The Apple Release Tier List

Summary

Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast

Episode: The Apple Release Tier List
Date: March 13, 2026
Hosts: Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), Andrew Cunningham, David Imel, Adam Molina, Ellis Roven

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the latest Apple device launches, ranking them on personal and public excitement, with commentary on their significance in Apple's evolving lineup. Other big topics include the chaotic state of volume controls in modern tech, AI monitoring fast food workers (featuring Burger King's "Patty" chatbot), the odd "robot phone" from Honor, and concerns around privacy with Meta AI Ray-Ban glasses. The crew also covers big changes to Google’s developer tax, all with their trademark wit and tech-heavy banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tech UI Rant — Volume Control Nightmares

[02:24–13:02]

• Andrew vents about his Subaru Forester's bad volume UI: adjusting volume takes over the entire screen, sometimes blocking Google Maps while navigating.
  • "The volume UI is horrible. It's the worst thing ever."—Andrew [02:37]
• The group analyzes volume step increments in devices (38 steps? 16 steps? 25 steps? Why do numbers matter so much?).
  • Marques prefers no numbers: "I review cars that don't have a number attached to volume, and I'm so much happier." [09:31]
  • Adam jokes that Marques needs clinical help for being irked by "14" as a volume setting. [09:49]
• Tangent: Numbers make people weirdly happy or uneasy when adjusting them.

2. Fast Food Workers, AI & Surveillance

[13:15–18:19]

• Burger King now pilots an AI voice assistant named Patty, which listens to employees’ interactions, measuring “friendliness” (e.g., use of "please" and "thank you").
  • "This just sounds like the worst thing ever. Why are we..."—Andrew [15:17]
• Crew rants about surveillance culture, privacy violations, and sarcastic AI detection.
  • David: "Knowing that there is something that is always listening...is freaking terrifying." [19:24]
  • Marques: "We got to tell our investors we're making the company better and using AI to do it." [19:53]
• One potentially helpful feature: quickly updating drive-thru menus if items sell out via headset. But consensus is this AI oversteps boundaries.

3. Apple’s Spring Release Tier List (Main Theme)

[20:43–44:01]

Products Discussed:

• iPad Air (M4)
• iPhone 17E
• Studio Display & Studio Display XDR
• M5 MacBook Air
• M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros
• MacBook Neo

Marques’ Excitement Tier (Personal)

1. Studio Display XDR – "It is better in every single way on paper other than being smaller... and it comes with a stand." [22:19]
2. MacBook Neo – Fascinated by form factor and performance.
3. M5 Pro/Max MacBook Pros – "They seem to have a surprising performance bump in a couple interesting ways." [24:21]

• Rest: iPhone 17E, MacBook Air, iPad Air M4, Studio Display (standard) in a less excited "tied" group

Public Tier List (General Excitement)

1. MacBook Neo – Most chatter, affordable, appealing to students.
2. iPhone 17E – As usual, iPhones draw mass interest.
3. Studio Displays – Studio Display XDR gets attention for mini-LED, high refresh rate; regular is seen as boring/stagnant.

• Pro/Air/iPad Air: Less buzz due to incremental updates.

Upgrade Timing Dilemma

• The crew discusses whether to upgrade to M5 or wait for rumored M6 devices (possible November release and OLED screens).
  • "Mariah is going to retire and still have that M1..."—Andrew [30:10]

MacBook Neo vs. Air — Who Should Buy What?

• Consensus: Neo is now the “default” for students/most users.
  • Marques: "For the 97% of people, I’m starting with Neo..." [39:29]
• Air still a "safe bet," but Neo is cheaper, covers most needs, and is set as the new baseline.
• Storage advice: get more than you use now, plan on increased needs over device lifetime.

Device Naming Speculation

• Will Apple use “Studio” or “Ultra” for the rumored high-end MacBook? lively debate on if the chip and laptop names must match [33:14–36:38].
  • "I don't think they can get away with naming it MacBook Ultra and not putting the Ultra chip in it. That's all I'm saying."—Marques [35:41]

Touchscreen MacBooks?

• Debate whether a pro-focused touchscreen MacBook makes sense or dilutes the pro brand [37:51].
  • "The touchscreen feels like more of a casual feature."—Andrew

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4. The Honor “Robot Phone” — What Even Is This?

[48:33–54:27]

• At MWC, Honor demoed a phone with a built-in Osmo-style gimbal camera and "robotic" anthropomorphic features (the camera can nod, shake, and “judge” you).
  • "I just think there's a reason why they don't let people hold this thing."—Marques [51:06]
• Intended for vlogging, backpack POV, and social features.
• The term "robot" is mostly a marketing gimmick, not actual robotics.
• Unlikely global release; maybe China-only.

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5. Privacy Nightmare: Meta AI Ray-Ban Glasses

[54:27–66:32]

• Investigation reveals Meta AI Ray-Ban glasses send audio/video to a labeling facility (Sama) in Kenya for annotation—to help train AI.
• Privacy scandal: Annotators see tons of personal, intimate, and even embarrassing content.
  • "This is all really icky… I just don't want people seeing potentially stuff like that, especially when you don't know when it's ever recording this stuff."—Andrew [58:36]
• Opt-out not available for AI features; camera indicators ambiguous, making it unclear when recording is live.
  • Meta’s terms of service allow this; most users aren’t aware.
  • Comparison to earlier "content moderation" labor abuses.
• Rule of thumb: Assume any always-on camera is storing footage forever.

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6. Google’s Developer Tax ("Google Tax") Changes

[66:32–71:00]

• Google drops their Play Store tax from 30% to usually 20% for most developers, apparently in response to lawsuits and regulatory pressure.
• Third-party app stores can now be more easily installed (especially outside the US).
• Adam jokes: Tim Sweeney (Epic Games) can’t complain for three years.
• Verdict: Slightly better for devs but complicated; echoes Apple’s "malicious compliance" move in the past.
  • "If you're a developer and actually need a lot more information on this... I'll link the Verge article."—Andrew [69:47]

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7. NBA Tangent — 83 Points!

[77:20–89:32]

• Marques explains in detail Bam Adebayo’s record-breaking 83-point NBA game in relatable tech terms.
  • "This would be like if we turned around and said: Ellis, what's your iPhone's battery percentage right now? And you still had the 12 mini. ... This is my 70th hour... And now there's a benchmark result saying the iPhone 12 mini has the longest battery..." [80:13]
• Highlights:
  • Team and game circumstances made the scoring possible (coincidence, coaching intent, triple-teams ignored, tanking opponent).
  • Comparison: Pixel phone suddenly beating Samsung/Apple in a benchmark.
  • Additional context: scoring anomalies, player comparisons, and NBA tanking for draft picks.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On volume UI:
  "Numbers make me mad. Music makes me happy."—Andrew [08:47]
• On AI’s role at Burger King:
  "This is piloting in 500 different Burger Kings... Sounds absolutely hellscape."—Andrew [13:56]
• On privacy and Meta glasses:
  "This is all really icky. ... I just don't want people seeing potentially stuff like that, especially when you don't know when it's ever recording."—Andrew [58:36]
• On the new Apple display:
  "It is better in every single way on paper other than being smaller. ... and it comes with a stand."—Marques [22:19]
• On MacBook Neo as a default pick:
  "For the 97% of people, I’m starting with Neo."—Marques [39:29]
• On Google’s tax change:
  "It's just Google trying to save their ass, because both Google and Apple make a huge amount of money being the traffic stop for app stores."—David [70:21]
• On Bam Adebayo's NBA record:
  "I wanna show you the last three minutes... when everyone in the building is like, do not let that man score. And he's like, I'ma score."—Marques [90:08]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Volume UI Rant: 02:24–13:02
• Fast Food AI Monitoring: 13:15–18:19
• Apple’s Tier List/Main Rankings: 20:43–44:01
• Honor "Robot Phone": 48:33–54:27
• Meta AI Ray-Ban Privacy Issue: 54:27–66:32
• Google Tax Changes: 66:32–71:00
• NBA 83-Point Game Tech Analogy: 77:20–89:32

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Additional Notes

• Brief discussion on the confusion of volume step numbers, UI design, and why some people need precise numbers while others prefer vague controls.
• Lively speculation on Apple hardware and naming strategies — with references to the notorious challenge of "MacBook Ultra" vs. "MacBook Studio" branding.
• Multiple offbeat moments—discussions of NBA stats through the lens of consumer tech, and the analogies make the episode highly accessible even to those less interested in sports.

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Waveform’s style is casual, quick-witted, and irreverent, with as much humor as insight. This episode is both a geek’s guide to Apple’s new hardware and a critical look at the state of pervasive surveillance and privacy in the tech world—a must-listen for thoughtful tech-heads and everyday gadget fans alike.

Transcript

[Marques Brownlee]

Support for today's show comes from Attio, the AI CRM for modern teams. The best tools don't force you to adapt to them, they actually adapt to you. And that's the idea behind Attio. Then ask Attio anything. Ask Attio to prepare you for your next meeting, or draft a follow up email, or find your hottest prospects. Just ask and Attio does the work for you. If you want a CRM that scales with your business from day one, check out Attio. You can go to Waveform and you'll get 15% off your first year. So that's 8attio.com waveform support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. So if you're someone who can't leave a tech question alone until you've actually figured it out, Claude is the AI partner for that. For developers, Claude code runs in your terminal and handles complex tasks end to end. And if you want that same kind of power without touching a terminal, their new Cowork feature brings it straight to your desktop. Try Claude for free at Claude AI and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Hold on, I'm pulling up the Heat

[David Imel]

Wizards box score so I can be Heat Wizards.

[Marques Brownlee]

Don't worry about it. That's exactly where you need to go.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's new Formula one team.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's where you need to be.

[David Imel]

Is this.

[Marques Brownlee]

Wow.

[David Imel]

Yeah, I'm a Heat wizard and wow.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yo, what is up, people of the Internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I'm Andrew.

[David Imel]

I'm David.

[Marques Brownlee]

I'm this episode we've got, let's see, fast food chains using AI. Cool. We've got a robot phone that maybe exists, but maybe not. Cool. We've got Ray Ban meta glasses. If you're using them, then maybe you shouldn't. Cool. And Google is changing their 30% tax. Cool.

[David Imel]

Pretty cool.

[Adam Molina]

Oh, and that's a 30% tax on like developers?

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. Same as Apple.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah, it was the same as Apple. Why was everyone so mad at Apple?

[Andrew Cunningham]

We've got mad at both 45 stories like that.

[Adam Molina]

The whole thing was that everyone was like, no, Google's one is cheaper and

[David Imel]

fine, but Apple's is not Google. Apple both got sued for the same things and Google lost an Apple one.

[Adam Molina]

I thought Google sued what?

[David Imel]

Speaking as Apple lost some parts of it, but Google lost more.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Damn Supreme Court.

[Marques Brownlee]

They don't have the same reputation. That is facts.

[David Imel]

Yeah. Yeah, well.

[Ellis Roven]

Well, that's because Google had a chain of emails saying how. Anyway, continue.

[David Imel]

Make sure you delete these.

[Andrew Cunningham]

And then some basketball stuff at the end.

[Marques Brownlee]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Cool. All right. But first, did they even test this? Okay, I have a really quick, really stupid one, but it drives me insane every day. It drives me insane every day. Sorry.

[David Imel]

No, I mean. No, it's fine.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, your thing, my forester. The volume UI is horrible. It's the worst thing ever. I'll be really fast on this.

[Marques Brownlee]

Go on. Because a lot of cars have surprisingly bad volume ui.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You change the volume, takes up the entire screen, no matter what's on the screen. Google Maps. Have you ever, like, been needing to take a turn? So you turn the volume down just to make sure it's easier to take the turn? I don't know why that.

[David Imel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, if you do that too close to your turn on my car, I've lost Google Maps now for, like, screen takeover. It's. I have a photo.

[David Imel]

Oh, my God.

[Marques Brownlee]

The volume is a full screen takeover.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's a full screen takeover. It is, like, kind of transparent for probably a couple seconds.

[Adam Molina]

You're like liquid glass.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's not like liquid glass.

[Marques Brownlee]

That is actually.

[Andrew Cunningham]

This is me changing the volume on my.

[Marques Brownlee]

That is not great.

[Adam Molina]

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Let me tell you why you're wrong, okay? Because it's a volume knob, right?

[Andrew Cunningham]

Oh, that's the next part of my.

[Adam Molina]

When your hand is on the knob, you can't see the knob. So how do you know what volume the volume set at? So you need it full screen.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, you do.

[Adam Molina]

That's what I'm saying.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Everyone else, your hand is covering it on the screen. It should be a little bar on the side that goes up and down with a number next to it. And not take up the entire screen because I need the volume quiet when I'm making my turn.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

And now I've lost being able to see that. The other problem is it's a full circle.

[Ellis Roven]

Wait, wait, real quick, Brits, stop commenting right now.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No, keep commenting. This is all for engagement. Subscribe. The circle, it's a full circle. The number it goes to is 38.

[Marques Brownlee]

No.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Why 38?

[Marques Brownlee]

Okay, that's actually worse. That is actually worse.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Part of me is like, that's not that bad because you never go max volume. Right. But that means the direct middle of the circle is at 19, which is infuriating.

[Marques Brownlee]

Okay.

[Adam Molina]

I thought you were.

[Marques Brownlee]

When I heard that it was the volume in your car, I Was like, whatever. A lot of cars have weird volume. I think the. The one I showed, I forgot what car it was. Where you do a gesture in front of the screen. You twist your finger like this and it turns the volume up. I thought that was going to be the dumbest one I've ever seen. But this is worse. This is actually worse.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's so annoying. So, yeah. So constantly 19, I'm like, no, I need to go to 20. And now it's like just one tick over the perfect half circle, which then I have to stare at for five seconds. Why I missed my turn.

[Marques Brownlee]

So that's a deal breaker. Honestly, in a car, that's a deal breaker. And I think if the Fisker had that, I'd be like, that's a little much.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah. Imagine like doing the whole thing with the like salesperson at the Subaru dealership and be like, man, this got good price. Drives great four wheel drive, everything. Smooth ride. Everything is great. Let me just check. Check how the sounds. And you spin it. You're like, oh, my God. And just walk out the door and leave it behind.

[David Imel]

Now I remember when I was a kid and I would be playing music in the car, my mom would turn the music down because she would get stressed about, like, what exit to take and I'd be like, mom, why are you doing that? And now I totally do that all the time. But it would be so much worse if you're trying to figure out what exit to take and the entire screen just disappeared for several seconds. Then you have to decide between turning the volume down so you can actually focus or being able to know where you're supposed to go.

[Marques Brownlee]

If you can you, like, tap it to make it go away or something? Every time. That is crazy, dude. That's the worst one yet. That is really bad.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's so crazy. That is. I think Adam has a quick update on his.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah, quick update on the one that I said I don't remember when it was time.

[David Imel]

Is the WhatsApp one.

[Ellis Roven]

The WhatsApp one. Oh, so now I am on a different, different phone and the problem is gone.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Oh, so it is just a pixel problem.

[Ellis Roven]

I think it's just a pixel problem.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Hashtag pixel problem.

[Ellis Roven]

Hashtag pixel.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Hashtag team. Pixel problem.

[Ellis Roven]

Pixels

[David Imel]

from Google. What phone are you on now with your weekly swapping?

[Ellis Roven]

The S26 Ultra. Now it came in, you buy. Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

What color?

[Ellis Roven]

Black.

[Marques Brownlee]

Nice. Yeah, Correct.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Also, a lot of people were telling him this was like some feature where you. Because if you like lift it up to listen to A voice. But no, you're talking about when you had your Bluetooth headphones connected.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah, when I have headphones and going in your pocket.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That wrong?

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah, because proximity sensor makes sense if you're like about to take a phone call and then it switches to the earpiece. Whatever. But like I'm wearing headphones.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

Why does the proximity sensor even turned on?

[David Imel]

It's going to be like a pixel. Like tap to the flip to hush thing could be like going off or something.

[Ellis Roven]

I don't know. I don't have to deal with it anymore. So someone else figure it out.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's the best way to fix it.

[David Imel]

Do you trade in your Pixel for the S26 Ultra?

[Ellis Roven]

Not yet, but I'm probably going to. Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

How many total trade ins do you have, do you think? Lifetime?

[Ellis Roven]

I honestly couldn't give you a number.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Adam's basically the guy who like leases a car every year.

[David Imel]

More than every year.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

Does it like every three months?

[Ellis Roven]

Listen, there aren't a lot of things that I splurge on, but the phone is the one.

[David Imel]

It's fair.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

Adam's been doing this for like the last seven years. I remember Adam and I going to the Galaxy S20 Ultra Briefing and we leave that briefing is like, I'm getting this phone.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I was like, Adam, this phone wasn't even here. And another phone came in that's still under embargo. And he went, should I even open this phone? And almost returned it.

[Marques Brownlee]

Big returner.

[David Imel]

Oh boy. Okay.

[Adam Molina]

According to Car and Driver, at some point Stellantis, who does not own Subaru, did an internal study where they determined that 38 was the perfect number of volume steps for a car.

[Marques Brownlee]

What?

[Adam Molina]

Because you could still hear the difference between each step.

[Marques Brownlee]

That is not.

[Adam Molina]

But it did not feel like two few. Like it was the perfect level of fine and coarse adjustment. In theory, it makes sense because according to this, you get two decibel increments which give you about 64 decibels of dynamic range, which is what most people functionally consider silence to loud. So that's kind of interesting.

[David Imel]

Okay.

[Adam Molina]

However, Subaru is not owned by Stellantis, so I don't know what that has to do with this.

[Marques Brownlee]

I have so many rebuttals to that, it's silly and I won't even bother going there.

[Adam Molina]

The biggest rebuttal is that the greatest audio engine of all time, the one baked into all Apple products, has 16 volume steps. And no one has ever been like, my iPhone doesn't have enough granularity to the volume.

[David Imel]

Yeah, but there's also not a number attached to it. Like, they could just take away the number and just show the wheel and it would be better that.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yes, but would you?

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. No.

[David Imel]

No.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Or scale, Actually, that would solve a ton. Why do we care about numbers? It's a valid point. Numbers make me mad. Music make me happy.

[Adam Molina]

Because actually, that is.

[Marques Brownlee]

You know what's funny? That's true. A lot of cars, they'll have, like. They'll have a set of numbers for the volume, and a lot of people are like this. They'll go to, like, 21 volume, and that's uncomfortable. So let's go to 20 or let's go to 22 or 25 or certain numbers are okay. And others, even though it's the correct volume. In my car, specifically, 14 is the perfect volume, but I hate that. So I always go to 15 or 12, which makes me mad. But the cars that I review is 12.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Okay.

[David Imel]

But 14, it's just 14.

[Marques Brownlee]

14 is weird. I can't do a 14.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Zeros and fives are ideal.

[Marques Brownlee]

Zeros and fives are ideal.

[David Imel]

What's up with 12?

[Marques Brownlee]

12 is fine. 11 is not. It just is what it is. Don't worry about it. I review cars that don't have number attached to volume, and I'm so much happier because I'm not thinking about the number. I just set it to exactly what I want. And that's perfect.

[Adam Molina]

Marcus, I'm not even going to get into this weird number bias you have. I did not know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I think a doctor needs to get into that.

[Adam Molina]

14 is a great number. It's divisible by 7.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's it.

[Adam Molina]

And 2.

[Marques Brownlee]

Well, that's it.

[David Imel]

12 is divisible.

[Marques Brownlee]

And 14.

[Adam Molina]

And 1. Did I ever tell you when.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Sorry.

[Adam Molina]

I was gonna say this is exactly like the headphone thing that happened last week. Because in my head, I'm like, I could never use a device that doesn't give me a number with the volume. Because, like, in the audio room, for example, it's like, I know when I'm at. Like, I think 42 is the number I like on my.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's the answer to everything.

[Adam Molina]

I know if it's at 42 and my reader is giving me, like, 78 or 82 decibels in the room. It's the right volume. Like, I can correlate all these numbers

[Marques Brownlee]

because I can match things.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

But when I'm in the car, I don't need to think about matching. I don't need to Listen to the music at the same volume that I did last.

[Adam Molina]

Oh, I do.

[Marques Brownlee]

I just need it to sound the way I want.

[Adam Molina]

That's my numbers thing. Like, there's. There's a right volume.

[David Imel]

Yeah, it's.

[Marques Brownlee]

I don't know.

[David Imel]

And then there's like, YouTube volume and system volume. I have this problem on my. I have a nebula projector, and for some reason, the projector has volume, and the Google. The Google TV dongle that is part of the projector also has separate volume. And randomly, the system will just decide that I want to use one or the other.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

And so sometimes it'll be maxed out, and the projector maxes out at 25. I don't know why it's 25.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I'm fine with 25.

[Adam Molina]

Well, then you just said even numbers are your thing.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, no, I guess if I'm only thinking of 25, because then the halfway mark of that is not.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah, that's 12.5.

[David Imel]

One time I was on the Google TV thing, and I had the volume maxed, and it was still really quiet, and I was super confused, and I was going through everything, and I had to change the HDMI to my Nintendo Switch 2 and then raise the volume of the system, because you can't change the volume of the system while you're in the Google TV volume. That's only the Google TV volume. Yeah, it's the whole thing.

[Marques Brownlee]

This is the thing with a lot of, like, pairing your phone to your car. A lot of them automatically max out the phone's volume so that you just adjust the car.

[David Imel]

That makes sense if it did that automatically.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, but some don't match match the volume. So I'll get in with my car volume high, but phone volume low, and I'll turn the phone volume up, and suddenly it's way too loud. I have to turn the car volume down. It's weird.

[David Imel]

Oh, my gosh.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah, We've talked a lot about volume. It's. This is.

[David Imel]

You know, this is one of those things that we could probably do half an hour on at least.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

Wait, wait, we have another one.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah. We started arguing about something else. Now, in a set of 25, the median would be 13, but in a set of 24, the median would be 12.5.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's not quite 13 the median. Is it a set of. Yeah, like just the numbers? Yeah, like. Like, that's the mean.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah, no, the mean is the. Is the average. I'm talking about the number, like, dead set in the middle of 25 would be.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, that's if you start at one.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah, no, I'm talking about if you have. If you got a volume knob, right, that is 25 steps. 13 would be the one in the middle because you'd have 12 on either side. You've had one through 12.

[David Imel]

Then you'd have zero as well. Yeah, yeah, zero, zero. 13 would be the same.

[Andrew Cunningham]

This is what I, when I remember, tells you.

[Ellis Roven]

What's the halfway. Like, what's halfway between.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I brought this section into the pod to be short. We're probably 20 minutes into.

[Adam Molina]

We gotta talk about burger.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, we gotta.

[Marques Brownlee]

We gotta move on.

[Andrew Cunningham]

When I was in like third grade, there were. We were learning halves and I had my hand up and I was like, half of five is obviously three because it's my middle finger and no one could convince me otherwise. And I just sat there like, I feel like the teacher's lying to me because of not doing zero.

[Adam Molina]

It's the median of, of a set of five. You were actually doing advanced mathematics.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, well, and then I stopped right there.

[David Imel]

You gotta slash. You gotta slice your finger in half.

[Adam Molina]

Oh, please don't say that.

[Marques Brownlee]

Okay.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Okay, cool. So more importantly.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Burger King. I'm sure you're all dying to hear about this.

[Marques Brownlee]

How important is this? Let's see.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It will be very fast. I want to get your opinions on it. It'll be very fast paragraphs about it. That's what I always do. I heard about this from a podcast called Eater's Digest, which if you're into food or food content, highly recommend.

[David Imel]

But it's like Reader's Digest for old people.

[Andrew Cunningham]

This is like.

[David Imel]

This is like that.

[Andrew Cunningham]

But it's a podcast for food for young people.

[Ellis Roven]

Oh, Marquez.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Cool. Or maybe millennials. Definitely Millennial.

[Ellis Roven]

They call it Digest. Wow.

[David Imel]

Yeah, they should just call it that.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's a good point.

[David Imel]

Remove the eaters digested cleaner.

[Andrew Cunningham]

But okay, so there's a new AI at Burger King stores. And I will go over the pros and the cons of this.

[David Imel]

There's only.

[Andrew Cunningham]

So you're almost right. The Pro is the AI's name is Patty, which is really funny.

[David Imel]

The only pro.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's the only pro of this.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's good.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The con is that it is a voice enabled chatbot that lives inside the employees headsets, that helps them with food preparation and checking their interactions to determine all the employees quote, friendliness. So essentially this is piloting in 500 different Burger Kings. Patty has been trained through information compiled by BK franchises and guests on how to measure the friendliness by using phrases like welcome to Burger King, please and thank you by monitoring the headsets Patty can Burger King managers and franchise owners can then access patty to see how friendly their employees at their locations are being. Sounds absolutely hellscape. Yeah. Total healthcare.

[David Imel]

These people have never watched Office Space.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I can't.

[David Imel]

That's. That's the part in Office Space with Jennifer Andiston. With her, with her. All her little pieces of flair. It's literally that. Except worse because they're always watching you.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It also my favorite part of this was they're working on it to try and recognize tone because I can just imagine people being saying thank you and please extremely sarcastically and being rude and their friendliness thing still going up.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

But this just sounds like the worst thing ever. Why are we. This makes it feel like, hey, managers and owners do less work. And now the people who are getting paid the lowest amounts at these and make the franchises run. We're going to monitor you 24 7. So I hope you're not talking about anything private there because who knows that's going to go.

[David Imel]

This just reminds me that like my friend has a coffee shop and he got a low rating on Google Maps and the rating just. It was like one star and it was like Barista said what do you want today? And I felt that that wasn't friendly enough. And I was like, are you kidding?

[Ellis Roven]

Said what the do you want today?

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's my thing though is yeah. People feel so entitled going to fast food already.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

With like the workers that if someone's rude they're probably going to leave a crappy review. We don't need to listen to them 247 and have AI follow and every

[David Imel]

Burger King already has a one party point four stars.

[Marques Brownlee]

I.

[David Imel]

So who cares?

[Adam Molina]

I love Burger King. Like I love the Whopper. But even I can concede when I'm at a Burger King. When I'm at a Burger King, neither of us want to be neither me nor the employee. So I'm not expecting you to go up over beyond.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's fine, dude.

[Adam Molina]

Just be rude. Give me my burger and we'll both go home at some point. Like that's cool.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You tell me to F off and just get everything right on the burger probably through the crappy point of sale system. And I'm happy. I don't care.

[Marques Brownlee]

It sounded like you said that's half of what it was doing. The monitoring employees part is ridiculous. But the first half you said it was like helping them.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You can ask it like what ingredients might need to be. Or like, how many pieces of bacon? Which could be helpful because of how often, you know, we do limited time offers and stuff like that. But it'd probably be easier to just ask the employer standing next to that knows how to do it already.

[Marques Brownlee]

Sounds like there's a picture.

[Adam Molina]

There's a, there's a. There's a picture on the wall by the station.

[David Imel]

Probably it'll remind you to put glue on the pizza.

[Ellis Roven]

This sounds like the AI that Mark has installed at all of our desks to track us.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No one knows about that.

[Adam Molina]

You made a good point. One of the big AI gaffs last year, was it not knowing how to make food?

[David Imel]

Yes. Yeah, it was like, oh, my, my, my cheese is not sticking to the pizza.

[Marques Brownlee]

What do I do?

[David Imel]

And it was like, use Elmer's glue.

[Adam Molina]

It's probably not. It's probably not trained on red. It's probably trained on, you know, recipes.

[David Imel]

It's trained on Reddit. Oh, God.

[Adam Molina]

It's not, it's not.

[David Imel]

I know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

There is one thing that I thought did maybe sound a little helpful, which is apparently in the headset, you can say that you're out of an item and it should be able to update the drive through menu, all the kiosks, all the point of sale systems. So that could be really helpful. Unless you go and ask one of your employees, hey, are we out of bacon? And it, I guess, accident. I don't know how it works, but I could see that being like, why

[Ellis Roven]

do you even need AI for that?

[David Imel]

This will happen.

[Ellis Roven]

There it is.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Dude. The amount of times working at a restaurant where the kitchen hasn't told the servers yet that like, something is out and it hasn't updated the systems yet, and then a bunch of orders come in and you're out of it, and then you have to go back to the table and explain to them it's out. So that would be kind of nice. But other than that. This sounds awful. Fast food workers have it hard enough. Let them, you know, maybe chat about their lives without worrying that everything is recorded.

[David Imel]

Dude, that's horrible.

[Ellis Roven]

What if they're just super rude and then at the end they go, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Have a good day.

[Ellis Roven]

Have a good day. Have a good day.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's like Rocket league in my eyes. Like the Rocket League to cut down on toxicity. They made all the quick chats and that is still the most toxic thing possible. When you, like miss a goal, it's like, nice, sick. Nice kick. What a shot. What a shot.

[David Imel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Great save. And it's just, like, ultra sarcastic. That's how this feels like.

[David Imel]

I play the Pokemon trading card game Pocket on my phone, and no, no,

[Ellis Roven]

you are addicted to the Pokemon.

[David Imel]

That's the one thing that I have. Adam, please let me have it, okay? I start something, I stick with it for my life.

[Ellis Roven]

Okay.

[David Imel]

Anyway, there's like, they. Nintendo really did not want people to be able to be talking to each other. They really did. So you cannot. You cannot message each other in any way. So even if you're trading somebody, you can't say, like, oh, I don't want this, or I want this. Like, you can label things that are. Start. Anyway, the whole thing, people have still found a way by basically, you battle somebody, and if you beat them some, sometimes they'll, like, initiate a trade with you and just trade you, like, the most basic card ever and then say, thanks. And that's just like the way that people are toxic.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Toxicity always finds a way.

[David Imel]

It's crazy.

[Andrew Cunningham]

They're like cockroaches.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Imel]

Anyway. Yeah, this is. This is hell. I think that the only way that a lot of employees of a lot of jobs get through the day is by having camaraderie with their colleagues. And just knowing that even though it's like an AI model, just knowing that there is something that is always listening to what comes out of my mouth while I'm at work is freaking terrifying. And the only reason this exists is because Burger King was like, we got to get our stock up, and AI is the only way to do this.

[Marques Brownlee]

We got to tell our investors that we're making the company better and using AI to do it.

[David Imel]

Leveraging AI.

[Marques Brownlee]

This is the thing I thought of.

[Adam Molina]

Burger King is not the fast food place where people are mean to you. That's Popeyes. And frankly, I wouldn't want that to change.

[David Imel]

I know they're pretty mean at the. The KFC Taco Bell combo near me. Yeah, but that's okay. They're allowed to be.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah, they've split ourselves.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I don't care.

[David Imel]

I really don't care.

[Marques Brownlee]

I do remember. Well, yeah, the kiosks are nice, but sometimes you go in. I remember I walked in. I don't know if it was a Burger King, so I shouldn't say it's Burger King, but I remember walking to fast food on a late night road trip, and the employee just goes, what?

[Andrew Cunningham]

That was Burger King.

[Marques Brownlee]

It was either McDonald's or Burger King. And I was like, nice, nice. Yeah, yeah.

[David Imel]

Incredible.

[Ellis Roven]

All right, we are now 20 something

[David Imel]

minutes in volume and burger AI. I don't know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, I've talked about everything. I know this episode.

[David Imel]

Cool. I think next we're gonna go down the Apple new devices tier list because all of the reviews are out. Well, not all the reviews. There's a. There's a number of reviews out now. All of the products embargoes have lifted.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yes.

[David Imel]

You can find reviews online, everywhere. We put a couple out. We're still working on a couple. But I think that we're gonna go through all seven of them and we're gonna rank them from best to worst.

[Marques Brownlee]

So I had a question about that. Yeah, when you say rank them. Cause there's seven here. Yeah, I'll just go through the seven. Just real quick. IPad Air. Got the M4 chip. IPhone 17E. Studio display. Studio display XDR, M5 MacBook Air, M5 Pro and M5 Max. MacBook Pros and MacBook Neo.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Now when you say rank them, are we ranking them based on how good of an update they are? Are we ranking them based on just how good they are, period?

[David Imel]

I would just say, like excitement. Excitement of the launch.

[Marques Brownlee]

Excitement of the launch.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Okay, I can do that.

[David Imel]

Like people being stoked for this product to come out and exist.

[Marques Brownlee]

Oh, I can do that right now.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Or even you being stoked for this product.

[Marques Brownlee]

Oh, that's different, people.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I care more about your. I care more about your thoughts.

[David Imel]

I think Marques's number one's probably, I'm gonna guess, the studio to play XDR.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I'm interested to hear what Marques is.

[Ellis Roven]

IPhone17E.

[Marques Brownlee]

My personal. I can do both. I can do both. My excitement, iPad Air, M4. And I've seen a lot of commentary online on these. So I can do both my excitement level and the general public's excitement level for these.

[David Imel]

Yeah, for sure.

[Marques Brownlee]

What you wanna do first?

[Andrew Cunningham]

I like yours.

[Marques Brownlee]

My personal.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's two things David and I didn't discuss and said at the same time.

[Marques Brownlee]

All right.

[Andrew Cunningham]

We're just on the same page.

[Ellis Roven]

You finish each other's sandwiches. Thank you.

[Marques Brownlee]

From.

[Andrew Cunningham]

He finished it for me from top to bottom.

[Marques Brownlee]

All right, so my personal excitement level number one is the Studio Display xdr. And it's because I am personally using the product right now that this replaces. And that's the only. It's the only thing. Well, other than the MacBook Pro. That's true. About this list, I kind of like the Pro display XDR. It looks really good. It's also only 60Hz and no, the XDR is 120.

[David Imel]

Right.

[Marques Brownlee]

The one I'm using now. Sorry, the Pro display xdr.

[David Imel]

Oh the protest.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. The one I'm using now, which is discontinued officially, which I bought like 7, 8 years however many years ago it came out looks really good. The nano texture is amazing. It's got these thinner bezels. I don't need a webcam or speakers in it. It's a great display but it's only 60 hertz and so this new display comes out and it is better in every single way on paper other than being smaller. So it's a 5k 27 inch display instead of a 6k 32 inch display. That being said, it's better in every single. And it's cheaper by like $2,000 and it is cheaper and it comes with a stand. So that's what I was most excited about and I'm thinking I'm going to be switching upgrading to these.

[David Imel]

Yeah. How do you feel about the size?

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's what I'm the most wondering. That's especially double. That's a big difference in screen real estate.

[Marques Brownlee]

I have a pretty set way that I use my dual displays now. I'm a dual display guy. I always have my primary which is mostly my web browser, email and whatever I'm working on. And then on the right I have a bunch of other things like Slack and my to do list and calendar and much of other stuff that sits over there.

[Ellis Roven]

Wow, good to know we're not your priority.

[Marques Brownlee]

Well, when Slack notifications come in I'm on top of it. It's always open anyway. I think I can work with slightly less real estate because of the way I manage what I'm doing. I don't need. I wish it was a 32 inch display. That would be. I'd be happier. But I will still have enough. So that's my number one is a Studio Display XDR. Right underneath that is MacBook Neo. I was fascinated by it, curious to test it. You can see on the podcast video users are aware that it's been in front of me this whole time. Underneath that is M5 Pro and Max MacBook Pros or made for each other.

[David Imel]

More piss.

[Marques Brownlee]

They seem to have a surprising performance bump in a couple interesting ways. Storage read write speeds are insane. I read the Verges review and they said they were getting like 18,000 megabytes per second reads and writes.

[Ellis Roven]

I was like wait, 18,000 or 1800?

[Marques Brownlee]

18,000.

[Ellis Roven]

18,000.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. I was getting 1500. Yeah, 1500 on the Neo and I was getting like 3000 on my MacBook Pro and 18,000 is crazy. So as someone who works with big files, I was curious about that. Then I'd go down to. The last four are kind of tied for me, I guess. Do I like any one of them more? Let's go M5 max.

[Ellis Roven]

Should I just make this four?

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, the rest is just. They're all tied.

[David Imel]

Nah, man.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I think 17 E's over the, like, studio display is just my personal excitement.

[Marques Brownlee]

I mean, I'm excited to review it, but, like,

[Andrew Cunningham]

it's what it should have been.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's true. I agree. I mean, as far as how good of a product it is. I agree. So, yeah, you could go 17e, then MacBook Air, then iPad Air with M4 and Studio Display last. Yeah, yeah. Now, general excitement from the public is MacBook Neo number one by far, which

[David Imel]

is why they saved it for the last day.

[Marques Brownlee]

And I think this is probably true about cheap devices in general, which is why, weirdly enough, iPhone 17e is probably number two as far as volume of chatter that I've seen about this. Number three is people talking about the studio displays a lot. Not necessarily because they're excited to buy them, but because of how big of a difference there is between the interest of studio display XDR and regular studio display. A lot of people are disappointed with the regular studio display because it's still a 60 Hz panel. They didn't really change much. They updated the speakers and Thunderbolt 5 on the back, and that's kind of it. And the cameras, and it's still 1600 bucks and 60 hertz. So the studio display XDR is the interesting one, but it's $3200 or $3300. So it's not like people are going out and buying this a lot, but they're interested in it because it's the new one or different one.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The biggest thing that kind of sucks about it going to 27 inch is for people who just want to use one monitor, I guess, like two monitors. It feels really big, but like 32 inches on one monitor. I have so much screen real estate to do separate things. And now 27 is quite a bit smaller. Yeah, it is.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. And the bezels are a little thicker. And it's. Yeah, it's just a little bit less room.

[Andrew Cunningham]

And a lot of people spending that price probably only want to buy one monitor.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, when you're spending that much money, you want the best possible monitor. But I said it in my review of the XDR. It's like there are no other 27 inch 5k, 2000 nit mini led, 120hz options.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's like the. This guy scored 4 goals on a Thursday in March.

[Marques Brownlee]

But all of the things are really great. Like what you want. Like scored four goals and Thursday games usually lose. Yeah. Like, and won the game and had a cool haircut and like had a sweet jersey. Whatever. Like it's a bunch of cool things all in one that you can't really find anywhere else. So that's I think number three. And then it kind of tapers off. Maybe

[Andrew Cunningham]

probably MacBook Pro over air. Just because like people, half the people who really liked Air liked it because it was the cheapest thing. Now Neo's there. So MacBook Pros are like, maybe you are the person who's waited a few generations to get the new one and you're looking forward.

[Marques Brownlee]

True that. There's a ton of people on M1 generation MacBooks right now. And every time a new generation comes out, they all look around and go, is it now worth an upgrade? Because the M1 is so much better than whatever they had before and it was a huge leap. So they've had M1 through the last six years of Apple Silicon and now M5. They're finally looking around, like, is now the time I should upgrade?

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

And it's closing in on maybe it's finally worth jumping. It's still expensive, but like M5 Air is 1100 bucks now. If you have an M1 Air, should you go to an M5 Air? You still kind of don't have to, but it's starting to get there.

[David Imel]

I think M2M3 really did not sell very well because everyone bought the M1. An M1 Max being like, I don't have to forget this for like 7 to 10 years.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

Like that was the whole thing. Like I, I blew like five grand on an M1 16 inch MacBook Pro with four terabytes of storage. Cause I was like, still kicking. It's still kicking.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

And I remember you stressed about it at the time, but look at how long it's lasted you.

[David Imel]

I know, exactly. Yeah. I think with the M5 MacBook Pros, the new fusion architecture is kind of a big deal. You can move data way faster. The Jeep, there's more GPUs. It's kind of turning into like a serious, serious workhorse. And I know that it's not upgradable in any given way. But yeah, I think people are finally starting to feel like maybe it's worth upgrading. Especially those people that are doing, like, coding and AI tasks where they just want to have that stuff accelerated. This stuff is very, very good at that. Now, obviously, we have the rumor that the M6 Pro and M6 Max are coming out later this year, like in November.

[Marques Brownlee]

Isn't that awkward? So you know who's in an interesting spot right now?

[Andrew Cunningham]

Mariah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Mariah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I was going to bring it up.

[Marques Brownlee]

Who edits here? As you guys probably know, her editing machine is an M1 Max MacBook Pro. And it's just like yours. It's been cooking, you know, it's been very capable, and it's gotten the job done, and plenty of edits have happened on that computer. But like I said, it's getting up to the time where it's like, wow, okay, 12 to 25% every year. Now it's stacking up. Maybe M5 is the chance to upgrade and actually feel that difference. But now that there's that crazy MacBook Ultra rumor on the horizon, it's like, well, maybe that's the one to wait for instead. And I don't know if that's gonna be an M5 max or an M6 max or if they'll even get to M6 by then, or if it's just the OLED that we want it for. Either way, for people who are, like, maxing out a laptop as their main machine, maxing, then that's the carrot at the end of the stick right now.

[Ellis Roven]

Mariah specifically wants a touch screen.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Oh, does she actually are.

[Marques Brownlee]

Really?

[Andrew Cunningham]

No. Mariah was all in on. Mariah was all in on updating. And then Alex was like, no, no, no, don't do it. Gurman just said that, like, the M6 Ultra is coming out later. I was like, oh, my God, Mariah is going to retire and still have that M1.

[David Imel]

I mean, isn't she still running a Pixel 6?

[Ellis Roven]

Yes.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, but like, getting work done machine. No, I know, but like, the gains from M1 max to M5 max will be pretty good for sure. It'd be nice.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I just.

[David Imel]

I wonder if she doesn't need the touch screen necessarily and then doesn't need the notch to be gone and have it be replaced with a pot touch id. Like it's going to be a dynamic island. I don't know if it matters for her that much, especially if the gains. We don't even know if it will actually be M6Pro and Max. And even if it is, how much better is that than M5 Pro and Max? Maybe it's not that much better. And they Focus on it. Enabling things like the touchscreen and these different things and maybe some AI workload things if they ever release Apple intelligence, stuff like that. Yeah, it is an awkward thing, especially when it's like we're not even. We're like nine months away from this potential launch.

[Marques Brownlee]

Nine or ten months away.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Potential launch. Potential. Big word there, too.

[David Imel]

Big word. And it could get pushed. There's all the, you know, there's the rams shortage. There's all that stuff. This is a whole nother angle to all of this, is that Apple was able to reduce the price of most of their devices amid the global RAM shortage, which is insane. Like, every other computer, every other phone is going up in price and Apple is like, here's a 600 laptop, here's. We're gonna reduce the price of the display, which also has the. By the way, the display is an 819 in it. So it has 16 gigs of RAM

[Andrew Cunningham]

more than the Neo.

[David Imel]

The display is. Sorry, yeah, 12. 12 gigs of RAM. It has more RAM than the Neo.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

Which is wild.

[Ellis Roven]

As it should. I don't.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I guess it's cheaper. It is very different. But. But then the air did go up. 100 bucks, right?

[David Imel]

Well, they just. They got rid of the base model, so it's actually. It's a hundred dollars cheaper. There is no base model, and it's $100 cheaper than the second model up from last year.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's the weird version of a price, technically.

[Marques Brownlee]

So it's like. Yeah, it's. It's a price. Their margin is better on the base one now because storage doesn't cost them much, but they're giving you more storage for the upgraded price. So the price of entry is higher by 100. You get more storage.

[David Imel]

And it used to be $200 to get that much more storage last year.

[Ellis Roven]

How long do you think they eat the price until they have to raise it.

[David Imel]

Assuming this continues, I don't know how long Tim Cook makes these deals for, like, storage and flash, and I would guess a year and a half, maybe two years. So it's like very possible that by the end of the year this is going to be way more expensive. I mean, we already knew that this MacBook Ultra or whatever it is, it's supposed to be much more expensive than this one. And I think that that's what potentially makes the M5 still doable for people. And maybe why they're going to release both in the same year is that they're priced differently enough that it's like M5, M5 max are still insanely good. If you want top, top, top of the line, M6, M6 Ultra or whatever Max.

[Marques Brownlee]

I don't know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

And their price ladder is crazy big

[Marques Brownlee]

boy, can I make a side bet here? All these rumors on this new laptop. Okay, name seems to be floating M studio, something like MacBook Ultra. I firmly believe it should be studio. A MacBook studio.

[Ellis Roven]

You don't think that's too confusing? They already have a Mac Studio.

[Marques Brownlee]

They already have a. Well, the lineup name is already confusing enough that I think this is fine.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You can't do Ultra because It can't be MacBook. Well, if it only has the Ultra chip. Yeah, it would have to. Because if they absolutely can do Ultra MacBook Ultra with M6 Pro would be really confusing.

[David Imel]

Or could be M5 Ultra.

[Marques Brownlee]

So that's the first question is, are they going to put an Ultra chip in a laptop that is such a powerful chip and so much gpu? They've never put it in a laptop before. I don't know if they would. They've only done Pro and Max and Base. But if they do and they name the laptop the Ultra, that's a little crazy. Well, I guess the Ultra only put the ultra chip. Yeah. MacBook Ultra, which only has the Ultra chip. MacBook Pro Max could make sense. MacBook Pro Max with the Ultra chip and the Pro and Max chips are not in the Pro Max. I'm locking in a 17 inch, 100% see MacBook Ultra, but doesn't have an Ultra chip. Doesn't matter.

[Ellis Roven]

No one cares about the chip if you're just buying a laptop.

[Marques Brownlee]

We're buying a $3,800 MacBook.

[Ellis Roven]

It's the same way that you're buying like the Apple Watch Ultra. Most people don't know what chip is inside of it. It's just the Ultra one. That's the one I get.

[David Imel]

That's fair.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yes. But in computers, I do think there's some part of you that's like, why am I getting the MacBook Ultra over the MacBook Pro?

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

And it'll be like some crazy web browser. The answer is the screen and the chip. It's gonna be the fastest, best looking screen.

[Ellis Roven]

But it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to have the Ultra chip specifically just like a super pimped out like regular Max chip.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Even in their own naming scheme. Like they just released the like M5 Maxbook Pro. Wow. I guess there is the MacBook Pro though, with M5 Pro.

[Marques Brownlee]

Right.

[Andrew Cunningham]

So there is a Pro and a

[Marques Brownlee]

Pro Mac there's a MacBook Pro with a Pro and there's a MacBook Pro with a Max Neo's looking like there is no Ultra.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The more I look at.

[Marques Brownlee]

I'm just saying, I do think as weird as their naming is already, I don't think they can get away with naming it MacBook Ultra and not putting the Ultra chip in it. That's all I'm saying. So I think they have to name it something else. And I think Studio is the name.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's.

[David Imel]

That's my weird thing about Studio is that now they have the Studio display that's kind of mid and it's not like insanely amazing. And then they have the Studio display. Xdr. That's really good. So that's kind of weird, right?

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Adam Molina]

Display is not mid. I mean, it's beautiful.

[David Imel]

It's an.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's still.

[David Imel]

It's still really nice.

[Marques Brownlee]

I think both can be true.

[David Imel]

Yeah, both can be.

[Adam Molina]

Mine is horribly broken.

[Ellis Roven]

But no, the new one.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No, no, no, no.

[David Imel]

The old one.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The new one still the Studio display. So that's like the kind of weird thing is like Studio kind of means Pro, but there is still the Studio. And Studio Pro xdr, pretty much by XDR is the name of it. It's the MacBook XDR.

[David Imel]

But it's already.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's possible.

[David Imel]

But it's already XDR, the Mac.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, but now it's the name.

[Marques Brownlee]

True.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Is the OLED one extra? XDR? I don't know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

XDR, the Pro, Ultra, XDR. I mean, not even called a MacBook anymore.

[Marques Brownlee]

The special thing about this laptop is going to be the screen. So I wouldn't be surprised if the name is something.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I just hope it doesn't come out.

[Marques Brownlee]

And we look back at this conversation and. Oled. Yeah, Right. I think it's supposed to be an oled.

[David Imel]

Yeah, it's supposed to be oled.

[Marques Brownlee]

So they're gonna. They're gonna.

[David Imel]

That's so weird because now they have like mini. Because they have mini LED in the

[Marques Brownlee]

laptop already, which looks phenomenal.

[David Imel]

Which looks phenomenal. And then now they finally put it in the bigger display and it is easier to make smaller screens like this. So, like they start with like really small and then they slowly go up. But it kind of feels like now they're like they've got multiple generations of screen technologies and you have to just. You have to just know which one is better. And OLED didn't used to be better until they increased the brightness and the refresh rate. Because OLEDs used to be hard to make bright and fast. And now you can. So it's just.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It is interesting how you just said how like the new Studio Display XDR matches with a MacBook screen. Way better now when you're using it in that mode. And then to then make a. The highest level laptop and highest level monitor now would. Would be different screens again.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Which needs.

[Andrew Cunningham]

This is just. This is Pixel Ultra again. This thing's not coming.

[David Imel]

Would they release the. The Studio Display XDR again but with OLED later? It's like a weird ladder thing. And maybe they do that on purpose to make you always buy the new one.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

When it comes out, stagger the releases, I guess.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I'm still confused why the Touch is gonna be in this. The like Pro Pro version of a MacBook touchscreen feels like more of a like casual feature.

[Marques Brownlee]

Casual. I agree. Yeah. Which is why I never wanted it in the first place. Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

So you two are not allowed to buy this. If it comes out.

[Marques Brownlee]

I'm probably still gonna.

[David Imel]

I think kind of a sneaky Update is the M5 air. Because it's crazy that the Air used to be the computer that people were like, this used to be the Neo where people were like, you can't really do like really serious video editing etc, etc on it. But the M5 is like super capable.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yes.

[David Imel]

And if you have one of those laptops, you can do pretty crazy video editing. Like the M5 is probably just as good in many ways as the M1 like Pro or Max was.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. Yeah. It's an eye opener. Like actually using the Neo and just trying to find the performance ceiling and seeing that it'll just. You can just open Final Cut and just throw a bunch of prores videos from your iPhone in there. And you are. You're doing it. You're editing 4K video on a MacBook Neo like it's happening. So that's already crazy. It's benchmarking around M1 levels of performance with this chip. So M5 is big. Multi threaded jumps, big screen improvement. GPUs are way better. Way more GPU. It's gonna be a better, like it's a really good machine.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

So. Yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

Okay, wait. I have a question for you guys. Now that the MacBook Neo is out, which one do you recommend? The Neo or the Air?

[Marques Brownlee]

For who?

[David Imel]

For who?

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, I don't have to answer that question.

[Ellis Roven]

Random college student walks up to you, is like, I'm starting college next week. Which one?

[Marques Brownlee]

I mean, the new default is Neo.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

So it's like for the 97, 90 something percent of people, I'm starting with Neo and then going, what do you want to do on this laptop? And if I hear something that they say that sounds like NEO couldn't handle it, then I'll bump you up to an air. Used to be air.

[Ellis Roven]

And then when you hear the thing and you bump them up to a pro.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

So now what is that ladder?

[Marques Brownlee]

So now it's like the air can do 99% of what most people need to do on the laptop. And if you're coming to me and asking what laptop you should get because you're not like in the weeds doing the research, that probably means a NEO can handle everything you're doing.

[David Imel]

Unless you want a bigger screen.

[Marques Brownlee]

The air has a 15 inch. Yeah, you have a 15 inch air if you want a bigger screen. Sure. But the second you say something like I have these projects that I, I want to do and my current computer's too slow for them, then I'm like, okay, now you need to figure out if the NEO can handle that or not. And sometimes it's like a pretty big people are coding with way heavier LLM stuff and bigger AI projects and they want more local memory and sometimes they're playing bigger games and sometimes they're doing more stuff then AE can probably handle it. And at the very, very peak of that is I am doing professional projects that I make money from and MacBook Air is the answer.

[Ellis Roven]

I say this because I still think to me the answer is still MacBook Air. Like I think the same way that people need to be convinced. People need to convince me for me to recommend them a pro. I need to be convinced to recommend you a neo.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Why?

[Ellis Roven]

I still think that the AIR is just the safe bet for anyone. If I know nothing about what you're going to do.

[David Imel]

400.

[Marques Brownlee]

It is a safe bet.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's $500 more.

[Ellis Roven]

Look at how long you keep M1.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I know, it's almost double the price.

[David Imel]

Almost double the price.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah. That's fair.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I think this anecdotally, the, the scenario to me is not so much as that it's usually the parent of the kid about to leave high school and go to college asking me what laptop should I get my kid. And the two reasons I've convinced them to spend extra money because it's usually the parents money. So they don't want to spend more to go MacBook Air in the past. Because if you're already asking me what MacBook or what laptop to buy, you don't know a lot. So you buying that means you can also bring it to an Apple Store when something happens to it. So now I can recommend a much easier to digest price point for a parent and with the benefit of like wherever your kid goes to college is probably an Apple store within 40 minutes of them to go fix it. Yeah, I'll say this really hard not to do.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's. That's super valid. I'll also say without knowing the breakdown of how much each laptop sells, the way I think about it is like if you want the true safest bet money, no object like 14 inch MacBook Pro is good enough for 99% of people to cover them. If you want MacBook Air M5, that's gonna cover 93% of people and MacBook Neo is gonna cover 85% of people. And so if I just wanna recommend the thing that works for everyone. Okay, yeah, MacBook Pro is gonna do it, but you could probably start with a Neo and then if you're in the sliver of people who that can't cover, then you bump up. Yeah, that's how I think about it. Yeah.

[David Imel]

And it is crazy with that education discount too.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

I still think everybody should probably get the Touch Bar 512 gigabyte version. That's the other thing. If you need more storage, I mean this Touch id.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Touch id. Yeah. I was like, wait a minute, bring

[David Imel]

back that touch bar. No. Yeah. If you need more storage, this only comes with 256 and 512. So I would definitely recommend getting the 512. Unless you're apparently like my sister and do everything on the cloud.

[Marques Brownlee]

My actual thing that I say to people is I go look at how much storage you're using right now on your current computer. Like four or five years in, how much storage are you using? Assume that you'll use 50% more and get enough to cover that because you're going to have it for four or five more years. Just do that. So I just literally was talking to someone the other day who has 128 gigs used out of their 256. You can get another 256 computer and be fine for the next four or five years.

[David Imel]

For most people it's like photos and stuff too.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yep.

[David Imel]

Photos and videos I don't know about on a laptop, but. But yeah, the other thing is that the Touch id. Touch id, not touch bar. A lot easier to log into your computer every time you open it by touching it as opposed to typing your password every single time. If you have An Apple Watch. Obviously, you can set it up so it automatically unlocks if you have your Apple Watch with you. But it is frustrating to have to type your password every single time. So that is something.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

But, yeah, pretty crazy. I think we talked about pretty much everything, Right?

[Marques Brownlee]

You know what else we do every

[David Imel]

time we do trivia? Yeah. I was gonna talk about the M4 iPad Air. There's really nothing to say.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You just said everything about.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's the iPad Air. It has an M4.

[David Imel]

Yes, indeed. Let's move on.

[Adam Molina]

Trivia, dude. All right, so after the break, we're gonna talk. Potentially. I thought we're gonna talk about it before the break, but about the new Honor robot phone, which they should not be calling a robot phone because there's nothing.

[David Imel]

There's robotics.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Have you seen the Verge? The Verge article basically has the same thought as you. What's the robo part of this?

[Adam Molina]

The Verge. Just jockeying my swag. What else is new? Just kidding. I love those guys. But my question is, amidst all the robot phone stuff, Honor dropped a press release that I did not see anyone mention in their articles, which is. Honor is partnering with a camera company.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yes.

[Adam Molina]

What camera company?

[Marques Brownlee]

Oh, is it.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I remember. Can we answer right now?

[Ellis Roven]

No.

[David Imel]

How'd I miss this?

[Andrew Cunningham]

All right.

[Marques Brownlee]

Oh, I know, I know, I know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, come.

[Marques Brownlee]

I remember. I'm gonna write it down.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Too much thinking.

[David Imel]

I think I know what it is.

[Marques Brownlee]

All right. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. A website should help your business grow, not slow it down. If updates to your dot com feel harder than they should, Framer is the shortcut you've been looking for. Framer is a website builder that can transform your dot com from a mere formality into a tool for growth. They've already helped thousands of businesses, from early stage Startups to Fortune 500s build better websites faster. Framer is an enterprise grade no code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Miro to move faster with real time collaboration, a robust CMS with everything you need from great SEO and advanced analytics that include integrated A B testing. Your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your.com from day one. So changes to your Framer site go live to the web in seconds with one click without help from engineering. So whether you want to launch a new site or test a few landing pages or migrate your fold.com, framer has programs for startups, scale ups and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a framer specialist or get started building for free [e-mail] wave for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com wave for 30% off Framer.com wave rules and restrictions may apply. Support for the show comes from Shopify the early days of starting a business are equal parts exciting and terrifying. It's a big risk, but it's one worth taking as long as you have the right tools. And if e commerce is part of your new business, then here's a tip. Shopify Shopify is the commerce platform used by millions of businesses around the world. They say they can help you tackle all these important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother. Let Shopify be your commerce expert. With world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond, you can get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build beautiful online stores that match your brand style. So it's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify. Today you can sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com waveform go to shopify.com waveform that's shopify.com waveform. Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. So when you're deep in something, figuring out how a new chip architecture works, or trying to understand why an update broke something you built last week, you need a thinking partner that can keep up. Claude works through those problems with you, not a quick summary and move on. It digs in for developers. Claude code runs directly in your terminal, so hand it a task. Writing tests, refactoring a module, tracking down a bug, and it takes it from there without you walking it through every single step. You can kick off multiple tasks in parallel and come back to finished work. If you want that level of capability without ever opening a terminal, that's where cowork comes in. Point it to a folder on your computer, connect your tools, and it handles the heavy lifting. Organizing files, synthesizing notes into reports, building out spreadsheets while you stay focused on the thinking that actually requires you. And one more thing worth knowing. Ads are coming to AI Anthropic committed to keeping Claude AD free. Your conversations won't be shaped by what someone else paid for. Try Claude for free at Claude AI Waveform and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

[David Imel]

Welcome back. So there's a big event last week called Mobile World Congress. MWC Adam and I have a lot of trauma from that event. Basically, there's a lot of stuff that gets launched there. It kind of has weaned off in previous years, but this year we're freaking back, baby. There's a lot of weird stuff coming out there. One of those things was the Honor robot phone, which we had. Yes. Beep, beep, boop. We had shown this phone off a number of months ago because they showed off a little concept. So we talked about it briefly. But now it's out in the wild, sort of. It's attached to tables. You can't really, you know, take it around. But effectively what this is is it's. It's a phone that has a built in DJI OSMO pocket in it. It's like a little gimbal thing that you can, you know, you can like

[Marques Brownlee]

swerve around, unfolds out of the steady,

[David Imel]

unfolds out of the phone, which is very crazy. So, yeah, it's, it's weird. They claim that it's 70% smaller than the competition. We're guessing that the competition is the OSMO pocket.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, they just had competition. I was like, yeah, gimbal and a smartphone. What's the competition here? Yeah, it doesn't look 70% smaller than an Osmo, because an Osmo's really. It's definitely smaller than an Osmo, but an Osmo is small.

[David Imel]

Unless they're talking about like actual gimbals. Maybe that's the competition.

[Marques Brownlee]

I think they're referring to the literal, like, gimbal mechanism.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

To like fold it into a phone.

[David Imel]

Something that's already small. 70% smaller is not.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah, true.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The way it comes out is the back of the phone has a kind of plateau. And then weirdly enough, all the cameras are on the right side of the plateau, which we're not used to seeing. And then the left side has a stagger, almost like a step, because that needs to. Half of it needs to slide over the right side and then it flips up on top of the phone.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Kind of like. Remember essential had that like 360 cam that connected with pogo pins on the back and was up on the top. Yeah, like that.

[David Imel]

But also kind of looks like that insta360 webcam. That kind of follows around the link.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yep.

[David Imel]

Kind of follows you around. It's like that. Um. Yeah, it's strange. They say it's the smallest four degrees of freedom gimbal in the industry. And the bump is already pretty big, but it's. It makes the bump very deep.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The wobble must be nuts on that phone.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Okay. There's a lot of things that are going to be nuts on this phone. Yeah. One, the wobble of putting it on a table. Two, trying to put this in your pocket and not like, like yank the thing apart. You know how when you put your phone in your pocket and like the lip of your pocket catches the camera lens, what happens on this phone? That's another thing.

[David Imel]

Yeah, I just.

[Marques Brownlee]

I think there's a reason why they don't let people hold this thing. If you watch all the hands on videos, none of them are hands on. They're just pointing at the phone like on a stick on a stand in Mobile World Congress. And then also. Okay, so I got briefed on this phone and I talked to them about this and they're explaining why it's called the robot phone. Do you guys know why it's called the robot phone?

[Andrew Cunningham]

Kind of.

[David Imel]

It's sort of a rope.

[Ellis Roven]

Does it go like a bunch of legs and walk across the desk?

[David Imel]

It nods at you.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's pretty much it.

[Marques Brownlee]

Almost the camera itself, obviously the gimbal will, like, move it out and point around and do all sorts of stuff like that and can follow you. But also, when you're not using it as a camera, it kind of becomes this anthropomorphic face and nods and shakes its head and responds to your queries with sounds. So you can ask it, do you think my outfit is nice? And it will nod and go, yeah, nice outfit. By moving the gimbal to shake the camera up and down. That's why it's the.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I would love if it just judged me by what I was looking at on my phone and it could, like, look down at the screen and look back at me and just like, shake it.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's the.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's the first thought I had is, would it ever say no? Like, if you go, hey, gimbal, robot phone, do you like my outfit? And it looks at you and goes, mm, mm.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It just folds back up.

[Marques Brownlee]

I don't like it. That would be hilarious.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

But, yeah, apparently it'll. Yeah. Respond your. Your queries.

[David Imel]

They are apparently also developing accessory to clip it to your backpack. So I think the point of this is that you should be able to use voice commands to do different actions. And it can be kind of this. You clip for your phone to your backpack, and then you have, like, a POV thing going on on your back

[Andrew Cunningham]

or maybe on, like, the OSMO people like to clip it onto a backpack.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

This feels like such a 2026 phone launch of. Hey, we actually put some crazy hardware on on this prototype phone. And let's still tell you about all the weird AI things it can do. Instead of that, we fit a gimbal inside.

[Marques Brownlee]

No one will pay attention if we don't say AI. So, AI. AI. Yeah.

[David Imel]

They are using a 200 megapixel camera, which I assume is primarily used for insane video stabilization. Because you're not going to use all 200 megapixels. You're going to crop the hell into that thing. Yeah, it's weird. Apparently it's going to come out.

[Marques Brownlee]

This is my.

[David Imel]

Allegedly.

[Marques Brownlee]

Or is it. Is it. Is it gonna come out in China only for $3,000 in, like, limited supply? Or is it gonna, like, come out probably.

[David Imel]

Okay. They suggested a global release in the future.

[Marques Brownlee]

Wow.

[David Imel]

Was a possibility, but they have no timeline.

[Ellis Roven]

This is a long shot, but have any of you played the Star Wars Fallen Order game? Jedi Fallen Order. No.

[Marques Brownlee]

No.

[Ellis Roven]

There's a robot, the BD one, that. It's just a little camera guy that, like, hangs around your backpack and shoulder. If they can make this. That I'm all in. Just give me that. That little robot with a camera.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I think it just screws your phone up so it's still way too big. And your phone camera bump is like a double plateau essentially on one side.

[David Imel]

This thing has IP68.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No, no.

[David Imel]

Do not bring it to the beach.

[Marques Brownlee]

It could.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It could be a full shot of water inside of the empty cavity when it's popped out.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, drones are. Drones are mostly. You can. No, you can't.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It can do one thing where, like, drones.

[Marques Brownlee]

You can get. You can get them wet a little.

[David Imel]

Allegedly.

[Marques Brownlee]

Oh, maybe not, like, submerged them or anything, but you can. You can.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I don't know.

[Marques Brownlee]

I can't.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I don't know that.

[David Imel]

That will be. A drone that comes out eventually is a drone that can land in water and then can jet around like a boat. That will happen if robot vacuums have anything to do with it.

[Marques Brownlee]

See what Google has to say about it. Mavic. Drones do not have an official IP rating.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I was gonna.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's funny that this comes out light rain. Mavic.

[David Imel]

40 people do fly light rain for sure. And through like fog, which is basically rain. Yeah, it's a whole other conversation.

[Marques Brownlee]

It is.

[Andrew Cunningham]

What is rain?

[David Imel]

Dense fog is like a cloud, actually. Basically a cloud is basically.

[Marques Brownlee]

See, a cloud is when it condenses enough to precipitate.

[Andrew Cunningham]

But the talk about weather, we have to be very careful here.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's my bad. I saw the road that I was going down and I decided not to go.

[David Imel]

You gotta. It's that meme of the car and

[Andrew Cunningham]

pivoting to the right.

[David Imel]

Weather apps.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Back to the podcast.

[David Imel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. So, yeah, I don't know, it could be interesting. Well, we'll. We'll see when it comes out. We'll see when it comes out. Now we have to talk about the thing that we glazed over a little bit last week. We, we briefly mentioned it, but we wanted to go a little bit deeper in this. Meta is allegedly sending your video feed from your Meta AI Rayman glasses to an analysis facility in Kenya. And people are being. Don't do that. Do not do that. People are being forced to watch videos that they shouldn't be watching. Lots of intimate scenes, lots of people using the bathroom. Very weird.

[Adam Molina]

Banking details.

[David Imel]

Banking details. And you know, I just think we probably shouldn't have cameras strapped to our faces all the time, but maybe that's just me. And Meta is the one that a few weeks ago had that leaked internal memo where they were like, there's a lot of bad going on in the world right now, which means it's perfect time to launch these AI features that people do not want.

[Marques Brownlee]

So I didn't read this article, but I do have questions if you guys have. I guess my first question is when you said like feed, camera feed, do you mean like, like not live feed, but stuff you take pictures of or stuff you ask AI about what is. What is involved.

[Andrew Cunningham]

There's a long article. One will post it in the show notes because everyone should read it. It's a Swedish newspaper that did this investigation. From what I remember and from what I wrote down, it seems like it's the majority of the time they're seeing it is when you're activating AI features. And not even always just like the AI features of like use the context of the camera, but essentially you ask it an AI question. It isn't showing the recording thing because of you're not just doing the video recording and people don't know how long it's continuing to use the context of video and audio. And so what it's do. The reason it's getting sent to this company called Sama Sama S A M A. They're located in Kenya. Is there are people there in an office who are using that feed to help label different things, to help teach Meta's AI. Yeah, there's data annotators. Yeah, they're circling objects so you can tell the street signs, you can tell car, so you can tell a person. And it's just helping build that. The issue is, is these people are saying the stuff they're seeing is like banking details on cards. They're seeing private conversations that could be about all sorts of different stuff, legal and. Or illegal. They're seeing. One example was somebody asked it a question and then put their glasses down on the nightstand and then their wife walked out of the bathroom naked and they're seeing all these different, you know, sexual intercourse, people going to the bathroom, people in changing rooms. All these different extremely private things are being sent to this facility in Kenya where data annotators can then see all these really private.

[Marques Brownlee]

My next, my next question was going to be like, why is the data getting sent back? So it's not just like, oh, this is some like mischievous thing that they're doing. It's that. That specifically they've decided to use humans to help correct or maybe point out things to the AI to train it to make it better.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah. So very poorly compensated humans. Because there's a lot of. Really, there's a ton of also investigations about that company charging X amount and paying the actual employees fractions of what they're charging.

[Marques Brownlee]

I wouldn't be surprised if that's also.

[Andrew Cunningham]

So that's another thing. The employees aren't allowed to like phones and stuff in the office. But at the same time, I don't care what it is. I just don't want people seeing potentially stuff like that. Especially when you don't know when it's ever recording this stuff.

[Marques Brownlee]

That's the last question. It's not just when you're asking the AI for a visual match, you don't

[Andrew Cunningham]

know when that ends. After you ask it, you don't know when that ends.

[Adam Molina]

We did a little test in the office to see what would trigger various indicator lights in the camera. Cause obviously when you say meta, take a picture, the ring around the camera lights up. Yes, if you say. So I looked at Mariah and I said, what Meta? Sorry, I don't want to trigger anyone's

[Marques Brownlee]

thing, but there's like a key phrase.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah, I don't remember what it is, but Mr. AI Bot, what is six plus two? And the camera light did not come on because that question should not require the camera. Then I asked it, what color is the person in front of me's shirt? And the light still did not come on. So there's no feedback when the AI, there's no camera feedback to either the user. There's a prompt light, but the prompt light comes on anytime the met the thing is being prompted. So that also. So the point is that you don't actually know when the camera is firing. The camera could have been recording data and sending that to Meta. When I asked it what six plus

[Andrew Cunningham]

two is, it wouldn't surprise me because in order for context aware AI through the camera to answer you as fast as possible, you should launch the camera and audio immediately. Once you trigger the word right or else, then you have to wait for it.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's a different type of. Well, just from my experience, it's a different type of prompt. I think you literally say Hey M. Look and tell me. And when you start that, then it

[Andrew Cunningham]

fires up even to be fast enough

[Adam Molina]

to say I just had to say hey M. What color is the person's shirt in front of me? That, that. And it gave me the correct answer. So clearly the camera was turned on. And I tested that multiple times to make sure it wasn't a fluke, like how many people are in the room? Are the lights on? And I never said look and tell me. It was just like, like there.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah. So a couple extra things in here is like Meta's attempt at privacy here is that their own systems are blurring faces before it goes to these data annotators. But they are also saying that depending on lighting conditions and stuff that those blurs don't work all the time. It's pretty often that they see people just end their faces and everything like that. Which maybe they need data annotators to check to work on their AI to send to other data annotators. But it just. This is all really icky. I mean and in their terms of service they're saying this is fine because it says in some cases Meta will revere interactions with AIs, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AI. And this review can be automated or manual parentheses human.

[Marques Brownlee]

So and no one will know when it's human.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You don't know when that's.

[Marques Brownlee]

You're using a product, but you don't know when.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You can't opt out of this either through the AI. There is some other privacy options. You can opt out of some other stuff on Meta ray bans, but through AI, there's no opt out as far as I'm concerned. And when I'm reading this right now,

[Marques Brownlee]

opt out would be smart to add.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It would be.

[Ellis Roven]

Yeah, it should be opt in.

[David Imel]

Yeah, it should be opt in.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. I mean all Samsung, like I just remember reviewing the S26 Ultra. All of these features of like Galaxy AI stuff, they're all on by default and they also will all use the Internet by default. But at the very bottom there's a little button you can check which is do all of this on device, which does limit some of its functionality. But it is an option that you can check which is to never have any of this stuff leave your device. Obviously if you're editing photos or doing any of that stuff, maybe you want

[David Imel]

to check that box.

[Marques Brownlee]

So yeah, I agree that like opting everyone in by default is ridiculous.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, and it's why they're selling these, right? Because this is all training Meta's AI.

[Marques Brownlee]

They want as much data.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, they want as much data. You're wearing it all the time. You're probably accessing the AI stuff. It's just going to record. And now you pay a bunch of people horrible wages to then help it wrongly tell the color of my coworker's shirt later.

[Adam Molina]

And it's like, it's. It sort of seems like it's meant to be confusing on purpose. Like one of the parts of the article was going to luxottica stores, which is the company that makes the like, glasses part of it, and asking a bunch of sales reps about where this data gets stored. And a bunch of them were like, no, no, everything happens locally on the glasses.

[Andrew Cunningham]

They just have no idea.

[Adam Molina]

They have no, no idea.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Like multiple different answers.

[Adam Molina]

No one has any idea, you know, except. Except Meta.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Half of Meta might not even know because they don't want them to know.

[Ellis Roven]

Like, this reminds me a lot of the content moderation things that was happening a couple years ago. Casey Newton had like a big story interviewing people in these places that are just like looking at videos on social

[Marques Brownlee]

media that people die for 10 hours, terrible videos.

[Ellis Roven]

And it's like they're getting paid pennies to like do this content moderation stuff. This is like the new like labor of AI.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, I cannot imagine.

[David Imel]

Yeah, so yeah, it says that they are also. All of the chats, all the transcriptions of the chats are also stored and they have to go through those to see if the AI gave them a good answer. And there's a lot of weird conversations that people are having and it's just, it's just a weird privacy thing because I think that something that we don't acknowledge enough as a society is what is in the terms and conditions that you just scroll past really quickly and then hit. I accept that stuff used to be like I will not see the company if my microwave explodes. But now it's like, I consent to give up all data that I have ever used on this product and the company can use it for whatever they want and blah blah, blah. And yeah, you're the product if the service is free. And right now the AI service is the free thing and the glasses are

[Marques Brownlee]

what you're paying for.

[Adam Molina]

And this is extra freaky because remember, this is the same product that those Harvard researchers made the like, look what we can do automatically face id. Oh yeah, thing built in. Yeah, I. No, no, I know. Well, student, whatever. You know, like this is like how easy would it be for someone to get these. Look, I don't know, I'm. I'm spiraling all of this. You have to like, this is bad. You know, this is really bad.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yicky at the best level and extremely concerning. Depending how much you trust Meta, you should just, if you have these glasses, read this article. Pretty much, yeah.

[Adam Molina]

And just, just in general, if you, if you own a device that has a non webcam, camera phones and laptops I think are exempt from this statement. But if you own a device with a camera on it, just assume it is always recording and that footage will be stored somewhere forever and people can look at it. There's no reason to ever assume that a device with a camera, because the article even says like the company, the money Meta makes on this training data from you is infinitely more valuable than any than if they sold glasses to everyone in the universe. You know, like, so of course they're going to look at it over and over and over and over again and of course they're going to capture as much as they can of your life. Like the stuff about the glasses sometimes recording for like long periods of time is like, why do they do that?

[Andrew Cunningham]

It should definitely have the ring going on for anytime that camera is being accessed and something can be used for sure. It almost. If you really don't trust Meta, you could argue that they only put the ring on there for normal recording to then make you not think about when it's recording later for AI stuff. I don't necessarily think that's true, but I'm sure they're not trying to get it on.

[David Imel]

It was because of the Google Glass issues of not having any sort of indicator which was.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah, I really liked insert. I don't know if it was in direct response to this, but around the time this article came out, someone dropped an Android app that makes your phone scan Bluetooth 247 and it can detect whether someone has metaglasses within 50ft of you and sends you an alert so you can go find them and not not do anything. You can go find them and say gently, gently take off those glasses, sir or madam.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Cool. Next thing, another potentially really confusing article, but for the better this time. Yeah, Google's 30 tax is changing. Where's this? There's a cool soundboard there somewhere, right?

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Whoops.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Maybe we've talked multiple times. Apparently Ellis doesn't remember any of them about. This was confusing about Epic versus Google. They were also Epic versus Apple essentially suing these companies because of their monopoly over Play stores and taxes on top of distribution. Yeah. So there was a settlement or it seems like a settlement was reached in November. But before the final details of that came out, Google just started making changes and just announced recently that they're going to change how they're doing their. I just keep calling it the Google Tax. I think everyone understands what I'm saying, right. 30 store tax. 30% of the of essentially your revenue if you sell on the Play Store through pretty much any form goes to Google. Yeah, I'm going to super tldr this and try and explain a little different afterwards. But it gets really confusing because there's different levels. Most of the fees seem to be going to 20% or lower and by the end of the year they're going to launch registered app stores which is a program that you can download third party app stores for people outside of the US Pretty much the same way you would just download stuff in Google Play. So they're not making this hard side loading effort of getting like an Epic store or stuff on your phone that's a pain in the neck. You should just be able to download them no problem.

[David Imel]

Which is a huge issue outside of the US in particular though, right?

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's what I read.

[David Imel]

Like European law I guess again we don't get anything.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Thank you.

[David Imel]

Europe gets the cool phones. They get the good, good consumer rights.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Hey, they don't get that 20 watt charger in their Neo box.

[David Imel]

That's true.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Damn, that's tough. So yeah, 20% for the most part of people, which is 10% less I'm trying to look into here. I have this chart that even the more I look at it, the More. I'm confused. So new installs 20% existing installs 25%, non recurring purchases 20% they're taking links to downloads. I'm not even going to attempt to, but so in some subscriptions and microtransactions, there's some other ways that this can be even lower. And the Google Play billing fee, if you're using their billing system, 5%. So a lot of things did go down. This is great. Somebody, I think Verge wrote this as Tim Sweeney just signed a deal to not be able to complain about Google for the next three years or something like that, which I thought was pretty funny.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's.

[Adam Molina]

It was till 2032 I think.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Is it?

[Adam Molina]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Rollout for this will be through the year. It seems like by June 30th this will affect UK and US. September 30th Australia, December 31st Korea and Japan. And then by September 30th, 2027 the rest of the world. I'll link the Verge article. If you're a developer and actually need a lot more information on this because there's like 20 different ways that this could change.

[David Imel]

The breakdown of this is reminiscent of when the judge said that Apple had to change their fees and then they did the malicious compliance thing and just made it so insanely confusing and probably worse for most people. And then the judge came back with the injunction and said there will not be another bite at the Apple, which was a banger. That almost kind of looks like what this is. But I don't think this is necessarily a malicious compliance thing. It's just Google trying to save their ass. Because both Google and Apple make a huge amount of money being the traffic stop for app stores.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yep.

[David Imel]

Like that is their a huge revenue driver for them. Apple notably has been like shifting to services over the last few years because they know that they're probably not going to be able to endlessly make money on the App Store anymore. So yeah, Google is also going to try to have to fill this gap. But it seems like they came to an agreement that was. Was good enough for everybody. I'm. I'm surprised that Tim Sweeney was still okay with 20, to be honest. Like I think that he was pretty

[Marques Brownlee]

hardcore about, you know.

[David Imel]

Absolutely not.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I think the biggest thing is that there's a easier way to download third party stores on your phone which then obviously you're outside store.

[David Imel]

Yeah. So good for developers if you can understand it.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's crazy that Fortnite's big enough that he could be like this thing that one of the largest companies in the world is making me mad about. So you don't get Fortnite. And that will make changes in the world.

[David Imel]

I mean, most game stores outside of Steam only really still exist because that company has like one giant game that everybody plays, you know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's true. Well, epic starts. It's like getting other big ones to come too.

[David Imel]

Yeah, yeah, but. Yeah, but Riot has like League of Legends and I don't even. Do they even have a store?

[Ellis Roven]

Store?

[David Imel]

They don't have a store.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No, it's just a client.

[David Imel]

Ubisoft has a client that is slowly dying a painful death. But they always have like, you know, they've got Call of. Is it they did they do color?

[Andrew Cunningham]

I've lost track of all.

[David Imel]

I don't even know.

[Andrew Cunningham]

But not real gamers here.

[David Imel]

Sorry, not real gamers. Yeah, I just played ODA too.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Jagex Old School runescape and runescape3.

[David Imel]

Is that a separate launcher for that?

[Andrew Cunningham]

They're just launchers, I don't think. Yeah, big news. Price increase. Old School Runescape. I know you're very upset about that. Market is.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

$15. Same as. Wow.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Worth it.

[David Imel]

Wait, same as. Well. How much is it?

[Andrew Cunningham]

15amonth.

[Marques Brownlee]

What? Damn.

[David Imel]

For Old School Runescape.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The game is a banger, man. It's been around for so long, it's still getting awesome updates from them. Have you released a whole new skill yet?

[Ellis Roven]

Pokemon. Have you ever had a dream?

[David Imel]

It's just Pocopia. Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

Is.

[David Imel]

Is like. It's if Animal Crossing and Minecraft like had a baby and then added Pokemon to it. The dialogue is very funny.

[Marques Brownlee]

I bought it and I regret it

[David Imel]

only because I realized I don't like games like that. However, the people are posting screenshots on like all over social media and is really freaking funny.

[Ellis Roven]

I'm obsessed.

[David Imel]

The AI, the Pokemon, I fruit. The Pokemon just like talking to each other and like weird going on. Is really funny. Kyogre has a southern accent for some reason. Magikarp says yo a lot.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Oh, this is like Animal Crossing Pokemon. Right.

[David Imel]

It's Animal Crossing with Pokemon. But everything is block based, so it's kind of minecrafty and you can make like minecarts and stuff.

[Marques Brownlee]

So it's.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It's literally like first person shooter.

[David Imel]

Yeah. With guns. Anyway, okay, dad to drop that I was funny the other day I saw. I was like trying it out and then on my switch I saw like Adam is playing Foukopia and I just texted him. Yeah, me too. And he said, wait, what? And I was like I was like, what are you talking about playing this game anyway? That is so.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Backyard baseball's coming out in July. I just had to get Marques back into the conversation here.

[Marques Brownlee]

Sorry. I'll get to all that once I'm done. Power washing various things. Simulator.

[David Imel]

Yeah. So yeah. Okay. Well with that, I think that we're going to do one more little break. We'll take it back with one more story that Marquez can rant about for a very long time. But first. Yeah, trivia dude.

[Ellis Roven]

Trivia dude. So we were talking about the honor phone to little robot boy, but we compared it. I don't know if this was on camera or off camera. People in the edit will know. Know we compared it to Wally.

[David Imel]

You're the one in the edit.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

People watching later will know more, so. Oh yeah, because I don't know if I'm keeping it. But anyway, we spoke about it and compared it to Wally.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Ellis Roven]

What does Wally stand for?

[Adam Molina]

1 point per correct letter.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Like politically. Politically, what does he stand for?

[David Imel]

Capitalism.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

Returning to nature.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I should have just wrote that in. Second Amendment joke.

[Marques Brownlee]

Wally St. I didn't even know Wally was an acronym. Wow. Well, I'll be guessing and we'll be guessing around here. We'll be right back.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yo, Harvey, Zoe group selfie.

[Marques Brownlee]

Oo, nice. New iPhone 17.

[David Imel]

Drew ski.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Let's do a triangle formation.

[Adam Molina]

I'm in front with a center stage front camera.

[Marques Brownlee]

Everyone fits in the shot.

[Andrew Cunningham]

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[Marques Brownlee]

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This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by stock. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. All right, welcome back. Something really big happened last night. By the time you listened to this, it was a couple nights ago. We recorded this on Wednesday. Tuesday night, a historic performance happened. And I was talking to you about this a little bit and David, I don't know if you've seen this, but I do think this is a great opportunity to explain something in tech terms here.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Okay?

[Marques Brownlee]

Okay. So, yeah, what happened last night was Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat. His name is Bam. His name is Bam Cool. Scored the second most points ever by a single player in a single NBA game.

[Ellis Roven]

Dang.

[Marques Brownlee]

By himself. He had 83 points last night.

[David Imel]

That's almost the entire score.

[Marques Brownlee]

Perfect.

[David Imel]

Wow.

[Marques Brownlee]

So that's crazy if you watch the game. What happened was I was sitting at the table last night and I opened up YouTube and there was a highlight reel at the top of my feed that said, Bam out of bio scores 31 points in the first quarter. And I was like, what? So I clicked it and I watched it and I was like, these are unbelievably. Like, he got super hot. And then I closed the iPad and I walked away and I went about the rest of my night. And then I got a notification on Slack like an hour later from Alex, who said, tune in to Bam adebayo. He's got 79 now. And so I go on YouTube TV and I'm like, I have to watch the Heat game. But I don't have the heat game on YouTube TV. It's just the Celtics game, Celtics, spurs, which is probably also an interesting game, but. And then I hover over it and it's players in red jerseys and I click on it and they have literally left that game to broadcast the last Few minutes of Bam out of bias, they said. Allowed to do this record. Yeah, all the time. They did this for Kobe's last game. So, yeah, they literally left the Celtics broadcast to watch BAM score 83.

[David Imel]

Damn.

[Marques Brownlee]

And so I watched the last two minutes of that game and it was hilarious to watch because everyone in the arena knew that they were trying to get the record for Bam. Oh. And everyone on the other team is hell bent on making sure Bam doesn't get the record against them. Cause that is like a star against your franchise. And so it was funny watching him just like catch the ball at half court, get triple teamed, and then just. Just try so hard to dribble with three people on him and chuck up a shot and get some free throws. It wasn't the prettiest 83 points you see. Okay. And it's also by Bam Adebayo, who is probably not the person you would expect to set the number two.

[Ellis Roven]

Marquez waltz. Bam.

[Marques Brownlee]

Wilt. Bam. Kobe Wilts. Thank you. So, yeah, Wilt Chamberlain in like the what, 70s, 60s, had 100 points in a game. It wasn't even on camera. There's many recollections of this and there's a newspaper article and there's a picture of Wilt with a hundred, but no one got to. Nobody alive today watched that.

[David Imel]

Right.

[Marques Brownlee]

But Bam out of bio in modern NBA most has ever seen. So in tech terms, trying to figure out how to explain how anomalous this was.

[Andrew Cunningham]

So you have to explain the type of player Bam is.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yes.

[Andrew Cunningham]

How many points that is in a game and how hard that is to do. And I guess that's pretty much the only two things you really need and

[Marques Brownlee]

how reasonably likely it will be to ever happen again. And the conclusion I came to was, and this is shout out to Adam for helping me figure this one out. This would be like if we turned around and said, ellis, what's your iPhone's battery percentage right now? And you still had the 12 mini. And Ellis goes, this is actually day four of me using the iPhone 12 mini. We're like, what do you mean it's day four? And he goes, yeah, I've got 12% left, but this is my 70th hour of using this phone. And we're like, how? How is that even possible, Ellis? And he's like, well, I woke up on the first day and I used my phone for a little bit and then I put it in airplane mode and I didn't really use it after that. So the first half a day was legit. And then the second three days were just him going, I want to just see how far I can make it at the expense of my own sanity and, like, daily quality of life. But I just want to see how long it'll go. And now there's a benchmark result saying that the iPhone 12 mini has the longest battery life of any phone recorded history. And we're like, that. That seems a little bit crazy. What's the asterisk? And then you go, oh, it's because he was so.

[David Imel]

What's the asterisk for the basketball guy?

[Marques Brownlee]

The asterisk for the basketball guy is. I watched that first quarter highlights, and then I watched the fourth quarter. The first quarter highlights are like, oh, my God, he's balling out. And the other team's like, yeah, he is balling out. But, you know, what can you do? You know, our two best defenders are sitting. And then you watch the fourth quarter, and it's like, everyone knows to stop him from getting the ball, but he gets the ball anyway. And he dribbles to half court and just chucks up a shot and he gets fouled. And he gets two free throws. Oh, and he attempted 43 free throws, which is the new most free throws ever attempted in an NBA game. In order to achieve that, he went 7 for 22 from 3. He shot less than 50% for the game. He still got 83 by himself, which is ridiculous. The next highest player on his team got, what, 12 or something? 18.

[David Imel]

But so did he just intentionally get himself fouled a ton of times?

[Marques Brownlee]

Yes. In the last quarter? Yes. And it was tough. It wasn't, like, bad to watch. Cause it was still entertaining as hell to watch this guy who everyone knows has a chance at the highest number to go try to get it. But now we know what it looks like when a player actually tries, even though they're up by 20. Even though he didn't have to stay in the game, coach was like, you know what? Go get your 80. And he did it. And now we got to see what it looks like. And there's an asterisk.

[David Imel]

But now, was the team intentionally giving him the ball a bunch to try to let him do this?

[Marques Brownlee]

So by the time he had 60 something at the end of the third quarter, everyone was trying to get him the ball every time. Okay, okay, okay. There's a really great video by. I've brought up Jimmy Highroller on this channel before. He does, like, basketball analysis videos for fun. Literally last week, he just did a video on will we ever see an NBA player get 100 again. Oh, and it's funny because if you go back and watch that video, he's like Wilt Chamberlain. Say what you want about it. Had the perfect set of circumstances to get 100. He was a dominant player. There was no answer for him by the other team. He also played every minute of every game for the entire season, which will never happen again. Oh, and if you are going off at a rate of 25 points per quarter, usually your team's crushing the other team and you just sit for the last quarter because you're up by too much. You don't have to play anyway. So you need it to be a close game for you to stay in the game long enough to actually keep putting up points.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Marques Brownlee]

So we're, you know, luka Doncic had 73. Joel Embiid had 70, Devin Booker had 70. We've had 70s.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Don't players.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. None of them are Knicks players. You know, it's not impossible. It might happen. Didn't Cat had 60 something. But as a Timberwolf. Yeah, as a Timberwolf. So, yeah, it's really hard to get those perfect sets of circumstances to ever happen again. And we just got a glimpse at like, what if they just leave him in? And it's like, just. I want to show you later the highlights of the last quarter where he dribbles to half court and three people sprint at him and he just throws the ball up and gets fouled and he gets two more free throws.

[David Imel]

What made it foul him? Because they like.

[Marques Brownlee]

Because they were like, you, you have 65 points. You are not scoring again. You are not scoring again. And the entire team's game plan is to force you to pass it to someone else. So we're gonna triple team you at half court to make you to pass to someone else. And instead of passing it, he shoots it.

[David Imel]

Okay.

[Marques Brownlee]

And he gets fouled. And he got 83.

[David Imel]

What was the final score?

[Marques Brownlee]

Final score was 150 to 129.

[Ellis Roven]

That's a crazy.

[Marques Brownlee]

Not a lot of defense.

[David Imel]

That's a crazy high score.

[Marques Brownlee]

It is.

[Adam Molina]

The other asterisk is that the Miami Heat are a real basketball team.

[David Imel]

Yeah.

[Adam Molina]

The team they were playing is the Washington Wizards, who the man, the coaching staff purposefully made the team as bad as they could be. So they could lose as many games as possible.

[David Imel]

Why?

[Adam Molina]

Because the more they lose this season,

[David Imel]

the better the get picks next season.

[Adam Molina]

Yes. The hope being that so literally the two best, best players on the Washington Wizards, Trae Young and Anthony. Oh, my God. Anthony Edwards. Hopkins, Dave Davis. Wow. Okay, that was crazy. The two best players on the Washington Wizards, Anthony Davis, Trae Young, are not playing basketball right now. Allegedly. They're like injured, but they're like, not.

[David Imel]

Do they get in trouble for doing stuff like this?

[Adam Molina]

Another team got in trouble and it was supposed to, like, you know, set the record straight, but yeah, so that's the other reason is like, they're not playing like a team that is like trying to win a basketball game.

[David Imel]

But they were still triple teaming him to try to stop him.

[Adam Molina]

That was. That was because at the end they were like, we don't want to be the people that lost like this, but

[David Imel]

like, yeah, so they were fine to lose. They just didn't want to lose.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Like, they didn't want to be in the record.

[Adam Molina]

The players do not want to lose. Right? The players are always going to go out there and do their best. So the coaching staff responded by only putting the worst possible players on the court.

[David Imel]

That sounds like a. Sounds like a movie where the coaches are trying to get them to lose, but they end up coming back through the finals.

[Marques Brownlee]

It happens sometimes. It does happen sometimes. Sometimes two tanking teams play each other and they're both trying to lose, but the players want to win, but the teams have to lose.

[Adam Molina]

Actually, Marques, it's even worse. Sometimes a tanking team plays the Philadelphia 76ers.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Wait, I have three questions. Yes. This one I should know. Points in basketball are only baskets, right? Assists don't count for points. That's a separate stat.

[David Imel]

Yes.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Cool. Easy one. Second question was, I have it up.

[Adam Molina]

How many assists do you think Bam Adebayo had that night? Meaning he passed the ball. You're still too high. He had three.

[David Imel]

Damn.

[Marques Brownlee]

Wow.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Who was the home team?

[Marques Brownlee]

Miami.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Okay.

[Marques Brownlee]

In Miami, this is cool when it

[Andrew Cunningham]

happens at an away team and the away crowd just gives up on trying to win and starts cheering for people on the other team team. So that would have been cool. Savage, third question. And this is an opinion for you guys, but went really good the last time we talked about basketball is Bam as a player. Compare him to a phone.

[Adam Molina]

First of all, I just want to say Bam is an Olympic gold medalist. Like, he's really good about Samsung.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Flip has a gold medal too, but

[Marques Brownlee]

he's an all star. But in terms of like, who you would expect to set this record, it's

[David Imel]

not so I wanted.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Because we did CJ.

[Marques Brownlee]

CJ McCollum.

[Andrew Cunningham]

He was the a CMF phone three. Grover loved that. So if Grover's listening, who is Bam As a phone.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's a good question. So if you're. We have to set like what we expect from the phone. If you're expecting what is the highest benchmark score from a phone, then that would be like.

[Andrew Cunningham]

He just pulled off a flip.

[Ellis Roven]

I was just gonna say pixel flip.

[Marques Brownlee]

If you're going by benchmark, the Pixel's fine. It's not bad. It's like one of the top five brands or whatever. But it would be like a pixel setting of the all time highest benchmark score.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It'd be like a Pixel 10 having 256 base storage.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah. Like a Tensor chip.

[Andrew Cunningham]

So he's a base pixel 10.

[Marques Brownlee]

It's a tensor chip, specifically setting a high benchmark score.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Okay, okay.

[Marques Brownlee]

You know, or like it's a good

[Ellis Roven]

phone and you would expect it to do well, but you wouldn't expect it to be this.

[David Imel]

Well, better than MediaTek.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah. It's not. It's one of the better ones, but

[Andrew Cunningham]

it's like good enough that it's kind of boring.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

Okay, so he's boring. Is he short?

[Marques Brownlee]

No, he's a. He's an All Star. He's just not like. His previous career high before this was less than half of 83. It was 41, which is pretty good. A lot of NBA players are All Stars and can get 41. A lot of players average 30. Nobody gets 83.

[David Imel]

What makes you an All Star?

[Marques Brownlee]

An All Star means you are one of the best. You know, seven or I guess it's like 14 best. 14 players voted in Toon.

[Ellis Roven]

Okay.

[Marques Brownlee]

You get votes for that year? For that year. Yeah. So yeah, he's a great player, but nobody thought.

[Ellis Roven]

Fun fact that Ellis found out that you know where Bam is from?

[Marques Brownlee]

New Jersey. Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Is he really?

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

And Bam Margera is from Pennsylvania.

[Marques Brownlee]

I don't know who that is.

[Andrew Cunningham]

You don't know who that is?

[Marques Brownlee]

Bam, who? You know, I've never.

[Ellis Roven]

Do you know Jackass, the old show on tv?

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, yeah. I know about the famous guys from the.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That he's the most famous from that. Him and Johnny Knoxville.

[Marques Brownlee]

And Johnny Knoxville.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Bam got his own TV show on MTV that lasted like quite a few seasons.

[Marques Brownlee]

Have I never heard of this?

[Andrew Cunningham]

And his brother is in the band cky.

[Ellis Roven]

I feel like if I show you a picture of him, you'd be like, oh, I've seen him.

[Marques Brownlee]

Wait, sorry. Bam.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The reason I probably have brain damage

[Marques Brownlee]

is because of J. Bam's search engine optimization is cooked now that.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, Bam jar just fell off.

[Marques Brownlee]

Off Marge.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, he fell

[Marques Brownlee]

Never seen this guy skateboarder.

[Andrew Cunningham]

He's like the best skater in the Jackass crew. Yeah, okay.

[Marques Brownlee]

I guess I've seen a lot of

[Ellis Roven]

Steve, I just want to say 14 year old me is so hype right now. We just covered basketball phones. Bam Margera. Like that kid is living.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah, it was a good time anyway. I hope now David, you, you, you can appreciate the insanity of what happened yesterday.

[David Imel]

That's crazy.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Are you gonna go watch the replay of the game?

[David Imel]

I might watch the highlights.

[Marques Brownlee]

I wanna show you the last three minutes without like a highlight cut. Just so you can appreciate. Just so you can see what it looks like when everyone in the building is like, do not let that man score. And he's like, I'm a score. It's so funny. It's so good.

[Adam Molina]

I just gotta say, when Adam and I walked in and saw that Marques was watching the somehow already uploaded RDC World 1, that's what I was gonna to say.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Adam Molina]

Mark Phillips, fast. Thank you. Thank you for, for commentating every great basketball moment. This is as soon as something happens in the NBA.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I'm like, what did he say last question. How many points would he have had if he had 100% free throw percentage? It was like over. He. He had like 43 attempts.

[Ellis Roven]

Seven.

[Marques Brownlee]

I can answer that. Yeah, he missed seven. So he would have hit seven.

[Andrew Cunningham]

90.

[Marques Brownlee]

Would had 90.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I think all basketball players should have 100% free throw percentage. Okay, bro, I like, that's my non basketball take.

[Marques Brownlee]

I like that take. It's called a free throw. It should be free points. But you'd be surprised how bad some of them are at free throws.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I am surprised.

[Marques Brownlee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Cunningham]

At all of them. What's your hockey comparison?

[Adam Molina]

All hockey players should make. I guess there's no like penalty shots in hockey.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No, there are, but it's against a goalie.

[Adam Molina]

So a basket is bigger than a. I mean a goal is bigger than a basket.

[David Imel]

Yeah, but the goalie tries to.

[Adam Molina]

The puck is smaller. Ergo, they should make every one one.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That'd be like if I think free throw had a one on one defending.

[Adam Molina]

It's not like, it's not like a giant volume knob comes up and blocks the entire goal.

[Ellis Roven]

Okay.

[Adam Molina]

It sits right.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The Super UI would be a great goalie.

[David Imel]

Oh my.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That's how you round this podcast out back. That's how we end. Right?

[David Imel]

I like your 38 notches, but just remove the numbers please, and also make it smaller.

[Marques Brownlee]

Incredible. All right.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Somehow Subaru was the biggest bad guy in this entire podcast.

[David Imel]

Well, Meta was competitive.

[Marques Brownlee]

It was close, though.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I know.

[Marques Brownlee]

What?

[Andrew Cunningham]

I said it was close.

[Adam Molina]

Matt, I know you're spying on millions of people without their consent, but my

[Andrew Cunningham]

Subaru volume now for three seconds.

[David Imel]

Okay, I need a marker.

[Adam Molina]

Why?

[Marques Brownlee]

Because it's trivia.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah, baby.

[David Imel]

Oh, other little last thing. And I guess we probably should have said this when the podcast when we started this episode is going to be dropping while we're. We're live at south by Southwest.

[Adam Molina]

Oh, my God, we forgot to mention it again.

[David Imel]

Yeah, so.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Well, it doesn't matter because if you're listening to this podcast, we're already. We're already on stage or on stage

[David Imel]

or we're leaving the stage.

[Adam Molina]

But what if you already have south by south by tickets and you just don't. Oh, right.

[David Imel]

You have to watch this.

[Marques Brownlee]

Le.

[Andrew Cunningham]

If you're not. By the time this comes out, we will be on stage.

[David Imel]

If you are watching us outside south by south and watching this episode at the same time, I salute you.

[Marques Brownlee]

Then I need you to yell, iceberg lettuce. Right now, I need you to scream, iceberg lettuce.

[Andrew Cunningham]

It will be part of the. I think Keith Lee is after us. And if they stay around for that. This is well over an hour long. So if you've made it this far. We're not on stage anymore.

[Marques Brownlee]

They fast forward it. Okay.

[Adam Molina]

Trivia.

[Marques Brownlee]

Whoa.

[Adam Molina]

I don't remember the question.

[Marques Brownlee]

Can I show you my board?

[David Imel]

I remember the question, dude.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I. I knew what it was.

[David Imel]

What was the camera company that.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Adam Molina]

Who's partnering with Honor on the robot phone camera.

[David Imel]

I almost said that. And then the answer.

[Adam Molina]

What's on the honor?

[Ellis Roven]

Your Honor.

[David Imel]

Your Honor.

[Adam Molina]

Your Honor.

[Marques Brownlee]

I remember being in the briefing and hearing that and being like another legacy down the drain.

[David Imel]

The camera companies going with the phone companies is the new.

[Marques Brownlee]

The car company first Leica and Hasselblad.

[Adam Molina]

Yeah.

[David Imel]

It used to be McLaren and. And Porsche. Porsche.

[Marques Brownlee]

However you say it now.

[Adam Molina]

Dragon Ball Z. Flip Emir. Everyone got it right. The answer is Ari.

[David Imel]

Ari.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I knew it first, by the way. Just saying.

[Ellis Roven]

I'm sure you did.

[David Imel]

We're all very proud of Panasonic. Had an Ari Luck collaboration after that.

[Ellis Roven]

Correct answer the score. Marquez with 17, Andrew with 19, David with 21.

[David Imel]

Oh, I can drink.

[Ellis Roven]

Nice. But don't as you sip your.

[Andrew Cunningham]

That is alcoholic.

[Ellis Roven]

His colored lemon. The Honor robot phone. We've compared it to Wall E, but what does wall E stand for? That is the question. One point per correct word.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Wow.

[Marques Brownlee]

I'm gonna get really far behind now.

[Ellis Roven]

Maybe, maybe not.

[Adam Molina]

What a Lovable little Ellis.

[David Imel]

Wow, that was good.

[Ellis Roven]

How long have you been holding that in?

[Adam Molina]

Just now. It just came to me.

[Marques Brownlee]

Ooh.

[Ellis Roven]

Off the top.

[Adam Molina]

Thank you.

[Marques Brownlee]

Amazing.

[Adam Molina]

I'm really good at acronyms. Why are Legos like eggs?

[Andrew Cunningham]

They hurt to step on.

[Ellis Roven]

Nice.

[Marques Brownlee]

All right, Supperman, Reed, what do you got?

[Ellis Roven]

All right, who wants to go first? All right.

[David Imel]

I wrote walking. I guess it doesn't walk, it roll.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I was gonna say you. It does have to contradict yourself in your. I know.

[David Imel]

Walking. Autonomous. Wow. Lovable, legless.

[Marques Brownlee]

E. Nice. No points for David. Andrew, what'd you say?

[Andrew Cunningham]

I wrote we all enjoy, but we W, A, L, L, E. Enjoy.

[Ellis Roven]

Clever, but no, that's clever.

[Marques Brownlee]

Glad nobody's getting points. I wrote what? And Lovable little engineer. But is it and is the and right?

[Ellis Roven]

It is not right.

[Marques Brownlee]

Damn. I hedged my bet there.

[Ellis Roven]

The correct answer is waste allocation load lifter.

[David Imel]

Earth class.

[Marques Brownlee]

Earth class.

[Ellis Roven]

It's in the movie.

[David Imel]

Wait, yeah, I know, but I haven't

[Andrew Cunningham]

seen it, so it's really wallach Child.

[Marques Brownlee]

Earth class.

[Ellis Roven]

Well, it's Earth dash class.

[David Imel]

It's like Earth.

[Andrew Cunningham]

We just get to make words one word. By putting a dash.

[Marques Brownlee]

I was gonna give it to.

[Ellis Roven]

You just said Earth. And I would have.

[David Imel]

I do remember that he was a trash compactor, so. Waste allocating.

[Ellis Roven]

Waste allocation. Load lifter.

[David Imel]

Load lifter.

[Ellis Roven]

Earth class. Next time you guys are at bar trivia, you're gonna kill this.

[Marques Brownlee]

What was the. I already forgot one. Eva. Is that A, E? Is she. Is that also.

[Ellis Roven]

It's also one. I forgot what. What it is though.

[Marques Brownlee]

I'm going to find out right now because it's going to bother me.

[David Imel]

Wally kind of talks like.

[Marques Brownlee]

Like ET EVE is extraterrestrial vegetation evaluator.

[Ellis Roven]

There it is.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Oh, yeah. Cuz she finds the little flower, right?

[Ellis Roven]

I thought she found Apple.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Sorry, spoilers.

[Marques Brownlee]

Vegetation for the bible of some kind.

[David Imel]

Wally is Microsoft and Eve is Apple.

[Ellis Roven]

Nice.

[David Imel]

Cuz she's all. She's all like smooth and curved and he's all like blocky.

[Adam Molina]

Too late. I have already depicted you as the frumpy Wally robot and myself as the sleek EVE bot.

[Marques Brownlee]

Anyway, that's. That's been it for this week. We obviously went full circle. I. If any NBA players are listening to this, please try to beat 83 against tanking teams all year. It's going to be so fun to watch.

[Adam Molina]

And come on the podcast.

[Marques Brownlee]

And also, yeah, come on on the podcast.

[Adam Molina]

Let's talk ball.

[Andrew Cunningham]

If. If you break the record, you can come on the podcast.

[Adam Molina]

No, you can come on the podcast.

[Marques Brownlee]

Either way.

[David Imel]

You want Bam to come on the podcast?

[Marques Brownlee]

Podcast, Sure.

[Andrew Cunningham]

I would love that.

[David Imel]

What about. What if we had Bam and the guy that they traded that? Everyone's like, whoa, do it.

[Adam Molina]

Wait, there's an asterisk that. We do not. We do not have a green room here at Waveform Studios.

[Andrew Cunningham]

We. This studio could probably barely hold someone who's over 65. His Titan.

[Adam Molina]

Dude, I'm right here, and I'm doing fine.

[David Imel]

Yeah, I'm the shortest one on this freaking podcast.

[Adam Molina]

David's 67.

[David Imel]

I'm 67.

[Marques Brownlee]

No.

[Andrew Cunningham]

No.

[Marques Brownlee]

See any other game? All right, thanks for watching. Thanks for joining us. Maybe at the live show at south by Southwest. If not, we'll see you back for a regularly scheduled programming. See you later. Peace.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Waveform and Spruce by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnering with Vox Media Podcast Network. And True Outro Music was created by Vain. Still Bingo.

[Marques Brownlee]

I can't find an uncut fourth quarter. It's all, like, cut highlight reels.