Thoughts on Pixel 7, Pixel Watch, and Meta Quest Pro!
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All right, what is up people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And it's Google week because we just got, uh, well, the last video, this is, it doesn't happen often, but the last video on the channel that was a main video was the first hands-on impressions of the pixel phones and the watch and all the new stuff. And the next video is the review of the pixel phone. So

That's something we're going to talk about a little bit. Also, we want to go over some experiences everyone's had in the studio because as you know, with review units, I have my experience, but we have a bunch of units here and everybody else has their experiences too. There's also some funny stories with the Apple Watch and roller coasters and Google killing cloud gaming, but not really. And also there's some new VR headsets. So let's jump in.

Where do we start? We probably start at the funny stories, the quick hits. Yeah. Yeah. We want you guys to have more watch time on this episode, so we're going to save the good stories for last. Save the Google. Okay. I like that. All right. So let's start then with... I actually tweeted this a couple days ago.

Apple Watch crash detection accidentally being triggered by people on roller coasters. I was kind of wondering, like when people were testing crash detection, like what are you even testing? Like Apple said, if you're in a car and it detects that you've been in a car crash and

It'll notify emergency services. Yeah, you test that you're just Okay, I'm gonna go crash a car now and then it either works or it doesn't work But it turns out the opposite was true Sometimes you can accidentally trigger it while you're not in a car crash and it turns out the perfect use cases I am on a roller coaster going 60 miles an hour and it does some crazy maneuver and probably hits the brakes suddenly and

the watch thinks I crashed. - We were talking at the event, we were like, what could accidentally trigger this? Like if you're running around or like skateboarding or biking or something like that and it seems like this seems to be the, now the perfect scenario because not only is it decelerating super fast, it's also,

Like, you're originally moving very quickly. There's generally screaming and loud noises going on at the same time. Oh, I don't even know if it listens to that. I think it's... No, remember it said it used the microphones to, like, listen... I think it listens for an impact. For an impact, but, like, an impact and screaming, you're probably... It kept showing a wooden roller coaster, so I'm assuming...

the noises probably help that. Yeah. Also the G forces that you experience when you just do those intense drops. I bet it's definitely using that. And then so the perfect storm on top of that is in these scenarios, it gives you 10 seconds to cancel when the thing pops up when you get a vibration or a sound. But like you're on a roller coaster. You're either can't reach your pocket or you're not going to notice it. Yeah. So yeah, it kind of hits the perfect storm and apparently the

amount of call dispatch centers, like for emergency services that have been getting called around theme parks is greatly, greatly increased. So what's happening? So they're getting a phone call and

turning on the mic and you just hear people on a roller coaster and you're like, oh, it's another one of those. The problem is, is as an emergency service, you have to investigate every single one of those calls. I believe the Wall Street Journal was able to get a hold of a couple of different phone calls that were dispatched to emergency services. And you just hear like roller coaster noises the whole time.

But aren't roller coaster noises just like metallic chaos and screaming? It sounds like a car crash. Yeah, a little bit. It kind of probably sounds exactly like an ongoing, very long multi-car car crash. And I'm sure that there are already a disproportionate amount of emergency calls coming from theme parks. But I posted a few pictures. Apparently, even with just like Apple Watches doing it previously, like there are now signs at...

In front of roller coasters that say to please turn your watches or phones on airplane mode or to just disable the emergency services. I think if you put it on airplane mode, they said it won't call because it can't call.

Oh, okay. I guess. I'm not 100% sure about that. Because I have Wi-Fi calling on and Wi-Fi stays on when I go airplane mode on the iPhone. You're probably not going to have Wi-Fi on a roller coaster at Six Flags or something like that. Probably. But yeah, I guess most places generally ask you to keep your phones not on you during the roller coaster. You're not supposed to film with it and they don't want loose objects, but everybody's going to leave it in their pocket. And I think the only really way for Apple to try and avoid this is

To just assume that there aren't going to be a lot of car crashes at an amusement park and through geolocation disable that? That is tough because there will be car crashes near amusement parks. Yeah, I wonder how precisely they can get... Geofencing out the exact area of a roller coaster so that nobody responds to SOS calls from... But what if you do call SOS on the... What if you're stuck upside down on the roller coaster and you call SOS...

I feel like if you manually call 911 versus like auto triggering, that's like a different scenario. Oh, it doesn't know the difference? I have no idea. Also, if you get stuck upside down on a roller coaster, I hope you know the person running the roller coaster might call the police or someone in the line. I mean, like if you're sneaking into an amusement park maybe and running the roller coaster yourself, that's...

Yeah. Then you call the police. Then, yeah, I have no idea. Also, ironically, there were actually people crashing cars to try to test this detection stuff. And it wasn't working. And it never worked. I saw a couple videos. One of them, it did work. Two of them, it did work. The rest, it didn't. Hmm.

And I think there were a lot of good reasons why it didn't work. Some people were crashing remote control cars, so they weren't going nearly fast enough. The ones that I did see work were Wall Street Journal video and TechRacks.

Okay. He just put it in a car. It was actually extremely irresponsible. He put like a brick on the gas pedal and drove a car at power lines through an open field. At power lines? Don't do what he did. Wait, no way. At power lines? I think the video might be taken down. I think it should be. It should be taken down. It's not a good idea. But it did actually trigger. So there's that. Nope, the video is still up.

That's wild. Anyway. Anyway. Okay. Let's all agree we can stop testing crash detection on the iPhone now. We've figured out the full gamut of things it works for and doesn't work for. And that's that. Also, Google has had crash detection for a few years. Oh, yeah. They were quick to point that out. They just never... Yeah, they pointed that out at the Pixel event. They never really made a big deal about it. I think there was like a blog post about it. And they do similar stuff with... They have earthquake detection as well, which can tell you when an earthquake is coming. Yeah.

That I thought was amazing. Which is so sick. Was that at I.O. a couple years ago, I think? I think that was just a random blog post. I think I saw... I mean, I talked about it at I.O., but I think that they... I associate some visual with it, but basically, like, an earthquake happens, a bunch of people's phones around the area all feel the earthquake, therefore they all...

can use that cumulative data to know that there's an earthquake and people around the area who are about to feel the earthquake will get an instant notification that an earthquake's about to happen yeah that's crazy crazy it's so pretty useful yeah and it's like a secure thing so it's not using any of your personal data you're just a random node on the you know on the string so

Yeah, very cool. Very cool random safety stuff that these phones can do. Okay, what's the other? The other quick hit is... Oh, God. The next one is, I just... It's kind of funny. I also kind of think it's cool, but, like, within a week of... I don't think we've talked about it on the podcast yet, but Stadia's dead. Rip. Um...

no big surprise i hope we don't get made fun of or yelled at for saying that but i i don't know i've never been a big stadia believer uh personally neither was google apparently um but like within a week of google officially announcing that stadia was over um they also announced a bunch of chromebooks that now do cloud gaming so that's

Kind of weird. Chromebooks for gaming. Yeah. Super interesting. I've used a couple of these before. So they're like high refresh rate screens and like RGB backlit keyboards and like big batteries and good processors. Yeah, so like a few of them. There's one that is around $400 that has a like 165 hertz refresh rate screen, 17 inches, good keyboard, a ton of ports in the side.

And that, I mean, to me, that kind of makes sense. You know, if you, if you can just carry around like an Xbox controller with you and then you have good internet in a number of places and you can just stream your Xbox games from Game Pass or like certain type of customer. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's very specific. Like you're narrowing down your user base a lot, a lot, a lot. Yeah.

However, when Stadia closed, the amount of people that came out saying like, this sucks, I actually use this, surprised me a lot. That's the thing about Stadia. It surprised me, but it still wasn't enough of an outcry for me to think, oh, they made a mistake.

Yeah, this was definitely a financial decision. I bet the... Yeah, like Stadia is going to be one of those Google services that a bunch of people start using, but it's not enough to justify continuing to spend money on it. So they eventually shutter it and that amount of people who probably loved it isn't big enough and they all just lose what they were using. Yeah, classic Google. This has been a problem that's been like for every product that Google launches. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because...

Google shuts down so many projects because they are incentivized to launch projects They have a huge incentive to actually launch because that gives you like points at Google and it allows you to move to other teams and other people like want you to work for them on other teams and

So launching things at Google is like very highly praised, but actually maintaining something and it's like updating. Nobody cares if you're just the guy that's like adding the features that you promised when you actually launched the thing. But then people don't trust Google to maintain a service. So then people don't even start using it because like in a digital era, when everything, all of your information and data is poured into like one or two or three services, like

How am I going to get everyone on Telegram if Telegram's parent company has a track record of shutting down every single app that they make? You know, Allo, you know, everything. Stadia actually had a bunch of really interesting, cool features. And this is the other thing about Stadia.

being a YouTube creator, you have to pay attention to what YouTube sort of leans into. Like if YouTube makes a public announcement that they're going to be prioritizing something, you should pay attention to that. That's really important for a person whose business is built on YouTube.

And so, yeah, when they go, oh, we're going to have cloud gaming where you can watch a live stream of someone playing a game and then just like from that YouTube video, click and just jump into that exact spot in the game. It's like that's a genuinely cool thing that I've never seen anywhere else. That's really interesting. Yeah. And then, yeah, that's just all gone now. Just disappeared. I think like Stadia dying is kind of...

It's similar to why a lot of people are worried about buying digital downloaded games because you're buying this stadia and all these games in it and while Google's doing a great thing by like Giving a ton of refunds, which I'm very surprised They do by the way if you have stadia look it up if you bought from the Google Store You can probably get a full refund for it but

Now all these people have these games and especially these save games and campaigns they've been working on that are just going to disappear. So that's why so many people love buying hard copies and are still really, really scared of keeping things on a cloud or just the internet. In terms of these new laptops, I feel like they make less sense than what Stadia did because I think most people playing games on computers, especially with really, really great specs,

are generally looking to be a little more like zoned in, less lag, maybe even more competitive-esque stuff where I feel like more single player games and...

It's hard. A lot of people do it on the computer, but I feel like if you're not worried about a 3090, the best specs ever, you're probably fine with an Xbox or a Switch or something like that. I think it goes back to the question of is cloud gaming really a strong option for people? If maybe you have a couple games that you play that are available, and by the way, these laptops will work with other cloud gaming services, so NVIDIA GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming,

and Amazon Luna, so no Stadia, obviously. But yeah, maybe there's a game that you play, and instead of spending $900 on a gaming laptop, you can spend $500 on a gaming Chromebook and get a lot of those same experiences and also the Chromebooks useful for other stuff. That could be a person. Yeah. It's a super narrow set of people. I can see it as somebody who wants a little beefier laptop experience

has a good enough internet connection at the hotel that they're traveling to for work and maybe wants to load up a game that they're in the middle of a campaign for that they're playing at home. Because so many TVs now also have Luna and Xbox Cloud Gaming or you just have an Xbox at home and you're like, I want to do some side quests in Skyrim or something. You can do that. You got to get that little...

laptop Xbox thing that we share. I forgot what it was called. You could bring an Xbox. Because obviously a Chromebook you can bring places and an Xbox you can't. But like, hey, now you can. I do see that as being like maybe pretty cool. It's way easier to bring a laptop than that. And also in some senses, this kind of reminds me of like the ROG phone where...

It's not as good as a lot of other things, but because it has a lot of these spec bumps, this is just kind of a nicer Chromebook in general, a better specced Chromebook for a little bit more expensive. I mean...

All the ones I have listed are 600 to 700 here, mostly Core i5s, 8 gigs of RAMs, high refresh rate, 120 to 144, and good Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. So they're pretty nice Chromebooks. Something that I think about is the reason that I want a fast laptop, usually the reason that I'm always trying to look for a fast laptop is for video editing tasks and creative tasks and photo editing tasks. And if you're a person who doesn't do those things--

But you do game every now and then, and you don't need your laptop to be fast except for when you want to game.

then this could be a cool option, right? Yeah. It's still a very, very narrow set of people, but there is a definitely very huge majority of people who don't use video editing apps or photo editing apps. And, you know, there's also like Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom Online. So you don't always need horsepower for that either. Yeah. What is the most popular cloud gaming service now that Stadia is gone? I think Game Pass. I think Game Pass will be like... Game Pass is so...

It's a great idea from Xbox. It's really what's keeping them in I feel like the PlayStation 5 was more popular than the new Xbox but game pass is awesome and the fact that you can do like PC games and Xbox games on your Xbox between all of it get it on your computer or I Really really think game pass is a great idea and now doing cloud stuff also with so many smart TVs having cloud like the the Odyssey arc or no

What's the gaming monitor? The crazy monitor that we just have? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that has those Luna and Game Pass, like, built into it, and you can hook a controller up through Bluetooth and just play it on your TV. Yeah, pretty sick. I think that's where cloud gaming is going to be better. Yeah. I read a lot of comments of people being upset about Stadia that were just saying, I literally travel so much, I want to travel as light as possible, and the ability for me to carry my, like,

Chromebook or a Chromecast ultra with me and the computer and plug it into hotel TVs As long as I have good internet and just play some games like you know It's still a small subset of people but to those people actually mattered so hopefully they'll move to a service That's more stable before I end this I'm gonna pitch this idea one more time. I think I've said this probably before but I

Expedia, but sorting hotels by internet speed. Right? Like, shouldn't that be a thing? Or just add that as a toggle in Expedia. Expedia, add it as a toggle. Or another site, build all the infrastructure, do all the Wi-Fi testing, and then sell all your data to Expedia so that I can just use that easily.

Because every time we go to an event and we want to edit the video in the hotel that night and upload it, and then I do a masterful job uploading or creating this really great video, and then I hit upload and it says it'll be three hours. I just want to throw it out the window.

So yeah, that'd be cool. That'd actually be a great partnership for like Verizon Fios or Google Fiber or something to like, I could see Verizon like partnering with certain hotel chains and just saying, we offer gigabit internet. Millimeter wave right outside. Yeah. Just walk out to the parking lot, hold your laptop up to the antenna, upload your video. Perfect. I would do it. I'd pay extra for that. All right. Anyway. Cool. All right. Let's do a quick trivia question and then take a quick break.

All right. Welcome back, everyone. So for today's first trivia question, what is the correct pronunciation for the acronym for the American Standard for Code Information Interchange? That is spelled A-S-C-I-I. I Google this all the time, and it's one of those words I've seen and never had to say out loud. And now it's a trivia question, and I should have probably looked it up. I think I know this, but...

The fact that it's a trivia question makes me think that it's a common misconception. That's probably what's happening. I'm going to be upset when I hear the right answer. We'll see. We'll be back.

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All right, welcome back to the moment you've all been waiting for, which is us going deep into the weeds of talking about all of the Pixel phones and the Pixel watches that we've all been testing for the past week and change or so.

Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro. So if you've seen the impressions video, we talked about that. Also, the watch is out. We'll probably get to that a little bit after. But the phones we've had all these, I mean, I've had all these high hopes for. We've sort of been waiting all year. We knew they were coming. Google's been telling us about them and showing us pictures and videos of them. But now they're finally out and they're in our hands.

How do we feel? I've been using mostly the 7 Pro, but I do have to say I really like the 7. I really like the flat 90-hertz screen. I really like the matte aluminum instead of glossy. Big fan of the 7, but I love me some 1440p 120 hertz, so that's the one I've been using. Tell me about your experiences because the review is up now. People know how I feel. How do you feel?

Do I go first? Yeah, go first. Oh, OK. I'll go first. Oh, man. It's up to you. Oh, did you say, do you want to go first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I heard, do I go first? No, no. You go first. OK. Sure? Yeah, I'll go first. OK. Go for it. OK. All right. Yeah, I really like this phone. I think I felt very similarly last year that I really liked the Pixel 6. But the Pixel 7 feels like a really refined version of the Pixel 6. Oh, I've heard that before. I think I said that exact sentence about the iPhone.

It's a refined version of last year's. Yeah. It's very similar to last year. Yeah. Do you like the metal over the glass visor? Yes. Okay. It makes it, in my opinion, feel a little bit more premium. I love that it

into the side now because the Pixel 6 had... So much better, yeah. It's like a three-piece suit. You know, you got the front part and then you had the sides. I like that. I never thought about that. Yeah. But this is like a one-piece suit. Whoa. A onesie. What is a... A jumper. A onesie? Okay. All right. We'll go with that. Yeah. But it's the same metal material, the same aluminum that is around the sides of the phone, so it feels a lot more cohesive. It's like you've got glass

And then you've got this matte aluminum. They had some special word for the type of aluminum it was, but I don't know. I like it a lot more. I get what people are saying when they say that the Pro possibly looks more like jewelry.

I like matte aluminum better, but I guess if you're going for like a fashion jewelry kind of look, this definitely looks more like jewelry, especially in like the gold color. It's what the companies keep saying, and I get it. Like the stainless steel iPhone Pro looks more like jewelry than the matte, but I...

The matte looks better. Yeah. It takes less fingerprints. It's easier to keep cleaner. Yeah. This one especially, the white and the silver, if you hate the look of fingerprints and the dust that accumulates around the bar, get the white and the silver. It's the only one that doesn't show that stuff. This color, lemongrass. Yeah. Actually, I've come around to it. I hated it at first and now I like it a lot. I hate it.

It's very polarizing. It's like a key lime pie. A lot of my friends that have seen it really like it as well, which is surprising. Personally, I think that the two cameras looks better. Obviously, the ability of what it can do is way more important than the looks, but I think it looks a little bit more cohesive. It's the dynamic island with one background task.

and a dynamic island with two background tasks. Yeah, yeah. I like the flat screen and the size more.

They definitely made the screen on the Pro less curved than last year, which is exactly what Samsung did from the S20 Ultra to the S21 Ultra, which was like perfect. This is way better. It's grippable. It feels a lot better and it's not just like obscenely curved. And then the battery life has also been pretty killer. And that's the one thing that last year I was like a little bit unimpressed with. It wasn't terrible, but it just was kind of eh. This has been pretty solid battery life. Like I'd wake up at 645, you know,

in the morning at about and then I'd get home at like 12:30 in the morning and it would die like exactly at 12:30. Yeah. So full day battery, you know, not a lot of bugs on this one. It's been pretty good. So I love the flat screen. I love the 90 hertz. It's brighter, 25% brighter. That's really huge. So,

Yeah. No, I've been loving this. I used about, I used each of them for about three days. And I think if I were to buy either of them, I'd probably buy the seven over the pro personally, but I know a lot of people really like zoom and the zoom enhancements are awesome. Okay. So I, so as someone who I bought the pixel six and I've only

Only used also I've exclusively used pixel since the three I have not used any other phone as my daily This is why people want to know what you I just like so I just want to say that out loud for some people if you don't think I'm a pixel user I've only used since the three

This phone, I think my way of describing this is if you were interested in the Pixel 6 because you saw the 6, liked how it looked, liked all the things it was offering, saw reviews, got worried because of battery life bugs, stuff like that, and then didn't buy it, buy the 7. The 7 is just what the 6 kind of should have been. It's just the 6 where everything is fixed. I've had...

essentially nothing wrong with it. I have my only little tiny issue is sometimes I have to do tap to wake twice. I don't know why. I honestly think it's a me problem. I don't like saying that, but like, but every time I try and show it to you guys, you guys double tap and it works fine. And I go and it doesn't come up. And then when I try and show it, it seems to work. So smallest, smallest little thing, but like in

modem issues have zero of them. It just took two tries. Okay, cool. I'm glad somebody got to see it once. But like some of the biggest issues I had on the six, I just do not have on the seven. I've had no modem problems, which are just...

- On the six, that was the absolute worst. It happened daily, I would say. Zero of those problems. Battery life has been fantastic. Like you said, the six battery life was not great. On the seven, on my six, I had the Moment M-Force. And so it would MagSafe onto a, I'm gonna call it MagSafe 'cause that's what people know. It would MagSafe onto the charger at night and I missed the charger because I wasn't paying attention. Woke up at 45% battery on a Sunday and,

went to bed around 10 with like 10% left. It still lasted me the day I'm like half battery. Oh, you got through a whole Sunday starting at 45. Not the busiest Sunday in the world, but I started at 45. So I found battery life to be just like miles better on this one. In terms of my other big issue, I had this bug on the six where I would...

probably once a week use the Google search function on the homepage and everything would be in light mode despite my whole phone being dark mode and I'd have to restart. And I would also get a bug once in a while where lock screen would not do tap to wake at all. So I've just had like, I don't know, this just feels like what I wish my 6 was. You had a buggy 6 experience. And it looks better. And this is a much improved last buggy. I'm so happy with this. I do have to say face unlock, super, super fast when it works in the light mode.

Um, we, I've been debating how I want to use it though, because at first I was doing face unlock, skip the lock screen straight to my phone. But then I realized I was missing a bunch of lock screen features like media controls and now playing. So now I have face unlock as just opens the lock screen, unlocks it for me, can still use those things when I'm climbing and my fingerprint doesn't work. Um, then other than that, I kind of use my fingerprint a lot. I think it's like

Slightly better than last year's I don't know. It's definitely not Again s22 ultra like fingerprint sensor, but it feels good I think something that I noticed that I also really love that they added the face unlock and I currently do have it so it skips the lock screen because if if raised to wake works you literally raise your phone to use your phone and you can just start using it I touch it at all before you can start using it but

When you do payments, when you're about to go do Google Pay, if it unlocks your phone with the face unlock and then you go to tap your phone to pay, it sends the terminal an error that you haven't biometrically authenticated your phone. And the system is like, oh, it could not work. Please try again. And then the person that you're paying is like, what's wrong? And you're like, oh, they have to lock your phone. You have to unlock it with the fingerprint. So that combination is like...

not that is a little that is a little weird it's because like it's so fast sometimes you can't get your fingerprint in there which is like a weird problem a super niche problem to have yeah um but yeah that is but i also get why it shouldn't use face unlock because this clearly is just camera face unlock um i have to say if you turn off the um

eyes have to be open feature so you can use sunglasses it still works really really well sunglasses in good light the minute you're out of good light the face unlock is not very good yeah even in medium light like if i'm driving home in my car and it's 6 30 and the sun is just sort of setting behind the cliffs and everything it's not enough light so and it it also says like face unlock failed please try again which seems like it would just i don't know i love that they offer both

the face-along and fingerprint, though. The fact that you can have both as an option is amazing. Also, can I just say that in the docs right now for this section, David and Andrew both have extensive notes on what they wanted to say. Marques's notes just say, phone go brr.

So I'm really curious to see what Marques says. Marques also wrote four and a half pages of what he wanted to say. Yeah, that's fair. You know, we made a whole review video. I will say I've been a pretty big fan of the Pixel experience and like being the smart smartphone. Like I love call screening. I get random calls all the time. Some of them I actually have to take, which most people just ignore any phone number they don't know. Sometimes they're spam, but sometimes they're just like a random delivery person. Sometimes they're like a person who's...

swore they would call me from a briefing that I forgot about, whatever. So call screening, I use that a lot. The being able to like fast forward through automated systems where it just shows you the numbers and what they're about to say before the robot voice even says it. Love that.

And then just Google Assistant everywhere. So my big bugs with Pixel 6 Pro, which was like, I wanted to keep it in my pocket as long as possible, but it had these major like performance hiccup bugs and those were big. And then on top of that, it had a bunch of weird glitchy UI bugs.

On my 7 Pro, I have observed a few glitchy UI bugs, but no performance bugs so far. That's also how my Pixel 6 Pro started. So I'm sitting here as a happy camper, very like enjoying the Pixel 7 Pro experience, really looking forward to keeping it in my pocket, but keeping an eye on how that evolves. Because I showed in the video a few little bugs, like the now playing just didn't show up for a while. I had to reset the phone or restart the phone.

Also some weird connectivity bugs with the watch that we'll talk about in a second. - Yeah. - But that might be more the watch than the phone. So generally pretty happy with it, but keeping an eye on it. - I do have to say after seeing you guys use the Pro, doing the Pro review, I still think, and I think we're all in agreeance here, the 7 is like an incredible price. Like if you're interested in the 7 and that price seems good to you, get it. I think it's fantastic. - Yeah.

I do think on the Pro, the Super Res Zoom looked better than I was expecting when you were testing it. Some of those shots look a bit better. Still not fully up to what I want out of a telephoto. It's halfway to the phones that actually have several telephotos, which is fine. It costs less than those phones. It's better than I expected. Sure. So I do think that...

There's a little more worth there than I originally expected, but I still think I would suggest the 7 over the 7 Pro every day of the week. I like the flat screen. I like the size better. So you'd suggest the 7 over the 7 Pro, but would you buy the 7 over the 7 Pro? David, yes. You're nodding your head yes. Okay. Would you spend the $300 extra for the Zoom? No, I would not spend it. If somebody gave me a 7 or 7 Pro and I didn't have to spend money on it...

It's still a hard decision, but I would probably get the Pro. That says enough. I like the size better, and I like the flat screen. I know there are people who will like a bigger screen. Would you say you'd get the Pro? No, no, I'd get... You said you'd get the Pro. You'd get the Pro still. Yeah, but I'm saying it's a hard decision because I still like the size, like the flat screen. I don't think...

The 30 hertz is like a big difference. Like with the iPhone, that difference is big because it's 60 to 120. Yeah, the difference from 60 to 90 is huge compared to the difference between 90 and 120. 90 is great for this phone. Yeah, it's really great. 60 is rough for those $900 phones. You know what I'm talking about. Also something I know we mentioned we liked. I don't know if you mentioned in the review. I think you did, but...

You won't notice this if you go from 6 Pro to 7 Pro because the ultra-wide selfie is very close, but the selfie on the Pixel 6 was 80 degrees, 84 degrees, I think, and it's 94 or like 93.8 or something like that on the 7, so it's better, and I'll take a wide selfie all the time. Yeah, it's awesome. There's a little clever piece of UI. You went from having on the 6 a 1x selfie and a 1.4x selfie

to having a 1X selfie and a 0.7X selfie. So you basically gain an ultra-wide selfie angle with the new Pixel 7, which is solid. Yeah, honestly, I'm putting it on the short list of best value phones of the year. I kind of massage that category a little bit. It used to just be like best cheap phone or best budget phone. I'm just going like best overall value. If you have $599 to spend on a phone, this is a pretty hands-down price.

- Top pick, I think. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's good. - For me, I would actually buy this if they were the same price. And probably most people wouldn't do that because you're intentionally giving away features. It's nice to be able to Zoom.

For me, I'm always carrying around a separate camera and I only take photos on my phone that I need to send to people for information density use cases. Like if I'm sending them a menu. You don't take pretty pictures? No, not on my phone. Interesting. I know that people can. I just hate the UI experience of taking pretty pictures on the phone, personally. Mm-hmm.

So the Zoom stuff to me is not as important. And then I don't really take macro photos. Those are for people that like those things that can be super important. I totally get it. But because the phone camera experience is not that important to me, because I like the flat screen, because I like the smaller phone.

I think those are the things that are more important to me than the camera experience. But I totally understand that most people are going to want the... I'm happy the battery doesn't suffer too much going to the smaller phone. Honestly, it's really good. It's fine. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Real quick on that. I do find it kind of funny...

I really liked, there was a Reddit post talking about how we talk about telephoto lenses and they called it a tool rather than like a camera. And that's where I would see the telephoto being good. So the way you described it, I would pick the pro as having a tool to send information. I would like the 5X not caring about photo quality quite as much. But if you don't care about photo quality, you can just crop the 1X. Yeah, but it's still going to be way better on a 5X. Yeah, but if you're just sending information, then it doesn't need to look pretty.

There's a certain point where you will lose something that you need to know if you're looking at a sign further away or something like that. I do think as a tool I like that, but as the 4 or 5x, I think if I'm trying to post it as a

photo that I think is pretty, it doesn't look like that. So if I'm using my camera as a phone, I don't care about the, or phone as a camera, I don't care about the telephoto as much because it won't look pretty. But if I want it as a tool, then it feels, this is like super niche. And obviously like, I just thought it was a fun conversation. The fact that the smaller phone will get as much done as you can possibly need means you don't need the bigger phone and you prefer the smaller phone, then just get the smaller phone. That's basically the thought process, I think, for a lot of people.

So yeah, it's good. I'm going to keep it out of pocket. We'll see. Quick question. So I was thinking about this. I don't like suggesting people upgrade year over year because I usually think they're incremental changes.

I kind of think this time around, if you have stuck with your six and just constantly been like, oh, this is kind of annoying, I feel like you should trade it in and spend the $200 to just get that experience in a way better package without the annoyance anymore. I feel like that's valid. I know people, I have a friend who bought a Pixel 6 and even watched our review and was like, I was really excited for it. And I asked him how it's going. He's like, I wish I could tell you it was a good time. And I'm going to tell that guy like,

Get the 7. That was the problem with the 6 is like all the reviews are very positive because most of the phone was mostly very positive and it just got buggier over time. And they did eventually squash it, but it's like...

I'm just really hoping that stays the same for this. So I'm going to stay on this for at least six months. This is funny. I've been burned before. I've been hurt before. History repeats itself. I've got confidence. For some reason, I'm ready for it. Take all the Stadia developers and put them on Pixel. The thing is, the modem was always an issue.

6 though right yeah and that is that was hands down the biggest problem i've oh yeah also i keep 5g on this because the battery is actually so good the first thing i did on my 6 was turn off 5g because it was destroying my battery yeah i love it i love the 7 yeah yeah me too i really yeah i really really like the 7 well let's uh let's change gears a little bit and go to something that we might not have as much of a universally positive experience with and that's

the watch, the Pixel Watch. We have a Google Pixel Watch. Okay, so this podcast we're recording on Wednesday, it'll be out by Friday. So maybe or maybe not by the time you see this, the Pixel Watch review is also live. But in case it isn't, let me give you my upfront two cents about the watch, which is that it is a pretty good first-gen watch.

Slightly overpriced, but still nice experience for a Fitbit slash Google smartwatch.

And I can elaborate on any of those pieces that you want, but basically it's pretty nice. Wear OS is pretty nice. It's a nice OLED. It's small and really light. That's the thing that I noticed most about it. The battery life is the biggest weakness to me. It is the, if you actually look it up, it is about the same physical size battery as an Apple Watch Series 8 battery, but it is an up to 24 hour battery life, which is, as you know, best case scenario.

Always on display is off by default when you take this watch out the box.

and it's a charge it every night type of situation. I had to charge it twice in one day once. The nice thing about it is it is such a small battery that it charges very fast, much faster than the Apple Watch. I don't know why. I think the charge curves might be different because I found like I'll put the Apple Watch on a charger, and I'll go away for like 20 minutes, and I'll come back, and it'll gain like 9%. If I go away for 20 minutes, this thing is gaining like 45%. Huge difference. So...

You know, it's got the Fitbit stuff. It's got the heart rate constantly going. I say first gen a lot in this review that you'll eventually see because there are a bunch of things that it just strikes me that Google is just finding out in their first generation of a smartwatch. One of the things is like it's pulling my heart rate once every second. Why?

I don't know. I don't need to know that. Like, it's cool. There's a cool feature. I have a complication that shows I'm at 60 BPM right now. That was just 58, 60, 63, 64. It keeps going. But Apple has known and learned over the years that, yeah, pulling heart rate and GPS a lot kill battery. So specifically the watches in low power mode will just pull way less often. Like that's how you get more battery out of it.

I haven't found an option to pull heart rate less often in this watch. I mean, that's just a first gen thing. Um,

the charging situation is funny it does work with uh an apple watch charger if you line it up perfectly which is kind of funny sort of it's almost impossible to do though because the magnets are opposite magnets repel so it doesn't it doesn't sit on the middle of the charger but it it will still sit on it and charge slowly but i wouldn't i think you have the nomad base station right i have one yeah where you can lay it flat it stands up so i think like

the friction of the base standing vertically will push it back. - That's about the only way it'll work, yeah. But I don't know, I'm curious what you guys think of this watch. I have not had the connectivity problems that others have had, but I have heard from almost everyone I've talked to about this watch a pretty terrible story of trying to get it connected or once it gets connected, having a hard time keeping it connected or having to reset it, and that sounds pretty annoying.

What's your Pixel watch experience been? This is my black one. You have the gold one. I have the gold Daft Punk one. You have the silver one. We've made Daft Punk helmets now out of our watches. How's it going?

I'll go first this time? Okay, cool. I've heard the stories of the bad connections. Mine connected perfectly the first time. And the only thing I can think of, I mean, it might be an issue. Austin, when he came over, said a lot of people were connecting it before they got that first over-the-air software update for reviewers. I think that didn't go out till like...

Later that day or something? I got it later that day. So I think that may have been some of the early issues. I'm not 100% sure. I did, though, have the issue that you mentioned, which was getting disconnected. And I don't know if this is a Pixel watch thing or an Android thing, but essentially what happens is your watch...

says you've disconnected from your phone and you have to completely factory reset the watch in order to get it connected again. But this happened with me on my Galaxy Watch 4. So I think it's an Android issue, but it is the most annoying issue possible because you have to literally like reset up Google Wallet, redo all your notification settings. And one issue I have with this is

if you're going into your phone apps that you wanna do for notifications, they're all defaulted on and you can't trigger all of them off to then just turn on the ones you want. You have to go down the list and unselect every single damn app. There's like 100, it's really, really annoying and now I've had to do it twice because of getting disconnected. Other than that, I actually like the size. I like it smaller, I think it's comfortable.

I kind of, I'm not, I don't dislike the gold. I actually kind of dig the gold. I think black looks better. I agree. It's matte black, by the way. These are glossy. Yeah. I would like to see the other bands...

In terms of, I'll save my battery life hot take till later and see what you guys think of it. Oh, wow. Okay. I've made it through a whole day, no problem. I'm not a sleep tracker though, so I always charge it at night. Okay. Very different for me, potentially. And I have brought it rock climbing once for a quick trip. I have like three little nicks on the top of it.

My only issue is like I was only climbing for like an hour and it already has scratches like that because of the dome shape similar to the Apple Watch, which my Series 6 Apple Watch is destroyed from climbing. I think this thing's going to get messed up pretty hard. Yeah, I've seen some other people have scratches and dings on the watch pretty quickly. We'll see. It does seem like I really like the design and I also have a feeling it's designed to be like a sort of a...

Like I wish there was a bigger one, basically. This is a nice small single size and a nice OLED with a mostly black UI. And it's got the Google Assistant thing in the time. It's high resolution. It's bright. It's a nice looking watch, but I don't imagine it as something I would go play a sport in, even though it is a Fitbit.

Yeah, it feels more like a really nice looking... I like the size. I love the size, actually. I would not want it bigger. It feels more like an everyday smartwatch where you do some physical activity, like walks or runs and stuff like that, not the really extreme stuff. One more thing before I let David go over his notes is...

I don't it so it does we found out it doesn't have auto workout detection I don't mind auto workout starting not having it but I really really wish it had um to like check if you're still working out auto detect end because most of the time if I don't start a workout I probably was just doing like an outdoor walk and it's like oh you're doing an outdoor walk do you want to start it

Sure, I wasn't really planning on starting one. But the amount of times I'm tired after a workout and just go like sit on the couch and don't stop it is very often. And I've stopped it immediately and check the calories and stats. I've already had like three workouts that are half an hour longer because I just went and sat down. And then like when I checked my watch later, I saw that I was still in the middle of a workout. So I wish I had auto stop somehow, which seems pretty easy. But yeah.

Yeah, something I feel about the Pixel Watch is similar to something that I felt about the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7. And that is...

Think the pixel 6 was sort of like a gen 1 for Google a second try at a gen 1 because they were going they're going for that look they're going for material you like everything about the pixel was reinvented with the pixel 6 and a gen 1 of anything is Fairly rough right it's got kind of like unfinished stuff because they're trying to rush deadlines. They're trying to fix problems and the gen 1 of the pixel watch is

is like a good first attempt that makes me excited about Gen 2. Because everything about it is, I think it's got the right moves, but it just needs a little bit of refinement. The Fitbit integration, for example,

I think, and I think I've said this before, but they just need to rename Fitbit to Google Fitbit and then use the UX design from Google Fit. Because currently the watch sort of feels like an Android Wear watch that has a layer of Fitbit on top. It's like bolted onto the side. Yeah, it's like bolted on. That's how I would describe it. Because when you do any of the fitness stuff,

It shows like the calories or the steps, but as soon as you tap, it's like launching Fitbit. Yeah. Whereas it's not, it doesn't feel like a native application that is Google fitness, you know? And if you're going to use a pixel watch, it's kind of weird that it has all this physics. I don't think they should get rid of the Fitbit name because as a lot of really strong brand cache for people that have used Fitbits in the past. And I think they are potentially going to sell a number of these to people that wanted a Fitbit that was more of a watch. Um,

Um, but they really need to fix that because it just, it just doesn't feel cohesive enough. It's also slightly annoying and confusing having to go back and forth between two different apps to check on stuff. Well, when I was talking to the manager of the Google Pixel Watch at the event, he was like, yeah, we're not really like recommending that people download Google Fit. Like you could if you wanted to, but it's not part of the setup process. And we're not really thinking about Google Fit when we do this. And it's like,

You just did an entire campaign like a year ago, like Get Fit with Google, trying to get people to use Google Fit because they redesigned it. And it's still tracking things in my pocket with my phone. I have Google Fit on the phone. So I have Google Fit on my phone tracking steps on and whatever else Google Fit takes...

But then there's also the watch app, which is like my watch faces, my watch settings, all those things. And then there's also the Fitbit app, which is where it keeps all of my fitness data and my sleep data. Which is actually technically also what Apple does, even though they're all Apple apps. So there is a fitness app for closing my rings on the iPhone. And there's also a health app for all the health information and sleep information. It's just not a separate logo company thing.

For what it's worth, I also think that Apple should just have all of your health and fitness stuff into one app. And it's like if you get an Apple Watch, it adds a little tab that's like Apple Watch stuff. It seems simple, but who knows? Maybe it's not. Real quick, if you do want to do that, and I didn't get to test it because when I set it up, then my watch needed to get reset. There is an app called Health Sync where you can sync all your Fitbit devices

like recordings into Google fit so that it's another app a third-party app you have to download kind of sucks but I'm sure there's someone out there who might want to do it and you can do that and have Fitbit throw into Google yeah how long does it kills Google fit like they killed Stadia just make it Google Fitbit I really think that's the best come on it's it saves everyone time and energy

I don't know. I'm just terrified to like invest that much time into like tracking my entire life in Google Fit and then Google is just like, yeah, I'm going to not...

Yeah, exactly. Google Fit for sure. I mean, Fitbit's been around for long enough and it's its own, like they have so many Fitbits. I don't think Google ever, well, I don't know. I don't know. Who knows? But I feel like they would be more hesitant to like completely kill off Fitbit than they are to like kill some random Google app, you know? But other things about the watch, I think that the watch faces are gorgeous. Um,

I think that the bezel is not a big deal at all. In the renders, it looked chunky. The UI is specifically doing a good job of making you not think about the bezels too much. All the watch faces are completely inside of the bezels so that you go right up to the edge but never see overlap.

If you ever scroll through lists and stuff, yeah, you'll see the bezel when you scroll, but it's like fading things into shadows in the corners. The UI is mostly black in the background. They've thought a lot about this. I'm sure future versions will have smaller bezels, but I'm not as concerned as someone. I think this is the perfect use case of something...

where people on the internet see an image of it and can complain about it, but they don't actually use the product. It's like the notch. If you're not using a product, you stare at that thing and you're like, that is ugly. But if you actually use the product, you're looking at the contents on the screen and it's not a big deal. It's the fold crease.

Yeah, it's kind of the fold crease. The fold crease you actually have to touch, though. So, yeah, but yeah, I think it's easy to ignore the bezel. I love how light it is. The way that the latch works for the bands is...

smart, but I feel like they did it backwards because you currently have to press in with your index finger and then press against your index finger with your thumb towards what you're pressing into, which kind of hurts a little bit. I feel like if they did it the other way where the button was here and you could just slide your finger that way, it'd be a little better. I don't think it would work that way though because the reason you're pushing in is because that's the piece blocking it, right? So you have to push down the thing it slides over. Right. I'm just saying they should do on the other side.

Doing that with my thumb, I think, would be easier than doing it with my index finger. That's a minor thing. The latch seems cool, and it makes it feel like it's coming directly out of the watch, which I think is very cool. I really like the way it connects. Aesthetically, very well done. Yeah, and I like the look of this watch a lot. It is a nice, lightweight little computer on the wrist. Yeah, I...

had switched to an analog watch because I feel like you can see an Apple Watch from a mile away and I think there is a use case for a wrist computer that's why I actually like the Apple Watch Ultra because the bigger higher resolution screen is like this is a better wrist computer if that's what you want it does all these computer things and a watch I feel like is more of a accessory and

And obviously it shows time. And obviously this is a smartwatch that can do things. But as far as being a computer, it's,

It's less efficient at doing that because it's circular. Right. But I feel less weird like going out into public and hanging out with people and wearing a circular watch than I do a square watch. Yeah. I think it's the best looking one. Yeah. I think it's really great looking. The silver I think is probably the worst color only because it kind of looks cheap compared to the other ones. Like even the gold looks higher quality than the silver. I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. But the matte black is awesome.

So yeah, I think it's a really great first attempt. The software is great. Um, there's a tiny bit of lag occasionally in like random things. Like if you're going from always on display to not always on display, sometimes it kind of like stutters open, the apps will stutter open, but it's not that much. Um,

In the future, I would love to see a cut-down Tensor as the Pixel Watch chip because that's what Apple does for the Apple Watch. That would be cool. Yeah, I think it would be good for them too because they can make the unit price of Tensor go down. Keep printing Tensors, baby. Yeah, I think it's a good first choice. The battery life thing really quick.

For me battery life is great during the day. I usually end the day at 25% problem is If you don't put it in sleep mode or bedtime mode when you go to bed It drains 40% battery which is nutty and then if you do put in bedtime mode it drains 20% or that's what I what I got and

Having to manually put something into bedtime mode every night is not good because I will forget. They need to put a setting. If I haven't found it, I'll let you know if I find it. But the Apple Watch, I just have like a time every day where it just switches at 11 p.m. for me automatically.

I would hope that I can do that here too because I'm going to forget one day and it's just going to die. Yeah, and it's like people always say like, oh, just charge your watch when you're showering. I shower in the morning, the first thing, before I put the watch on. And if it's going to die in the middle of the night but it's supposed to do sleep tracking, then I can't do my sleep tracking if it's going to die then. I will say if you find yourself about to go to bed and realize it's at 20% and it's going to die overnight, plug it in for –

seven minutes and you'll have more than enough. That's annoying though. It's just annoying. It is, but it's like I brushed my teeth and I came back and it was full. It was like ready to go. So that's my little pro tip, I guess. Yeah. Anyway. Can I end with my battery hot take? Oh, yes, please. I want to see if you guys agree with this. I would love to hear this. Okay, so... Oh, man. I hope I don't go that way. It's not that bad. So as someone who doesn't sleep track and maybe that's the key point here, I think I'm getting to the point where...

As a watch, it either needs to have one day of battery life or over two days of battery life. 36 hours to me feels pointless because if I'm not wearing it to bed, I just need it to last through the day. And then if I want something more than that, I want it to last like a whole weekend. So this like...

past 24 but not quite 48 feels the same to me as just 24 and i don't think there's really any benefit like i don't think the regular apple watch battery life is that much better in this comparison for everyday use

I get the logic. I think for peace of mind, having you end the day at 35 instead of five is nice. And if you happen to have a heavy day, you work out, you go for a hike, you do a bunch of stuff, you'd kill this watch rather than having 5% left on the Apple Watch. But I get the logic of like, I'm going to charge it every night anyway.

So I hear you. You said like 24. If you take it off the charger, say it's a Friday, right? You got to get up at 6 a.m. to go to work. You take it off at 6 a.m.

You wear it to bed, but on Saturday you don't have to get up till 8:00 So if it's 24 hour and then it dies at 6:00 a.m. But you're still sleeping this is assuming not sleep tracking though. So it would be on the charger at night Oh, I see so that like I just need it to last during the day. I've had no issues with that I've had double workout days and I haven't had to charge it again I know you had to twice why I had a double practice weekend But for one of the weekend I like woke up got in the car did a road trip had a practice

And I think by the end of the practice, I was low enough that I had to put it on the charger. And then I had enough time to charge it back up to like 60%. And then I ran it down again through the end of the day where I needed to charge it again before I slept.

So it was like just not quite enough battery to just peacefully go about my day. But that's the price you pay for, you know, a little bit of first gen. I do have to say I quickly disabled the battery charge percentage on the home screen of this because, yes, it was making me anxious. I don't have that. That's something I've always done on my Garmin and my Galaxy Watch. And I do not do it on this. Let's end this by saying what all our battery percentages are right now. All right.

I'm 67%. 57? 62. That's literally a 5% delta between all of us. That's pretty close. What time did everyone wake up this morning? 7. 6.45. 6.30. Oh, wow. I mean, we're all like almost exactly. So I slept tracked, woke up, and charged it up to like 88% before I got here. Do you guys find anything interesting in your sleep tracking?

No, but I get a score now, which is huge for me because I can competitively sleep now. There we go. That's all you need. I got 77 and then I got an 82 last night. Let's see. I'm definitely getting up to 90. It's already difficult for me to compete with you. Yeah, who's on the sleep high scores here? I'm going to sleep for like nine hours tonight. I'll get the highest score you've ever seen. Just don't come into work tomorrow. Phones on the other room. All right, I think we're ready for trivia. Yeah, let's do trivia and a quick break. All right, trivia. Trivia.

Side note meanwhile my whoop is yelling at me constantly that I don't sleep enough. Do you have a score? It does give you a score. It's only like one to ten though So I don't know what that would like translate to I think my score right now is like a four point eight or something Oh, come on. I do think yeah Whoops is really important though because whoops whole stick is like your recovery. Yeah. Yeah anyway, so the name Bluetooth is

Comes from... This is multiple choice. All these history questions. A, it's an acronym for Bilinear Utility Transmission onto Other Technologies Hardware.

B, in World War II, England used a technology called blue sonar to, quote, give it to them in the teeth. So they renamed it to Bluetooth in homage. Or C, it was named for Danish King Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm, because an Intel executive thought it sounded cool. Those are your options. Is all of the above an option? Yes to them all.

Dragonath of the fire domain thought that it would make him have superpowers. All of them sound reasonably possible. Yeah. I'm not old enough to know. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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All right, welcome back. I think we've got a little bit more we want to talk about. Last quick bit here is we did get a meta event and a Microsoft event this week. We can eventually talk about the Surface stuff, but I do want to dive in a little bit to the meta stuff. And maybe this will eventually be summarized in a video, but new meta headset, Quest Pro, $1,500.00.

12 gigs of RAM, new Snapdragon chip, 90 Hz refresh rate, 1-2 hour battery life, 50% better performance than the Quest 2, designed for enterprise.

Give one to your employees and they will work in the metaverse and have meetings with each other as they all wear headsets and see each other's avatars with legs. Are we sold? With legs. With legs. With legs is huge. Legs. Legs? Legs. Legs. No, but in all seriousness, it is an improved design, so they moved...

some of the electronics to the back, the battery to the back. So now you have weight on the front, weight in the back, and then it is comfortable. I did get to try this headset. We wore it for a little bit. So we're working on a video about this stuff, but I think generally my thoughts are more curious about just like who believes in this future?

Accenture. Clearly Accenture. Accenture bought 60,000 of these. Did they buy them or did they just get them from Mark in exchange for a promo? I don't know. I just think it's fascinating that there is this huge bet from all angles at this future of everything being in the metaverse from meta. And part of that includes working in the metaverse,

I've seen pros and cons of it. I've seen upsides and downsides.

It's generally, here's how I'll summarize my thoughts. I think it's a good idea and there are real benefits. I've seen a pass through where you have a laptop in front of you, you put the headset on and it turns your laptop into huge multi-screen like operating environment. You can do a whole bunch of stuff in there and you can take the headset off and take that with you wherever you want, on a train, on a park bench, anywhere.

I get it. It's super cool. Being in a meeting with nine other people instead of a Zoom call and you can just turn to the person next to you and go, hey, can you read what he's writing on the board? I can't quite see that. And the person next to you can hear you even though it's in VR. You couldn't do that on a Zoom call.

okay i get it that works but looming over all of this is you have to convince people to make an avatar and hang out in the metaverse and like spend meaningful time wearing a headset during the day getting work done and i don't know if that's possible do you think it's possible

I don't think you have to convince people. I think you have to convince the people running the enterprise that they're trying to sell to, to then force it onto all of their employees. You have to convince the bosses because they'll buy them, but then you have to convince all the employees to use them, to actually use them. You know what's funny? B2B is always like the plan B solution when something is not working. Every company that like sells like B2B,

IBM, great example. IBM was the computer manufacturer. Everyone was fighting against them. Apple was fighting against them. Everyone was trying to beat IBM. Eventually, they lost. What did they do? B2B, baby! Business to business. And that's what everyone does. And it just makes me wonder, of course, Quest 2 is selling incredibly well considering the entire landscape of virtual reality. They sold a ton during COVID, right?

They've sold a lot because of like Beat Saber and all these other things. But up until now and even during the MetaQuest Pro presentation, they talked so much about VR gaming. And it seems like VR gaming and work

are the only two use cases that they've been able to bang against the wall. I disagree. I feel like they've thought of every single thing you could want to do in VR. You can make your own house in VR and hang out with your friends in your VR house. So they're like, hanging out with friends, that can be in the metaverse too. Work, that can be in the metaverse too. Watching a movie, that can be in the metaverse too. You can watch YouTube videos together. They're just...

Basically, they'll think of every possible thing you could want to do with traditional 2D screen experiences or even non-screen experiences and then just throw as much money at the companies in the space as possible in order to turn it into a viable VR experience. Yeah, you know how Tesla used the super expensive car, medium expensive car, cheap car model to get cash injections for each subsequent model? Mm-hmm.

I think that, like, as far as AR goes, they've obviously sold a crapload of Quest 2s to, you know, tons sold during COVID because people wanted to do exercise and Beat Saber was very popular. And they're still, like, one of the most popular consumer headsets.

but they are standalone. They're not hyper powerful and they added a lot of stuff to this MetaQuest Pro that they'll eventually want to put in say a Quest 3, like a consumer version of that. So if they sell a ton of these to consumers, sorry, not to consumers, if

So if they sell a ton of these to businesses, they'll get a cash injection to do R&D to eventually put in a consumer version of this. But obviously enterprise is going to be where you can pull the most cash from people at once in the beginning. And it's pretty easy to convince like IT managers and also the people that are, you know, they have a budget for what they want to do. Is it?

I mean, it's not easy, but there are people whose job is... Easier to get $1,500 out of somebody. Yeah. You can get $1,500 out of 1,000 people faster by convincing one business IT manager. Right. Okay. There are people whose jobs it is at these companies to be like, how can we make our employees more efficient? And they go to... That's like what expos are for, right? Conferences and expos are how can we make our employees more efficient? Yeah. And if they can convince the people who run the business that this will...

That's a big cash injection. You just get on stage and you say, meetings in VR make your thing more immersive and everyone's 3% more efficient. Yeah. And 3% you just do like, what does that translate to in terms of actual revenue? Boom. Yeah. Yeah. So.

I can't wait to play Among Us in VR. Oh, Among Us in VR looks like so much. Here's the thing. I love VR. I love Beat Saber. I love this new game that Ella showed us called, I believe it's pronounced Acron, which is basically you're a tree and get attacked by a bunch of squirrels that people are playing on their phone. So like fun party game. I love showing older generations it. Honestly, when we're all old,

VR is going to be awesome. Like I feel like we're going to get to experience a million things in VR later. The business aspect of it, I'm still not totally sold on with like meetings in such a VR. I get what they're thinking of like Zoom kind of sucks and there's probably a better way of doing it and a more interactive way of doing it.

It's not anywhere near there yet. And I am getting it's hard to convince with the examples I'm being shown right now. They're just slowly. I want this is going to be a video for sure. They're slowly just spending as much money as they can to be the company responsible for the VR future. And whatever examples they can think of, of like, what would be more fun or what? What's another reason we could get people to use VR?

let's put money into it. So if you're thinking gaming is one of those examples, all right, let's pay to make Among Us in VR happen. Let's pay to make this other game and that other game happen. Developer studios, boom. Okay, what's that? You want to do work in VR, right? Of course.

Microsoft CEO, or CTO, come on stage. Satya Nadella, CEO. Microsoft, join us on stage. Let's get Office 365 in there. Let's get Microsoft Teams in there. People will get real work done in VR. Oh, what else are people going to do? They'll just come up with other things and just pour money on it to be the company responsible for VR happening.

So that's what's happening. I don't even think it's an equation of like, how many times can we get 1500 bucks out of people? I think it's just like, we have X billion dollars to make this the future. Let's do it. An X runway before our company is dissolved. Yep. And it's either going to happen or it isn't. And if it works, all the money they'll make is probably mostly from software rather than hardware. Like just all the money you have to spend inside of that VR headset and subscription bases and...

subscriptions in summary everyone tells them fetch is not going to happen but they are trying their best to make fetch happen absolutely facts that's that's a great place to end it can't wait to spend $30 on my avatars clothes in the metaverse yeah but you can buy pants now with your legs that's true legs legs I think we need more more legs and VR works four legs VR is the thing eight legs 12 legs why stop there

I'll sell that to you. We'll just turn hard left into trivia. All right, get out them whiteboards. It's time for waveform trivia. Is this mine? I go. It is now. All right. I decided to mix up the colors today and make it a little fun. Also, I turn into like the D brand color. Oklahoma tractor farmer. Every time we do trivia, I'm like, it's time for trivia. Bring it on down. All the horses.

All right. Question number one. What is the correct pronunciation for the acronym ASCII? Now, you realize we're writing pronunciations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're trying to explain how we would say it. Yeah, just write it in a way that reading it out loud is intuitive. It's smart. It's easy, breezy. Beautiful. Yeah. All right. I got it. So you want to flip it over? Yeah. Let's go. I have to blur mine.

Okay, well, oh, I'm wrong. I always thought ASCII. Same. ASCII? I did like the fruit. Acai? Acai? No, the answer is, in fact, ASCII. Let's go, Rachel!

I'm glad we both are asking. Yeah, thanks for getting us demonetized. That is what is. Enjoy your point. It's written. That's how it's written on my sheet as well. So glad we're all on the same page. Sacrifice this monetization for this episode. Adam, would you like to read question number two?

This is insane. This question is nuts. Question number two. Quick reminder, the score right now is Marques 8, Andrew 8, David 6. David is catching up. I'm catching up, boys. Watch out. All right. Question number two. The name Bluetooth comes from... It's multiple choice. Yep. A. It's an acronym for Bilinear Utility Transmission onto Other Technologies Hardware.

B, in World War II, England used a technology called blue sonar to, quote, give it to them in the teeth. So they renamed it to Bluetooth as an homage. Or C, it was named for Danish king Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm, because an Intel executive thought it sounded cool. Do you want to know my strategy for picking this one? Yes. What do I think would be the hardest for Adam and Ellis to make up as an answer?

That's kind of my same train of thought. Is it obvious? No, I want it to be C so bad, but I don't think it's C. They're all very good. But I really think it could be C. I don't know. I think it could be any of them. The Gorm thing's kind of throwing me. I hate that. Gorm feels made up. I'm giving no shot at A, because there's just no way that long of an acronym turned into a word. You're confident in that. I am pretty confident in that. I did ask you the question about...

What's the Sony thing? There's a pretty long one. Vivitron? No, the TV. The acronym for there. Bravia. Bravia is an acronym, yeah. But Bluetooth is so long. There's no way. All right, I have my answer. Flip them over. Sorry, guys. So David says C. I already know this. Andrew says B. Marques, what do you say? I said B, but maybe C.

except David watch out boys I'm coming for you the answer was C a Danish king Harald Bluetooth son of Gorm is Gorm an alien? the ancient runes for his initials are actually the logo if you want to look at the waveform slack just now check the waveform slack and I'll put the picture up on the screen weird it's pretty cool this is all made up

David's answer is, it's C, duh. No-brainer, duh. All right, history questions are my weakness. Bluetooth was sort of like a code name when the project was in development. And then when it was time for marketing to come up with the real name for it, a bunch of things got passed around. One of them was called RadioWire, and there was sort of a problem with each one, and then they couldn't get...

They couldn't do like trademark checks on other names. And finally it was time for the product to come out and they had to be like, I guess it's Bluetooth. I guess that's what it is. Wow. That is really interesting. That's crazy. I'm glad it's, I remember the first, the age of like early Bluetooth headsets of like being the weird guy in New York city who's talking to no one because you're one of very few people with a Bluetooth headset on and you look like a psycho. That was a good time.

Also, I threw the Son of Gorm thing in there because it just felt like really obvious until I wrote Son of Gorm. Who made up the giving it to him in the teeth? That was Adam. I just was like, I know it's definitely because an Intel person thought it sounded cool, but the rest threw me off. So, yeah.

Well played. I hate Gorm. Well played. Well, that's been it for Waveform this week. I hope you enjoyed the rest of your Techtober. We'll catch you guys very soon next week with much more to talk about. Until then, see you later. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Malina and Alice Robin, but if they keep giving hard questions, I will stop shouting them out at the end of this podcast. We are also partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro after the music was created by Vane. So...

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