Gadgets We're Loving Right Now!

Summary

Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast – “Gadgets We’re Loving Right Now!”

Date: August 8, 2025
Hosts: David Imel, Andrew Manganelli, Adam Molina
(Note: Marques Brownlee is on leave this episode)

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Episode Overview

In this lively and gadget-packed episode, host David Imel and co-hosts Andrew Manganelli and Adam Molina—flying without Marques Brownlee—offer a compelling mix of current tech news and hands-on “show & tell” with new favorite gadgets. The discussion spans from the quirkiest Microsoft merch, impactful YouTube and AI updates, Nintendo’s pricing tactics, Fediverse news, and finally the cool gadgets the team is loving right now. The tone is as energetic and nerdy as ever, blending insightful digressions with playful banter and trivia.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Microsoft’s Windows XP Crocs – The Ultimate Nostalgia Merch

[03:01 – 06:15]

• What’s New: For Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, exclusive Windows XP-themed Crocs are being released, pre-sale currently open for Microsoft employees.
• Features:
  • Design mimics XP’s classic “Bliss” wallpaper (green sole, blue with clouds upper).
  • Comes with 6 “Jibbitz” charms: Recycle bin, mouse cursor, Clippy, Internet Explorer icon, folder, and MSN butterfly.
  • Includes a drawstring bag with the Bliss wallpaper design.
  • Price: $80.
• Hosts’ Take: All three would happily throw down $80 for these, joking about team photos in matching Crocs. Praise for Microsoft’s unique, “fire” merch compared to Apple’s more subdued branded goods.
• Notable Quote:

  “For a $4 trillion megacorp… their merch designers are cooking.” — David [06:12]
  “You could have just stopped at Windows. That’s how awesome it is.” — Andrew [02:54]

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2. YouTube Collabs – New Way to Share the Spotlight

[06:15 – 13:23]

• New Feature: YouTube is beta-testing collaborative videos, inspired by Instagram/TikTok collab posts.
• How it Works: Videos can appear on both creators’ channels with credit to all, but current testing suggests these may be similar-but-not-identical videos, not a single post mirrored across channels.
• Monetization questions: Still unclear; hosts speculate about implications for analytics, revenue split, and discoverability.
• Smart Move:

  “If there’s a very large creator that’s collabing with a smaller creator, now it’s less... ‘maybe I can kind of ride his…’” — David [08:32]

• Concerns: UI quirks (e.g., cluttered titles, verification issues), possibility of features hurting analytics and being abandoned by big creators (e.g., MrBeast).
• Wishlist: The hosts lament YouTube’s clunky manual process for adding video chapters, wishing for a first-party solution.

  “Why is still the best way… just putting a part in the description and writing chapters?” — Adam [11:33]

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3. OpenAI’s “Open Weight” Models – Breaking Open the Black Box?

[13:30 – 22:30]

• News: OpenAI releases its first “open weight” AI models since GPT-2, available under the Apache 2.0 license (commercial use allowed).
• Explainer: “Open weight” means the model architecture and parameters are public, but not the training data (“not open source”—can’t see what it was trained on, for legal reasons).
• Implications:
  • Models can be run locally (smaller one needs ~16GB VRAM, larger one needs a top-end GPU).
  • Could spur US companies to compete with open models from China and Meta’s Llama.
  • Likely to enable more “run-anywhere” AI tools, potentially bypassing costly API calls.
• Host’s Perspective: The move balances making money via APIs and combating uptake of foreign or open alternatives.
• Notable Quotes:

  “To them, it’s better to get people to like [their models]… and then they can figure out how to monetize that later.” — David [17:28]
  “It would be cool if things could run locally on your device and not burn all the water on the planet.” — David [21:35]

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4. Nintendo Switch Raises Prices – Tariffs and PSYOPs

[26:46 – 36:36]

• What’s happening: OG Switch, Switch Lite, and Switch OLED prices increased by $30–$50 across the board, but not Switch 2 (which is selling rapidly at $450).
• Why?: Likely a tariff response and supply chain play; Switch 2 is manufactured in Vietnam, and Nintendo is trying to avoid consumer backlash by holding its price.
• Analysis:
  • Old hardware price bumps make Switch 2 look like a better deal (creating “price ladders”).
  • Used Switch hardware is much cheaper online—Nintendo likely makes big profit even at old prices.
• Notable Quotes:

  “I feel like this also helps… now the difference [with Switch 2] is only 50 bucks. Might as well get the Switch 2.” — Andrew [30:45]

• Fun Moment: Stick drift confusion on JoyCons turned out to be tilt controls left on.

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5. Fediverse Corner – Ghost 6.0 Makes Blogs Social

[37:43 – 42:08]

• Update: Ghost (open-source newsletter/blog platform) now supports Fediverse integration (Mastodon, etc.): your blog/website can be followed/commented via decentralized platforms.
• Why this matters: Ownership and distribution of writing is “back”; echoes a Substack resurgence as creators want autonomy and escape social media algorithms.
• Notable Quote:

  “Blogs are back, baby.” — Andrew [39:59]

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6. Instagram Live Streams Now Require 1,000 Followers

[42:29 – 47:10]

• Change: To go live on Instagram, users now need 1000+ followers.
• Hosts’ Views: Widely panned as unnecessary; hurts private or small-account use, undercuts new Meta Ray-Bans’ “go live from your glasses” function.
  • Speculation that it’s an anti-abuse measure, but easily circumvented.
• Memorable Commentary:

  “A thousand followers is a lot… most people do not… Regular people do not have a thousand followers.” — David [43:27]
  “People just want Instagram to keep up with their friends. … Not everyone's on Instagram to build an audience.” — Adam [45:44]

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Gadgets We’re Loving Right Now: Show & Tell

[50:01 – 75:21]

A candid segment where each host demos or discusses a gadget they’ve been using and loving.

1. David – Peak Design Pro Tripod Small

[50:31 – 61:24]

• Why He Loves It: Heavy-duty upgrade to the beloved Peak Design travel tripod; extra stability for large-format and windy shoots; improved quick-release and ergonomics.
• Caveat: Much bigger than the original; high price ($800–$1,000 for Pro models).
• Memorable Quotes:

  “It’s simultaneously too expensive and the best thing ever…” — Adam [51:25]
  “Everything about these tripods is definitely about stability and being able to shoot things without any shake.” — David [56:13]

2. Adam – Senda Ergonomic Vertical Mouse

[62:39 – 68:37]

• What Is It: A wild, $20 vertical ergonomic mouse available on Amazon, “white label”-style, with a fun color palette and volume knob.
• Pros:
  • Cheap, fun colors, plug-and-play, USB-C charging, Bluetooth and dongle modes.
• Cons:
  • Feels cheap, no software (can’t remap knob), questionable ergonomics, unknown durability.
• Notable Quote:

  “I was very intrigued by it. I want to see you game with this…” — David [68:37]

3. Andrew – MOFT MagSafe Tripod & Not Boring Camera App

[70:04 – 74:52]

• MOFT Tripod:
  • A foldable MagSafe stand/grip for iPhone that doubles as a mini tripod.
  • Super handy, especially for creators.
• Not Boring Camera:
  • New iOS camera app, part of Andy Allen’s “Not Boring” suite (makes default apps beautiful and fun).
  • Mimics old film camera experience (no instant photo review), exquisite UI, cool LUTs/filters, RAW support.
• Notable Quotes:

  “I like seeing things that have more intentional design—and more fun.” — Andrew [73:52]
  “Us Android people like to have fun too…” — Adam [74:53]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “For a $4 trillion megacorp… their merch designers are cooking.” — David [06:12]
• “Blogs are back, baby.” — Andrew [39:59]
• “People just want Instagram to keep up with their friends. … Not everyone's on Instagram to build an audience.” — Adam [45:44]
• “I was very intrigued by it. I want to see you game with this…” — David [68:37]

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Trivia Face-Off ("How Well Do You Know Each Other?")

[23:30, 75:21, 78:25]

• A special segment (since Marques is out) with David and Andrew quizzing each other on:
  • Most used app in the other’s Screen Time (Instagram, Reddit/Pokemon TCG).
  • Apps on each other’s phone dock (Adam reveals his crazy “dock of folders” system, sparking fierce debate).
• Listeners are invited to weigh in on “folder dock” vs. “search everything” home screen philosophies.

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Tech News Quick Hits

• Pixel event is in two weeks — anticipation building.
• YouTube chapters UI still broken: hosts express ongoing frustration.
• Fediverse/Decentralized Web Developments: Ghost’s integration with BlueSky/Mastodon via probable bridging; old-school blogging makes a comeback.
• Not Boring app suite: Unique, whimsical, iOS-only upgraded takes on basics like weather, camera, calculator.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Windows XP Crocs & Merch – [03:01 – 06:15]
• YouTube Collabs – [06:15 – 13:23]
• OpenAI Open Weights – [13:30 – 22:30]
• Nintendo Switch Pricing – [26:46 – 36:36]
• Fediverse: Ghost 6.0 – [37:43 – 42:08]
• Instagram Live Restriction – [42:29 – 47:10]
• Show & Tell – [50:01 – 75:21]
• Trivia & App Philosophy – [75:21 – End]

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Bottom Line

This episode captures the team’s knowledge, skepticism, and infectious enthusiasm for both the fun and serious sides of tech. From nostalgic Crocs to AI democratization to the allure of thoughtfully designed accessories and apps, “Gadgets We’re Loving Right Now!” is a treasure trove of recommendations, industry commentary, and the kind of debates only gadget nerds can love.

Transcript

[Andrew]

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[David]

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[Andrew]

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[David]

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[Adam]

Plus up to an extra $450 off.

[David]

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[Adam]

Everyone's taking their shot at Apple.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Right now.

[David]

And yeah. And the pixel comes out in exactly 14 days. Is the announcement.

[Andrew]

Well, it's announced two weeks.

[David]

Yeah. Announcements.

[Andrew]

It's already out technically.

[David]

Yeah, that's true. I mean Google themselves is showing it. What is up, people of the Internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts and I'm David.

[Adam]

And I'm Andrew.

[David]

Sorry, I couldn't not.

[Adam]

It just caught me off guard.

[David]

In today's episode. Marques is gone. We warned you before. We did warn you last week. He's going to be gone for two weeks. Please, please don't leave you. We still, you know, press that subscribe.

[Adam]

Button to bring him back.

[David]

That's true. If you. Yeah. If you press subscribe, he comes back. Today's episode, we got a lot of different stuff for you. We've gotten a new open weight model from OpenAI. What a concept. Some exciting Fediverse news, which, you know, I'm excited about.

[Andrew]

Is that an oxymoron?

[David]

What exciting Fediverse news? Because it's already exciting.

[Andrew]

Exactly.

[David]

Exactly. Yeah. Some Fediverse news, some Nintendo Switch, but not Nintendo Switch. Two updates. Sad, sad face. And we're also Going to be ending it with showing off some cool little gadgets that we've gotten our hands on recently.

[Adam]

We do.

[David]

That's quite fun. But first.

[Adam]

But first, Andrew's mega awesome. Best news of the week ever. Possible, possibly the year. Gadget of the year. Some may say Windows or Microsoft is releasing Windows XP Crocs.

[Andrew]

You could have stopped at Windows.

[Adam]

Why? That's how awesome it is.

[Andrew]

That's how awesome.

[David]

Okay, well, XP specifically. Yeah, this is XP baby.

[Adam]

This is the good, good, the nostalgia. But so to celebrate Microsoft's 50th anniversary, they're about to release Windows XP Crocs. The reason we know they're about to release it is apparently they've already opened up pre sale for Microsoft employees.

[David]

Oh.

[Adam]

They will cost 80 bucks, but come with a pack of 6G. Do you want to know what the Jibbit are?

[Andrew]

Can you explain this?

[David]

Explain the don't know what Crocs are and gibbit.

[Andrew]

Listen, how much are Crocs normally? Let's start there.

[Adam]

50.

[David]

Are they really that much?

[Adam]

Yeah, than regular sh. To make like little. I think I'm about right there.

[Andrew]

And how much is a gibbet?

[Adam]

That I don't know. I only have one gibbet.

[David]

Oh, I remember when this used to be a good country and we used to like me monsters that were Crocs and we would laugh at people and be like, wow, those are so ugly.

[Adam]

Oh, wait, yeah. 30 to 50 bucks. Okay. For plain colors. Then they can get a little more expensive. Like 60 bucks for some like patterns and stuff.

[Andrew]

So this is like a special collab.

[Adam]

Special edition kind of one.

[David]

And then what are, what are, what are jibbet?

[Adam]

Jibbitz are like the little charms that you put in the holes of the Crocs. Okay, I only have like a disc golf one right now. Hold on.

[David]

Keep laughing.

[Adam]

Wait till you hear the Microsoft Jibbit.

[David]

Okay.

[Adam]

Or should I explain the shoe pattern first?

[David]

Well, you know the shoe pattern, right?

[Adam]

Well.

[David]

Oh, there's a pattern on the shoe. Yeah.

[Adam]

The pattern for the shoe is the bottom sole is green and the top of the shoe is a light blue with clouds. So it represents the green hill with the cloudy sky from the Windows XP wallpaper. Yo, it's so good.

[David]

You're kind of. You're kind of changing mirrors.

[Adam]

It's so sick. And the gibbets are a recycling bin. A mouse cursor clippy.

[David]

Oh, I knew it.

[Adam]

The old Internet Explorer icon, a folder icon and the MSN butterfly.

[David]

Oh, my God.

[Adam]

It's really cool.

[Andrew]

What if I just want the gibbitz?

[Adam]

Then you're going to have to pay 80 bucks and sell someone a pair of Crocs.

[David]

I don't love using the Gen Z logo, but I think they cooked with this one.

[Adam]

They could. It also kind of looks like it comes with a drawstring bag that is also the wallpaper.

[David]

The like Hill wallpaper. I mean if it comes with a bag, it's not a horrible deal. Although that bag costs 5 cents to make.

[Adam]

It's maybe less.

[Andrew]

Wait, so are these exclusively going to be for Microsoft employees or will they eventually open up for the Verge article.

[Adam]

I read it off of? Seems like it is going to be available worldwide. Just Microsoft employees get first dips at it. So if you're a Microsoft employee who doesn't want these and want please buy them for us.

[David]

I would. I would give you the money.

[Adam]

I'm spending $80 on these if given the chance. I can 100%.

[David]

If we took a team photo in this, that would be pretty cool.

[Adam]

It would be pretty awesome. I think we can all agree with the ugly sweaters. Microsoft is a better merch company than pretty much anything else. Yeah, their merch is sick.

[Andrew]

Their ugly sweaters in particular are always fire.

[Adam]

Yeah, we always talk about Apple Store like exclusive shirts and merch and stuff.

[David]

But I think Microsoft's got for a $4 trillion megacorp. They're really, you know, who most game is online who mostly does B2B sales.

[Adam]

I gotta say, they got a couple fire shirts.

[David]

Their merch designers are cooking.

[Adam]

They are.

[David]

All right, well, hopefully we get our hands on these soon. We can move on to the next story. There is a new YouTube feature that is not yet launched, but we have seen some examples of it and that is YouTube collabs. So you might know that on Instagram or TikTok, when you make a post, you can effectively make the post with another person. It's like a collab post. So it will show up on both people's pages and it will show both people's little icons right next to each other. So this is a post by this person and this person. YouTube is now apparently experimenting with bringing this feature to YouTube, which makes a lot of sense because there's a lot of history in YouTube of people doing collabs. But it's very much like, oh, we're putting on my channel. And then maybe there's a different type of video that's on your channel where we collab.

[Adam]

Yeah, and they also tried to do it a little bit with like Tagging. Sorry, Tagging in the title, which I don't think worked very well. It just made titles look really weird because you had to put the AT sign in it, and that always looked terrible. Yeah. But I think this is a better. Because it lives on both channels and is the easy connection between them.

[David]

Right.

[Adam]

When you see it without messing up the title.

[David]

Right. Yeah. I think this makes a lot of sense. It'll just show up on both channels. I don't yet know how the monetization structure is going to work for something like this. I did reach out to Renee Richie, who is the YouTube liaison. Uh, he says they are not officially announcing anything about the feature until the fall.

[Adam]

Okay.

[David]

So it's possible that they're just beta testing it. The only people that have access to it are, like, very, very big YouTubers.

[Adam]

Yeah. Mr.

[David]

Beast has done, like, two of them.

[Adam]

Has he done two?

[David]

Because I believe so.

[Adam]

I think you're right, because the one I'm looking at right now says Mr. Beast and three more. And then you click it and you see Mark Rober Stokes twins, Ben as Art. The first one we saw, it said, like, the channel or when you click the video, the channel just looked like it said Mr. Beast and Mark Rober.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Which then just to me felt like Harper said this also. I take a glance at that. I'm like, is this a scam channel that's like trying to trick you into being Mr. Beast and Mark Rober?

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

That looked a little weird, but I think people get used to it. And as long as they provide verification check marks in it.

[David]

Well, they also have people. They also have. Instead of just the image of your channel being in the corner, it's the two images.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

So, I mean, you. I guess you could make like a fake version of that, but YouTube theoretically has.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

You know, if it's from a. And then if. If it's from a big creator, they have the verification badges, obviously. Yeah. I think this makes a ton of sense, though. I think that people are going to want to see this content regardless of what channel it's on. And it also makes it easier to, you know, if. If there's a very large creator that's collabing with a smaller creator now, it's less. Like a lot of the times people used to do that because they would try to grow with that. They would be like, oh, if I can get Marquez on my channel and do a collab with him, then maybe I can kind of ride his.

[Andrew]

Maybe this podcast will pop off.

[David]

Yeah. If anyone. Hey, Joe Rogan. Just kidding. If anyone massive wants to collab with at Waveform podcast, here's something that could be pretty cool.

[Adam]

Interesting. Looking at it right now. The on Mr. Beast channel, it says Mr. Beast and three more includes four total people. Mark Rober's channel just says mark rober and Mr. Beast.

[David]

Oh.

[Adam]

It's also a different title and thumbnail.

[David]

And those are not different videos.

[Adam]

And they're. I believe they're the same video. It's very hard to tell because. Are they both 10 minutes and 53 seconds?

[David]

Well, I wonder if.

[Adam]

No, they're different videos.

[David]

I think it might be different videos. I think they're different videos.

[Adam]

Oh, so it's not like. Then I'm wrong before I said lived on both channels. This is not, not like Instagram, where on Instagram when you collab with someone, the same post is on both people's feeds.

[David]

Well, it might be if those are different videos. I mean, if you go to Mark.

[Adam]

Herbert, it would be the same video. So like on Instagram, if I make a post that's like a picture of us in waveform and I collaborate with you.

[David]

Right.

[Adam]

That same exact picture is just on both of our feeds now with both of us linked. This is there collaborating. But the videos are completely different. Where, like, if it's the Instagram way, the Mr. Beast video would be on Mark is what I'm saying.

[David]

I see. Yeah. I'm not seeing the Mr. Beast video on Mark Robert's page.

[Andrew]

Oh. So that I guess it is collapsed. Explains how the analytics will work then.

[Adam]

Yeah, that explains that part. Then you're not doing the same video, so you don't have to worry about different monetization. It's just this feels like the new way of tagging someone in a title.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

To make it more first party.

[David]

Got it.

[Adam]

Can I complain about something else? That should be more first party from YouTube.

[David]

Yes, but let me finish this real quick. Okay, so I. If you go to like the Mark Rober video that he made called can you safely drink your own pee? Okay. It says mark Rover and Mr. Beast, but then there's a huge section right above it that shows Mark Rober and describes what he's doing and then shows Mr.

[Adam]

Beast as an organizer, which would make sense why Mr. Beast is collabed with more people. And I'm assuming this is going to grow. Yeah, but Mark Robers only collabed with Mr. Beast because it's. This is pyramid scheming of.

[David]

I think this is. Overall, I think this is a very smart move. By YouTube. They've added a lot of features that have been popular on other platforms. We won't talk about stories, but. Yeah, what were you going to say that you think that they should add?

[Adam]

This is something that Adam and I have wanted to complain about for a long time. But why is still the best way on YouTube of putting chapters in content by just putting a part in the description where you write the word chapter and then write the timestamps out?

[David]

Yes.

[Adam]

In the description.

[David]

Yes.

[Adam]

First of all, it breaks for us literally every.

[David]

Every week.

[Andrew]

We hear you in the comments yelling at us.

[David]

We do it.

[Andrew]

I swear, it's at time of publish. The chapters work and I've taken to screenshotting it and posting it in Slack. Like as of 1058.

[David]

Yeah, chapters are working and then they.

[Adam]

Break and then at like 2 o', clock, I'll walk over to Adam and be like, I just saw 5 comments that said there's no chapters and what.

[David]

The hell, we do it. So yeah, please YouTube fix this.

[Andrew]

I keep like commenting if they're broken because we are on it and trying to fix it. It's very annoying.

[Adam]

It usually just winds up. Adam deletes the colon after chapters and then puts it back in and saves it and it works again. But like, how is there not a first party system of entering in chapters? There's first party systems for entering all the mid rolls at a literal exact time slots.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

50,000 times in a video if you.

[David]

Want what makes them money.

[Adam]

Yeah, but why can't I just. Descriptions are way cleaner. Like when I want to actually add.

[David]

They kind of hide descriptions more than they used to too. They. Yeah.

[Adam]

Yeah, they do. It's harder and it's. Yeah, I don't care about. I don't know.

[Andrew]

It's very.

[Adam]

So frustrating.

[Andrew]

Thank you for reminding me about that because I said last week I wanted to rant about it and completely forgot.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That's so annoying to all y' all.

[David]

That think we don't know what we're doing. We don't. But we do do that, right? I will say. I will say. Yeah. So I don't know, we'll see in the fall, I guess, when that officially rolls out. I think it's pretty smart for them to test it with like a bunch of big YouTubers because it kind of is doing a stress test on the system. It's pulling in like a ton of views from a ton of different areas. And yeah, seeing how people react in.

[Adam]

Terms of analytics, I would like to see if it now source gets That's a collaboration, is added as a source of traffic.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Adam]

So like when you come into a video, do it. Did Mark Robert get those views from clicking on Mark Robert's link in the Mr. Beast video? It also kind of sucks for everyone clubbing, assuming that it's going to be a 50 page long thing of like, this is Mr. Beast's whole team water. One of his big charity things where he's going to obviously invite a ton of people. So if that turns out 50, like number 49 or no extra views off.

[David]

Of, or like one of his like 100 youtubers compete for this kind of thing and then he tags every single one of them.

[Andrew]

Well, is that a collab at that point?

[David]

Yeah, I guess you get to decide whether or not you want to make it a collab. It would be crazy if there was like a hundred people though, and they might have a max too.

[Adam]

Mr. Beast is going to launch this and then figure out it hurts his analytics and then never use it again and be the only person with the ability to do it.

[David]

And then YouTube will eventually make it not hurt your analytics, just like they did with shorts. Yeah, it is a fickle. It's a fickle beast. Okay.

[Andrew]

Really interested to see where this goes.

[David]

Yeah. We got one more story before we're going to take our first break. OpenAI has released their first open weight models since GPT2.

[Adam]

Before you go on.

[David]

Yes.

[Adam]

Do a lot of explaining in here for those of, for the people out there who don't understand what this means.

[David]

All right, so a model, like a large language model, is a lot of data that has been trained to create effectively, like a neural network. So when you give it an input, it gives you an output. And that output is generated by a bunch of different neurons. Neurons, quote, unquote, kind of like firing at each other and deciding what the most probable output is going to be. It is probabilistic. It changes every time. It's kind of like they're trying to make a brain, obviously. Now usually when you use a model from, if you use ChatGPT or you use Gemini, these are all closed models. And that means that it's effectively a black box. You, number one, don't know what data it was trained on to make that model. And number two, you can't see the model weights. A model weight is effectively the people that are building the model can put more influence into certain aspects of the model to try to guide it towards certain behavior. And kind of a lot of the race in AI is to perfect these Model weights to get better outcomes. And so the reason that a lot of these models have become more closed is because these companies don't want to disclose to each other what they're like, how they're changing their model ways. So OpenAI has released a new open weight model. It's not the same as open source because if it was open source you could see the training data and OpenAI would be sued a hundred million times. That's definitely the reason that they're not making it open source. Right, because they're already being sued by everybody and now they would just give.

[Andrew]

It readily available on the Internet.

[Adam]

But David, I can just watch YouTube for free.

[David]

I'm training my brain right now. Anyway, it is, it is a pretty big deal because now you can run these models locally, which is pretty crazy. If you remember correctly, we did a deep seat episode and deep seq. Is this Chinese open. I think it's, I think it is open sourced, open sourced model that you can run locally on your computer. And it was very competitive with the top models at the top time and it was free to download and all these things and it freaked everybody out. And a lot of people in the AI community decided we probably actually need to release open models because if we don't, everyone's just going to be using these free models from like different vendors, like Chinese vendors. Right. To them it is better to get people to like. The entire reason that Meta has llama, which is their, their model and that is like, that is an open model. The entire reason that Mark Zuckerberg is like open source open models is the way forward and we want to give to the community is not because he wants to give away things for free. It's because he wants to be the foundation that everyone do like uses to do things on top of and then they can figure out how to monetize that later.

[Adam]

And they're literally the least trustworthy company on the planet. Pretty much.

[David]

Right? Exactly. So now it seems that OpenAI sort of wants to get in that game. There's also been a lot of discussion of like, well, if the US in general, those, the companies in the US don't start releasing open models everywhere, everyone's going to start using like Chinese, like open models instead.

[Andrew]

Open weight. Not open open weight.

[David]

Yeah, open weight models. Open weight models instead. But these models are available to use via the Apache 2.0 license, which means they can be modified pretty significantly for commercial purposes.

[Adam]

Okay.

[David]

Which is cool because it means that people can start making products that run locally on these local models and sell them and change the weights. Right. So it's kind of like a foundation that you can then work from and like build your own products from.

[Adam]

So if I wanted to make like a new browser in Alpha and Charge 20amonth for it, I could do it with that.

[David]

You could do it. You could. They're still a little bit heavy. Right. So like they released two new models. One of them is a 20 billion parameter model that is similar to the OpenAI 03 mini model. And you can actually run that on 16 gigabytes of VRAM which most people, well, many people have on their computers, which it can run on a laptop effectively. And then there's a much bigger 120 billion parameter model that is closer to 04 mini that needs a dedicated separate Nvidia GPU.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that one. You cannot run it on a laptop.

[David]

Correct. But even so, just owning like a 4080 or something and being able to run 04 mini, which is like a very substantial model locally on your computer is pretty cool.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[David]

Right. So yeah, it's, it's a big deal. I'm wondering what we're going to see happen from this. I think Google is probably going to have to get pressured into opening their own, like creating their own model. Microsoft is now hosting these models too on a bunch of their Azure servers and stuff like that. So yeah, it's, it's a big deal, especially because, you know, it's open AI and their whole thing from the beginning was that all of this is going to be out in the open and then they realized they could make money out of it.

[Adam]

Yeah, yeah.

[David]

Which is why Sam Altman has, was trying to make them not like, not a open foundation anymore or whatever. They were trying to monetize it more than they are.

[Andrew]

They backtracked on that.

[David]

They had to effectively. They're a company that can only make a certain amount of money and then they have to not.

[Adam]

Because they're not non profit is.

[David]

Yeah, they're.

[Adam]

They're a, they were originally founded as a Nonprofit organization in 2015.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

10 years later.

[David]

10 years later. Yeah.

[Adam]

Who knows what they are?

[David]

Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. I think we're going to start to see a lot of different applications that can run different things locally. You know, there's all of these companies that are relying on OpenAI making API calls to OpenAI, spending a lot of money to do so. Right now they're burning through a lot of venture capital. But imagine you could package something and release it as an apk. Or, you know, on a phone or as a program on your computer and you could just run it locally on your computer. Obviously these are still very heavy. You know, they're still. But they're realizing right now that scaling laws maybe aren't the answer necessarily. Where scaling laws are where you add more data and the model gets better, they're realizing that there are definitely ways to make models more efficient without scaling them up higher, which is what Deep SEQ did when, when that happens. So eventually I think that we are going to get to. We are going to get models that are small enough that they can like run on your computer. You don't have to download like a giant program and it's not going to take up all of your ram.

[Adam]

Like all tech forever has always been right. Yeah, there's really, really cool thing that takes so much power, the size of a room. How do we simultaneously make that better and continue to take that much power, but also make versions that are smaller and more accessible?

[David]

So, yeah, so it's an interesting space for OpenAI to be in because they still want people to pay them for the API calls, obviously. But if everyone starts using the free version of something, nobody's going to pay them anyway, so they have to get in the game in some way. But yeah, it would be cool if things could run locally on your device and not burn all the water on the planet.

[Adam]

I mean, it's still still screwing some stuff.

[David]

Yeah, it's still using, it's still using power, but at least it's using it locally on your device and instead of in a data set.

[Andrew]

It is cool that just there's now like multiple options. Like if you want, you could do the API call to OpenAI and build whatever you're going to build. But now if you need something a little more robust, just get one of these things.

[David]

Yeah. And this new model can do reasoning, write code and operate agents using the company's API. So people also have been speculating like, Apple's probably looking at this and going like, hmm, we can finally do something. Because it's commercially available, it still again uses a ton of ram. So maybe not yet, but maybe in a year or two when these models are much smaller, they could just use that for Apple Intelligence.

[Adam]

Yeah, Apple Intelligence. We have to just like really briefly mention the really funny pixel.

[David]

Sure.

[Adam]

Like, this is too good of a spot to like, but like, Google released this ad that was basically just like, it's like what Marques has always said. Don't buy a product based on future promises and Then they take a shot. It's like. Well, the phone you've been looking at is future promises over a year old at this point. Maybe just buy the phone. That doesn't do.

[David]

Yeah. All of the ads for the iPhone 16 were built for Apple intelligence. And then the only Apple intelligence feature they released for like Genmoji and visual intelligence. And. Yeah. Not. Not the best use.

[Adam]

Everyone's taking their shot at Apple.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Right now.

[David]

And yeah. And the pixel comes out in exactly 14 days. Is the announcement.

[Andrew]

Well, it's announced two weeks.

[David]

Yeah. Announcements.

[Andrew]

It's already out technically.

[David]

Yeah, that's true. I mean, Google themselves is showing it constantly. They show it in this advertisement. So. Yeah, very funny. Anyway, with that I think we're gonna hit it to trivia real quickly and then we'll take a break.

[Andrew]

So trivia marque out. As everyone knows, Ellis is also out because he's sick.

[David]

I'm still in the lead. Oh, yeah, we didn't mention that. Sorry, Ellis. Feel better.

[Andrew]

Yeah, Ellis is sick home. But he had a good idea. In these next two weeks that Marques is gone, we are going to do a head to head trivia exhibition match. Just you, David and you, Andrew. Mano a mano, one on one.

[David]

No, not necessarily.

[Adam]

I don't think I've ever been winning going into a trivia extravaganza.

[David]

I'm always winning and then I always lose.

[Andrew]

All right, so here we go.

[David]

Okay. Oh.

[Adam]

Oh, he made new music.

[David]

This time I actually hear Ellis.

[Andrew]

He still did it.

[David]

Yeah, I can hear his voice.

[Andrew]

Amazing work from. From Ellis. Okay, so this is going to be how well you guys know each other. Oh, that is the plot twist here.

[David]

I don't like that.

[Andrew]

So in the screen time app on both of your phones.

[David]

Oh, boy.

[Andrew]

What is the most used app on the other person's phone? By time? What is the top used app?

[David]

Down 29% from last week.

[Adam]

Nice.

[David]

Wow.

[Andrew]

So, yeah. So figure that out.

[David]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And then we'll be back after the break.

[David]

I somehow knew this. Oh, that's day. Sorry. Oh, no. Oh, no. Okay. All right, we'll be right back.

[Adam]

Support for this show comes from wix. For anyone who's tried to create a website before, it's a familiar feeling being so excited about the idea and the vision, only to give up halfway through because you couldn't get the site to look for how you wanted. Some platforms have very strict templates where you can't break the mold quite literally. Their options are limited and their UI is frustrating. Well, Wix.com can help. Wix.com gives you the freedom to build exactly the site you want for any business idea. WIX puts incredible website creation at your FingerTips with their AI site builder. You answer a few questions and get a personalized business ready site fast. The Wix.com interface is super easy and fun. It's all drag and drop. There's an amazing AI image studio and tons of amazing design effects. If you're looking to sell products and services, schedule appointments and more. Wix.com also has you covered with built in solutions. No add ons required. WIX has been pioneering in website tech for almost 20 years now. They understand web design and what it takes to run your own business. So if you're ready to create your own website, go to wix.com that's wix.com start building your website today. Thanks to Wix for sponsoring our show.

[Andrew]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info and if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. Lifelock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[David]

Ford BlueCruise.

[Adam]

Hands Free highway driving takes the work.

[David]

Out of being behind the wheel, allowing you to relax and reconnect while also staying in control. Enjoy the drive in blue cruise enabled vehicles like the F150 Explorer and Mustang Mach E available feature on equipped vehicles. Terms apply. Does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com BlueCruise for more details. All right everybody, welcome back to the Nintendo Switch 2 podcast. Except this time it's not about the Nintendo Switch 2. It is not about the Nintendo Switch 2 though, which kind of makes it about the Nintendo Switch 2. I'm your host. Okay, so some news. Nintendo has raised the prices on the original Switch and the OLED Switch and the Switch Lite but not the Switch 2. But not the Switch 2.

[Andrew]

Okay, interesting.

[David]

So yeah, this is some interesting news. The OG Switch now costs $340 up from $300.

[Adam]

Yeah, that's like a kind of solid bump.

[David]

This call is like 8 years old by the way. The Switch lite is now 230 up from $200 and the OLED is now $400 from 3:50. The $400 OLED to the Switch 2's 4:50 price tag does not make the Switch to look that expensive anymore, which is very interesting. Nintendo said that they did this because of market conditions, which means tariffs. It happened to a single day after the Trump Administration announced a 20% tariff on Vietnam, which is where Nintendo does most of its manufacturing. So obviously there's a reason why they would have done this. Now, interestingly, the Switch 2 is also very largely manufactured in Vietnam. However, I think that Nintendo is trying to avoid getting people very angry about them rising the cost of Switch to number one. Number two, it has already sold 6 million units. Switch 2 is a very, very, very quickly growing console. They are selling a lot of these things and I think that they are a little bit worried that if they jack up the price now, especially because it's on a percentage basis, they're gonna lose a lot of potential customers.

[Adam]

So I'm interested. I've already seen like, I've already been to a Target and seen Switch two is just sitting there. They're definitely in stock. Yeah, like, pretty easy. I'm assuming they're pretty easy to get. I don't remember that happening with the Switch for months. And I mean, it took me days to find one.

[David]

Right.

[Adam]

I bought my orig this. Adam and I were talking about this like last week on trying to figure out why it makes sense. And my guess, and this is from someone who doesn't know anything about retail or that is like, are they gonna bump this up? Which just means the cost of a retail store purchasing these to keep them on shelves will go up. Still, like, not exactly the same. Obviously the retail store is making some sort of a margin there, but. And is this kind of attempting to cover the tariffs of Switch 2 by release, releasing stock that's out there already that's like this goes up, it'll probably be paid by stores to sit on a shelf and maybe not even really get bought. And yeah, some sort of like, recoup here from what they're about to lose for the 20.

[David]

Well, yeah. Andrew Webster at the Verge did some analysis on this and his opinion effectively was that it is much less risky to raise the price of hardware that is not sold as much. And the reason is because, I mean, yes, yeah, people that buy like less of the stuff, yes, it won't, it won't make as much money, but it's not going to scare people as much as it. As it does to. To raise the price of something that is very popular.

[Adam]

Well, and this sucks the most for the people who might be interested in that. But if, if the Switch 2 is out and you really want the Switch OLED. Yeah. You're probably not. You're upset it costs more, but you're probably still going to buy it because there is a very specific reason you want that piece of hardware.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

And you are going to spend the money for doing it.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

It's. It's obviously less risky because it's the thing that's not.

[Andrew]

I feel like this also helps because people are going to be no longer looking at the Switch 2 as, wow, that's so expensive compared to the other Switch. Like, I could just get a Switch OLED for a hundred dollars cheaper. Like, now the difference is only 50 bucks. It's like, I might as well get the Switch 2.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

If I'm already spending $400.

[Adam]

I'm trying to think of, like, in this scenario, how many people go into that, like, ladder, because, like, if you're at a Walmart, are there still old switches in stock there? Yeah. And then you see it next to each other. Are you looking at the Switch 2 because of a specific game which isn't even available on the old switches? So you don't even have to make that jump. You already have to pay the 450 because you want to play Donkey Kong or Mario Kart World.

[Andrew]

Also. They could just be waiting for the tariffs to change again. They're like, we already have all of our stock for the Switch 2 in the States, hopefully, so we don't have to import a crazy amount.

[David]

I think that's probably why they flooded the market.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[David]

You know, like, the original Switch, it was hard to find them for a very long time. With the Switch 2, it's kind of been like, every single week there's a restock. And like you said, now you're at the point you can just walk into a lot of stores and buy them.

[Adam]

We still saw, like, huge shipments of phones coming in to beat tariffs. So I think on top of not doing a Switch one and beating tariffs, there's probably so many Switch twos.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Already in stock. Are they just raising these? Because they. I'd love to see how many OLEDs and lights they're still selling.

[David]

I got. This is what I was just about to say. I'm on ebay right now looking at sold listings of Nintendo Switch 1. You can buy them between $80 and, like, $120. Used. Used OLED, used with everything is $160. Like, you should not be paying full retail price for any of these things anymore. So I'm really wondering how much of this cost Nintendo is actually recouping, in a way, it is just making the Switch 2 seem like a better deal.

[Andrew]

That's what I think it is.

[David]

So at the same time, it's like, yes, they're doing it because of tariffs, but also they're probably going to sell more Switch Twos if everything else is.

[Andrew]

More expensive, you know, because now it's just going to force people up the ladder to just. I might as well get a Switch to. Or even if they don't, then they're minimizing their loss because they just raised the prices on all the cheaper models.

[David]

Right? Yeah. Which, you know, in 2025, you look at inflation, it's like things can't really be that cheap anymore. Obviously, their parts are so old that they probably are making a huge profit if they're selling any of them. But, yeah, it is. It is very surprising.

[Andrew]

$80 for a used Switch is kind of good, though.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I mean, it's not bad.

[David]

I mean, yeah, it's great. But, I mean, you know, if you have an original Nintendo Switch, it's. It's been a long time.

[Adam]

There is one very specific one, though, that I do think goes for a lot because it's the easiest to mod or something about it. There's like, this very specific.

[David]

If you didn't update it, it was. If you didn't update it to a certain patch, yeah, it was easy to mod. Also, they have raised the price of the Switch 1 Joy Cons by $10, which is something that people might buy new, obviously, because of stick drift, which is effectively where it does not monitor the direction of your stick correctly after a certain amount of time.

[Adam]

A funny story Adam and I experienced the other day.

[David]

Sure.

[Adam]

We're playing Rumble mode, right. Knockout. Knockout. Sorry, I think we've said this already. That mode is so much fun.

[David]

Knockout Tour.

[Adam]

Knockout Tour, yeah. Is like. It's. I don't want to say it's worth buying world for that, but if you love Mario Kart, I think Knockout is super fun.

[Andrew]

It's the one to play with a bunch of friends.

[David]

Knockout Tour is basically like you. You go through six stages in a row without stopping.

[Adam]

Without stopping. And it's like, there's checkpoints and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like. It's almost like Fortnite, where checkpoints people get eliminated and you have to be. And it goes from, like, 26 or 25 down to, like, four, and then you win. Yeah. But Adam, Alex, and I are playing on the screen over here, and Alex is just like, oh, my God, I Got stick drift already. And he's like, freaking out the whole thing. Joycon, this brand new Joy Con.

[David]

But he had tilt controls.

[Adam]

He had tilt controls on it. Didn't realize the best is he was so into it. I was like, oh, no. I. Mine's messed up too. I think I have tilt controls on. You probably just have it on. He's like, no, no, no. And he's like, focusing and just playing. And then the next time he switches control, he's like, what the. I was like, dude, you definitely just have tilt controls on. And. Yeah.

[David]

Yeah. I haven't figured out how to turn tilt controls off if you press start.

[Adam]

And I. It used to be, like the left button, but now I think it's why there'll be settings and you can turn. It's like auto steering.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Tilt control.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

And auto accelerator.

[David]

Baby mode say that too. Yeah. It's the bumpers on Bowling. Okay. And they also raised the price of the Alarmo Alarm clock.

[Adam]

No, see, that's what they should raise the price on, though. Like. Yeah, that's. People are still buying that. Oh, wait.

[Andrew]

I kind of want.

[Adam]

Sorry. Switch one. Joy cons went up $10, which people.

[David]

Do need to replace.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

That's because you have a switch 1. Everyone's joy cons eventually get stick drift.

[Adam]

I bet they're. Yeah. I bet they're making more money off.

[David]

They're probably making a lot on.

[Andrew]

The Joycons were already so expensive.

[David]

Yeah. And you need to buy those new effectively. So, yeah.

[Andrew]

Even if you didn't go and get the Switch two, you're like, ah, my switch is fine. I'm still just going to play these games randomly. Like, you will need Joy Cons eventually.

[David]

New Joy Cons. So, yeah. Again, 450 is not seeming like that big of a deal now that The OLED is $400. You know, 50 more dollars for the brand new one is. Yeah. The OLED screen still looks a little bit better, in my opinion, but a lot better. A lot better.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Adam]

I would just love to see the numbers of how many switch switches. Switch OLEDs and switch lights are still sold.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

In the US on like a quarterly basis.

[David]

That data will probably come out.

[Andrew]

I mean, the switch.

[David]

There probably is some data right now.

[Andrew]

I'm sure there's a lot of switch lights being sold.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

One because of the cheapest. Two because it's the smallest.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And they have a bunch of colors. Like, if it's like a Christmas gift.

[Adam]

For, like, little kids, this is. This is just attacking all the parents and grandparents who don't know anything about consoles. And when they're new Switch, they just buy the thing. The old version accidentally, or they just. 20%.

[David]

I mean, a lot of people probably don't buy anything used. You know, there's probably a lot of people who just walk into the store and buy the thing and that's how they purchase everything.

[Andrew]

So that's what they're counting on.

[David]

Yep. All right, moving on. We got Fediverse Corner to talk about. Let's go. I need. I need Ellis to make custom Fediverse Corner music. Ghost has released Ghost 6.0. If you do not know what Ghost is, Ghost is a newsletter publishing platform and sort of also a website builder. You can kind of think it as a combination between Substack and Squarespace, which is pretty cool. It's. It feels weird saying Squarespace on a piece of content because I've literally never done a Squarespace ad, but, like, the entire. The entirety of YouTube is, like, powered. It's, like, run by Squarespace ads. Anyway, I'm not. I'm not doing an ad for Squarespace.

[Adam]

No, you're not.

[David]

But I am doing an ad for Ghost, but they didn't pay me anyway, so. If you watched our Fediverse Explained episode that we did last year, it was called Blue sky versus Threads.

[Andrew]

Was that last year?

[David]

Yeah, it was last year or two years ago, actually. It might have been two years ago.

[Andrew]

That makes more sense.

[David]

It could have been two years ago. We broke down the protocols of the open social web in that. And we also interviewed Ghost CEO John Nolan, because. John o'. Nolan. Sorry. Because he was very adamant about eventually integrating Ghost into the Fediverse. And the way that this would work effectively is that your website itself. So I have davidml.com right? Davidml.com now is an entity in the Fediverse. So on Threads or on Blue sky or on Mastodon, you can follow davidml.com and then whenever I make a blog post on davidml.com because Ghost is a newsletter publishing platform, you can just see the blog post there. You can like it, you can interact with it, you can comment on it. Those comments will show up on my website. So it's just kind of a way to own and distribute all of your content across the social web, which is very cool. I am trying to figure out how they integrated it with Blue sky, because Blue sky is on the AT protocol, which is different.

[Andrew]

Didn't they use the Bridgie Fed thing?

[David]

I don't think they did. Anyway, the update also includes A native analytics suite. I think the reason that they're doing this is because there has been a really big resurgence in Substack over the last year or so, which has been very interesting to see because back in 2020, Substack blew up because a bunch of journalists started leaving different publications and starting their own newsletters and making a lot of money. Substack was offering people effectively like entire salaries to write on there exclusively. But yeah, I think there's been this big resurgence of a bunch of regular people have been writing on substack recently. And I think that that is a reaction to just the quickness and randomness and algorithm focus of social media. A lot of people want to do more long form thoughts instead of just dumb takes that are incentivized by the algorithm to be controversial.

[Andrew]

Blogs are back, baby.

[David]

Blogs are back, baby.

[Adam]

It's funny because everyone you're describing here as like old reporter who made a substack to do non clickbaity headlines makes me think of one of my friends who's the first substack mentioned in this article talking about Ghost.

[David]

Really? That's cool.

[Adam]

Tangle News.

[David]

Oh, that's your friend Marquez and I.

[Adam]

Played ultimate with him.

[David]

Wow, that's super cool. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Also Ryan Barrett, the guy who does Bridgy Fed. Bridgie Fed is part of a new social which is the group that's like doing this whole thing. So I think back to my point, I think they are using some sort of bridge. Are they? Okay, that would be my guess.

[David]

I email John o' Nolan this morning, but he does not live on this coast. I don't think he's on the. Anyway, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna say where he lives, but why don't you want to document? As far as I understand he lives in a different time zone. So I'm not surprised that he hasn't gotten back to me as of time of publishing. I would like to find out how they're doing that on Blue sky, but either way it's very cool. It's a very. Also, Ghost is open source, so you can host it yourself. If Ghost the company, the business goes out of business, you can still run your website, you can still host it. It's not like all these other platforms where they get to make all the decisions and if they decide that they want to charge you a million dollars, you're just out of luck. You can do everything yourself, which is pretty freaking awesome. So Adam, you updated Cool supply your newsletter to be on Ghost 6.0.

[Adam]

Right.

[Andrew]

And it was really easy. Like, I logged in and then a little banner popped up and was like, hey, go 6.0 is ready. Do you want to update? And I was like, oh, sure, yeah. So I hit update and it was like, go grab a coffee. This may take a couple minutes.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it literally took, like, 30 seconds and everything was updated. But I don't have a lot on there. But still it, like, completely updated. Super, super chill.

[David]

Very fun little Fediverse corner update, because this is what John has been waiting for for a very long time. Yeah. All right.

[Andrew]

It is cool. It's like having your own little comment section.

[David]

Yeah, no, it's amazing.

[Andrew]

Everything.

[David]

And I think newsletter should. Should come back. Yeah, I've just been, like. I've been nervous to do, you know, like, a weekly newsletter because I don't want to be so reactive to everything all the time because I think people need to digest information more and not have a hot take about literally everything.

[Adam]

This podcast would crumble if we weren't allowed to do that. Yeah, we actually usually have a couple days.

[David]

Yeah, we have a couple days to think about it and think if it's a horrible.

[Andrew]

Think about what we've done.

[David]

Think about our horrible opinions. All right, last story before we take it to break again. Take it to the break Ticket to the bridge. Take it to the bridge account. Bridged Fediverse.

[Andrew]

We tried.

[David]

Instagram now says that you need a thousand followers to go live. So if you know what going live is on Instagram, it's a live stream.

[Andrew]

This makes no sense to me.

[David]

Yeah, I don't understand.

[Andrew]

Like, if I really wanted to go live on Instagram and do something nefarious, Right, what's to stop me from just botting a thousand followers to whatever account I wanted to go live from?

[Adam]

And. Yeah, I mean, yes, and also if, like, yeah, just bought it. But if you're a scam account that doesn't have a thousand followers, you're not scamming anyone, because no one's watching this, the live stream. There's no. As far as I know, there's no live discoverability in Instagram. It's only page reels, like posts and reels Discoverability. You only ever see live if you're following the person. So, yeah, this actually just kind of seems really crappy to people with not a lot of followers that might still go live to. Like, I don't. There's.

[David]

By the way, a thousand followers is a lot of followers.

[Adam]

A lot of followers.

[David]

Like, that's a lot of people. And it I know that, like, you know, huge accounts that have millions of followers are like, that's not a lot. But regular people do not have a thousand followers. Yeah, most people do not. And it's kind of lame that, you know, I. I have some friends in like, the film photography community that are occasionally just want to like, go live and talk about some photos that they took just. Just to their friends.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

And this, this makes it feel like Instagram is moving further and further away from being a platform where you share things with your friends and more and more like, oh, we're only going to give features to people who have a large audience that can make us a lot of money.

[Adam]

Well, if Instagram heard that, they'd say, thank you very much. That's exactly what we're going for. But do you know what? This, like, Nerfs. That's really funny. People who bought like, meta Ray Bans or Oakley Ray Bans because. Or, sorry, meta Oakley. Because one of the cool things they said about that is like, you can stream on Instagram live from your glasses.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Which I think is actually a really cool feature. But now you need a thousand followers to do it. So they just nerf their own product with this. That's potentially.

[David]

Thousand. That is crazy.

[Andrew]

I did not think of that because.

[Adam]

I've thought a couple of times about grabbing one of the pairs and like, playing around of Disc Golf Live. I'm lucky enough that I work for a thing that has me over a thousand followers, but, like, yeah, I know plenty of people that I would be like, oh, my buddy's playing around live on his meta Ray Bans right now. I'd love to watch that. Yeah, they might not be able to.

[David]

That is so lame. I don't know. Some people were speculating as to why they might have made this change. Some people thought maybe they want to send save on server costs. Like, if there's like less people doing live, they don't have to host it anymore.

[Andrew]

The first thing that I thought of was this is them kind of trying to cover their bases for like, random, like terrorists. Exactly. Like, if you. Because every time a bad thing happens live randomly, it is live streamed and it's everywhere immediately. So, like this kind of of stops that to a certain extent. Like, if you need to be a real person, quote unquote.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Like actively engaging in the community of Instagram, get a thousand followers and then go live.

[David]

Yeah. So you have like, more to lose if you do something.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Which I get. But it also completely screws over everyone trying to Build their audience.

[Adam]

And yeah, bigger my argument with that and which goes to what David said is not everyone's on Instagram to build an audience.

[David]

Yeah, exactly.

[Adam]

I just have. Some people just have friends. Like, like, I think all the time how kind of bummed I am that I didn't like separate my Instagram and have two of them. One that's more of the like MKBHD verse focused and one that's more of just my friends. I originally split it off into Mac and then had to remake my own second one that then. But like, yeah, a lot of people just want Instagram to keep up with their friends. The only reason Facebook's still alive, there's like two Facebook groups and a few family members on there. Marketplace is the reason I have it. And Marketplace. But yeah, that's so funny. There's going to be so many people with Ray Bans that are probably live stream like random things to their friends. I just lost a feature.

[David]

I could see a class action lawsuit around that, to be honest. If it's. If it's a major feature that they advertise.

[Adam]

They did remember the thing they brought in Charles LeClaire to go on like a go kart drive with the meta Ray Bans to. And then like he was reading the chat on his phone. Well, I feel like he obviously has a thousand followers.

[Andrew]

The feature is still there, though. It's not like they're taking it away. So you bought these glasses for that feature?

[David]

You have to have a thousand.

[Andrew]

Yeah, like they added a barrier, but, like, I don't know if you can like, take a class action.

[David]

I feel like you can sue.

[Adam]

I would argue that's a barrier for a lot of people. That is one that won't ever be broken because their profiles are private and they don't want a thousand followers.

[David]

Yeah, Actually, I know a lot of people with private.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's true.

[David]

Yeah. So dumb, dumb change.

[Adam]

That was so much dumber than I expected it to be.

[David]

Like, once we talk about it, we realize it's really stupid. Anyway, that's gonna be it for this segment, so we will take it to another trivia question.

[Adam]

But next, talking about really cool things. We like Super Head to Head Trivia.

[Andrew]

Super Head to Head Trivia.

[Adam]

Thank you, Ellis.

[Andrew]

All right, the next question of how well do you guys know each other? What are the apps in the other person's phone? Doc.

[Adam]

Oh, yeah.

[David]

Oh. Oh, all right. That's interesting.

[Adam]

Gonna be tricky.

[Andrew]

It is.

[David]

All right, well, we'll get that to that at the end of the show. But in the next segment, we are going to do a little show and tell with some stuff that we've been using recently. Interested in recently?

[Andrew]

I have two.

[David]

It's gonna be fun.

[Adam]

Nice things we want to show and tell about.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, show and I'm gonna tell.

[Andrew]

Share with the class.

[David]

I'm gonna tell everybody. I'm telling you. Do it.

[Adam]

Don't tell me. Be right back. That's a Marquez. He's in China.

[David]

Oh, I can tell him.

[Adam]

Marquez. Race the rudders.

[Andrew]

Raise the sails.

[David]

Race the sails.

[Andrew]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.

[David]

Over. Wait, is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started [e-mail] campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

[Andrew]

Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. And I'm CeeDee Lamb, wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. You know, I'm here for Abercrombie's Cowboys gear. That's not a question, but I need a whole wardrobe to go with it. No shade to the guys, but I'm used to having the best tunnel fits. This season, Abercrombie has me covered. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store.

[David]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send.

[Adam]

Event invites and pin messages so no.

[David]

One forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail] all right, welcome back to another episode of the Waveform podcast. We're your hosts. Yeah, that's going to get old pretty quick. Okay, we're in the third segment of the this episode now, and this is our.

[Andrew]

So meta.

[David]

I'm trying. I'm. I'm sorry. This is our. This is our little show and tell segment that we're doing this week. So we just figured we wanted. Yep. We very rarely get to talk about products that we're, like, individually using because this is mostly a news show. And I kind of wanted to talk about a new tripod that I've been using a lot recently.

[Andrew]

What tripod?

[Adam]

You this morning were like, I really want to talk about this. Can we do show and tell. And I was like, like, wait. I actually do have something that I just got that I want to talk about.

[David]

That's awesome. That's very cool.

[Adam]

Let's do it. Let's start. Tripod.

[David]

Okay. So if you are a photographer or in the photography community, you've probably heard of peak design. They are very high quality, quite expensive brand that creates what they would call peak design.

[Andrew]

Oh, my God. Realize that it's like, I think it's.

[David]

Like a double entendre. Like peak, like mountain.

[Andrew]

But yeah, that's always how I took it best.

[David]

I don't know. Anyway, I have had their original travel tripod for a really, really, really long time. Basically since it came out, I believe it was like 2018, 2017, 2018. It was a while ago, something like that. I have the carbon fiber one, which is too expensive. It is 600. It's really expensive, but it's basically the best super lightweight tripod that I've used. I keep it. I do a lot of hiking, so I like keep it in my backpack. And it's very easy to just slap my cameras on.

[Adam]

And it just like tucks into pretty much like your water bottle holder on the side. Pretty easy. Because who needs water on hikes when you can have a 600 tripod instead? Yeah, but like, it's one of those things that can simultaneously be too expensive and also just like really, really high quality. The best thing ever. Exactly. That's the scenario you have it in.

[David]

Yeah. And they do have an aluminum version of this, which is not that much heavier and it's much cheaper. So, you know, that's still also a good option. Anyway, this has been around for a very long time. It does have some quirks and features, and that is why they eventually made this new one called the. It's the Peak Design Pro line of tripods. So this is the small one. For some reason, Peak Design made three of the new. Of the new pro tripods.

[Andrew]

Do you know what the differences are between them?

[David]

Yeah, so they. It's mostly that they hold different amounts of weight and also can get taller and shorter and stuff like that. This is the small one. So this will be compared to the original tripod right here, if you want to do that.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

I don't know if this is like.

[Adam]

Significantly bigger than I thought it was going to be.

[David]

Yeah, it is quite a bit bigger. So for me, the one problem that I have always had with the original. Well, not one problem. Maybe the biggest problem I have, I've had with the original travel tripod is that I shoot 4 by 5 film. Pretty often 4x5 film is like one of those large view cameras that you would see in like the 1940s. And when I would use this, it would have some shake because those cameras are very big. They are not really. These tripods are not really made for like big payloads. So I think part of the reason that Peak Design got into this market segment was that they wanted to probably tackle people that are using like way heavier duty, harder core cameras. Uh, and then there are just some engineering things with the original tripod that they made better. So for example, it has this quick lock mechanism that allows you to just like displace the. They have a little mount that is kind of like standard to them. And it looks like this, the tripod.

[Adam]

Mount that goes on the camera like the original one's square. It's very small. But yeah, I. I liked what it was. My.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

My biggest complaint about it.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Was the little area that they hold the Allen wrench for it.

[David]

Yes, the Allen wrench always. I have.

[Adam]

Yours is missing. I noticed that. Yeah.

[David]

And you do need an Allen wrench in order to put this on your camera. So what I've ended up doing, I'm not going to show my keys on camera because people always yell at me about that, But I've put an Allen wrench on my keychain. So I constantly have an Allen wrench with me. Anyway, some of the problems that the original tripod had is that if you raise the head here, and I'm sorry if this is really boring to non camera people, but if you raise the head here and you want to like put it at an angle, you can only. Wait, what was it?

[Adam]

So it's on a. It's a ball head.

[David]

Yeah, it's a ball. Wait.

[Adam]

And there's like these three different dividers essentially that fall down into the tripod when it's tucked all the way in.

[David]

Right.

[Adam]

And sometimes that makes turning it sideways difficult because it kind of gets in the way.

[David]

Yeah, it can kind of get in.

[Adam]

The way, assuming that's what you're talking about.

[David]

So this new one is more of a standard ball head where you can just pivot and twist in like many different directions. So that's very handy. You can just can go360 instead of having to, you know, jam in there. That's very useful. Uh, the big thing about the, the 4 by 5 cameras though is that this. Because the 4x5 is so big and it's not super heavy, but it does Have a lot of surface area. It would shake a lot when it was windy on like a mountain. And that was very frustrating because there is no optical Image Stabilization on 4 by 5 film obviously. So even the most like micro shake would. Would mess up the image. These are much more stable. Even the small one is like super stable. They also re engineered the center column to add a bunch of different features. They changed the clips a little bit. Overall it's kind of just like a much more sturdy system. Also when you're clipping in the camera, it now has the spring loaded mechanism.

[Adam]

This. I was just messing with this. Yeah. The spring loaded mechanism for the. The tripod mount on a camera attaching feels super nice.

[David]

It feels really good. So yeah, effectively you. You like unlock it by pulling this and it. It pulls up this little tab that when you put the plate in, it snaps it closed.

[Adam]

They've been into the mic's talking to your mic a little bit. I'm sorry, he's getting.

[David]

Locks it in. Yeah, I'm sorry, I tripods and it like locks it in and then they have an extra lock right here. So I don't know. Everything about these tripods is definitely about like stability and being able to shoot things without any shake and stuff like that. They made the clips a little bit easier to use because un unclipping and clipping a tripod always takes forever. Yeah. So I've been really enjoying this. I don't love how big it is. Like you cannot really beat this original tripod size because this can fit in like basically any water bottle pocket of any backpack that I have. Whereas the, the new pro ones definitely are bulkier. Even the small one for some reason they made it in a small, medium and large form. The large makes a lot of sense because it's for like giant payload. Like they're trying to get into the cinema kind of landscape. They. They sell a fluid head adapter that makes it so you can use it as a fluid head tripod. But I don't really understand why they made the medium one. Because the small and the medium are almost exactly the same size and they go up in size in prices. Prices of a hundred dollars. So they call it Pro Light Pro and Pro Tall. So I'm not really. I don't really know. But overall like this has made my photography a lot more reliable. I guess specifically with my 4x5 camera.

[Adam]

I can see like, I understand it being larger and the main problem you have with it is shake and stability. So like making it larger is probably the Only way to really fix that. And if you're. I would argue if you're carrying something like your 4x5 camera, you probably aren't trying to be in like this level of light payload where like this could be. I took this tripod with me and just like a Sony A7R.

[David]

Right.

[Adam]

With other hiking stuff. So like to me it was just part of the pack and then like totally back bad. But seeing this, I think it's really cool. They obviously, I mean, peaks quality is always. Yeah, absolutely at the top of its game. This looks like they solved a bunch of the issues. But seeing it and seeing inside just makes me still like the original one rather just great. It's. It's so pocketable, so small. It's so like when you are somebody and I see this now all the time watching like disc golf YouTube of people like, like lugging tripods around all over a disc golf course. Like you want a really small one, but the problem is all the really small ones are really flimsy.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

This is. They nailed their target demographic, this one, despite its price. I think getting into the bigger game, the. When you talk about the larger one and huge payloads and cinema stuff is like we have really good cinema tripods. Yeah. Already it feel. That feels like a crowded space.

[David]

For sure.

[Adam]

I'm sure peak design can get into.

[David]

It, but I think it's probably for people that like everything that they own is in the peak design ecosystem. They have built out quite in like an ecosystem that uses all of their things and they interlock with each other and they've got all these features. But yeah, I think for like most people, the original one, even the aluminum one is like more than great. This is really going to be. If you have specific use cases like me with the 4x5.

[Adam]

Yeah. This, the. The travel tripod feels like I'm packing it with other things. The pro tripods feel like my pack is all cameras.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

That's all. That's all.

[David]

That has been me for a while now.

[Adam]

Well, yeah, but that's because you sacrifice the rest of survival things for your cameras.

[David]

I'm having lower back problems, so. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. For my book, it's been great.

[Adam]

No, these. I mean, this is sick.

[David]

Yeah. And it can get a little bit tighter down too because of that redesigned center column.

[Adam]

Yeah. The center column seems way larger, which is the best part about it.

[David]

Also when the original one was all the way down like this, it couldn't tilt at all. So the only way to bring it Up. You had to loosen it, bring it up to here, tighten it, and then it could. And then it could rotate. But that means it can't go quite as low, whereas this one can. It can tilt even a little bit. Even when it's all the way.

[Adam]

It's on its lowest stage.

[David]

Yeah. Yeah. Which is pretty cool.

[Adam]

Do you know what I appreciate? Even though this is the pro version, it still the little hidden cell phone holder.

[David]

So this has always been a really cool feature. In the bottom, there is a hook. Generally on tripods, that hook is for stability. So you put like a backpack on the hook, and that basically just adds a bunch of weight to the tripod so that it shakes less. And I still do that. The hook on the bigger one is obviously bigger, but inside of that column, they have a secret little cell phone holder that you can put on the tripod. So if you want to do like Astro mode on your Pixel or something, you can now use the tripod with your Pixel instead of having to buy a brand new tripod just for phones.

[Andrew]

That's cool.

[David]

So I think that that's really cool. Also, obviously we talked about the. You need an Allen key, which is very kind of frustrating because you can lose it pretty easily. And they have a clip on the. On the tripod itself to store the Allen key. In the new ones, the bags now have a slot for the Allen key. So I think that they want you.

[Adam]

To keep it in the bag.

[David]

In the bag more. The previous bag had like two microns of extra room.

[Adam]

It's like putting a sleeping bag back in. Like a sleeping bag or like so.

[David]

Hard to get it in and out. So the new one has a slot in there and they gave it a little more slack. So I don't know. I just wanted to bring that up because I've been doing a lot of mountain climbing recently, and I've been using this a lot, so.

[Adam]

And yeah.

[Andrew]

Nice, nice.

[David]

They're selling Kickstarter right now, though.

[Adam]

So what's the final price? Did you say it?

[David]

Yeah, they're really expensive. They're like, really expensive. Uh, so the Pro Light is going to be $800. The pro. The pro. Is going to be $900. And then the Pro Tall they call it, because I think it just gets taller is going to be a thousand dollars. So, yeah, really expensive. They. They're also selling a lot of new accessories with these. They have a new leveling base for. And they have spiked feet for $49.

[Adam]

Oh, it does have the level on it.

[David]

Yeah, it has a Level?

[Adam]

Oh, yeah, both of them have level.

[David]

Okay. But a leveling base is like that weird, like, cage thing that you can use with cameras. It's like. It's kind of an old school, like, hardcore photographer feature. Yeah. Then they have spiked feet. So I guess if you're, you know, in the mountains and you want to, like, really, really, really rig it down, if you're doing. I guess if you were doing like a really, really long exposure and you just wanted it to not, you know, overnight kind of long exposure.

[Adam]

I mean, they coded all this with Jimmy Chin, so they're gonna.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Do it in a scenario where it's. Yeah, it's lasting out there for sure.

[David]

Yeah. Anyway, just want to bring that up real quick.

[Adam]

All right.

[David]

What did you have?

[Adam]

I brought something that is significantly cheaper.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Cheapness is actually part of the reason why I find it interesting and probably.

[David]

More useful to more people, I would guess.

[Adam]

Maybe. So my thing is, is like, you wanted to take. To possibly label this section, like our favorite things. But I don't want to call this.

[David]

A favorite because I was mostly kidding.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

This is.

[David]

Oh, you got one of these that.

[Adam]

I saw on the verge.

[David]

You got one of these.

[Adam]

So I think I first saw it on the verge. It is called the Cenda Ergonomic Mouse Rechargeable USB Dual Bluetooth MOU302 Vertical Wireless Mouth with volume knobs. There's actually more to that, but I don't feel like saying all of it. Essentially, it's a vertical, ergonomic, like, wireless mouse that comes in some wild colors. I bought arguably the coolest color, which is like purple, yellow, and like a vintagey green. Like this feels very like it's like a turquoise. Like Rocco's Modern Life. Or like a Sea vibes. Yeah. And what. So I saw it because of the color and because of the integrated volume knob. So essentially the mouse, because it's vertical and ergonomic, it's, you know, the. The buttons are almost sideways, and you hold it like you're holding a glass of water, essentially where you're kind of pinching it in between your hand. And then on the top. Now it's got extra space. There's still a front and back button on the sides of it where your thumb rests, but above it, there's a little knob that clicks in and can turn. That's what intrigued me by, is the colors in that knob.

[David]

Then what's shaking in his boots? He hates knobs. Yeah.

[Adam]

What really intrigued me, though, is when I clicked on the link for was on sale for 1959. That's with the. The list price at 27.99.

[David]

That's crazy part.

[Adam]

I don't know how they're making money off of this. I'm by no means saying the build quality on this is great. I wouldn't even say it's very good.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I would say it feels like it's 20 bucks.

[Adam]

It feels like it's 20 bucks. But when you look at a Logitech, I think they have the Logitech lift and the logitech vertical are two of those. And they're like 80 and like over a hundred dollars.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

For them. And they're great mice. And like people like rich here love them. I don't love vertical ergonomic mice, but I'm.

[David]

Apparently it's way better to get rid of your carpal tunnel.

[Adam]

We'll see. If it stresses me out more than my carpal tunnel, then I. But I think there's some design flaws in this. I. I think the reason I want to be really cautious about talking about this is cuz I've used it for less than a week.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

And I don't know the durability of it.

[David]

Sure.

[Adam]

But for $20, I had to try and I'm gonna keep trying it. The colors are sick. It's usbc, which took Logitech years to finally switch to. Yeah, it does. It can do two Bluetooth connections and the USB dongle, which I'm always a dongle person. I think it's easier just like a little, you know, usba.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

The things I have not liked about it is I don't believe there's any software. So I cannot change what the volume knob. I can't change what the volume knob dubs. Which really sucks for me because I'm using an audio interface, which means my volume keys don't do anything when I'm plugged into my desktop.

[David]

Okay.

[Adam]

So the volume knob does nothing for me.

[David]

Also, how do you deal with sensitivity?

[Adam]

There's. There are three DPI modes and then you also can just change sensitivity inside of Mac OS or whatever.

[Andrew]

How's the latency when you're playing old school? Runescape.

[David]

I was gonna say you should play Valorant with.

[Adam]

I'm definitely not putting. I mean I should try Valerin with it. That would be hilarious. How bad it would be.

[David]

I kind of like the way it feels. I'd say that the. The sliders on the bottom are horrible. Like it feels like it's kind of like there's a lot of Felt fine.

[Adam]

On my mouse pad.

[David]

Yeah. Maybe the mouse pad would be better than this.

[Adam]

My biggest gripe with it, and we found this out when we were comparing to Rich, is the Logitech verticals, where your mouse rests. Almost has, like, a bed for your thumb to rest on, where it juts out, out. This is just straight down. And you're kind of, like, always gripping this mouse. I say it's kind of like if you're a climber, like, pinch holds. You're always pinching this. You're not really resting your hand on the mouse at all, which is comfortable, I think. Yeah. Which makes you really have to think about using it. I've been kind of enjoying it. I find myself doing way more wrist movements than, like, whole arm movements to move things, to go around and click on stuff.

[David]

Stuff.

[Adam]

It's taken a really long time to get used to. Vertical mouse. It feels really strange. They're silent buttons, which is a lot of what, like, the MX Master's been doing now. I think they actually feel kind of nice. Scroll wheel feels like. But I don't really care that much. It's $19 and it works. The knob doesn't feel bad. It's just plastic. But it's got some, like, nice feedback to it.

[David]

The tactility of the clicking is nice.

[Adam]

Yeah. And it's. I mean, it was essentially plug and play. I plugged it right into my computer and it just started working. I'm assuming it would on Windows as well, but.

[David]

Cool. Yeah.

[Adam]

I don't think.

[David]

For 20 bucks. Yeah. That's crazy.

[Adam]

I do not know what the battery life's yet.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

I've charged it once, and it's still going. Generally, they last a very long time. Yeah.

[Andrew]

How many colors does it come in?

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

What are the other four? So there's a plain black. There's a. A pink. What are they even calling this? They literally don't even have color. Oh, no, they're just calling it pink. Pink. But it's like two different types of pink. The buttons and the scroll wheel are. Or. Sorry, the buttons and the volume knob are a different color. This is the purple and green version. They just call it purple. There's a light blue version, and there's the straight black version.

[Andrew]

That one's definitely.

[Adam]

You can also buy two packs of these.

[David]

Really?

[Adam]

For $42. Wow.

[David]

So it's more exp.

[Adam]

Wait, right now? That's more expensive. But it's not more expensive if you're assuming the list price of 27. I don't know how Cheap it. How long it'll be this cheap?

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

If you decide to go out and get this, I cannot promise you how long it will work. I assume it will work as long as $20 is worth. But I was in. I was very intrigued by it.

[David]

I want to see you game with this.

[Adam]

There's no way I'm gaming.

[David]

I need to see a pro Twitch streamer just using this.

[Adam]

And that would be. I'm sure someone's done it. But getting, like, pro CS players to play it with, like, crappy voice. I bet the latency on this is.

[David]

It's probably terrible. Yeah.

[Adam]

But no one buys an ergonomic mouth for, like, great ladies.

[David]

Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

[Adam]

Yeah, that's it. That's a Good one. Ergonomic MOU302 scene. Multiple device cordless mice compatible for Windows PC, laptop, Mac OS.

[David]

Purple, pink scene.

[Adam]

I make a bunch of other random stuff.

[David]

Really?

[Adam]

Yeah. I've never heard of that.

[David]

Them.

[Adam]

Although. Okay, so here's my other thing. This is probably why it's so cheap. I'm almost positive it's just white labeled something because I saw a different really weird ergonomic mouse that looks like an oven mitt and it's also vertical.

[David]

That looks different, though.

[Adam]

This is different. But Cinda makes one that looks exactly like this one, even though that one's from a different company. So I basically found two of the exact same mice under two different companies I'd never heard of, which makes me just assume this is white labeled from somewhere.

[David]

Sounds like those Alibaba things. Yeah.

[Adam]

Yep.

[David]

Got it.

[Andrew]

All right. Neat.

[David]

Cool. Adam.

[Andrew]

Yo. All right, I've got two. One of them is hardware, one of them is software.

[David]

Ooh.

[Andrew]

So for the last few weeks, I have been asked a surprising amount of times, what is this teal thing on the back of my phone?

[David]

Oh, yeah, those are awesome. Yeah.

[Andrew]

This is a moft tripod, basically. So it attaches MagSafe to a phone. Now I'm on iPhone, so it attaches perfectly. Last week I was on Pixel. So it attaches to the case, but.

[David]

It will attach to the Pixel 10.

[Andrew]

It will attach to the Pixel 10.

[David]

Allegedly. Allegedly.

[Andrew]

We'll see in 14 days. But it's just a little MagSafe stand that uses resistance to kind of prop itself up. Or if you need to get it taller, you could kind of fold it all the way out, which is really cool. It has multiple angles and stuff like that. So it's just a really handy thing to have attached to your phone if you're not gonna have anything on MagSafe.

[David]

Anyway, my friend Birgit has that, and she does content creation for a film company. And it's amazing just watching her just like, prop it up and making stuff.

[Adam]

All the time, you know? Peak Design had a really awesome magnetic tripod for a phone, but it was like the proprietary.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Own connect. Magnetic connection on their cases. And I just really disliked the fabric cases.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Adam]

The tripod was sick. Like, it was so cool how maneuverable it was and how small it was on the back of the phone. But their tripod case case got grody.

[David]

The phone case?

[Adam]

Yeah, sorry. The phone case got grody.

[David]

Have they changed the material of that?

[Adam]

I have no idea. I don't know if they're even still. Really?

[David]

Yeah, yeah. They use this really. At the beginning. They use this really thin, light material. They just kind of. Kind of disgusting pretty quickly.

[Adam]

Yeah. And it had a lot of, like. It was like, woven. So whenever you have woven stuff like that, it just means so much more dirt and grime. And I liked it because I could film climbing stuff with it, which meant my hands were chalky, which meant that thing in like. Like two weeks was disgusting.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Nice.

[David]

All right, what's your software?

[Andrew]

The software that I got, the reason I actually switched back to the iPhone was to try this piece of software, and Brandon put me onto it a couple months ago, which is the not boring software, like, suite of things. So in one of the studio videos, he was talking about his weather app. The developer of that weather app, Andy Allen, makes a bunch of different, like, utility apps. And basically his whole thing is he takes a app that's pretty much a stock app on the iPhone and just makes it super pretty and cool. So, like, in the studio video, Brandon was talking about the weather app. He recently released one for a camera. It's like Retro camera. And this camera app is just so sick. It's so fun to use.

[David]

Not boring camera.

[Andrew]

It is not boring at all. And it's almost like. Remember we spoke about the X half a couple weeks ago?

[David]

Yeah, the Fuji X.

[Andrew]

The Fuji X half. And it's like. Like you use it because it kind of mimics a film camera. Like, that was part of the allure of it. Like, you can't relook at the photos you use or whatever. This app kind of does something similar, which is, you know, in the regular camera app, you take a picture. The little preview goes down to, like, the bottom left and has, like a gallery that you can then click to see what that does not exist on this camera app. So it is just the viewfinder, but you can customize the way the camera looks. It's really fun and quirky. There's a bunch of colors and stuff like that. And it does do like. The best feature that I personally like about it is that it does have really nice, like filters and luts and recipes, and you can even import your own lut if you want. It is a paid app, I believe it's like $14.99 for the year. So like, I don't know, a dollar or something a month. But it's like overall a really fun app. You can also save just the straight up raw if you want, so you can take a regular picture in their recipe or whatever and then still have your raw photo saved in the background, which is cool. I prefer that. But so far I've been really liking it. I've been using it for like a week and the pictures that I'm getting are like, fantastic.

[David]

Yeah. I love everything that these guys make.

[Adam]

UI looks really similar to your rendered iPad case from the Shark Tank episode.

[Andrew]

You're right.

[Adam]

A little more colorful, but it's just a really.

[Andrew]

I like seeing things that have more intentional design.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And more fun.

[David]

Yeah. These guys also make not boring calculator and not. Not boring weather.

[Andrew]

Not boring habits.

[Adam]

Yeah, I'm. When you said a new app, they did, and I looked on their thing and saw habits. I was like, he's about to talk about habits.

[Andrew]

Oh, that's next. I have that downloaded as well.

[David]

It seems like everything that they make is sort of like the most boring, like utilitarian thing. And they just make it really fun.

[Andrew]

Just make it pretty and fun. Which is one of the reasons I'm so excited about this is not iPhone, but Material 3 expressive.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because it's like the whole UI of the phone is that kind of fun material expression.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But apps like these on iPhone that are just like fun to use and look cool.

[David]

Yeah, they definitely feel like material. Yeah.

[Andrew]

It's more like this is supposed to be fun and whimsical and different, you know, not like very monotone and clean like the old aesthetic of Apple. So, like, having this app on an iPhone has just been like a fun, weird experience.

[David]

Cool.

[Andrew]

So highly recommended.

[David]

That's awesome.

[Adam]

I just want to say, hey, Andy, us Android people like to have fun too. I wouldn't mind trying some of these out.

[Andrew]

I made a whole episode about why there are so many different iOS apps and no Android.

[Adam]

I want to have fun.

[Andrew]

You're not allowed you're only allowed to go on.

[Adam]

I'll have a lot of fun with my Lemon cello.

[David]

Pixel Piss color. All right, let's move on to trivia.

[Adam]

Super head.

[Andrew]

Super head to head Trivia. All right, so first question. How well do you guys know each other? Look at your average screen time and guess the other person's most used app.

[Adam]

Go. And we're doing of, like, the last week, right?

[Andrew]

Last seven days. Yeah.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Or like, seven days in general. Not like the last seven days until now.

[Adam]

But I'm worried this is going to be really boring.

[Andrew]

Don't give him a hint.

[David]

Wait, you're giving me a hand. Shoot. I think I know what it is now.

[Andrew]

Maybe at the end of these exhibition matches, the winner will win something.

[Adam]

Who knows?

[Andrew]

No pressure. You probably won't win anything, though. All right, flip them and read. What do you got?

[Adam]

Oh, you went way too boring.

[David]

Oh, dang. I said Instagram. I'm sorry? You said insert. I said Google Maps.

[Adam]

No, I forgot. You don't know what the answer is. I said Instagram.

[David]

No. Ooh.

[Adam]

All right, Mine was Instagram.

[David]

Oh, really?

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[David]

Oh, dang. Mine was. Mine was Reddit.

[Adam]

Was it really?

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Can I wait?

[David]

Because I'm. I'm hooked on that Pokemon trading card.

[Adam]

Game, and you're reading all the.

[David]

And the subreddit's really fun.

[Andrew]

Okay, so me and Ellis thought that yours was gonna be the Pokemon trading card game.

[David]

Oh, it was number one for today.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay.

[David]

I already had 45 minutes.

[Adam]

That's what I should have had guessed, though. So wait, can we talk about something with Reddit? That's really funny. My favorite thing about the new Reddit app is if you take a screenshot of a post, the Reddit app, ever since they killed all the other. Ever since they killed the good ones, the bad official. If you screenshot a post, it recommends. It's so quickly bro puts this little crappy popup because it's in. It's all in white and just like, plain text. It's just like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Please share button instead. So much more, much more fun if you share this with someone. I'm like, eat my screenshot.

[David]

Because then it gives you a link and then the link opens. The Reddit app. Yeah. Yeah.

[Adam]

It makes me happy every time I do.

[David]

Yeah. It's like, you can't stop me.

[Adam]

I was worried mine was gonna be Reddit because I still do go on it pretty often and then get frustrated, but, you know, it wouldn't help my public image if it was I will.

[David]

Say, annoyingly, because everyone sort of has their sort of like. Like, my brain needs sustenance app. Right. I'm annoyed that mine has become Reddit as of recent weeks, and I. I do not like that.

[Adam]

I've just tried to make my following subreddits. So actually, mine are so small that the majority of the time, Reddit just doesn't work for me because it won't re. Show me articles and then, like, just nothing will show up in the home page, which is another glaring, awesome development by the Reddit app. Because it's just such a good app.

[David]

It's really bad.

[Adam]

It's terrible.

[David]

Yeah, it's bad.

[Andrew]

Damn.

[Adam]

But. All right, what was the next. I don't remember the next question.

[Andrew]

The next question is what apps are on the other person's doc on your phone specifically.

[Adam]

I'm gonna answer and then ask a question.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[David]

Is it one point for each?

[Andrew]

No.

[David]

Okay.

[Andrew]

You got this.

[Adam]

No pressure.

[Andrew]

All right, flip them and read. What do you got?

[David]

I put messages. Is that on there?

[Adam]

Sorry. Okay, wait. So here's how I'm going to ask Adam. How do I score this? I have two folders on my dock.

[David]

What?

[Adam]

Does every app inside my folders count?

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

So David, basically. David can't lose. David.

[David]

Could have. Your whole phone is on your.

[Adam]

Could have gotten 70 points off of this.

[David]

How many apps do you have on your dock?

[Adam]

Each folder has 12 apps.

[Andrew]

You're a mar.

[Adam]

And then I have three.

[David]

Dude, the entire point of the doc is quick access.

[Adam]

Yeah, quick access to 24 apps. No, but these folders, if I accidentally. If I, like, get rid of one of them, I, like, forget how to function on this because, like, my thumb is so used to picking things just by second nature that, like, you don't. One of these shifts? No.

[David]

Oh, yeah. I just pull down and stretch everything so much longer.

[Andrew]

I mean, yeah, but I don't need to worry about where it is.

[Adam]

I would argue 99% of the apps I use in a day are in one of these folders on my dock. And it's just like. It's almost like a shortcut key to just press it.

[David]

This is insane.

[Adam]

How is that you guys type it out every time you want to find something?

[Andrew]

Well, I just have a doc, and then if I need to find something, then, yeah, I'll just search for it every time.

[Adam]

I. I think the comments are going to agree with me on this.

[Andrew]

I disagree. I think the comments are on our side.

[Adam]

Well, you guys also, though. Oh, you have a homepage, though. I have literally nothing else on my homepage. I only have my document.

[David]

Got it. I have, like, my most used apps on my homepage. And then when I want to use something else, I swipe down and search.

[Adam]

Yeah, I just have nothing on my homepage. My five icons on the dock, two of them are folders and they're the apps that I use every day. And I never go into my app.

[David]

So this. This question is kind of moot then.

[Andrew]

Well, it doesn't, because he's yours.

[David]

All right. Did I just show you?

[Adam]

Well, I'm not giving you Frisbee.

[David]

Did I just show you?

[Adam]

I wrote it down.

[Andrew]

He wrote it down. Oh, but David, what did you say for.

[David]

I said messages. Correct.

[Andrew]

Andrew. Correct.

[David]

Spotify.

[Adam]

Spotify. It's a very common one in one of my folders. I would give him that.

[David]

Yeah. Google Maps.

[Adam]

Correct.

[Andrew]

Correct.

[David]

Some sort of Frisbee app.

[Adam]

There is a U disc is right here.

[David]

Nice.

[Andrew]

Four for four.

[David]

All right.

[Andrew]

You shot yourself in the foot by having folders on that. That's your fault.

[Adam]

I'm very excited for the. I don't know if this is like an Android versus iPhone thing or like.

[Andrew]

Like I think just having full.

[David]

I never did that.

[Adam]

I think you guys telling me the better thing is to go into your app drawer and search for it every time.

[David]

No, you just swipe down it.

[Andrew]

Especially you, because you like a clean.

[Adam]

Swipe down and search. It's the same, I guess in Android you go into your app drawer.

[Andrew]

Yeah, you just swipe up.

[Adam]

But it's this same thing.

[Andrew]

But you like a clean first homepage. Like, you don't like anything on there. So it makes sense to me that you would just search for everything. Like, why even.

[Adam]

Why would I search when I can just tell me an app depressor.

[Andrew]

Right now you're done looking Instagram. That's depressing.

[Adam]

It's not depressing. It's just like, these are the things that, like, I'm so used to.

[Andrew]

Okay, Slack.

[David]

Damn. What about.

[Adam]

You don't use basically the folders? My most common ones are usually on the bottom, so I can just press them again. It almost turns into the second doc and then like, I don't know. I guess another common one is my email or like Instagram or YouTube.

[Andrew]

Going back to our conversation from last week, though, that just means that you have this stored in RAM at all times. I'm telling you, physical motions.

[Adam]

I have to take screenshots of what my folders are because when I get rid of one that maybe I don't use as much and then all of them shift. Then I'm just like, oh, no. And I try and click things and it's just wrong all the time.

[Andrew]

See, muscle memory is unreliable. You should just use the built in search function.

[Adam]

I think that's insane.

[Andrew]

Anyway, what did you say for David?

[David]

Yeah. What did you say for me?

[Adam]

I said phone.

[David]

No. I sw. I. No.

[Andrew]

No.

[Adam]

I don't use my phone messages.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

I said camera.

[David]

No.

[Adam]

I said Reddit.

[David]

No.

[Adam]

And Instagram.

[David]

No.

[Adam]

What is on your.

[Andrew]

There's only four in the iPhone dock, by the way.

[Adam]

I don't know that.

[David]

Yeah. So I have pocket casts. Nice far left. Because it's my most used app messages.

[Adam]

Okay.

[David]

Okay. Then I have. Have Arc mobile, which is my browser. Hey, you didn't put a browser on there.

[Adam]

I have my browser in a folder. Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I should have put Safari. Yeah.

[David]

And then I have Spotify. And Spotify, which I've been trying to use YouTube music more recently, actually.

[Adam]

Oh, really?

[David]

But the UI is horrible. Yeah.

[Andrew]

It's not.

[David]

It's like so bad.

[Adam]

I can tell you use a lot of audio on your phone because you have two audio things.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

In the bottom.

[David]

Well, I listen to podcasts most of the day.

[Andrew]

Yeah, same.

[David]

Yeah. So dang cool.

[Andrew]

All right.

[David]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Nice.

[Adam]

Good question. I want to see the comments.

[Andrew]

We learned something new about you, Andrew.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Another thing.

[Adam]

I have a machine. Don't fix it. Search. I think searching.

[David]

What about Google? Where's Google tasks? Can you instantly get.

[Adam]

Well, Google tasks is the only thing I have on a different page.

[Andrew]

Oh.

[Adam]

My next page is basically my Google task list and my content calendar.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Adam]

Which I also have calendar here, too.

[David]

Multiple.

[Adam]

Well, this is like if I want to go month by month, the other one's just like, what's going on?

[Andrew]

What's happening right now?

[David]

Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, that's been it.

[Andrew]

Let us know in the comments how wrong Andrew is.

[Adam]

That's not.

[David]

Yeah, let us know in the comments how you feel about that. We're very close to the pixel event. We have one more episode, and then the next episode we actually record on the day of the pixel event in two weeks when Marquez is finally back.

[Andrew]

Can't wait.

[David]

Wait. Make sure you subscribe, because the fat. The more people that subscribe, the faster Marquez will come back. If you don't subscribe and we don't grow to a million followers by the time he comes back, he will get stuck in China.

[Adam]

He's gonna get very sad. If we don't have a million subs. That would honestly be the craziest thing.

[David]

Cry, bro. It's not a good site.

[Adam]

Could you imagine if Marques just came back from China after only missing two episodes and we doubled in size subscriber wise.

[David]

Make it happen. Do it.

[Adam]

Make it happen. We'll collab with Mr. Beast.

[David]

Yeah, do a collab YouTube post with Mr.

[Adam]

Beast.

[David]

Anyway, that's been it. Catch you guys later. See you in the next one. Peace.

[Adam]

Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our TR Outro Music was created by Maine Silk.

[David]

Bingo.

[Adam]

Let's go.

[David]

Oh, and you can break it down into categories too.

[Andrew]

Yeah, there's a lot of data there.

[David]

There's a lot of data, there's a lot of smarts and also a lot of data. I mean, that's a lot of smarts, but also a lot of data. Exactly. Marques. Thanks.

[Andrew]

Wow. It's like he's here.

[David]

Thanks for chiming in.

[Andrew]

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started garbage after gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

[Adam]

Oh, come on.

[Andrew]

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

[Adam]

Whatever.

[Andrew]

You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.