The Steam Machine is How Much?!

Summary

Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast

Episode: "The Steam Machine is How Much?!"

Date: June 26, 2026
Hosts: Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), Andrew Cunningham, David Imel, (plus Ellis Roman, Adam Alina)

Episode Overview

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.

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Key Topics & Segment Guide

1. Intro & Chit-chat

   • [03:16] Banter about subscription buttons, YouTube interface changes, and podcast housekeeping.

2. Slate Truck ($25K Modular EV Pickup)

   • [05:19 – 18:00]
   • Complete breakdown of the minimalist, ultra-modular electric pickup truck, including pricing, target markets, polarizing opinions, and hands-on impressions.

3. Valve Steam Machine Announcement & Pricing

   • [46:00 – 68:00]
   • Main feature: Steam Machine specs, performance, price controversy, build-ability, and place vs. consoles and PCs.
   • Spirited debate on the value proposition and who it's for.

4. Meta Smart Glasses Without Ray-Ban Branding

   • [71:44 – 80:13]
   • Meta drops Ray-Ban branding, intros new cheaper models (plus a Kylie Jenner collab), privacy/proliferation concerns, and societal implications.

5. Nothing Phone 4B Naming & Pricing

   • [32:42 – 36:56]
   • Dissecting product lineup strategies, price brackets, and the odd world of budget vs. "budget-budget" smartphones.

6. Other Notable Tech News

   • [03:23 – 05:18] Android 17 updates, Pixel drop, Android dessert naming trivia, speculation on upcoming features.
   • [38:08 – 40:51] RCS on iOS beta, improved messaging parity with iMessage.

7. Trivia & Trivia Debrief

   • [41:07, 83:34, 88:03]
   • Fun quizzes about Android's dessert codenames and the early history of Valve.

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Deep Dive Summaries

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The Slate Truck: “Spirit Airlines of EVs” or Game-Changer?

[05:19 – 24:47]

• Description:

  • A barebones, ultra-modular mini electric pickup.
  • Rear-wheel drive, 65kWh battery, 180hp, ~$25k base price.
  • No power windows, no speakers, steel wheels; add only what you need via (pricey) modules.
  • Five-foot, narrow truck bed; can be converted to a five-seater with roll cage module.

• Polarizing Price Reactions:

  • Some say $25k is expensive compared to loaded gas trucks; others note it’s historic for an EV.
  • “It’s the Spirit Airlines of EVs. ...It seems so cheap off the rip and then you’re like, well, here’s all the things I basically need to be comfortable.”—Andrew, [07:46]

• Target Market:

  • Fleets, contractors, local service/maintenance pros, anyone who values price > features.
  • “This screams to me like fleet of local pool cleaners or local pest control people”—Andrew, [12:26]

• Marques' Hands-On:

  • Minimal but ‘zippy’, rides firm but compliant, “fine for rougher roads”.
  • Vinyl wrap starts at $500, functional upgrades (speakers, lining) add up fast.

• Risks/Unknowns:

  • Factory still not finished; “these things are not actively being manufactured yet.” — Marques, [16:07]
  • Could pricing shift before launch? Will the modular model confuse/alienate buyers?
  • “Fingers are crossed. I like the idea... but we’ve seen many [EV startups] get this far and not make it.” —Marques, [24:18]

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Steam Machine: The Long-Awaited Living Room PC, But at What Cost?

[46:00 – 68:00]

• What It Is:

  • A small form factor, living-room-centric PC by Valve—runs Steam OS, focus on plug-and-play gaming on TV.
  • HDMI-CEC support, streamlined for couch gaming/consolesque experience.
  • Price: Starts ~$1,049 (512GB, no controller), up to $1,428 (2TB, controller bundle).

• Price Uproar:

  • “When it gets talked about to be released at around $700... Now $1049 for 512GB not including controller.”—Andrew, [49:45]
  • “You get two PS5s.”—Ellis, [50:11]

• Specs/Features:

  • PC-grade silicon, upgradable RAM/storage (barely), compact and quiet.
  • Special customization options (magnet faceplates), but performance hovers close to a 5–6 year-old PS5.

• 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?

  • PC gamers with huge Steam libraries who want plug-and-play on a living room TV.
  • Niche: “I think the people who see this niche are excited for it. ...Knowing I will be paying a price that's probably... too expensive, or at least I'm paying for a convenience.”—Andrew, [58:04]

• Counterpoints:

  • You can build a comparable (or better) traditional PC for less, if you sacrifice form factor/quietness.
  • “The price to performance ratio is turning into a stinker…”—Andrew, [51:12]
  • “Maybe just releasing something that's the option... this is the price. If you're not okay with paying that, you can build it by yourself.” —Andrew, [65:13]

• Playful Take:

  • “[Valve is] a private company. They don't have to think about their stock going up. That's why people still love them.” —David, [68:35]

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Meta Smart Glasses—No More Ray-Ban, More Creep Factor?

[71:44 – 81:40]

• What’s New:

  • Meta drops Ray-Ban branding, keeps Luxottica as manufacturer, adds new styles (Fury, Adventure, Kylie Jenner Edition), $80 cheaper ($299 base).
  • Kylie model features her AI voice.

• Privacy & Social Impact:

  • “Is it really a good thing if more people have these glasses?”—Ellis, [74:29]
  • Drilling out the camera recording LED for stealth use is an emerging issue, leading to some venues banning all smart glasses.
  • “Meta does not care about this. Meta only cares if they get in trouble.”—David, [76:39]
  • Marques recounts being recorded/ambushed without consent at an event by someone with the glasses.

• Societal Concerns:

  • Growing difficulty of distinguishing between regular and smart glasses.
  • Comparison to Japan’s loud shutter law for phone cameras as a possible solution.

---

Nothing Phone 4B & The “Budget-Budget” Naming Rabbit Hole

[32:42 – 36:56]

• Product Lineup Confusion:
  • Nothing’s naming: Numbers = generations, letters = “segments” (A = not flagship, B = budget of budget).
  • “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.”—Marques, [34:00]
  • CMF phone 3A Pro canceled due to high RAM pricing—cheaper segment instead gets “Nothing” branding at the edge of profitable specs.
  • Extended jokes about budget, budget-budget, and premium lines.

---

Rapid Fire: Android 17, RCS, Trivia, and More

• Android 17 rolls out (“bubble bar,” virtual gaming touch screen, color tweaks)—confusion over Pixel drop vs. Android version features. [03:38]
• Fun trivia about Android dessert codenames, Valve’s founder history, and banter about NBA2K game pricing. [41:07, 83:34, 88:03]
• RCS on iOS: iOS 27 Beta 2 enables RCS 2.7 (edit/unsend), closer feature parity with iMessage, still buggy. [38:08]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• 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]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| 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 |

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Closing Thoughts

• The episode highlights the rapidly shifting landscape in consumer tech pricing, segmentation, and value.
• The Slate truck and Steam Machine spark heated debates about “enough features,” upcharge models, and where ‘innovation’ ends and up-sell begins.
• The team’s trademark fun, skepticism, and technical rigor make the discussion lively and insightful for both newcomers and tech veterans.

Stay tuned for the July trivia extravaganza—and don’t forget to subscribe!

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Transcript

[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 [e-mail]. 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]

using a Venmo debit card.

[Marques Brownlee]

Say more.

[David Imel]

More.

[Marques Brownlee]

Exactly.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Because the more you do with Venmo,

[Marques Brownlee]

the more you get.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Like earning up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash on a bundle of brands.

[Marques Brownlee]

So order more pizza.

[Andrew Cunningham]

The math demands it.

[Marques Brownlee]

Get the Venmo debit card Venmo Stash

[Andrew Cunningham]

Bundle Terms and exclusions apply.

[Marques Brownlee]

See terms Venmo Checkout not available at all merchants Venmo MasterCard is issued by

[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]

1, 2, 3.

[Marques Brownlee]

I'm standup comedian John Marco Cerese. And I'm actor penis model Russell Daniels. The downside is our podcast, where we bring on guests to talk about how

[Andrew Cunningham]

miserable their lives are, because, let's face

[Marques Brownlee]

it, things are not getting Better. Every episode we talk about what's wrong with our lives, our guests, lives, the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're gonna walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Busy Phillips, Stavros Halkias.

[Marques Brownlee]

Laverne Cox, Hassan Piker. Alana Glaser. I promise you're gonna have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast network,

[David Imel]

this is the downside.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Foreign

[Marques Brownlee]

My new show, Create or Destroy

[Adam Alina]

Reimagining Marketing, explores how every decision a

[Marques Brownlee]

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[Adam Alina]

all, contribute to either creating value or destroying it. Each week I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people building,

[Marques Brownlee]

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[Adam Alina]

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[Marques Brownlee]

And the wisdom is company new episodes

[Adam Alina]

drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

[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.