00:00:00
They just smash Xbox inside of an existing product like ROG Xbox ally. You just described the whole Microsoft strategy for the last decade. What if they did MacBook Xbox Pro? That would go
00:00:11
nuts. Go so hard. MK Xbox HD. Yo, what is up people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm
00:00:26
Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. So last week we talked a lot about the thing that happened that week which was
00:00:32
WWDC and we talked for our entire time which means all the rest of the stuff that we didn't get to talk about now we
00:00:38
can talk about it right it's a good time. So we've got some old news we missed last week. We've got Xbox speculations a new Fuji camera a
00:00:44
Fedverse corner of course and we have some thoughts about some new YouTube features. But first, the biggest news of
00:00:52
them all. The elephant in the room that just barely barely got eclipsed by WWDC,
00:00:57
which was the headlines that I read that Instagram may be launching an iPad app this year. I'll believe it when I see it. It could happen. Where's the horn soundboard? Yeah, I was I was hearing
00:01:10
that. Oh, yeah. We we'll believe it when we see it because they did they did launch
00:01:16
a WhatsApp for iPad and that is a meta property that we also never thought would get an iPad app and so now here we
00:01:22
are. Yeah. But Instagram is a small team, you know. Yeah. I did just Google it recently.
00:01:28
Literally tens of thousands of people. 20,000. 20,000 just on Instagram. Just on
00:01:35
Instagram. Lean team. Holy hell. But you know that's it's maybe coming. 20,000. The app updates like twice a year. That's like a small city. What the heck?
00:01:48
Speaking of what those 20,000 people are doing, maybe this is just a me problem. I feel like part of this pot is what
00:01:54
issues is Andrew having, but my Instagram is cooked. There are so many issues. I like how we have like a David
00:02:00
Fedverse corner and an Andrew tech support corner. I I've been having three main issues on Instagram and I want to see if any of you are are experiencing them. One, when I try and send a reel,
00:02:11
do you know how like it pops up all the profile pictures and names to send it to? Yeah. A third of those pictures don't load. They're just blank. Okay.
00:02:18
Kind of annoying. Not too bad. I don't have that. Let me try. I've been having another one recently where reals just
00:02:23
play half the video and then pause. Oh, I have that all the time. Yeah. Okay. That's been That happens all the time.
00:02:28
Really? That's the most annoying. So, you're really annoying. Like I'll just swipe to a reel and I'll just play a
00:02:35
quarter to half of it and then stop. And that's only ever happened to me when I have a crappy internet connection. No.
00:02:40
Like No, it happens at my house. Yeah. All the time. Okay. This one is the least annoying, but the most annoying
00:02:47
because of how simple it seems. Like every third pro, do you know how like in a real the bottom left corner is their
00:02:52
username and profile picture. That profile picture is like completely blown out and almost impossible to see. Like
00:03:00
exposure through the roof. And then you click on their profile and it's totally normal. I think I posted one in Slack
00:03:06
somewhere. Interesting. Have not had that problem, but I think it would be fun to enjoy. That is the weirdest one.
00:03:12
I think it's the weirdest one. I like the chaos. Bring on the chaos. Um it's kind of good that the reals just pause
00:03:17
in the middle of them because then you wake up from your like trance and then you go outside. It's a feature.
00:03:23
It's a feature, not a bug. They're like, "You want to stop? You should probably stop." It's like how when you're It
00:03:29
should pause and then open the selfie camera. Look at yourself right now. Why are your eyes so bloodshot? This is what it looks
00:03:36
like. Do you see that? That's awesome. Yeah, super boring. This is like every third
00:03:42
image is just we'll put it on the screen. But yeah, just like totally exposure slider all the way up. Um and
00:03:50
the rest of it is Yeah. Normal. And everything else is normal. The video when you go to the profile, totally normal. I have a speaking of HDR,
00:03:58
uh my friend who works at Apple, he in the new iOS beta, he added a feature that lets you do HDR um not screenshots but HDR screen recordings and he was
00:04:11
like, "Hey, go check out this setting in your phone." And I did and I was like, "Oh, no." And I was like, "I love you."
00:04:18
But um I already my eyes already bleed when I see random HDR content on Instagram. So I'm not sure I want to be like sending HDR videos to people or HDR
00:04:29
screen recordings to people. You know what I mean? I feel like HDR around here has turned into a way for us to troll each other instead of actually using I'm
00:04:36
just under my covers at night like Yeah. Yeah. And then someone reacts with our HDR emoji.
00:04:42
That is my least favorite one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, on top of the story as well, I just wanted to make a note that Megan
00:04:49
Fox is a real person. She did email me uh after we mentioned that she emailed me first before and she said, "Yes, I am a real person." So, shout out to Megan. Wait, Megan, not Email me, I think.
00:05:04
Sorry. Keep going. Okay. What? Why did she email you again? What was Because she thought it was funny that I was like, "Is she real?" Wait, is it like Megan Fox? Mega Fox or is it
00:05:14
coincidentally someone named Mega Fox? Do you think Megan Fox from Transformers would be doing PR for Beeper? I don't
00:05:20
think she'll be doing PR for Beeper. But I do totally see Beeper as the kind of company be like, "How do we get people
00:05:26
interested in the Fiverse? How much money can we give Megan?" Is not a Fenverse app. Oh, right. It's the It's
00:05:32
the like multitexting app. Oh, but I still It's the woof. Yeah. I still don't know if Megan Fox from Transformers one would be interested in doing Beeper PR.
00:05:43
I that's what I thought. I thought it was Megan Fox got paid through a paper thing and like it sent out an email
00:05:48
quote from Megan Fox. Yeah, but she Yeah, that's true. That is a good way to get like tech reporters to open their
00:05:54
email. It's from Okay, that's not I didn't think she was doing PR. I just thought
00:06:00
that Megan Fox from Transformers 1 emailed David and Mel. That's also what I thought. That's a possibility.
00:06:05
Honestly, I've had weird. Okay. I currently still think that. Okay. Yeah. All right. Although the
00:06:12
other Megan Fox that emailed you was pretty cool. She She was really cool. I felt really I felt bad because I think
00:06:18
when people have common names like that, they probably get made fun of all the time. Well, this section's not helping that. Not at all. But thank you, Megan.
00:06:25
But thank you, Megan. You're a real one. Okay, moving on to the Fetverse corner.
00:06:33
All right. Uh there was some Threads Fedverse news this week. I don't know if any of you guys that are watching this use Threads or care about the Fedverse,
00:06:40
but I'm going to tell you anyway. Uh so they introduced some new features where now there is a dedicated Fedverse feed
00:06:47
on threads which is actually quite good very cool yeah I'm curious about this so is it the same way you can make a list
00:06:55
like currently on threads will just be like a fetverse feed on desktop on threads right now you can like show
00:07:02
multiple feeds at the same time what I have it set up as as the for you feed and the following feed because I want to
00:07:08
be able to just scroll my following list most of the time and also for you you set one of those to just fetverse
00:07:13
follows. Oh, interesting. Okay. So, you can follow accounts from like flipboard.social or mastedon.social or
00:07:20
whatever and then all of those posts show up in one feed. And the reason that that is like good and kind of
00:07:26
interesting is like for example, Ghost, which is a publishing platform, is also on activity pub, which means if you want
00:07:33
to like read articles, you could use threads to read articles, which is interesting.
00:07:39
I just open threads just because while you were talking about it and mine is extremely broken right now where basically their their everyone's name
00:07:47
and profile picture is correct but then the text and content of their post is something else and it'll all just be the
00:07:53
same as the one before it. So my top post is Adam Miser saying we're testing a way to hide spoilers and threads and
00:07:58
then next is a random post of like the WNBA fight last night. There was a fight. Yeah. And the caption is we're
00:08:05
testing way for you to hide spoilers and threads. And then it's David Al post posting saying it's just been about a
00:08:12
year since thread started the Fedverse integration. And then the next post is we're we're testing a way to spoilers
00:08:18
and threads. Then it's Jonno posting uh then there's a random person saying I love Caitlyn Clark getting bumped and sh and shoved to the floor by Marina Mabberry. And then the next post is Jonno with a picture of you are here
00:08:31
right before World War II. And it says I love Caitlyn Clark getting bumped and shoved to the floor. And then it's an
00:08:36
ADL post also saying I love Caitlyn Clark getting shoved to the floor. And then another person saying I love Kaitlyn Clark getting shoved to the
00:08:42
floor. And then another person saying I love Caitlyn Clark getting shoved to the floor. And then YouTube saying I love Kaitlyn. And then another random person. It's
00:08:49
just like that lean team. Okay. So broken right. The nice part about it is it's got all the correct media. So it
00:08:55
the text being changed with the media saying the same makes the so much better. Well, if you were on the
00:09:00
Fedverse feed, uh you would probably see the same thing. Let me find that. But did that roll out already? So yeah, it
00:09:06
rolled out. I have it now. It's great. Uh so that what I was saying is like the kind of the nice thing about that is
00:09:11
like if you follow a ghost publication when people publish on ghost, which is like their website, it will also show up
00:09:18
on your Fedverse feed if you follow that on the Fedverse. So now you you can basic kind of like an RSS reader in a
00:09:25
way for a lot of things. I miss those. Yeah. Uh it's frustrating because you still can't interact really past lightning. That was my next question. So if you want you I interviewed Peter
00:09:37
Codddle who is the head of the Fediverse integration at Threads uh yesterday as of time of recording in a thread which
00:09:44
is a horrible way to interview people I will say because threads wait wait wait you interviewed him in like in replies to a thread. So we organized an interview but the interview was like me
00:09:57
asking a question him answering me asking a question him answering. The problem is that threads as a platform
00:10:03
prioritizes top level like the top level post and like the top comments but anything under that like does not come through very easily. So you tried to thread the whole interview but then we
00:10:14
threaded the whole interview and it it's really hard to find. You think someone at threads would have realized that
00:10:19
probably wasn't a great idea. Yeah. Sorry not to derail that. That's just crazy. Agree with you. Um, so anyway, but if you do want to see that interview, you can go you can go see it.
00:10:32
I'll have Adam and put it in the show notes. No, I won't. He won't put it in the show notes. My mine's broken also
00:10:39
cuz right now looking at David Ml's profile is pinned comment. Lately, I've noticed companies smashing. So, I made a
00:10:44
new video. Every single post after that. Oh my gosh. New video from me with the same. I will say if this is Wow, it's
00:10:52
all the same post. I will Wow. Does everyone have the same bug right now? I guess so. That's kind of dope. Is
00:10:57
busted. All right. Well, if this was because of the Fedverse integration, then I'm so uh I'm glad for you, but
00:11:03
also I'm sorry that happened. Anyway, um yeah, that happened. So now you can follow all your Fedverse people in one small thing. Basically, you can silo them so that you never have to hear
00:11:15
about it again from me, unless you want to. And that's all I have. The actual Fedverse corner. I think we do need a
00:11:22
real feather in this corner here with like the pins and red string connecting everything and it just slowly grows as we do it. That would be fun. As more
00:11:33
people federate, we can grow the, you know, until it's just angle of red yarn. Slowly it will not be a corner anymore. Slowly will be the Fedverse office. That's my goal. Nice. Federate. Next up,
00:11:45
we have a new Xbox handheld sort of symmetric. We're really late on now. This So, what I wrote here is actually a little different than that, but we can start with that. The ROG Ally, the ROG
00:11:57
Xbox ally. It's like that's a they just smash Xbox inside of an existing product
00:12:02
like ROG Xbox ally. You just described the whole Microsoft strategy for the last decade. What if they did MacBook
00:12:09
Xbox Pro? That would go nuts. Don't go so hard. MK Xbox HD. So, I haven't watched too much about the uh the new ROG Xbox Ally X, but not only did they do it with the name, that's
00:12:23
pretty much what the device is. It is a ROG Ally X. Xbox, Nintendo Switch Xbox has all three. Okay, continue. That's okay. Um, they
00:12:36
pretty much did it with the name and the actual console because it's an ROG Alli X slightly upgraded and the, you know,
00:12:44
where you hold it is more like a real Xbox controller, including, I believe, on the Alli Xbox Ally X, not the Xbox
00:12:50
ally, because there are, there's two tiers of them. The higher tier has like the responsive triggers or whatever. Um,
00:12:57
why I posted this though is actually a teaser that the Xbox CEO posted recently about their nextG consoles that a lot of
00:13:04
people are speculating off of that I thought was pretty interesting. Um, so the main thing they did was they were
00:13:11
announcing they're continuing their partnership with AMD for new consoles. Um, the X and S were already using AMD,
00:13:16
so it's nothing that interesting in that sense. Um, but in that they said a couple things. Well, first of all, they
00:13:22
said they're also going to use the power of AI to enhance graphics. I think they're the last home console that's kind of like jumping on the AI
00:13:28
bandwagon. I think we all expected that. Yeah, my Nintendo Switch 2 definitely has so much AI in it. All that AI. I
00:13:34
mean, it has upscaling DLSS. AI upscaling. It is AI upscaling. There's a lot of companies that would call that AI upscaling if you want it to be. Oops. All AI. Yeah.
00:13:46
Um, but one of the main things they said is one, she announced that they were going to be making the new chips to
00:13:52
bring the nextG Xbox to your living room and to your hands, which kind of sounds
00:13:58
like since this just came out. Maybe they're doing a first party handheld. Everyone's like, "The Switch 2, we need
00:14:04
a competitive." I mean, PlayStation did one, right? It was kind of that like streaming one. Yeah. The PlayStation
00:14:10
Portal. Yeah. So, I'm not really sure about that. But then there was a statement. There's a statement at the
00:14:15
end of the video that everybody is really speculating on. They said, "Delivering you the Xbox experience not
00:14:21
locked to a single store or tied to one device. That's why we're working closely with the Windows team to ensure that
00:14:27
Windows is the number one platform for gaming." A little weird. The Xbox CEO is saying Windows is the number one. They are owned by Microsoft. I still think it's strange that Xbox is saying that,
00:14:39
but not being tied to a single store or one device. Everyone's hoping that this means the new Xbox is basically a toned
00:14:46
down Windows platform that can run Steam and Epic Games Store, which could be really sick if your Xbox andor Xbox handheld device is running Steam. The
00:14:57
dream of the Steam PC is alive and well. I see. Yeah, the like hybrid PC console.
00:15:03
I also got to say, so Dave 2D did a video recently. Yeah, there was a Lenovo Legion handheld device that had originally run Windows and it was not good. And then they released a Steam OS
00:15:14
version that was much better. Like it got a much higher frame rate and like cooled better and everything. And that was all because it was running Steam OS instead of Windows. And the whole thing
00:15:26
was like, oh, Windows was the problem all along. So title this Yeah. Is this really a good idea? Maybe if they're focusing more on it than
00:15:39
creating it into I mean I guess it's not only the handle. I think more people are excited about an Xbox console being able
00:15:44
to play Steam games which is a speculation also. That would be great. That would be awesome. But also then
00:15:50
what would be the value of the Xbox store? You know what I mean? Well, it still has there's still Xbox exclusive
00:15:55
games that aren't on Steam. So you have both. You just have more choices now. That's about all we have because we are
00:16:01
definitely not the bastions of console games. Yeah, we're not the gaming except for the Nintendo Switch 2. Everyone
00:16:06
comes to us for Nintendo Switch 2 news. So, I I want to do a just planting the seed for the future. this I I'm reading
00:16:13
about this AI upscaling DLSS stuff right now and I'm I'm kind of curious like the whole idea that like you load lower
00:16:19
resolution files into your memory to save motherboard bandwidth knowing that your GPU can upscale them with machine learning when they become like close to the player. Like that that doesn't make
00:16:31
sense to me. Like how can a how can a graphics card be that fast that it beats out motherboard bus speed? Well, I think it's like memory read speed, you know,
00:16:41
like scaling is faster than loading higher resolution assets or something. I know, but doesn't that just feel wrong
00:16:47
coming out of your mouth? I don't know. I mean, maybe it's just me. You either just neither of us know enough about this to like you either just said something remarkable or
00:16:58
someone listening to this is like what an idiot. No, I mean I'm sure it is what an idiot, but at the same like just
00:17:05
think about it like the idea that like like as someone who has messed around with a bunch of these I granted not on
00:17:10
like a dedicated chip, but I've messed around with a bunch of these AI upscaling things and they're not I you
00:17:15
know they're not exactly lean. Again, I'm not doing it on a dedicated chip and the idea you know I'm we're doing this
00:17:20
on a Mac studio which is essentially a big giant bus city, you know, with these like super fast memory read and write
00:17:27
speeds and and buses between everything. So, I'm just like, damn, were we really at that place where it's I know that it's more efficient. A lot of the drama
00:17:33
around the new Nvidia cards was that they're not actually that much faster. They just did a lot more AI upscaling.
00:17:40
Okay. Well, either way, if you are the kind of person watching this who knows how stupid what I just said is, write to
00:17:47
me and uh we'll we'll talk about it. You're going to get tweeted out a lot this week. I love it. Yeah. Good. If I
00:17:52
had to guess without getting piled on by how wrong I am, we're all going to get piled. Everyone got your fingers ready
00:17:57
to type. It's not that it's just, you know, like one chip doing all of the upscaling. It's one chip that's using
00:18:03
machine learning to help the already powerful graphics chip in that get to that point. It's not doing it all by itself. No, don't do that. That's
00:18:14
what was that one? That's why Okay, that's what's going to be my Twitter in a few days. This whole conversation just reminded me when I was at New York airport the other day. No, this will make sense. Did Megan Fox
00:18:28
show up? No. You know the guy who checks your ID and like your boarding pass before you get in? He was like, "Oh, yeah. I watch your videos. Like, good to
00:18:34
see you." or whatever. I was like, "Oh, cool. Thanks." And then I like went in and then he like got onto his break
00:18:40
immediately. And then like walked back up to me and was like, "By the way, I have a question. I have a RTX 4090. What
00:18:46
chip should I get?" I was like, "I don't know. Like, what do you what games? I don't There's too many answers to this question." Yeah, I just was like, I don't know. My Macintosh, my my
00:18:58
plane leaves in 5 minutes. And I was like unloading my bag onto the conveyor belt like I don't know, man. Whatever
00:19:04
you want. Like I could tell in that moment. I was like, I do not I I am not giving a good There are multiple dedicated channels for this. Wait, isn't an RTX 4090 good? Yeah. Yeah. He said,
00:19:15
"What what processor should I get?" He's like, "I have this card. What processor should I get?" I have like the most soughta card in the country right now.
00:19:23
I was like, "Honestly, man, you're probably going to be fine. You can't play City Skylines with an old
00:19:29
CPU, though. You should have been like, "Oh, last year's card." Yeah. Broke boy.
00:19:36
All right, we got to move on. Okay, this is another extremely small story. We need a segue. Speaking of maps,
00:19:49
why was there a map? Cuz planes fly on maps and now this is a map. We just saw car. Planes fly in the air. Yeah, not lately. Marquez was delayed for 11
00:20:00
hours. It didn't fly too much. Last week we saw CarPlay Ultra with the new Aston
00:20:06
Martins. It wasn't last week. It was a while ago. And how the UI kind of matches the car. We got our first glimpse of that in Google Maps in
00:20:13
Android Automotive. First of all, I thought Android Automotive wasn't a term anymore. I thought we were now Android
00:20:19
Auto and cars with Google Drive. Google builtin. Builtin, right? That was funny.
00:20:25
Google Drive. That was funny. Wait, I made that joke like four years ago. I got that so late. Dang. Wait, that's a
00:20:31
really missed opportunity. Google Drive. It should have been called Google Drive. Well, yeah. No, Android Automotive is
00:20:37
just what the cars like the Polestars run that have Google as the UI. Yeah, it was like it's for the whole car. The UI using it without having to plug your phone. It's Android Auto without your phone. Uh, it's just a Android tablet
00:20:52
pretty much inside your car as your car's UI. But then I thought at Google IO they announced like Google
00:20:59
Google car with or car with Google Drive. No, no, car. Cars with Google built in, right? With Google built in. Yeah, cars with Google builtin is now
00:21:11
what they called it. Right. So, I thought Android Automotive was gone, which is the first thing that confused me about this. Right. So, I think that
00:21:17
that would refer to the cars like the GM cars where it's not that the entire operating system is Google, but they do
00:21:25
have Google Play Store access and you can install Android apps on them. So, you can install Spotify and ways on it even though the whole thing isn't
00:21:37
Android Automotive. I'm not saying this is easy. This is totally a Google's fault for making several things with
00:21:42
similar names all being difficult to understand. But yeah, Android Auto, Android Automotive, and Google with no
00:21:48
cars with Google built in are three different things. Cool. Sounds like a Google product. Yeah, exactly. Nailed
00:21:54
it. Nailed it. Um, but we saw our first glimpse at an Android Automotive being a
00:21:59
slightly modified to match the car's UI, right? Vibes, I guess. Carplay Ultra, baby. Yeah, pretty much. There's a polestar. It's super simple. Google Maps now has like an orange button instead of
00:22:11
a blue button. It's more squared off. Everything matches with Polestar. It's very nice. But it made me think, is
00:22:17
Polestar the Google Pixel of the Android Auto software or Android Automotive software?
00:22:24
Pstar. Like if you want the Android Automotive latest updates, you have to buy a Polestar because it seems to get all of this first. Polestar is the pixel of Android Automotive. Yes. Yes.
00:22:38
It's the It's the pixel of EVs, period. I feel like maybe that's maybe that's rude. I just feel like I see so few of
00:22:44
them now compared to everything else. But there are still enough of them where you see them and they're good and people
00:22:49
who like them are like, "Wow, this is like amazing." Like, why does this not have more market share? Is that the almond of the walnut? I was thinking the
00:22:55
same thing. How do they get How do they How do they How do they milk the almond? Okay, I don't have the answers. DJ Cow
00:23:06
and I usually have all the answers. Uh, can I except for which chip to get for a 49? Yeah, you didn't have the answer to
00:23:12
the TSA agent. I can feel this derailing. We should work on it. Wait, wait. Before we take a break, Before we take a break, I just want to read a
00:23:17
tweet that I tweeted um six years ago. Okay. Okay, perfect. So, I decided to rename all the Google's favorites. Okay. Uh, Google Keep. Wait. Okay. Google.
00:23:30
Wait. You're doing great, sweetie. Okay. I said Android Auto should become Google Drive,
00:23:36
which was Ellis's joke, but I just want to let you know I made that six years ago. Wow. Way to one up Ellis. That's messed up. Let him have this moment. No
00:23:42
one laughed at it in here either. So, uh, I said Google Drive should be either rename it should be renamed to Google
00:23:48
Keep because you're keeping stuff or Google Cloud because it is a cloud service. Google Cloud also exists. Uh,
00:23:54
and that Google Keep should be renamed to Google notes. So, well, I just wanted to that was it. That wasn't all the services. I was expecting like 20. Uh, Google Pixel should be Google phone. I
00:24:06
didn't say that, but it would make sense. Anyway, we can take it a breakdown. I'm sorry, Ellis. That was really mean. I should have just like
00:24:12
been like, "You're funny, but I was funny first." Don't worry, Ellen. Ellis has a old VHS tape from a first grade uh
00:24:20
recital where he made that same joke, and you actually stole it from him. Well, in my Bible, Jesus actually said,
00:24:27
"Oh, yeah. Well, if you come with me, I have cave paintings where they're painting about how funny it would be if
00:24:33
it was called Google Drive. Okay. In their weird Flintstone cars, fossils which have engravings on them. Anyway,
00:24:41
ancient aliens came to me and said they should let's when the big bang hit the button right now. The sound that
00:24:46
reverberated was Android Auto should be calculated. I think this is the sharpest decline of listeners we're ever going to see on an
00:24:57
analytics of an episode. That was very chaotic. Oh my god. Question one. Let's get right into it, folks. In the early days of Instagram back in the Oh my god, no one laughed this hard at the actual
00:25:09
joke. I was so proud of it cuz I made it first. It's never funny the second if you made
00:25:15
it this far into the episode. Comment Google Drive down below. I just want to know. I just want to know if you made it
00:25:21
this far. All right. Question one. In the early days, in the late 2000s, the early days of Instagram, the original
00:25:27
conception of it was not as a photo sharing app, but actually as a location-based social network. Once
00:25:33
Foursquare took off, they realized they were not going to capture any of that market share, and they pivoted to
00:25:38
images. But before they pivoted, what was the original name of the app? Before Before it was called Instagram. Before it was called Instagram. Did you
00:25:53
know that Foursquare recently bought another company? How? With what money? That's what I'm saying. I'm like I I
00:25:59
read this news and I was like how they've bought companies in 2019 from Snap. They acquired something from
00:26:04
Snapchat in 2019. They bought something in 2021. but he bought something this year and I'm like where is your money
00:26:10
coming from? I also think it's hilarious that it seems just like everyone wanted
00:26:16
to start a four square in the late 2000s. Like Sam Alman was doing it, Instagram was doing it. That was like
00:26:22
the birth of of like location data. So everyone was like what can we do with this? And they all had the exact same
00:26:28
idea cuz it's the only idea. Yeah. Well, we will think about this one. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back. So sorry.
00:26:40
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00:28:02
All right, welcome back. We got to talk about uh this sort of double-edged sword
00:28:07
of this one new YouTube feature that is attempting to do good things, but obviously it's a double-edged sword, so there are bad things happening, too. So, we talked a couple weeks ago actually about uh dubbing our videos. We've been
00:28:18
paying to have our videos transcribed so you guys who are unable to hear the videos can obviously read along, but
00:28:24
also if you don't speak English, we started working on audio tracks in different languages that would play alongside the video for people who speak
00:28:35
different languages. So obviously if you're in an English region, you watch the video, it's English. If you're in a
00:28:41
region like let's say Germany for example and a lot of people speak German, it could theoretically uh insert
00:28:49
a dub of me like my voice but speaking German and it would play alongside the video as if it was just like normally how it sounded. And it was it's kind of a cool
00:29:00
idea. You might have heard about this before autodubbing. A lot of other channels have tried it. We experimented with uh voice actors who would speak
00:29:07
alongside me but don't necessarily sound like me but the translations would typically be very accurate. We also they
00:29:12
take a while and then we also experimented since tech videos are fast turnaround with AI dubs which would actually sound like me but wouldn't
00:29:20
necessarily be as accurate but they'd be much faster. So, there's a whole bunch of things we've been trying that actually. So, the last time we talked
00:29:26
about this, that was the conundrum when we were in and we asked our audience, what would you rather have, the like
00:29:32
paid for voice actor that's more accurate coming seven days later or the AI within 24 hours? Right. And the funny
00:29:39
thing is the feedback we got was, "Please stop. I'm It's auto it's defaulting to those tracks based on my region and I've been watching you in English for so long. This is now making
00:29:51
watching your videos super annoying. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's that's where we got we get to this this new feature
00:29:57
which is YouTube. I got an email. Actually, I'm going to pull up the email right now from YouTube. What So, real quick before we get to that, that
00:30:04
actually changed our whole strategy. And what we're currently working on now if people are interested is instead of
00:30:09
taking the most popular regions and trying to adapt to dubbing from some of those, we actually decided to take the
00:30:16
least popular regions that watch us. I think like Russia and Japan are two right now because if somewhere like
00:30:22
India, which is one of our biggest uh viewer audiences, they're already listening to us in English, they like it
00:30:28
in English, there's not a lot more people to reach to there. So, let's try and find the people that aren't listening in English. And so, if it
00:30:34
does, autodub it based on the region that might be able to expand the audience. So, that's what we were trying until this feature rolled out. Yeah. The
00:30:41
key issue was that YouTube was autochanging the dub track based on the viewers location. Yeah. and would not
00:30:48
give the viewer an option to change back the or you would have to do it individually per video. I don't even
00:30:55
think you can change it at all. No, I think you can change it in the audio track in the settings. The gear icon,
00:31:01
it's similar to where you change like speed of and quality. Oh, I know that by heart. Yeah. But the issue is like,
00:31:08
okay, all these millions of people are used to watching in English and it just got switched to a different language on them and even though it's one of the
00:31:14
languages spoken in their region, they'd really rather just watch in English. Mhm. Yeah. So, I get this email. Hi, Marquez Brownley. We'll soon be enabling
00:31:21
automatic dubbing on your channel. This means that YouTube will automatically generate translated audio tracks in
00:31:27
different languages, making your content accessible to more viewers. No action is needed. We'll enable this on your channel in the coming weeks. And once
00:31:33
it's enabled, when you upload a new video, we'll automatically add the dubbed audio to your video. Over time,
00:31:38
we may also dub previously published videos. In some cases, we may be unable to generate the dubbed audio. So, you'll
00:31:44
first be able to see the status of the dubbed audio in YouTube Studio. Effective today, you can turn it off for
00:31:50
your entire channel. Oh. Um, but once it's enabled for your channel while uploading new videos, you'll also have
00:31:55
the option to turn off automatic dubbing for that video. And it's a bunch of languages. So if I if you click the the
00:32:03
learn more link in there, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and all,
00:32:10
I presume will continue to be locked to the regions that they assume people are from that speak those languages. So
00:32:17
yeah, YouTube just go ahead and flipping the switch on the AI dubbing feature that they've been building in the background. Uh double-edged sword. I
00:32:24
think a lot of creators, maybe smaller creators especially, will find this useful because they don't have established audiences who are used to
00:32:30
listening to them in a certain language. So, this is just free extra visibility to them in new places that wouldn't have ordinarily been able to consume their video. It's great, right? But the other side of that sword is myself, a channel
00:32:43
who already has people who are used to listening in English and don't want it switched would just have a bunch of
00:32:48
people suddenly getting weird AI dubbed tracks when they're used to listening in English. And uh they're going to have to
00:32:54
find that button to switch it back to English, which is not necessarily easy to find. I believe every every time a
00:33:00
new video starts, you would have to do that, too, which is It happened to me the other day cuz I was doing the
00:33:05
dishes, as we do here in this podcast, and I usually just like leave my phone off in the corner playing videos while I
00:33:11
have like an AirPod in or something. And I had changed my phone recently to the Spanish language to help me like just
00:33:17
get more reading Spanish. And it autodubbed it. It was so weird. I had to like dry my hands. If Duolingo had this feature and you were like doing French or whatever and then it just started
00:33:28
talking in English to you, that'd be pretty funny. Huh. Yeah. The Duo AI just takes over your phone and starts dubbing
00:33:33
things. You know, YouTube calls this a dub feature. I call it an L. Nice. Thanks. I mean, I I think we all understand what they're trying to get at, buddy. Yeah. Jesus. Did you make
00:33:46
that joke first? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something something big bang. We get it. Um, like I remember Squid Games came out and everyone like it had all the different
00:33:58
dub tracks on it already and like got super popular and like we all understand the benefits of this dubbing in here to
00:34:06
be able to reach. I think it's just like way too surface level and people aren't understanding that like what we saw from
00:34:12
feedback from our audience is really upset about people who already listen to you in English. And the other thing is
00:34:18
is like we did it in Hindi. We had so many people saying hey India speaks like 12 different languages like not even all a lot of us probably know or English
00:34:29
better than Hindi but now you're going to all get region locked to Hindi or maybe it's based on phone. I'm still not
00:34:35
100% sure about how that works. Yeah. I don't know if I just like maybe it was just a weird hack that happened or
00:34:41
something because I changed the system language on my phone. I can easily see YouTube's point of view from this cuz
00:34:47
it's like there's all of this content that people could be watching that would just give them so many more ad dollars.
00:34:52
So if you turn if you make it opt out instead of opt in, people can just watch any video and enjoy it and then YouTube
00:34:58
gets more ad revenue. So it makes a ton of sense from a monetary perspective. Yeah. Here's a my proposition to YouTube
00:35:05
to make it make sense for everyone. allow users, like viewers, a little bit of control over the default viewing experience for their channel. I've brought this up before. I brought this
00:35:17
up like many, many years ago where I was like, I would like YouTube to automatically default whatever video I'm watching to the highest available
00:35:22
resolution. I will wait for it to buffer. I will. And I don't mind that that's like going to take longer for
00:35:28
certain videos or certain worst connection environments, but that's a flip I would switch in my YouTube
00:35:34
experience. Let me flip the switch. But that's not a flip that I can switch. That's not a switch that I can flip. Yeah, but I want another switch. Another
00:35:42
switch. Because this would make sense. If you're gonna do this, YouTube, I get it. Great. Give us another switch that just says defea all videos to their
00:35:50
naturally uploaded language or default all videos to English or default all videos to dubbing in this language. So
00:35:57
that I don't automatically get videos in the language I don't speak and I have to like switch them a whole bunch of times.
00:36:02
I just want to watch everything in whatever language it was natively made in. give me that or I just want to watch
00:36:08
everything in English because I speak English and just do that. Companies are strangely adverse to giving you like granular control of things. Yeah. You
00:36:15
know, they know better. Yeah. Yeah. I also I don't think subtitles is that bad of a thing to do. I don't know why it needs to dub because the anime world has very strong opinions about that.
00:36:26
Exactly. And there's so many like not even outside of anime. Like I'll watch YouTube from YouTubers in other
00:36:31
countries doing like I don't know EDC travel videos or something like that and you miss a lot of like how they feel
00:36:38
about something even though I don't understand the language. I could tell they get excited about certain things or like things like that which I can read
00:36:44
what it says perfectly fine as long as I'm getting like the intuition of their excitement through their voice. Yeah. I
00:36:49
have a thought and I have one more step further on a proposition for how to fix it. My thought is this feels like a very
00:36:56
American step because I feel like in America we don't know a lot of other languages where in a lot of other
00:37:02
countries people know three, four, five languages. That's super common. So it feels like to us, oh you live in another
00:37:08
country, you speak different language. Here it is rather than like they might know a bunch of different languages and
00:37:13
watch different channels in different languages. Yeah. Um so that's what causes this issue of default locking
00:37:19
that to a region or a language based on your phone being annoying. My proposition is when you subscribe to a
00:37:27
channel, you get to click keep this defaulted all the time I watch this person's videos in original or that. It
00:37:35
brings back the subscribe button to actually being important again because it's not really that important right
00:37:40
now. But they don't want it to be important, right? They want people to just go roaming around watching videos.
00:37:46
But I don't think YouTube would be mad at seeing those numbers continuing to increase because it still does represent
00:37:52
success. I mean, they just changed all the shorts views numbers for literally no reason to just pretend to be successful. So, if we bring back the
00:38:00
subscribe button to meaning a little bit something then somebody who maybe does watch other videos in Hindi but wants to
00:38:05
watch you in English can subscribe to your channel and be like all videos from MKBHD are in the original audio file.
00:38:12
Sure. Original language. That would be the best user in my eyes. Like user flip to switch. Yeah. Or like giving the user. But you would only get that subscribing to someone, right? Yeah.
00:38:24
What if you're just like on the TV clicking around random videos cuz I do it all the time. I had this happen to me
00:38:29
and it was totally by accident, but there's another YouTuber who does car videos and I don't know where Romanian
00:38:35
somewhere in Europe they had this this foreign language channel that they are very successful with, but they did dubs of it in English just to get a larger
00:38:42
audience and they made an English channel. And so I was looking up car reviews and I was watching a bunch and I
00:38:48
clicked on one and it started playing and it was very clearly an AI dub. But I I went with it because I was I was still learning facts about the car or whatever. So, I I I had encountered this
00:38:58
channel and they had this English- speakaking AI dub channel just for these videos and I made it through the video
00:39:04
and it was okay. And I think in an ideal world, instead of those views going to a
00:39:10
separate channel that they had to make, it would all go to one original video just with different dubs playing for
00:39:17
different people watching the video without me subscribing or having to engage or anything necessarily. it would
00:39:23
just know who I am, what language I want to watch the video in, and play it for me. So, I just want that toggle on my
00:39:30
end to be like, "Hey, YouTube, you might think I want to watch in this language, but I actually just want to watch the original, or I actually just want to
00:39:36
watch English." And that would be fine. Yeah. Yeah. There are some people though who probably know different languages
00:39:42
where they might watch one channel in Spanish and might watch another channel in English and then it has to default to
00:39:47
everything. So, I guess that's my reason for like if I subscribe to a channel, this is the channel I know I want to
00:39:52
watch in this language. Sure. Therefore, it all does that. And then you default your nonsubscribe channels to, right,
00:39:59
whatever language you pick. That makes sense because I do have just like straight up Spanish YouTubers that I
00:40:05
watch that only speak Spanish. So, like that would be weird to have make everything English as a toggle, you know? Yeah. Mhm. Andrew, it's really
00:40:11
crazy that you made that point about the like letting the subscribers choose based on their channel because I
00:40:17
actually tweeted that six years ago. Alice, I'm so sorry. I I really Wait, can you pull it up and I actually have been thinking about this all episode and it's really was a really big It was a
00:40:31
huge mood. We're I promise we're okay. I just love callbacks. Well, so did I. That's why I pulled up the six-year-old joke.
00:40:43
still long. Damn, that was good. So, to wrap this up, I think the moral of it is if you're a larger channel, you probably should opt out of autodubbing, right? Uh, yeah. If you have an
00:40:57
international audience, it's it's hard to say. If you if you're a channel like us where you have a large
00:41:04
English-speaking audience in a whole bunch of countries that speak English and then there are a bunch of other countries that probably wouldn't benefit
00:41:11
from you having autodubbing, then you're good. But maybe you are a small Romanian car channel and you are very limited in
00:41:19
your audience and only people who speak that language. Maybe you do want autodubbing turned on for your channel
00:41:24
and then you get a whole bunch more viewership that you wouldn't ordinarily have gotten. Yeah. So it it depends on who you are or what channel you are and
00:41:31
how popular the language that you're speaking is that you might want to turn it on or off. So it's typical YouTube.
00:41:37
This is a decent idea that will probably not be that great because they don't let users have enough control over them. A
00:41:44
little control. I I've always wonder there's definitely like a lot of technical reasons and I know that companies will like sunset features that
00:41:51
are not getting enough use which is always very frustrating because it's like well some of your users use it but
00:41:56
the problem is then they have a code base that they have to keep up and it makes it slower and whatever. Um I just think companies are very adverse to
00:42:03
giving more granular control which is frustrating. So many products could be made better if even really really really
00:42:10
deep in the settings you just gave us so much specific tweaking control. Yeah. But they don't want to do that cuz the code base would be too complicated. So this reminds me a lot of how YouTube rolled out shorts because remember at
00:42:23
first we were kind of confused and like we made a whole separate channel just for shorts because we didn't want it to
00:42:28
mess up with our algos and stuff like that and like viewership. Yeah, it seems like they just kind of rush out these
00:42:34
features before they're completely baked in in the way that they should be at launch. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz now I think Sean
00:42:41
shorts is fine like on your channel to separate it out perfectly fine. No big deal. It's shorts is a good example cuz
00:42:47
that that's it is a huge feature on the site. So it obviously takes time. You can't necessarily roll it out perfectly
00:42:54
on the first try. Yeah. But it is tough because you have this whole ecosystem of power users and and people who depend on
00:43:00
it and want to do well immediately with it that will be frustrated as it evolves and changes and gets better. So yeah,
00:43:06
you want to do as well as you can right out the out the box, but it's not going to be perfect. You do have to improve it. And then there are features that
00:43:13
just go away. Like I remember I go to the creator summit every year and every year Lionus brings up I'm not trying to
00:43:19
call him out but YouTube stories. All other creators would bring this up too. YouTube stories and every year there's a
00:43:27
question about how do we avoid that happening again because you guys rolled out stories for a couple months and it
00:43:32
was actually working for some of us and it was like a cool feature we could use to give temporary updates and then it just stopped and it just went away and
00:43:39
now we we were relying on that feature. We had like a whole show going on stories and now it's gone. Just don't do
00:43:45
that again. That's that's the the goal if you're I think the hard thing is with a lot of products you can roll out beta
00:43:52
features and it's like it's either good or bad or whatever but with products that people rely on for like their
00:43:57
livelihood. It's very difficult when companies just roll out features that they have to rapidly adapt to and then
00:44:04
maybe it will disappear and there's just not that much transparency. It's the hard thing though because social media
00:44:09
if you are a social media company you want to try and figure it out as fast as possible and gain. So, like I'm sure
00:44:15
Lionus did a good job of figuring out how to make stories work for their business, but it didn't for everyone
00:44:21
else. And you're almost like, you almost have to try and succeed in I mean, pre-shorts, do you remember IGTV? We
00:44:28
tried to do stuff on IGTV. Yeah. It's a weird weird thing that just completely went away and now is reals and shorts and everything. And now Tik Tok is just what IGTV was. It's just short videos. I
00:44:41
just don't know if YouTube for example cares that much about us as the creators. Not in a way that like all big
00:44:49
companies don't really care. I just mean more so that we are not the customer of the product. You know like there's the
00:44:54
viewer who is clicking around and that's who they want to reach. There's the people that buy ads which are the actual
00:45:00
customers for YouTube and then there are creators who make the content. Yeah. So all of this stuff is like kind of
00:45:06
getting into the weeds of who gets what control when you give people. You have to distribute incentives, right? Like
00:45:12
you have to make it lucrative for the creators to make the content, but you also have to make it look like interesting enough for people to want to
00:45:18
keep watching the content and then you have to make it so the advertisers want to advertise on the platform and it's just the whole circle. I think I've
00:45:24
called this like the 9010 problem or something like that where like the 90% of users don't do most of the content generation
00:45:35
but you have to incentivize the small 10% who are making all the content even though it might not be ideal for the 90% of people who are watching it but also you want to make things that are great for the 90% of people who are watching
00:45:46
content it's hard on YouTube like 1% of 1% of people make the content a tiny fraction make all This though is something that is hurting potentially
00:45:58
viewers. Like people who come to watch MKBHD are watching things on YouTube for MKBHD. And if now they're getting mad
00:46:05
that they have to switch the audio track every time, they might be spending less time on YouTube versus like us wanting
00:46:11
this very specific thing as like this is the 90% potentially being or 20% of the
00:46:16
90% possibly being bad at something. The question and we saw the list of languages. So the question will be what
00:46:21
fraction of people who are used to watching in English will have it switched on them and that's bad for them
00:46:27
versus all the people in those regions who speak those languages who weren't watching MKBHD videos who suddenly will. Yeah, I don't know the math of that.
00:46:38
That's really hard. Ours is probably unique, but I Yeah, I would argue ours in some of those is probably more people
00:46:43
mad than more people gain. It's some ratio and hopefully that more people helped than hurt. I I have a question
00:46:49
because I've been in podcast studio Rewire World for the past week or so, so I haven't quite been following this.
00:46:55
What What happens to the music and sound effect or do you have to upload a separate dialogue track and then it
00:47:00
swaps that out? Because I know I was giving you separate dialogue and music for a while. So, that's a good question.
00:47:05
When we were doing the human uh the human method, Yeah. we would have to export a separate track for all the
00:47:11
sound effects and music and a separate track for the voice. So that when we had someone do the re-recording in a
00:47:17
different language, it would be overlaid in place of what my voice track was and it would still have the underllay music.
00:47:23
The AI dub is doing a remarkably good job with one single audio track of just replacing the voice. Wow. Now the AI like small car channel that I watched it
00:47:34
was it was bad. Like whatever tool they were using it it had like the music like fading in and out and like breaking and
00:47:40
it was pretty bad. but it was just like a robot English voice so I could at least get the information about the car. But some of these AI tools and now the
00:47:47
ones we've been using and YouTube's tool ideally uh we'll be able to do it all with a single audio track. Yeah. I I
00:47:54
just you know just I'm sure it does a great job. It's just like I spend all this time man like
00:48:01
trying to make stuff sound good on the channel and then it's just like only for like a robot to decide what to do with
00:48:07
it is so painful. We shoot in 8K only for all the content to be I mean if you walked into a movie theater and you saw like an AI dub of like a like a THX
00:48:17
sound like it wouldn't be worth I'm a big compress I'm a big compressor nerd and when I'm especially when I'm working
00:48:23
on music ducking or or making a mix or any of like a channel intro which doesn't usually have well sometimes they
00:48:29
have dialogue like I'm doing a lot with like how what what logarithmic curve should the compressor roll off on like
00:48:36
how is it going to and then just to have a robot be like m I know better. Yeah, I
00:48:41
I think the the original file will always be best and so if I am making English content, those who enjoy the
00:48:46
original will always have it best. And then it's sort of like for those who don't speak English, would
00:48:53
you rather not be able to understand the video at all or get like a C+ mix version where you can understand it? And I think YouTube's answer is let's give accessibility. You can at least
00:49:05
understand it. It's not going to be a perfect mix, but more adore views everywhere, you know. Yeah, that's the And theoretically, more views everywhere is still better for the creators because
00:49:16
they still make more money. Yeah, that's true. I think from YouTube's perspective, it it makes sense even if
00:49:21
it's rough. Well, uh, speaking of English language content, this podcast and the thing we do exclusively in English on this podcast,
00:49:33
trivia, I was reminded that one of the few movies that I've seen uh, has a character voiced by Vin Diesel who just
00:49:44
says, "I am Groot." over and over again. And they do a bunch of languages of this
00:49:50
movie. And so there are many recordings of Indiesel going soy Groot. Is Groot the good guy or the bad guy? Groot's always good. All right, trivia question number two. So we finally
00:50:04
have an Instagram app coming to iPad. Allegedly, allegedly maybe we'll see. But when Instagram launched, it famously had a one by one aspect ratio. What were the pixel dimensions of each
00:50:19
image? blank by blank. Originally, originally when it launched. Yeah, I know, right? That's crazy. Originally, I remember back in the day you could only upload from the
00:50:32
viewfinder. Oh, that's remember you couldn't upload a file. Holy crap. Yeah, that that was
00:50:37
insta. Yeah, that's the world would be instant. I will also accept the actual number of pixels that Ellis calculated
00:50:45
out for me. Oh, like the god. Okay, cool. You know, fun fact, it's called Instagram because in between
00:50:52
the foursquare thing and the photo sharing thing, they try to do like an easy bake oven, but exclusively for like Teddy Graham crackers, little cinnamon bears.
00:51:04
So, you make a big cracker into a little cracker. Teddy bear. No, you make like an nondescript like slurry of powder and
00:51:11
liquid under like an incandescent bulb into a little tiny graham cracker. Uh, where's that in your Twitter six years
00:51:16
ago, David? I'm sorry. This This horse is dead and still being beaten. The audience is going to hate me after this episode. Not as much as me. And on that note, you know what? We'll be back after
00:51:28
the break. I give up. [Music] Support for this show comes from Monarch Money. We all have dream goals, uh, bucket list items, and big plans for the
00:51:47
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00:53:40
Welcome back. This is my section of the podcast now, but also David's. Um, sort of sort of. We're going to be talking about the Fuji X half camera that I have right here. I've been playing with it
00:53:53
for a few days. Um, I don't know how to feel about it. It's awesome and also weird and also bad in very specific ways. So, it is a camera from Fujifilm.
00:54:04
It's a new camera. And if you look at the back of the camera, instead of like a screen that's normally landscape when
00:54:11
you like line up pictures or whatever, it is a portrait like orientation or Thank you. It is a portrait oriented
00:54:17
screen. So, it's basically for Instagram. Turn it around. Show Show the class. Turn it around. I was just going
00:54:23
to put B-roll, but sure that works too. Yeah, for reference, uh, half frame cameras in the film era were half a 35mm
00:54:31
strip of film. And because of that, the aspect ratio was vertical, which is why this is a vertical. And it was supposed
00:54:37
to save you money back in the day because instead of 72, yeah, you would get 72 shots instead of 36. Uh, this is
00:54:44
a very expensive camera for what it is. How much did that cost you? This was $850. To be clear, they were going to
00:54:51
sell this for 700 and then the tariffs happened. 700's still too much. I think if this was like 500, it'd be a must buy. Okay. I think you should explain it more. Wait, wait, before you do that,
00:55:02
can I ask a question specifically about what you just said? They said out loud this was going to be 700 and now it's
00:55:08
850. On the briefing I was on, they said it was like 700 and 700 is the MSRP in other countries. Okay. But in the US it's 850. So, we might get to see when tariffs are not if they will actually
00:55:20
bring it back down. I don't think I don't think so either. But I just don't think we had a clear thing to point to to see if this would happen. And now we
00:55:27
do. Yeah. Fun fact, uh this camera has a 1 in sensor, which famously means the sensor measures exactly one inch
00:55:34
diagonally. It doesn't. It doesn't. Wouldn't that be nice? 1.0 type. Yeah. So, this is a digital camera, but the whole point of it is to
00:55:45
kind of emulate a film camera. So, there's a mode, a film camera mode that you can turn this into. You just like
00:55:52
set it on where you will not be able to see what you're shooting on the back screen. You have to look through the viewfinder and it is basically just like a film camera where you take a picture
00:56:02
and all you see on the back is a number go from zero to one. And then you do that until you fill up quote unquote the
00:56:08
roll. So you can choose whether you want 36, 72 roll, whatever. Um, so let's say I chose 36. I'll take pictures and all
00:56:15
I'll see is the number going up. I will not see a preview of the camera or or the picture, anything like that until
00:56:22
there's a accompanying app that you can download and you will quote unquote develop the film. Oh my god. And it will
00:56:28
transfer it to your phone. That's the greatest. You don't have to. You can watch the contact sheet fill out as it
00:56:34
develops in real time. And it's so cool. Worse is better. Okay. Worse is better.
00:56:41
When are you going to learn that? You can, Marquez. You can take photos with You don't have to be in that mode. You
00:56:47
can't. This is just a mode. You could just keep it in digital camera mode and it acts just like a digital camera. This is just a specific film camera mode.
00:56:53
Show them the Show them the paddle. Paddle. The film advance lever. There's a film advance. There's a film advance
00:56:59
lever on the back that switches into the mode. This thing is my number one complaint with this camera so far. It
00:57:05
feel well the build quality in general of this camera is very plasticky. It's very lightweight which is cool, but Fuji
00:57:11
cameras are typically like they feel honky durable. Like they're like really good cameras. Uh this is more like an
00:57:17
expensive toy. Yeah. And I love expensive toys. I buy Teenage Engineering all the time. So it's right
00:57:23
up my alley. But this like lever here, the lever lever thing, whatever. Wherever you advance lever, the film
00:57:29
advance lever has no ratcheting, no like feedback, no nothing. So, it's just like it slides into place, which is like kind
00:57:36
of annoying. Um, but I've been having a lot of fun shooting with this thing. It's just it makes me wonder if I know
00:57:42
David, you had a a video years ago about this about how like smartphone cameras are all about software now. How how many years ago? Wait, it might have actually been six years ago. It was not 6 years
00:57:53
ago. Okay. Well, like four years ago. It was when the the Pixel 6 came out, so it was four years ago. Nice. Okay. So four
00:58:00
years ago you had a video about how like cameras are all software now and this is like taking that in a different
00:58:05
direction which I really find interesting because it's just it's adding features instead of processing
00:58:12
the cam the photos in a certain way you know like I find that really intriguing and I wish that Fuji would make another
00:58:19
one of these or bring this to their like prolevel cameras because I think that would be so fun if you have like an
00:58:24
X1006. Bring what to the pro level camera? the film simulation mode. Like all of these things they have they have
00:58:30
film simulation modes on the X100X. Wait, how? Oh, you mean like a fun throwback to when cameras were bad. That part they were not bad. They were so good. David has a whole side
00:58:42
career off of his film camera. Can you talk about the subLCD? Yes, that is Andrew's favorite feature.
00:58:49
So on the back there's the main display which is as we mentioned vertically oriented but there is a subd display LCD
00:58:56
thing that you can actually wait let me turn it on so like maybe people can see. I'll just put this in B-roll. Um you can
00:59:03
swipe through different film simulations on it and it shows like the canister like it looks like it's the little window that you would get in a film camera. You see like the little like
00:59:13
portra or well not portraia like all of those as you swipe through. It's really cool. It's also how you like
00:59:19
navigate menus and stuff. It's not super responsive. It's a little slow. I thought it was No, when you're swiping
00:59:25
through it's pretty quick, but when you're like tapping through for the menus and stuff, it's a little bit slow. Yeah, that part I thought was cool.
00:59:32
Scrolling through the the like fake film canister to pick the different filters was really responsive. And I didn't
00:59:38
expect it to be because gimmicky stuff like that is usually not really that well built in. But it was really good.
00:59:44
Yeah. David and I were taking a beautiful walk. Sorry, did I cut you off? I was just going to say the one other thing is that film advanced lever
00:59:49
if you push in is also lets you see the last photo you took. I guess if you're outside of whatever the mode is, but I
00:59:56
thought that was a really quick way to check the photo. That's nice. I I think they should full send it. And since the
01:00:01
sensor is so small Yeah, I know it's not actually one inch, guys. It's It's very very small, but it's small enough that
01:00:06
you could in theory put them on a belt and have the film lever just advance which sensor was like in line with the
01:00:13
Anyway, um David and I were taking a beautiful walk through North Brooklyn on a beautiful summer day a few a week or
01:00:19
two ago maybe and we were talking about this bad boy, having a conversation about it. And David, you said one of the
01:00:24
funniest things I've ever heard you say. Maybe that's an exaggeration because you've said some pretty funny stuff, but it
01:00:31
but we were talking about we were talking about how this camera you can't pull raw images off of it. You can only
01:00:37
pull compressed images off of it and and how people were complaining about that even though Fujifilm is kind of known
01:00:43
for their breathtaking JPEGs. But um you know you were I you were I was like you really don't think like you'd ever want to like pull a RAW out of it. You go, Ellis. All of the features in this
01:00:55
camera are to make the pictures worse. One of the filters is literally called light leak. You're like, what are you
01:01:02
trying to dial in on this thing? Yeah, that is my take. A lot of people Yeah, it you can only take JPEGs. My my take
01:01:09
on this is I am in a 1 in camera period of my life right now. I I can't explain it. I just am really enjoying shooting on like super low dynamic range old one
01:01:21
inch cameras. Uh mostly because of like the lenses that you can adapt to them are really really cool. And if they made
01:01:28
this with an interchangeable lens system, oh my god, I'd buy it like so fast. I'd
01:01:36
buy it like so fast. So my take is that Fuji is trying to respond to the digam hype that's been going on for the last year or so. I don't know if you know about this. Is this also a throwback retro thing? Uh, basically zoomers are
01:01:50
going to So, remember in 2020 when all the zoomers were buying film cameras? Well, they broke boys because film is
01:01:56
expensive as hell. So, all the zoomers now are going to thrift stores and buying like 3 megapixel Samsung Digi
01:02:04
Cams from 2003. Mhm. because it gives you that like vintage bad quality party camera look that everyone wants for social media because the the whole thing right now is like anti-perfectionism.
01:02:17
I'm so cool. I don't care how about how good the picture is. I just I'm living in the moment, bro. Marquez, how much do
01:02:24
you think a mint Canon PowerShot G7 costs right now? This is a 10 10 megapixel Canon G7 on eBay. on eBay. It
01:02:33
comes with a battery and a charger and a camera and that's it. How much it costs or how much it's worth. Oh, and a strap.
01:02:38
How much it is selling? No. Yeah. $6. I am here. Actually, I should go to the sold listings, but I'm seeing them for $32. I'm seeing them for in between $2 and $300 right now. Yeah.
01:02:51
Like like these things are demand. These would have been these literally would have been $5 at the thrift store like
01:02:57
four years ago. Wow. So, but yeah. Yeah. So, Fuji is trying to respond to that. I think the problem is that it's an $850
01:03:03
camera. I think the amount of R&D that they put into this is worth a decent amount of money. It's probably not worth $850. Um, but I think the the 1.0 type sensor
01:03:17
is intentional cuz they want the images to have less dynamic range. They want it to look worse. They want they have all
01:03:22
these filter modes that just add these bad effects to it on purpose. Yeah. Then you get the Fuji colors which are
01:03:28
beautiful. But you get the feature colors. I I think this makes two got sold today for over $1,000. It's the
01:03:33
newer one, the 20 megapixel one, but two Canon. Wow. Today. Yeah. Um and I just want to say like a lot of people are like it can't even shoot RAW and it's like it has a 1.0 type sensor. It
01:03:49
obviously could if they wanted it to be able to, but Fuji intentionally made it not able to because why would you do
01:03:56
that? Also, this is not the camera to get if you care about image quality. If you care about shooting RAW, that's the type of person who cares about image
01:04:02
quality and high performance. And this is the opposite of that. On the slider of toy to tool, if you're asking for
01:04:09
RAW, you're pushing it towards tool. If you're asking for light leak filters, you're asking for toy. So, just pick a side. And if you're asking for one, why
01:04:20
complain about the Yeah. This is like the perfect road trip camera where you're just like in the car and you're like boom boom boom boom boom boom.
01:04:25
Yeah. Like if you're shooting a wedding, you're not taking this camera. Actually, maybe. I mean, a lot of people want
01:04:31
photos like that. It wouldn't be your only camera with a professional camera and add those after if they were like,
01:04:38
you know, a wedding photographer like professional tool. If you were at a wedding and wanted to take with a
01:04:43
camera, this is like Fujifilm's entire Instax line is run by the wedding industry. So, you know, yeah, people
01:04:50
want those Polaroids. someone who is entering the wedding age of their life. Um, whoever has the Canon Powers Shot is
01:04:57
the most beloved person by the By the way, I was at this Canon event where they were launching the R5 Mark. They
01:05:03
were Canon launching. Boom. Um, he's on it today, folks. We have to stop. Notice how I laughed
01:05:16
and didn't try to one up and then everyone's referencing me trying to one up. is opening up Twitter right now. Oh
01:05:21
my god. I literally I I can't wait to title this episode. I just have to say I was so at this Canon event where they were launching Ellis's joke, not mine.
01:05:32
Uh the R5 Mark II and also the R1 or whatever it was. I like that. And so these are like the fastest, most insane,
01:05:40
like most high professional cameras ever made basically that are like not even really cameras anymore. They're kind of
01:05:45
just like video feeds in 8K that you can take stills from. But uh there was a reporter there and she was like 20 years old. She was like, "Oh my god, I just got this like Canon G7. All of my
01:05:57
friends are trying to get these right now." I was like, "Oh, are you guys like photographers?" She's like, "Oh no, no, we just like every these are huge in my
01:06:04
circles right now." And I was like, "What? The Canon? I've never heard of." No, they take good pictures. They do. They
01:06:11
really do. They're They're actually like great cameras and especially like the autofocus systems on them are usually really good. Like I feel like these
01:06:18
these sort of point and shoots got kind of passed over because DSLRs were kind of like pumping out really incredible
01:06:24
images, you know, but now that we have mir mirrorless cameras and really incredible images are the default, it's
01:06:31
like we you get these really beautiful I don't know. And so there's sort of this weird liinal space that people want where they either want a really image of
01:06:38
like their life or they want something better than their phone. But nobody wants the phone. And I'm just here to
01:06:44
say HDR is bad and stop doing HDR for everything. HDR has driven these industries. Every industry has a slider
01:06:56
from functional to fun. Yeah. And often the nostalgiadriven like toy or more like entertaining version that's towards fun uh is you
01:07:09
know not necessarily the most functional thing. doesn't have the most high quality experience, but it has the fun factor. And then there's the other side,
01:07:15
which is when you push all the way to functional, it feels a little more sterile or a little less exciting, but
01:07:21
it has it's the one that's pushing the envelope of technology, etc. Yeah. And so, yeah, you just you pick a If phone
01:07:28
HDR had never been invented, people would not be buying these. The iPhone 7 camera looks exactly like the Canon.
01:07:35
Like, they look the I was going to ask, so this might be a kind of an embarrassing question, but is there an app I can get for my iPhone that enables
01:07:46
is there an app for my iPhone that enables the sensor to be exposed one time even without HDR? Yeah, no HDR, no multiple exposure, no hitting both cameras and deduce like I just want
01:07:58
shutter open, quote unquote shutter open, quote unquote, shutter closed. Allied has a has a feature called process zero that I think we talked about a few months ago. Maybe even that
01:08:10
is going to not be zero because for me for me it's the computational it's like I could I would be okay with a if if
01:08:16
like a if it was possible to do a single exposure high dynamic range like it's not the dynamic range that bugs me. It's
01:08:23
how on phones everything is perfectly exposed. Yeah. It's so Well, that's because of the HDR. Right. Right. Right. It's the it's the stacking. But Halllight has that. There's an app
01:08:33
called uh Zero. Zero Cam that does the same thing and it works. Yeah, it works pretty well. Yeah, the images look much
01:08:40
better. Well, you have to edit them obviously, but that's fine. Yeah. Why don't you just get a Fuji X? I'm just
01:08:46
saying tone curves are not meant to be. Fuji X cost $400 more than I paid for this iPhone. Wow. So, anyway, I think the X is really, really cool. I think
01:08:58
it's expensive, but I think it's really cool. Yeah. And I want to say that R&D into building something that interesting
01:09:04
and weird and they built an accompanying app with it does cost money. Okay. 850 is too much, but you know, it's worth
01:09:11
something. No, I agree. Like they they should charge for their work. I just think 850 is a little much. Yeah. It
01:09:17
also accomplishes the most important thing is you get to walk around with a Fujifilm camera and have where's the
01:09:22
brewery at? I feel so cool. And I have the answer. Yeah. I can be like, if you want to I I'm on my way. Fine. Yeah, not
01:09:29
me running beers and cameras. Anyway, Marquez, we're going to get you to love one of these things eventually. You will like an old bad thing. Look, I'm going to tell you right now, I know
01:09:40
where I am on the slider of functional to fun and in many of the hobbies that I'm in and I I think I've been thinking
01:09:46
about this like I am I am very much towards the functional slider and the fun. This is true in cars where like if
01:09:54
you ever hear about the way people talk about like driving characteristics like when you watch Porsche 911 reviews and
01:10:00
people are like the car is too perfect. The car is like soulless. To me I'm like hell yeah. Hell yeah. It's like a
01:10:06
surgical instrument. Other people are like I want the skitty rearwheel drive like tail happy car that like can't put
01:10:12
the power down. They want that because it's less functional, less performant but more fun. So that slider exists in a bunch of different ways. I am I know where I am on the slider, but I know one
01:10:25
arena of your life. I don't know if you know that you are where you are more on the tell. It's your Yamaha HS8, which is
01:10:34
No. I If I can look, if I dive in and find out that those are way more towards fun and I can get something way more
01:10:40
towards that, I'm kicking them out. No, no, no. What is the Yamaha HSA? Explain.
01:10:45
And the they are trusted studio monitors. are known to be accurate, especially in their price point. They're
01:10:51
really, really great. But the big difference between the eights and the sevens or the Yeah, there's a five,
01:10:58
seven, and an eight in that series. Um, is that the eights have way larger speaker cabinets than a lot of other 8
01:11:05
in speaker cone, which gives them a lower rolloff point, which gives them this really punchy, clear, exciting, low
01:11:12
frequency response, which can can be a little bit bassier. It can be a little bassier than things are in real life. But when you talk to people who work in studios who even the people who prefer a
01:11:25
more clinical, dry, accurate, transparent speaker, the number one people, the number one word people use for the HS8 is fun. It's a fun speaker
01:11:35
to listen to. Like I'm in the market for new studio monitor, especially Especially when you have them in a near field configuration like you. I liked
01:11:42
this, but then I found out I could be entertained by it, so now I have to get rid of it. Yeah. So, I want I am all
01:11:48
function. I as far as like cuz I got those HS8s to replace what I had before which was like a 2.1 system from like some classic Harman Carden thing I had before. Yeah. So like if you want I went
01:12:01
in the direction of Yeah. accuracy. We can we can talk if you want ultra accuracy. Okay. Oh yeah. But first a little thing we here at the Waveform
01:12:11
podcast call trivia. Dude, there's a Sharpie here. That's dangerous. That's very dangerous. Eagle-eyed viewers among you watching on
01:12:23
YouTube.com may have noticed that Adam and I are sitting in the same chairs that we do every single week and nothing
01:12:29
has changed. Question one, Instagram was conceived as a location-based social network. Uh, but
01:12:36
eventually they had to pivot because a little thing called Foursquare came along. Before they pivoted, what was
01:12:45
their name? Oh, that was what was the aspect ratio? Uh, that is question number two. Oh, sorry. Wait, can you ask a question again? Before Instagram was called Instagram, it was called what?
01:12:57
Oh, just wasn't think very deeply because about six years ago, I'm gonna I literally can't I can't even think of a guess. Yeah, it's because it's stupid. Yeah. Uh, who wants to go first? None of
01:13:20
us. Nothing. Nothing. Marquez, what you got? I made a guess. I wrote Instamatic. I'll I'll give you a hint. The word Insta is not in it. I don't know. This
01:13:32
hint is coming way too late. Yeah, I put Insta Square. But I know I know it's not
01:13:38
Insta anything. The correct answer is bourbon. All right. Spelled B. I have actually BN. And I've seen the bourbon the logo as well. Uh coffee, you know,
01:13:52
until I This is the first time I've said it out loud. Bourbon is an alcohol. Marcos. Well, I assumed it was like
01:13:57
urban or suburban cuz it was a geoloccation thing, but yeah, I think it actually is just like is it like
01:14:02
untapped? No. Which is like dude, who knows? That's like the beer rating app, right?
01:14:08
Yeah. Quick update on Marquez with 26, Andrew with 16, 10 points behind. David, dude, how old are you? 30. With 30 points. Nice. All right. So when Instagram first launched, it had an
01:14:23
aspect ratio of one by one. Uh the question is how many pixels did it have resolution wise? Yes. Like blank by blank blank by blank or I will
01:14:36
also accept the literal number of pixels. I don't know if I can closest without going over. You don't get extra points for doing both, right? No, it's one of two options. It is
01:14:49
one of infinite options. No, I think it was one of one by one. Yeah, one by one aspect ratio.
01:14:56
Flip them and read. What do we got? Oh. Oh, the O is not an option. Go first. I know. I'm wrong. I wrote 324 by 324.
01:15:08
Wrong. Specific. I wrote 418x 418. Wrong. I wrote 480 by 480. Wait, wait, wait, wait. But why did you say that? Because like was wrong though. Was it 720? Because why? But why did you choose
01:15:20
480? Am I going to make an answer and say reasoning and then you're going to say
01:15:26
actually that's not correct? Uh well if you if you're reason you're you're kind of your answer's wrong but if you can
01:15:32
nail your reasoning I'm going to give you a point because like because in resolution you go like 480p then 720p. I
01:15:42
was going to say you mind if I take this one? Yeah, go for it. I was going to say the the well the correct answer Adam is
01:15:47
500 512 640 by 640 because the resolution of the first retina display present on the iPhone 4 was 640 pixels wide I would
01:16:00
need to fact check this but I believe the width of the iPhones 1 3G and 3GS were 480 pixels wide which is why I thought you picked that is why I picked it fair yes six years ago
01:16:14
Doubt it. Uh, yeah. No, that's that's an interesting fun fact. I'm canceled. We all got all of those wrong. That's okay.
01:16:20
That just means the scores are all still the same. I mean, I'm still 30 years old. Um, yeah. No, no, I was wrong. It's
01:16:26
320 pixels wide. Don't listen to me. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for watching and listening. Very chaotic week. We'll be
01:16:32
back, of course, with your regularly scheduled programming again next Wednesday. If anything, uh, if you made
01:16:37
it this far into the podcast, if you made it this far into the podcast, make sure to check in on Looped wherever you
01:16:44
are listening to the podcast until you're the mayor and then we'll know that you're really plugged in. Hope you finish the dishes. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.
01:16:57
Wave for produced by Adamolina and Ellis. Should I say Ellis Raven and Adam Molina and you guys switch? Yes. Wormer
01:17:03
is produced by Adamolina and Ellis Raven. partner with the Vox podcast network and our tractor music was created by Vin Silva. Let's go.
01:17:15
[Music] I heard there's like waw wah wah wah wah wah.