WTF Happened in 2024? - Waveform Rewind
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All of the like AI big stuff is just going to like your expectations need to lower and then that'll be where it's at in your phone. It'll be like RIP Google Assistant. Pour one out.

Yo, what's good, 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. We're all currently wearing ugly Christmas sweaters. And this is also our last episode of the year. Happy holidays. Happy New Year. Yes, it means we're taking two weeks off. It also means that this is the first weeks that we are taking off in five years since

of weekly episodes of this podcast. It hasn't all been weekly, but these are the first two scheduled episodes we're missing. Which is, you know, it's fun to actually take a little time off and we're gonna enjoy that a little bit. And I hope you guys do too. But this is the last episode of the year, which means we have all sorts of end of the year stuff to talk about, which is great. And we also have some late 2024, but also early 2025 news. We can just jump right into it.

Let's jump into the news first, and then we'll get into kind of our waveform rewind for 2024. Okay, so 2025 January, what usually happens? We get a Samsung event. We usually get the Galaxy S flagships, the S Ultra and the S Plus and the S. It's going to happen again. Shocker. I mean, CES is the other thing, and that's also going to happen again.

Cool. So January 22nd is the leaked date for Unpacked for when we are expecting not just the Galaxy S series, but also potentially some version of maybe a preview of this XR headset they've been working on. Yeah. There was this...

preview that they gave a few people yeah so it's not on video but they allowed some people to check it out test it use it for a few minutes and then write about it and or make videos uh describing it so there's no videos of this but there are lots of descriptions of it floating around did we even talk about that headset last week i don't really know okay so for those that don't know uh this is samsung's project muhan xr headset yeah that won't be the final name no do you know what that means

It's like mudang Infinity in Korean I believe bar bar just it's the introduction of Android XR Which is Google saying oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god to vision Pro vision OS

Which knows whether or not that actually plays out. Who knows? Whether they should be saying, oh my God, oh my God. Vision Pro is another. Yeah. The Samsung headset looks a lot like a Vision Pro though. That's what we've heard. Yeah. Again, we haven't seen it. There's photos. But it's just. Well, yeah, I have not seen it. Google officially released photos. I thought those were renders based on descriptions. No.

I don't think so. I think Google made a blog. Oh, wait, that's it? Yeah. I probably saw this and just thought it was the Vision Pro. Oh, okay, that's actually it. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, people were saying it was heavily inspired by Vision Pro. I think the reason you see that is because most headsets don't have glass on the outside, and this one does. I don't know if there's any display facing outwards. Probably not. But it looks like a Vision Pro because the Vision Pro is the only other one that has glass on the outside. Yeah. Yeah.

It's similar like colors plastic on the outside of like the quest but I think that's a distinguishing feature Otherwise, yeah pretty similar pretty clean design looks fine. The UI looks very similar to vision Pro. Mm-hmm So it's but with like kind of a little googly take with more round corners and stuff like that Less translucent stuff. So

Interesting. I feel like every five or six years we get an XR push. I remember, I'm old enough to remember back in 2015 when Microsoft thought that XR was going to be the next big thing. And Lenovo and HP and Dell and Compaq all made headsets for Windows 3D paint and stuff like that. The good stuff. And then quickly got rid of that. This one's for real this time.

Final final. Export this one. Ship this one. PDF. December 18th. JPEG. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll probably hear more about that and hopefully a little bit more of Google's detailed plans for Android XR considering now Samsung events are kind of Google events and Google events are kind of Samsung events. Yeah. There's something to that. When this says unveiled previewed at Unpacked on January 22nd,

Do we think there's going to be a significant portion, or do we think this is of the event, or is this going to be the Galaxy Home end of the thing and then never see it again? It depends if they're actually planning on releasing this. But I guess they were also planning on releasing the Galaxy Home and then never did that. But they do have the Home Mini in Korea. We don't talk about that. They did. Yeah, we don't talk about that. All I want for Christmas is the original Galaxy Home. Yeah. I think if they're saying it's going to be a 2025 launch, then this is a preview...

to get people hyped about it coming out in a few months, maybe something like that. I could see that.

That'd be cool. Yeah. But the thing we definitely want the most out of this event is G2. Which I read something. G2? G2. Not on the headset. I was like, where? Yeah, slap your head. No, on the phones. So I read something. I don't remember exactly who I read it from, but remember, was it last week or the week before we said that like,

I think Ice Universe said that there was going to be Chi-Tu on it, but it was based off of a tweet someone else put. And we said, based on how they're properly naming Chi-Tu, it should have the magnets. I read a tweet recently that's saying it has Chi-Tu, but not the magnets. So that's like the Chi-Tu. The guy from the Wireless Power Consortium said you cannot call it Chi-Tu without the magnets. I think that's going to turn out to not be true. Yeah.

I think companies are going to call things Chi-Tu without the magnets. I feel like I should just reach out to them again. If they call it Chi-Tu and don't put the Chi-Tu branding on it, it seems like that's what we were at, right? The guy was saying that if it has the Chi-Tu branding, it has to be the magnet protocol. Right.

Maybe companies are just saying it's like the they're gonna say it's Chi to come out of Lee. Oh They're gonna say it they're gonna slide and then it's gonna have a little book Okay, but also Samsung has a history of being like one of the first ones to use a more expensive like protocol or product right because they introduced the Cup not the in screen fingerprint reader with ultrasonic they were the first ones to do that in the US at least and

in a phone with the galaxy s10 and nobody else used that for a very long time yeah so maybe they'd be willing to spend the extra money to license it for g2 officially yeah i i would love it i mean i the magnet part is what is exciting well think about this they can sell more they can sell more expensive first-party chargers that way too yeah so apparently this is from chun vn 8888 saying that it won't be proper g2 support explaining that they're

Without the magnets, essentially. So take that as you will. The original report was us completely speculating on it anyways. All right. Well, let's let's make our first prediction of 2025 right here. OK, will that 25 have G2 with magnets? Yes. No, I'm going to say yes. But that is the most optimistic. Yes, I could possibly have out there. What about you two?

Nay. Wow. Okay. Tiebreaker. I have no, I have no, I don't know. How am I supposed to know? It's a prediction. It's going to be a shot in the dark. Okay. Same. Maybe.

Yes. Okay. Hey. I heard it here first. The S25 will have magnets. It's official. Wait, why would it not have magnets? No one's done it yet. Because nobody has. No. Well, what's that phone? Technically, the HMD Skyline did it. That sounds like a car. It's the only phone to have G2, but it's a very bad phone overall. But it's repairable. It is repairable. And it's not a track car. No.

That's true. Apparently the magnets in that phone are really weak. It barely sticks to a lot of... Can't you just get a sticker? Yes. It's hard to do with cases and stuff like that and people who want their phone without a case, that's

But it stinks holding that. I've had it before on my Zen phone. It's annoying to just have this like protruding on the back. What's worse? No magnets or weak magnets? What's worse? Weak magnets. Because I'd rather just put a magnet case. No Wi-Fi or weak Wi-Fi? Yeah, I think it's the same question. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you still pay for it on the plane, don't you? Unfortunately, yes. I put myself through that torture and I know it's going to suck every time and I pay the $8 anyway. What's worse, weak Wi-Fi or having $8? Give me the Wi-Fi. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're going to see probably S25, S25 Ultra, S25 Plus. You know, with S25 Ultra being the successor to the phone of the year.

Could get even better with the Snapdragon 8 elite. Mm-hmm probably with a bigger battery Probably with an improved display like this is probably gonna be a really good phone again. That's a super cold take Hopefully don't they don't pull an s20 ultra again and just Bummer that's bad. Can I throw one more thing in here about the unpacked event? Yeah, I

Last year, Samsung Impact was January 17th. This year it's the 22nd. Every year it feels like we've moved back and back and back to the point where I was like, when are we getting the December Samsung event?

I'd prefer, can we get this back in February? For some reason, February felt nice of like, let's just chill in January. February did feel like it was Samsung's month. It did. Like that's, yeah. I don't know. I think Sony also did something in February. Well, yeah, but then it released in November. Yeah, but their phones aren't out until, yeah. Yeah, they would announce the phone and then they'd just go silent for six months. Six months. Thank you, Samsung. Give us some breathing room in the new year so we can appreciate the last year, make our steps forward. Yeah.

And then start reporting. And let Dua Lipa interview Tim Cook? Yeah. That's all we want. The schedule is always New Year, everyone gets back, immediately CES, go get sick, come back, and then you have a break. And it's like Samsung is pinched into that more and more. Yeah, they're like, nah. Like, yeah, no, go straight from CES to our event. Okay, so some additional news that is going to happen in 2025. We have alleged...

uh, renders of the actual switch to Nintendo switch to Nintendo switch to Nintendo switch to thank you. Algorithm. Um, is that for the transcript to just max SEO? Okay. Uh, courtesy of D brand. So Adam at D brand says that he has official dimensions. And so he built out, uh,

It was like a 3D render that The Verge put. It is a 3D render with the case that dbrand would be making on it. But it's translucent, so you can kind of see through. It's a very funny render. I'm surprised dbrand's doing this, and I'm also not surprised dbrand's doing this. It's like one of those things dbrand seems to like to poke the big console bear. I always thought that the way these things worked were that they were just under NDA, but it seems like they just have...

access to things that they don't have to sign ndas for i don't know we don't ask dbrand how they get access that's true that's true you know i'll put it this way when you are an official accessory supporter uh-huh you get to see things ahead of time yeah but like you're not supposed to yeah that's that's that's bold that's bold that's for sure bold it's a it's a good point though because accessory makers don't just get you know like package widths of like

height, length. Yeah, exactly. They know exactly... Everything has to fit perfectly. They know like...

perfectly what a thing is going to look like is maybe not they don't know the specs it because that doesn't matter but like every accessory manufacturer you know knows what all of these devices are yeah that's how they have their case on the shelf when it's announced what is the law yeah so the additions to the switch to seem to be that it's quite a bit bigger than the last switch there's an additional button on one of the joy cons which is very interesting

And on the joy oh, oh, sorry. I'm thinking the stick yeah below the home button Okay, and then there's also an additional USB C port on the top. Thank God oh Yeah, the biggest issue prior was like they assumed that you're gonna charge it while docked But a whole nother thing was that you could play it with the kickstand open and the joy cons in your hand But the problem with that is if it was low battery or dead you had to like

a USB-C cable underneath it. And it was just horrible. So bad. It was a huge design flaw. Yeah, very massive design flaw. They did say that they were going to officially announce the Switch 2 before April 2025. Nintendo said that. So earlier this year.

So we're hoping that we get something in the next four months or so. March 31st. Yeah. And I imagine it'll come out holiday 2025. April 1st. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, just it mostly looks bigger. It will probably be faster. It will probably have stuff. The case looks sweet too. Nintendo Switch 2. Low profile. Also, we're partnered with dbrand. So take that with a grain of salt. But it looks like a sweet case. Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch 2. Okay, we can move on now. Last little bit of stuff that I wanted to just like slide in here because it's the very end of the year.

Some Fediverse news. Do it. Thank you, Ellis. Some Fediverse news. Some Fediverse news. What's going on in the Fediverse? It's more fun than the WordPress drama for me to talk about. Some people would disagree with that. That's true. That's true. Okay. So some stuff was happening last week with Blue Sky where people were basically parking on domain names because...

Because if you remember, Blue Sky's way of verifying accounts was that if you owned your domain, you could change your handle to that domain. And that was a way for people to be like, this is the real me. The problem is they got a lot of normal people on Blue Sky. And that's a very engineering mind focused way to verify people because most people do not own their own domain. Right.

So apparently people had been parking on domains of like famous authors and other people that weren't like League of Legos. That's not owned by anybody but me. It's League of Legos. Yeah, Legos, man. Oh, Legos.

And so they're actively working on figuring out another way to do verification. I still think it's cool that they're allowing you to set your domain as your handle, but I think that they're going to need to figure out some other ways to do it. I think you should need to have a personal video call with the creator of Blue Sky in order to get verified.

Shouldn't have any issues at all. It's a little shout out to T2. That's what T2 was doing. You had to schedule a call with them and then they would verify you. Actually? Uh-huh. Wow. In their defense, I don't think they...

Had anything in place at the time so this was what they were new yeah? It was like there was a lot of if I was that executive my entire job would be figuring out how to stop doing these calls Like I need to figure out a way to verify people yeah, wow okay, so Yeah, so blue sky has mentioned that they are actively looking into ways to verify people They are also actively looking into a potential subs like Twitter blue kind of thing for blue sky Which I would we're going very quickly into I I don't know I

Some of the things they had talked about doing with a paid system is that you get to MySpaceify your profile. I think that's sick. Does that mean put music on it and pick a top eight? Maybe. That I'll pay eight bucks. I mean, that'd be dope. Yeah, I just want to say there was already a way to verify yourself on social media, which was this app a while ago called Keybase, where you can use PGP to put

public private keys on all of your public profiles and it would verify you and then zoom bought them and everyone like lost trust in it and it died but that was a solution that i wish everyone could just have no idea make their profile picture their driver's license their whole driver and i would take it and i would make it my profile photo uh okay some other fediverse news uh we talked a little bit in the what is the fediverse episode about this thing called bridgy fed

which is a bridge that bridges the activity pub and the AT protocol and allows threads posts to show up on Blue Sky effectively. It sort of creates like a fake version of the threads account on Blue Sky and then it just cross posts for it so that you can follow someone's sort of like faux threads account through Blue Sky.

Because they are using different protocols. Anyway, that was a thing. It got very popular. They're building it out.

But now they've decided they're going to start a whole foundation to just bridge all of these different protocols together because we're in this weird space where like Activity Pub was originally supposed to be this like end-all be-all protocol that everyone used, but that's just not how protocols work. Nobody ever just like decides on a protocol. There's a famous KCD comic about this.

So now they are starting a foundation in which they are just going to keep bridging all the new social media protocols that pop up and work with the platforms to make sure that it is like more natural. One protocol to rule them all. It really feels like another protocol. I feel like and I don't know if we said this in like the Fediverse long form, but everyone wants it to be.

open and for everyone, but then everyone wants to create that thing that does it. Does that make sense? Which makes me feel like there's not a lot of paths forward in this if everyone's going to fight over who gets to be the one that... Most of the people are not fighting anymore. Most of the people that... Well, except for Meta. They'll fight tooth and nail to make sure the threads is the only thing. But most of the people that are starting the smaller platforms with their own protocols, which I agree, they should just like...

Make one that they like They're not fighting as much because they just want the open social web to exist. So anyway, there's no foundation It is their goal to build this out That's good. It's good to have foundations last little bit of news the people who started

Flipboard, which is a very old app that used to be pre-installed on Samsung phones way back in the day. I was a user. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I use Flipboard. It is a news aggregator reader app. We had their CEO, Mike McHugh, on for the Fediverse episode. They have just launched, actually, as of recording today, a Fediverse browser app.

which allows you to basically have all of these sources, whether it be threads accounts, blue sky accounts, podcasts, YouTube channels, because podcasts and YouTube channels are both RSS based.

And create your own like packs of like news feeds that you can use to just like read different topics. And so you could create your own pack, which I could then follow and I could add your pack to my all my friends packs pack. And then it would just be a giant news aggregator. So it's all that's all federated as well.

So speaking of packs, I'm going to throw one really quick thing in here. Pokemon. Yes. Oh boy. Three of us in here play Pokemon, the card game. Okay. The new expansion came out. Adam. Yeah. I message everyone in our office that plays it the other day. I'm like, yo, let's open packs together. I'm not going to get into that argument. Cause that was some big drama at the MKBHD studio where everyone stabbed me in the back. But Adam just that morning goes,

I got this. Is this cool? And it's a gold Mew EX. It's like the rarest thing you can pull in the new expansion pack. And just stunts on all of us. And then David and I proceed to pull absolute garbage. I've gotten nothing good. Nothing good. This is just random, right? Yeah, it's a slot machine.

Yeah. They have like percentages of like what the probability is that you're going to get a certain card. Do you like trade the cards? Not yet. It's coming. You will next year. Okay. And what blockchain is all of this registered on? It's on Solana 4. Crypto edition. That's the one that Fartcoin is on, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, isn't that real? Yeah. I think it is. That came out like last week, I think, right? And it just reached like a $900 million mark. Okay, we are not financially... You people are animals! I feel like talking about this is not financially wise. I'm so sorry. Anyways...

Adam's very lucky. He pulled like a 0.2% pull. Sounds skilled. It is skill-based. But to all you new expansion... I have the heart of the cards on my side. To all you new expansion enjoyers, good luck this holiday season with your pack pulls. Did you also notice that a lot of the cards have like a small Mew somewhere in the photo? I did not notice. Yeah, a lot of the Pokemon art will have like a Mew like...

diving into the lake or something in the background. I've been too mad at how unlucky I've been. Okay, cool. Marques, you have a really cool thing to share with us. I've prepared something to show you all. Audio listeners, I think you should probably watch the video version just for this segment. Just for this segment. We'll do our best to describe it. Sure, we'll attempt, of course. But pull over and open your phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely pull over first. So Google...

kind of out of the blue announced their AI video generation model VO VO 2 is going suddenly out and it

Okay, so Sundar Pichai posted this announcement with four videos, and we know it's going to be handcrafted, generated videos. Is that why it's called VO? Yeah, more or less. They're super creative over there. It comes out, we get these four hand-selected videos, and each one of those videos, in my opinion, is better than everything that I've seen from Sora.

And we just reviewed Sora like a week ago. And we're like, guys, this is the worst that tech is going to be from here on out. It's getting really good at a lot of things. It's still, you know, you remember we talked about this, not great at physics, not great at certain things. Yeah.

VO seems like it's really good at that stuff too. These videos that people are generating and I got access to it and I started playing with it actually have, and people have done sub-basic comparisons, real working physics. Things look like they move correctly and they seem to have object permanence and things overlap and move around each other and don't disappear and glitch out and look weird. And that is another huge step.

in whatever direction you think it is. So what I did was, yeah, what I did was I asked you guys in Slack, give me a couple prompts. And David, you have access to it too, so I know you've played with it. But I asked everybody else, give me a couple prompts of things you want to see me put in this new one, Veo, and we can look at them and see your reactions. Because you guys have now seen a whole bunch of Sora-generated videos. You know kind of what to expect, what looks real, what doesn't.

So I've generated them and there you can't change the resolution. It's still very early very limited access There is it's like a small couple seconds each videos like two megabytes, but I have them for you I'm gonna can you pay extra to remove the watermark?

At this point, no. Garbage. So at this point, it is very much not as productized as OpenAI's Sora is. But I think Google saw Sora's announcement and went, all right, we got to get our thing at least off the ground and out. So I have a box and a prompt generator. I can make stuff now. And I think they'll have more features coming soon.

Now, just to give you guys a peek in these guys' heads, these are the prompts that they gave me before you see the video. You should say the prompt first so the audience can guess who said it. Okay, so I won't tell you who gave this prompt, but here's the first prompt. Okay. A humanoid sponge living inside a pineapple at the bottom of the ocean with his best friend who is a starfish.

I'm just going to drop that video in the Slack. It is. Oh, my God. Check this out. Holy crap.

So this video, maybe, David, you can describe what you're seeing. Sponge Bill box trousers. This is literally SpongeBob SquarePants with very nice eyelashes. Yeah. And his pineapple house is upside down for some reason. And then his starfish looks more like a pet starfish versus Patrick Starb.

It's literally just Spongebob. With no fingers. There's like maybe a couple very, very slightly different facial things. The pineapple's upside down. Cake. It's under the sea. I don't know why it's upside down, but it is there.

And, you know, this is a cartoon style, but so, you know, it's not like a perfect photorealistic thing, but the bubbles are rising. The bubbles overlap things in the background. They all the water physics look kind of solid.

the lighting is all cartoonishly good. It's like if SpongeBob was made in the bluey. Yeah, it's alternate animation. Oh my God, that's exactly what this is. It feels more like drawn animation where it's a very set background, but the things in the foreground are moving a little bit and super, way more clear than the stuff in the back.

But the character even has like the same exact outfit. Yeah. He's got the same working attire. This right from the beginning has me thinking like, what does the Google thing get trained on that Soares doesn't?

Because this is very different for a sword if you posted this Paramount would would have some issues Low-key even on the YouTube video we might have an issue. This is very similar. It's very similar Yeah, it has the two teeth so it's funny as I posted on Twitter a couple videos when I was talking about Sora and I Posted some of them that were kind of in this cartoon style the artist community got very mad They were like not happy that I thought this was like an animation. I'm curious what they think of this one. I

I think there's a difference between we thinking it's impressive for AI thing and then artists are clearly at times better than this. Exactly. The bar is in totally different places. But I understand the frustration. Yeah, it is crazy. All right. The fact that you didn't type Spongebob though and it literally made exactly Spongebob is... It clearly has seen Spongebob. It's worse than the plant, the tech reviewer plant. There's a weird tension now between like...

trying to look at something and say this is where the technology is and also not necessarily advocating for it to exist. Yeah, you know like shining a spotlight on it sort of it's it's Complicated right like doing journalism about anything or like talking about anything is hard because you're technically giving it a platform Everything you do is platforming. Yeah, and

Yeah. So it's complicated. I had like the most minor criticism of this ever, which is that the water ripples are really nice in the... With the bubble. Oh, in the top. In the top, but they're not reflecting caustics upon the sand floor. Ah, yes. Right. How dare they? Frankly, gross. A human would have...

Do you mean like the like thing on the sand? Yeah. The shimmering. When you look down at a pool and you see that sort of like wavy grid. I love how that looks. That's called caustics. All right. Well, so, okay. Spoiler. That was an Adam prompt.

No way. Thanks, Adam. This was Adam's next prompt. So that one, keep in mind, Ellis, was a cartoon style. This one is very much not. Photorealistic. A smartphone reviewer talking about the latest product release sitting in front of his desk while talking to the camera explaining what they like about the phone. With a plant. You'll see a plant. Don't worry. It's like a Motorola phone.

Mixed with the phone. It's got a very... Okay, so table, person sitting at table, phone sitting up in front of them. It looks like a mix between a Motorola and a Sony and a Samsung. I don't really know. That is really photorealistic, though. This guy has 60K subs. He's wearing an Apple Watch. 100% an Apple Watch. He's got the very prominent lamp and plant in the background. It looks like a nice fiddly fig back there. Let's check out his lav mic placement. Yeah.

Pretty good. I was checking that out. He has the like window Reflection on the back wall. He's got the Brandon. That's like literally an a-20 a galaxy a-22 The same phone this is the physics really good even of his fingers right up until the very end He grows a couple extra fingers with most of the hand movements as he gets occluded by the phone. Oh

Are pretty reasonable. They're all like physically accurate his eyebrows go up and down bro Look at his last frame fabric of his shirt on his left sleeve. That's crazy Yeah it like it it folds with his arm all these decisions from the plant to the light to the color of the shirt to the way the guy looks and the phone and the watch and the lab are all just

That's all just things that I thought would make sense for this prompt. The way I know that this isn't real is because he's using an Apple Watch with a Galaxy A22. It's a reviewer. Yeah, Mark has those. You can use two phones. This guy could be a two-phone guy. Two phones over here. The phone does...

I guess you could stand a phone up like that. It feels like weird placement. I used to do that. Not in my video. Just like right in front of you. Not in my video. Oh, yeah, in the video. It feels more natural if he was holding it. But I wonder if that's a liberty they took of like that would maybe not look as good. The set is not bad. The computer.

the computer i really like the set aesthetic yeah just like a lamp a plant also something something i've started noticing about these the shadows are mostly pretty good yeah which isn't always true about a generated videos okay oh not all right one more prompt from adam a jaguar car driving off of a ramp and flying away into the clouds with new york city skyline in the background

I just want to say I'm pretty good at prompting, not to toot my own horn. Wait, before I've even hit play, do you know when you're like...

watching tiktok and it has to have the like attention span killing thing underneath your ramp and it's the rent the car that's on the ramp that just goes like yeah and slowly gets out of control that's what this looks like what what are you there's like i have no idea what you're talking about do you know like in tiktok they do the like exposing yourself cutting oh yeah i am full brain rot yeah like um they're either like cutting squand or they're like glands squand is that like

Sand that kind of gets wet and sticks together in different colors. They're either cutting that or they're like subway surfers. It's all the attention span brain rot things. One of them is there's this game where a car is going down this big ramp, but there's a series of gaps. So it slowly just starts bouncing and bouncing and skidding and flipping. And you gotta watch it. It's underneath a podcast clip so you can...

not to go off the podcast we should start it honestly waveform would be at 10 million subscribers if we started doing that anyways okay so anyway yeah this this is a very realistic looking jaguar the ramp ends it floods off it's definitely manhattan in the background you can see some recognizable buildings and it's clearly a peninsula but also it just kind of flies horizontally and the wheel stops i would argue it doesn't ramp it just

yeah it goes off of the platform and it just goes straight and it stays perfect yeah the it doesn't drop the wheels also stop completely at some point yeah because he's flying this one you can tell is ai um well very easily it but it is much i don't think sorrow would have been this yeah it's also that's an exact car right like it's not like a google jaguar e-type

I would argue the thing Sora might do better is like, I bet it would have started falling in Sora. Wow. It's like just the E-type. It's just the E-type. Even with the curves, yeah. It even got the rims right. Yeah.

Yeah. I cannot tell just straight up that this is AI. I would think that this would be like some bad special effects. Adam, it's flying off a floating platform. Yeah, but if you're watching like a college film. Okay, how I can tell it is... It's a bad CGI. The wheels are going from full speed and then they just stop. There's no like ramp down of it. Yeah, bad CGI. It could be a bad animation, I guess. It looks like a Blender animation. Or they got an ABS delete. I don't know.

What does that mean? In the comments, they'll answer it. Fine. Okay. Cars have this thing called anti-lock brakes that when you slam on the brakes as hard as you can, the wheels will slowly come to a stop so they don't start skidding. But the joke is that they took that out so you can just lock the wheels up instantly. Oh. Calipers go... Cool. Okay. Let's... So...

I think those are also, as we've seen, probably better than what we've seen from Sora. Agreed. Andrew gave me one prompt, but I did run it several times and get several videos. Okay. Yeah. I'm so interested in what this did because I gave it a pretty... There's different paths it could take. And I got several different answers. Okay, cool. Andrew's prompt was the New Jersey Devils winning the Stanley Cup.

This might be the only way I see it. So this is how you know it's AI generated, right? Because it's going to be actual devils. Oh. Whoa, okay. Wow, it is. This is video number one. Whoa.

So the New Jersey Devils are a copyrighted, licensed thing. Is that their logo? Yeah, that's their logo. It's extremely close. Yeah, it is very much recognizable as a New Jersey Devils logo. They tried to put a Stanley Cup in the middle, confetti falling from the ceiling. In confetti ways, it kind of disappears a little bit and you can tell it's not real. But a bunch of Devils players in the background...

not real people, but wearing devil's jerseys, jumping up and down, celebrating. I feel like if, if you put that clip in a live, like broadcast after they actually won, I don't think people would know. Or like, or like, uh, part opacity over it with like the, like MSG network coming up next. Like it probably, but I will say this feels super, the super AI generated. The Stanley cup is really off. It's like, I,

identical, it's big and then small and then big rather than it's normal. Like, look, their words on it are really weird. They don't really say anything. There's no individual team names.

Some of the players are kind of weird. I'll give them credit for when their jerseys are jumping, you can tell there's like pads underneath it, which is pretty impressive. And the laces, which the Devils don't have, are going up and down. But there's some physics issues in this for sure. The reflections don't match. Yeah, the reflections are weird. A lot of people don't have bottom rows of teeth, which maybe hockey players don't. Yeah, I was going to say that's totally normal. Yeah.

Yeah. So the Stanley Cup is like that thing that people buy, the thermos thing, right? I don't even think that's what it could be. Because it looks totally different. That's the best thing you've ever said on this podcast. I hope the next one is a literal demon drinking out of a Stanley Cup they bought, a bedazzled Stanley Cup. No, so for all three of these, it never even fluttered from the New Jersey Devils thing. Like the hockey team every time. They got hockey right every time. Here's the second video. This is later on in the same night.

Oh. Okay, these players look very like Eastern European, which is very hockey related. So the players are now back to the locker room. They've calmed down. There's no more confetti. They've still got the slightly weird but pretty close New Jersey Devils logos on their jerseys. It's worse. The logo is worse. But it's consistent. The one guy goes for a high five and then doesn't get one. The jersey on this is super realistic.

These are like the new fanatic slash Adidas jerseys where like the way the black and the top neck piece is is very realistic. The hats in the background are...

and the names on the lockers are really bad. - Dude, that's so funny. - Is that what the Stanley Cup looks like? - This is what the team would look like if they just won the Stanley Cup five years in a row and aren't even excited for winning it anymore. If the Devils haven't won since 2003, these guys would be blackout drunk and champagne flying everywhere. - So here's the last video from a week later. - With a parade. Wow, this looks so bad.

This is the least realistic looking one, but it is the hardest one to generate, which is hundreds of people, a bus, all the players on the top of the double-decker bus, the Stanley Cup, the people in the street, the flags waving, tons of physics.

um zoomed out it doesn't look terrible but as soon as you start inspecting i don't think i would think twice if i just saw this clip on like a news broadcast if i was scrolling my twitter timeline i wouldn't check twice that's kind of where it is this f-150 is holding like 15 players in the back of it i thought it was bigger than it looks kind of like an ambulance size like it's kind of bigger than it yeah i don't know them sitting in the bus is really bad

Like they're on top of a double-decker bus. They obviously aren't fitting in it very well. But compared to what we've seen from Sora... This is the closest Stanley Cup out of all of them. It is. I also like how there's like 40 people on the hockey team. Dude, the reflection of the guy in the street on the side of the bus is pretty close. Okay, but...

Every single, there are over 100 people in the crowd. Not one of them is looking at the bus with the players. They're all looking backwards and there isn't a face facing forward. It's because Santa Claus is back there. Yeah, but the reflection doesn't go away. The bus drives way past him and the reflection stays. It's like what a college freshman would do on their first ever VFX project. And they'd get a C- or something. It wouldn't be that good. I don't know about that. Yeah, that ran the gamut of one...

All the different things that happen when you win the Stanley Cup and two progressively got worse. You should have seen my VFX work freshman year. Much worse than this. The people on the left, like sort of just down left from the street lamp are like merging into one another in this sort of like terrifying human soup. A very Sora thing to do. The flag also that's being waved is just freaking out. Oh, yeah.

So that's like Stu the focal length or that like doesn't not focal length but like the the plane of focus doesn't make sense like some of these guys faces are really sharp and then six feet behind them it'll be blurrier and six feet behind them it'll be back to sharp again. Yeah. Yeah. It's parafocal.

It's something we would notice for sure. Cool. All right. So last three prompts are Ellis prompts. Let's go. Thank you, Ellis. And these go, these are also very interesting. So first one. First one from Ellis. A wide angle shot of a dolphin jumping out of a tropical ocean in the style of, can you say that? I don't know how to say that. Frutigere arrow. Is that a cheese? Don't know what that is, but I put it in the prompt engine anyway. Frutigere arrow is, let's see. Yeah, let's.

Okay, wait. Okay, I'm going to try and explain this as best as I can. No, go on. It is a very realistic dolphin. It is underwater, then jumping out of the water and landing where...

Everything looks pretty good except for like the velocity of the dolphin. It like slowly goes up to where it looks like it's just going to poke his head out. Then it just slowly continues to be about five feet over the water, flies for a little bit and just like very slowly comes back in. And then just goes horizontal for a little bit and then dives back in. Yeah. Yeah.

He decides what his gravity is at any given moment. Did it match your style? No, I'm going to drop some images in the slack of what Frutigere Arrow is supposed to look like. It's a very distinct visual style. Also, but I would like to give it credit, caustics on the dolphin. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

- See, some of it, that's the thing is some of it is pretty impressive and then some of it is totally wrong. So it's like, how do you summarize it as a whole? Oh, it's not like that. - That's this. - That's what "Fruity Share Arrow" is. - I missed this. - Okay. - So I was really hoping for something like straight out of like a juice commercial. - Greatest. - Like some of it, again, this is going to annoy people who do this for a living, but some of it is really impressive.

When the dolphin's under the water, look at the bottom of the water where it reflects the dolphin as it's coming up. Yeah, like the... That's kind of interesting. The bottom of the water? Yeah, under the surface of the water where it reflects the top of the dolphin and the reflections. That's just... Okay. I found that impressive. Yeah. Again, Sora doesn't necessarily get all these things wrong, but I don't think it's this good. Here's one more Ellis prompt.

It reads, a crane looming high above a pristine mountain lake on a cold, misty winter morning. Wait, before you send it, were you talking about the bird or the construction equipment? That's up for Google to decide. Let's go.

Okay, cool. It went bird. This one I think gets the highest grade. I'm going to read the prompt again as you're looking at this. Dude, that bird be shitting though. Oh my God. As cranes do, obviously. There's so much bird poop on that. The prompt one more time is a crane. Look at this video. A crane looming high above a pristine mountain lake on a cold, misty winter morning. That is crazy. It got all of it.

I wish it thought construction equipment because if there was just an actual crane sitting here, it would be pretty sweet. Don't worry. The next prompt gets... I chose the word looming very carefully to see what it would do. Yeah. Again, it gave me a couple options. This was the one I think fit the best. One of them, it was kind of on a lower rock. I thought high above, this fit better. The environment, very, very impressive. There's not really any real place, but it's definitely a mountain lake. It's definitely a cold winter morning.

It's pretty good. It's really good. If you saw this on your Twitter timeline, do you know it's AI? I've seen planet Earth shots that look just like this. I was just going to say, not even Twitter. If you put this in the middle of planet Earth for a quick three seconds, I would not think twice. Well, the stabilization is not quite perfect. It kind of wobbles a little bit.

As drone shots do. I think if David Attenborough was speaking over that, I wouldn't blink an eye. Here we see the crane looming over the mountain lake. It's the crane's neck. It does these sort of lateral movements that if you pay attention to them, yeah. But again, like 99% of people are not going to be looking for this stuff. If you only saw the clip once and moved on, it probably would pass your, what's the test? Vibe. Smell test. Vibe check. That's a smell test, sure. Alright.

All right. One last prompt from Ellis before we take a quick break. This one got a very different response. A bat with vampire fangs being held by a child behind home plate at a little league game. I hope it's an animal bat. You specifically tried to mess that one up. This one is pretty obvious. Again, the prompt is a bat...

with vampire fangs. All right, so we're talking the animal behind... Oh, yes. Oh! It is... Someone describe this because I cannot. It's like a souvenir baseball bat that looks like it's... Super short one. Yeah, yeah. And it...

it looks like it's made out of like play-doh yeah and it has like play-doh vampire fangs hanging up yeah these are more like boar tusks versus that's true vampire fangs because they're facing upwards instead of down that is so funny also i don't see home plate but it does look i see the pictures mount so this is approximately yeah there's a plate i think that the models are going to be good i think oh

The models are gonna be good at knowing like what you mean to talk about because of the way that large language models like associate words together So if you put like baseball bat it or if you say like home plate It's not gonna associate that with an actual bat, but I said vampire fangs. Oh, yeah I gave it one of these I gave her doing and I actually think that would be very fun to do a lot more of those just to see what happens Yeah so overall

Really interesting results. I think it's really good. Yeah, I know. It's really good at some things that Sora struggled with, which is why it to me feels so interesting that Google would drop this right after Sora.

It's yeah, it's it's just gonna keep getting better at this or that Sora dropped it right before Google got aimed. Sure Yeah, and you know that the 12 days of Christmas it got leaked They felt pressured to release that comes out early now Google says oh this is out. We might have some pressure We release ours

There's other video generation models that are evolving very quickly. There's just a lot going on. Google always was going to have more data to work with. Yeah, how much? The entire internet. Is there YouTube stuff? I don't know. OpenAI had to go and take everything. Google just had everything on hand. You know what I'm saying? Do we think there's... They're not trying to say that. 100%. Because they just gave us a tool to opt in, not opt out. Exactly.

Yes, to third parties. Oh, third parties. It specifically said third parties. I noticed it didn't say anything about YouTube. So for those that don't know, there was a story that came out this week. YouTube is now allowing creators to opt in to third party training models, training on their content, which like I have no idea why you would want to do that. I guess what they are probably planning on is like there's all these publishers that have been striking deals with OpenAI to train on their news organizations' work.

And maybe YouTube is thinking that some YouTubers could like go to OpenAI and say, pay me a million dollars and you can train on my content. I don't think that will happen. But the way that I see that story is that they specifically said third parties. Is there an argument that...

Google and YouTube are separate and Google using it? No, they're going to call them. I'm like really trying to find like a potential proxy. I thought the same thing. I looked through their announcement and there's no mention of Google or YouTube. Well, I'm just saying Google's making VO. YouTube's the one saying third party. I think they're both first party in this case. That's what I would agree with. I just want to make sure we're getting the note. Yeah. Or that's what they're hoping morons like me think that of. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Considering they have more realistic... Sora would probably make up a fake jaguar that's sort of vaguely based on what jaguars look like, but just make them up.

Google just takes the actual I type right again because we got lots of refusals Yeah, we got lots of refusals from Sora on anything that has had any sort of potentially intellectual property with this Clearly a spongebob clearly the devil's clearly a jaguar like things that would not pass the same test. So that's that's that's Trend can someone notice can someone make a meme? That's like

Google when a YouTuber infringes on intellectual property rights and it's like someone freaking out and then like Google when Google infringes on intellectual property rights. Someone's already making that meme. Oopsie. Thanks, fam. We're sorry. Anyway, we have gone in detail. Let us know what you think in the comments. We should take a quick break, though. And before we do the quick break, we should do trivia. Trivia, dude.

I've been getting complaints on the comments that people say, I don't say trivia dude enough. So I'm going to start saying it again for all you out there. I've been getting complaints from these lights that say, hail us, even though we worked perfectly all morning, we're just going to stop. Anyway, today's trivia, today's first trivia question, I should say, is about Samsung Unpacked. Specifically, they move it all over the world, which makes it different from...

than other tech events. So... They only started doing that last year, though. That is not true. Never mind. Two years ago. Also not true. It's usually in... Okay, continue. Which of the following cities has Samsung unpacked never...

been in. Interesting. We have our first one, Seoul, Korea. Our second one, Barcelona, Spain. Our third one, Tampines, Singapore, or Tampines, excuse me, Tampines. I looked up the pronunciation of that. If I still got it wrong, Singaporean audience, please correct me. But Tampines, Singapore. And finally, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Cool. I have a 50-50 shot. Really? Because I was at the other two.

I've been to two and none of them were out the list. Never mind. Okay, yeah, we'll think about that one. The answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

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So last year we did a recap episode. Since this is our last episode of the year, we are going to do that again. We called it the Waveform Awards last year. And then everyone told us, hey, you morons, you call everything else YouTube Rewind. Why aren't you calling this Waveform Rewind? So I'm calling this Waveform Rewind. Bet.

Good idea. Thank you for calling me a moron. You were right. So we're going to do some things we did last year. We have some fun questions. We're going to go over some predictions we had. We're going to make new predictions. It's kind of how we're going to wrap this episode up. But before that, I want to do some stats about Waveform this year because they're awesome. So as of writing this, not including this episode, we did 24.5 million views on the Waveform channel, which is...

- That's so many dishes, dude. - Yeah. - So many dishes being washed. - We have 8.8 million watch time hours. Dishes washed hours has gotta be at least 100,000, I think. - Wait, okay, eight million. Keep going. - You keep doing that, okay. We gained just shy of 100,000 subscribers this year.

maybe there's three weeks left you could try and hit that last 6,000 Nintendo Switch 2 we did 13.1 million views in shorts which is something we really focused on a lot this year and that did great I think the thing I'm the most proud of is we posted 60 we will have posted 62 episodes of waveform this year we did a lot of bonus episodes we did four more episodes than last year even though we're gonna take this break now um

which I think is really cool and I can't wait for 2025. I figured it out. 8.8 million watch time hours is just over a thousand years of human life washing dishes. I mean, listening to the podcast. That's impressive. That's impressive. That's super impressive. I can't believe... That's a lot of dishes, bro. That's a lot of years. Yeah. Audio-wise, we were just shy of 8 million total downloads, which is technically down from last year, but...

This was the first full year after the Apple podcast change where auto downloads stopped. And from what I've heard, podcasting across kind of the world has hit a dip.

and we stayed pretty even so I'm taking that as a huge win thank you for sticking with us thank you for being like loyal listeners who don't just listen to one hit auto download and then completely forget they have 40 episodes of a podcast and I think it means a bunch of new people joined us so hi welcome subscribe thanks yeah so we have some cool plans for next year I'm super excited for it but

news-wise, we covered a lot of things. There's a lot of stuff. We are notoriously really bad at being like, that happened this year? Yeah. So David was great and put down kind of the

the biggest stories. And I just want to like also reiterate it with the question we did last year was, was there anything that happened to this year that wasn't on our bingo card? So do you want to say the big things and if there's anything someone really was not expecting? Okay. Yeah. Jump out on it. So I went through, uh, just the episodes that we launched and the stories that we covered and I listed basically the biggest topics that we covered this year. Yeah. Uh, Google getting labeled a monopoly. Yeah.

in search by the Department of Justice. Probably could have seen it coming, but it actually happened. Didn't expect it to come to fruition. And it's still happening. Yes. In progress. Yeah. The Vision Pro technically launched. That we knew was happening. And is out. And feels like an eternity ago. That was this year. That was this year. It was January, so it's fair. The Humane AI pin happened this year.

Yeah. It did. That was this year as well. Yeah. The Rabbit R1 happened this year. They sure did. They were pushing each other. That was an interesting couple months. Yeah. For sure. The Fisker went out of business this year. That was definitely also this year. Sora launched this year, officially only like last week, but it's been previewed. It got unveiled and now it's out. Yeah. The Cybertruck actually came out. That was awesome.

This year? Lots of big things this year. I was watching the end of last year's episode and we were all debating on if we thought 25 Cybertrucks came out before the end of last year. Yeah. Did that happen? Oh, by the way.

Remember, the bet was 25 delivered non-Tesla employee Cybertrucks. Before the end of last year? Before the end of 2023. Yeah. And we were all very on the fence of if we thought that was happening. It's still hard to say. I think it's hard to say. I don't think it happened. The Meta Orion smart glasses happened this year. We got a very super thin OLED iPad Pro.

The Google generative search experience that kind of made people eat glue and rocks came out this year. That was fun. Forced them to. Nothing came out with their CMF phone, which was weird. CMF line, right?

That's a great question. Did they launch the earbuds and watch last year? I thought those were all together. We were talking about them all together at first. Oh, you might be right. That might have all been this year. And they've launched two watches in the process, right? Apple Intelligence got both announced at WWDC and is half out because they're still missing Siri.

The Fediverse got a really big push. Blue Sky is big and now Threads is big. Threads, by the way, the day before today, they announced they have 300 million users now and 100 million... Wait, did Threads come out this year? No. Oh, that was last year. It was last year. Okay. Yeah. It was last July. Okay. Which is crazy because I literally remember where I was the moment I made my account. And because I have that so vivid in my head, it doesn't feel...

It feels like it was this year, but also the restaurant I was in is now out of business. So it's clearly was a while ago. Yeah. Okay. We had the Huawei trifold, which is very strange. Got announced the same day as the iPhone, the Tesla cyber cab event. Google Bard rebranding to Gemini technically happened this year. Bring it back. Bard was better. Yeah.

And the Scarlett Johansson AI voice mode thing. Controversy. Controversy happened. Chat GPT. So the funny thing about this is like most of these were in the second half of the year. It doesn't seem like a ton of stuff happened at the beginning besides the human. Oh.

there was like vision pro the cyber truck the ai pin when was the cyber truck they were gadgety for the first start of the year it feels like yeah yeah an ai the rabbit r1 is it oh that super thin ipad was like that was middle year yeah that was like june or something wow uh yeah it was a pretty big 2024. if i had to pick the thing that wasn't on my bingo card it's

Apple announcing a phone and its main selling point not fully coming out till literally the next calendar year. Yeah. Wouldn't have guessed that. It was very off-brand. I did not have the Orion glasses on my bingo card. I think that was an interesting surprise.

uh because we all saw the headset start to come out and we assumed the smart glasses thing was super far away but to actually have them go on stage and just be like here we're not ever going to sell this but we still are like prototyping check this thing out that was kind of out of the blue it's cool i think that just in itself having a company that big announce something and publicly saying this isn't for sale we're not going to sell this and immediately make money on it stock price true

So yes, they're making plenty of money on it. But I didn't have that on my bingo card of making the correct decision of not immediately just trying to sell to everyone. Or do you have a sick bingo card? They're all bingo. Let's go. Cyber cab event. Was that on your bingo card?

No. There was a lot at that event. Is that the thing that was not on your bingo card? Well, that's another thing that was not on my bingo card. Like Blue Sky coming back, having the year that it did, especially the last few months, was not on my bingo card. And yeah, the Cyber Cab, all the things that happened at that event were also not on my bingo card. Because a lot of people were thinking Model 2 has got to be the next thing they show. It's got to be this smaller version of the Model 3 for these markets that we need a $25,000 car. That's what a lot of people thought was coming from Tesla. So this was just kind of...

different we've had like multiple episodes where we said there were reports that the model 2 got cancelled and then elon said no they haven't been and then the reports were like the model 2 is now just the cyber cab so it's it's gone back and forth quite a bit um

Yeah, I didn't have it on my bingo card that Google would like just force everyone to use the search generative experience no matter what. That was definitely not on my bingo card because that felt to me like they are literally just playing with fire.

allowing their robots to answer people's questions and not even like yeah yeah wait that was that was this year as well oh my goodness yeah the like eat three rocks a day thing pulling things from reddit yeah yeah that's and just like how much they blew up their own search it felt like like i know google has slowly been making their search absolutely miserable yeah but man

They hit it home this year. They really hit it home. They hit their goal. Yeah. So what about you guys? You guys have anything? I think the thing that wasn't on my bingo card the most was how quickly everyone forgot about the Apple Vision Pro.

Yeah. Like it came out. It was a huge deal. We spoke about it constantly. Biggest video of the year. Yeah. It has like random resurgences, like people on social media that discover a new cool thing you do with it. Or Ellis. Or Ellis. And everyone's excited about it for like another couple days. And then it kind of just like fades into the background again. Yeah. And like for an Apple product, a new VR basically, like that's just weird to me. It went from like people...

taking like candid videos of themselves outside, like crossing the street, poking things. And it was everywhere. And then it's just nowhere. I think you really need something to have that reason to come back to it every single day. If you don't want it to just be a blip in the news and they just don't have that right now.

So it could be like an original iPhone where not a lot of people buy it initially and then later on it just becomes crazy popular. But right now it's looking a little bleak. Here's an interesting stat for the video we made about it. Okay. It blew up obviously. It was one of the biggest videos of the year. In the first week, it had 22.9 million views. Like a lot of people who weren't ever going to buy it were just watching that video.

It has since gotten roughly 1 million views in the last 300 days. Wow. So the chart is just shit. Yeah. And people just stopped talking about it. Stopped caring. Yeah. That's crazy. It's interesting. What I also did not have on my bingo card is Google Fi still not supporting RCS.

That's so funny. On the iPhone. That really bugs me. I was thinking about switching to Google Fi and I'm probably not going to do it. If you're on your iPhone, it will not

Like, you can't do RCS chats with Android phones yet. Oh, that's why. I was trying to text Mark as yesterday, and that's why it didn't work. Oh, because you have Fi on the iPhone, yeah. Yeah, I started noticing a lot of people. I mean, obviously, they updated to iOS 18, but I started getting the typing indicators. So I've been on Android, and I'm not used to getting the typing indicators. And when I did see one, I'd be like, oh, another Android person. That's so cool. Now I see it, I'm like, yeah, everyone's got these now. Yeah.

Cool. I get to see when people are typing. I did expect all the misinformation that people are spreading about RCS and threads and stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty classic. That's fun. Honestly...

What wasn't on my bingo card was discovering I love Vision Pro. I've like chilled out a little bit, you know, but damn, there was like a month or two where it was just like I was in that thing. You were locked in. All day, every day. You've been in it within the last month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it rocks, man. It's so dope. It's like...

Do you want to tell people what you're using it for specifically? Literally just computing. So you're just on the computer, but with the headset on, so your environment's different. Like, yeah, I sit at my desk and I do my normal work, but I'm wearing Vision Pro and I'm in Hawaii and it's nighttime. Like that's the vibe. Like I don't really know. A bigger screen and cooler environment. Bigger screen, cooler environment, less distractions, uh,

I don't, I don't, I'm not a developer. Like I don't pay for the developer beta pass. So I'm still waiting for, is it 2.2 or 2.2.1, whichever one adds the ultra wide display. Right. Cause that's going to be a game changer for me. I was going to mention that. So the, cause the, you know, we're not going to get a vision pro two anytime soon, but I always feel like when you get a first gen product, that's the company trying to,

see what's interesting about it and see what sticks. And the closest we have to a Vision Pro 2, which is when they learn, okay, this is what worked, here's what the direction will go, is the software updates they've put out. And the fact that they're improving specifically the Mac connectivity and adding an ultrawide and adding more capabilities there. That's what people really like to use it for. It tells me that that's one of the...

primary uses of the Vision Pro. It's just, it's the resolution. The resolution is so good. It's so high. Like it just feels so natural to use. And then being able to like

Typically what I do is I have all my work stuff on the virtual display and then like Slack, I'm running the Vision Pro app for and it's like floating off to the side. And then because of universal control, my mouse will automatically go from my computer to the Vision Pro. It's just like... You know what I really don't like though? I used it with the Mac Mini the other day and if you're not using a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse, you cannot see your keyboard and mouse. It only recognizes the Apple stuff. Same with the trackpad.

Like you can't see it. But I figured out like the perfect environment setting to where I can still see my hands. Oh, yeah. And then when you have it like at that halfway, little past halfway point, if you're in a nighttime environment, even though the environment's like mostly in front of you, if you turn around, it matches the lighting in the room you're in. It dims the room. It's so...

Would it be weird if we were all wearing Vision Pros all day in the studio? Yes. Yeah. Well, maybe it wouldn't be weird because we'd all be in our own environments. We wouldn't even notice. Yeah, I'd be in Hawaii. Yeah. I'd be a crane. Yosemite. No one even thought about it. Everyone's just like, yes. Yeah, that would be weird. I'm just like, when you're describing it, I'm like, maybe I should do that more often. And then I'm picturing like several people in the office doing it. I'm like, what if we all did it? I don't want the nightmares of saying, hey, Marques, and having you turn around and your eyes would just...

That was bothering people for a minute. I was reviewing that, just walking around. A minute? People were like, I can't talk to you while you're wearing this. I was like, yeah, that's fair. You walked into the studio a few weeks ago when I was wearing it, and you just stopped by my desk and stared at me. I did? You said, right, this is how the world is now. I remember that. You've got bug eyes. Yeah. I wonder if Samsung's going to do that with theirs.

Put the eyes on the outside? Probably not. That's a great question. Probably not. Yeah.

All right, so we should make some predictions for 2024, right? 2025. Well, let's look at our predictions from last year and then make our predictions. Okay, sure. Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's do that. All right, so this was last year. We have a split up of these. David said multimodal AI is going to take off and be integrated into everything. Adam said that was the safest prediction possible. That's true. Would we say...

I would say it got integrated into everything. I wouldn't necessarily say it took off. I wouldn't say everything. I would say the important things.

It got integrated into like Google. The things we expected, I feel like. There's visual search on the iPhone right now that's basically multimodal. There's Gemini has the back and forth with what am I looking at kind of thing. There's the Ray-Ban metaglasses. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be a successful production. Yeah. I do agree. Yeah. It was a soft take. It hasn't taken off quite as much. Even though...

If I'm talking about AI stuff, that's probably the one. Except for if you just want to know what a person's dog is, just ask them what the dog is. Don't ask them to take a picture. Don't get down on one night and ask them if I can take a picture of their dog and then figuring out everything. Yeah. How old is your dog? Don't tell me. Don't tell me. How old is this dog? I need to AI this. Is he a good boy? I got it. It's Charlie now.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a fair prediction. All right, Marques, you had Hasselblad releases a camera and one that shoots AK video. Or video at all. Or video at all. He said, or video at all, but it's AK. Here's the problem. Everything that you just said.

I'm looking up the X2D release date. So the X2D came out in September 2022, and I'm pretty sure they promised it would shoot video with a software update, and it still doesn't. Yeah. I don't remember. The X1D at least had a section on the camera in the software that said video, and it said coming soon, and it just never came. It never added.

And the X2D, the X2D is the number one camera where I'm like, I don't need it, I don't need it, I don't need it. There is no reason for me to have an X2D. I mean. But I want it so bad. And I'm like, maybe I could just fight if I could occasionally shoot like handheld video clips on it and I could use them at home or whatever. And I'm fairly sure, even though it came out before 2024, they still never added video. So I think I failed here. I think they did not announce any cameras with video.

And that's just how the world is. They also just got rid of the video section entirely on the next one. On the X2D? Yeah. So they didn't even promise it? No. They walked back. Yeah. You don't even get the hope. I think this was more of a hope than a prediction. Yeah, that's fair. But it didn't come true. All right, Ellis, you said holograms. Okay, so I just want to say, if you're... Look, look, look, look, listen, all you haters. All right, look.

Sure. Maybe we haven't seen him in the news, but if you're like me and you're deep in that hologram web community, you would know that the two leading companies, Voxon Photonics and Lightfield Labs, have made great developments in their products this year. Voxon Photonics' new... I forget what the name of it is. I think they just call it the Voxon Display. Voxon Photonics.

It looks great. It has a new housing. You can buy one for $6,800. It's pretty sweet. Lightfield Labs seems a little more and more kind of scammy. But I'm not going to call it because I still have faith. They had a press release a few days ago that they just, you can now go see one of their hologram machines at the SETI Institute.

So that's pretty cool. Looking Glass also came out with some products this year. They came out with the one that attaches to your computer and it's like a little side-by-side display. And they also, you can integrate it with ChatGPT now and it'll talk to you, which is interesting. And it looks like they have like a...

Like a 3D volumetric picture frame thing now. Yeah. Okay. So I'm not an expert in this, but I'm about to drop what little knowledge I have. So the CEO of Voxon did this cool interview a little bit ago where he was like, we got to start, we got to drop the word hologram because holograms refer to this thing like, if I understand it correctly, like this proto display thing.

that David just mentioned. And if I'm looking at the right thing. Like looking Glasgow? Yeah. Which is a hologram the way we know it. Like those things that you like move side to side and it like gives perspectives. You know what I mean? What Voxon and Lightfield Labs are developing are called volumetric displays, which is think of a display, but instead of pixels, we have these things called voxels, which are 3D pixels. So they're sort of

Like this is still pixels just with like perspective information. The other ones have voxels. Anyway, so while I will concede there were bigger news stories this year, the volumetric display train just keeps on rolling. Fair enough. How close are we to... Oh, I'm going to embarrass myself. Is it the first Star Wars that they had Princess Leia in the family? Yeah. How close are we to that?

I don't know. So the big thing right now is both of these companies, it seems like they're these self-contained things. Like think of like a fish tank and then it can exist in there. And then you could walk a full 360 degrees around this thing and you're still able to see it. But as far as like,

Throwing a projection that's still pretty specialized. I don't know if that exists yet, right? I think a lot of people have not yet figured out totally how to commercialize Hologram technology, but there is still a group of very dedicated people who want to make it a reality Just because they want to make Star Wars again, you know, yeah, my sure so that's cool And I think that will keep advancing over time. So I

Let's go to the next one. We got Andrew. So I was watching it back and I like, I don't think I ever actually said one, whether I was scared or got caught up in it. I did agree with something David said, which was a major software redesign for the Apple Watch. I don't believe that's it. They did have a software redesign. There's a software redesign, but it wasn't like major. Yeah, it wasn't major. Yeah. They kind of just tacked on tiles. Yeah.

Which is like a feature. I would not say that came true. Yeah. We thought they would have, everyone thought there would be like a crazy 10th gen new redesign for the whole watch. Well, it got thinner. It got thinner. It looks exactly the same as the last one. It's like, all right, you made it thinner. 10% thinner. It's nice that it's thinner. I believe the exact words we used last year when we were talking about this was a complete redesign of the watch. Complete.

That did not happen. I don't think that happened. We were picturing like Moto 360s and like... They hyped it up like it was a complete redesign. Yeah, they did talk about it. From the ground up, the lightest Apple Watch we've ever made.

Yeah, okay. And then Adams, which I really liked, he said, we're going to stray away from transparent tech and get more colors. No, what are you talking about? No, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's been all about transparent tech this year. What transparent tech came out this year? All of it. The ones that already were stayed transparent. We made a whole video about it. Yeah, I think there's just as much transparent tech as there is new colorful tech. And I will argue the colors just continue to get less colorful. Why not just...

Bro, I ordered a purple iPad accidentally and thought it was silver for like a week before Adam told me that's purple. So desaturated. Okay. Counterpoint. Counterpoint. iPhone 16s. No.

really saturated. There's a number of your counterparts. More saturated than they've been. Ultra marine. Exactly. Rabbit R1, the most orange thing a human being has ever made. CMF. CMF. No transparent stuff there. Get him, Ellis. Yeah, let's go. Let's get him. I'm pretty sure every single new iMac is less saturated than the iMac before it.

from generations. All of the pro iPhones are still just like more and more silver, essentially. They're like the LaCroix of colors. It just doesn't feel like we're getting super colorful. You make a good point with Rabbit, though. That was a color that essentially broke cameras. You know, we did get a lot of this year. You are right about the iMacs. You know, we did get a lot of this year that I'm very glad we got. We got a lot of weird game console stuff. Like,

Like, there was, uh, there was, there's always new special editions of the, um. PlayStation? No, of the. Analog Pocket. Analog Pocket, that, like, Game Boy thing. Yeah. They always do new colors and new, like, fun things, but then we got, we got the Arms Dealer Game Boy this year. Yeah. Um. It's colorful, too. Yeah, it was, uh, Palmer Lucky's Game Boy. Oh.

Yeah, so we got an arms dealer game boy. We got a bunch of new weird amber neck handhelds, which are like the the weird Chinese rom Oh that the stuff that you find on dead whales sometimes you find stuff wait What what Adam gets it didn't keep going. Okay, amber amber gris. Oh, oh

It's fine. I'm not hanging around. We can just keep going. I don't know. It just, it felt, and then, PS5 Pro. PS, well, yeah, yeah. But Analog also came out, or at least announced its N64 redo this year as well. So yeah, I don't know. There's like a lot of really cool retro gaming stuff. They're just shoveling nostalgia onto people. They are. They really are. They're like, what if we had what you had in your childhood, but it was metal?

And you would pay $400 for it. And everyone who did have it during their childhood is very excited about it. Yes. And everyone who didn't have it during their childhood, at least I'm speaking for some of them, are very confused. Yeah. Like, oh, you want a Game Boy again. But more...

But more expensive. And you still have to buy the cartridges. Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. To Adam's point, a lot of these things are very colorful. That was my point. No, that's fair. Yeah. I wish things were more colorful. Yeah. I agree. Cool. We did get some transparent stuff, though. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Do we want to do our predictions real quick? I am unprepared, but I will think of one. I will try. I have one. I had one, and I forgot it already. Kick us off. If you have one, hit us. My prediction is someone will get...

The AI wearable right. Disagree. Someone will get the AI wearable right. So do the meta Ray-Ban glasses count for that? So that is where my head went to. But not everyone is just walking around wearing meta Ray-Ban glasses. If you have them, you have them. You love them, I'm sure. I want a pair. But I wouldn't say they're right. I think they're the closest pair.

But I think this year someone will get it right. If you define get it right, is that like it's in the zeitgeist, regular people are buying it? Yeah, like it's a success. I wouldn't say people are buying it, but people want it. Because there's levels to success. There's AirPods, which is like amazing success. But there's also Tesla Model 3 success. And there's also, you know,

or Sony A6000, which is like in a community that's into this stuff, it's very successful. - I would consider an A6000 to be a complete success. - Much more successful than even like an A7. - So you probably never see them on the street, but everyone who knows, knows. - Yeah, and everyone who knows wants one. - Okay. - Even if it's like Google pushes a software update to the Pixel Buds, if it's like the Meta Ray Bans get significantly more powerful, like something like that. - Do you think Google's gonna release the new glasses that they keep teasing?

Yeah, I have so many thoughts. Google Glass 3. Does AirPods getting Apple Intelligence count? No, because Apple Intelligence isn't there yet. But if it gets it, if there's some amazing Siri talking, translating. Yeah, if it comes out and it blows everyone away, I will consider that a success. Okay. I think that...

of the like AI big stuff is just going to like your expectations need to lower and Then that'll be where it's at in your phone. It'll be like RIP Google assistant Gemini is just gonna be like doing more stuff and series just gonna do more stuff and

Is that a cold take? That's definitely going to happen. We thought it was going to happen this year. I don't think there's going to be a separate wearable that really takes off. I see. Well, I can segue into my prediction. Do it. So my prediction will either be, I think, right or super wrong. Rabbit are two. I think they survive long enough.

But since it's not subscription-based and it is taking compute power for each person that could potentially still be using it, they'll need to release a new one so that they can charge money for it. Mm-hmm.

I don't think it'll be much different. I don't think it will have a lot of success. But I would not be surprised if we get a rabbit R2 next year. That's a good pick. And if we don't, I wouldn't be surprised if that's because rabbit folded. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of that, you know how Humane recently was like, hey guys, you can use our OS if you pay us money.

Because they recently were like, Cosmos isn't just for the Humane AI pin. It's anything. Oh, I missed that. Yeah, this was like three weeks ago. They did this whole press thing being like,

We spent so much money and time engineering this AIOS for the AI pin. You could actually use this in like a car or something if you wanted to. And they were basically just trying to vet like people to use them as an AIOS company instead of as an AI hardware company. So I don't know if they're going to make any sales, but I think Humane gets sold this year.

I wouldn't be surprised. Okay. They successfully do what they've been trying to do. Probably not to HP, but probably to someone else. To Fisker. To Fisker. Will they be sold for more or less than Juan Soto's current contract? $765 million. Jesus Christ. Oh. I think that's actually a great number to be looking at for that. Yeah. It could be less easily.

Easily. But it could be more easily. Because their sales, it's like, do you care about the sales or the talent? No, no, no. You're acquiring the talent. Oh, I guess I said current content. There are some talented people over there. The talent's kind of been exposed at this point.

It's tough. They have designers, clearly, but they also have a long way to go. Yeah. That is a good over-under. It's a great over-under. I have no idea. I would say $500 million. Haven't they raised that much? They raised more. $400 million, I think? No. I mean, it's hard to know exactly how much they raised because they don't have to publicly disclose it, but it seems like...

estimated they raised in between 200 and I'm going to say 310 million dollars. So if they could sell for Juan Soto money, that's pretty cool. That'd be good for them, yeah. Yeah, you could just f*** around for eight years and net like 500 mil. That's just called the roadster. Welcome to Silicon Valley. I've come up with a prediction that I'm excited for.

The browser wars are back. Yes. The browser wars at least heat up again and are interesting because at this point it feels pretty stable. It feels like people who use Safari use Safari. People who use Chrome use Chrome. People who use alt browsers use alt browsers. And there's a little bit of people like sometimes leaving Chrome for I switched to Arc. You know there's a couple people doing the browser dance. But

But I think maybe with all this antitrust, with some Google pressure, and maybe with a new search engine, or maybe Apple does something interesting with Safari, I think we could see some version of the browser wars heating up, whether it's on desktop or mobile. Do you think Chrome has to be either sold or divested this year? I don't think it has to happen for the browser wars to heat up, but I think...

yeah just something something happening whether it's the default uh search engine being a thing that kind of just gets up for grabs in some major browser or something happens in 2025. i think that could heat up the browser worth it could be fun a lot of people are trying to re-architect what the browser browser looks like right now oh yeah i think it's a long shot personally but

It'll be interesting to watch. Yeah. Every once in a while I open up Safari on the Mac again because it's a laptop and I'm like, wow, my battery life could be so much better. Yeah. And then like an hour later I'm like, Safari is lame. Damn. Never mind. Firefox baby. I've been having the opposite experience where I was like, you know what, Ellis? Like, you're boring. Like, let's try another browser. And then I was like, Safari has tab groups now. Stay in here, brother.

Yeah, every eight months they add an old feature that every other old browser has had, and they go, look at this thing we invented, and everyone goes, all right, Safari's pretty good. Yeah, Ellis is just over the moon. It's good. It's good that they add stuff. Yeah, that's my prediction. My prediction, and I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Microsoft will not be adding live translations to any product they ship in 2025. You heard it here first. Not even Teams video calls. And you know what? You know what was really awesome? Just to like...

Just to make sure I had all the facts I needed to make that prediction, I Google Microsoft ads live translation press release. Yeah. I found articles from every year for the past five years saying Microsoft's adding live translation. Really? Every year. It's just at a certain point, it's like their Christmas party invite. You know what I mean? It's like the Tesla full self-driving. Anyway, so Microsoft...

Microsoft, if you're listening, prove me wrong. This could be the year. What are you willing to do if they add it? I'm a man of character, of good moral character. I will admit that I'm wrong. I will get right up here and I'll sit at the big table in 4K and be like,

Microsoft, I'm sorry. He'll lay across the table. I didn't believe you. But, you know, I'll really eat my words in public and be willing to be the guy who was wrong. But I just like... Will you shave your head? No. What is it? Will you take a dab of the bomb?

Da Bomb while crying. A dab's not that bad. I think you could do that. A teaspoon. I will... I think if a hundred engineers get together and build this impossible thing in the next year, then you should take a dab of Da Bomb. Yeah, I'll... Let's... I'll eat something like on...

believably spicy in this room. I don't know if it'll be a dab of the bomb. I don't know. While giving your concession speech. Yeah, no, no, no, totally. We'll figure out the specifics. Microsoft, if you're able to do the impossible and make good on your word, that again, you started promising almost 15 years ago at this point, I will melt my taste buds for you. And if it does not happen, Satya has to do that for you.

For sure, he's in on it. He's listening right now, obviously. Honestly, Satya, if it doesn't happen, just send me one of the hard hats that you sell with HoloLens and sign it. And that's enough for me.

I mean, I have a lot of prescience of things I don't think will happen in 2025, but that's a little more boring. Roadster? Roadster is not happening in 2025. Cybertaxi is not happening in 2025. Robovin is not happening in 2025. Robovin's never happening. Maybe Jaguar has some interesting predictions around it. Do they ship a car that people buy? I thought the whole thing was that it wasn't... Copy. Their release wasn't until 2026 anyways. Well, never mind.

What do you think the Pixel 10 is going to look like next year? Oh, that's a fun one because we think that the Tensor chip finally does the thing. Tensor 5 is supposed to be TSMC based. That could be good. I want that to be good. I don't want to fall in the trap of making a prediction of just something I want to happen because that's what I've done before. But this is the year for Pixel 10. Do you think Google will have a big splashy redesign of the hardware because it's the 10th one? Yeah.

Because the 9 is already very refined. I think they do the tick-tock strategy of updating the outside, then the inside, then the outside. So we had this new flat visor thing this year. Outside got updated, but tenser is still tenser. I think Pixel 10 inside gets rejuvenated. Very exciting. I think Pixel 11 outside gets changed again. But that's 2026. I think that's a fair prediction.

Okay, well, we should take a break. We should. We should come back. We've talked our faces off. Before that, one more trivia question. I was thinking really hard at the end of that. He's worried. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just trying to think if I... I've talked so much s*** here. I was just like, do I have any other predictions? I have a thing for after the ad break. It is an optimistic question. What's that? All right. Question number two.

Project Muham. Remember Google Daydream? When it was announced in May of 2016, Google said that it would be built into the next release of their Android operating system, which was... Oh, I think I know this. Question mark, question mark, question mark.

So what operating system? Yep. I think I know this. I always just assume I get these ones wrong. I have a guess, but yeah. I will accept the number or the treat that it was named after. Yeah. I'm right unless I'm wrong in which I was just kidding. Same. Great hedge. Great hedge. On that note, we'll be right back.

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All right, welcome back. Andrew, you've got two more things to close us out for the whole year, no pressure. That was way more pressure than I was expecting. Okay, last year we did worst product of the year.

I think we all kind of know a few things we would say. We already just made fun of half the worst products of the year. So let's do favorite product of the year. Maybe that's, I'll open it up to this. Favorite product that got released this year or favorite thing, product you bought this year. So I'll let it be a little more open. I mean, I have one pretty obvious one that I'm using. Oh. One right in front of me.

This is, that's, okay, so what is it first? Okay. For audio listeners. Yeah, so for me, it's both. I bought this one and I reviewed this this year. It's the M4 MacBook Pro. It has the nanotexture display. And for those wondering, I mean, I have taken really good care of it and it's holding up fine. It does have a couple little marks on it that aren't coming off.

But in general, when I'm looking at it from reasonable angles, it looks fantastic. And I almost forget that there are things I could be reflecting. It looks that good all the time. So it's been incredible. It's super performant. I have all my stuff on it. I got rid of my home Mac studio, and I now plug this into a dock, and so I have all my documents and everything. This computer goes with me everywhere.

This is a good one. And this is, because you had an M1 before this, correct? I had the M1 Max. When was the last time you didn't hop on the newest? Because you're always pushing that. And what I've thought is really impressive about the M series is it got Marques Brownlee to not immediately upgrade and wait.

Three iterations before actually. Yeah, I didn't mean I mean again It's it was the two main things that I do on my laptop Which is all the everyday around the studio stuff and then once in a while I need to edit a video on my laptop and So I could use a MacBook Air I could use any laptop for 99% of the stuff But it's for oh I will also need to go to the Apple event and edit the entire video in the hotel room while I'm there that two or three times a year thing

requires a powerful machine with a high resolution display. And I went with the 14 inch laptop this time. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me. I have not edited a video on it yet, but I think I can. And I can mess with the window sizes and do my coloring and probably get it done. So it's been awesome for the 99%. I'm waiting for having to edit a video, but it's been phenomenal. What about for the 1%?

the 1% of things where I'm just editing a video. Well, you said it's awesome for the 99%. Oh, well, the 99% is all the daily activities that are not editing videos. I was trying to make like a really wealthy people joke. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. So great laptop came out this year. I bought one this year. It's good. Cool. Yeah. Mine is the Anbernic RG35SP.

which is a Game Boy Advance SP clone ROM machine. And I had a lot of fun with it. This year I played a lot of games from my childhood that I never finished because my attention span was too short. And I actually finished them, so that was good. And it cost me like $40. So it was a pretty good purchase. I also want to shout out the Pixel Buds Pro 2 because I have fully switched over to them. I really like them.

They also have a nice mint color. Mint. Great color. I really like that they have... They have...

Dual what do they call it when the Bluetooth can connect to multiple devices? Oh, multi-point. Yeah, a multi-point Bluetooth, which in my opinion, if you don't have an iPad and you have a computer and a phone because it connects to two things, that's like all I need. And it is like more stable than the H2 chip in my AirPods Pro was before then. Wow. I like the shape more. Yeah, I like them a lot.

They're cool. Sweet. I think mine is...

a keyboard, obviously. But I think a keyboard that's more suited towards the gamer, the person out there that doesn't want to build it. There's the Zen Blade 65. It is a Hall Effect keyboard, which has been super popular this year. But it's a Hall Effect keyboard that has a great build quality and stock feels and sounds very good. I think if you wanted to upgrade it, all you would have to do is buy a nice set of keycaps and

and maybe lube the stabilizers, which you can do without taking the whole thing apart. Other than that, great build quality. Hall effect is really awesome for gaming. And if you get the silver one, which I think is the only version, and you get the silver MKBHD escape key, it matches Chef's Kiss. Looks great. The black logo. The black logo, yeah. Sick.

It's like $300 still, but most gaming keyboards are like $200 to $300 at this point, especially Hall Effect, it feels like. What about you guys? Mine is the Marvel Unlimited subscription. I got really into reading comics this year, and just having that backlog of comics to go through has been awesome. Anytime that you're just bored sitting on the subway or something, you just whip that out and read for a bit. It's pretty cool. Ellis? Ellis?

I don't know. There wasn't really a lot. I mean, Fission Pro is cool, but I would never buy that. You got your keyboard. That didn't really come out this year. Yeah, but you got it this year. That's true. I do like that thing a lot. The piano I have at home. But even that thing has some flaws. I was going to say Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

but it's unplayable garbage. So I would actually change my answer to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, which is an unbelievably terrific experience. Cool. And I'm assuming way cheaper now. I have Game Pass, so I couldn't tell you. But I can't wait till 2024 works because then I will switch. But until then, I'll be stuck on 2020. Awesome.

Cool. One more thing to wrap it up. This worked well last year. We want to do our favorite soundbite of the year. Soundbites, again, they're in our shows a lot, but I don't think people understand how much we play them in this room. It's probably 10 times more than it is on the podcast, but I think a bunch of us have some favorite ones. Whether they were this year or not will be very hard to remember. Do you want to throw us through a couple of greatest hits from this year or...

Do you have a few? Sure, yeah. I mean, we could start off with the classic that made it on this year that I don't think will ever leave, and it is this one. That's fine. That's what I wrote down. Do people know what that is? It's David making a party. Wait, can you recreate it right now perfectly? It's going to be so much worse. It only happens when you don't try. You can't do a magic trick twice. You just got to do it once. Once or it's luck. Twice or it's luck. Yeah.

I could do it perfectly. I just don't feel like it. Also, shout out to the people that also watch the studio channel and notice that Ellis put that in that section. That's the reason why I think it's my favorite. It expanded outside of the podcast. Did you only use it in studio? Was it in a main channel at all? No, it's never been on the main channel.

Smartphone Awards intro. I just sit down with my suit on. So that was my favorite. I was pretty sure you were going to play it. It was a great one. Then there is also this. I don't remember if this was this year either, but personally, it's one of my favorite. I just don't get to use it a lot. Do you have birds? I got birds, boy. That was this year, yeah? That was this year? I believe so, because I think I got the bird feeder this year, yeah. Bird buddy. Do you still have birds? I know.

I need to find a new way to stake it into my ground and I've been very distracted. I need to get it up again. It's also freezing outside. Maybe you could use a pork chop. There's still birds, but it's... Pork chop? Yeah. What? He staked it into the ground. My favorite soundbite of this year was not in an actual episode because Andrew said it while we were soundchecking. But Andrew dropped this bad boy on us a few months ago. Queez. Oh, no.

Nice. I thought it was going to be something crazy. I was very worried. What did we say? I rewatched last year and the majority of them were... Don't worry. I have plenty of crazy ones. Like, I don't even know what this one is. We have so many crazy Wave 4 moments. Like, do you remember this? I'm not making up a frittata. Yes, vividly. That...

That was one of the best episodes. So that was, was that the trivia episode? It was 2.15. I don't remember what that was. I just remember talking about Oof! I was gone that week because I remember I came back and you guys kept reciting it. I was like, what are you talking about? Oh, it was a trivia question. I think it was a question. And then everyone said, you didn't know what a frittata is. And I was like, really?

Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. That's fine. I know. That's fine. I mean... This is very off track. Do you remember when you pinged everyone on our Discord to ask them if they knew what a plum was? But that was not 2020. No, no, it was not. It just feels like the... Have we told people about that when I...

It's the only time in our Discord everyone has ever been pinged and we were just having a debate on if people knew what plums were. I needed data. I needed a sample size. And hey, listen, some people... So we were talking about it in the studio. So

And somehow fruits came up and then plums came up. And I think someone said, I don't think I've ever eaten a plum. And someone else was like, what do you mean you've never eaten a plum? Everyone's had a plum. And then the debate was like, wait, no, plums are not a common fruit. So then we had this whole like, have you ever had a plum before? A lot of people I know have never had a plum before. And we had to figure it out. So I went to the Discord and I said, at all. At everyone. At everyone. I need to know if you...

even know what a plum is. And then what did you do? And then I hit send. And then? And then I just like the Joker just walked away from the experience. Exactly. You closed Discord and walked away. But we got a ton of answers and I think it was close to 50-50 too. Yeah, it actually was. There was actually like a reasonable position in that debate which is plums are not very common but some people find it crazy that they're not that common. They are delicious though. They're great. They're great. If you made it this far in the episode comment if you've had a plum before.

Or if you know what a plum is. Or if you don't even know what a plum is. That'd be great. Yeah, well, you know, here's to another year of waveform and great sound bites and hopefully learning about egg dishes and all sorts of fruits we've never heard of. Thank you for watching and listening and making this year possible. I think the only thing left to do is end with trivia. There was a conversation that somehow went from cannibalism into... It was David.

That's a good one. That's a great one. Question number one. Which of the following cities has Samsung Unpacked never been held in? A. Seoul, South Korea. Yeah, South Korea. I don't know why. You can just say Korea. Sorry, guys. South Korea. Two. B. Barcelona, Spain. I don't know why I said two. I'm really losing it here. Three. Tampines. Tampines. Tampines.

Singapore or D Amsterdam Netherlands my last brain cell is like barely hanging on today don't I'm doing the thing where I think I'm answering the trick question yeah which always means I'm wrong yeah that means I'm wrong too but are you right

We all pick different things. I said Seoul, which is funny because Samsung's headquartered there, so I figured that would be a funny non-answer. That was their first one in Korea. That's the one I didn't go to. Two years ago, they did it in Paris. I'll say why I picked this as a trick question. I said Barcelona because I assumed it was MWC, not Unpacked. It was. There was an Unpacked at MWC. It was Samsung at

Samsung has been referring to their event as Unpacked since long before it was a standalone event. They referred to their MWC thing as Unpacked. I went to that one. That's kind of why I assumed I was wrong on that one. I put Amsterdam. Amsterdam is correct. It has never made it to Amsterdam. And I just want to say, on the theme of tech companies writing their own blogs and spreading misinformation about themselves in these blogs...

Samsung, you have two blog posts, one of which says that the very first Galaxy Unpacked was in Las Vegas in 2010. And you have another blog post that says the very first Unpacked was in Singapore in 2009. So make up your mind, I guess. Quick update on the score. Marques with one.

Andrew with one, two, three. He's carrying it, folks. Zero. While Marques carries the one. We got it. David in the lead with three after that correct question. Chill. Slow down. Call me Wolverine with my three claws. He's got six, but sure. So, remember Google Daydream? Yeah. Which operating system was it built into first after it was announced in May of 2016?

But there's a difference between going down like this and going down like that. Well, they have jets attached to them. Yeah, so the jets push them forward. And as long as the force pushing them forward is higher than gravity... It's like a fish swimming through water. Yes, gravity is pulling the fish down, but there's a certain force holding the fish up. And how do boats work? Shareholder value. How do boats work?

That was a soundbite, by the way. Audio listeners. Shareholder value. I still get people tweeting at me that say, but how do boats work, David? Shareholder value. Flip them and read. What do we got? Hoof. Very close. David? I said nougat. Correct. I said seven. Correct. Andrew? I said seven nougat.

I said nine. Wrong. I meant no, that's not right. With our powers combined, Marques, we could know any question. I looked at Nugent, I was like, that's seven. Oh, that's seven. That's seven. Great. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for sticking with us. Many more trivia questions, many more episodes, many more fun news topics and things coming up in 2025. Wow. This feels weird to say that out loud. 2025, right around the corner. We'll see you then. Bye.

See you next year. Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch 2. I'm the dad. I'm supposed to make the see you next year joke. Guys, I have an announcement. Cut it. No outro, no nothing. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by Vayne Sil. Bingo. Let's go 2024. Let's go 2025. 2025.

Hey, it's Liam from Decoder with Nilay Patel. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in tech and business, about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series, diving into some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today. For instance, what does it mean to start buying and using AI at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buying? And most importantly, what are they doing with it? And of course, podcasting.

Yes, the thing you're listening to right now. Well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds, and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the AI space? Why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away co-founders? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than it seems. You'll hear all that and more this month on Decoder with Nilay Patel, presented by Stripe. You can listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

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