Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up, Internet? Welcome back to Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I'm Managing Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: Also joining us this week is podcast producer Ben Ellman. Hey, Ben.

Ben: Hello. I'm finally back from my dog sitting gig back in New York City.

Devindra: Dog sitting in San Francisco, which actually sounds like a pretty good gig.

Like just chilling out with a dog in that beautiful city this week, folks, we're going to be talking about the MacBook Air M4 once again Hey, I scrambled to review it really quickly at the beginning of this week. Also Steve Dent at Engadget reviewed the Mac studio. So we'll talk a bit about both of those systems, kind of what's working well, what isn't, and also not a great week for Apple in some respects too.

Cause they announced on Friday that they're going to be delaying the whole smarter Siri plan. That was the thing they showed off at WWDC. And that, I think. That was kind of like the linchpin. That was like the ultimate thing for Apple intelligence to get to. And at least Apple says it's come, it's coming in the coming year, which could be this year or it could be early next year for the fiscal year.

We'll talk [00:01:00] about what all of that means. And there's a bunch of news as well. If you're enjoying the show, folks please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice. Leave us for you on iTunes actually makes a big difference. And drop us an email at podcastingadget. com. We're not seeing enough emails.

I would love to. Answer questions. I would love to have a regular segment where we just answer simple questions. I'm actually considering if I ever get free time of just like signing up for volunteer hours at the library, you know, and just be like, Hey, bring me your tech questions. I'm just bored.

And I could probably help with something tech in your life. Let us do that for you folks, podcast and gadget. com. All right. The MacBook air M four. It's a good computer. What else do you want folks? It's a good fast computer. It's a good, I don't know what else to say. We're done. I think for a lot of those reviews, that's kind of how I feel because it's like, yeah, man the 2022 revision of the air, which was the whole new redesign.

And then the following year they gave us the 15 inch version. Those are really good computers. This is iteratively [00:02:00] faster because the M4 chip is less than 20 percent faster than the M3. It has a Lowr starting price, which I think is great. It's back down to 9. 99. The error actually used to be at that pre the whole I think the whole M1 scene, right?

There was a point where Apple had gotten the price back down, but it jumped up for 12. 99 for the re It was the M2 MacBook Air, the one they redesigned it. Now it's fully back down. I think that's pretty great. And it's a 1199 for the 15 inch. Good prices, good machines, good hardware. That's really fast and does everything you want it to do.

And the battery life is really good too. So it's this is such a no brainer computer for me. Like as soon as we filed this review, we made this our. Top recommendation for you know, what you buy for a laptop. Sherilyn, do you disagree? Do you have any thoughts on this?

Cherlynn: No, I mean, I think your review is pretty straightforward.

Laid it out very clearly. I think that the fact that it's a Lowr starting price is really good. And I mean, people in the chat, by the way Dpro9 says it's a good time to buy a used M1 or like a referred or what, yeah, a referred M1 or [00:03:00] something.

Devindra: So Walmart is selling the M1 at this like weird secret discount where Apple doesn't advertise it.

But Walmart has those old units for 6. 99, sometimes 6. 50 and below, I believe. I hear they're only the 8GB RAM SKUs. Oh. And also, Those things have terrible screens, like the screens are old. If you just need like a cheap computer for somebody, sure, I guess, fine. But you pay a little more, and you can get the used or refurbished M2, which is a much, much better screen and everything.

Right, right, right.

Cherlynn: So there's a screen tech, and then I think the webcam is also an improvement on this, at least on this model, compared to the older M1 model. And then you know, again, another tip from the chat, which I thought was a Good one or a good reminder anyways that like, as always, apple provides an education discount so like students can get it for I think 8 99 the MacBook four that we just reviewed, which makes it even more appeal 100

Devindra: off.

Yeah. Yeah,

Cherlynn: right. $100 off of, so yeah, basically exactly the SKUs that you choose to get, if you upgrade to more storage or more RAM than used to get just like a hundred dollars off, which is. Not that's a [00:04:00] good deal.

Devindra: Yeah, this is a reminder to by the way Like yeah, if you're in college, I don't think it typically hits High schools or things like that, right?

if you're in college your IT department likely has like Equipment that they show like this is how you get a discount on this because when I was in IT like I had to like Shout at kids. Hey we can get you Microsoft Office cheaper. We were selling Microsoft Office for 10 and I had a whole pile in my box and I just had to like force kids to come get it.

You can get discounts. Keep an eye on those things. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's like a lot to say about how much these things cost. And also the fact that's the main thing for me to say about the Mac book that just went out that way. Yeah it's. Not exciting, but that's not a problem, right?

If there's not a lot of changes.

Devindra: They're just so good. Like I get that. Yeah. It's not exciting because not much of it's new, but it's also man, I don't think everybody sees like what the PC makers are doing out there. And it's a, it is sometimes rough. It is

Cherlynn: snapdragon laptop. Oh, [00:05:00]

Devindra: well, I mean, you can spend 2, 000 on the low end.

That's what I mean. Yeah, but yeah, I just reviewed the Asus ZenBook A14, which is a really cool laptop that tried to be a MacBook killer, but you always see compromises whenever somebody comes at Apple, right? So right now the MacBook Air, the 13 inches is actually close to a 14 inch screen, weighs 2.

7 pounds. Has a pretty decent power prices, not bad for what it is. So Asus comes in and is okay, we can make this a half pound lighter. LG does it too with their gram machines. I don't like those because those have always been slow and cheap feeling. But for Asus to do that half pound, they had to put in a really low power chip and it just benchmarked really low.

So I don't know why you would get that versus just a MacBook Air. The only thing I think stopping people at this point is like, yeah, not everybody knows how to use Macs. That is still a thing. Speaking of.

Cherlynn: I mean, look, one of the cons you put in your review was like, it's still a challenge to learn Mac from Windows.

And I almost was like, when I was looking at that con, Davindra, I was like, should [00:06:00] we be listing that as a con? Isn't that kind of for granted? But there is something to be said about The fact that we're all moving to ARM based architecture, and Apple is a superior one in this case, and that might convince some Windows people to switch.

And in that case, it is a huge pain in the butt. But, remember last week when I was like complaining?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Cherlynn: Okay, I am very sad to announce. That I have discovered two things I prefer on MacBooks than Windows PCs. One is not super surprising or new. I think the trackpads just, now that I've gotten used to it, is better.

I miss my three finger gestures and everything on Windows. At least, I miss how they work. I have those, but it depends on the Mac OS. It's full screen, then yes, three fingers. is swiping between the instances of an app, but if not, then you have to rely on command, whatever. I think

Devindra: you can actually find third party apps also remap some of those for you, Sherilyn.

Right. I meant I

Cherlynn: guess I meant baked in the OS without me having to do too much, right? Windows is really baked in. You don't need to think about it. It just all works across all the things. You are the only person I've heard, [00:07:00] Sherilyn,

Devindra: who has ever talked about multi finger gestures in Windows.

Listen, listen.

Cherlynn: That's how much of a power user I was, okay, or am still. Here's the thing, I use so many I'm the person I might be the only person I know who uses the right control key as a shortcut as part of my shortcuts in my workflow. That is

Devindra: madness. Yeah, it's so good when you're typing

Cherlynn: and you're like, just control backspace or control delete.

The right one works really well for a control backspace.

Devindra: Okay.

Cherlynn: All right. Okay. Anyway, the second thing I've discovered that I like on a MacBook, at least the MacBook I have versus my Windows PC experience, man, that fingerprint sensor. Sheesh. It's listen, I like I'm the sort of person that washes my hands about 17 times a day and they're often like just a little bit moist or like just lotioned up and like the windows pc will never recognize my finger in those instances but the macbook is like you a little wet i got fam it's all right i can handle a [00:08:00] little moisture

Devindra: it's a I mean, it's usability stuff.

It's like when you bring up the trackpad, I'm like, Apple has had the glass trackpad, the whole thing, like they've locked that down for, I think at least a decade now. Like these trackpads have been great. Everybody's been chasing it with what do they call it? The the precision windows, precision, like various companies are trying to do that.

You can get close to it, you can get close to it in Windows, but it always comes down to the fact that it is a third party company making the trackpad, it is Microsoft producing the software, it is a PC laptop maker who's implementing all these things together, and you, there's a discernible lag sometimes.

So I feel like it just never feels as smooth on Windows. The other thing, Sherilyn, like if you lean more on Macs, you'll learn is that I think the standby times. Or also rock solid, like when you close the lid, you can leave that thing in your bag for a while. Different.

Cherlynn: The ones I've been using. So that's one drawback of MacBook, at least the one I have, which I believe is an M1 MacBook Pro, by the way.

It [00:09:00] is a, it just go, it's sapping. while lid is closed. So the thing I don't,

Devindra: that is weird. That is weird, which

Cherlynn: might be like specific to this machine, which by the way, I love that we're like, okay, so for the last two weeks, like various Mac users on our team have had to be my tech support. I've been yelling into various voids on Slack, just being very angry.

And I've been like, why do I have to press three buttons to do one screenshot? Or like, why do I have to like, you know, so I've learned a few things along the way that have made me a lot less angry as a person. Number one, maybe.

Devindra: You, you learn things. Listen, my, and it's sometimes it's just what, you know, and it's hard to learn new things, which is why I listed that as a con.

Like I bought the MacBook Air, the one of the cheaper, the discounted ones over the holidays for my wife. And she is, she knows how to use computers, but she is. So hardcore Windows, right? So it's like I'm giving her a Mac and it's taking her time. I'm surprised she hasn't been

Cherlynn: like, you gave me a Mac.

You're sleeping on the couch.

Devindra: Well, there are some of that. I'm like, yeah, [00:10:00] well, this is so much faster than that Dell laptop that I got her a couple of years ago. That Dell laptop. Yeah, it's a, it was a, it is an XPS and you know, it's just, it is not like Dell laptops also don't last for that long. Like after two, three years, you will start to feel the build issues and stuff, but it's just one of those things.

I feel like this is the point where it's like somebody wants to buy a laptop. You really should consider jumping to Mac if you haven't yet, it's less a problem. I think for the younger generation, like for kids going in, a lot of people are exposed to Macs in many different scenarios. But yeah, I have a lot of people aren't as well.

I,

Cherlynn: one last thing that I will say that is like a bit off topic is that like I was chatting with a friend in the gym. And they're like young, like Gen Z, like 23. Right. And they were like, I was like, Oh, so what tips do you need to learn about tech, blah, blah, blah, trying to like source ideas for any stories we can write.

And they were like, I would love to learn how to create a folder on my Mac book. And I was like,

Devindra: yeah, [00:11:00] just basic stuff. So this is

Ben: wait, this is like getting to the idea of anyone younger than what? Like they don't know born, yeah. Born after 1997 can't use a file directory. All they know is,

Devindra: I have seen such bad and lie so many examples of this.

And I think there, there are a lot of tick talkers out there who are like, you know, life is hard for millennials. And I actually think some of it is just like whinging, but some of it is like, it is true. Like we kind of, you got to be tech support for your parents. You don't understand the technology and also tech support for the young kids.

We were

Ben: just talking about this like two episodes ago. We're stuck between the boomers and the iPad babies.

Devindra: Basically. So sorry if that is a repeat topic, but I keep seeing examples of this. Anyway, MacBook Air, good computer, learn Macs. I think you will be better off, especially if you have an iPhone.

If you have an iPad, I don't want to sound like an Apple shill. There are still so many. good uses of Windows. I'm sitting here in front of a Windows desktop. I love a PC. I spent the last day like jamming my fingers into motherboard [00:12:00] stuff and plugging in hardware because I love having that ability to build a computer.

And I showed it to my daughter. I was like, this is what an open computer looks like. And she's can you build me one? And also, can I play Minecraft on it? That was her first. Her first thing, I was like, yes, actually, you could play the best Minecraft. You could play realistic shaders. Like she, we see these videos sometimes where people are playing with like extremely hardcore shaders on Minecraft using like crazy video cards.

It looks like you're playing in real life. So she wants in on that. So we're going to, we're going to be gaming side by side. Not too long from now, but that's the MacBook Air M4. It's pretty good. But also if you want a cheaper MacBook Air, look out for deals. I would not go down to the M1 just because that design was basically a decade old when they stopped, when they like gave up on it, when they upgrade to the M2.

So the M2 one, the M3 one, you will see discounts on those. Look at refurbished sellers be careful on eBay and stuff, but yeah another good one for Apple. And we also see other upgrades that they [00:13:00] announced the max studio. Which now has the M4 Max chip and the M3 Ultra, which is a really interesting twist that they did there.

Steve Dent did that review for us, and I really wanted Steve to review it because he is a video guy. He produces his own videos. He was able to put 8K workflows on this thing and gave us some like really good insight into like how powerful it is versus his M3 Pro MacBooks and also some scores we had from the M2

Cherlynn: Ultra.

Devindra: It was the M2 Ultra, yeah, and I think the M3 Max.

Cherlynn: Oh, M3 Max, yeah, the M3 Ultra is the new chip. Yeah, from last year. Yeah,

Devindra: gotcha. Yes, also very confusing. And Nate Ingram reviewed the new iPad Air, which is, it's an iPad, guys.

Ben: We talked about that last week. Yeah, well, we

Cherlynn: talked about the news last week. The review went up on Monday, and the Avengers review went up Tuesday.

Steve's review went up yesterday, I believe. Did I get it up yesterday? I think so. It's all melting into one big fondue. That was yesterday. This week has been [00:14:00] apple fondue week for me, but this week we, there's one more Apple review that is coming from us. At least we're doing some longer term reviews.

And also recontextualizing some products. So today and the rest of this week, you'll see some like reviews of maybe some older Apple products, but with the lens of Now that I've spent a long time with this, is it better than the experience out of the box? Or now that it's 2025, is this still worth a good buy?

Like this two or three year old product that Apple is still selling? It's been a bit of an Apple mixture for me. Like I've been in an Apple jam, which is why if I get my dates of published wrong, I apologize. But Yeah.

Devindra: It was supposed to be all good news for Apple, but something weird did happen last week after we basically after we recorded on Friday, Apple sneakily, like just put out a little bit of a negative news.

They shared a statement with John Gruber at Daring Fireball. And I think a couple other places, I think Reuters got the statement to basically saying, Hey that Siri. We showed you all that [00:15:00] really cool Siri that could read your email and also give you contextualized information stuff.

They showed it off at WWDC. That's going to take a while. And the specific quote is, We have also been working on a more personalized Siri giving you more awareness of your personal contacts as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate them rolling out in the coming year.

And there have been a lot of discussions about this. First of all, Apple giving people an actual statement on the record, because normally when you talk to Apple, they're like, here is a gun to your head. You can't say that Apple told you this. You can't say the names of anybody. That's just how they work.

And it's it sucks. I hate talking to companies that way. They gave an on the record statement to Gruber, who is a very well known Apple fan, Apple commentator. You know, he has actually run podcasts at and meetings at Apple's campus during WWDC. He is fully working together with the company.

But he is also somebody that I've seen has [00:16:00] taken He seems really offended by this news. Almost like the fact that Apple seemingly lied to us, they showed us a shiny new version of Siri. They never actually demoed it at WWDC last year, Sherilyn. And that is notable that we only saw it on the video. We never, sometimes Apple brings us to rooms and here's somebody demoing this technology.

That's how we saw the initial Apple intelligence features showed off. They never did that for the Siri. That's probably a bad sign. If Apple can't do that at WWDC, there's probably, they're probably a long way off from actually shipping that. And yeah, is this a sign that Apple is failing?

Cherlynn: I don't know.

Right. Like I think. Siri has like historically been one of the, oh no, my, my phone just reacted, but thankfully didn't try to respond to me saying the hot word. Anyway Apple's assistant has historically been one of the like less smart ones, right? Between when I used to switch between Android and Apple more often, I would notice the Google version [00:17:00] was a lot smarter at least in the early days of the assistant wars.

And then now we're at a point where you know, Google's so far ahead with Gemini, right? And S the S assistant is barely there and can't even get off the ground. I don't know that. Apple is doomed per se. I think Apple is clearly going to have to tap the help of like open AI or Google S has done in the past with, which they've done with things like visual intelligence and so on.

But I mean, it's clear and I feel as if the visual intelligence thing, the fact that they've integrated chat, GPT and Gemini. Or Google search within the visual intelligence feature is actually a tacit like acknowledgement that we need to make this feature available. And yet we don't have the, you know, algorithms or software that the engineering behind it yet.

And so we're going to partner with these people who are obviously so much better at it than we are. And they haven't come out and said it, but it is like basically that I will point out. And one thing that I wanted to [00:18:00] say when I saw that this topic was one of our you know, on our list Alexa Plus, for example.

Oh, crap. Hey, everybody mute your speakers. It's fine. It's

Devindra: fine.

Cherlynn: Amazon's A Word Plus is Was announced last month. We talked about it and it's coming and it was Set that it would be available this month. I saw recently on my Amazon app that now I am able to waitlist, right? It's join the waitlist to test it out So to be clear though because someone in the chat this morning asked whether a word plus is that much better To be extremely clear again.

We never saw this new A word assistant Amazon assistant for ourselves. We watched a lot of canned rehearse demos. We saw a lot of

Devindra: but they at least demo live and Apple didn't even live.

Cherlynn: Right? And everything. It was going up on the stage, especially it seemed live and it was, you know, taking pictures of the audience and I saw myself in the picture and therefore it was able to still, you know, describe the audience [00:19:00] based on what appeared to be including me in it.

Right. Okay. So far, I don't know that there's that much better of a, an assistant out there that is not purely driven by. You know, something like an open AI, like a GPT O or like a chat GPT or a Gemini.

Devindra: There is nothing. There's Microsoft is trying to do that with Copilot, but Copilot is not even there either.

And I think so yeah, you're bringing up the fact that Siri has has had issues for a long time, Cherlynn. It's hard, it's actually easy to forget, like when Steve Jobs, I think, first announced Siri. This was like a big thing. It was a big thing because the iPhone is getting essentially a smart helper that could do all these things.

But that was really early days in terms of like conversational assistance. So it could do really basic things, but it could only do so much. And that was even before the very idea of transformer models was even discovered. Like we did not have that milestone that led to Gemini and a chat GPT and everything.

So what we're [00:20:00] talking about now. is a newer version of Siri that is based on all the stuff that's powering GPT and Gemini. And it just seems like Apple can't really do it yet. But also, I don't think, I don't think it's the worst news in the world. And I think a lot of these companies probably needed to do this as well.

Microsoft was so hardcore

Cherlynn: on

Devindra: teaming up with OpenAI. They brought you Yeah, they brought you to to Seattle, like you went there just to see them unveil. Let's be clear. They didn't bring me. They invited

Cherlynn: us and we paid our way. But yes,

Devindra: they pulled you there. They made you go there to go see it.

And then Copilot happened. And then like Copilot was in windows and it's everywhere. And they were like so gung ho because they invested tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI to make that thing happen. And I feel like they were just so relentless. And. What happened last year when they announced the whole Copilot Plus initiative, but also stuff like Recall.

We were so excited to announce Recall. It's look, we'll capture everything you're doing. The that one. We'll [00:21:00] remember everything. The instant backlash, the fact that they didn't fully think about it, the fact that these very obvious security flaws were not even really well considered at the company.

And I've had several conversations with Microsoft saying what the hell, what, how did you guys not see this? And they're like, we tested. No, in my recall we have done a lot of

Cherlynn: opinion. Microsoft has one of the worst cases of engineer brain with a lot of their products. Their testing is very tested on people who know how this works.

So know exactly what the limits might be and therefore have already like kind of restricted themselves based on that. So I think Microsoft is one of the the worst examples of that Google also does that to an extent. I think Google has learned in the past few years to broaden its testing, but. And also Apple has less of that, but Apple then actually doesn't have enough engineer brain in my opinion because it's not pushing far enough sometimes with the solving problems, right?

Either that or Apple is considering something that It's peers don't which is it might be trying to be as useful as [00:22:00] possible to as many people as possible Which is not a bad thing to do And that is why you and I think are in agreement that this delaying of the new smarter assistant It's not such a bad thing get it to a point where it works for 99 or 90 percent of the population.

The other thing that you're getting at, which like, by the way, I love that we're having this debate about assistants because clearly we're saying a lot and it's resonating also in chat. But the, one of the things that Amazon's executives said at that event about why, you know, they want to push towards this smarter assistant or this more natural language style with.

Talking and interacting with the assistants is this idea that like people have had to learn how to talk to their speaker, how to talk to their phone. Yes. And they didn't like that. And I'm like, well, now that I've spent 10 years learning how to talk to, you know, a word, it's, you are telling me how to like, relearn or unlearn that stuff.

It's a little bit annoying. Why not make [00:23:00] something that just. Works the way, I guess, I think that's the goal. They want to make it work the way you want it to, but it's not. We want to,

Devindra: we want you can finally

Ben: talk to it like a person. Yes. Like you wanted to. Def was about to say. Yes.

Devindra: Like you can talk to it like Star Trek.

Well, also it's a conversation where you're not like. constantly issuing commands. The thing with current assistance is that you have to, it's essentially programming, you're programming a computer, right? Do this for me. And you get a response. It's command response and not conversation. And I think we want the conversation when I've tested GPT stuff and even some copilot when you can actually talk to it and have a back and forth.

That's actually kind of nice. To what we were really getting at here, I think is that. So many people rushed out with all these AI features. Well, Google literally was caught flat footed. Like they rushed, they had a London event, right? To show off Gemini, like that was a disaster. All these companies have been pushing Wasn't Gemini

Ben: renamed from something?

It was

Devindra: BARD. It was BARD back then. Yeah, it

Ben: was BARD. That's right.

Devindra: But all these companies have essentially rushed everything out the [00:24:00] door to try to compete with whatever they assume OpenAI has already hit. And some of that stuff is impressive. It's cool that we can Talk to this thing and it can recall all this information.

It's cool. It can create documents and images and video and whatnot. Functionally, how it's actually making your life better. Sterling, when we were at WWDC, I think that was one thing we were saying, like Apple is focused on these features that will actually make your life. Maybe just a little easier.

Stuff like the writing assistant stuff within your apps. Technically the notification summaries were part of that too, which was kind of a mess for them, actually. Like they got in trouble. with bad summaries. They got in trouble with like them rewriting headlines and stuff. But when it's not terrible, I actually do appreciate the fact that it does compact a lot of different notifications into a small thing.

So yeah, if Apple takes a while, takes another year or so to make the Siri thing work good. I think that is ultimately a good thing, but. What happens is right now, the perceived problem is that oh, you're not hot, you're not [00:25:00] hot, like you're behind on AI, you're not as good as everybody, and I think that's all.

I'm gonna

Cherlynn: use Gen Z lingo here because I am so young.

Devindra: Let them

Cherlynn: cook! Let them cook! It's okay!

Devindra: That's not Gen Z lingo. Oh, not Gen Z lingo.

Cherlynn: So whatever lingo it is it's new to me. It is most often used by Gen Z. Let's be real. So it's okay to cook, right? I think the internet society agrees that it's okay to cook.

We just need to be patient.

Ben: Well, yeah, but in a lot of cases when they say that, it's like you're already doing something. You're already like showing the results of your work. So let them keep going on showing the results of their work. We have not seen. Sort of,

Devindra: I think the way let them cook is usually uses like somebody is going off, right?

And you don't know if it's gonna be good or bad. You're like, let's step back. Let's let them go I actually feel like that philosophy actually applies more to what OpenAI and Microsoft is, and it's let them, let's just go, let's go. The investor is yes, money. Here's AI, do AI. Oh [00:26:00] my gosh, Lucky Dog.

They're like, let them cook. Lucky Dog's podcast in the

Cherlynn: chat is let them Tim Cook.

Ben: I mean, and that gets to the idea of maybe let them cook in the sense of let them give themselves enough rope to hang themselves.

Devindra: I guess.

Ben: Because. I think the synopsis, if we were to boil all of this down with some AI brevity, the idea is that you only get one chance for your new assistant to be good, and if people can talk to it conversationally like they want to, especially if the most Average user can do that, then they will continue using it.

But, if you need to talk to it in a specific way, if you need to talk to it like you're programming a computer or something, you're gonna lose some large percentage, probably 60 percent or more, of your users who would eventually end up maybe loving this as it gets better. If you only get one chance for it to be good, then maybe [00:27:00] keep it under wraps for a while.

Devindra: I feel like that's it. Let's while we're in Generations, I'm gonna, let's quote Millennial icon, Eminem. Because it really comes down to this. If you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip? Think about that.

Think about that. Now that's gonna be in your head all day. Mom's spaghetti. One shot. You got one shot, everybody. And I guess we'll see where this goes.

Ben: So I want to bring things back to the MacBook Air for just a second and kind of bring up like a audio flow chart or something for should you get a MacBook Air or should you get a MacBook Pro, especially if you're a student, because we talked about how MacBook Airs are great for students.

If you do not see yourself doing big computational work at all, ever, so I'm talking about you know, English literature, I'm talking about like studio art where most of the stuff you're [00:28:00] doing is you know, manipulating objects in the real world, absolutely go off and get a MacBook Air.

It's going to be everything you need and more. However, if you are an interdisciplinary sort of. Kind of interested in computer art, maybe using bigger AI models, or if you, for some reason, want to do some Beeple ass art, you know, very computer generated or something, you need the fans.

Devindra: You need fans. You need, yeah. So the MacBook air is fanless. It is just a little hot box basically.

Ben: Absolutely. Yes. So if you are an interdisciplinary artist, if you're doing anything in like blender or Maya or anything like that, you need. Like heat dissipation really badly. I think that's basically it. If you're going to be an engineering student, or if you're even kind of casually interested in eventually majoring in engineering, and you're going to be doing solid [00:29:00] works or something, MacBook Pro is where you want to go, not the MacBook Air.

Devindra: Yep. I feel like you would know it. You would know if you need these tools or not. This is more advice for like people going into college, people thinking about what to buy ahead. You don't know what, like what your workflow is actually going to be. Something we're thinking about. I'm thinking

Ben: about parents who don't quite know like everything, like all of the specs for these different machines.

They just know that like the MacBook Air is a bit cheaper, but it also has the top level chip right now.

Devindra: So I think your advice is pretty much right there, Ben. That's pretty much what we'd say. I will say though, like the thing about these M4 chips and Apple's chips in general is that they are really fast.

Like they are really fast. So if you are a visual arts student who does not need to do like hardcore rendering, but you just like drawing, like you just may want a 15 inch air plus a Wacom tablet or something. You will get faster processing with a pro for sure, but. If you're a college student, you may also want to prioritize just having a lighter machine to walk around with.

So I think that's where [00:30:00] some of that comes in. Some of the complaints I have from my review still hit the 60 Hertz screen looks good, but I would like a faster refresh rate. And that is something,

Ben: yeah, that's especially not good for art.

Devindra: I mean, it's yeah. Yeah. It's better to have something smoother for our, for artwork, but yeah, if you bump up to the 14 inch MacBook pro, which I've actually seen that thing is normally 1599, I believe, but I've seen it on sale for like close to 1400.

At that, if you bump up to that, you get more storage, I believe too, but you get more ports, you get a higher refresh rate display. And I think for a lot of people that will be a safer computer to last you your entire, like college career or professional career or whatever. That's the main thing to think about like the 14 inch MacBook Pro, don't be afraid of it, especially once you start adding hardware to the Air, that's where Apple gets you.

You know, you will spend 200 more to add more RAM or a harder, bigger hard drive or something like that. And also worth pointing out the 999 Air, the 13 inch has fewer GPU cores. I believe it's eight instead of 10. So that may also [00:31:00] be a downside for some people. For if you're just writing, if you're just doing productivity stuff.

You'll probably never even notice. So that's that good recommendations there, Ben, anything else you want to add to the show?

Cherlynn: No, I think we just have a lot of Apple products that we reviewed. We

Devindra: have a lot of Apple products. I mean, yeah. And also we talked about the series stuff. We will see where this lands.

Like we're going to follow this story, folks. I do feel like. This is one of those things, like it is a telling thing. I think Apple has lost a lot of trust, which is something John Gruber has been saying. Like typically we trust that if Apple says something at WWDC, we're like, okay, yeah, they will figure this out in time.

Right. And this was an example where they showed it on a video. They never demonstrated it live. And I think we never really had a sense that if they could actually do this. So I think after this, like there's justification to push Apple harder around this stuff. I really do hate sometimes talking to Apple reps because they are so media trained where like.

You ask them a question and what they give you is literally here is the copy from the thing you just read. [00:32:00] Yes, I will ask a specific question like, oh, how did you come up with this feature? They're like, this is the greatest feature in the world and everything I just told you I'm just gonna repeat back and It's not super helpful.

Ben: There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

Devindra: There's no war in Ba Sing Se tariffs are helping the economy. I mean, we just saw that today. So yeah, we will, we're going to push Apple harder. This is certainly, I think it's maybe troubling news, but also I don't mind if people delay AI features, get it good rather than, you know, announcing it and having it fail completely.

Let's move on to some other news. Briefly, we saw some rumors coming out of out of Microsoft and around Xbox stuff Windows Central reports that the Xbox handheld that has been talked about and discussed could come at the end of the year and it likely won't be built by [00:33:00] Microsoft, which is actually fine because we've spent the last few CESs looking at all the portable gaming hardware from Asus and everybody else.

It could be a company like Asus building whatever the Xbox handheld is actually don't think that's a bad idea. Like a handheld at a decent price. It has access to game pass is a really compelling product. The more interesting thing that Jez Corden over at windows central report is that their next generation consoles are targeted for 2027, which is only two years away.

Goddamn. 2027, new consoles that would feel I think the thing is they feel, they would feel more like Windows PCs. And if you remember what I said, I think it was last year, I think when Jess was on here and we were discussing whatever the future of the Xbox was, I was like just make it a Windows box, man.

Just make it to make up small Windows mini PC that you put to your TV and the people who don't need that can bring it to a monitor and play games on their [00:34:00] monitor. But it's just a Windows box. Let's stop overthinking all the Xbox stuff they had to do for consoles because they were never very good at it.

Microsoft has failed more than often, more often than not, when it comes to Xbox stuff. The original Xbox burned billions of dollars to get that thing. That was a failure. The Xbox 360 succeeded because they had a good strategy. They did a lot of things earlier. But the Xbox one, that whole platform the everything now the series X, it's the same problems over and over again, where Microsoft is facing against Sony and Nintendo Sony, who is so good at the closed console market and knows how to produce killer games.

Nintendo, who is just like off in la land doing whatever, like they don't need to even play this game at all. Nintendo can just survive selling Zelda and Mario with unique hardware all the time. And Microsoft, I think it's taken Microsoft a long time to realize we make. PC software. Maybe we should be selling people PCs and the consoles themselves right now are running AMD CPUs.

They're running AMD GPUs. They are [00:35:00] essentially computers. So I feel like the next logical step would be here's an Xbox handheld. That's great for a lot of people. And maybe you can dock it. Here's a powerful 500 to 600 mini desktop that can sit by your TV. You'll have an Xbox interface to play the games you're used to, but also.

It's a Windows box, so let it run Steam, let it give you full access to Game Pass. I wonder if Microsoft is brave enough to do something like that, because you give people an easy way to put Steam on their TVs. The hardcore players will love that. I'm actually thinking about, I have some spare PC hardware now.

I'm like, I should just put, rather than string a 100 foot HDMI cable from my office to my TV or projector. Should just build a little box because all I need is 4k at 60 hertz if that really to power a tv thing And I think that's going to be a compelling option for a lot of people. I don't know trillin ben any thoughts on this Just make yeah

Ben: Dev, can you give [00:36:00] me like a capsule history, like five sentences or less, about why we're seeing so many new Windows gaming handhelds now?

Devindra: I mean, the history is the hardware got good. The portable hardware got good enough that we could do this, and

Ben: But is it the batteries? Is it the video stuff? It's everything! Is it the processors? It's the GPUs. Okay.

Devindra: It's a chip, it's a GPUs. It's the fact that Nintendo has been writing switch hardware since 2017, like 2016 era switch hardware is ancient, but it can play a game like Zelda tears of the kingdom and it's selling, it's still selling a ton.

People are buying those games. I think we're at the point where the graphics rat race is just like. Not everybody needs it, right? I think few people can really see the difference between a PlayStation 5 game and a PlayStation 4 game. Okay, we're scaling back. Now you can do some pretty good gaming on a handheld form.

Maybe the games themselves are less demanding, but the hardware has gotten there. Nintendo kind of proved that. Even Sony themselves kind of proved that with the [00:37:00] PlayStation Vita, which was a great piece of hardware that they gave up on because the ecosystem wasn't fully there for it. But yeah, there are rumors that Sony's going to go back to it as well.

Handheld gaming hardware is great, and it's better than ever because of all the advancements we've made in CPUs and GPUs and display technology and everything. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I mean, we saw the Lenovo Legion Go at CES. That one's coming out with SteamOS later this year. And we've seen a proliferation of Windows gaming handhelds.

Ioneo is one of the makers of many of them. But there's others Pretty sure Ace, not Ace, is it the ROG Ally X that is a Windows one?

Devindra: Yeah. So lots of people are making

Cherlynn: these Windows handhelds, and I think And the

Devindra: experience isn't great. Exactly. I was gonna say, the

Cherlynn: problem is the software. The problem has always been, it's such a pain in the ass to use Windows OS on such a tiny little screen that's a touchscreen, which we've lamented for years that just Windows doesn't work as a touchscreen interface.

And that is the problem.

Devindra: This may be like, I feel like this is warning [00:38:00] signs, not just Microsoft go all in on AI. Hey, Microsoft, people want to play games while using your platform in this form factor. Do something about it. Like chase that. Make let's strip Windows down to the point where we can make it easier to work with.

Cherlynn: Yeah, make a version. I don't,

Devindra: I don't trust. I don't trust. I don't even when

Cherlynn: you ask me my thoughts. And yeah, when you ask me my thoughts about this is what I wanted to say, right? Which is that gaming handhelds, we've seen them. It's not like we haven't seen the windows gaming handhelds by third parties.

And for Microsoft to try to do this, it would need to see what valve is doing and try to do better. I think that's what's going to happen. Just make

Devindra: Windows itself I think just make Windows itself better. I don't trust Microsoft to make an offshoot thing, because whenever they've done Windows RT, or was it the, I think the 11X or 10X or whatever they were considering for foldables or something they were Whenever they start to offshoot windows, like it just becomes a mess.

Just give us a box, man. Consoles are just PCs now. Give us a box, let people do what they want with them. And I think that [00:39:00] would actually be a really compelling thing for a lot of people, especially if you just sell it. It's Hey here's a game pass box. You pay 30, 40 a month. We will give you a box that will sit by your TV and it just plays game pass things.

I don't know. That could be a solution there. I would love to know what you folks think. Podcasts and gadget. com. We've got a lot of news to run through. We're just going to blow through some of this stuff. Some of which is disheartening and some of which is just yeah. Interesting point out here.

There have been a couple things happening with Tesla. There have been widespread protests around the country. I love that Alex winter of Bill and Ted fame is now like one of the most visual, like most visible antagonists against Tesla. Like he has been leading the charge on protests, I think around Los Angeles.

There's like widespread consumer reaction to this protesting Tesla's because of what Elon Musk is doing to the American government to this cuts to his like chainsaw antics. As part of that, apparently like one way to counteract that [00:40:00] is Elon Musk and Donald Trump turned the White House into a Tesla dealership.

And Donald Trump's bought a Tesla and the one, the red one of the white house. I don't know. Sure. Whatever. He's not the red one, but he bought a Tesla. What was the quote? Everything's computer. He sits down, everything's computer. But I

Ben: pointed out that the European New Car Assessment Program actually wants things to be less computer if you want the maximum safety rating from them, and it totally makes sense.

I have never rented a Tesla. I've always kind of wanted to rent a EV. Actually, when I was in SF last week, I Happened to walk by a Rivian dealership. This is my first time ever really a Rivian dealership And I was like I need to go in I need to touch this car and It has the same problem big screen.

No, I hate it.

Devindra: I hate it. Give me buttons

Ben: there is a small margin for error if I want to [00:41:00] change a setting or something where In every other car on the market, all of the internal combustion cars, I can just kind of randomly feel around like on the console area and figure out what I need to press just by the shape of the button.

Devindra: You can build muscle memory based on button placement and shape and everything. And you cannot do that with the touchscreen. I think Volkswagen is saying now like they're going to go back to at least buttons for climate controls. And I think everyone's seeing the folly of just Hey, it's a big ass tablet.

It was cool when Tesla first did it in the early 2010s, because nobody was doing that. But I think the usability problems became evident. Anyway, I don't want to laugh too much at everything's computer. Like it has become a bit memish, but also that whole situation is such a disgusting, scenario where yeah, of course, Donald Trump is basically acting like a used car salesman right now, right down to having sales pitch notes on his notes. Just to refer back to

Ben: there was a [00:42:00] what was it? White House press pool photographer took a picture of the, I love everybody does papers he was holding and it was literally Just like a list of Tesla specs.

And

Devindra: it's easy to do that too. I feel like that's a photographer's duty now because we all know that Donald Trump needs large typeface notes, so it's very easy to zoom in and get a picture of exactly what he's holding. But I think that is, you know, that's him directly helping Elon Musk and trying to give Tesla a boost, but also signs that the protests are working.

There are so many other things too. You had brought up, Ben Doge reportedly has a chatbot that's going to automate some government tasks. And I feel like that is such, it cuts to the core of like how dumb and broken this whole efficiency seeking initiative is. Like they want to offload stuff to AI.

We've spent the last hour. Talking about how dog shit, a lot of AI is you can't do that. It's never going to work. So I feel like that's just never going to work out for them, but yeah, that's, so that's our check in into exactly what's happening here. We're going to keep an eye on this. Like the tariff stuff will [00:43:00] also directly involve the technology industry and consumers and what you can buy and how much it's going to cost.

So I would love to have a discussion with that with somebody who knows economics and somebody who can really explain a lot of this, but it is, I look not so great. Folks, so you know briefly mentioning researchers also are saying that Musk's been there was a story about X being down for, I think, a day or so.

Over the weekend, on Monday or something. Yeah. Researchers are not buying his explanation that it was a cyber attack, so there'll be more to see there. There is a book coming out from a former Facebook executive, Sarah Wynn Williams. She's been written up by the New York Times and elsewhere talking about like just how kind of disgusting Facebook is at the corporate level, at the executive level.

And

Cherlynn: the courting of China.

Devindra: Yeah. And now apparently Meta is trying to stop sales of that book. So that's a good look. That's a clear sign that you've done nothing wrong. And they scored a victory

Cherlynn: last night, right? Like yesterday. So that's what the development is. We, A, discovered that Meta was trying to stop them, but B, that this past, and it's just a funny story.

I've read the arbitration, it [00:44:00] was really funny to read. I would

Devindra: love Meta to look up the Streisand effect and to see what's going to happen now. Yup. Exactly. Like literally the people who are going to ignore this book. But now

Cherlynn: everyone's talking about it. It's great.

Devindra: Yeah. The book Meta doesn't want you to read.

That's great. Let's move on to some stuff from around and gadgets. Some great coverage this week Sam, Mr. Sam Rutherford got to play with the ninja swirl by creamy. He calls it the ultimate home ice cream maker. This thing looks beautiful. So the ice cream looks beautiful. Totally get that. The ice cream looks beautiful.

I have one of the ninja dual toaster reverence for Lynn. Let me tell you I, I hesitate to recommend. A gadget to Cherlynn that could potentially catch fire, or cause things to catch fire. But a toaster oven is key. Does this have a danger? If you want, this one, any of these things can catch fire. But the toaster oven is key.

I'm going to write that up at some point too. But it's two compartments. Like you can cook stuff on the top and cook stuff on the bottom. I've made whole dinners for our entire family just on that little device. So

Ben: that's

Devindra: great.

Ben: It's also really funny how the Ninja Creamy is [00:45:00] probably a really desired review among Engadget staff.

Like everybody outside of the tech journalism space is Oh wow, you get to touch like all the new tech, that's got to be so cool. People inside Engadget are like, you get to make ice cream for work. That's awesome.

Devindra: Ice cream. Sam also loves the kitchen gadget. So I love that he gets to play with those.

Mr. Daniel Cooper also loves routers. He likes playing with routers. So he reviewed the Eero Pro 7, which kind of, kind of middling. Like he says, good performance and everything, but Eero. Which is owned by Amazon, right? They are trying to keep a lot of basic features behind the monthly fire monthly subscription.

And to me, that seems like a bad thing for a router. It

Cherlynn: was hard for me when editing this to Hey, can you bring up a comparison that a company that doesn't do this, that doesn't charge for all these fairly basic features. And the tricky thing is that Wi Fi 7 routers aren't It's not like you can just pick up the same exact version or a counterpart from Google or [00:46:00] TP link or Netgear.

Right. But because wifi seven, again, is not something that, and if they have made a wifi seven router, it's a flagship router. So it's got bells and whistles that bring the cost all the way up to a thousand dollars maybe. So it was hard to be like, Oh, it does not justify it. But no matter what, I think we can all agree that asking you to pay a subscription for basic features like parental controls on your own network is ridiculous.

And so you'll see that in Dan's review.

Devindra: I hate it. I totally hate it. Do we want to do the question that came in, Cherlynnn, or do you want to save that for Let's

Cherlynn: save that for next week, Kevin. It was a very good question, though. Thank you. so

Devindra: much, Kevin. Thank you so much, Kevin. But we are running along.

Ben: Yeah.

Everybody else, send us more questions so we can do just a big, engaged mailbag. Ideally, not in the middle of recording. Yeah. You know, we do that sometimes, and we would really like it to happen, you know, at least every other week or so.

Devindra: Let's move on to what we're working on. Yeah, I'm testing the Ryzen 9950 X3D chip.

So that is fun running benchmarks and doing some more game testing on this thing. And hopefully that's not the [00:47:00] cause of like our stream hiccuping just now. And also I did a twit this week. I did this week in tech the episode is called chatting with Mr. Babyman. Which was just, that was a line from something we were talking about.

Mr. Babyman used to be the top dig user and I am currently in a group chat with him. So I remember that you remember him. So I talked to Mr. Babyman every day to chat with Mr. Babyman every day. And it's great. He's a good dude. Show in anything you want to mention.

Cherlynn: I mean, I'm digging myself out of the pile of Apple reviews and other types of coverage.

Next week, we've got some interesting events to look out for. DaVindra, I know you're on board to live vlog GTC for us, so that's exciting. And then, yeah, I'll be on another podcast this week as well. I don't know when it's coming out, so I'm not going to say what it is yet, but once I do know, I'll let y'all know.

Devindra: Keep keep an eye out on Trillian's socials, on PleaseGuy, and, you know, wherever's Any pop culture picks you want to talk about, Trillian?

Cherlynn: I don't know if it's pop culture, but I do want to shout out this app called Finch that our Cheyenne MacDonald has [00:48:00] Engadget. And I actually discovered this app when she filed her draft of it maybe about two weeks ago.

And I've been using it since. So it's been 15 days. I got my like 15 day streak of using the app notification today. It is a self care, like a mental health based app where basically by taking care of yourself, you are also taking care of this pet bird or whatever animal is really cute and it's helped me.

slowly regain some structure in my life and in a way that like feels non pressurizing. I love also that the subreddit of Finch users has got just the best vibes. Everyone's very supportive. It's no pressure. It's really it's designed for people who, you know, like tasks that you can complete are as simple as getting out of bed each day if you want to.

And you can reward yourself for getting out of bed. You can reward yourself for washing your face, brushing your teeth, drinking water. It's really nice and I actually recommend it to my friend for their kid a preteen kid. I think you need to be like age six and [00:49:00] up to be able to really reap any sort of use from this.

But it is such a great like thoughtful little app designed by two people who were like college buddies who really wanted to just help support each other. It's not very corporate and doesn't feel very money grabby which is nice too. A, check out Cheyenne's piece about it for more information on Engadget, and then B, Finch, an app.

I really quite enjoy it.

Ben: I saw that on the site and I was like, Cherlynn is going to love this. Nice to have some confirmation of that. It's

Devindra: like they've gamified to you, basically.

Ben: You are the Tamagotchi.

Devindra: It's, aren't we all? That's that life. That's the story of life, folks. Alright, thank you for that, Cherlynn.

I need to check that out, too. I want to shout out I am catching up on Severance. It is very good this season. And hoping, I'm hoping to have time to write something about it by the finale. Which I think is a couple of weeks from now or maybe next week, it's coming soon. So a lot is happening in that show.

I love how it's building on the themes of season one, but also not afraid to be weird, not afraid to be like the [00:50:00] very David Lynchian at times too, like we've lost David Lynch, but like his spirit will live on in projects like this. So kind of love that. Also want to shout out Mickey 17, the new film from Bong Joon Ho, who is one of my favorite working directors right now.

Robert Pattinson, multiple Robert Pattinson's dying over and over again. He's, I mean, he does funny voice, like everything he does now, it's like he's, if it's Batman or whatever, he will do funny voice. And I think you should check it out. It's definitely like zany sci fi stuff, but it's also in a very similar way to Severance.

It is ultimately about labor and the way that, you know, capital destroys the value of labor and the rich, will always take advantage of people. And I think it's a really fun, funny movie, maybe it runs a little too long, but it is, it's Bong Joon ho doing satire with sci fi in sci fi, and I just kind of love that.

I love him, love Snowpiercer as a host. Pretty much everything Bong Joon ho has done. But when he gets to be like full zany that's like my zone. I kind of love that. So I don't love this as much as Snowpiercer, but it's [00:51:00] still very good. If you could see it in theaters, definitely check it out. It's Mickey17, by Bong Joon ho.

Cherlynn: Well, that's it for this episode, everyone. Thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by game composer, Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find Davindra online

Devindra: at Davindra at Blue Sky and all those fun places, Mastodon, you know.

And I'll spodcast about movies and TV at TheFilmCast

Cherlynn: you want to send me your favorite macOS shortcuts for the keyboard or the trackpad, you can please send them to me at, via email shirlin at Engadget. com, or on threads, shirlinstagram, C H U R L Y N S T A G H U R E. And then email us your thoughts about the show at podcast at inkadget.

com. Leave us a review wherever you're listening or tuning in, because that will really help this show get discovered and then subscribe on your favorite.[00:52:00]

Ben: Mom's spaghetti.

Devindra: What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I'm Managing Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: This week, we're also joined by Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham. Hey, Nate. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Full house this morning, so it's good to see everybody. We're going to be talking about the Basically all the new Apple hardware that just dropped by press release this week the M4 MacBook Air, the new iPad Air and the base iPad, which is kind of interesting too.

There's a new Mac studio out there with a really intriguing chip selection and some stuff from Mobile World Congress. And I've been crazy reviewing the AMD and NVIDIA GPU. So I've got thoughts on that as always folks. If you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice.

Drop us an email at [email protected] and join us Thursday mornings around 11 a. m. Eastern on our YouTube channel for our live stream. I think we're good. I think we're good to keep doing these as long as like I'm around and not sick or something. So join us then, folks. And hello. Hello, everybody.

Sherilyn, how are you doing with the news with everything happening right now?

Cherlynn: Surprisingly, I'm doing okay. Thanks. Because I have gotten most of the work out of the way, I'm having a chill Thursday, but definitely not an easy start to the week for us, right? I mean, I don't know if you know Devon Jivey, obviously you know, but you were working on a couple of super high priority reviews for us.

And then we had Sam and like other people on the team filing a lot of embargo hands on pieces over the weekend. And then to start the week, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had all kinds of Apple news that Nate. Who's joining us today is all on top of Nate. How was this week for you?

Nathan: It's been a little crazy.

Especially cause I have to carve out a couple hours to talk to everyone today, but that's cool. No, it's useful time. But yeah, Tuesday morning was, we had stuff prepped or at least we knew like it was going to come probably. So I had some posts ready to go and just to throw those up and fill out the details and.

Devindra: It was about what we expected. Let's well, let's go down the list. I think from priority and the one everybody was excited about is the new MacBook Air. We've been waiting for them to throw an M four chip in there. Apple reduced didn't in last, in the fall, they made 16, 16 gigabytes of ram, the base level of ram.

I ended up buying my wife an M three MacBook Air because of that, and it totally worth it for that price. And we've been waiting for the new chip. It is here. No Hardaware changes beyond that, except they reduced price by 100. And now it starts at nine 99. I, this is such a no brainer computer. If anybody, if you're familiar with max, right, this is just a one to recommend to most people.

Right. Did it

Nathan: also not

Devindra: get the

Nathan: webcam upgrade? I think,

Devindra: Oh yeah, it got the center stage webcam. Yeah. Yeah. 12 megapixel.

Nathan: So that's something that'll be nice. I think. But yeah, like they, you know, previously 999 got you an M2. Now it gets you an M4. So that's kind of a, yeah, no brainer when it is now easy to recommend the base model for most people, I think.

Devindra: Yeah. I mean, I could have seen Apple just keeping 1, 100, right. And not giving us a discount or anything. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Everyone in the chat's like excited, right? I mean, we have people going, This is the GOAT! And I'm like, okay. I don't know if I would call it a GOAT, but there's setting aside my personal struggles with macOS.

It is the GOAT ultra

Nathan: portable. Yeah, so, I don't know. Sherilyn and I have been, like, going back and forth about Mac stuff lately because our corporate overlords are forcing us to use our work issued Macs, so all of our Windows fans are struggling with the transition. It's it's struggling.

Devindra: You know what?

I'm not, nobody from corporate is listening to this, but I'm still okay on my window. Some people have been on our

Cherlynn: team. I don't want to, I don't want to give it all of it away. Cause I don't want to affect all of you, but when it does happen, cause it's a when, not an if y'all are, I'm sorry.

I'm a PC girl having to switch has been. Theory infuriating,

Devindra: I know this, but you know what, Sherilyn, like when you started doing more iPhone stuff, I remember you're an Android, you were an Android girl mainly too, and you're like, you slowly got it, you slowly got the appeal of

Cherlynn: I wouldn't say I got it because I still long for Androids cameras, but that's a topic for another day.

I'm sure. MacBook Air. Okay. So, I mean, I, look I, setting aside my issues with the Mac OS, I can respect that it is a very good laptop, frequently just has like longest lasting batteries in the industry, at least does all of the ARM emulation, well, not emulation anymore, just supports ARM natively now, if I'm not wrong, and just does it really well.

Good job, Apple. Good for you, but okay.

Devindra: Doesn't have a fan, which is both a blessing and a curse. It depends there's no fan noise, but also don't take that sucker outside in the sun because it will just sit there and roast and never eject any hot air, as I learned one time. But yeah, it's, this is the good computer for everybody.

I don't know what else to say beyond that. The Max Studio also got an upgrade, and I know the the more power hungry folks were waiting for this, and this one's coming with the M4 Max, same price starting in 1999, but also the N3 Ultra, which is a chip people were waiting for a long time. Really weird to see a last generation like chip design being pushed in a new product, but I'm hearing from some people that apparently these ultra chips just take forever for to like design and test and implement because they're essentially two max chips like squished together, you know, connected by some sort of bridge.

So it took a while to test. And from what I hear, the M3 Ultra is twice as fast as the M4 Max in like really heavy duty data processing work. So the number

Nathan: doesn't ultimately matter at the end of the day. It is

Devindra: confusing though. Yeah, it is.

Nathan: It's definitely weird, but I think for the people who are going to spend that much money and

Devindra: need

Nathan: that kind of power, they know.

Right? What they're getting into. They're not going to get confused by like marketing semantics.

Devindra: Is anybody excited about the iPad air with an M3 chip? So

Nathan: it's good. Fine. Yeah. So it's very much like the MacBook update, but I think, you know, after mowing this over a bit, I think what has happened, all these releases concurrently is basically them getting off of, I think, five nanometer.

Processors. Sure.

Devindra: Sure.

Nathan: So like they no longer have to support them to on the air or on the iPad. So I think that's a sense of they were doing is like them three is like way into production. They probably like we have so many of these, like there's no reason not to put them into the new, they're swimming in them three chips at this.

Right. So let's just do it. Right. And that's fine. I think for both the air, the MacBook air and the iPad, they're both like such mature products at this point that like, yeah. You're going to get just spec bumps and like I'm writing, I'm working on, or thinking about like how I'm going to review the iPad.

It's basically like everything I said a year ago. It's good. It still applies. Plus one.

Devindra: Yeah.

Nathan: Plus one. Right. So if you were going to buy one, you should still buy one. And same token goes for the air. Like we said, like for the same price, you're now getting an M4 instead of an M2. That's a big win.

Devindra: I think when, especially these products that are so mature, it's is the decision, should you buy the new one or should you like.

If the old one was so good, like it's probably a couple of hundred dollars less now. Maybe you should just look for that. And that is something I always kind of think about in my reviews, but then they drop the price. So it's I don't think you're going to find an M3 MacBook Air for a lot less, maybe 800 again, as they like clear out some of the, some stuff, maybe you'll find some M2s below 800 and that'll be an insanely good deal.

Cause that's still a very good computer, right?

Nathan: I would agree. Yeah. That's like a. Like, if you need a budget Mac there you go. You just gotta keep an eye on Amazon and whatnot and see what they've got. The other thing that's kind of funny about the Air Is that I was thinking about like right now, the way I'm thinking about it is what's the differences between the pro and the air and they always have to have things to differentiate and you know, every so often you kind of say well, what does it make sense?

What are you giving up for this money? And the pros still is like crazy expensive, but with the air, this is the generation where I'm starting to feel like, okay, like it's had the same screen for five years. It's had, you know, I mean, that's the big one for me is the same screen. And no face ID. And I understand that five years ago, those were smart ways to differentiate the product lineups, but now it's starting to feel a little, you know, miserly and you really want face

Devindra: IDs, the thing you're waiting for,

Nathan: I'm not waiting for it, but having used an iPad pro, I Way prefer it than having to keep on reaching up to authenticate sign in to things etc.

I feel that for

Devindra: me But that's I think again, it depends on how

Nathan: you use it Yeah, it's like I'm using it literally to do my whole job today except for this podcast You could have done a podcast on it. I think I could have tried but I don't want to cause problems Yeah, but I think that if you're like a more slightly more casual using it.

It's not gonna bother you as much I was thinking about the fact that you could go out there and probably find a refurbished M2 iPad Pro from a couple years ago and get a better screen and get, you know, the same, essentially the same performance that sort of thing.

Devindra: It's mainly the screen I don't know if they'll ever bring a fast refresh rate screen down to the iPad Air.

We're also still waiting for that on the base level iPhone. To me, that is such a qualitative leap in quality because all we do all day is scroll folks. If you just make the scrolling better, that's all I need and cheap Android phones and tablets are doing that. So why can't Apple? To me, that seems like the big annoyance, even 90 Hertz, give me 90 Hertz.

And even that will reduce eye strain a little bit. That's just a shame, but Hey, I've had air.

Nathan: Yeah. As I'm looking at the screen or you know, when I've looked, I'm thinking about the The M2 model, which I reviewed less than a year ago, like the screen itself looks very lovely. It's just a basic LEDs or LCD, but it looks still, it's very nice, but yeah, you definitely notice the stuttering compared to the higher refresh rate.

And then the other thing that I think about a lot is at one point, Apple had the mini LED screens, the iPad pro. So they've got the tech, you know, they could have this middle ground where the basic iPad is just like an LCD. This one's got The mini LED and then they've got the OLED for the pro.

So I'm like, that feels like it would be a good update.

Devindra: It's a, it's yeah, I guess they know who will buy their products, right? The techies who really want this stuff. We'll just bump up to the pro and then the people who want not just the base iPad. We'll go for the air. I feel like the air is just like in a weird space.

Cause it doesn't look that much different. It doesn't feel that much different. And I'm, I have always been a fan of the base model iPad because you get so much bang for your buck. And this year you're getting still once again, a pretty decent. amount of bang for your buck, right? This is coming in at the reduced price that the last base iPad was brought down to last year.

349. That thing launched originally over for at over 400. And we were really annoyed about that.

Nathan: So I think it was 430 or 450 even possibly.

Devindra: So I love this like price range because it's such a, it's just such a throwaway thing, right? Like, why not? Just get another base iPad. Your kid needs like a thing to do stuff on.

That is such a decent price. And if they destroy it, you know, it'll run for a couple of years. I'll crack the screen, but in a couple of years you may replace it or something. Like to me, that is, that's just like a really good, useful thing. My daughter started messing around with like art stuff on the the last.

The 10th gen iPad air or iPad base iPad. And now she's playing Minecraft on it and she's playing in big worlds with lots of textures and stuff like it's running really well. So that is such a good computer basically to scale with people. So shout out to the base iPad, which is better now too. Yeah, they added the

Nathan: A16, which is smart.

Interesting that it doesn't run Apple intelligence because my assumption was it was going to, because you know, they've tried to get that on almost every product they sell, but not this one. I mean,

Cherlynn: That, to me, was the most interesting thing out of all the news we've been talking so far. Yeah,

Speaker 4: yeah.

Cherlynn: I mean, iPad Air, cool.

MacBook Air, great value. Cool also, but incremental. No huge change to chassis design. I do want to point out Wes Jackson in the chat has been talking about the colors should be nicer on the MacBook Air. I don't know about the iPads. I mean, that led me to think I haven't really seen a very colorful laptop in a while.

There

Devindra: is a blue MacBook Air now, which is pretty Right. Right. But that but what, but West

Cherlynn: Jackson was saying is he wants it to be very saturated.

Nathan: If it's anything like the iPads, it's like the suggestion of blue it, it's like it's gonna look silver's, like sky

Devindra: blue. I remember, remember like the Surfaces had it's blue. You want blue. This is the bluest blue your eyes have ever seen. You know, you look at it too hard and all you see is blue for a second. That's how basic

Nathan: iPads also have great colors. Bright

Devindra: yellow. Bright. Yeah,

Cherlynn: they

Devindra: do. So I can't go ahead. Go ahead.

Cherlynn: I mean, Wes Jackson also pointed out and I wanted to ask the two of you what you thought on this really is that like, why is Apple so behind with screen refresh rates, right?

We understand they are behind. We've known this for a while. Why? What is holding them up?

Devindra: I think, well, they tend to value other things, right? They do put good screens in their devices. Like the base I've had is excellent. Yeah. The quality is excellent. Like this is the problem I have with the the Apple.

What's the, like the display, the monitor, that's 1, 500. Is it the studio display now? Studio display, but I know you're talking about, it doesn't have. High refresh rates either, right? That is, you have to go up to the pro monitor for that. But it looks good and people keep those things for years and years.

So it's they value other things in addition to refresh rate. But I'm just saying like where the market is now, like refresh rate, like it makes such a huge difference. I was thinking the base iPad is this thing where they're like. We can't make this too good. We're Apple, actually. And if we allow ourselves, this will be too good.

So the last time they're like, it has to be more expensive because we put a better chip in there. So that's kind of how you're doing it. And now it's well, it doesn't have Apple intelligence. So if you really want that, you need an iPad Air. Sorry. It just

Cherlynn: seems so ridiculous to me. I'm like, you just went all in.

It does because it's ridiculous

Nathan: because you get the sense that they want to be able to tell adoption numbers like this. Many people are using Apple intelligence. It's a win for us. And they've also said in the past that the best. I'm selling iPad is no surprise the cheap one. So you'd think there'd be a natural way to be like, okay, like we can, you know, again, like juice our Apple intelligence adoption here.

It's really telling, right? So surprising

Devindra: the cheapest chip that can run Apple intelligence is the a 17 pro, which was in the iPhone 15 pro series. So that would have cost more money to jump back up to that chip. The A16 is probably something they can put out cheaply, but I do think it ultimately comes down to sort of like the iPhone SE.

Does Apple want more people to buy the base iPad? I kind of don't think so. Actually, I think they want people to buy the thing with a higher per average, you know, price, so they'll get a higher return from it. It is this weird balance. Apple never wants people to just go straight to the cheap device, even though that is the one I think most consumers will consider first, you know.

Nathan: Well, and to your point about how much you like the base iPad, like everything you said is absolutely true. But then I think about somebody like myself. Where I, so last year when I reviewed the Air, I was like, this is the one to get because it has enough improvements, better screen better multitasking, you know, Apple intelligence now is a thing if you care about it, better processor, obviously I believe it's the only one, or I don't think the base I've had supports the Apple pencil pro.

So if you're really into visual arts, that's a win for you also. So they do all that without making it too expensive. Like it's not cheap. It's not cheap, but the price is, I think, reasonably fair for what you get, as is the price for the basic iPad. But, you know, like I, when I reviewed the basic one, I was like, I, it would feel like too constraining for me compared to what I want to do with it.

So I'm an air guy, but like other publications, I remember said the same thing about the air being in kind of a weird place. Like you could either just have this, like cheap basic iPad or. You could go the other way, but they've bumped up the price on the pro last year when they redesigned it. So now the cheapest one is a grand, which is bonkers.

The

Devindra: only smart decision for an expensive iPad is a used iPad pro. I think that's kind of the only way to go yes, you could buy the air and then you have this year's chip, but last year's M2 chip or whatever would still be. Yeah. Pretty freaking powerful. Yeah. And

Nathan: they've got good, you know, Apple is really good about having like quality refurbished stuff on their store pretty often.

Yeah. You'd save some cash get the one from a couple of years ago. That's a good call off to consider that. It's

Devindra: iSmart folks. Yeah.

Cherlynn: If you think about it, we've just been talking about how incremental everything has been like over the last few years. So definitely let the last two year models, the Hardaware wise, they basically feel the same, I think, and the processors.

Even if there have been like leaps in performance, it also wouldn't translate to much real world difference. I don't think you can tell me that the A17 is so much different than the A18, other than supporting Apple Intelligence a bit more natively slash better.

Nathan: I could see why they have updated the, you know, the base one, like A14 is probably starting to get old.

And again, I think it's also a matter of them moving away from Like producing things at like the certain you know, I'm not a huge chip guy, but I was talking to Aaron about this yesterday and it's okay, this they've cut their, they've removed all the products using, I think, five nanometer chips from their lineup at this point.

And that was probably like a weird strategic part of the decision that consumers aren't really privy to. Right.

Devindra: I see a comment here. Moe Esquire says from the chat, Apple stays asking for 2025 money for 2011 screen technology. It's wild. I wouldn't say that. Like the numbers are the same, but the actual technology behind the screens are, they do get better.

It's a better LCD. It's brighter than before, you know, in many respects, like It is getting incrementally better. Nate, like, how do you feel about the iPad air screen at this point? Is it a decent value?

Nathan: Yeah, so again, I haven't reviewed the new one, but it's the same as last year's And you know, if I sit there, like I said, if I look at the screen i'm like it's reasonably bright.

The colors are nice. It's great to watch movies on play games. Like it's a very quality display, but the thing where you start to feel it not being as good is when you compare it to the iPad pro and specifically again, as you're saying, the refresh rate, right? Like it feels. You know, I can feel the stuttering of the screen more and that makes it feel like it's on as fast, even if that's not the case, right?

It's how our eyes perceive speed, basically, yeah.

Cherlynn: I will say that at 350, the base iPad is a really decent purchase, like people in the chat, Declan, Deepro are saying that it's used in schools and hospitals, for example. Battery strength appears to be something you will notice in an older model, you know, falter faster, I guess.

And then I want to point out, we had this chat in our team Slack yesterday. But Paradise and Wes Jackson are both like we love the iPad mini. And I'm like, me too. I would adore the iPad mini seven myself. But we seem to notice a bit of like loss of love for many things from Apple's end, right Nate?

We were like, I mean, I was like, should we write about the iPad mini graveyard? What happened to all the minis? The phones are getting

Devindra: too big. I think that's something like. When I get a Pro Max phone, I'm like, it's just a couple more inches to the mini. At that point, I should probably, I gotta differentiate more.

I gotta get like a full iPad, basically, you know?

Cherlynn: Yeah, I guess the pricing would also be confusing. I mean, if you're going to stuff like proper power into a mini device, then would you charge more or charge less? I, hard to say. Yeah,

Nathan: no. So yeah, the mini is definitely a step up over the basic one in almost every regard.

It's smaller, but then again, that's not like a. A downside the people buying it. I don't think you buy it because you want it to be small. And like I reviewed the latest mini last fall, I guess it was. And I hadn't used one for an extended amount of time in a long time. And I was like, this thing is so much fun.

It's just like a cute little iPad. You can like almost put in your pocket and you can use the stylus to take notes. And again, I wish I had some visual art skill. I don't, but it would be a great little drawing canvas. It's a perfect size to read things on. It was my Bellatro machine perfect size for just playing that game relentlessly.

Devindra: What if you could have something that size and then you unfold it? Make it fold,

Cherlynn: Apple!

Devindra: Make it fold, but fold it to be bigger, not to be smaller, is what I'm saying. Give me an iPad mini that, then you just get a phone! I don't know. Just get to me the big thing, giving you something that you could slip into your pocket, like the iPad mini, but also Bang that out to the full 10 inch iPad or something, that would be really cool.

Cherlynn: So are you saying, DaVinder, are you saying you're for foldables?

Devindra: I'm for that idea of a foldable. To me that is more interesting than than the smaller phone things. But hey, we'll see. I kind of, I do want to buy a foldable at some point to just get that, you know, experience. Live the life, yeah.

Live the life just a bit. Okay. Anything else we want to say about these Apple devices? Cause we've got a lot to go through here. I feel like that kind of

Nathan: covers it. I mean, we made the joke yesterday, like this could have been an email. I'm like, I guess it was an email, right? It was

Cherlynn: an email.

Devindra: The iPad stuff was, didn't that just drop?

I don't know. It just dropped it. I can't reveal it or whatever. There was a

Cherlynn: video for iPhone 16e last time last couple of weeks ago, but yeah.

Devindra: I can reveal that, you know, Apple talked to me and a few journalists about the air and stuff like, so that was more important to them than I think the iPad.

So, oh, whatever.

Cherlynn: Well, no Nate did chat with people too, I think. So they didn't do the little briefing thing. They just didn't make a big deal of it. I think.

Nathan: It's primarily focused on the air. Like the base iPad is really just we put a new chip in it. Oh, I will say one other thing about the Air before we move on is that they improved the keyboard accessory, which I like it does both.

It's a little thinner and lighter. It has the function row, which is great and it's shockingly cheaper. It's still super expensive. Don't get me wrong, but you know, they cut 30 bucks. It starts at two 70. That's so

Devindra: that's almost a full

Nathan: base iPad. It's bonkers. I know, but it's cheaper. 'cause it used to be, it's cheaper.

2 99 and 3 49.

Cherlynn: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I have a question. Can I use the magic, this is a dumb question coming from someone who's never tried this before. Okay. Can I use magic keyboard with an iPhone? Dang it. So I've been the tool before. You get, get the little log

Nathan: text. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. I know. I'm gonna get one of those, but I've been a

Nathan: little mini Bluetooth.

Yeah.

Cherlynn: There's this threads account that's been posting these renders of a keyboard case for iPhones that they're making iPhones and other phones. And it just looks super good. So I, this is my workaround for my IT problems. I think,

Devindra: I don't know. I think it's actually all around. I'm looking at Tik TOK.

I keep getting ads for this, trifold pocket phone, like pocketable keyboard that actually it's pretty good. I've seen that one. They exist. They exist.

Cherlynn: No, I'm talking about another one. I'll send you a link. I'm talking about this thing called Amber from a company that is right. Like they make AI writing tools.

Anyway.

Devindra: Okay. Let's move on to Mobile World Congress 2025. And I remember when people used to be really excited about this thing. And now it's I don't know. Do general chat. Do you guys care when we see Mobile World Congress? Do you

Cherlynn: care about NWC? As much as

Devindra: you care, maybe about CES or something. I don't know.

I feel like that era has passed.

Nathan: I think Covid really kind of killed it. That was the final blow. Although

Devindra: it seems like it's hopping this year. There's a lot of news and a lot of people went,

Cherlynn: I, I don't know if it's necessarily hopping or popping this year. I mean, look. I'm friends with a lot of people in the industry, not to flex or anything,

Speaker 4: but

Cherlynn: I don't know about y'all, but I got friends in the real world.

CFI 42 and was Jackson in our chat, by the way, echo this sort of sentiment, CFI 42, MWC was Jackson's. I used to care, but then everyone has their own conferences now. And that is the thing, right? That is the thing we've seen, the trend we've seen in the last few years of these sort of grouped events don't.

happen as much anymore because companies do their own things more frequently. I think that was a result of COVID, like Nate said, and it both like made MWC less important, but still somewhat important as well as it made our lives harder in this space because we now have to cover everything every week instead of like once a month we cover one conference or something.

So the cadence has changed. And I mentioned my friends as mostly because. you know, there's a few of them that went to Barcelona and I've been like, what is the point? I, first of all,

Nathan: think about

Cherlynn: it. I mean, they, I think I, I hate to throw shade on people, but I'm like, I think people enjoy traveling to Europe.

Sure. When they don't have to pay. Yeah. Yeah. When they

Nathan: don't

Cherlynn: have to pay for it. I would

Nathan: have loved to have gone to MWC. I think the great escape to go to Barcelona that

Cherlynn: y'all are not picking up that I might be throwing is that it I'm, I don't want to suggest that they didn't have professional reasons to be there, but it, when I say that they want to travel to Europe, it is a side benefit, a pretty major one that makes it more alluring to go to a show that maybe you didn't need to go to.

I think that for us at Engadget at least, we definitely didn't send a team. Not because none of us wanted to go to Europe. All of us wanted to go to Europe, but,

Devindra: but we even have people closer to there. Yeah. A,

Cherlynn: have people closer. We have people based in the UK and Europe, but B, like we would need to justify the expenses.

And it's super expensive to go. Like our team covers our own travel and accommodation. So like we would have to pay the flight. We would have to pay for the hotels to go. It's not and also we all, we tend to get briefed ahead of time and see all the interesting things, even in America. So we're.

And I don't think that the amount of news that came out of it this time from what I'm seeing really would have justified traveling there from America as well. So

Devindra: it's more of a nice to have thing. And also like folks, if you're seeing influencers and other folks out there, a lot of folks. A lot of folks get sent out there by companies who want them.

Yeah, there's a lot of sponsored travel,

Cherlynn: which by the way, as a rule, Engadget doesn't do. Like we just don't accept sponsored travel in case it was never clear before. Now it is clear. We just don't. So is there actually

Devindra: news from this thing? I know, right? After all that

Cherlynn: crapping on shitting on it.

Nathan: Lenovo did a bunch.

Cherlynn: Yeah, but it's mostly

Nathan: weird concept stuff, right?

Cherlynn: Yeah, I mean, I really got a hats off to Lenovo always coming with this sort of like weird experimental energy and I love it. We, they were the ones that we were able to see ahead of time in New York. So Sam went and Sam saw a few things.

There was a codename flip foldable laptop that like is an another take on it's like rollable laptop that we saw at CES. We, this thing like it flips out the screen, like kind of like trifolds flips. It's very weird. I don't even know how to describe it. So I'll use Sam's words.

Nathan: It

Cherlynn: is, sorry, that was your, those were your words, right?

Nathan: Oh,

Cherlynn: it's him. Lanky lad. This thing, basically imagine your laptop and you open it up and then you open it up twice more on top of his screen. That's kind of what we're talking about. This. It can, it's a normally a 13 inch panel and then it can unfold vertically to 18. 1 inches. And I guess the benefit of this is, I mean, yeah, I know the quote benefit of this is that like you can.

Get that extra space. And you don't have to wait around as long as you'd have to wait for Lenovo's like rollable you know, that one we saw at CES, if y'all haven't seen it yet, for everybody who really wanted the rollable

Devindra: 18. Yeah, the rollable. This will get to it. First of all, that

Cherlynn: screen's definitely not going to be as good.

Cause it's rolling into the hinge, but it's going to come up. Super slow. I got to tell you, I was shooting the video for this and I was like, God damn, how long do I had to hold this?

Devindra: This feels like a typical thing. Like actually, I remember going back to some MWC, like a quote unquote innovations. No, nobody needs this.

It's cool. You can do it, bro, but nobody needs this. Like you look at this and be like are you overcompensating much? And also it looks ridiculous. It looks ridiculous. Yeah, it's just really awkward. It'll never, you can't use this anywhere, really. You can use this in a cafe in an airplane.

Something I've noticed and people don't think about a lot is that if you're working outside and it's windy, your laptop is in danger. And this has happened to me several times. Like I was once at a bar in I don't know, San Francisco doing some work and. Group of people needed a picture. I was like, okay, I'll help you take a picture.

My Mac book air was just sitting there doing nothing. Augusta wind came and flew it off the table.

Cherlynn: Oh, it

Devindra: goes with the air because it was also so light. But like the having a laptop open is an error like pocket. So air hits that it can go flying. And I never, I don't know if y'all look.

Cherlynn: I don't know if I want to show for the live stream what we're talking about.

And I know it's tricky for us to do a screen share right now, but basically it is to Sam's point in his hands on. He also says that it's hinge wasn't fully up to the task of keeping everything stable as even a light tap would cause the whole panel to sway back and forth in a disconcerting

Nathan: way.

Let's be clear. This is a concept, right? It's a concept. I

Cherlynn: was going to get. Oh, thank you. But yeah, I was like no one's gonna sell this thing because it clearly isn't ready for prime time. I do want to add to if we scroll slightly down that article, you'll see a picture of the touch pad. Lenovo also included in this thing, what it's calling a smart force pad.

There's a three layer illuminated dashboard. Cause those are great words. Someone in our chat dropped a not safe for work comment. So I'm not going to say a thing, but

Devindra: Your screen does not need to extend so much. At some point you're overcompensating for something. I will say that for

Nathan: our conversation about Apple, we're like, this is the most incremental of incremental.

And then we go to the other side of the equation here, which is these like ridiculous concepts like We can't be like, Oh, this is too Borg and incremental make, Oh, this is too weird. Like I'm not that way. I know. But it's just fun to be like, I like seeing companies. I

Cherlynn: like seeing the experimental and again, to be like you said, Nate, like Lenovo is not doing anything with this yet.

Right. The rollable is going to be available for sale at some point, but not this one. So, okay, we, I don't want to spend too long on this because Lenovo had a few other things that we should talk about. Another one being a external display concept which I'm actually very intrigued by.

And then I'll get to the last one, which is this actually seems

Devindra: useful. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. So this I don't know if there's a name, but basically it's a set of accessories or a family or ecosystem of accessories that can attach to a 16 inch think book, the think book 16 P and I mean, the base machine itself is pretty standard.

It's a 16 inch machine with Intel Core PC CPU NVIDIA GPU the 5070, in fact good displays and whatever. But then when you get to the attachment or the attachable accessories, you start with Lenovo's so called Magic Bay docking system. That allows you to add either the second display concept, which is a small 8 inch screen that you can Snap on magnetically as an external monitor or whatever, or you can use the second What is it called?

The second display, like basically a dual screen so you can snap it onto the back of your lid And then you get wings, right? Two screens that seem like wings, so you have a triple display set up

Nathan: Lenovo gives you wings

Cherlynn: Lenovo gives you, oh boy. And no, this is the Tico Pro, I believe. No, the Tico Pro.

I'm so confused with all these names, by the way, because there's. This name is Tico out of nowhere from Lenovo. Basically this is a much slimmer thin display that you snap on top of the lid of the laptop and it adds like a, like an eight inch tall sort of extra row to the top of your. to function as like a spare screen where you can see all your like, it's like a running ticker, I guess, of yeah, like a touch bar, but on top of your laptop screen.

And then finally I think there was just the Tico, which I told like, Sam, when I saw it, I was like, I want this. It's a circular screen that can again, snap on top of the laptop lid. And it's like an AI companion and can react with emoji to like throughout the day. So it's kind of like a Tamagotchi just sitting on top of your screen.

I think that's cute as heck. So. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of this article, by the way, Devinder, you can see this Tico Tamagotchi staring at you,

Devindra: it's kind of weird. Is it in it's in the roundup? I don't see it in the doc here, so drop me a link. Oh,

Cherlynn: I'm sorry, it's at the bottom of this thing that you're sharing your screen on right now.

Let

Devindra: me find that. Do you see it? Oh yeah, that whole

Cherlynn: thing. Yeah just for the, oh, look at that thing.

Devindra: Ben, please you can share the entire, all the things cause I'm sharing. We'll share

Cherlynn: the links to the show notes in the episode wherever it goes up on the audio podcast. But please go to Engadget.

com and look at our MWC coverage. So yeah, a lot of really wild ideas from Lenovo and not all of them dumb.

Devindra: I think here's the thing. Like they're kind of cool. You'd be like, huh, kind of interesting concept. So many things here. The external display wings looks really annoying to put together.

To be honest, like it looks super annoying. You know, what's great. Just have another little external display, have a tablet. This is unfortunately have an iPad. I have an iPad. If you have a Mac, your iPad is an external display. Sorry, Cherlynn. But then it's you're walking with a screen and a laptop.

Anyway, you know, that's how. That makes sense. Also, I must say, in this economy,

Cherlynn: yeah in this economy,

Nathan: becoming the running joke. But yeah, it

Cherlynn: is this economy as well. But the, some of these screen attachment type things, I believe I read that Sam wrote some of them have kickstands built in to improve the stability, which we said was a problem with the previous one.

Look, I, we can talk. ad nauseum about these accessories, but I believe not all of them are actually coming to market. In fact, it's a start the magic bay. Yeah. The most, they're probably all concepts at this point. And I think Lenovo needs to spend more time testing it out, but they're also doing this as to as a way to gauge our reactions, right?

They're like, Oh, do people like this? So if you like it, you know, I guess. Tell us, you

Devindra: know, what's useful though. They did have a solar PC concept with just like solar panels on the back. That's cool. This is my

Cherlynn: favorite one as much as I like that. Silly little AI companion. This is the Lenovo. Yeah.

Solar PC concept. Basically it's a, the so called it's a laptop with a built in solar panel into the lid and you can use it to charge the laptop. Basically. I mean, it's going to take a while to do, but the technology has improved so much lately that it doesn't take as long as you would think.

So, 20 minutes in the sun gets

Devindra: you an hour worth of video watching. That's pretty good. Actually, that's not bad at all.

Cherlynn: It's used is using a back contact cell technology on the back of the laptop lid. So you can get that amount of power conversion that you just said. So I think this is the neatest idea I've seen.

I'm here for anything that improves sustainability. But of course, I am no expert on solar technology or solar power. So anyone out there listening or watching, tell me if this sounds like a good or a bad idea.

Devindra: We kind of need solar stuff everywhere is the thing. Like not everyone's going to get solar panels on their roofs to make their entire house solary, but you could get like little external solar batteries.

I have one one of my house cameras that's upfront, has a separate solar thing. And I just never have to touch that camera. I never have to change the batteries. I never have to do anything. So these little, like It's like when Samsung

Cherlynn: did it for the remote control.

Devindra: Yeah, sort of, sort of.

I mean, we've had solar remote controls for a while or like solar calculators. Like we've had that stuff forever, but that was cool. But this is like a whole laptop and we, you work outside, keep your laptop charged. That is, this is a cool concept or maybe give me like a little. Give me like a little solar tent that I plug into USB C and that is just trickling energy into whatever device I have plugged in.

I think I just made a new startup, folks, and nobody steal that idea. There

Cherlynn: you go. Yeah, that's your backup career plan. Wes, people in the chat are like, Wes Jackson's would that be in danger of overheating? CF540 is a two bit, you can't charge it well with the lid open. So those are good questions.

I will ask Lenovo. I know Lenovo sometimes listens. It's

Devindra: the angle. If you have a laptop open, it's still getting some on the back. And trust me when I learned from that MacBook Air, your laptop will still get cooked, even if you have it open, like this is actually good to use for that heat, maybe.

Cherlynn: Yeah. There you go. And Sam saw

Devindra: this,

Nathan: right? We can ask him like what the,

Cherlynn: yeah, Sam did see it. I mean, I would have loved for Sam to be able to join us today but our team is so, it's just, we can't have so many people on the podcast at once.

Devindra: Do we care about the Xiaomi 15 Ultra?

Cherlynn: So, I mean, I will point out that Xiaomi 15 Ultra, I mean, it's not probably coming to the U.

S., but it is one of those phones that, We have, we see elsewhere that like people lost after, yeah. Is it 6. 7 inch phone with a really bright screen gets up to 120 Hertz, but the, yeah, it got, it has that like a camera built in, but there is this little attachment that adds a grip and some, I believe lens cappy things or lens cap.

Devindra: I see. So you can add like maybe filters and stuff. Like UV filters? Exactly.

Cherlynn: And Sammy collaborated with Leica to make this, so, I mean, check out Sam's hands on. One of his 17 hands ons that he filed late Friday, basically.

Devindra: Poor Sam. Poor Sam. Poor one out for Sam. I saw something wasn't there one with a big lens or something that was like attachable?

To a phone.

Cherlynn: Yeah, that's the Xiaomi. I believe that's the Xiaomi 15 Ultra or are you talking about something else?

Devindra: It looked like the Xiaomi but this one is not quite it. I don't know. Maybe it was that I was thinking of. Yeah

Cherlynn: If you're remembering it from this week It was probably the Xiaomi unless you might be thinking the HMD had some other attachment that was not a camera

Devindra: But anyway anything else i'll do.

Yeah, let's look at the rest of the news from

Cherlynn: yeah I there's some other stuff. I mean, the nothing phone 3a and 3a pro were released or unveiled as well and they look really cool. I mean, I was just talking to someone who doesn't know tech at all. So, you know, real life friends and the You remember like 10 or 6 years ago, there was this obsession with the transparent iPhone?

Yeah, people are obsessed with devices that are transparent and nothing continues to feed on that obsession. They look cool! Yep.

Nathan: Yeah,

Cherlynn: it Bring us back to 1999. It looks so good. These are a pair of I think mid range phones. They're going to cost around 379 and 459 for the 3a and 3m pro respectively.

Matt Smith on our team wrote a pretty in depth hands on with these devices. He's come away pretty impressed. We're going to have a review up shortly. They're going to be available in the U S through the nothing beta program. So I think it's worth. Checking out. It's not like you can't get this phone at all.

In america The

Nathan: first thing we've talked about that anybody can buy right or all the lenovo stuff with concept, right?

Cherlynn: Yeah, the lenovo stuff other than the thinkbook 16p which attaches to those accessories Which you do we are able to buy but yes exactly to your point. This is something you can actually buy Hey speaking of something you can actually buy samsung.

Yes Yeah, launched this week, a pair of galaxy or trio of galaxy a series devices, which by the way, I'm so glad they don't do that awesome squad event anymore for the a series Nate, this is back when Christopher Lasko was with us and we used to like, I think right during the pandemic or right after we used to live stream alongside these live events that companies would have and Samsung had an event for a Galaxy A70 something or something like that?

80, 90? I don't know. And it would not stop with the cringe millennial slash Gen Z speak. It was very much a take your squad and viva! Yeah,

Nathan: it's coming back to me a little bit.

Cherlynn: I will force you to re watch it later today.

Nathan: Please do.

Cherlynn: Anyway, so this is the main news, the Galaxy A series basically the A56, 36, and 26 were released this week or announced this week.

And if you're in the UK, you'll be able to buy, or in Europe, you'll be able to buy any of them. The A56 in particular is a very interesting one. However, the A56 doesn't seem to be coming to the US just yet. I mean, Samsung says later this year. No actual other date. And they also don't want to give us a pre order like link or whatever.

Like where can we find more info? There is

Devindra: some sort of A50 already available in the U. S. Right? Is it the 55? Yes,

Cherlynn: A55.

Devindra: Yeah.

Cherlynn: But I believe it was also kind of touch and go in terms of the availability there. I believe when it comes to the U. S. and A series, Samsung's more focused on the 70 something series than it is the A and also the FE, the fan edition.

I wonder what that says of, you know, Right. I wonder what y'all are thinking about those other regions that you sell the Zay series in, huh? But you know, but Samsung didn't just bring devices that you can buy. They also brought devices you cannot buy. And this is one of those things we didn't get to see in person because we never went to Barcelona, but the Samsung display department slash section of the company came through with a few concepts as well.

You'll see at our, like everything announced at MWC sort of roundup piece while I'm talking about, it's a bunch of folding display concept devices, including a, Briefcase display, which is so silly to me. It's like this metal briefcase you see in movies and TVs, like very silver and whatever. And then you can unfold it into like this, I don't know, like 27 inch TV type of thing.

Then you can, you will also see they brought a flex gaming concept. That's kind of a switch that can fold in half, right, basically. It's a 7. 2 inch OLED screen, folds horizontally in half. And then they have kind of like controllers along the sides of the screen. Very interesting, we saw that from Android Police.

And then Allison Johnson at The Verge posted some videos on social media of this thing that basically looks like a Galaxy Z Flip. However, instead of folding in half, It has two hinges along the top and bottom, so it folds inwards two ways. So it's like a tri fold, but covers most of the screen.

It's like when you're wrapping a gift and you don't want to fold it in half. You wrap and you just can't finish wrapping it. And you have to stick one more span of

Nathan: wrapping paper. I take back what I said earlier. I'm really happy about Apple's iterative updates

Cherlynn: because

Nathan: this crap

Devindra: makes no sense.

This is definitely yeah, what you need more in a device that can break with movable parts, like a device with hinges is more hinges. That's, that makes sense. So that's

Cherlynn: why it's a concept, right? So, so this is what we missed by not going to Barcelona and spending a ton of money to see these concept folding phones or gaming handhelds.

And to be clear, like Samsung did show some of the other concepts they brought to Barcelona at. CES this year too. So we've seen some of these things. I do want to point out Mike Jones in our chat reminds us that the A55 actually was not sold in the U. S. So that's a good point. Like I said, I think I saw it at some retailers,

Devindra: but okay.

Okay. It was something. It might be like, maybe it's a 54. I don't know. Someone personally, privately imported it. There's no, I hate the A series phones because yes, you can, you can't really keep up with anything. It's a super pain. And then to be

Cherlynn: clear, Yeah, I mean, I think in the U. S. you still have other options, like the Fan Edition S whatever, S24FE the A70 something, whatever.

And also, the Pixel, maybe, just dominates in the U. S.? Maybe that's why it's not I mean, in that space I think

Nathan: just the basic S24 S series their flagships are the ones that I don't know. I will say that this conversation has made it really feel like I went to Barcelona though. So, aside

Devindra: from other things.

No. Aside from the tapas? Yeah, aside from the tapas and the beer and the nice paella I don't know, we're missing a little bit. No, we don't talk about the microwaves. I got to keep you away from microwaves. Apparently

Cherlynn: we will talk about that in another episode, but I mean, look, there's other stuff.

I mean, Meadow was there, Google was there, but we've seen their Android updates. We reported it. We didn't need to be there to cover like Android updates, that sort of stuff. So if you want all the full details again, like I said, just check out Our roundup on Engadget. com or check out our individual pieces there as well.

And yeah, I mean, maybe today you just go get yourself some tapas to feel like you went to MWC, you know?

Devindra: Get some tapas, get some good food, folks. Or

Cherlynn: paella.

Or

Devindra: Good paella.

Cherlynn: Kimi, I mean, pintos, I don't know, man. I am hungry.

Devindra: Alright, let's move on to some other news and hey, I've been heads down reviewing video cards for the past two weeks, actually for several weeks cause Nvidia threw all their new cards at me and then AMD announced the new RTX 50 what was it? Not the RTX, the RX 9070 cards. And I have just been fully on those things and I'll tell you, I was I was most excited about it.

About doing the 5070 because that thing was 550. I'm looking at the 9070 right now But that thing was 550 is supposed to have the power of you know Nvidia supposedly said of the you know, was it the 4090 or something like AMD

Cherlynn: said right?

Devindra: Nvidia said like that one was supposed to have a power of a much older card and

Cherlynn: videos.

Devindra: Yeah That thing was supposed to be And I found the, you know, 5070 to be just kind of mid, that's ultimately where it was. Like I found it to be not as fast as some of the other ones. It wasn't much of an upgrade over the 4070. It was practically the same as the 4070 TI, which is, I think that one came out last year or two years ago.

There just wasn't. Much going on there. And yeah, I just, I feel like all of Nvidia's marketing claims around the 50, 70, just really made it clear. Like they're leaning so much on AI and frame generation to get you higher frame rates. Not cool. Then an AMD comes out and they announced the Radeon RX 9070 and the 9070 XT.

And these things are 549 and 599 and the 599 card, the 9070 XT is actually meant to compete with the 750 5070 TI. So that is, that was like gauntlet throw down by AMD. We have this card that is much cheaper. Almost as comparable and in my review like I think they're both really good cards. I really like the 9070 XT because it comes in a hundred fifty dollars less than the 4070 Ti it is in many respects many benchmarks many games like just as fast and AMD is also doing a better job of getting into their AI upscaling stuff.

So they've announced FSR for Fidelity FX super resolution for Which will do some of the stuff that DLSS has been doing with NVIDIA's cards. So AMD is catching up. These aren't perfect cards, but I think they're like, they're really compelling, especially for that price. The other thing is you can't find the AMD, the NVIDIA cards anywhere.

All the 50s, all the 50 series cards have been jacked up in price. If you do find them at all, they're out of stock everywhere. And from what I'm seeing, people are finding the Radeon cards. They're in stock at a lot of stores. Easy to get easy to buy at the base price. Some are, some manufacturers are putting more tech in there to like.

Make them price higher, but hey, this seems like a pretty clear win for AMD in the mid range arena. So if you've been waiting for a new video card, now's the time to probably jump in, or just wait a little bit and see how these prices go. We have not really talked about like the crazy tariff stuff that the Trump administration has been talking about and they're like, they're trying to go gung ho with it.

That will lead to a lot of things being more expensive. And that includes video cards, everything food. So many things are going to be more expensive. So we're not even like talking to that level of it. But if you find, I think if you find a 90, 70 or 90, 70 XT, you're in the market for mid range card, you've got a card that's four or five years old.

These are going to be good upgrades for most people. So, Hey, check it out now, grab it now. If you can, yeah. Before the prices get up and good luck out there. Happy hunting folks.

Nathan: DaVindra, what's your like workflow for

Devindra: reviewing a graphics card like? Crying. I mean, it's mainly

Cherlynn: crying. The fans are crying.

The fans are

Devindra: crying because, you know, I got to rip out the old car. I have to uninstall all the driver stuff of my current car. I have to rip out the old car to plug in the new car, reinstall this set of drivers and hope windows plays nicely. And then weird shit just happens. Sometimes like my video, my webcams just start getting wonky.

And I don't windows like. Something got corrupted. I don't know somewhere along the line, but that's basically it. I do that and then I start benchmarking. I start playing games. I see how they feel. I see, I run some stress tests because 3DMark has some of those and if the system crashes, that's like Hardaware issue, driver issue, something's not up to snuff.

I will say these Radeon cards are the best AMD cards I've had for a while when it comes to stability. I've Had so much trouble with a MD drivers in the past a MD Hardaware in general. When I did the R nine Fury X, which was like many years ago, that was like pre covid. That thing wouldn't even boot in my computer.

Like my computer just was just incompatible with it for no reason, even though it was running high end in video cards at the time. So a MD has come a long way and they're definitely the underdog in this scenario because Nvidia is now this big titan. Their power, like all the AI stuff has made them one of the most valuable companies in the world.

And I think AMD deserves, you know, some of that love and they're treating the GPU market a little better, I think. So that's my main thing.

Cherlynn: I do want to point out to people listening and watching that like port of Indra, you had to like that workflow you just described. You had to switch over in two days, like this week, because Nvidia.

The NVIDIA 5070 review was like, what, Tuesday that it went up and then Wednesday was the next one or something like that. Wednesday was

Devindra: the two AMD cards. So I had to benchmark those two cards and have thoughts. At least we were able to combine them into one review. But, you know, that's a lot of stuff.

And also I don't have a test system. You were

Cherlynn: also dealing with Apple's MacBook News and like M4 and M3 Ultra, I guess. But it was not easy. Thankfully, other people were able to write those.

Devindra: Yeah. Other people were able to write those and that helped out. But yeah, I had to talk to Apple. I have to do a lot of stuff.

It's a busy time for all of us. Sam did all those MWC embargoes. It's crazy out there, folks. It's crazy. Anyway, that is the AMD and video war. Go check out our reviews and you know, and

Nathan: check out Igor wrote about why the GPU market is kind of such a mess right now in terms of there's like systemic problems that have led to this point where it's impossible to find these things.

They cost too much. Yeah, it's a great piece. I think it's really hit a chord with people who've read it. The timing of it couldn't be better, right? Coming alongside these new reviews you put together. The

Devindra: title is the GP Mark is built on a broken foundation by Igor Bonaparte. And I think yeah good points. If I had time to sit and breathe and get these out there outside of all the reviews, like this, yours pretty much saying everything I'm thinking. So I love

Cherlynn: that. I mean, you agree. Yeah,

Devindra: I agree. Our recommendation for video cards for the longest time has been do not buy because the prices got crazy.

Stock is wild. Don't pay scalper prices. You don't. Unless you are like some sort of like massive influencer or a streamer or something, you don't need a 1590. I see people out there convincing themselves. They need 2, 000 GPUs. And I'm like, that's, you could get a whole ass, like really good gaming computer for 1, 500 for less.

That I'm seeing on sale like I'm such a deal hound like I cannot stomach that whole thing So the 1590s it is and it flexed by nvidia, but it's not for anybody. It's these mid range card It's going to be the cheaper cards coming in that are going to be really good We review the intel arc b. What is it the 580 570 and those like those are Budget cards that are actually pretty decent too.

So to me, that's where the market is and where it's more interesting. You're a

Nathan: capital D dad though. So of course you're searching for budgets.

Devindra: I mean, I, that's just how I roll. Like I listen I'm from an immigrant family coming to the U S like everything was so like, that is how I had one video game per year.

Growing up, like it was so hard to be surrounded by all the stuff, all of this pop culture and abundance and whatever. Anyway, that's my mentality, but also i'm pro consumer, right? I'm consumer first and i'm not going to make excuses for nvidia and how they're pricing these cards or how things are getting expensive Enough of that folks.

Let's have a little fun. Let's move on to our pop culture picks for the week date Go ahead. What do you got? All right. I have two things. One is

Nathan: The pit on max. So good is basically A sequel to ER, but it's not, and I the

Devindra: Michael Crichton estate would do not want you to call it the ER, but I think

Nathan: that was the, yeah, that sounds like for sure.

It's been reported that was the plane was to literally do it as if no, a while as John Carter again, which I would have been absolutely all for. But what they came up with is still also really good. And I like that they're doing the 24 trick of doing it an hour at a time. Like every episode I watch when it's over, I'm like, wait, it's over.

It's an hour of real time. So you're there for a day every time you're there for an eight hour

Devindra: shift. I believe that's a

Nathan: 15. Okay. Yeah. I think it's a 15 episode. Yes.

Devindra: Yes. You're right. Yeah.

Nathan: But like the actors are great. The stories are compelling. It feels, it definitely feels like a little bit of a throwback.

But also with enough like modern, you know, storytelling sensibility, it doesn't feel too like overly dramatic or soapy. Right? It's just like a good, solid, normal TV drama. The

Devindra: mid season episode, I think it was like number 7 or 8, was like, it was one of those where a lot of things come to pass all at the same time.

It was like, devastating. That is just a devastating hour of television for Good reasons and like sad things happen. And it's just like all over the place, but that was incredible. It sets up

Nathan: what the back half of the season will have to do. Yeah. But yeah, it's just like enjoyable.

And then the other thing I'm keeping an eye on obviously is Last of Us season two comes out on April 13th. There's a South by Southwest panel this weekend with the showrunners and a bunch of the actors that I'm looking forward to. And Variety also had a great. Interview with some photos from the sets and one of them is great.

It was a shot of Joel his workshop and his house in Jackson from a time when he was like, happy for a few years and relatively peaceful and it was a picture of Pedro Pascal with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. I was just thinking how cool it must be to be Neil Druckmann I made this game.

Or, you know, we, his huge team made this game and you see it on your screen and then you get to walk into it like it's wild, like the amount of detail they've put into these sets and making it feel authentic is great. I'm excited about seeing the new cast members. It's going to be so devastating for people who've played the second game.

I don't know how the reactions online are gonna

Devindra: be something. It's gonna be crazy. Shely, did you ever end up watching that first season?

Cherlynn: I finished Last of Us. I loved it. Yeah. Okay. But you don't know what happened in the last of us

Devindra: too. Game. Avoid spoilers. I cannot remember it. Okay. Avoid spoilers because they're, I will the entire plot it that has been out there, so it's gonna be interesting to see if they do like original episodes or like dive into search.

They are characters from that game. That I'm more variety. They

Nathan: mentioned that they're working on an episode that's similar to the Bill and Frank episode from season one, where it takes a character who you don't meet and it's just mentioned off screen and you get, I don't know, I'm already starting to see how it can fill in.

I will, I won't say who it is for spoilers and people who are going

Devindra: fresh, but the characters in the it's after he goes through the skyscraper thing, but the characters who are like the bow and arrow folks, like it was the Sarah fights, like they'll be in the, they may have some good backstory.

Like I would love to spend some time there.

Nathan: I think it might come next season, just based on like how they're going to, I actually guess I have no idea how they're going to plot this thing out. Oh yeah, it's going to be two seasons,

Devindra: right? For Last of Us 2? Yep,

Nathan: for sure.

Devindra: Oh boy. Okay.

Nathan: All right. So we're entering the hype cycle for this.

I'm really interested in seeing what the what the panel's like on Sunday afternoon.

Devindra: Awesome. Well, Nate, I know you have a hard out, so let's wrap you and then we will continue with the rest of this. All right. So where can people find you online, Nate?

Nathan: Yeah, I am occasionally online on threads and blue sky at Nate Ingraham.

And then obviously you can find all my

Devindra: stuff on Engadget. Check out Nate's iPad reviews. Like I'm sure things will be coming up and yeah, feel free to shout at him about how you feel about iPads on socials. Yes.

Nathan: Yell at me about iPads. I love it. All right. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Nate.

Thanks everyone. What do you got, Shirlen?

Cherlynn: Okay, I've been excited all week to share my pick this week. Kind of wish Nate was here for it, but I'll just tell him directly afterwards. So I, I was watching this show on Netflix and it's got me gripped. I've been like rewatching it again cause I'm like, Whoa, I really love the world they built.

Kind of, kind of, it's bodies on Netflix. Have you heard of it?

Devindra: I've heard of it. Yeah. It's based on a,

Cherlynn: you've seen it. Okay, good. It's based on this graphic novel loosely of the same name by Cy Spencer, I believe. I don't know if it's, I look at that name and I go C cause it's S I. I'm like C.

But it's, I think Cy, like short for Simon, maybe. And it's about time travel. It's about you're

Devindra: talking about the show. I watched this entire show and my memory of it is just because it's such a Netflix show, but I love it. I loved

Cherlynn: it. I've, okay. So what happens is basically, I think we start in more modern times, 2023, and a naked corpse appears in an alleyway, just out of nowhere.

It just appears. And what happens is we find out the same corpse appears across. four total different time zones, the time eras. So in 1890, in 1941, and then in 2053 as well. So there's all of the usual time travel tropes of you know, lubes and Conflicts and whatever but like this. I don't know.

I just really enjoyed this story I don't know why I think it deals with a lot of very interesting themes as well There's some hint at like racial sort of conflict in the 2023 timeline then there's some hint at like homosexuality being a scene in the 1890 timeline and then there's like World War two in the 1941 timeline 2053 is just And then the combination of a whole bunch of different things.

Devindra: I was, I remember, the one thing I remember about this show is that, Oh man, you had no money for 2053. You had, you have really crummy, like you have Sort of future looking cars, but you're just, It's just like neighborhoods in London, man. Like you're not doing anything. They ran out of budget for the CGI.

They have no money to make it look like the future. It's kind of hilarious. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I really enjoyed it. I mean, so, so I've been seeing. watching some other stuff. I'm trying to not give all of my recommendations away at once, just in case I run out of things to recommend eventually. But this one was really gripping.

It's a limited series. There's only one season so far. And I really enjoy it. Of course, I've been catching up on White Lotus and Severance as well. I almost said White Severance. I would love, I

Devindra: mean. I would actually love to know, do you have initial thoughts on White Lotus this season? Because I'm like, I'm tired.

I'm a little tired of the the drama of what White Lotus does. But it's more, it's set in, you know, Southeast Asia now. So

Cherlynn: a little closer for you. It's set in Thailand and obviously like it resonates a bit more. With me than the previous seasons have just because of the setting but then in another way there's like different sets of people always in every season of white lotus this season We've got a trio of girlfriends in their like I want to say 40s I'm, not sure but like they're later in life than a an average 20 something year old, right?

This one has michelle monaghan money I don't know how to pronounce her last name. Monahan. Leslie Bibb, I believe is also one of the people in this little scenario. And they're just three friends who like backstab each other whenever they can, but then they also are very nice to each other in front of each other.

So it's like a really interesting study of that dynamic. I really like it because it's. So it's actually super realistic. I can't, I have to ask Mike Wyatt for understanding this dynamic so well. There's this family.

Devindra: Friends and she is one of the greatest living actresses right now. So I hope this shows her more.

Cherlynn: I hope it does for her. What like this show has done for Jennifer.

Devindra: I mean, she's she has been a big. Actors for a while. She's been doing a lot of stuff. I feel this show is actually a step down for Carrie Coon, to be honest.

Cherlynn: But anyway I another group that this season of white lotus looks at is this family.

With parker posey as the mom Three kids patrick schrodinger is one of them I can't remember all the actor names right now But I know the dad's played by the same actor that played lucius malfoy in the harry potter series and I think what people are talking about in the subreddits is how realistic or not this portrayal of a family from North Carolina is.

It is a rich,

Devindra: white family from North Carolina. Let me tell ya, down here in Georgia, I am surrounded by a lot of those folks. That does feel real. That does feel real. I

Cherlynn: keep, it feels very accurate, especially from my only person I know that's from North Carolina, which is our Billy Steele. And he, I've been asking him to watch it.

He hasn't seen it yet, but he does. He reminded me that he really wanted to watch it because his favorite, one of his favorite actors is in it. Walter Goggins.

Devindra: Walton

Cherlynn: Goggins. Walton Goggins might be is also in this and just. does his usual thing of playing these characters extremely well because I viscerally react whenever he's on screen.

Well, he's

Devindra: as an actor. He's great because he can be silly. If you watch The Righteous Gemstones, like he can be silly as hell, like in a comedy, he can also be. Like what we know him mainly for is being kind of a scoundrel, kind of a badass guy at times to you especially from the shield.

But yeah, so you're liking this, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: I am enjoying it. Lucky Dog Podcast adds that as someone from NC, it's too relatable. So yeah, so, so basically I like it. It feels very real. It feels very relatable because these vignettes of people we're seeing seem really realistic. So that's what I'm really enjoying so far.

There's some mystery some connection to the previous season. I'll

Devindra: So I, I like Mike White a lot. I've loved his movies. He's done TV shows before too, as a creator. I think he's a really empathetic guy and he's really smart about relationships and stuff. White Lotus season one and two. Really good stuff.

This one. I'm just getting really tired of the shtick because a lot of the shtick is basically White people problems man. Yeah, like that's kind of what I'm like, man we could do more we could do more. I understand. He's writing what he knows and everything So I would love for this show to get A better, like a bigger writing crew and more people involved to like

Cherlynn: a bit more diversity in it.

Devindra: We'll just have like different perspectives. That's all like I

Cherlynn: diversity. The whole

Devindra: thing about White Lotus is what is it like for white people to come in basically into these exotic environments? And the second one was in Italy, right? Or Sicily, I think. So like it was, yeah, it was like a very specific thing to where it's still people coming in being outsiders in this environment.

And if you just feel like they're saying the same things over again. But I hope I like these actors. I hope Walton Goggins gets his chance to shine. And I love that he kind of messes around with the HBO slash max formula of well, we've got to start this show with a murder or something to like really keep people hooked.

And HBO was doing that for a while, for years. So that's cool. Glad you're digging it, Cherlynn.

Cherlynn: What's yours? What's your tip for or recommendation for everyone?

Devindra: My tip. And actually I think it's, yeah, it starts somebody who was in bodies. It's star Steven Graham, who played Mannix in bodies.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Devindra: Now take that guy, the older Mannix, I think, but take that guy and imagine if he was buff as hell. Had rippling biceps. Like no way. Yes. Go look at the trailer for a thousand blows, which is the new show on Hulu right now. That guy is so

Cherlynn: out of shape in body. Well, he's

Devindra: big, right? He's just a big dude.

But in this show, I didn't mean to body

Cherlynn: shame anybody.

Devindra: In this one, he's well, also, you know, he's one of those guys is he's post 50 now, like your chance to do like big action. Rules. Now's your chance. Like your body can take some of it. Now, once you hit 60, it gets much tougher. This is a new show from the guy who did Peaky Blinders.

It is a period piece. It a really cool period too, because it's set in I don't know if it's like technically Victorian London, but it follows, it's essentially about. Several different characters. One character is a Jamaican immigrant who's new to the country and thinks he's going to go work at a zombie lion tamer doesn't really work out that way.

Other characters who are in the underground, including a woman played by, I think Aaron Doherty, who was in the crown and she is like the head of this group of lady thieves. That's super cool. And Steven Graham plays this guy. Who's basically the head of a boxing ring, the head of this, I don't know, like criminal underworld thing too.

And it's cool. It's fun. Like it's all those characters coming in. It is the character, you know, the perspective of an immigrant trying to survive in London in a not very welcoming time for them, but also women fighting for their own to make money and have their own place in a society that doesn't want them there.

And Steven Graham, like it's really just about Steven Graham being buff as hell. In a boxing ring, and you don't believe me, Shillen, go look at the trailer for this thing. I linked it in our show notes.

Cherlynn: I will. It is

Devindra: Wild 2C. I think he's also been one of my favorite actors for a while. He's been a character actor.

He was really

Cherlynn: good in bodies. He was good in bodies.

Devindra: He's been a lot of, in a lot of Guy Ritchie stuff. I think originally Snatch and his, or Lockstock too, maybe. I've always loved him. This show's a lot of fun. People in chat

Cherlynn: love him too. If

Devindra: you like Peaky Blinders, and you will not believe. The idea of Stephen Graham as Superbuff as a boxer man if you do not think that sounds real, go just go look, go watch A Thousand Blows.

It's on Hulu right now.

Cherlynn: Well, that's it for the episode this week, everyone. Thank you, as always, for listening. Our theme music is by game composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find Davindra online at

Devindra: at Davindra on Blue Sky and Masked Dawn, a podcast about movies and TV at the Filmcast.

Cherlynn: If you want to tell me how you would use an iPad mini that folds, you can tell me on, I guess, threads at Cherlynn T H E R A M or bluesky, Cherlynn at dot b sky dot social. Email us your thoughts at podcast at engadget. com. Leave us a review wherever you're listening or consuming this podcast and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I'm Managing Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: This week, it's the iPhone 16e, which Cherlynn has reviewed. We're going to get her full thoughts on that thing. And also, Amazon held an AI event this week. We expected a lot of devices, but they spent 75 minutes talking about Alexa plus, which is the AI powered Alexa.

You know, that they,

Cherlynn: we expected a lot of devices. We have one.

Devindra: I expected one device, maybe

Cherlynn: one, at least one it's been a while.

Devindra: Mr. Panos Panay was there, the father of the service and no devices, just him talking about AI. So that's weird.

Cherlynn: Oh, and stay tuned at the end of this episode. Uh, I, we included an interview that I did with, um, the vice president of Alexa to talk more about the new Alexa plus.

Devindra: Anyway, folks, if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice, leave us a review on iTunes and drop us an email at [email protected]. You can also join us on our live [00:01:00] stream on Thursday mornings, typically around 11 a. m. Eastern. Um, you'll see our faces.

Sometimes we'll do Q& A and show off devices as well. This week, uh, Sherilyn has the iPhone 16e, which is the least, um, impressive thing to show off. It's just like, Hey, you have an iPhone from 10 years ago, five, a while ago,

Cherlynn: when, when

Devindra: last, was there a single camera back iPhone?

Cherlynn: Oh God, before that was 11. I think so.

Devindra: Yeah. Like a while ago. So, you know, it's like a flashback. All right. So let's talk about this thing, Sherlynn. And I checked out your review. First of all, you gave it a really, um, I think serviceable score. Like you're saying 77 out of 100. Your title is what's your acceptable compromise. And really when we were talking about it last week, it really was like compromise seemed like the key word.

The thing we kept coming back to was like just one camera, no mag safe, no fast wireless charging. What are your overall thoughts on this thing?

Cherlynn: I mean, so that headline is like all thanks to our EIC, Aaron [00:02:00]Souppouris, because I was like, where, where do I go from here? How do I, so, so he's right. It is like, instead of what's in your wallet, it's like, what are you willing to take out your wallet?

I don't know. Um, okay. I'll tell you the story. Okay. So yesterday I was at the Amazon devices and services event where there were no devices and A bunch of other reporters had gathered and we were all like, you know, the, like, review's going up soon, right? And so we were all talking about our thoughts on the 16E.

Uh, I was with Lisa Eadiccico, who's now at CNN and Julian Chokkattu from WIRED. And like, they were both going off about their own, like, grievances first. Julian was the first to be like, I can't stand that there's no magsafe. And I was like, huh? I almost like, was like, oh, I didn't really. And then Lisa goes, oh, I didn't mind that so much, but I can't stand that there's no dynamic island.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I pointed out that I didn't care about either of those, but I care that there's only one camera because there's so many. So all three of us had different things we couldn't.

Devindra: I mean, you're all power reviewers, right? We are. Um,

Cherlynn: but we, so, [00:03:00] so I can understand that like a lot of the little, you know, the things that we find to be compromises are very unique to like each person's use case.

And I think that that's the thing and that's why I went with that headline in the end. It is ultimately like you are the one that accepts these compromises. You are the one as a person considering an iPhone that has to decide what's a, an okay compromise for yourself. Um. And for me, the, the single camera is just, I can't, I can't abide, I can't live with it.

So, um, I, to me, the lack of ultrawide initially was just like, all right, well, I mean, I don't, you know, maybe I don't need an ultrawide. Maybe that's okay. Maybe my parents will need an ultrawide. But I didn't realize until spending more time with the phone that it's not just that, right? Like the lack of a second camera or a second, like, source of data for Apple to pull information for photography, computational photography stuff means that a lot of other things are just poorer than what you actually already have out there.

So portrait mode was for me the biggest deal. Um, [00:04:00] there's also like you can't do the same photographic styles as you get on the regular iPhone 16s. Uh, there's just. Yeah, even when it does apply portrait mode, it's, it's just less accurate. Um, the sort of where they draw the line as to where to apply the blur is a bit messy because there's just one camera and it's doing face detection.

So yeah, look, the, the other intriguing things about the iPhone 16E or like to, to kind of give it a few. You know, here's your positives. Um, affirmations, I guess it's like, yeah, it looks like right. And iPhone 16, it doesn't seem to deviate too far from this year's lineup. And that's like for the first time in a long time has an entry level iPhone, like an S E.

Looks so similar or like the gap between the iPhone 16 E to the iPhone 16 is not as far as the iPhone SE 2022 was from the iPhone 13, and that's a point that like Aaron pointed out [00:05:00]as well. So that closeness to the iPhone 16 lineup is largely, I think. Due to, I mean, what you can't see is the A18 chip inside, right?

They have the same chip across the entire iPhone 16 lineup, which is kind of bonkers to me. And then there's also the fact that it looks externally quite similar, unless you open the screen, then you see the notch, and then you see the thicker bezels. And then it's like, all right. And also like, don't go look at the rear, right?

The camera is just like a dead giveaway. But otherwise, if you're just kind of like staring at someone on the train, holding onto the iPhone 16e, it's not easy to tell which model they have if you're Not immediately looking at their camera. Um, so yeah, I mean, those are some good things about it, right? The display is an OLED, and like, yes, I know that of all the choices they could have made, an OLED's not necessary.

Like, for an entry level iPhone, but the, it is very bright. Um, it doesn't get quite as bright as iPhone 16 or even iPhone 15, but it's nice. I don't like that it refreshes only at 60 [00:06:00]Hertz, but it's just much more vibrant. So

Devindra: does the base iPhone right now still. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The non

Cherlynn: pro phones don't have ProMotion, which is 120 Hertz or up to 120 Hertz refresh rate.

So, you know, you would need to like shell out quite a lot more money for 120 Hertz refresh rate on an iPhone. Um, and I guess. That's just what you gotta live with. And also to be fair, it probably impacts battery life in a way that you wouldn't enjoy anyway, because I feel like the pro phones last about a day.

Yeah.

Devindra: They have variable, like, refresh rates too. So it's like, it slows down depending on like how fast you're doing shit. Right. I feel like an LCD that was a higher refresh rate would be an overall better looking experience than just, you know, putting OLED at 60 Hertz, but yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah, I think that's like a personal thing.

I like OLED. So like, I like the look of it. I really enjoy. Yeah. Not a fan of the LCDs, honestly, but here's the thing. Um, when I said battery life, also one of the great things about [00:07:00]the iPhone 16 is its battery life, right? Like I think it does last a lot longer than the iPhone 16. Um, Partly because I don't know, maybe because it doesn't get quite as bright, but like partly because it has a bigger battery.

And I think all of us reviewers were kind of hesitant to be like that modem. Is it going to work or not? Cause it's like very hard to say. Um, I think most of us were supplied with the, like with service for our review units and it was like, And for me, it's really hard to be like the C1 modem works better than my iPhone 16 pros, like whatever modems in there, because it was AT& T versus T Mobile, right?

It really wasn't down to the Hardaware. It was down to the fact that my carrier just. doesn't have as good coverage as AT& T, sad to say. Um, so I can't tell you, I, I wrote down like, yeah, I did the speed test and fast. com like testing on both phones, but it's just not. And we can't just throw

Devindra: over a SIM card anymore because there are no more physical SIM cards in iPhones.

So we used it's just not,

Cherlynn: I mean, it could support a dual SIM, like I could. [00:08:00]you know, support, like, uh, I could have set up a different SIM card in there to just to really do the, you know, apples to apples testing on an Apple phone. Haha. I get it, but I can't

Devindra: move it as easily as you used to be able to.

Cherlynn: Yeah.

Yeah. I, it's like give up my own phone for hours or it's just not, it wasn't like super easy to do within the span of like a week that I had the phone. So anyway, it could be due to the C1 modem that battery life was better, but in general, like I just find that the non pro phones. All kind of last longer than the pro phones the pro phones have always on display Which is one thing that I think drains the battery, too And to be clear the 16e 16 or 15 don't have always on display either So there's a lot of like little things that you have to consider you're doing a lot of Specs sheet peeping.

I mean, I think we pointed out last time when we were talking about the iPhone 16 E that like, you know, you don't have wifi seven, you don't have a thread, you don't have ultra wide band. And that's not just in millimeter wave 5g, but also in like locating things precisely, right? Like when you're [00:09:00] using find my, and also you don't have max safe.

Um, 5 Watts as opposed to 15. So there's a lot of these little things. And depending on the audience, it may or may not matter. I don't know that my mom will care.

Devindra: Um, For the people who don't know what they're missing, basically. Right.

Cherlynn: But then for those people is 5. 99 the price point, right? Like it's,

Devindra: I don't, yeah,

Cherlynn: I don't, I don't think

Devindra: so.

Like given all the compromises you're listing, um, This is such a, Apple has put us in a weird spot, right? Because like 599, it is the cheapest iPhone, but used to be, I wrote a whole thing last year is why the base iPhone 16e was actually a pretty good deal, given everything they put in there, and it was cheaper than the pros, and that thing is what, 800?

The base

Cherlynn: iPhone 16?

Devindra: The 16. Yeah. Just the 16. Yeah. Um, and to me that felt like given everything they put in there, it seems good. This one at 600 does not seem like a big enough difference cost wise to like turn [00:10:00]people. Yeah, that's the main thing. And also I think, so I set up an iPhone 14 plus for my mom.

I was talking about last week and she loves it, but also she really needs that bigger screen. You know, um, even though it's slightly harder to hold, like it is much easier once you're dealing with, you know, um, older eyes, basically, you kind of need bigger screens to use these devices correctly without like putting on reading glasses every single time.

And that's why the plus end up being a good one. So I don't, I see people saying like, this is a good cheap one for your parents or something. A lot of people may actually find this even too small or harder to use.

Cherlynn: And so, so when you're considering that, right? Like. You want a big screen on an iPhone, the cheapest one you're going to get is the 15 I think.

And that one is going to start at the same price No, wait, uh, same price as the iPhone 16, um, smaller one. So, no matter what that decision is, whether you're going for iPhone 16 16 or 15 plus versus 16 E. The difference is [00:11:00] 200. And if you're financing your phone over two months, that is like a few dollars a month over 24 months.

Aaron and I were talking this out and Aaron was like, I'm happy to eat two ramen meals instead of like going out every month, just to save that money and make up for it, it's like, it's quite easy to do the math here and, and. And go for something better instead of the 16 E, like for me. If you like taking photos at all, don't do the 16e to yourself.

I mean, again, it's going to be a huge improvement in quality over the iPhone 11 and up, but even the iPhone 11 onwards has dual cameras.

Devindra: Yeah.

Cherlynn: Quality itself is the same, but versatility is different, you know, so.

Devindra: I mean, I kind of feel that, like, I don't want to sound like, Hey, just put everything on credit or installment plans, right.

Or deal with your carrier payments. But that is kind of the way costs break down, at least in the U S I'm sure in other countries where you're not paying, you know, monthly, or if you're paying like all up front, A lot of people just want to buy their phones out right then. Yeah, this is legitimately cheaper and you'll feel that in your [00:12:00]pocketbook.

But I also agree that, um, the smartest thing to do is not to give away all your money, right? But also not to pay extra interest on it. So the carrier payment plans are actually pretty good. And if you do, if you throw in an upgrade in there, that's how they juice you, right? Like, that's how they get to they're like, Oh, we're going to give you 800 in credit for this very, very old phone.

But yeah, the trade is like that credit is useless outside of paying for a phone. But if you care about paying for your phone, then it's actually pretty useful. So that's how I ended up getting like the 16, not the 16, the 15 pro max for like, not much because I just traded in an earlier iPhone and you have a good phone for like

Cherlynn: two years.

Yeah. Yeah.

Devindra: Yes. Play the system, folks. Like, play. These carriers want to give you money. They want to tempt you with things. Um, the cheapest path for an iPhone may not necessarily be just the one Apple is selling, but again, also look at the used market. Look at other things. Uh, yeah. I'm surprised you didn't bring up the iPhone 16 plus, Sherilyn, because that one is [00:13:00]900.

So not much more. Yeah, it's a bit far out. You're getting closer to the pro. There. Any other thoughts on the 16? Yeah. Because I just feel like, hey, yes. It's a cheaper iPhone with a lot of compromises and I just feel like I don't think we'll be talking about this phone very much after this week.

Cherlynn: Okay.

Devindra: Yeah.

Cherlynn: So my thoughts on the reviewing the iPhone 16e. Um, and the other things that I really like are that being forced to use a phone that feels like it's from like, I don't know, five, at least five years ago, right, made me actually grow to appreciate the features I've taken for granted on the 16 pro that I kind of pooh poohed at the start.

Right. So things like dynamic Island, I'm surprised. I'm like, Whoa, I actually liked dynamic Island and, and to Lisa's point, when she pointed out that she, um, missed it, I'm like, yeah, actually it is. Become, and it's not the aesthetic of it. It's not the all screen. It's the fact that it's functional. Your live activities sit there.

It makes a big difference. And going back to the notch was like, huh, where's my waveform for my voice memo? You know, it's kind of like, Uber timer. Where's your, [00:14:00]

Devindra: when is your delivery? All that stuff is really Spotify

Cherlynn: controls. All of that stuff. I mean, there is some kind of like some apps still sit at the top nicely, but not in the notch.

And so it's just kind of weird. Um, the other thing that I've found myself missing from the iPhone 16 pro is weirdly camera control, but not in the way you'd expect. So what I like about camera control, having it versus not, is that. It's a really quick way to launch your camera in a dedicated, like it's just dedicated shortcut.

You don't need to think about it. You just press it and it opens. Um, and the 16E has the action button that you can customize to do that. And so I found myself doing that, but the thing is you have to give it up, you know, like whatever, like, for example, I use the 16 pros action button to switch between silent mode and not silent mode and same.

On the 16E, you can't have both at once, so that's kind of sad. You can still use the lock screen shortcut, of course, but I don't want to have to pull out my phone, swipe the screen, and then take a photo. I'm just like, take it out of my pocket and it's good to [00:15:00]go, you know? So those are the things, like, I learned from my review, not specifically about the 16E, but about these other features Apple has introduced that, like, I wasn't super impressed by at the start, but, like, now I'm like, oh, they have actually.

I've grown used to them in my life and That's why long term reviews are important. And I would say, stay tuned to our website. We'll see like more of these long term thoughts.

Devindra: That's uh, yeah, I think that's ultimately it. It is, this is, I think for listeners of the show, probably not a phone. A lot of people would be buying.

Ben, for the love of God, do not, um, Yeah, don't, don't do it.

Cherlynn: Get the iPhone 15. I think you might enjoy, especially because if you don't care about Apple intelligence and don't. You know what all the fuss is about? The 15 is a good phone.

Devindra: 15? So, the 15 Pro, like, honestly, any of those, although it's only the Pro Max that works with Apple Intelligence because it has the additional RAM.

No, the

Cherlynn: Pro. The Pro alone will get you intelligence, so you're fine. Just do the 15

Devindra: Pro?

Cherlynn: Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Ben: Yeah, no, I wasn't aware of that because I [00:16:00] was about to say that reading the Reviews for the 16e convinced me to get a, um, 16 base model or 16 pro, because I read Sherlyn's review and Julian's review at Wired back to back, and Julian made The really interesting point of, okay, yes, Apple intelligence going to be in its infancy right now, but if you want continued access to all of the stuff that might be coming in the next like year and a half, two years, two and a half years or so, because I do keep my phone for a while, then it's a good idea to have something that Like can get that right now Ben for you

Devindra:specifically the voice notes transcription thing That could be useful in addition to other recording you're doing that's like instant transcription of an obsession you're in or something So

Ben: yep, that's good stuff.

So like if i'm doing um Recordings with like lav mics any of those lav mics that have gotten [00:17:00]really popular in the last couple of years You see tiktokers using them and everything like that You should be able to use Apple intelligence to Transcribe this stuff that you recorded into, you know The sure app or the road app or whatever like that

Devindra: not yet But I think that'll definitely come anything else you want to add Trillin because we got we get stuff

Cherlynn: I was going to say that the iPhone 15 Pro, just to confirm, it does support Apple Intelligence, so you can consider that.

I mean, like, that's going to be cheaper than the 16, it's the same price as the 16, I'm sure. That's what I'm trying to do right now, is to confirm the iPhone 15 Pro pricing for you. I, I don't know that Apple still sells the 15 Pro though, so if you can find it, get it, but if you can't. You

Devindra: know, and after you're giving up the camera button, if you go for 15 pro and also any potential other, I don't know, I don't know if they're gonna have like lock off points for like what apple intelligence features you get because you'll have a slightly lower, um, you know, intelligence chip than, uh, I mean, maybe

Cherlynn: in future, right?

[00:18:00] Like if, if we're thinking the apple intelligence is gonna stick around for five years. Sure.

Ben: Yeah.

Cherlynn: But I mean, yeah. Um, I'm not saying don't will in

Ben: some capacity.

Cherlynn: Sure. Sure. In, in some way. They might retire the name or something, but they'll still have the feature of like, yeah, intelligent Siri or whatever.

Devindra: I don't, I, they're so dug in, like all these companies are so dug in, they would look ridiculous. So if they're just like, forget about all that AI stuff that we tried to feed you. It feels they're stuck with it

Cherlynn: piece from three, five years ago. I can't, everyone's, I,

Devindra: no, at least it's safe. At least these are, don't think these are features you can touch and feel and they do shit.

Um, but some of them don't. Some of them just don't work well, NFTs were just like useless anyway. Let's move on. Let's move on. We got other news. Let's talk about in talking about potentially useless features. Amazon announced, uh, Alexa plus, sorry for people who have echoes nearby, but the AI powered version of its voice assistant that they've been talking about for a while.

They announced, I think two years ago, 2023, that they were working on a [00:19:00] better conversational Alexa using generative AI tools. We hadn't heard anything about it until now. It's coming. They fully announced it. Uh, there's no a clear arrival date yet, but it's gonna be $20 a month on its own or a part of a prime subscription if you already have it.

And that is $15 a month. So clearly they just want you to get prime. That's the whole point of Amazon these days. Um, it's gonna be coming to a, you know, these devices with screens first, eventually to any of the devices. And since it's in the cloud, they're not doing onboard processing. Um, you don't have to go buy new devices.

So that's cool. I think that's the main good thing here. But what is Alexa Plus, Jolene? Are you intrigued by it?

Cherlynn: Yeah, uh, I wanted to say at the start of this episode, actually, really just to give people a moment to go and mute their echo speakers. So while I waffle on for a little bit, I'm not going to say the A word.

You have some time right now. Walk over to your speaker, mute the microphone. But anyway, it's impossible to avoid this. I'm not saying this word, this episode at all. So [00:20:00] your, your best bet is to have muted your speaker by this point, if not pause. Okay. So, I mean, we, we knew it was going to be about this, like redesign slash like next gen Alexa, um, for this event, but some of us are still, I guess, hoping for a device because it's been a long time since there's been a new echo speaker or a new echo device, new echo buds, new, like.

Like a show I guess. So anyway, attending this event was intriguing. It was fun for me because it was nice to like, see people. Um, I don't know if y'all read the live blog, but there was a moment where we were like moving from one spot to another and I kind of saw Panos just kind of making his way through the crowd and nobody like knew.

It was looking at it. I was like, Oh, this man is like being treated like an average Joe. And I'm like, this is Panos, excuse me. So I just went, I just like, as I was coming up the stairs, I saw him, Hey Panos. And he turns around and he's like, Oh, hi. And then he's like very friendly. He's like, I was with Lisa as well.

And so like, he was shaking hands with both [00:21:00] of us and he was like, saying nice things. Oh, thank you for your very kind article to me. And then like, he's talking to Lisa as well. So we're all just like, all right. I mean, that was, that's the sort of thing I go, I like, deeply

Devindra: in the eyes, because the thing about making me question

Cherlynn: my life choices,

Devindra: he has those, uh, you know, like when you talk to a mystic or like a magician and they just like stare into your soul a little bit, it's so funny.

It was very

Cherlynn: like the, and then his portion of the presentation too was funny because, okay, so the nobody. Um, and I was able to see this set up because this was not a live streamed event. You could only see our photos and our live blog. And maybe you saw, you know, social media influencers live streamed it perhaps.

So, but, but to describe it for you, we were all set around the stage and there was this gigantic, Projection of an echo show, which is their like picture frame looking smart display. And there's a webcam or an actual camera, I'm sure built into where the camera of the echo show would normally be on this gigantic a hundred inch echo show on the wall.

Um, and then, you [00:22:00]know, whatever PS or other people doing demos were doing on a. More like regular size echo show probably 21 on the stage was reflected in real time on that. So at some point, um, during the demo or the presentation, they had Alexa use the webcam on the wall and see if the people. You know, watching panels do his thing, we're reacting in a certain way.

Right. He was like, Oh, Alexa, like, um, uh, tell me what this 200 group of 250 people look like. And like, um, you know, I'm, I'm nervous, you know, tell me about what they're saying. Like the expressions are telling you or something like that. And it was like, Oh yeah, they all look happy. And like, they're ready to listen to what you're saying because they have their laptops open and that sort of shit.

And I will say like having seen the picture. Or the view of like myself in the audience. I'm like, you know, I think Alexa did like. I mean, if it was accurate and truly like a live present demo, then it's like, it, it worked to the [00:23:00] way, like the humanity worked, right? Like it, they're good at parsing image info.

Yeah.

Devindra: I don't know why. If somebody had like stuck up their middle fingers or like did something really wild, like. They, it was a wi, they said it was a live demo, so they could have, Alexa could've just said that too. Like, could have pointed out they could have, I didn't, dude, being a jerk. Yeah,

Cherlynn: I know. When I saw the camera open, I was like, yeah, I just put my hands up immediately.

I was like, yeah, but I, I wish I should have done something different, but I wanted to verify that it was live and so like, I was just trying to move around and see if I was in it.

Ben: Yeah. Good. That's a good move actually. Yeah, no, that was a good move because otherwise it could easily be a canned

Cherlynn: response.

Right. So I saw myself and I like was in the outfit that I was wearing that like it's just. Accurately at me, right? So, I mean, I guess that excitement in my expression did get correctly captured by Alexa, but you.

Devindra: It locked onto you. Like, this one girl is a little too, too excited. One person. Please calm down.

Please calm down. Yeah, like,

Cherlynn: chill? Your laptop's falling off your lap? Like, maybe calm down. Um, but you know, so, [00:24:00] so, so, to my, like, what I was saying earlier is that it's been a while since they promised or previewed this, and now it's like, I don't know that I was super excited by anything I saw a demo.

Hang on. There is one thing I am. And like everything else seems very reminiscent of like Gemini and like. It's the new Siri and like, um, the, I, I, I mean, I guess opening. I also get

Devindra: back to what is like, what is it? Yeah, it is Alexa, but it is also smarter, more conversational. You don't have to keep saying Alexa all the time.

You can continue the, whatever you're saying to it, right.

Cherlynn: More conversational, natural. And if that's reminiscent of anything other than what I've already said, it's also very co pilot by the way. Like it's just. It's contextually aware of like the conversation so you don't have to follow up and say like my favorite team is this and then like, you know, how did my favorite team do?

You can, you can, you know, it will remember that stuff within the same conversation. You can also send it documents and emails and stuff and have it pull out pertinent information for you. [00:25:00]So I think the demo that was given was like somebody sent their HOA, um, bylaws or whatever and asked if they could use solar panels and then Alexa was like, Right.

Alexa was like, Oh, you can, but make sure it's just like, it seems like your HOA supports green energy, but doesn't want it to be visible. So as long as you use it on the side of your roof, that's not facing out, like you will be fine. That's

Devindra: actually useful, by the way, like I just want to put that whole process, even if it means like you have to do something like drop a PDF to your Alexa through the website or the app or something like there are all these documents we live with.

Nobody reads them all right. So, and then you get people on next door or like your neighborhood, a Facebook group who don't read asking the basic questions of stuff that's already explained. So like, if you could just talk to your Alexa and like get accurate info, that's cool. That is interesting. But also I feel like there's a downside to that because then you're putting all your trust in this machine, interpolated that correctly.

Right. So they showed off one example of like, uh, Oh, you got your. Kids schedule for their sports games. When am I supposed to bring snacks for that? If that thing gives you the wrong [00:26:00]date or tells you any bit of wrong info, that's a problem for you That's a problem for your kid That's like social embarrassment because then you're the parent who screws up bringing snacks and you don't want to be that parent Because other parents are so judgy.

So that's the part where I'm like, I don't I don't know how much we can trust this You know, this is a nice little helper, but you're still gonna have to double check that info. I'd say

Cherlynn: Are you okay, Devendra? It feels like you think, uh, your parents are judgy.

Devindra: Uh, wait, just wait, Sherilyn. Wait till you encounter more parents.

I think

Cherlynn: there's quite a few I've already seen online, but okay, so, I mean, there's that stuff. And then what really intrigued me about the new Alexa, and I'm writing a story on this for the website, by the way. Or I've already written, it's just not going up yet. Um, it's the third party integration side of things.

So Amazon's whole point, right? Let's start from there. Amazon's whole point was that these LLM based assistants, one of their greatest flaws or weaknesses is that they can't really work well with APIs. So [00:27:00] Alexa Plus is going to work with third party services in three different ways. And it's important because you think about how all these Machine learning or like these generative AI chatbots, they generate things for you, but they rarely ever can do things with other companies and businesses on your behalf.

And so this is going to be crucial to making like the Alexa plus experience much more useful because like so far we've been limited to talking to these chatbots and being like, create my essay for me, summarize this thing for me. Like it's very. Limited to generative stuff, but once you can broaden beyond that, it gets really useful.

And I think that's why I'm so intrigued. And so the three ways that Amazon's going to use, um, make this work is one through API. So it's already worked with, like, it says tens of thousands of its partners at launch, um, including Uber, Samsung, Xbox, or some of the logos that we saw. So those are some sort of API integration, which means I think they've worked together with the company to ensure that that works.

And that's an impressive number [00:28:00]at launch. The second way is this thing that sounds very familiar. Basically, Alexa will be able to navigate websites on your behalf. It can, like, go out to, like, um, let's say a model project's website and see, like, Find a calendar. It's a restaurant that children

Devindra: can't stop ordering from.

Cherlynn: I love Mala project in New York. Um, but yeah, so you can just be like Alexa, like, um, what's that restaurant we really like in the east village. And it'll be like. Oh, these are the things and then like you can be like, Oh, can you make a reservation at that second one? And it will go to the website for you and scour it and then you can just tell it things like, Oh, for three people for how many and then it'll make the reservation.

Um, if that sounds familiar, it's because Google's duplex. Was supposed to do that for you with restaurants, it would phone businesses on your behalf and you literally phone the businesses and

Devindra: talk to you.

Cherlynn: Yeah, it would use a human voice to talk to them. And that was kind of strangely implemented the Google [00:29:00] Duplex system because it was a human talking to a machine to interact with humans on their behalf.

Devindra: It offloaded so much work to the human workers and that's what pissed me off about that whole thing. Right,

Cherlynn: it would bother actual human beings, which is where kind of it was very annoying. It's format that Amazon is describing has machine talking to website and it kind of eliminates that like sort of human frustration.

It can probably be more likely to make mistakes in my opinion.

Devindra: Like how is it talking to the website is the key. Is it talking to OpenTable? Is it talking to like a service that already exists?

Cherlynn: Exactly. So, so no, so, so it can't. So there's two ways, right? One, so the open table thing is through the API method that I mentioned, um, before, which is when you have enough of these APIs, um, Alexa can form like what it calls experts.

So it can have a reservation expert. It can have a food ordering expert globe. That's part of the API experience. The second part is it just goes out and scours the internet. I, I don't know the full technical details [00:30:00] yet, and I'm going to ask Amazon for more. Okay. Um, but what it is is basically, yeah, the software is going out and scraping websites and being like, here's the reservation system and here's all the available things I'm going to click through as if I am a human being, clicking through these things and initiate the reservation.

So. I mean, I think that's super intriguing. That also sounds familiar. And Devendra, you'll like this and you can tell me if you have faith in this. It sounds a lot like the Revit R1s, like large action model.

Devindra: I mean, sure. It's like getting the LLMs to do actions. That just, yeah, it kind of sounds like that.

Again, we have to see if it actually works. I have faith in APIs because robots understand APIs, right? You trigger a reservation function to this restaurant, has all the data already there. Having a robot just be like, can you scrape the text in this? Is, does this have a form to input for reservations? Can you input into like, that doesn't, that will not work.

That definitely won't.

Cherlynn: Right. So yeah. Yeah. And we saw that the Rabbit R1 struggled with [00:31:00] it. So I, I don't know, I want it to work. I don't know the details of how it'll work. So like to be extra clear, right? Like we're kind of speculating a little bit here on how it all works, but it seems in essence and spirit to be very similar to Duplex and the Rabbit.

R1s, LEMs, so we'll have to see how effective it really is. My question

Devindra: to you, yeah, would you trust it? No, I can't. Because the just like, open OpenTable on your phone or something, or just go to Google on your phone because sometimes you can reserve right from the Google Maps thing. Right. But just doing it in five minutes on your phone.

I trust that. And even then I'm like a little wary that the restaurant doesn't always check those digital reservations.

Cherlynn: They don't get a concept. You show up and there's no table waiting for you. And there's nothing for

Devindra: you. I don't trust that just talking to this stupid speaker that I've had for a decade, you know, that had trouble, you know, understanding me, we'll be able to effectively reserve something.

I would love it for it to be able to do something like, Hey, set up this reservation on open table and let me double check it or set up a grubhub order or Uber. To [00:32:00] me, that's more useful because I like stuff I can trust. And the whole thing about the Apple, the rabbit device, I couldn't trust anything. You can trust it.

Yeah.

Cherlynn: I wanted to say that like, um, the, the, the demo that they did was of thumbtack, right? So thumbtack is this like professional people that you can hire kind of like handy, but I guess it has a website and doesn't have an app. So what I think that the second method that Amazon's describing brings is that it eliminates, or at least like.

It opens up the playing field to smaller businesses that don't have apps, that don't have developers who can work with Amazon to integrate APIs or to come up with their own APIs. It just makes it like it levels the playing field a little bit, right? And then finally, the third way that like Amazon is making Alexa Plus work better with their party services is, um, and this is where it's a bit dystopian.

It's a through all these AI agents. So Alexa can go talk to AI agents on your behalf. Uh, so instead of having to like, um, the demo again, during the [00:33:00] presentation was too soon. Oh, so like Alexa, go ask this thing to make me a country music song about bodega cats. And it was like, cool, I think you heard the song Davindra, it was a kind of a cute song.

Devindra: I could barely hear it.

Cherlynn: But you also could have gone to the website to ask for this song, right? So one day eventually you'll probably be able to get Alexa to talk to you, like say the United Airlines customer service chatbot or somewhere, your bank's chatbot. And the idea of these bots talking to each other is just so funny to me.

Devindra: It's, it's sort of like, yeah, it's, it's, they have, um, sort of separated. The idea of visiting websites is just like, you're asking something to go visit something for you and talk to that something. So you can think of AI agents as just like websites that talk to each other, I guess, is this kind of the way this is all going, um, briefly, like we should talk about like.

They talked about all sorts of other features for this too, like you'll be able to order groceries just by talking to it or other delivery services. They [00:34:00] showed off the feature of like, um, your kids can use Alexa plus to, uh, basically conjure stories together and have like shared story time together, which is the whole thing.

So yeah, a lot of cool ideas. Um, to me, this is like the most useful form of like. Generative AI stuff I've seen in terms of like, I don't want to type more stuff into search fields for, um, for co pilot or chat GPT. Like I want to be able to just talk to things and have it come back with information. My other thing though, is like, I am getting the sinking feeling that.

I may have to just divest myself of a lot of Amazon stuff at this point, because the very morning that this was announced, we also got, um, Jeff Bezos is a memo to the Washington post editorial, you know, op ed page where there was, he was just like, this is going to be my little kingdom and we will write about what is fair and whatever.

And like, we are in the midst of like a billionaire takeover of the American government, but also of so many other things. And I'm like, I. It is wild that he took, he chose that morning [00:35:00]to do it. Uh, Jeff Bezos has been on a weird trajectory for a long time, but now it's like, can I justify Alexa Plus? Like, even if I, I'm still currently a Prime member, should I be using this or should I move to Google devices?

Google has done a lot of crap, crummy things too. Should we just like, be really careful about any of these AI tools at this point? Like, there are moral questions now, the way we have to kind of sit and ask ourselves. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. A bit depressing. A bit depressing.

Devindra: We can't just like, you, it's, it's sort of like, you have to ask more questions now.

Like I think pre iPhone era, we were like, Oh, cool, cool tech, cool, fun toy. Yeah. I can get excited for this.

Speaker 2: It used

Devindra: to be fun. And post iPhone it's like, well, no, this device requires lots of, uh, low wage labor in China and people were killing themselves at factories. There are all these moral costs to technology that we just used to, didn't.

We didn't think about that much and now it is front and center and yeah, I don't know to me. It's something I can't stop thinking about at this point. So Alexa plus seems cool. I for many reasons. I don't know if I'll be able to [00:36:00] trust it, even though I won't be paying anything extra for it. And maybe I should just give up on Amazon Prime altogether.

I don't know if you have any other feelings on that show. Lynn or bed.

Cherlynn: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think I was going to like stop buying stuff from Amazon. I have drastically decreased the amount of shopping I do on Amazon and target. It. Um, I just go and buy local things, which like I was already trying to do anyway, but now I just quite like the, the balance is swung in a different direction by a lot.

And, um, but I do know that like Amazon, like the commerce and the way it's. It's, it services a lot of like businesses, like ours, it's difficult for me to like, um, every time I need to like do an Amazon, like run or something, run digital run. Um, I'll be like, all right, I'll at least like try to shop it through an in gadget link or something to make myself back the 5 cents.

I don't know. I'm just

Devindra: fraudulent. We're not going to get to any of that on this podcast. I don't know if

Cherlynn: it's fraudulent, like, am I not allowed to buy something through? [00:37:00] I think it's only

Ben: fraud if you're doing it like automated, like 5, 000 times a day.

Cherlynn: I'm like every now and then I'll do it. I've absolutely

Devindra: goosed my own affiliate links in the past.

I will admit to that. Right. I,

Cherlynn: I, I mean, if we need to cut this out, we'll cut this out. But like, for me, it's like,

Devindra: I'm not here

Cherlynn: telling y'all to do it. I'm just, I'm also transparently telling you that we do make

Devindra: money off of it. Became a thing. So it doesn't matter

Cherlynn: anymore. So, so anyway, that, that's the only way I can see continuing to use Amazon on an ad hoc basis.

And also when you can't get something anywhere else, which is rare these days, but I can get, I can understand that for like certain parts of the country or the world that there's no other option maybe, or there's no easy. Uh, financially like, like comparative solution, right? Amazon is cheap. And if you're in a bind, then like, maybe that's like all you've got.

So I don't know. I mean, I don't want to judge anyone for not doing it. I'm just saying I'm trying to do it because [00:38:00]we have the power. We just have forgotten. We have the power. We just, instead of exercising our collective.

And I think that action is where it'll, I really would be curious to see, I'm going on a tangent now, I'd be curious to see how Target's doing now, but yeah.

Devindra: I know, yeah, people are active about it. Thoughts, Ben, and then we'll run through it real quick.

Ben: So to get back on topic, I'm wondering how much of Dev your tendency towards saying like, Hey, can you build an order and then let me check it is based in just kind of like old internet.

Understanding like purchase requires big screen.

Devindra: We're millennials. This is the thing. Like this, this is the old person's thing. Like kids will be just like, talk to their AI agents and get stuff delivered and not see all the fees and not. But I wonder.

Ben: If they will be happy with what they end up getting because all it takes is like two or three garbled orders and people say, Oh, well, [00:39:00]maybe I don't want to use this.

Or maybe I want to use this in a different way. So is the workflow for how you like build an order and then check it? Is that going to be something that people end up doing themselves initially and then it gets built in by the developers? Or the other way around. I

Devindra: don't think you have the ability to do that.

You don't have the ability to do it right now. Like you can have from what we've seen from the demos, it can produce an order for you, but I don't think you can just like fill your cart and then you will empty the cart in your, you know, Grubhub app or whatever, finish an order. I don't think that capability is there, but I think people are going to ask for it because yeah, they're going to rent to things where you don't understand the fees.

There's a lot of fees on delivery apps and other things. Um, there's a lot of ways these apps can like really screw you over in terms of On top of the

Ben: lack of ability for comparison shopping.

Devindra: Yeah, that's what I mean. And then you're like, okay, you'll let the AI do the comparison shopping. I'm like, okay, who has the lowest fees?

Who has, what's, where can I get [00:40:00]a pizza for a good price? It'll get delivered to me right now. That's the sort of thing AI should be able to solve. That's well rated and everything. Um, I don't know what I can trust. It

Ben: seems like we're setting ourselves up for a situation where we're like, okay, yeah, we'll let the AI do the thinking and then there's going to be some big, um, like kerfuffle about how the AI was actually like, no, actually I prefer Amazon services.

And we come back to the idea that Lenacon was right all along.

Devindra: Maybe. I mean, listen, literally, uh, right now Jeff Bezos is out there, uh, turning the Washington Post, you know, editorial page into his personal playground of just like, uh, Um, I don't know. Freedom and, um, free enterprise, I think. Yeah, because that's, that's the thing that has trouble in America.

Let's move on to other news real quick. I'm just gonna run down this stuff because I think it's worth the reading. Check out our stories on all of these things. Uh, framework [00:41:00] had a bunch of devices that they announced. The modular laptop company, they announced, um, a modular desktop, which is a wild concept because desktops are modular.

Yeah, exactly. They're modular and upgradable and Dan Cooper wrote up all these stories was like, yes, aren't desktops already modular? But they have basically created this cool like little mini itx case that is easy to put together Um is using some standard parts and it's also using that ryzen ai max chip We talked about at ces which has a pretty good gpu So this isn't a desktop where you're going to be putting in a graphics card or something but It's kind of a cool project for like a teenager or a kid who doesn't want to build a full size machine, but maybe put together a decently capable little box that can play some games.

And they're also bringing Ryzen chips to the, uh, framework 13 laptop. And also something I'm kind of excited by for they are teasing a cheap two and one convertible 12 inch laptop, the framework laptop 12 that I think could be really, really cool. So again, similar, it's going to have like modular components you can plug in, but it's not [00:42:00]underpowered.

I don't think we have pricing on that yet, but hopefully it's going to be like decently priced. This, this could be a cool little thing for a lot of people. Um, so yeah, show me any thoughts on that on framework.

Cherlynn: I just am trying to care.

Devindra: I think it's nice to

Cherlynn: support a smaller business than like the. HPs and the Lenovo's and the, you know,

Devindra: Yeah, we complain about when those companies grew up all the time.

So, yeah, I think it's, it's good that there are alternatives.

Cherlynn: I think it's unique and cool, um, in the way that nothing as a brand, as a phone maker is unique and cool. This is maybe the nothings of laptops. Um, sure. Frameworks has been around for a very long time and there's a lot of like littler laptop brands out there.

Like, um, man, they're escaping my mind. So like Frameworks is doing its own thing and I respect that.

Devindra: It's a unique thing like the thing about nothing is that nothing nothing is doing is actually new or different They're just like here's a different design for an Android phone. It doesn't actually right But if

Cherlynn: you don't want to support Apple or [00:43:00] Google or Samsung for some reason nothing

Devindra: backed by like a major Chinese Corporation,

Cherlynn: uh, that might be one plus

Devindra: Yeah, yeah, well, I think

Cherlynn: nothing is on his own still so yeah,

Devindra: we don't we don't fully know a Christa wrote up the story Christa Bell wrote up about iPhones having a bug where they briefly changed racist liquid word racist to Trump In iOS dictation, I don't To me, that doesn't seem like a bug.

So we're just going to move on from that clone robotics proto clone. Uh, one of the first, uh, lifelike robots, uh, a robot body that somebody has developed, it looks like a fricking nightmare. Uh, go check out our story on the proto clone, bipedal musculoskeletal Android V1. It looks like a zombie robot. And it's dancing on wires.

It looks horrific.

Ben: You know what it looks like? The, um, what character from Prometheus? Yeah. With the kind of like sandy white skin?

Devindra: Yeah, the, uh, the origin I don't know what they call them. It was like the originators, the people who [00:44:00] Spoilers for Prometheus the people who seeded humanity, essentially. So that's cool.

That's a whole thing. Uh, Benny brought up the story, human therapists prepare for battle against AI pretenders, and this is like, um, therapists essentially think like AI bots are going to be a big problem when people start to ask them for mental health help. And there have been stories of where people have harmed themselves.

Teenagers have hurt themselves because of what they were seeing from an AI bot, basically. So that's dangerous. Yeah. The thing

Ben: that really concerns me is how accessible these are on Metaproducts right now. Because if you do enough scrolling on Instagram, you'll see like their little Like chat bot insert between a couple of the posts of, you know, from accounts that you follow, hopefully a viewer would be able to see like, Hey, this is right next to like an AI clone of the hawk to a girl or something.

So maybe I shouldn't consider this [00:45:00]like actually high quality psychological help. But, uh, you never know.

Devindra: In so many ways, we are not prepared for AI. You know what, what I keep seeing in Tik Tok is like a lot of, um, I'd call them tired millennials. We're just like, um, you know, guys, we are sandwiched between the boomers who didn't understand technology.

And then the, the youngs, the Gen Z who grew up with tech, but also grew up with really easy to use tech. So they never had to fully understand it. And we're

Ben: sandwiched between the boomers and the iPad babies

Devindra: and the iPad babies. And now we're like, Oh, so now we got to explain. I got to tell my parents how to use their phones, but also make sure my kids don't like.

Uh, talk to kidnappers on, on Minecraft or Roblox or whatever. So we, we are screwed digitally. So, which is also why I'm so, I have so much trepidation around AI in general, like this stuff is going to happen. These therapists are right to be worried because people, we are so, we are weak minded primates when it comes to talk, you know, putting.[00:46:00]

Um, I don't know, souls are putting like a meaning into things. So if a chatbot is talking to you like a human, you're going to treat it like a human. You're going to treat that advice like it's coming from a friend or something. And that worries me. Sherilyn, I know you care about mental health stuff. I don't know if you've thought about how this could hit.

Cherlynn: I mean, I've, I've thought that the, I mean, social media has already done this. Social media has already destroyed kind of where people get their mental health info from. Um, I mean, we started first with the internet and then as the barrier to entry gets lower and lower, now we're at the barrier to entry of being a human, at least, is also falling down, so it seems like it's just, yeah, I mean, I talked to my therapist about it too, and my therapist and I, we're, we're both, you know, concerned, we're just like, eh, but it's not easy for people to, you know, get help, um, and therapy is expensive.

So they're going to reach

Devindra: out to whatever resources they can get. They're going to find

Cherlynn: whatever they can. I mean, I, I could go on a rant for hours about how much I hate like the advice that people on Reddit parrot at each other because they [00:47:00] saw one person make this one comment one time that they liked and then they just copy and paste it everywhere else.

I really hate that one person made a joke like years ago that I too choose this man's wife and now you see it everywhere by like all kinds of other people because They can't come up with their own jokes or something. I mean, I'm being mean. I think it's a funny joke, but it's

Devindra: true though. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Is the same delete Facebook,

Ben: hit the gym lawyer up like, yeah, it, it is unhelpful.

Um, and from the point of view of the developers, especially if they have no contact with. Actually going to therapy they might be like, oh, you know what therapists are like just giving out the same advice to all of their clients So why don't we automate that because I don't know the therapists might be bored or something.

But oh my god That is such a misunderstanding

Devindra: Yeah, too much. There's too much information flowing around, unfortunately, and like we are so bad at processing it, which is also why I'm worried about. Yeah, in general, because it's also simplifying that information even more for a really gullible populace.

Anyway, let's [00:48:00] move on to what we're working on. I'm reviewing a lot of shit. A lot of GPUs are coming in. There is one fun CPU that I'm looking forward to testing in a couple weeks. So more on that soon. I don't know if you want to shout anything out, Sherlynn.

Cherlynn: I mean, it's non stop from here on out, guys, we strap in, it's review season, it's event season for some reason already.

So, yeah, stay tuned, come over to Engadget. com.

Devindra: It's the end of February, we're still recovering from CES. Yeah, for what it's

Cherlynn: worth,

Devindra: this weekend

Cherlynn: is Mobile World Congress. Like this weekend, Mobile World Congress starts. So just pay attention, you know, there's gonna be quite a lot of stuff coming

Devindra: up. I miss going to Mobile World Congress.

I miss doing that whole thing. It's actually been I think my, for the first time I did that was like, I did it on my own at my last site in 2012. And that was like a wild experience of when, like, there was so much 5G hype, there was so much 5G hype in the early, simpler days. Simpler days. I saw that Nokia, the 41 megapixel camera for the first time and that was like a big deal back then.

Anyway, shout out to Mobile World [00:49:00]Congress. Check out our coverage on all that stuff. Let's move on to our pop culture picks for the week. I just want to say I've been playing a lot of Avowed. Avowed is just where my jam is because the world is insane right now. This is Obsidian's, um, kind of their Skyrim.

Their like simpler, more focused version of Elder Scrolls. It's on Xbox Game Pass right now. Um, so if you have Game Pass, it's really easy to try. I just love the look of this world. I love exploring it. Um, has a really good aesthetic. If you remember that scene in the movie Annihilation, which is one of my favorites, but the scene where people start to turn into plants, the bodies of plants, um, Avowed is a game where.

You play somebody who has been touched by a God at birth and you have these like Godlike powers. Um, and as you design your character, you can have like plant face, basically, you can have, uh, roots growing out of your heads or seashells or things like that. I think people, people who are tryptophobic may have a lot of trouble with this game because it's leaning into like really weird looking designs [00:50:00]for people, but also.

It's a really cool fantasy world. Um, I just love like whenever I'm playing, I try to like put it in an hour at a time. I discover things all the time. Like there's always something interesting happening. It's a really fun world to just sit and explore. Also really useful thing to just like, you know, I'm testing so many video cards.

It's a really good way to compare them to each other. So about, I'm really digging it. Uh, Sholin, anything you want to shout out?

Cherlynn: Yeah, I've been on a documentary kick, but, uh, I would first start by telling you what you should not watch. Um. It's not a documentary, but based on like real events, the Netflix show called Apple Cider Vinegar.

Really? I was saying I

Devindra: was going to recommend that to you.

Cherlynn: I was going to say that I started, I don't know if I already brought it up on this show, but I'm now realizing that I didn't. I tried to watch, I tried starting to watch it maybe a couple weeks ago. And I just could not, um, it's a bit too triggering for me.

Uh, it's someone who's gone through a lot of like people in my life with cancer diagnoses, dying from cancer, that sort of stuff is a lot. Um, [00:51:00] I already like my, I think in last year, one of the episodes last year, I recommend this command as the podcast is that was a woman who was posing as someone suffering from breast.

Cancer. Apple cider vinegar tells the tale of, um, Belle Gibson in the drama dramatized like, uh, retelling of the story of Belle Gibson, um, who claimed to be dying from brain cancer and all kinds of terminal cancers, but actually lied about it, but profited majorly off of it, and was a big

Devindra: healthcare like a guru.

She did a lot to spread a lot of like health, like new forms of health, right? Whatever you call it, natural health.

Cherlynn: Yes,

Devindra: basically. Yes,

Cherlynn: like, oh, you can eat your way out of cancer, basically. Like, eat well, eat healthy. Um, and, and, and was more or less pitching it as a way to, like, you know, heal herself. But anyway, uh, and instead of watching Apple Cider Vinegar, I couldn't, but I was still very Drawn into the story.

And so thankfully Netflix actually has a different, um, series called the search for Instagram's worst con artists. And it is about bell Gibson as well, but it is more of a [00:52:00]documentary retelling. The reason I really couldn't, um, stick through apple cider vinegar is because they also bring up this other influencer that, uh, bell Gibson drew inspiration from.

And that person was a very young person. Yeah. Mila, um, she was diagnosed with, uh, an aggressive form of, I guess, sarcoma cancer. And so it had to be, you know, she was very young and was contending with these things that had to do with amputation. And that, that was when I had to stop because it was getting a bit too close to home.

I

Devindra: will say like, I think the show is really, really well done if, but it is like a lot. All at once. Um, it is well acted Caitlin Dever, who plays bell Gibson. She has been one of my favorite, like young actors for a while. I think she was in justified at one point and she was just incredible in that show. So yeah, it is a really well made show and very much like it, it feels like it's made by an Instagram, you know, somebody who was raised on Instagram basically, because like it's edited in that way, it like goes through a lot of like different ways of showing the story it's juggling three storylines at once, it is good, but I can understand why it's too much [00:53:00] for you, Sherlyn.

Cherlynn: Yeah. So, so to that point, I really, I mean, I liked it. I just couldn't keep watching. I do agree with you that the style of it is really nice and very easy to follow. Um, but even if you did enjoy Apple Cider Vinegar and you want to continue watching and following on that theme, then yes, go over and watch the Search for Instagram's Worst Con Artist.

It's a two part docuseries. Um, they interview Belle Gibson's brother, uh, Belle Gibson's stepfather. Um, and, and the bunch of journalists who like pursued that story and how they came to, to find out what was happening. So, yeah, very interesting to me. And so, I will leave you with that as my recommendation this week.

Well, that's it for the episode this week. Everyone, thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by game composer, Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Ellman. You can find DaVindra online at

Devindra: at BlueSky at at DaVindra and I podcast about movies and TV at the FilmCast at FilmCast.

com

Cherlynn: If you want to [00:54:00] send me like social media accounts that are actually doing good in this world, you can hit me up, I guess, on threads at Sherlynn's Instagram or preferred, uh, is on BlueSky at You can also email us your thoughts at podcast at Engadget. com, leave us a review wherever you're listening to your podcast and subscribe in your favorite podcast platforms.

Devindra: I've got a good social media account for you, Sherlyn, actually, and that is go watch Keith Lee's videos because Keith Lee has been touring the UK. And having a bad time with British food, it is hilarious to see in the Brits are fighting online.

Cherlynn: I love that. And

Devindra: it is, it's really, I will give

Cherlynn: you, I will give you one like social media account that I followed that is kind of an example of what I'm looking for.

Uh, we rate dogs. It's literally my favorite. Very nice. Thanks to everyone that like struggled with us through the technical issues for the live stream again today. We really appreciate you and sorry, we couldn't make it like the whole show.

Devindra: It's a, it was both [00:55:00] my computer deciding not to work, but also Google, uh, YouTube just stopped streaming.

YouTube just stopped letting us stream. So that's fun. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Sorry guys.

Devindra: Sorry folks, but thank you for listening and thanks for trying.

Cherlynn: So I was able to sit down with, uh, Daniel Roche, who is the vice president of Alexa, and he was on stage presenting and doing demos of the new Alexa Plus and how it integrates, uh, with third parties.

You can listen to this interview now. It will tell you a lot more about. Um, all that third party integration stuff we were describing.

Speaker 5: The presentation today, your part was specifically, it seemed, about how Alexa Plus would work with all these different third party, uh, apps and integrations. Especially given LLMs don't have, you know, natural, like, accessibility for APIs and stuff.

Speaker 6: Not natively integrated, yeah.

Speaker 5: Could you, just for our, uh, podcast audience, and for myself as kind of a refresher, Go over that really quickly again.

Speaker 6: Yeah, so at a high level there are three different ways that Alexa Plus [00:56:00] integrates with other services, capabilities, devices out there. And by the way, at launch it will be integrated with tens of thousands of different services, devices, and capabilities out there. The first way is, uh, through APIs. So APIs, you know, LLMs don't natively support APIs, calling APIs, filling out arguments the right way, choosing methods, etc.

A big part of what we've done with Alexa Plus is, uh, basically building, uh, the way, you know, the nature of those integrations. And then, uh, building an at scale such that it can accommodate so many different types of integrations. You heard me talk about experts in our show today. So, uh, experts are the fundamental way that we accomplish that.

So the information expert is really, really good at going out and. Uh, taking advantage of, you know, partnerships that we have with information sources, for example, right? Or, um, you saw, uh, a scheduling and reservation expert today, uh, [00:57:00] use OpenTable APIs to complete a reservation for a restaurant that's just a few blocks from here.

Um, and so, APIs, uh, uh, is the first way that I would, that I would say in terms of the three, the second way is, you know, partners don't necessarily show up and have all of these different APIs ready to go, but they might have a website, uh, that has all the capabilities they want to offer to customers.

Thumbtack's a great example of that. Um, they, you know, help you provide, uh, find, uh, service providers across a huge range of different kinds of services you need for your house. You need your gutters cleaned. You need a plumber. You need, uh, I use the example of my oven is broken. Um, and in this case, Alexa Plus, uh, gathers some information from you.

When do you need them? What kind of service do you need? Et cetera. So in a voice interaction, you could say, Hey, my oven's broken. I need someone as soon as possible. I've got some cooking to do. Um, Alexa gives you a range of possible options, you can help pick, [00:58:00]and then Alexa goes off on the internet and goes to a website like Thumbtacks and doesn't need APIs to go to the calendar components and book a time and to the selection components and find a service provider and to all the different experiences that you might navigate yourself on their website.

Alexa Plus goes off and does all that, uh, comes back and just tells you it's done. Period. Done. That's the second way. The third way is in an agent to agent way. So if there's another generative AI agent out there, and we could probably both name several, but the example I used today was Suno. Very cool entrepreneurs.

By the way, and a very cool set of capabilities, uh, and they're doing generative music. So, you can just say what you want for a song. Uh, my example today was about a bodega cat. I just wanted to prove that you really can write any song you want. Um, a country song. That's right, yeah, fewer bodegas out in the country.

[00:59:00] But, uh, you can definitely write a country music song about a bodega cat using Alexa Plus. And the integration with another generative AI agent in Suno, you know, we do believe the world is going to be full of different generative AI agents that have different capabilities. Alexa can help orchestrate across that full range of space so that customers can take advantage of those super specialized experiences like Suno.

Speaker 5: I have a few questions.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Um, I'll start with, you know. A way to kind of make sense of what you're describing, which is to compare it to things that I already know are out there. And so I don't know if you've heard of or observed, um, Rabbit's R1 device. Rabbit, um, you know, team at Teenage Engineering made this wearable slash device.

I have seen it, yeah. Yeah, and I think one of the biggest selling points for those of us in the industry was less the Hardaware and all of the fun stuff like the crank and more of the like promise of the large action model they brought up, which sounds a lot like what you're doing with Alexa and APIs, right?

They're using [01:00:00] You know, machine

Cherlynn: learned, uh, chatbots or whatever their AI assistant, uh, is being called and using that to kind of navigate third party apps without any need for really deep integration. Um, that's kind of how I'm sort of seeing a bit of a similarity. I'm also seeing a bit of similarity to Google's duplex, uh, which calls restaurants and makes reservations on your behalf.

So when you're talking about the second way where the partners that don't have a Alexa can go navigate the website for you. It sounds

Speaker 5: somewhat structurally similar, similar. Is that correct?

Speaker 6: It might be from a technology perspective. I mean, I do think from a customer experience perspective, customers just want the thing done.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 6: They don't have to be responsible or care about any of these things, right? They just want, I need a plumber or I want to book a table, et cetera. So we try to make sure that for, for consumers, for customers, they, Just see the same super easy to use experience, whether it's voice or a couple taps on the app, let's say on your phone to kick off a task.

But then yes, I think, I think you're right to say that, um, there's this range of options happening in the [01:01:00]background, whether it's API integration, agentic, uh, Alexa going off online and getting something done. I do think the scale of Alexa Plus is unique.

Speaker 2: Coming out

Speaker 6: of the box with tens of thousands of different, uh, services and devices already integrated, uh, on day one for Alexa Plus, I think is unique.

Speaker 5: By the integrated, do you mean that these third party services have to do any work on the backend? Is it all the second approach, which is the website crawling, or is it like some of them have to tweak? There's a range.

Speaker 6: There's a range. Um, we have a lot of deeply integrated API partners, uh, Uh, you know, agents going off online is newer technology, uh, and, uh, you know, agent to agent is really cutting edge, uh, you know, agents interacting for a customer on their behalf.

So I think on the timescale, um, uh, that's how, that's how it looks. I

Speaker 5: mean, I think there is like a lot of appeal to just talking to the one assistant in your life and having that assistant talk to all the other AI chatbots [01:02:00] out there for you. Can I, can I just ask, I want to be clear on this. The Suno was one example, but can you say used?

Alexa to talk to Capital One's customer service chatbot to get a, like a transaction, you know, refunded or something.

Speaker 6: So nothing to, nothing to share today about, you know, about, uh, any of the selection that's, uh, you know, available over time. But I will tell you that the SDK is all about. Okay. You can, you know, use Alexa to, to make connection with, for you on your behalf, other agents and complete tasks.

Right. So that's the whole idea.

Speaker 5: Right. That's what I was trying to get at. You're on to it for sure. Okay, gotcha. Because I didn't want to like, that was the first example I could think of. Yeah. United Airlines, for example, is the other one. I

Speaker 6: mean, we know, again, I think customers are going to benefit from tons of different generative AI.

And we strongly believe that they should work together so that they're not disconnected.

Speaker 5: So the other thing you said is that these, um, what people want is like something that they can just [01:03:00] talk to and have it done for them, right? But then the other thing that people want, in my opinion, that is lacking a lot of today is a solution they can trust to be accurate all the time.

So how has Amazon worked around or how does Amazon plan to work around this issue that This notion that Gen AI as it stands is still not 100 percent reliable and accurate and trustworthy and that hallucinations can happen.

Speaker 6: What is a, you know, these are non deterministic models at the, you know, at the outset in generative AI, right?

They produce excellent conversation, they produce, you know, multiplicity of different answers even faced with the same question. But you can build systems around those models to ensure that they're deeply grounded in knowledge. You heard me talk about that today. That is. grounding in our own knowledge graph from Amazon, you know, using, uh, reliable sources on the internet, using partnerships with authoritative sources.

You know, we have hundreds of those already on day one so that we get answers right. [01:04:00] Uh, cause customers want to be able to count on that experience. So I think, you know, what you have to do is use the right tool for the job. LLMs are at the foundation of the architecture, but they're not the only thing answering the question.

And I actually think in the industry, Uh, there's been a mistake of thinking a model is a product. So the reason you're asking the question is because other products will simply give you an answer out of the LLM.

Speaker 2: If

Speaker 6: you're asking for an authoritative answer, that's not actually sometimes the way to get one.

And I think that's what you're highlighting. So, we have taken great care with Alexa Plus. Will it make mistakes? Every piece of software makes mistakes, um, but, but we're working hard to, to ground it in, in knowledge.

Speaker 5: So to clarify that last point that you said, and to make sure I've got it right, you're saying that instead of just relying on the assistant to give the answer back, you might have the assistant say, according to Succentouch website that, you know, came up with my search on the internet, this is the Most accurate sounding answer to your question.

Yeah, or this

Speaker 6: [01:05:00] authoritative source in my knowledge graph, right? I mean, you saw me ask about Alex Brigman, you know, some nerdy baseball stats today. And the fact is Triggered a lot

Speaker 5: of fights in the Engadgeteam, but sure, let's go. That's what

Speaker 6: that was all about.

Speaker 5: I loved it.

Speaker 6: That's what that was all about. But I do think, you know, you want, you want those answers to be right.

And that means you need an authoritative source that's going to tell me about How well Alex Bregman does at Fenway. I need to be prideful here in Manhattan asking those questions.

Speaker 5: Um, the other thing I wanted to ask, and it is a bit less big picture, uh, Alexa Plus is coming out, uh, early access starting next month, um, and people who don't have a plan will probably need to pay 20 a month.

For people who, I guess, have Prime, that update probably occurs automatically. Um, if you're already paying for Prime, right? Like,

Speaker 6: what will the customer experience be like when I get Alexa Plus? It's included in your membership.

Speaker 5: So, let's say you have That's it. That's all. Right. So, you have an Echo speaker at home that's tied to [01:06:00] your Prime account, then it'll update on its own over the air.

What's gonna

Speaker 6: happen is we're starting with our large screen devices. So, we'll be rolling out to customers in waves. starting in March, uh, late March, most likely, um, eight inch plus screens will be the first wave of customers, uh, that will get access. A customer does accept, we are changing the experience for them.

We want to make sure customers know that. So you would see it either on a device like an echo show, or you'd see it in an email, simple press of the button. And then for prime customers, the Alexa plus experience is completely updated for non prime customers. You can start.

Speaker 2: Uh, in

Speaker 6: that situation, uh, paying a 19.

99. There is an early access period to have in there, but that's the, that's the simple approach. Gotcha.

Speaker 5: If you don't have the, uh, a Prime membership, and you somehow have an Echo speaker that's not tied to it, would you still access the older version of Alexa on that?

Speaker 6: The original version of Alexa continues to be available.

Speaker 5: And [01:07:00] how would they play with each other? Is there any sort of You know, a scenario where they would interact and one experience would be, you know, so different that it gets in the way of the other, you know what I mean?

Speaker 6: Not that we've found.

Speaker 5: Okay. So you've done testing around this?

Speaker 6: We have done testing around it.

I'm, you know, I'm, I don't know that we've hit every possible imaginable case, but yeah, we believe that that'll, that'll work fine.

Speaker 5: And then tell me a little bit about the setup process. I know you mentioned that there's like acknowledgement that some things are going to look different. You're upgrading to Alexa Plus, but do you have to like re sign into some accounts?

Do you have to like. You know, um, allow permissions again to different integrations, for example, or does it happen on a case by case basis when like, you know, everything that you've

Speaker 6: done carries forward. So, for example, let me just give you a hardcore example. Some people have spent years setting up their smart home, you know, I bought a plug from this provider, I bought a light from that provider, etc.

And the reason that customers love Alexa is it takes away all the complexity. I don't need to remember who built what device. I talk to them all just the same. One consistent interface for everything. [01:08:00] Uh, and we would never take that away. So that's a, you know, that's the kind of thing where we want customers to continue to benefit from all the, from everything that they've put together in their home, right?

So, day one, they just advance to a new version of the way they interact with those things. They don't have to reset up anything.

Speaker 5: And if you're adding a new service, for example, like you just signed up for, I don't know, Netflix for the first time, or Uber for the first time. Yeah, you would just

Speaker 6: do that in the ways that you do it today.

Gotcha. It's a little bit easier, frankly, because Alexa can walk you through those setups in many more cases. So you don't have to dig around in the Alexa app. You can just say, Alexa, I want to set up a streaming account with Hulu or something. In many cases, you get a QR code and it's just one simple tap.

So Alexa can walk you through a bunch of that herself. We'd like to say, Alexa is an expert and now an expert on herself.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Kind of, I mean, we're seeing this develop everywhere else in, you know, the consumer tech space, like with, you know, redesign Siri, for example, or like Gemini and all of that stuff.

Where, where do [01:09:00] you see Amazon's generative AI ambitious playing out outside of Alexa?

Speaker 6: Well, I think, I mean, you heard Andy talk about how much is going on at the company. Uh, I mean so much, right? And, you know, unbelievable and highly differentiated cloud services, Hardaware underlying that. Uh, and then on top of that, you know.

Literally a thousand plus consumer applications of Gen AI, where Alexa is literally one of those. It's one, if you read the list, Alexa would say one, you know, Alexa plus is one of them. So it's a huge amount of work that we're doing. I think, I think our ambitions at Amazon are always just grounded in what we can do for customers though.

Um, we've got consumer customers, we've got enterprise customers, we've got such a broad range of customer entertainment customers. Um, So, artists, authors, et cetera, you know the list, uh, uh, because, uh, we think there's a lot we can do. [01:10:00]

Speaker 5: What is your favorite thing that Alexa Plus can do?

Speaker 6: Uh, I showed some of them, frankly.

I mean, I think if you ask Mara or Panos the same question, I think one of the ways we divided up our work today was to just say, well, what do we love to do? Like, what are the things that we actually do?

Speaker 5: Panos with the ring camera thing. Yeah, he loves that. And you know,

Speaker 6: he loves seeing his kids. He loves his dogs.

When we saw the driver yesterday, he was like, Daniel, come in here. You know, where do you sit? See this? 'cause he'd been telling me about that driver and he hadn't had a ring footage as far as I know. Yeah. Uh, where we had seen that happen with Aries. But, um, so you're seeing some of the best I do, I do a lot of information exploration with Alexa.

Okay. Um, I sit next to my, my, uh, teenage kids and do homework. Mm-hmm .

Speaker 2: With

Speaker 6: them. We do a lot of information exploration together just to, just as we're doing schoolwork together, we do. together. I've asked about, you know, I had forgotten the fundamental theorem of calculus, like how you would say it. Alexis got the fundamental theorem of calculus, I, you know, the fingertips for you.

So, um, [01:11:00] there's a lot, there's a lot of that in my house, for sure. A lot of, we're getting excited for the baseball season coming. Uh, I mentioned, you know, like, like booking things and using some of these new integrations and open table and Uber and, you know, food and dinnertime is tricky at my house. My kids.

It's Row Crew and they come home ravenous. So using Grubhub through Alexa with my, uh, Alexa app and it's in the tray on the way home. Uh, it's awesome. It's just super easy to just say what you want. Yeah. Last orders, it all comes up. So I think, I think you saw, I think you saw a lot of my favorite things today.

Speaker 5: Yeah. We saw a lot of things on stage today. It was really hard to kind of imagine in my real world and what my favorite would be. Um, I know we're kind of close to time. I have so many like nitty gritty questions. And things like, you know. Um, they just flew out of my brain. You were talking, oh, the Ring camera stuff.

Like, you know, it seems, I know it works only with Ring cameras, that video search feature, but it doesn't work with like, I know it doesn't work with Blink cameras just yet, but. Yeah,

Speaker 6: it's with Ring, the smart [01:12:00] video search. Yeah, because you're also seeing, you're also seeing AI applied to the video sources, right?

I think Alexa on stage might have even said, which we, which we've heard once before, I think say, I found with a husky.

Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has

Speaker 6: learned.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 6: Through video analysis that Ares is a husky.

Speaker 5: Right, yeah.

Speaker 6: So it's often. Could you

Speaker 5: ascribe a name to the husky?

Speaker 6: I think you could. I think panels could say, yep, that's Aries.

Um, but I'm not sure we'd have to go.

Speaker 5: We're kind of early days. So, I mean, we're going to wait. It's just,

Speaker 6: it's just the beginning. It's a lot, but it's just the beginning.

Speaker 5: And we'll end on this. How long has it been until like today since working on next gen or Luxor?

Speaker 6: I mean, it takes to get to this point. You really need.

Large language models to have reached the state of the art that they are at now. And then you've got tens of thousands of services and devices and capabilities integrated hundreds of experts in different areas, right? So it's been a big lift But you know a lot is dependent on [01:13:00] where we are with the state of the art in LLMs And I would say that we're there reasonably recently.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 6: Yeah.