
The crew chats Slate truck, Steam Machine, and the new Meta Glasses!
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Marques Brownlee
We've all been there.
David Imel
You pop into the shop for five minutes and all of a sudden you've
Marques Brownlee
forgotten where you parked.
David Imel
Car. Car.
Marques Brownlee
Unfortunately, that lost feeling is what it's
David Imel
like trying to manage your policy with other insurers here.
Ellis Roman
Car.
David Imel
Come out, come out, wherever you are, please. With Geico, you can use the app
Marques Brownlee
to easily manage all your policies in one place.
David Imel
Did this parking lot have a waterfall? I think you've wandered too far, mate.
Marques Brownlee
It feels good to find what you're looking for.
Andrew Cunningham
It feels good to Geico.
David Imel
Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, and more. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com. that's o d o o dot com. Yeah. You know that vanilla is actually one of the more complex flavors. There's like 30 something flavor things that go into vanilla.
Marques Brownlee
That sounds like something vanilla would say.
Andrew Cunningham
Big vanilla.
Adam Alina
Big vanilla wants you to believe.
Marques Brownlee
Yo, what's up, people of the Internet? Welcome back. Another episode of the Waveform podcast.
Ellis Roman
We're your hosts.
Marques Brownlee
I'm Marques.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm Andrew.
David Imel
And I'm David.
Marques Brownlee
This week we've got a.
Andrew Cunningham
Everyone back.
Marques Brownlee
Oh yeah, everyone's back.
Andrew Cunningham
Let's go, everyone.
Marques Brownlee
Everyone is actually officially here. This is back to your regular regularly scheduled programming. For real? For real. No cap on God. Actually, our last episode, in case you missed it, was a bonus episode where we explained tech. Sorry, we explained the NBA in tech terms.
David Imel
Yeah, I really schooled these guys.
Marques Brownlee
But also kind of, for some people, explain tech in NBA terms. If you're like, if you're up on ball and you wanted to know more about tech.
David Imel
That's right.
Ellis Roman
By the end of it, we were just talking ball.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, there's a great comment that's like by the end of this video, I will either know about basketball or know nothing about technology.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, it was great. I highly suggest you check it out if you haven't already. But now we're back to regularly scheduled programming, which means we can talk all the news. The Steam machine got a launch and a price and we got a lot to say. About that. Also, meta launching cheaper sunglasses without the rebrand branding. And we got our first look at the $25,000 slate truck, which I have many thoughts on. So I also got to drive it, by the way, and the nothing phone, 4B. So, yeah, we'll talk about it all. But first, have you subscribed? See what I did there? Usually you expect me to go into the. Did you even test it? But I just wanted to make sure everyone subscribed.
Andrew Cunningham
If your subscribe button's red, right, what's it start out as? You should test it and see what happens.
Marques Brownlee
It changes color so much on mobile, it might not even have a color anymore.
David Imel
It's like rainbow.
Marques Brownlee
Sometimes I think it might be black.
Andrew Cunningham
Now, we didn't test this CTA out very well.
Marques Brownlee
By the way, I hate the new mobile app. Not showing like counts anymore. I just want to say I hate it. I got it. Now it's on my phone. We had this conversation. It's hit my phone. I hate it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe to the Waveform podcast. We appreciate that. Okay.
Andrew Cunningham
Now, did they even test this?
Marques Brownlee
Did you even test this?
Andrew Cunningham
I've got this one. Okay. In fact, I am this one.
Ellis Roman
Oh.
Andrew Cunningham
Because last week I exclaimed from the rooftops that Android 17 is the best if they ever. Because it got rid of. At a glance, it was gone already.
David Imel
You really doubled down on this, too. You said, believe me, I would now.
Andrew Cunningham
Not just that. Tested this for a week, next morning or Friday morning. Rufus goes, the pod was up for 20 minutes. And Rufus goes, there's a comment that says it was out in 16. I was like, no, it's not. I didn't even turn around, and then I saw another one, and I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. I remember we talked about this a while ago in one of the 16 betas that they were testing.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
And I didn't download the beta, but I was like, it's gonna come. And I guess I just never looked again. And when I was looking through things in 17, that little was just sitting there looking at me, and I was like, can I get rid of you? And I could. And I assumed it was 17. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I will live in shame. We didn't change the name of the episode.
Marques Brownlee
You still can get rid of it.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, for sure. Yes. But, yeah, I still like 17 so far, even though most of it is just getting rid of all the stuff they've screwed up in the past and making some of the colors a little nicer.
David Imel
But there's A gaming virtual touchscreen and a bubble bar.
Andrew Cunningham
And a bubble bar.
Marques Brownlee
Pretty nice. The bubble bar. My Android 17 top 5 features video will be live by the time this podcast goes up. So you'll see all of my thoughts. It is actually kind of confusing researching and going through the Android 17 features because some of it is Android 17 features, some of it is June Pixel drop features that also make it to Android 16. So in the research, you have to be very careful about what stuff is new to the June Pixel drop that's also going to 16 versus what's new specifically to 17. And there's also new stuff coming to 17 that's not here yet that they talked about at I o like Rambler and the create my widget with natural language and all that other stuff.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
But anyway, 17 is out if you have a pixel and you want to download it now.
David Imel
So go check it out.
Marques Brownlee
All right. Okay. Where should we start? Slate truck feels like a good place to jump in.
Andrew Cunningham
Let's do it.
Marques Brownlee
$25,000 pixel truck, less Slate truck.
Andrew Cunningham
We're talking about a lot of prices. Lots of prices this episode.
David Imel
Yeah, lots of prices.
Andrew Cunningham
Actually, almost everything has to do with prices.
Marques Brownlee
So this one is weirdly, actually also kind of polarizing. So I'll jump into what the Slate truck is and then what's polarizing about it. So the Slate truck, the idea of it is it's this ultra modular electric mini pickup truck type of thing where it comes as an ultra stripped down super, super basic, like no power windows, no speakers, just basic truck cabin. And then you can add on the modules that you want to build it up to exactly how well equipped you want it to be. So the starting price of the blank slate, pun intended, is just south of $25,000 US that'll get you rear wheel drive, 65 kilowatt hour battery, 180ish horsepower, and so it'll do zero to 60 in like eight seconds or something and then get up to 90 miles an hour. I think it'll haul about 1500 to 2000 pounds. It'll tow 2000 pounds and it has a five foot bed. Five foot long anyway. But it's narrower because it's a small truck.
David Imel
Who can sleep in a five foot bed? Damn.
Marques Brownlee
Well, it's definitely not a bed bed,
Ellis Roman
David, you once slept in a coffin.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, true. No way longer. It's a five foot long truck bed. It's a two seater at the front and it has a lockable front trunk. It's slate gray, no paint. You can wrap it with vinyl instead. If you want to change the color. Steel wheels, 17 inch wheels, fixed suspension. I got to drive it. It was fairly firm, but overall pretty compliant. We did some rougher roads and it was going over bigger bumps and it was fine. So, yeah, it was this like zippy little truck that is extremely minimally equipped and then tons and tons and tons of optional accessories that I haven't seen the price of all of them yet. But I've started to see prices of some of these accessories coming out. So it's this really basic blank slate. One of the craziest things is you can actually attach this like roll cage to the back and add seats to the back to create a five seater
Andrew Cunningham
suv like a Bronco.
Marques Brownlee
And you can do it like after you buy it diy, like you can buy it as a pickup truck and then DIY bolt this thing.
Andrew Cunningham
I love the term diy. I love this throw for like my kids in the back seat. It is definitely there and ready.
Marques Brownlee
It's a concept. It's an. It's an interesting concept.
Andrew Cunningham
I think about Slate truck this morning and I'm sure someone's made this analogy already, but it kind of makes me think of the spirit airlines of EVs.
Marques Brownlee
Because basic economy.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
David Imel
You're just like, rip.
Andrew Cunningham
Whoa. This ticket is so cheap. I'm basically losing money if I don't take it. It's like, I want to bring one. I want to bring my backpack. Upcharge. I want to have a drink upcharge. I want, I want a radio in my truck. Upcharge. It's just like, really? Yeah. Seems so cheap off the Rift. And then you're like, well, here's all the things I basically need to be comfortable on this flight.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
And it, it pops up. It's not a bad thing. Sometimes that is the best way to go.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. When you don't need the upcharge stuff. So that's what's, that's what's been polarizing about this vehicle. I'll just jump right into it. There's been a lot of commentary about it online. We published the autofocus video. All the stuff in it. People are saying both this is too expensive and this is too cheap. Too cheap. Like cheaper than expected and more expensive than expected. Both sides are coming out.
Andrew Cunningham
Well.
David Imel
It doesn't have RAM in it, so it can't be that expensive.
Marques Brownlee
So the side that's saying it's $25,000. It's too expensive. It should have been 20,000 are mostly people looking at roughly equivalently priced gas trucks. Like if you go find the cheapest Ford Maverick for example, Starting somewhere under $30,000, it has a ton of these features included. Like the lining of the truck bed and the power windows and the speakers and the screen and the radio, all this stuff that's included.
Ellis Roman
Airbags.
Marques Brownlee
That is fair. Okay, to be clear, the slate truck bolt on airbags, the blank slate is five star safety rated estimated. They're planning on actually finishing the testing but they're saying it's going to be. Well, that's how this works before you get to production.
David Imel
And this is a five star podcast.
Marques Brownlee
So it is supposed to be a five star rated safety truck and it has all of the things required by law. Like you actually have to have a backup camera required by law for new vehicles in the US So it does have on that tiny little screen a reverse camera.
David Imel
That's cool.
Marques Brownlee
So obviously like things like airbags and the center console, all that stuff obviously having.
Andrew Cunningham
This is like the base, like we talk about cars base. This is like literally the base of it. Which is funny. But in their little video they posted, I think it was this morning, it's showing everything that comes with it normal. And it's really funny watching them have to really pull for like what's on here. Like locking frunk. You said that before. It's like.
David Imel
Yeah, I hope it locks.
Andrew Cunningham
There's one thing here. Cup holders as like a feature in this.
Marques Brownlee
Think about the locking front half of the EVs that come out today don't have a frunk at all.
Andrew Cunningham
That's.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, it's not nothing, but it's mostly.
Andrew Cunningham
No, I'm not saying it's not nothing. It's just funny that it locks. Also, cup holders is on here twice.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Wait, you're right. Two USB C ports.
Marques Brownlee
Yep.
Andrew Cunningham
Charger. Yeah. I don't. What's the latch system?
Marques Brownlee
The latch system is basically the rail system that lets you add things.
Andrew Cunningham
I thought. I just meant it had a latch on the back.
Marques Brownlee
Oh no.
David Imel
Plywood sized bed.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Well, the thing is it's generally a piece of plywood's 4x8 and the. The thing is is it would have to be open, which is fine. That happens for some people or stacked up. The confusing thing is the wheelbase between the bed is like 42 inches and a general piece of plywood is 48 inches wide. So it would have. They made the top of the wheel well flat so it could sit on that. But then it's like teetering. I don't know. It's Kind of weird. It kind of holds plywood.
Ellis Roman
Okay.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. So, yeah, it's got the basic stuff. And a lot of people are saying, well, I can get a Maverick and it'll have all that stuff, plus all the basics like speakers, et cetera, for 28,000, $29,000 back row of seats. And they are correct about that.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
But on the other hand, there are people saying, wow, $25,000. That makes this the cheapest new truck in the US and it's the electric one. That's kind of crazy. All the most expensive vehicles are electric because the battery is the most expensive part. You'd expect the cheapest truck in the US to be a gas truck, but they've stripped out all this extra stuff, and then you can add back exactly what you need to make it functional to you. So, yes, if you're thinking I would get the Maverick because I need speakers, power windows, truck bed lining, all this other stuff, then you might actually be cross shopping those things. But a lot of people imagine, like someone's first EV for their kid, like a fleet truck where they're just bringing around lawnmowers or random equipment and don't really need all the luxury electric features you see in a lot of bells and whistles. They might not need to buy power windows and all this other stuff. So it is more economically viable to get the cheaper thing. So I see both sides of it. I'm very interested. I think it's gonna be fascinating to see the prices for the modules and the vinyl and the customizations and how much it costs to build the slate truck that you want.
Andrew Cunningham
This screams to me like fleet of local pool cleaners or local pest control people. Like, things where, like, it probably would be beneficial to put a bunch of chemicals in a bed outside. Potentially long things that have to hang out the back of the truck. Hoses. Yeah. But like, as long as you have ac, they probably have like headphones or something. Like, get a bunch of those and like throw it in there and then get a little wrap on it. That says pool guys.
Marques Brownlee
Exactly. Get the vinyl wrap. Yeah. Most of the time is not being spent in the truck. The truck is just going from location
Andrew Cunningham
to location, and every single morning you park it at the shop and plug it in. And it starts every morning with a full tank of gas.
Marques Brownlee
The 65 kilowatt hour battery. Getting 205 miles is actually almost 40 more miles than they originally were promising. They're going to be somewhere like 160 miles of range or something.
David Imel
So 200 plus but now they're not offering the 240.
Marques Brownlee
So they're all now down to one drivetrain option.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
There's talks of like maybe an all wheel drive version of the future. They wouldn't tell me that that's real. So it's just this one. Just real wheel drive, 200 miles range, and it's actually pretty zippy, I'm not going to lie.
David Imel
Really?
Marques Brownlee
I mean, you don't think about like 0 to 60 in 8 point seconds as a quote, fast vehicle. But it's electric, it's all the torque all the time. And so you kind of zip around like a golf cart. It's fine.
David Imel
I think five miles seems kind of low.
Marques Brownlee
It is. It's also the cheapest truck in America, so it is like, okay, how much are you gonna drive if you're doing the fleet thing? Are you driving around a neighborhood?
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Do you put 200 miles on it in a day? Probably not.
David Imel
This makes sense for like my dad, who's like a. He's like a carpenter and. Because he only really does work, like locally. Locally, yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, exactly.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
You're not road tripping with this.
Marques Brownlee
No.
Andrew Cunningham
And like 200 miles in a day is a pretty solid amount.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
I think most Europeans would be like, you guys are insane if you think you're trying to.
David Imel
You drove across the country.
Ellis Roman
Most Europeans are like, what the hell is a mile?
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
What's a truck?
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
300 kilometers.
David Imel
Lots of questions for these people.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm interested in the. So like, everyone's like, they did it. They did 250 or $25,000.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
There's even a. They're like responding to it. There's a comment in YouTube that said massive respect for the team for the base price. They said, we said it, we meant it. Mh. It's a something. I'm intrigued to see where it goes because they haven't fully built the factory out to produce these yet. Right.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
So we're a while away from seeing them.
David Imel
Correct is what I was.
Andrew Cunningham
Prices are fluctuating all the time.
David Imel
The rivan has changed. Like before that came out, the price changed like three times.
Andrew Cunningham
It changed and they had. And they tried to make everyone with reservations pay the new price and they got a ton of backlash and had to do that. So, like, this has the interesting thought though of can they keep the base 25 even if prices change, but then change the prices to all of the accessories in there and make up some margins on that because.
David Imel
Yeah, I'm.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm still super intrigued how many people are going to buy this at 25 base space? And how many people are going to buy this at 30 to 40 with.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Or more things? They basically consider necessity to be fair.
David Imel
Like building out a car that has all the necessities, but it gets to be spec'd exactly how you want it. It gets to look exactly how you want. Like it's the LEGO of trucks. I think that's kind of cool.
Andrew Cunningham
Projector.
David Imel
Yeah, projector.
Ellis Roman
I just feel like a lot of people like David's dad are gonna just order this base thing. Like, I know people that have small businesses stuff. They're like, I don't care about.
David Imel
It has power windows or my dad's truck still has can crank.
Ellis Roman
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
They drive around and build.
Ellis Roman
And this is the cheapest truck in America.
Marques Brownlee
Right.
Andrew Cunningham
Even more so. They don't have to care. They don't have to care for their employees who are all Dr. Also. It's like, that's true. Not my problem.
David Imel
I don't need ac.
Andrew Cunningham
Play it. Play the radio off your phone.
David Imel
But it does come with ac.
Marques Brownlee
It does have ac, which is. Yeah, I do think that's a. It's a really good point that they don't have a finished factory. These are not actively being manufactured yet. So this is all technically TBD, which always makes me nervous with EVs every time. But they're saying they're going to ship it this year. So in a couple months in quarter four, they want to ship.
Andrew Cunningham
They don't have a factory.
Marques Brownlee
Well, they have a factory that's almost. They have a factory that has built the trucks that I've seen and driven. But these are like, like finishing prototyping, like almost done. And when they start to roll them off in quarter four, that'll be like final.
David Imel
We'll see.
Marques Brownlee
So they're tooling, they're finishing building the factory, and they have the space. They just need to get over that hump and actually ship the thing. So that's the tbd. That's the big asterisk. There is a tweet here from Speed Sport Life, someone who's in the maker of the slate truck who has seen basically some of the prices of the modules. So the wraps, for example, they start at $500 for a full vinyl wrap of certain, like, base colors. They'll go up to more expensive, like $1,500, $1,600 for a wrap. But that is just materials. You do the installation yourself.
Andrew Cunningham
That's why we were trying to figure out why it felt cheap.
Marques Brownlee
So then I go to the next page. There are the integrated speakers. So you can get the front left and front right for 150 and you can get the center channel for 250 more.
David Imel
So there are no speakers?
Marques Brownlee
There are no speakers by default. So you know, 200 bucks. I mean that's. Yeah, that's a big expensive Bluetooth speaker. I guess that's about in line.
Ellis Roman
Does the wrap come with like a dbrand kind of thing that you put over the car and just instantly rip out squeegee.
Marques Brownlee
Squeegee out it is. Obviously it'll be pre cut. I imagine the hard part is actually installing it. Like just getting it off the paper and like sticking it on the truck is. I mean you can give it to a professional or you can do it yourself. Depends on how good of a job you want it to be. Yeah, it's a big task if you
Andrew Cunningham
have to bring it to a professional already. I would just bring it to a professional and get the wrap there and not deal with.
Marques Brownlee
Well, they're going to charge you for the materials that they buy and the labor. Yeah, but so if you provide the materials, that's. That's way less that you're paying.
Andrew Cunningham
I don't know the breakdown of what's materials versus labor. But I always. I assumed a wrap place most of that was labor.
Marques Brownlee
Probably most of it is labor. But you still do they go out and acquire still a middleman materials for you. So they have to upcharge you for that as well.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
So yeah, it's at least cheaper to. But I imagine a lot of people will try to do it themselves here. And yeah, there's also a page here for the truck lining. You can get a more durable, versatile truck lining. $750 if you plan on what is a lining.
Andrew Cunningham
It's like bed liner.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, bed liner. One bed boss. Structural bed floor with integrated tie downs. Installs without drilling. Five feet by five feet.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, that's what I want my tie downs to be installed without drilling.
Marques Brownlee
I think the bed. The bed liner is installed without drilling. And then you tie things down to
Andrew Cunningham
the bed liner that's installed without drilling.
Marques Brownlee
Yep. Yeah, that sounds scary.
Andrew Cunningham
I know I'm just missing something but that latches.
Marques Brownlee
There are latches.
Adam Alina
Can I ask a question about this truck that I. I'm confused about and
Andrew Cunningham
I would go to Europe for two weeks and now we hate trucks.
David Imel
Look has always hated trucks.
Adam Alina
I also want to say when I was in Wales, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in My life. Shocking amount of trucks. I had always heard that it was very hard to get. And they. None of them had like F150 sized beds, but they had crew cabs and were sizable vehicles. And I was like, I was always told that these were not here and there they were. Thank you, Wales. How do you wire this truck in a factory? That's what I'm really confused about. For example. So there's like. I understand the idea of power windows optional, right? Because those are motors that you have to put in and install. That's great. But is the wiring already going through the whole system or. It's the same thing with the speakers. It's like, I understand in theory that you could put in and take out speakers, but does the. Is there an amp? Are they active speakers? The amp is in the speakers and then you just run power to them. How does the audio signal get. Is it wireless? And it's like, yeah, part of it makes me wonder, like if there are things in this car that are actually cheaper for them to put in because they have to already run the wiring all through the vehicle in the factory or. There's obviously something I'm missing here.
Marques Brownlee
I was told. So I was told that there are pins and there are. There is wiring, pre existing wiring for power and data in certain places. So for example, one of the speakers is an. It's a small like JBL Bluetooth speaker.
Adam Alina
Right. I saw.
Marques Brownlee
And all it needs is power. So you buy. It's already wired for power to the pins and if you get that accessory, you pop it onto that pin and then everything else for the speaker is in that speaker that you bought.
Andrew Cunningham
Interesting.
Marques Brownlee
I think some other accessories are requiring pins that are again, in certain locations that have data and power running to them already.
Adam Alina
Interesting.
Marques Brownlee
There is no screen option. There's just like this screen behind the steering wheel, which is your speed, your range and your odometer and basic stuff, your reverse camera. And so they don't have wiring for display or anything else of that sort. You just get a mount for either a phone or an iPad.
Adam Alina
Pricing this thing from the business's perspective must have been such an interesting challenge because you don't want to make the blank slate too expensive. But at the same time, it does feel like at a certain point you may have to charge people for things that they won't use, I. E. The wire running through the frame. And I don't know how expensive it is to run wiring through a car frame. That could be like a non factor,
Marques Brownlee
I think in mass the goal, I mean they've preached about how many pre orders they have and how much volume they want to do. I think the goal is likely just that the bigger your scale, the lower the cost of that incremental wiring and so you can still sell something cheaper.
David Imel
If they don't use having one SKU and making a zillion of them is always cheaper. Well, not always, but generally cheaper than having multiple SKUs and making less of each of them.
Adam Alina
So shout out to the industrial engineers at Slate because these are tricky, interesting thinky problems that would make my brain hurt.
Marques Brownlee
And the. The final product.
Andrew Cunningham
So good to have you back.
Marques Brownlee
The final product I think is. Is pretty cool. Do you guys think the aesthetics are. Are.
Andrew Cunningham
I like it.
Marques Brownlee
I think they're kind of nice. Yeah, there are definitely people who think it's ugly as well.
David Imel
I like the bronco looking one but
Marques Brownlee
I think it looks kind of.
Andrew Cunningham
I think some of the, yeah, the like the top off back seats, like old bronco roll cage kind of thing is sick. I think this is also cool because like there are lots of people who don't want a truck as their daily driver but want something with a bed. Like yeah, my brother in law has like a little a 1992 F150 that like only half the gas tank fills up and that's because like once every month he needs to like like pick some crap up and like move it around and like it just rots pretty much. So like having something that's really cheap as a base and who cares? Like that might be the thing I go pick up that crap on Facebook Marketplace with. Or yeah, get the dryer from Home Depot and bring it home.
David Imel
Like it's obviously bigger than like a Japanese K key truck however, but at least it's smaller than like a Rivian, you know what I mean?
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. It's funny is the length of the bed is the same as the Rivian. So it's like a five foot long but it is narrower because the truck is narrower.
Ellis Roman
You know what's funny about this? When they launched it or not launched because it hasn't launched it. When they announced it, I was super excited for it. And then the more time that went by I was like, I don't know. Like I don't know if they're gonna be able to hit the price. I don't know. We still don't know. But now that it's like a thing you went and you saw the car, I feel like they might do it.
Marques Brownlee
They had that price up there in like, shiny numbers. They put lights on that price. They were like, it is definitely 25.
David Imel
We've seen that.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah. I was gonna say, I like. Like trying not to be biased. I think it's really sick.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
I mean, I'm not gonna go spend $25,000 on a secondary car. I ain't that kind of guy.
David Imel
But I already got an R2 on order.
Andrew Cunningham
Right. Like, I think this is really cool.
David Imel
40,000.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm going to be extremely skeptical of this because how many trucks have we seen that are coming out end of this year for the last five years?
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. I feel like there's. There's, like, stages of how close to release are you? And we've seen lots and lots and lots of cool ideas. Everyone from Faraday Future to the Tello truck to the. To this have all gotten to the stage of showing it to us and even letting us drive it, and that's it. They never actually ship one and sell one. So I am. My fingers are crossed. I like the idea. I'm rooting for it, just like I'm rooting for a lot of the others. But it is true that we've seen many get this far and not make it.
David Imel
Having been through the 13 years of drama with my Street Lit Manifesto album
Andrew Cunningham
getting delayed, I didn't bring it up this time.
David Imel
These things are not out until they're out, so we'll see.
Marques Brownlee
Paperware until shipped.
Andrew Cunningham
Exactly.
Adam Alina
But didn't it come halfway out?
David Imel
Came halfway out yesterday.
Marques Brownlee
Halfway out.
Andrew Cunningham
I thought it was only two songs.
David Imel
It's two more songs. They released three demos a year ago. They mixed the demos finally, and then they released two more songs. So now there are five songs out, but it's half of the album and it's half.
Adam Alina
So it's not out unless it's out.
David Imel
It's not out until the whole album.
Marques Brownlee
So that's more out than like, the roadster. It's like.
David Imel
Yeah, for sure.
Marques Brownlee
It's more out than not for sure.
David Imel
Yes.
Marques Brownlee
But it's not full.
David Imel
And they're bangers, to be clear only.
Marques Brownlee
Which gives you hope that the rest will be good.
David Imel
The rest is gonna be a grace from God.
Marques Brownlee
Okay.
David Imel
I guarantee you.
Andrew Cunningham
Wow.
Marques Brownlee
It's like playing. I don't know if there's a good analogy.
Adam Alina
It's like if the roadster's seat came
Marques Brownlee
out and you could buy it.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Sit in it.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
David Imel
More than the seat, I would say.
Andrew Cunningham
Didn't you say there's all four wheels
David Imel
the car needs to work in order to drive it? Whereas half of Australia manifesto album is still part of.
Ellis Roman
Okay.
Marques Brownlee
It'd be like. It would be like if the roadster came out with no battery. It only had like a fraction of the battery.
David Imel
Yes.
Marques Brownlee
And one of the motors worked.
Andrew Cunningham
Isn't that okay?
David Imel
That's a good analogy.
Adam Alina
And it could only turn right.
David Imel
Yes. So I feel right now it's still great. I'm still happy.
Ellis Roman
Yeah.
David Imel
But it's not out until it's fully out.
Marques Brownlee
Because it's blending albums in tech terms, in cartoons.
David Imel
It's been delayed for 13 years.
Andrew Cunningham
Marquez, isn't there a conspiracy that it's a. A we child going to be on the GTA 6 radio? So it can't come out till GTA 6. Exactly.
David Imel
It won't be out to November. Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
That is.
Andrew Cunningham
Speaking of GTA.
David Imel
Speaking of GTA, we got a price. Yeah, $80, which is less there. There have been a lot of bets, by the way, but whether or not GTA would be over $100 because they've been working on it for so long that. Yeah, I'm sorry. If you're a gamer, you cannot afford this. I'm sorry. Anyway, there's a deluxe edition that's $100.
Marques Brownlee
Okay.
Andrew Cunningham
Whether.
David Imel
Well, I assume it just comes with extra digital assets or something.
Andrew Cunningham
It delays it 6.
Marques Brownlee
It delays purchases, microtransactions.
David Imel
I'm sure there will still be DLC on top of the deluxe edition because they gotta juice it. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, they say that it is now coming out in November if you buy the gta. Yeah, gta.
Andrew Cunningham
Wow.
Ellis Roman
Yeah, they say, apparently according to this Reddit comment. So take it as you will. There's a bunch of in game stores and vehicle mod mod shops that are locked unless you have the ultimate.
David Imel
That is so dumb.
Marques Brownlee
Come on, it's gta. The whole point is.
David Imel
Okay, so tired.
Andrew Cunningham
Wait, a comment.
Adam Alina
So I'm not sure if it was
Andrew Cunningham
real GTA you could steal from gta.
David Imel
Yeah, that's right.
Andrew Cunningham
Wait, just hold the gun up to dlc. That's crazy.
David Imel
This is not too different from the Slate truck is all I'm saying.
Marques Brownlee
No, the Slate truck is. I think it's big difference. And the Slate truck, you can add any accessory at any time at any point after you buy it. Yeah, but it sounds like with GTA there will be parts that are locked out. If you start at the wrong base,
David Imel
I almost guarantee you they'll allow you
Marques Brownlee
to upgrade to the ultimate edition.
Andrew Cunningham
Oh, yeah, I'm sure for an extra $20 to $30, just.
Marques Brownlee
They'll just Charge you more.
David Imel
They might charge even more just to make you want to buy the ultimate edition up front.
Marques Brownlee
Fair enough.
David Imel
Yeah. So people are excited for that. I personally don't care at all because I've never played a GTA game, but I'm excited for all you people.
Marques Brownlee
It's funny is I also have never played GTA game, but I'm really looking forward to this.
Andrew Cunningham
Oh, you're looking for. Are you going to play it?
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, I'm going to play it.
David Imel
Oh wow.
Marques Brownlee
It seems like a fun game.
Andrew Cunningham
We need to.
Marques Brownlee
Only from trailers. Only from trailers.
Andrew Cunningham
Wait, you do know you could play the other ones while you wait.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, that's true.
Ellis Roman
Yeah.
David Imel
GTA 5 can play on your freaking refrigerator.
Marques Brownlee
GTA 5 has been out for so long, but I. It's almost like backyard baseball where it's like I could either. If I start getting my fix now, I'm going to be waiting for GTA like even more like on a seat of my pants. So I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to not play GTA until six comes out and then have a good time. It'll be fun.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm excited for it because when the first one came out, my now brother in law played it for so long that his. He was in college and his car got stolen but he didn't know it was stolen because he was playing the game for like three days straight and then went out and was like, where's my. He got Grand Theft Auto. So now I want to see if this is going to be a pattern that's literally somehow it will get stolen again.
Marques Brownlee
Your Grand Theft Auto wall. Your Grand Theft Auto.
David Imel
There are many people trying to take like an entire week off work for this game, so.
Marques Brownlee
Wow.
David Imel
Yeah.
Ellis Roman
I can confirm. According to this article from Radio Times, the Reddit comment was correct.
David Imel
About what?
Ellis Roman
There will be certain things that are locked away unless you get the ultimate edition. Like Dom locations in game locations, locations, vehicle mod shops, classic car collections, certain vehicles.
David Imel
I think they wanted to charge a hundred dollars but they were like, we can make it technically not a hundred dollars if we do this.
Adam Alina
This is freaking Grand Theft Fortnite over here. Like.
Andrew Cunningham
But no, my thing is I don't care about stylist or like visual skins costing extra money when the game's free. Fortnite is free.
Adam Alina
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Let them charge for things that are not competitive. Advantage. Dota League of Legends.
Ellis Roman
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Valorant.
Adam Alina
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
If you charge $80 and then you're like you have to pay more money for skins or locations.
Marques Brownlee
Crazy like your friends go to a new location and you can't go because you bought the base version.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah. If you think we're making fun of Android people in the U.S. wait till we make fun of the regular GTA.
David Imel
GTA people. Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Sorry, Stevie, you can't hang out with us. We're going to the Down Deluxe edition.
David Imel
This game is $100. It like nobody. I don't, I don't know. I don't think anyone's gonna pay the $80. I think they just did it because they knew they'd get a lot of backlash if it was $100.
Ellis Roman
Listen, Super Mario was like 80 bucks, wasn't it?
David Imel
GTA can charge whatever they want, Donkey. No, it was a Mario Kart. Mario Kart World.
Adam Alina
$80.
David Imel
Yeah. This is true.
Marques Brownlee
Worth it.
David Imel
$80. Especially with this much anticipation, I think is probably.
Ellis Roman
I'm honestly shocked that it's not more.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, I'm unfortunately shocked that it's not more.
Ellis Roman
Yeah, it's fairly standard pricing, it's expensive
Andrew Cunningham
as hell, but I think it could
David Imel
have been 100 and it was NBA 2K.
Marques Brownlee
Comes out like every year and it's always $80. Sometimes it's 100. Yeah. And there's like premium versions that are 100 plus. Yeah.
David Imel
They make the graphics like 1% better.
Marques Brownlee
Not even 1% better. It used to be like a big difference, like between 13, 14 and 15. It's like, oh, okay, I can see that the animations are smoother now. The difference between like two. Well, the roster updates. A software update over the air, so you don't even need the roster update. It's literally like a new. A new game mode better. Like smoother animations and controls and in the name of realism. That's like kind of cool. But it's. It's stopped improving at such a rate that it would justify, like buying a hundred dollar game every year.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
So I think the last one I bought was 22, maybe.
David Imel
Oh, wow.
Andrew Cunningham
Wow. Yeah. I don't even know Ball.
Marques Brownlee
Well, I have the new rosters. It just goes to the new game. So I just. Yeah, whatever.
David Imel
I'm surprised they even like push it to the old game and not just like force.
Andrew Cunningham
It's pretty surprised.
Ellis Roman
I also haven't purchased the 2K on launch in a while. I always wait for it to go on sale now.
David Imel
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marques Brownlee
And I always buy the base one.
Adam Alina
We need basketball to get really, really popular in Europe so that the EU puts a stop to this. They're the only ones that can stop the 2K.
Andrew Cunningham
Only EU can stop EA.
Marques Brownlee
No, it's actually, it's not actually EA. It's take two is the publisher.
Andrew Cunningham
Can we just pretend it's EA because that sounded funny.
Adam Alina
Well, it's funnier because they also do gta, so it's the same.
Marques Brownlee
Nice.
Adam Alina
Yes.
Marques Brownlee
Speaking of pricing.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
We got another device announcement, another tech announcement. It's a new Nothing phone. Nothing Phone 4B. Oh, okay, interesting. So we have the Nothing Phone 4A. What's the Nothing Phone 4B? You may be wondering. Well, it's perfect because somebody who works for Nothing on Twitter was able to explain very clearly what it is he says. This is from Akias Evangelides. What does the B stand for? Nothing. It's simply a continuation of our naming system. Numbers represent generations while letters indicate different product segments.
David Imel
No way.
Marques Brownlee
So the A series has been our best selling smartphone line, bringing the best of Nothing's design innovation while focusing on features that matter most. The B series builds on the success of the A series by expanding into a new segment while maintaining a clear product hierarchy. The A series remains our most premium line below our flagship products, which don't carry a letter designation. This avoids overusing suffixes and provides a clearer naming structure as a portfolio expands.
David Imel
Hope this is clear how to say nothing by saying a lot of words. I don't know what that means at all.
Adam Alina
It means the word on their Cheaper.
Andrew Cunningham
This is.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, this is. This is marketing speak for I don't want to say the word cheaper, but I want to effectively communicate that this is just a different price tier in the same product line.
David Imel
Yeah, cheaper.
Andrew Cunningham
This guy's never posted anything worthwhile on Twitter, but I'm just like, it's marketing.
Marques Brownlee
It's just marketing.
Andrew Cunningham
It's insane marketing. Because it's, it's. What's funny is he's right. This naming scheme makes perfect sense.
David Imel
Yeah, it's a name.
Andrew Cunningham
It's arguably the best naming scheme out of maybe anything. Because it's not confusing. Yeah, it makes sense. But like, oh my God, this is a convoluted tweet.
David Imel
Yeah, it's a lot of words to say very little.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
So the.
Marques Brownlee
When I review the last phones from Nothing, I made the point that they kind of can't make a flagship phone at this point because they don't have high enough volume. They don't sell enough phones to like get the low enough part prices to actually make money on a flagship phone or even compete against the Samsungs of the world. So they just don't do it. Yeah, this is maybe more proof of me being right because they add to their lineup in the opposite direction and make probably a compellingly priced phone. I haven't actually learned much else about the phone.
David Imel
I don't know anything about it yet.
Marques Brownlee
But yeah, I agree with my old take that they are not planning to make a flagship phone.
David Imel
Something we do know is that they're canceling the nothing phone. 3. 3, 4A pro. 4A pro, they're canceling. Sorry, not Nothing phone. The CMF phone.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, okay.
Marques Brownlee
3A Pro.
David Imel
3A Pro, they're canceling.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
David Imel
And in. This is just. This is just my theory. The theory that they're. The reason they're making the nothing phone. 3B.
Marques Brownlee
4B.
David Imel
4B good at this is that they said the reason they were canceling the CMF phone was because the RAM would have been half the price of the phone and they just cannot make it at that price. So now the nothing phones have always been more expensive than the CMF phones. Right. So if you make a cheaper nothing phone, you're basically hitting the price tier where it's barely marginally able. You're able to make a phone at that price, whereas a CMF phone could not do that. So my theory is that they're just making it under the Nothing moniker because nothing kind of demands the higher price than cmf.
Marques Brownlee
Makes sense.
David Imel
Which we've been over this multiple times. Nothing was supposed to be the Budget brand, and then CMF was the Budget. Budget brand and then Nothing has the budget phones from Nothing. And now there's the Budget. Budget Budget.
Marques Brownlee
Because Nothing had flagships, so they had the A series, which was the budget of the Budget, but not too budget, because that would be cmf. So like the budget of the Budget, but not the budget of the budget.
David Imel
But not the budget. Yes, yes. Yeah, exactly. And now they've got the B series, which is the budget of the budget.
Marques Brownlee
B is clearly for budget.
Andrew Cunningham
No, no, no, no.
David Imel
But not cmf, which is the budget.
Andrew Cunningham
No, the A series is the most premium line below their flagship. That is the greatest line in history.
Marques Brownlee
And you're not allowed. When you're not allowed to say cheaper, that's what you end up saying, which makes sense. It's our best. Below our best. Are you getting it? Yeah. So we get it.
David Imel
That's me when I haven't taken care of myself in a while. I'm the best I've ever been, except
Andrew Cunningham
for when I'm at my best. This is funny too, because if you
Ellis Roman
haven't had me at my best, you don't deserve me at my best.
Andrew Cunningham
Nothing could use the word cheap better than any other company out there because, yeah, nothing's fandom appreciates a budget.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Which is so funny that just to say, like, front this cheaper is a banger tweet.
Marques Brownlee
I'm guessing they have like a rule book where they're not allowed to say cheap budget or even acknowledge less expensive
David Imel
because other people have a different definition of what that means. Yeah. And I think that even nothing making a cheaper nothing phone, a lot of people are going to still think it's too expensive. Very competitive markets. So we'll see. I mean, no CMF phone. I guess we'll probably get one eventually once OpenAI collapses as a company.
Marques Brownlee
You know, what makes you think that's gonna happen?
David Imel
Maybe Sam Altman will carry all the RAM over to nothing at some point and be like, here you go, we're not a company. And have some.
Andrew Cunningham
I don't need this anymore.
David Imel
Yeah, I don't need this anymore.
Andrew Cunningham
He's gonna put it on Facebook Marketplace.
David Imel
All right, I got one last quick little thing before I take the break. Just very excited about RCS as usual. You know, Very good rich communication services. IOS27 beta 2 just dropped yesterday.
Marques Brownlee
Hell yeah.
David Imel
Or maybe two days ago. I don't remember two days ago. It did fix a lot of the bugs that I had in iOS in the beta one, which is good. But one thing that they added, which is very exciting, is that they upgraded to RCS 2.7. Not fully yet. They added a couple of features with it, but part of the RCS 2.7 standard is the ability to edit and unsend messages. So now. Yeah, I know.
Marques Brownlee
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
David Imel
I'm thinking the European Union is on my side today.
Marques Brownlee
Oh, my God. I'm sticking with Android, baby.
David Imel
So, yeah, now you'll be. When you're using RCS with Android phones, you'll be able to edit and unsend messages. Brings it a lot closer to the feature parody with imessage that everyone wants. Obviously you're not going to have the imessage integrations like Apple cache and stuff like that, but we are very close to the color being the only major differentiating factor, which I think will still matter to people, unfortunately.
Ellis Roman
No Apple cache. How the hell am I supposed to split my receipt bills?
David Imel
I know, I know.
Marques Brownlee
As soon as I asked Siri to do stuff.
David Imel
Exactly. So, yeah, that's exciting. RCS getting better. I'm very excited about that.
Marques Brownlee
I'm looking forward to Whatever. The next thing is, they bolt onto the side of imessage. That will not make it through rcs. Yeah, because right now it's the color, obviously, but it's like the stickers.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Apple, Cash, whatever. Whatever games people play in ims.
David Imel
Genmoji. Genmoji games.
Marques Brownlee
They're in there. There's some games in there.
David Imel
There are some games in there, but. Yeah, I don't know if people use them, but we're getting closer.
Marques Brownlee
I.
David Imel
Right now, RCS still only works for me like half the time. It like randomly breaks and sends as SMS you don't even want.
Ellis Roman
So far you've messaged me on WhatsApp. Like, are you getting my texts?
David Imel
You don't even want to see Adam and I's messages. Half of them is just like, not sent, not sent, not sent. I'm just. It's depressing, but one day we'll be in our protocol heaven.
Andrew Cunningham
I literally can't communicate right now, but one day it will all be better.
Adam Alina
That's just you, like a him problem, you know, because you change phones every five seconds.
David Imel
That's true.
Andrew Cunningham
It's actually.
Marques Brownlee
Oh, wait, aren't you using a phone that doesn't have, like half the bands
Ellis Roman
in the U.S. no, no, I didn't switch.
David Imel
I wanted to, but I'm the oppo anymore. What do you want? What do you want right now?
Ellis Roman
Still my S26 Ultra. I was trying the oppo, but then I. I was like five minutes from fully switching over the Google Fi sim and everything. And I was like, maybe this isn't a good weekend to do this. I had a very busy weekend, so
Andrew Cunningham
I was like, let me, let me wait.
Marques Brownlee
I would advise not to do that if you have a lot of communication needs. Yeah, yeah.
David Imel
All right, well, after the break, we're gonna talk about probably the most controversial thing we've ever talked about on this podcast. And I think no matter what we say, we're gonna get canceled. So get excited. Buckle up. Buckle up. Oh, I forgot about that. I forgot there was trivia on this.
Adam Alina
All right, trivia. And I'm back with the six pack. Real Ellis trivia in the house. Marques, I'm glad to hear that you said you are going to be sticking with Android, because today's first question is for the Android sickos in the room. Okay.
Marques Brownlee
It's me, the Android sicko.
Adam Alina
Exactly. So we all know prior to Android 10, they were all desserts. They weren't just desserts, they were desserts in alphabetical order. After Android 10, they switched to numbers. However, the internal code names for the dessert for the operating systems stayed as desserts.
David Imel
Okay, now, keep going, Keep going.
Adam Alina
We're all on the same page here.
Andrew Cunningham
We are. Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
I may have said this exact word. Hold on.
Andrew Cunningham
Go ahead.
Marques Brownlee
Keep going.
Andrew Cunningham
Keep going.
Adam Alina
Which Android version's number was the one where they reset the Alphabet?
Marques Brownlee
I got you. I got you.
Andrew Cunningham
I didn't listen to last week's episode.
Adam Alina
No, I was in Wales. I was listening to the beautiful buying of sheep next to my bed.
David Imel
We had this question last week, not
Andrew Cunningham
quite very similar to the. Led us to a conversation.
Marques Brownlee
It is possible to get this wrong.
Andrew Cunningham
I probably still will get this wrong, even though I just re. Listened to us all talking about it.
David Imel
You're saying, which is the one where they.
Adam Alina
Which is the one where they reset the Alphabet?
David Imel
Oh, yeah.
Marques Brownlee
As we know, they got to Android Q and then they kept going with the code names. Those code names at some point reset the Alphabet, by the way. By the way.
Andrew Cunningham
Look, Ellis does not know about this. This part. Can I tell the story before? What were you going to say? Can I tell the story?
David Imel
Go ahead.
Andrew Cunningham
Okay. This is partially my fault.
Marques Brownlee
How did you spell it?
David Imel
Either the dunk on David.
Andrew Cunningham
We were talking about the letters, and David guessed the dessert was tiramisu. And I think it would have been out there. But then I said, david, how'd you spell that? And if. Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe it was T, I, E, R, R, I, S, I, E, U, I don't know. And then he said, French. And I was like, how'd you spell that? He's like, tiramisu is 100% French. And that was probably 20% of our comments last week.
David Imel
Does it not sound like a French word?
Adam Alina
I'll give it to you.
Andrew Cunningham
It kind of.
David Imel
Yeah, it sounds French to me. I got a lot of people tweeting at me, okay, it's Italian.
Andrew Cunningham
It was. It was so intense that I got people tweeting and commenting at me saying, you got yourself Italian, that you didn't sell him that. It's definitely Italian. So I got.
Adam Alina
Should I make the question harder? Do you.
Andrew Cunningham
No, no.
Adam Alina
Should I ask her what the dessert. The first dessert is when they reset it?
David Imel
Sure, yeah.
Marques Brownlee
We could have, like, bonus points or whatever.
David Imel
All right, all right.
Adam Alina
Two points.
David Imel
So which.
Andrew Cunningham
Which one reset.
Adam Alina
What number was that one's internal code name?
David Imel
What number?
Adam Alina
Yeah, sorry, sorry, I was amongst.
Andrew Cunningham
No, that's okay.
Adam Alina
The sheep.
Andrew Cunningham
How dare you.
Marques Brownlee
But our viewers. Our viewers are yelling into their screens right now. The answer because they already know it. But if they don't, we'll have the answers at the end, like usual. We'll be right back.
Andrew Cunningham
When I scraped my car in that
Marques Brownlee
parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. Like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedge maze. I have definitely already been here.
David Imel
Now, was it left right or right left?
Andrew Cunningham
Well, maybe I'll cut a path out
Marques Brownlee
and find my way back later. But it wasn't like that.
Andrew Cunningham
I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app and they
Marques Brownlee
handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened.
David Imel
It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico this episode
Marques Brownlee
is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses Setup required Compatibility and availability Various 18 Hey, I just Venmoed you for rent.
Andrew Cunningham
Nice.
Marques Brownlee
Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or
Andrew Cunningham
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Marques Brownlee
Say more.
David Imel
More.
Marques Brownlee
Exactly.
Andrew Cunningham
Because the more you do with Venmo,
Marques Brownlee
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Andrew Cunningham
Like earning up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash on a bundle of brands.
Marques Brownlee
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Andrew Cunningham
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Marques Brownlee
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Andrew Cunningham
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Marques Brownlee
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Andrew Cunningham
the Bancorp Bank N.A. all right, welcome back to a little section we like to call people who say they're gamers that aren't really gamers talking about games. Nice just to get it out of the way.
David Imel
Okay, Gamers can't afford.
Andrew Cunningham
I disagree. I think David and I play quite a few games, but according to the comments, we have no idea what we're talking about.
Marques Brownlee
I'll own it up. I'll own up to it right now. I play games once or twice a month. Not a huge gamer.
David Imel
It's not bad.
Marques Brownlee
So you guys should tell me about the Steam Machine, because all I really know, I've seen some videos and I've heard a lot of people saying, wow, you should do a video on the Steam Machine. I haven't because I'm not super interested, but also I know what Steam is and so I imagine that a Steam machine is a very specific thing. But you tell me it runs on Steam. It runs Steam.
David Imel
This is like round.
Marques Brownlee
Oh, runs on Steam. It's crazy.
David Imel
It's like round three of them trying
Marques Brownlee
to release this is it basically just Valve decided to make some hardware because they make the Steam store already and they're like, oh, well, we should sell a gaming PC.
David Imel
There are so many things to this.
Andrew Cunningham
The reason for it, I think makes perfect sense. Steam is generally a PC gaming marketplace. Right. It's usually PC games. Steam Deck changed that a bit. Let handheld gaming come onto the, you know, Steam marketplace. But really the. The thing people have wanted for so long is I have this massive Steam library. But the benefit of consoles is it just plugs into my living room tv. I get to sit on the couch and use a controller. It has a lot of. It's like very cohesive with all of that. People like consoles because of that. But console wars means we have a lot of exclusivity. We have a lot of different things.
Marques Brownlee
And that's box only titles.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah. You're really locked in like Steam is on your computer. You own your computer. You're not like renting like.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Steam is what people like for games.
Marques Brownlee
Because also for the last like 15
David Imel
years, there's steam sales in the fall, there's Steam sales in the summer, the Steam cells in the spring. The amount of Steam games I own that I have never once launched. Valve knows how to make you buy things that you will never use.
Andrew Cunningham
I bet most steam users have 50% of their library. They have it open.
David Imel
Yes. Because there's bundles. Everything's like, you can buy GTA for $4. Like it's so cheap that they're like, why wouldn't I do it? You know what I mean?
Marques Brownlee
So there are people sitting out there with huge Steam libraries, but maybe a little bit of a void in the living room where they could be playing it like a console.
Andrew Cunningham
And everybody for years has found ways or tried to, but it's pretty hard to like build a computer that sits next to their tv. But we're talking small form factor. We're talking Micro atx. Yeah. But we're talking noise compatibility issues. So like, Steam went out to release something that is essentially the console that runs Steam.
David Imel
Yeah, okay.
Andrew Cunningham
Right. Makes perfect sense. People want that. There are so many things on the Steam library that still run great on a controller. You don't have to play everything. Keyboard and mouse. You. There's lots of especially indie games. There's so many indie games on Steam that are really fun to play on TV and relaxing.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
So they set out to launch this little box. I mean it's. I don't know the exact dimensions but it looks not that dissimilar from like an Xbox series X but a square instead of a tall.
Marques Brownlee
The original gamecube size seems similar.
Andrew Cunningham
This feels very gamecubey.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
I'm proud of myself for knowing the size of the original GameCube.
Andrew Cunningham
It's all pretty much PC parts, but it's all run and compatibility wise really great. I believe it's like HDMI cec which lets you. Which lets turning the controller on to turn the Steam can also turn your TV on. It lets all of those controls happen. Things that are kind of tough to do when you're building a PC yourself. Yeah. Everyone's hoping for this thing. When it gets talked about to be released at around 5 to $700.
David Imel
I think $800 is really like 7 was like the. The general consensus. I think Linus said that he would eat an entire cake on the WAN show if it was over $700.
Andrew Cunningham
The portal cake.
David Imel
The portal. But he said this months ago.
Andrew Cunningham
Yes.
David Imel
Before OpenAI destroyed everything.
Marques Brownlee
Certain prices have gone up since then.
Andrew Cunningham
They have. And so we just got the release date and the release prices and.
Marques Brownlee
What is that?
Andrew Cunningham
So the Release date is June 29th, which will be Monday.
Marques Brownlee
Okay.
Andrew Cunningham
The starting price is $1049 for the 512 gigabyte model. That does not include a controller.
Marques Brownlee
Wow.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
1128 for the bundle with the controller at 512. Then it can go as high as a two terabyte model for 1428. That's the bundle with the controller.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
So 1400 dollars over. A little over 14.
Marques Brownlee
But basically starting at 1100 with a controller.
Andrew Cunningham
Yes.
David Imel
Wow. Yeah.
Ellis Roman
You get two PS5s.
Andrew Cunningham
She pricey?
David Imel
No. PS5 is now $700.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
Ellis Roman
I thought it was 650.
David Imel
They. I. I think. I don't know.
Andrew Cunningham
I think original PS5,650 and they've raised the price like 900 now with increases.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Some of the issues with this, I mean I. I'll go over some of the things it comes with. But one, the two terabyte model also comes with two swappable face plates. Remember this has a magnetic face plate that lets you do a bunch of cool customization. It has some cool LED bar on there. It's. It's a well thought out machine in terms of compatibility. It's got all these separate antennas. So like when your Bluetooth controller is connected to it, but maybe you're downloading something off the window. WI fi. It's not, it's a separate WI fi antenna. So like you're not getting all this interference with that. There's. There's a lot of stuff they put into this that's really impressive.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
The issue is this price because if you think about it, even with the price increases, it's running fairly similar performance wise to a PS5.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Which is a six year old console. That is $650. That's six years old, right? 2005.
Marques Brownlee
It can't be that old.
David Imel
Did it really?
Andrew Cunningham
It came out around Covid, right?
Marques Brownlee
Oh yeah.
David Imel
Am I old?
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, five years old.
Adam Alina
It's gonna turn six in a couple months.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
David Imel
Oh my God.
Andrew Cunningham
So performance wise isn't that far off from a PS5. Some people, some games were even saying worse than a PS5. But even a PS5 Pro is $900. So still 200 less than this comes with a controller also. And the like price to performance ratio is turning into a stinker pretty much. And one thing that people were thinking was, and us included, how much of this will be subsidized because Steam also owns the marketplace. Therefore X amount of money from all the Steam games that gets purchased. And they had straight up a response to why they are not subsidizing this console. I'll read it super quick, but while this might seem like an easy solution, it doesn't align with our beliefs of how healthy ecosystems are built. If there's anything we're religious about at Valve, it's our belief that open systems are better in the long run for ourselves and customers. The openness of the PC ecosystem in particular has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation. Because anyone with an idea for a way to do something better was always able to take a shot at it. When companies sell their hardware under costs for competitive advantage or buy exclusive content for it, they're doing that to build a more closed system. One where you don't get to choose what software you use. Yeah, we don't want PC hardware. We don't want that for PC hardware. We don't think you should want it either. We feel like you should have to buy Valve hardware. You should be able to view it as. Shouldn't have to buy Valve shouldn't. Yeah, you should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices playing games and select the one that makes sense for you. This means you get to decide which device fits your personal trade offs. Things like price, performance, form factor, peripheral support and everything else you care about. That's the strength of our PC platform. Subsidizing hardware runs counter to that.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Okay, so I think, yeah, so there are a competitor in the market of. I don't know if this is the most market to compare to, but when you ask people about PCs, like 90% of the people who are like, I could just build a PC that gets more performance for less money. That's the whole idea of building a PC. So I can immediately see people going, oh, I could build a PC just like this or cheaper. And it would be a better buy than buying the Steam thing. Is there anything that you literally can't get from building your own PC?
David Imel
I don't think you can get a motherboard with that HDMI thing that can turn on the tv.
Andrew Cunningham
It's almost impossible to say. There's no way to get it. Because building a PC is like infinitely customizable. To build this piece of software running what it's running in the form factor with the compatibility of everything with all the different.
Ellis Roman
You mean hardware? Sorry, Build this piece of hardware?
Andrew Cunningham
If you build. Yeah, sorry. It's very hard. There's lots of people comparing it to this and that, but like, maybe it's a little bigger. Maybe it's not as compatible with your TV and systems. Like they definitely made the efficiency of this whole thing pretty impressive.
Marques Brownlee
This is like this Surface Laptop because there are lots of laptops you can buy and they're not necessarily like the Surface Laptop is a premium option. And it is maybe to serve as like a Halo product even so that others will build premium options like it. But it will never be the best bang for the buck.
David Imel
Can I give you my equivalent?
Andrew Cunningham
Sure.
David Imel
This is a MacBook before the M chip came out because it was a premium. It was premium hardware that had features that only the Mac could have. Cause it could work with other stuff. It had an OS that was like sort of custom built for it and like, you know, runs things on, was more expensive than things at its performance ratio. But because you could only get certain things for it, it worked better with certain things. It did things that other computers couldn't do. People still bought it. Yeah, yeah, that's my analogy.
Andrew Cunningham
I like it. Except for that like Apple is known for being like pretty closed system stuff. And this is trying to stay open. But I do know what you're saying. It's like you're Paying a premium here for like, yeah, how intuitive it is to be able to play Steam machines on your couch.
David Imel
Just, it's the, it just works kind of thing. Whereas like, yeah, Valve says that the worst part about PC gaming is Windows.
Marques Brownlee
Right.
David Imel
And so like they want to just. But all the games are written for Windows.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
David Imel
And they thought that they would be able. Like they made steam machines in 2015. 15. And when they did that, they didn't themselves really make a bunch of Steam machines. They went to partners like Asus and Acer and like all these other companies and they were like, we're building the Steam os. You should build these Steam machines that are better, that can like run Steam on your tv, et cetera. But what they didn't, they expected that all these companies would want to like run Linux and like run steamos and do this kind of stuff. These companies, they couldn't really force to do that. And so they made this layer called Proton, which is a, It's a translation layer similar to Rosetta 2 that will trans translate Windows games to Linux to allow you to run pretty much every Windows game. So on the Steam machine you're using Proton, you're. You can run all the Windows games, but it's not actually running Linux, it's running like wine underneath, which is like a Linux distribution. So yeah, I don't know, I just, I, I feel that the price to performance ratio is like you're paying the premium for something that just makes the experience so much more seamless. And it's also a computer. It's also a Linux computer, which you can do work on it too. You don't only have to put it,
Andrew Cunningham
you can put Windows on it if you want.
David Imel
Yeah, you can put Windows on it if you want.
Andrew Cunningham
It's this weird thing where like it's. If you haven't been on the Valve subreddit in the last couple days, it is, it is the Wild West. It's wild. It is like you can't. Every single comment has somebody fighting them on it. Like everyone who thinks it's overpriced, somebody's telling them they're wrong. Everyone thinks it's good for what it is. You're a total Valve fanboy. It's, it's fascinating to me.
Marques Brownlee
I can see this having a similar YouTube ecosystem where like, like there are people split. I haven't even looked yet, but are there people split? People who are like, wow, this is overpriced here. I'm going to build a PC that's
Andrew Cunningham
more powerful for less Money nobody thinks barely do it. It's underpriced. I can tell you that there are people who think we are paying for the parts essentially like we are just paying the price that it is because that's how much stuff costs now. Because stuff is really expensive, especially in the PC world. I think people want. But at the same time it's really easy to compare this to the consoles that are arguably running better performance than it, that are hundreds of dollars cheaper.
David Imel
Which is tough because those consoles came out in a time when we were not in Ramageddon.
Andrew Cunningham
But at the same time it's also a six year old console.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
That is performing better than the thing coming out now at 400 more expensive.
Ellis Roman
The old consoles can't play your Steam library.
Andrew Cunningham
That's true.
Marques Brownlee
Yes.
Andrew Cunningham
It is so niche.
David Imel
Okay, sorry. You should finish.
Andrew Cunningham
I was gonna say I think the people who, who see this niche are excited for it. I kind of think this is sick and I kind of want one.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Knowing I will be paying a price that's probably quote too expensive or at least I'm paying for a convenience.
David Imel
In my opinion, this console proves that people cannot see, cannot look out into the future and be like, I'm paying more upfront now, but the games will be cheaper for the entire time I own this because PC games are, are always way cheaper. And the reason why Sony can subsidize the PS5 is because it's its closed ecosystem. You have to buy their $80 games. They don't go on sale that often.
Andrew Cunningham
Do you know what else you have to pay for annually to play online? Yeah, like, yeah, like the amount of free online.
David Imel
This is the thing. This has always been a thing. And you pick is it cheaper up front? But in order to use the product and the service over the years, you're paying over the years more and more and more money. Or do you just pay more upfront, but it's basically free for the time that you use it? The games are cheaper.
Marques Brownlee
You own the games in your Steam library.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, you own the games. Yeah, that's. That might also be a reason why they can't really. Like this is something we all said they own the marketplace, but we also talked about how everyone has a million Steam games. There's probably a solid chance a ton of people buy this machine and don't buy a game for years because now I finally get to CD games.
David Imel
You have your couch that I can
Andrew Cunningham
play on my couch now where it's like, oh, I bought all these because these look fun. But like like it sounds crazy calling it a chore to sit at your desk and play games, but like it's so much chiller to sit at your couch and play games. And I'm sure the people who have bought the $3 side scrolling indie game that like has a cult fan base now you can go play it because I just have a controller and I'm relaxing in a chair.
Marques Brownlee
And it also sort of does the opposite where it like unlocks a new, maybe a new market for them. Where most people who are buying Steam games were, were buying like the experience of sitting at your desktop leaning forward. But if they weren't buying lean back controller games as much, this is a new opportunity for people to go, yeah, you know what, I should get some more casual games and they're going to go back and buy more Steam games because they have a Steam machine.
David Imel
Totally.
Ellis Roman
Can I ask a dumb question?
Andrew Cunningham
We might have an answer.
Ellis Roman
Can you upgrade this machine? Because you can't upgrade a PlayStation.
Andrew Cunningham
That's a good question. No. And there's not a ton. I think you can upgrade RAM and storage. That's it. Yeah, I can't. You can't do that. Oh no. Oh, sorry.
Adam Alina
It's like you can upgrade the thing that's like really expensive.
Andrew Cunningham
Honestly.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, I mean I guess like in the future, like GPU stuff, is that gonna become a bottleneck for Steam games?
Andrew Cunningham
Probably. Probably to a point. So one of the things, and this is something Linus really put it. So I watched Linus and Dave's reviews. If you want the Super TLDRs, you should go watch them first of all. But the real TLDRs are like, like the pros of this are. The form factor is great. It's really quiet, which I don't think people are appreciating. Like having a quiet system in your living room is great and like the cohesion and support to be set up as a living room console is really good and something that's really hard to build into a custom PC.
David Imel
Small GameCube.
Andrew Cunningham
The cons are performance wise. The price to performance ratio is not great. And one thing they kept saying was playing 4k games at 60, where a lot of that seems to be. What they meant was that it's like low settings, 4K upscaling, 60fps is like a lot of what they seem to have been talking about is like your 4k gaming at 60 frames a second. Because Linus did a ton of tests and not a lot of. We'll call them modern, like big title games.
Marques Brownlee
We're Running at that is so interesting. Yeah, I. And again, I'll watch their videos, but I kind of wonder if they are looking at it more through a lens of PC gaming, which has a much bigger focus on fidelity. Where I think if you're 15ft away and your TV is across the room. I mean, I want the frame rate but I'm maybe not thinking quite the same way about the fidelity. I mean it's gotta perform well, obviously, but I'm not thinking exactly the same way as I would about like the game I'm gonna play in 4K on my monitor right in front of me.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure.
Andrew Cunningham
No, I agree. And it's, it's tough. I agree. But at the same price, when the PS5 is outperforming and again it's like really hard to come back to that.
David Imel
But games are so expensive and there's way less games on it.
Ellis Roman
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
I guess my question, when you say outperforming when the PS5 is outperforming the Steam Machine, what exactly does that mean? Higher frame rates, more resolution, higher frames, better settings. Okay. Yeah, that's a big deal.
Andrew Cunningham
Wow, it's close to PS5. PS5 for Pro. Seems like it was clearing it pretty easy. I agree that that's the thing, that stuff here. Right, right. It's really hard to compare to consoles. It's really hard to compare to PC gaming because when you have this sick tower that's running a 5090 or whatever, like it's crushing. Like people who like PC games like to have the insane frame rate so they can play old school runescape for. Without utilizing any of it, but they still want it. Like we've all been there, we've all done that. It's. Yeah. I don't know. That's why I think it's so interesting. One thing to note is someone on Linus's team was talking with Valve about original price because remember this got announced before ram.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Blew up and VR, they couldn't quite say it, but they said if you look at the Steam Deck price increase,
David Imel
which by the way, similarly we might have mentioned before, but the Steam deck, the 512 gig model went from 549 to 789. So that was a $220 price, $230 price increase. And the 1 terabyte model went from 649 to 949, which is a 300 price increase. That's like almost 50%.
Andrew Cunningham
So not 2 to 300 off of Steam Machine. And we're kind of should have been
David Imel
like 700, which is what everyone thought it would be, and it's 700. This thing would be awesome.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
Adam Alina
But the slate truck, that'll stay the same.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
There's RAM in that thing.
Ellis Roman
What do you mean?
Marques Brownlee
There's no RAM in the slate truck?
David Imel
So my question is, can you even build an equivalently powered PC at this price point?
Andrew Cunningham
I'm no expert. I have.
David Imel
Has anyone done that?
Andrew Cunningham
Linus is making, in the process of making that video? I think I saw the Verge doing, and it seemed fairly comparable. That's something that is almost an impossible question to answer, because between sales and individual parts and finding the best deal here or the rebate there, or how it all connects together, then what do you consider the same thing? Does it have hdmi, cec? Does it. This is.
David Imel
Yeah, I would say. Is it as loud performance?
Andrew Cunningham
I'm sure you can build performance arguably better.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, I think that's specifically if it's
David Imel
the same storage and everything.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. I think if their focus is just priced to performance, purely performance, then the answer is probably, yes, you can build it. But if you try to get some of the smaller intangibles, like the small form factor or the quietness or the hdmi, that might make it tricky.
David Imel
Yeah, that's basically impossible.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
So if you're. If you're gonna look, if your success to clear the bar is, I just want the same specs or to be able to play at the same settings but not to spend eleven hundred dollars.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
Then you probably can do that.
David Imel
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Do you know what? Maybe that's fine. Maybe just releasing something. That's the option of if you don't want to build any of it, if you want this compatibility, if you want to play your Steam games on the couch, this is this price. And if you're okay with paying that, pay it. If you're not okay with paying that, you can try. You can build it by yourself. And maybe that's its own.
David Imel
This is a console that's also a computer, whereas most computers are also consoles.
Marques Brownlee
You know what I mean?
David Imel
And so you kind of have to look at it at that angle if
Marques Brownlee
you're cool with having a PC in your living room, because the console is designed to slip under the TV in a little console thing or whatever. And like the PS5 is the slim box and the Xbox is a slim box. And now the Steam machine is.
David Imel
I mean, this is way smaller than both of those boxes.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. So that is another thing.
Andrew Cunningham
Small computers are expensive.
David Imel
Expensive yeah, they are.
Andrew Cunningham
You start losing the availability of.
David Imel
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm gonna stop saying anything because so many people.
David Imel
No, it's fine. I mean, it's fine. I mean, we're gonna get yelled on no matter what.
Andrew Cunningham
I think it's fine. Kind of want one. Not gonna lie.
Ellis Roman
No, that's this launch. I tried going through PC Parts picker and, like, trying to make the same thing that was smaller.
David Imel
You tried this?
Ellis Roman
Yeah, I tried it, but this was again, many moons ago when it was first announced, and it was still difficult. Like, it was tough. And I don't think I got exact specs or whatever what, like, to what it's going to launch with or anything like that. So it's. It's hard.
David Imel
I saw a funny tweet where someone was trying to, like, build the equivalent powered PC for about, like, for try to. Trying to get a good price on it. And they put the parts into Chat gbt and they said, is this a good build for this price? And Chat GPT said, yeah, this looks like a really good computer. Except I want to point out one thing. The RAM that you bought. It says that it's $400, but that must be, like, an error because RAM was this kind of ramp should only be about $80. And if it was 400, I'd call the police, frankly. And it was like, wow, your model's only trained to a certain date, isn't it?
Andrew Cunningham
Damn. Yeah. It's funny watching Linus and Dave talk about this because it's one of those things where they're like, this is awesome. This is awesome. I remember the price. This is a little tougher. Oh, the performances. I think, like, I think both of them kind of wound up at like. Like, I still think this is really sweet. Yeah, it's just like. It's a really sweet thing that's really hard to recommend. Like, the people who want this are the people who are going to find out they want it by themselves and be willing to pray.
David Imel
Yeah. They also clearly did not make a lot of these things because in order to buy one, you have to, like. There's a really, really weird system you have to go through. You have to, like, email them or something. And then they put you in a lottery.
Andrew Cunningham
You sign up for a waitlist list, you sign up to get put into a lottery which puts your place in line for when it comes out. And then if you sign up after the. Whatever date, then you just get added to the waitlist.
David Imel
At the end of that, they're gonna be. They're These things are gonna be sold out for, like, the next two years.
Andrew Cunningham
There is one thing that I thought was interesting to go all the way back to. I knocked David's mic. Somehow, something people were saying, a reason they might not be subsidizing. This is because it can just be run as a Linux or Windows system is like. Like, people could just buy a bunch of these at the che. The subsidized price and use it as compute power and. Oh, for like, far and Data Farm. So, like, fascinating. Maybe that's something they took into account. I'm sure there's lots of things to take into account. There's so many variables out here with slop, and it's annoying and gamers suffer the most.
David Imel
I know people are probably going to say I'm Valve glazing, but generally I feel like Steam and Valve, like, do things that they just don't want to do because they're a private company. They don't have to think about their stock going up. And that's why people still love them. That's why the Steam is still a good marketplace. Wow.
Ellis Roman
How much do they pay you to Please.
Andrew Cunningham
No one post any of our conversation to the Valve subreddit. I cannot handle.
David Imel
Oh, they. I. Oh, they will.
Andrew Cunningham
I will go into hiding.
David Imel
They will.
Ellis Roman
I will make a clip specifically for it.
David Imel
Yeah, I don't know, man. I. Private companies. I love private companies.
Andrew Cunningham
So let's do trivia.
David Imel
Let's do trivia this time.
Ellis Roman
Trivia.
Andrew Cunningham
Gabe Newell.
David Imel
Ooh.
Ellis Roman
And Mike Harrington, founders of Valve, started the company in 1996.
Marques Brownlee
Damn valve.
Ellis Roman
What company did they both work for before that?
David Imel
I know the answer.
Andrew Cunningham
Let's go.
David Imel
That's unfair.
Adam Alina
Why?
David Imel
Because I know the answer.
Adam Alina
That's how the game works.
Andrew Cunningham
Trivia really sucks when everyone knows.
David Imel
That's literally what trivia is, is knowing the answer.
Marques Brownlee
Don't not supposed to know it. Nope. Dang it.
David Imel
All right, well, I'll tell you guys the answer to that.
Marques Brownlee
We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Starbucks.
Andrew Cunningham
That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer.
Marques Brownlee
Okay, I like this.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm rocking with it.
Marques Brownlee
Okay, try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours.
Andrew Cunningham
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Marques Brownlee
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Marques Brownlee
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David Imel
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David Imel
Welcome back. Have you ever wanted a pair of Ray Bans? Except they're not by Ray Ban. They're by the company that steals all of your data.
Andrew Cunningham
And they're also still kind of by Ray Ban.
David Imel
And they're also still kind of by Ray Ban.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, we got a story for you.
Marques Brownlee
Boy, that's a lot of smart.
David Imel
Meta has launched the product just for you, Marques, because Meta has just launched three new models of smart glasses. Now they are just called metaglasses, which is really ironic because everyone already called the Meta Ray Bans Meta glasses.
Ellis Roman
Ironic. See what you did there?
David Imel
Oh, with your eyeballs? Pretty good. They're $80 cheaper. And so basically it just seems like Meta wanted to not license the Ray Ban branding. And they're also made by Luxottica.
Andrew Cunningham
They're still made by Luxottica, which makes
David Imel
the Ray Ban glasses. So they are launching three different models. There's. Okay, these are stupid ass names, dude. The Fury model.
Ellis Roman
Oh, boy.
David Imel
Okay. They kind of look like Ray Ban Wayfarers a little bit. They're a little bit thicker. They have seven color options. That's the one thing about these glasses that are pretty different from the Ray Bans. They come in like a lot of different col. Well, I specifically put color
Andrew Cunningham
options there because there are seven options. There's not. It's kind of confusing. So some of them are color plus lens options.
David Imel
Right?
Andrew Cunningham
So there's probably like four colors, right?
David Imel
There's. Yeah, compost. That's a good clarification there. The Adventure model, which are definitely pretty similar, but they have thinner frames. They also have different color combinations, about eight of them. And if you couldn't get enough of Kylie Jenner for some reason, because, you know, you're just a huge Kardashian fan, even though that's not her last name. They also have the metaglasses Kylie Edition, which, you know, they've got this retro oval kind of look to the frame. And they're a collab with Kylie Jenner. They have three color options and she voices an AI model that talks.
Andrew Cunningham
I missed that part.
David Imel
She does.
Andrew Cunningham
They're also not $80 cheaper. They are 399, $400, I was gonna say.
Marques Brownlee
Instead of paying the licensing money to Ray Ban, they just paid Kylie Jenner
David Imel
directly to Kylie Jenner. So, you know, I don't know. I think we've been seeing all these different glasses from like the smart glasses from Samsung and like a bunch of different companies. And I guess Meta eventually just wanted to take all of the money and not have to like pay directly to Ray Ban anymore.
Andrew Cunningham
But it's confusing because they still have luxottica branding on them on the inside. It's still made by like, I saw a lot of takes like, oh, this is cool, let's make it cheaper for people. Which it is. I'm not going to complain that it's cheaper. It's 299 now, starting price, but like without the Raybrand licensing. But it's not Meta building these from the ground up. It's luxottica who still built the frames.
Marques Brownlee
Who was anyway before.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Who is. They own Ray Ban.
Ellis Roman
Is it really a good thing if more people have these glasses?
David Imel
No.
Andrew Cunningham
Okay. Okay. That definitely.
Ellis Roman
For who?
Marques Brownlee
For us. Or so for Meta. Yeah, that's the whole point.
Andrew Cunningham
Meta was essentially. They had PR statements ready for stuff like this because not just in the sense of. Of all the. The privacy concerns that we talked about. There have been. I don't know if you've seen, but a lot of people have been finding ways to like drill out the camera light.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
And there's like tutorials online and people who are doing this in some states where like you can essentially stop the light, which I already think is not a good enough light to prove that you're recording, but to just full blown drill it out and still have the camera work so people don't know you're recording. Which is the creepiest thing I could ever think of. And also we're starting to see establishments banning these types of glasses from places because of recording, which is a huge issue. Because if these are just your glasses that you're supposed to wear every day and you go to one of those places that is banned now, you either are not going to that place or you're going to that place without the ability to see because you. You can't wear your glasses inside of it. And they've noticed this. Something they said at the event is we know there's tampering today and there's handful of ways people are doing it. Nothing that Meta has seen or noting. Meta has seen an increasing number of bad actors misusing his products as they become more popular. If people aren't comfortable with you wearing the glasses, not only do we personally think that's bad, but we would have. We wouldn't have a business anymore. You should see some updates from us really soon while we're looking to address it directly. They need to find a way to stop. Stop these glasses from working. If you drill out the lights, they also need to make the recording sign red.
Adam Alina
Yes.
David Imel
They had, they had put some precautions in where if you, like covered the light with tape, it would know and it wouldn't work. But Joanna Stern actually did a video about this where she found a bunch of people that were willing to like selling the service of drilling the light out without the glasses knowing.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah.
David Imel
Because the wiring was still there, so it was still receiving a circuit so it didn't trip anything. But they were. They took the light out physically. Yeah. They need to make this a lot better. But Meta does not care about this. Meta only cares if they get in trouble.
Andrew Cunningham
Meta will start caring if stuff like this happens where these start getting banned everywhere and it's gonna turn into. Smart glasses are just not a viable option.
David Imel
It's so hard to ban these when they look more and more like regular glasses. And the cameras in these are actually smaller than they were in the original Meta.
Andrew Cunningham
Yeah, they are a little bit smaller.
Marques Brownlee
I just had to. I was like, where was I? Just, just. I was just somewhere where these glasses were banned. I was trying to remember what it was. And it was the Formula one paddock. Yeah. Where you. You walk into the Formula one paddock and they had to like, outlaw, like, no recording, no cameras, don't take any pictures, obviously. Yeah. And people would be going in with the glasses on all the time and just recording anyway. So they had to put a sign on the door that says no smart glasses. In the paddock.
Andrew Cunningham
It's funny. That's because they don't want, like, trade secrets of their cars going in where most of these establishments, because they don't want creeps coming in or people to feel uncomfortable. That's the thing is, like, you could not be a creep, but lots of people are going to feel uncomfortable.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Because you're in a private place of business with potentially getting recorded whenever.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. It's one of those things where every time I talk to someone who I can tell is wearing the meta glasses, I just immediately assume that they're recording.
David Imel
I felt on edge when I'm talking.
Marques Brownlee
Like, remember we were at south by Southwest and that person came up to us and this might not even be online. I don't even know, keep it anonymous. But somebody ran up to us basically, and just, like, started recording with the glasses. I don't even think she asked, oh, can I record.
Adam Alina
Can I record you with my metas?
Marques Brownlee
Yeah, I record you and then just started recording and then just started interviewing us, basically, like using her glasses as a camera and just sort of didn't listen for us to say yes or no and just started going.
Andrew Cunningham
The most south by Southwest thing.
Marques Brownlee
Yeah. And when that happens to you, you realize, like, anyone wearing glasses could be recording at any point. And I feel like the people who are wearing the glasses probably intend to record something at some point. So I just kind of assume that if I'm talking to someone and I notice that they have the glasses on.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
I'm just gonna talk live and act as if this is being recorded right now.
Andrew Cunningham
Which also I get people like, if you are in a public place, you are allowed to be recorded because you're public. It's the thing that gets weird about this are if I'm being recorded a public place place with some. A phone or a camera, I can tell I'm being recorded. When you're starting to drill this stuff out, I don't know what's going on. It starts getting really weird on who's recording what when it comes with children or like, that's all really strange. And then when you start getting into private places of business that don't allow recording and that you expect some sort of privacy and you're potentially recording stuff like that. Yeah, it's just getting really strange.
David Imel
In Japan, they have a law where every smartphone has to come with a loud camera shutter sound. Every time you take a photo of something on any smartphone, it's at its, like, max volume and you will always hear it go off.
Marques Brownlee
I Think I noticed that, too. Is that true about China phones, too?
David Imel
I don't know. I feel like in Japan it's a law.
Marques Brownlee
Okay. That might be true about some other places too, but I feel like that was a default that I noticed was this shutter sound was always on out the box and extremely loud. And every time I took a picture, it was like, yeah. Oh, wow. And then they got clever with it and they made it sound like a DSLR and other stuff.
David Imel
But it's just hard to know if someone's just wearing glasses, walking around. Like, you never really know if they're recording or not.
Ellis Roman
It just becomes your glasses right now. Could be the Metaglasses.
David Imel
They're not. They're not.
Marques Brownlee
I don't know how to look like them. That's the whole point is also because they're Ray Bans, the idea is to make them look kind of like regular glasses.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
And with the. With the Ray Ban name on them, they kind of feel like regular glasses. So. Yeah.
David Imel
And the more styles they introduce, the more they're just gonna blend in and look like more regular. Because even ray like. Like now people have started assuming that pretty much all Ray Bans are smart glasses. You know, they associate the smart glass trend with Ray Bans, but now they're releasing all these different models that come with these different styles, and it's just going to become impossible at some point.
Andrew Cunningham
I will say, like the. So the Furies definitely look like smart glasses. They're super thick on the.
David Imel
Yeah. Super thick on the sides.
Andrew Cunningham
What? I don't even know what you call that. It's pretty obvious.
Marques Brownlee
The arms.
Andrew Cunningham
The arms. Thank you. I'm an idiot. The. This Kylie ones, which I'm kind of confused by because all the pictures says Meta Starfire Kylie Edition, but everyone keeps calling them Meta Glasses Kylie Edition. So I don't know if there's a name change. Those are a little harder to see the glasses because the frames are so black and thick. But then the adventurers, they look pretty normal. They look super normal. They're really thin. The glasses just look like they could be like a screw hole or like a jack. Just a piece of flare, essentially, on the glasses. And I can't imagine a little white circle around that is really tipping many people off to your recording.
David Imel
Yeah. So these glasses also come with Meta's first Super Intelligence Labs model, which is called Muse Spark for some reason. Everything is spark recently, by the way. And I think this is a reference to Sparks of AGI.
Marques Brownlee
Gemini Spark.
David Imel
Gemini Spark. There's a lot of spark stuff going on. Yeah. And I think it's the. The whole sparks of AGI thing. Either way, it should be a little smarter, so you should be able to have like more natural conversations with it. It should know more things. Things like that.
Marques Brownlee
And Kylie's voice.
David Imel
And Kylie's voice. Sick. Which is great. Kylie's voice.
Andrew Cunningham
I didn't. I don't know how I missed that.
David Imel
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
That's really funny.
David Imel
Yeah.
Adam Alina
We never got an update to the svg that Swedish House Mafia. Yes. We never got it updated.
Andrew Cunningham
Swedish. We never got investigation.
Adam Alina
Yeah. Yeah, I know. Meta ended their contract with the data company in Kenya, but we never found out how real.
Andrew Cunningham
It's such a big tech company thing to do. Be like it was their fault. I know. Just blame them completely and find another place that will do the probably exact same thing.
Adam Alina
And that story didn't really make the rounds among us consumers. And I found myself over and over again, like meeting people who are wearing the metaglasses and wanting to be like, hey, there's this potential that they're just recording all the time. And I never know how to have that conversation with people, so I just don't.
Andrew Cunningham
I think the. That here's my potential silver lining of. I think most people who buy those glasses aren't using the AI features of it, which is generally when it was recording without them knowing. So I do think most people are just like, these are glasses that can play some music and I can record first person view every once in a while.
Adam Alina
I hope so. I hope they weren't just recording.
Andrew Cunningham
I think the average people buying that are probably like not really asking the Meta AI what's going on.
Adam Alina
Yeah. But in other news, Meta's starting a prediction market, so.
David Imel
Yeah.
Marques Brownlee
What?
Adam Alina
Oh, yeah, you didn't hear about this?
David Imel
Yeah.
Adam Alina
They're starting a standalone app called arena that's supposed to compete with polymarket.
David Imel
Have they ever had any original idea?
Adam Alina
Yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
Anyway, we all just.
David Imel
This is every time we talk about Meta. To be honest, this is every time we talk about Meta.
Adam Alina
What's something nice we can say?
David Imel
Guys have to shoot the manifesto.
Marques Brownlee
At least they look better than the Snap glasses.
Adam Alina
I agree with that. I like the Snap glasses.
Andrew Cunningham
Oh, my.
Marques Brownlee
That might be one of the hotter takes.
Adam Alina
I'm back with them.
David Imel
Anyway, should we do some fun questions? We should do trivia. Let's do it.
Adam Alina
Hey, Scoop up back for its second week in a row, apparently.
Andrew Cunningham
Guys, I'm still getting this wrong.
Adam Alina
What was the first version of Android where they reset the dessert Alphabet in the code Name. And I'm looking for the number and the dessert.
Andrew Cunningham
Take this, cuz it's okay.
Marques Brownlee
One point each would be cool.
David Imel
Which version?
Adam Alina
It'll be one point each.
Andrew Cunningham
Hell yeah.
Adam Alina
Oh, version number.
Andrew Cunningham
Wait, when you say reset, you mean it's the last one before it reset or the first one that did reset?
Adam Alina
The first one that did reset. That's a. That's a great, great clarification to get out there.
Andrew Cunningham
All
Adam Alina
right, flip them and read. Who wants to go first?
Marques Brownlee
I'll start. I Believe it is Android 16.
Adam Alina
That is correct.
Marques Brownlee
Which is baklava.
Adam Alina
And that is double correct.
Marques Brownlee
Thank you.
Adam Alina
Marquez is the Android sicko.
Marques Brownlee
Thank you.
David Imel
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Cunningham
So they didn't start with A.
David Imel
No.
Marques Brownlee
Nope.
David Imel
Well, they didn't start with A with regular Android either.
Adam Alina
That is correct. With C. You're also a sicko.
David Imel
That's right.
Andrew Cunningham
Well, that's B.
Marques Brownlee
That was cupcake. Well, I'm saying that's B. C. 17 is cinnamon bun.
Andrew Cunningham
My deduction was solid because I knew 17 was C, so I went to 15. Assuming normal people restart the Alphabet at a Lane restarts the Alphabet at a totally valid guess. I think that's. And then I just guess apple turnover.
Adam Alina
Yeah. Unfortunately, that is incorrect. David, you also put 15.
David Imel
Yeah.
Adam Alina
And what dessert did you write down?
David Imel
Creme brulee. I almost wrote to your. No, solid. Wait, hold on.
Andrew Cunningham
Start the Alphabet because.
David Imel
I'm just kidding. I just. I just wanted to rage, bait people.
Andrew Cunningham
It feels like creme brulee was just a guess. Or did you think it was C because you made the deduction to go back to 15 based on current being C. You think that, but he did.
David Imel
See, again, you would think that, Andrew, but I just went for it, baby.
Andrew Cunningham
Oh, hell yeah.
David Imel
I didn't have enough time to actually think that hard.
Adam Alina
You're too busy.
Andrew Cunningham
You ar trying on the Kylie sunglasses that I was.
David Imel
And they look amazing. I put it in memes.
Andrew Cunningham
You could check it out.
Marques Brownlee
Oh my God. My mouth slightly opens.
Andrew Cunningham
The trivia music started and David's still having given me my whiteboard because he was trying them on. I was like, I gotta think virtually.
David Imel
Try on the.
Adam Alina
For Those curious version 13 was tiramisu, as we learned last week.
Marques Brownlee
Wait, I got this. 14 was upside down cake.
Adam Alina
Whatabanger?
David Imel
Whatabanger? Whataburger?
Adam Alina
V number 15 was really hard.
Marques Brownlee
Was V, which is voluptuous cake. No, V. V is the last one before they reset. What is V? Hold on.
David Imel
V, V, V. I'm assume that's the French version.
Adam Alina
The last one before they Updated.
Marques Brownlee
What was it?
Adam Alina
Vanilla ice cream.
Andrew Cunningham
One of all time.
David Imel
Vanilla, Very vanilla.
Adam Alina
It's a rare bean from Madagascar.
David Imel
Yeah. You know, the vanilla is actually one of the more complex flavors. There's like 30 something flavor things that go into vanilla.
Marques Brownlee
That sounds like something. Yeah, vanilla would say big vanilla.
Andrew Cunningham
Big vanilla wants you to believe that's like this base slate trip being like it locks.
Ellis Roman
Anyway, after that correct answer, Marquez with 30.
David Imel
Damn.
Ellis Roman
Andrew with 26. And David with 30. Oh, no.
Andrew Cunningham
That far ahead. Oh, no. I thought David was clearing all of
David Imel
us, by the way, because Mariah destroyed me when I was out. She didn't do it.
Marques Brownlee
She got points for you.
David Imel
No, she didn't. She got zero points.
Marques Brownlee
Damn.
Ellis Roman
Damn. Okay, well, what company did both the founders of Valve work at before?
Marques Brownlee
Damn it.
Ellis Roman
Starting Valve.
Marques Brownlee
Just as we thought we were catching up. Yeah, I can make a guess.
Ellis Roman
You should guess.
Marques Brownlee
They founded Valve.
Adam Alina
You get one point for founder. That was a joke.
David Imel
They came from the same laugh. Where'd they find her?
Andrew Cunningham
Welcome back, Ellis. This is this.
David Imel
I have no idea. I hope.
Ellis Roman
Flip him and read. What do we got?
Andrew Cunningham
Yes. Just because.
David Imel
No way you guys guessed this correctly. I think it's the only plausible thing to guess.
Andrew Cunningham
Unless you know.
Adam Alina
2, 2, 3.
Andrew Cunningham
Microsoft. Oh, that's.
David Imel
God damn it.
Marques Brownlee
You thought he was about to get a free point?
Andrew Cunningham
It's not free.
Marques Brownlee
Nope.
David Imel
I used my big brain.
Marques Brownlee
Thought you were about to take the lead by even more than you were already in the lead.
David Imel
I'm only in the lead by one.
Marques Brownlee
Marques, we made educated guesses and you are still only in the lead by one.
David Imel
Oh, God.
Marques Brownlee
Wow, that felt good.
Andrew Cunningham
I'm trailing by a billion.
Marques Brownlee
I'm glad. I'm glad we were able to pull that one.
David Imel
Well, it's been a fun extravaganza. 31 points, actually.
Ellis Roman
Next month in July.
Marques Brownlee
We've been cooking. That's a nice little teaser. Hey, if you made it this far in the episode, now you know when the trivia extravaganza is.
David Imel
That's true.
Marques Brownlee
Which is very exciting, exclusive information. Well, that's been more for your regularly scheduled programming. Be sure to tune back in next week. Of course, if you're subscribed, you already know it's gonna hit your feed. But we'll catch you again soon. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one.
Andrew Cunningham
Peace Waveform was produced by Adam Alina and Ellis Roman, partner of the Vox Media Podcast network. And Triad Music was created by Vain Sill.
Marques Brownlee
The whole world's talking about the Slate
David Imel
and I'm talking about Streela manifesto.
Andrew Cunningham
When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if fatween won the lottery battery.
David Imel
I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is gonna be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies.
Andrew Cunningham
But switching to GEICO saved me hundreds. So my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard earned cash. It feels good to geico.
This week, the Waveform crew dives into the newly announced Valve Steam Machine console—including its much-debated $1,100+ price tag—exploring everything from its specs and intended market to the broader state of PC and console gaming. The team also covers the hyper-modular $25,000 Slate electric truck, Meta’s rebranded smart glasses (now without Ray-Ban branding), the new Nothing Phone 4B, and quick tech industry news on Android and RCS messaging. Heated opinions and playful banter abound, with plenty of inside jokes and tech deep-dives for gadget lovers.
Intro & Chit-chat
Slate Truck ($25K Modular EV Pickup)
Valve Steam Machine Announcement & Pricing
Meta Smart Glasses Without Ray-Ban Branding
Nothing Phone 4B Naming & Pricing
Other Notable Tech News
Trivia & Trivia Debrief
[05:19 – 24:47]
Description:
Polarizing Price Reactions:
Target Market:
Marques' Hands-On:
Risks/Unknowns:
[46:00 – 68:00]
What It Is:
Price Uproar:
Specs/Features:
Reasons FOR High Price:
RAM/pricing volatility post-OpenAI.
Not subsidized by Valve—philosophy is to avoid locked-down hardware ecosystems.
“When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage... they're doing that to build a more closed system.” — Valve’s official statement, [51:12]
Some buyers pay for seamless “it just works,” couch experience, not maximal specs.
Who Is It For?
Counterpoints:
Playful Take:
[71:44 – 81:40]
What’s New:
Privacy & Social Impact:
Societal Concerns:
[32:42 – 36:56]
Slate truck analogy:
“This is the Spirit Airlines of EVs.” —Andrew, [07:46]
On Steam Machine’s market: “If you think about it… it’s running fairly similar performance-wise to a PS5—which is a 6-year-old console… The price to performance ration is turning into a stinker pretty much.” —Andrew, [51:12]
Valve’s Official Philosophy:
“We feel like you shouldn’t have to buy Valve hardware… subsidizing hardware runs counter to that.” —Valve statement, [51:12]
Meta Smart Glasses concern:
“Every time I talk to someone who I can tell is wearing the meta glasses, I just immediately assume that they're recording.”—Marques, [77:39]
Nothing Phone naming confusion:
“This is marketing speak for I don't want to say the word cheaper…” —Marques, [34:00]
| MM:SS | Segment | |---------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:19 | Slate Truck intro & price breakdown | | 12:26 | Fleet and business use cases for Slate Truck | | 19:03 | Modular accessory pricing details (wrap, liner, speakers) | | 24:18 | Skepticism on Slate Truck's launch/EV delays | | 46:00 | Steam Machine segment opens | | 49:45 | Official pricing is revealed | | 51:12 | Valve’s stance on not subsidizing hardware, open ecosystem | | 58:04 | “Who is this for?” debate, couch gaming vs. desktop | | 62:33 | Comparing performance vs. PS5 and PC | | 65:13 | Should you build your own instead? | | 71:44 | New Meta smart glasses (no more Ray-Ban) announcement | | 77:39 | “Assume you’re being recorded” when talking to glasses users | | 83:34 | Android dessert codename trivia | | 88:03 | Valve’s founders’ trivia |
Stay tuned for the July trivia extravaganza—and don’t forget to subscribe!