they made a Touch Bar dongle, do you think people would buy it? Jesus. An external Touch Bar. Isn't that just a...

I don't know what it is. I don't know. That's for the, there's, there's what you get for the, the hardcore touch bar fans is you, a USB-C touch bar that sits on the side of your computer. A very, very thin iPad. Yeah.

That connects to the side. That'd be rough. Yeah. You know, we'll, we'll keep an eye on it. I definitely have plans to get my hands on these laptops when they're available. M2 MacBook Air should be soon. M2 MacBook Pro, if we can just see what the benchmark differences are. And I'm always interested to hear from our audience. If there's someone out there who saw this 13 inch M2. What am I missing? Yeah. Like I would love to know what your use case is that you find this to be the compelling choice. Um,

over an M1 Pro or the MacBook Air M2. I would love to know. I would really, really like to know. Tweet at us, comment, whatever. Here's the last thing I'll leave you with. A lot of the initial sentiment when we saw this new design was, oh, okay, it's the old design for this MacBook Pro. Why didn't they just make a new design for this MacBook Pro, right? M2 MacBook Pro, refresh, update the design.

To which I say, yeah, that would have been nice. Good point. But then you just end up competing directly with the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Like there is no difference other than M1 Pro versus M2. It's all very, it's very confusing to think about, which is why we're kind of stumped here, which is why we're throwing the question onto you at home. I've never been so confused by the existence of a product. I'm like stumped. I'm actually stumped.

It feels like they have a bunch of extra chassis and want to get rid of them. That's why your SE comparison does very well. That's why they didn't redesign it is because they needed to use those chassis. Here it is. Okay. All right. Well, we got to take a quick break and then talk about the nothing phone, one of the most hyped devices in a long time. But we are back to doing trivia before the ad breaks. So Adam, take it away. Don't say the answer this time.

Okay, which of the following was not a version of OS X? Kodiak, Jaguar, or Cougar? Okay. I know what this one is. I'm confident, which means I'm scared I'm wrong. We'll see. We'll be right back.

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by American Express. All right, welcome back. Let's talk about, let's talk about this nothing phone. Yeah, I think the first thing we have to talk about is like,

the views we've been getting on that video, which is insane. It's crazy. So I, I was like, I, we've been avoiding talking about the nothing phone cause there's like nothing to say all the puns. Here we go. But there's nothing to say. They're just, this is Carl pay playbook, like reveal just a little bit at a time, a little bit extra, a little bit extra. Um, but I'm following it cause it's a new startup trying to do something interesting in smartphones. And that's what I'm into. So, uh,

eventually they come to me and they're like, hey Marques, would you like to do a world exclusive first reveal of this glyph interface with the lights we've put on the back of the nothing phone? You can be the first one to show it to the planet. Yeah. It's like, all right, cool. I get to see the phone. It's hard to say no to that. I get to check it out. I'm not going to say no to that. That sounds great. Um,

So they're like, all right, cool. We were going to ship it, but since we're running so tight on time, we're just going to fly someone over to you to just hand you the phone and show you how it works, and then you can make the video and do whatever you want with it. That's not that uncommon also. If anyone's out there hearing that, we've had companies fly people out. dbrand sometimes flies people out just to put the skins on things because they don't trust us. That's pretty funny. That's not that uncommon in the industry. They're also incredibly good at it. They're insanely good at that. Literal robots.

Anyway, yeah, so they fly out here. A day or two I get to spend with the nothing phone. And again, we're only really allowed to talk about and reveal the Glyph interface on the back of the phone. There's still way more that we don't know about the phone. And you could definitely argue that this is just playing right into the hype and sharing it. But I actually found it really cool. And the way I made the video and phrased things was like,

okay, this is going to be unique. Is this enough to get people to care about a phone? And I found the conversation about that question really interesting. We can talk about, okay, this did get a lot more attention than I was actually expecting. It

What was it? I think in the first two hours it had doubled the view count of where our WWDC video is, which is always a very, very popular video. I mean, this thing was... Yeah. I mean, okay, for context, we typically... Yeah, we get...

let's say one to two million views on a video in 24 hours. The best videos are the ones of the most hot, like hype devices. And this one is no longer doubling the Apple videos, but for many hours, it was literally doubling the performance of the Apple videos. So people know about or care about, or at least interested in the nothing phone to the extent that they'll watch this video. Yeah. So cool. First look at the phone.

So we got to see that, and I'll just refresh. You can watch the video. It's only like a seven-minute video, but the glyph interface on the back, it's got these lights, about 900 LEDs across the back of the phone. And when they all light up, it kind of looks like a movie prop. It looks like if aliens were making a crop circle of a weird SIM ejector tool. Oh, okay.

Yeah, actually. There's been some people saying it looks like a vague silhouette of an Apple logo, which is hilarious. I can kind of see that also. They are like coming for Apple, but also kind of doing the Apple thing. I mean, look at the phone. Wait, wait, wait. Can we talk on that real quick? Yeah. In your video, you said it looks like an iPhone 11 or an iPhone 12. When I first saw it, I thought iPhone 10 or 10S. And I think there's more. I've seen two, but I've seen both of these. Flat sides, though.

Well, okay, okay. I guess what I'm talking about, like just the back. So like when I think of the back, I first see the pill cut out because it has a light around it. And that is 1010S. But then some people are seeing that the lenses are protruded and the pill's not a bump. So they see 11 and 12. Sure. So I...

At first I was like, no, it's clearly a 10, but now I see all these people saying 11, 12 and I see that also. So I, I think with the flat sides, if you look at the whole phone, it kind of looks like a 12. I hate being wrong, but I think you're right. It's similar. I mean, but you get the idea is like, they're not shy about like doing lots of stuff. Apple's already done. The buttons look very similar. Um,

speakers in the same place, but like the lights are different. The lights are different. I don't really see that on too many other phones. And if we just ignore the question of like who cares about lights on the back of the phone, they do a bunch of cool stuff. They will light up as a fill light while you're taking videos. That I think is the coolest. And they get pretty bright. So I was kind of impressed with that. They get pretty bright while also remaining like

soft and like it's nice lighting it's the opposite of when somebody's like in the dark and you turn the flash on and try it then that just looks like Blair Witch product where this or Blair Witch project where this looks you know like key lighting like I've seen some bad ring lights on phones Motorola used to put a ring light around the camera lens like that was going to make a difference versus a flash this is genuinely bigger than that ring light it's it's it's better

So for that type of stuff, close-up subjects, maybe dark environments. It does have a real flash, but it's cool for that. It'll light up the ring on the back when you wireless charge or reverse wireless charge. That's pretty cool. It has a mode where you can flip it over and it'll just use the lights for your notifications.

One thing I didn't get to demo but that some people picked up in the software was the glyph interface will use that exclamation point at the bottom to respond while you're talking to Google Assistant. So the phone's face down when you talk to Google Assistant. Oh, it's like a level meter? Yeah, like a level meter. But it'll also act as a battery charging indicator, which I thought was nice. That I thought was cool, but at the same time, I hated that it goes away and that you have to shake it. I think it should just stay on.

I can't imagine it's taking that much battery plus it's plugged in at that part. So what's the point of it not staying on? I wonder if you'll be able to toggle a setting to stay on, but I feel like it would get annoying if it's in the corner of the room just lit up all the time. If it's dark and you're sleeping, I could see that. But if I'm like, if it's on my desk and it's charging, I would love to just like quickly be able to see it. If I'm shaking it, I could have just picked the phone up and looked at the charging. It is remarkably easy to just like poke it and it just lights up. So it was very sensitive and I feel like-

the convenience of just going, what's that at? And you can see it's like halfway and you kind of know. So I'll give it that credit. But that's a lot of stuff that it does. I just like notification lights on the back of phones and we haven't seen that many. I did like the recording that it blinks a little red light when you're recording as well. There is also a record of that in the back. I think that's one of those things where I see it and I'm like, I think a lot of phones should have this because...

You should always know if somebody is recording you. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't see a toggle to turn it off. So again, we don't know camera quality. We don't know a bunch of other stuff about the phone, but I don't know. Thoughts on like, will people care about lights on the back of a phone?

If I could take it one step broader, like I don't care about the lights that much. I think they're cool. I think they're unique. I'm all for people doing unique things and like trying something different. Cool. Yeah. I do like how it looks and it kind of reminds like,

I mean, obviously it reminds me of the nothing year ones, which were a pair of headphones I used for quite a bit because honestly I was fine with, I didn't think the features worked very well. I didn't think the sound quality was anything spectacular, but I thought they looked cool. I thought they were decently priced and like I was fun to that. They fit in my ears. So to me it was like,

it kind of felt like how people buy Beats. I'm like, I appreciate this look and it's functional enough that I like it. And like, it was affordable. It's way, those were 99, what like a lot of other things are like 160, 200, 250. So that felt really cool to me. And this feels like that. I think it will, I think there are people because of how successful Beats were that pay attention to how things look. And this phone looks really cool with the clear back and the like,

kind of transparency. We've seen phones do transparent before, but this is like clearly super focused on it and that's their whole shtick and it

It looks really nice. Yeah. I think I've noticed a couple things about it since publishing the video, especially stuff I see in the comments. One is that it seems like a bunch of regular people who aren't super into tech are at least intrigued by that phone, whether or not they're actually thinking of buying it. They're just like, oh, that's cool. The phone has lights on the back, and they do cool stuff, and you can see how much charge the battery has. That's kind of cool. Two is this phone is not targeted for the U.S.,

They're actually, I guess, mainly targeting Europe and the regions that they're, I mean, it's a startup, but you don't really have the carrier relationships yet to just jump right into the U.S. So it will have very limited compatibility on U.S. carriers. Yeah. But this is more of a phone for Europe and Asia. And three, everyone puts a case on their phone. We know this to be a fact. Yeah.

How do you navigate that? Do you just sell a clear case or do you have like a case that like just cuts out the lights on the back or something, I guess? I mean, I think there will be a few like that. I would be very, very surprised if this didn't come with like a clear case in the box. Because in the box, think about every other phone we've seen that really cares about the back of it. So basically a lot of like

oppo realme xiaomi phones that have a very unique colored back that usually comes with a clear case that's true any of these like naruto phones or the dragon ball phones those always seem to have a clear case in them so i think

Any phone and even some super budget ones we've seen still come with a clear case when they care about the back. And this is like the phone to care about the back on. Yeah, probably more than ever. I would bet it comes with a clear case. I like your idea of ones that just have the lights cut out. Yeah, just the lights. What was the HTC phone that had the dot matrix on the front so you could tell the time? That was actually a screen cover.

that was an amazing feature back in the time that was on the same level of like is it a gimmick is it a feature I don't know but it's kind of cool but it was like the one m8 I mean did you see how excited you just got when I mentioned that I really liked it I didn't even really use it I used that phone because it was a it was a one of those cases that like had a flap on the front I hate having a flap they're terrible but that feature was sick it was really cool

Yeah, it's kind of in that same league. So I don't know if I'm ready to declare it a gimmick yet or just a cool feature for some people. I think it's easy to call it a gimmick, but there are gimmicks out there that are genuinely fun and genuinely enjoyable to use. Facts. That's very fair. So, okay, here's what I ended the video with. This is actually really funny. So the video comes out

it starts just getting a ton of attention and press because nobody's seen the phone yet. Carl pay retweets the video. And then I think two minutes later, he finished watching the video, which is when I got to the end where I started to make my comparison to one plus. Yeah. Um, so he, he tweeted about that, but my comparison was okay. Listen, so lots of phones all look the same.

How do you steal market share from these Goliaths selling these bland phones? You do something a little different, something a little cooler just to target some group that's going to like it, and that group will buy your phone. So you just made an enthusiast phone for some group. You stole the market share just from those small group of people, right? Yeah.

Now, as you grow, you can start to attract more people. And maybe the next version of your phone is a little bit more broad appeal. So you can attract more people because you got that first audience that liked the phone. For sure. Now they're going to buy the next one and you sort of draw more and more. The next version is even more broad appeal. You attract more. Next version is even more broad appeal until you got to this point where you've started making bland phones yourself and

that sort of feel like they've abandoned the roots of being targeted to an enthusiast. Yeah. Sound familiar?

It does. Yeah. I think also I want to add on there. I think a lot of people forget that Pocophone went that way as well. You're talking about OnePlus. I'm talking about OnePlus. But Pocophone, like to me, that's what it feels like to Pocophone had this like insanely hyped original phone that came out. You couldn't mention a smartphone for like six months without somebody comparing it to the Pocophone.

crazy, crazy amount of people who are obsessed with this thing. Then they just kind of go away and then they come back and release not the second version of that, but like

10 other ones. And now I just feel like Poco is just making a billion phones. Yeah. Yeah. That's a little different because they just diluted super hard. Like there was one super fast. Yeah. There was one Poco phone and it was like, this is the, the goat legend. Like if you, if you don't have any budget phone comparison to this phone, like this is the one. And then within two years it was like, now there's nine Poco phones and we don't know which one.

Which one is which, which one is the one you buy. It's just, they've saturated their own market. Exactly. So that's another version of what could happen here. They just jump from step one to step 10, basically, in like a single year. Whereas OnePlus was, yeah, they were gradually. But it's also...

when you think about though, as there's this weird standpoint from the fans as well, because when you're an enthusiast of a phone like that, all you want to do is convince other people that this thing you're enthusiastic about is right. And the more people you then convince that come over, then that group gets bigger. And then that product needs to adhere to a bigger group of people. And then they bring in more people that has to adhere to more people. And exactly. It's kind of,

you're cannibalizing yourself. The companies and the fans are both basically just turning. It's like the sun exploding. The sun just gets bigger and bigger and then explodes and now off to find the next one. It's so funny. Like rooting for the success of an enthusiast company

is also rooting it towards its own dilution and eventual... But it also needs to succeed to survive, so it's kind of a... So maybe, maybe there's a Carl Pei for, like, every wave, and we just get, like, a wave of, like,

So we have OnePlus, right? OnePlus has like four or five glory years before they fade into like being generic. And then as they start to fade, another company comes along with another Carl Pay and that's nothing. And they start to make cool phones. So you jump from the last of the good OnePlus phones. I think it's the same Carl Pay actually. It's actually the same Carl Pay. But then, you know, five or six years later, they're going to start to want to jump out of the nothing bandwagon because they've gotten too generic onto the next one. And we just keep having this arc over and over again.

But here's the difference, though. This is not differentiating itself with nerdy specs price-for-the-dollar performance. This is differentiating purely on aesthetics at this point. At this point. And, like...

Aesthetics are the easy way to do this right now. Or not easy way, it's the easiest way because something that looks good is always way more attractive than just some numbers on a sheet at first. We know there's a lot of people out there who are obsessed with specs, but I think more and more people like that since those Pocophone days.

days are starting to understand that like how a phone works and how it feels and how the user experiences is way more important. So back then it was like, hey, you

You want top of the line specs. We're OnePlus. We have those specs at a cheaper number. Now it's like you want this incredible user interface and just like overall user experience. And it's hard to show that without showing software. So they're like, look at this. I'm already showing you some experience in the design aspect of this phone. Yeah. So it feels almost like a different route, but also very similar route. I think because...

They're differentiating with a different thing, which is design feature. I think they have a chance at attracting a different starting audience. So I think there are people right now who are following Carl Pei, following what might be another OnePlus.

who will probably be disappointed when the design is a differentiating factor instead of what the old stuff we were expecting was. It's funny because, if I can interrupt for a second. Yeah. The way you're saying that, I saw it as a positive of...

that old OnePlus enthusiastic crowd believes in Carl Pei. So Carl Pei has them already. Now he needs to bring in the other side with the design aspect. So this is now a culmination of two sides. Can you keep them both? That's going to be the question we're going to find out very soon because we know so little. But I think right now, Carl Pei has in his hands and eyes on him, the old OnePlus fans, and now he's bringing in the new aesthetic of...

i'm gonna call them the smartphone the hype the like the hype it's literally on stock x i think the top bit is like over three thousand dollars which is the hype but yeah so so i think right now that's where it is and then once we find out everything about the phone what you said we're gonna see

who that's targeting. - The thinning of the craft, we'll see. - Hopefully both. - We'll see if you can-- - I'm sure Carl's hoping for that. - Yeah, it'll be a success if you can appeal to both groups. But yeah, that's always been such an interesting thing when you look at like the iPhones or the Samsungs of the world. It's like, this is a huge company, but they're also selling this phone to so many millions of people that it cannot have, it by definition cannot have features that are designed for small groups of people.

So you can't be an enthusiast phone at that scale. So you can easily differentiate from the Samsungs and iPhones of the world, but can you keep them? And the problem is, is every single one of those companies that caters to them at first wants to be the other company eventually. No matter how much you believe that they're there for the little guy, that company wants to be the shark. They want to eat the other fish. Oh, are we talking about the, what is it again? The Menorah? Menorah. Menorah.

thought. Yeah, the remora. Well, I guess that's not really that. It's more like dependency. This one wants to be the shark that has the remora fish. It'll be a whole another shark. That's fair. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. We'll keep an eye on the nothing phone. We'll also keep an eye on

The hype levels, like I said in this video. The hype levels right now are just rising astronomically. And I think they're going to continue to rise, continue to rise. And we will see when money is put on the table if it stays there. I think that will be a very big, I mean, obviously that'll be a really big tell of how this company goes. So by July 12th.

That's July 12th is the launch and you can order then. That's when you'll, I believe you'll be able to order, but that's at least when it's coming. All right. We'll check back in a couple of weeks. Yeah. Stay tuned for that. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but before we do trivia time.

Trivia. So Andrew mentioned earlier the sun exploding, which is perfect because on this day in history, June 22nd in 1633, the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei was forced to recant his views that the earth orbited the sun. Sticking with our solar system, which two planets have no moons? You get two points per correct answer.

I feel like there was a lot of buildup to that question to just ask about a planet that has no moons. That was a lot of facts. Yeah, I just threw a lot at you. Someone learned something today. I hope. I did. I have to think about that one. I definitely have to think about that one. All right. We'll think on it. We'll be right back.

All right, we're back. There would be no better way to finish talking about some stuff on Waveform than without bringing some cars back into the mix. Yeah, the comments asked for more EV stuff. Like we've been saying, you know, we can talk about it all day. No, there's some interesting ones. Okay, you dropped this in the Slack yesterday and I had the

I had quite a negative reaction. I think David posted it. Yeah, it's the light year. Some new, I mean, just bring out the checklist. I'm going to read this tweet first. It's from Wired. Okay. So I'll just read the tweet.

This is the Lightyear Zero, the car that could become the first produced car with solar panels this fall. The Dutch company says it'll be capable of driving around 388 miles without recharging with additional range of up to 44 miles a day from the solar panels. And then some sleek renders that honestly look like dolly renders of a mysterious concept car.

So we've talked at length, both on the podcast and on the main channel, about startup EVs. Yeah. So I'm not even going to get into the when does this ship conversation. This checks almost all those boxes. Yeah, very much so. But the solar panel conversation has been interesting. This has come up before, and I don't know if I asked Elon about this or somebody has asked Elon, but just like, hey, what do you think about putting –

like solar panels on, I think this is a Cybertruck. Somebody asked about it. Like what about the cover making it? And the answer really is like,

Solar panels aren't that efficient yet. And so with the best solar panel tech that we have today, covering the entire top of the car in solar panels would max you out at like 40 miles of range if you had a sunny day all day and you left it outside the entire time. I'm imagining it in like Alaska during the summer solstice where they like don't have night. Yeah. Yeah.

That is a best case scenario, which means you're probably going to have some cloudy days where you have some sunny days where you get lots of range and you'll have some rainy days where you literally get three miles added to the battery. So this isn't like you're going to just get free energy forever. It's cool.

It's cool to add this range and it might be convenient for a short commute, but it's to me, I don't want to say gimmick because it's a really useful feature to connect it to the drivetrain like that. But it is very unlikely to make a difference to me. There are clearly some like obstacles to overcome in this scenario. I mean, like, so we're talking about 40 miles on a day, which is like best case scenario, right? So like absolute max. So let's just...

You know, when you think of anything, when they give a number like that, you have to go lower. So let's say... In the electric car world, if a car says they get 300 miles of range, they get 270 miles of range. Let's say this is... I'll even be, like, optimistic and say 35 miles. Sure. Okay. So...

So driving a day, you know, maybe there are some people that aren't driving that far in a day. They have a super short commute. There's someone who generally like leases a car. Cool. You might get like totally clean if you park outside, if it's sunny all the time, if you clean your car enough to not affect the solar panels. That's something I always worry about. Do you remember...

Years ago, there was a Kickstarter for these solar panel roads, and everyone was freaking out about it. And then everybody immediately was just like, do you know how dirty those would get and just not work at all? It's just a brutal logistics question. So that's an issue as well. It just comes down to this point of...

How much extra is the cost going to be onto this? Because like solar panels aren't cheap. You're replacing like pretty easy stamped material. Yeah, it can just be metal or glass. You are taking away, like some people do like moon roofs and stuff. You're taking that away. There's no option for that in this car. It's not adding that much. And you're getting a bunch of extra parts now that could break or something could happen to this. Like a hailstorm on this sounds fantastic.

Expensive. That's fair. Like tens of thousands of dollars expensive. So it's interesting. So I plan on talking about this pretty soon in a video, but in this tech smart home that I've been building, solar panels on a roof. Yeah. It can get hailed on. It can get rained on. It can have birds land on it. It's a strong roof and it has solar. It is expensive compared to normal materials. And obviously if you do this in a car, you don't have a moonroof anymore. Right.

But I think to me, more of what I was thinking was, do you think you're gonna replace charging? Because you can't. Like, okay, you drive to work. Let's say you drive to work. You start with a full battery. You drive to work. It was 30 miles. Great. Now, as it sits at work all day in the sun, you replenish that battery.

Then you drive home using that same battery. Then what? It sits at night all night. Yeah. So you can't fully drive off solar. Like, that would be the dream. That would be cool. But that's not how solar panels, that's not, we haven't gotten them that good yet. Yeah. And like, so I also, can you click on the website and see this? Because I don't think you've seen the full car and they show it. I have not. This is the first time. I want you to see it because it is a little more than you're expecting. This is the first time. Yeah.

it opens up by saying drive for a month without charging. Press X to doubt. Okay. Scrolling down. Interesting. So it's the super teardrop shape. It looks kind of like that Mercedes EQX or whatever. It reminds me a mix of that. So it has like the really long like hatchback trunk so it can just make, so the like the roof of it seamlessly flows all the way down to the trunk and it's all solar panel. And then even the hood of the car is a solar panel.

So they're really leaning into the solar panel. But do you know what it also reminds me of? Do you remember when I believe it was the Civic or there was a Honda hybrid that used to have the wheel cover on the back like this? Wheel cover on the back? For aero. Oh, yeah. Like this solid wheel cover over the back. So, I mean, it's a sedan with a really long, elongated roof into the trunk, basically creating as much space as possible for a solar panel. Have you seen the McLaren Speedtail? No.

Google McLaren Speedtail. Oh, yeah. It's like this is the type of thing where you're like, all right, I need to make this car as aerodynamic and slippery as possible for the longest possible range. You need aero caps. You need a sleek shape. You need a sleek shape.

You need it to slip through the air. And I don't care about how bad it looks. Yeah, and you just end up with this shape. Yeah. So fine. So it's going to be focused on that. It's going to be hopefully super efficient. They're advertising lots of range. 388 miles of range. I mean, that in itself is cool without it. And I do want to say, like, I like the idea and I hope we can get to the part where solar panels will make a difference because...

We all know that even though we're using electric vehicles, it doesn't always mean we're using clean energy to charge those vehicles. It's clearly the step we need to make. But right now there's still a lot of like

just because it's an EV doesn't mean it's fully green. I think right now the better solution is if you really want that clean energy to be charging your car is to have solar panels on your house. And then you're just charging your EV from that. Yeah, this is the part where I haven't done, I'm just gonna look at the camera and say, I don't know this to be true. I don't have the research in front of me. We are not experts. I'm not an expert. But from what I understand, the surface area of a car

No matter how efficient, like we only get so much energy from the sun and it's a lot of energy. But, you know, you compare the amount of efficiency of current solar panels, let's say it's 0.6. And we assume an improvement all the way to perfect efficiency where we can use all the range. Even if you do get perfect efficiency, you don't have enough surface area to charge and drive a car for very long. So...

It's it's it'll always basically be relegated to like a cool accessory feature. I think Ellis put in the in the dock here. There was a Prius back in the day. Yeah. So the Wired tweet said that this might be the first production car with solar panels on it. But I immediately remembered the Karma Rivera that we looked at a while ago had a solar panel on and that was getting even less range added onto the battery. Ellis found was adding range. Yeah.

I believe that one was adding range to the battery, but the Karma Rivera was also a weird hybrid system. It might not have even been in production. Yeah. But Ellis showed...

And this is really cool, I thought. A Prius with a solar panel, but it wasn't connected to the drivetrain. Rather, you could leave your AC running with the car off and not waste gas. Yeah. I think that's awesome. Car battery never dies. Yeah. It's a good hack. That's a really cool idea. I like that feature. So, yeah. Yeah.

Solar panel is cool. You know, maybe these guys are thinking of something different, maybe. But their website doesn't have a lot of information. So I can't say they've discovered something new with this that could finally bring it. All I'm saying is there's an order button. All I'm saying is we made a video about how if you have a cool idea for an EV...

That you just make a dope website and great renders and parade one concept car around and collect lots of money. And that's basically what we're seeing here. 250 euro...

you know, order fee, whatever. I root for the success of startup EV companies, but I hesitate to like just cheer on every single thing under the moon because, yeah, my initial reaction was this should be an option, not the defining feature of the car. Well, that's the other thing is like when we talked about price before, this is going to add a lot onto the price and that's going to take people away who aren't looking at super, super high priced vehicles. But the minute you want to offer both of them then on top,

you make your production twice as hard because you now have to offer two different trims where one has a regular roof and one has a solar roof and hood at this point. I guess my question is, would you buy this car if it didn't have the solar feature? Right now, no, because I don't know anything about it. In the future, I don't love the look of it either. There's not a lot of other redeeming things about it. So I'm like, this isn't an option. This is the reason you buy the car. This one. I do want to like, in a broader spectrum,

I'm wondering if there is a way solar panels can eventually get put onto an EV. I would assume it would be a pickup truck first because maybe you could have a truck bed cover that could have it that increases surface area a little bit and like

The majority of people using trucks aren't always using the back of the truck. So if you could have a cover and some extra panels back there, maybe you could add something extra. Somebody in the comments on YouTube do the napkin math. I bet there's somebody watching this who's like a solar engineer who knows about the efficiency of solar panels. Assume the biggest truck with the most surface area with perfect efficiency of solar panels. How many miles are we looking at in the best case scenario added to a car's range?

To me, it'll never actually make a difference, but I hope I'm maybe wrong. I feel like the technology we're looking for is advancement in solar panels before we get to the advancement in cars with solar panels. And that will come eventually. You need amazing drivetrains and battery tech before the solar panel saves the EV.

I think so, yeah. We'll see. But yeah, it's interesting to see. I still root for new EV ideas all the time. So this is cool that we're actually getting stuff like that. The Karma, by the way, is one of the funniest looking cars we've ever pointed a camera at. But when I was looking it up for this, they're making a 2022 model and it looks nicer, no mustache. It's funny, the mustache was like,

The most unique identifying thing about the car, you know how the BMWs have the nostrils now and you see the nostrils and you're like, BMW, I know what that is. The mustache is like I could see that from a mile away and know, oh my God, there's a Karma. And now it's got like this swooping thing. It's a little different. I don't mind it though. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Do you want to do trivia answers to wrap up? Okay, yeah. We had some interesting trivia ones this week, so we should jump in and do those. Remind us the first question. All right. But first, the score so far. Marquez has nine. Andrew has five. So the first question. Which of the following was not a version of OS X? Kodiak, Jaguar, or Cougar?

My guess on this is Kodiak because Kodiak is a bear and the other two are big cats. And they named things after cats. They did cats and then they switched after OS X. They did Mac OS and they just did California locations basically. Okay. So Kodiak never made it. Gone with Kodiak. The correct answer is Cougar. Kodiak was a beta. Kodiak was a beta. Ellis pulled the fast one on you guys. Well, Kodiak.

There was never an OSX Cougar. There was never a Cougar, really. I feel like Cougar is like every high school mascot ever. Counterpoint. Is there a Mac OS Mountain Lion? Yes. That is a type of, that is a Cougar. That's true. Checkmate. But it is not OSX Cougar. The Mountain Lion, also known as the Cougar. Ah.

Thought you pulled a fast one, but we pulled a faster one. You definitely pulled a fast one on us. That was good. Wait, so the Mac OS beta was Kodiak? That's interesting because Kodiak's a bear, correct? Yeah, it's a bear. Yeah. So why they would go bear and then cat? Maybe B for beta for bear. Ellis and I need to discuss whether we're giving you guys points. You shouldn't give us points. Were there other beta names?

I don't even know if there were other. I also didn't know they ever named the beta something different from the main OS. I thought it was just like Mac OS beta. I thought it was just like code names. Yeah. Like three, like alpha and then like. Yeah. You should not give us points, by the way. Yeah. I don't think. No, we got it wrong. We got it wrong. We got it wrong. Yeah, that's a good one. For the fans that were wondering, we were going to give them the points, but never mind. Nah. We appreciate it. I mean, it doesn't change anything. No points. No points. The following question. Oh, okay. This one.

Yada, yada, yada. Which two planets have no moons? No moons. Imagine if someone couldn't name all the planets. And Pluto we're saying is not a planet. Sure. Whatever. Because Pluto does have a little satellite. A little one. Pluto does not count. And you get two points per correct answer for this one. Okay. Because there's two planets. Earth has a moon. I know that to be true. It does.

Jupiter. I'm just going through the logic in my head. You should probably let me answer first because I can tell you I'm far less confident. I'll let you step through your logic. To be fair, I knew Earth had a moon. Thank you very much. Good job. I'm pretty sure Jupiter and Saturn both have a lot of moons. I think Saturn has like 65 moons or something. I feel like I'm just asking you the question and then if you say yes or no. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Keep going. I will go...

You remember all the names, right? No. No, actually, I think I do. I'm going to guess one in close and one far away. So I'm going to guess Neptune, a planet I definitely know very well, and Venus. I think the gas giants all have moons, so I'm going to go Mercury-Venus.

So the correct answers are Mercury and Venus. Nice. So Marquez got plus four and Andrew got plus two. Yeah, I couldn't remember. Neptune always lets me down. Neptune always lets you down. Yeah, I think Saturn. Saturn, correct me if I'm wrong. Google, 67 moons. Is that Saturn or Jupiter? You get minus three points if this is wrong. One of the two.

What did you say? 72. You said 72. Andrew, any guesses? Jupiter or Saturn. One of the two. Tons of moons. 56. Saturn has 82 moons. They must have discovered more. That's your number. How do you not remember that? They definitely discovered more since I learned that fact. Do you guys want to guess Jupiter? This is... Jupiter, less than Saturn. Because Saturn has the rings, so there's mad satellites. I'm going to guess less. So you said 82 for Saturn? Let me go 67 for Jupiter then. Andrew? 65. 65.

Jupiter has 82 moons. They both have 82 moons? No, 79 moons. 79 moons, okay.

That's sick. I definitely learned that fact years ago when they hadn't found all of the moons. Someone fact-checked that. It's been updated. Prove Marquez wrong. Yeah, well, you can probably go on the Wikipedia and find when each one was discovered, which I guarantee some will be during my lifetime. But we won't dig that deep. We'll let you guys go off of that one. In 2016, Business Insider reported that

Jupiter had 67 moons and Saturn had 62. Business Insider? I don't know why they're reporting that. I want to see Astrology Insider or Astronomy Insider. Just kidding. Either way. All right, let's get out of here before I embarrass myself. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Obviously, stay tuned for the future videos on the channel. We've got stuff on the Nothing Phone. We've got stuff on cars coming up. Maybe by the time you see this, another car video, I'll just leave it at that. Thanks for listening. Catch you guys in the next one.

Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are partnered with Vox Media and our intro music was created by Vain Sewell. Who just dropped an incredible track, by the way. I haven't listened to it yet. Listen to it. It's amazing. I'm sure it's great.