Apple Drops New M2 MacBooks and Mac Mini!

Marques let us in on his psyche this episode. He’s a dope creative thinker. I like how he expresses his ideas

Probs one of the greatest podcasts yall have had. The creative yet chaotic energy was amazing 😂

Marques is on Macbookpro M1, David is on Chromebook and Andrew is on Windows. Thank you for the ongoing support of all systems. Just waiting on Linux based as well as everything else! Loving the diversity!

Love how the producer mic is in the most inconvenient place for both of them lol

Havent finished the episode yet but for those that also have shower mirrors that fog up, try holding the mirror under the hot shower water for a few seconds to get it to match the temperature. It should stay defogged until it begins to cool down again.
bonus pro tip: If your mirror becomes hard to see in from water spots or whatever, try putting a dab of toothpaste on it and scrub it all over the mirror, then wash it off. Should be good as new.

The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, who (with others) was contracted by Apple to determine how to introduce the new player to the public. After Chieco saw a prototype, he was reminded of the phrase "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" from the classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, referring to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship
Chieco's proposal drew an analogy between the relationship of the spaceship to the smaller independent pods and that of a personal computer to its companion music player

This episode was probably one of my favorites out of the whole series, it was so funny I laughed so hard at so many different moments. Love the chemistry & banter between you guys.

This was a great podcast! 5/5 stars! No, really, i am totally starting to get into the waveform podcast! And i have never liked podcasts before. Cheers, Atlas! P.S. Bostondynamics rocks!

Reviewing reviews my favorite part of the podcast. I'd love to see more off the cuff rants

As a designer who has worked on review systems I can say you definitely nailed it with the giving up on 5-star and going to binary. Most users are thinking in binary terms so this is not only more realistic but also gets more engagement. You touched on the big challenge at the beginning of the discussion, but it’s worth emphasizing: the main challenge of review systems is getting people to review *at all.*
A more nuanced system would be both useful to consumers and good feedback for a company, but there’s no room for this en masse because you’re never coming back to the product page after you bought it (unless you have a strong binary feeling like love or hate).
I think that’s why nuanced product reviewers have an entire niche. You can read consumer reports or WireCutter, and watch Clip-Share videos like yours or LTT.

I have two HomePods paired as speakers for my Apple TV. After looking at atmos sound bars and their prices 2 years ago, my conclusion was that they are better looking and cheaper. I’m not sure it’s still the case but I really pleased with them despite Siri not always being the smartest home assistant 😂

This episode was GOLD. I laughed out loud so many times omg.

This particular episode was so entertaining and I literally laughed out loud several times. Also enjoyed the different perspectives, diversity, and informational on tech, as always.

David made this podcast much more entertaining and taking it to another level. Loving it.

Would love to see a long form podcast about reviews and especially about how people and companies buy fake reviews. I've seen this many times on Amazon and even on Google reviews for local businesses.

I think for high volume products, we could ask people just a few yes/no questions on it, instead of asking people for their overall opinion. Things like "Is the mirror easy to install?" and "Does the anti-steam surface work?"

Another idea for reviews would be to keep the numbered rating system, but also have a "Do you recommend this product? button. Speaks to David's point about products being great in a vacuum, or great in comparison to similar products

The robot walking on the plank was pretty interesting because that plank wasn't straight if you noticed, when it put the plank, that was the task. The walking was probably another instruction set that adapted to the location of the plank without previous knowledge of where it was exactly. I'm a programmer and I can tell you that the level of engineering that goes into this is probably much much more sophisticated than it appears. The hallmark of amazing technology is when the complexity is hidden behind apparent simplicity.

I'm not sure what rating I would give it, but this is definitely the only podcast I listen to every week on Clip-Share 😁

You guys don't have to worry about being too long! Joe Rogan podcasts are 2 to 3 hours long. If it's interesting, which Waveform always is, I'm gonna watch it despite the length.

What a great comedy podcast! The tech commentary was nice too.

I typically look for reviews woth in between numbers since it often takes a nuanced perspective and mind to even want to give it a score other than 1 or 5, and that nuance and detail is what I'm interested in because it has honesty and reason

Idk why but this was the most I have laughed during a wvfrm episode 😂

I give products a rating based on how they deliver the features they are promoting.

The podcast is getting better and better

ARC already added return (Audio Return Channel) which was amazing in that you can just have all the devices (Chromecast, Firestick, games systems, etc.) connected to the TV and a single HDMI to the sound system. It essentially negates the need for multiple HDMI inputs on the sound system and there's no need to switch inputs on it. eARC is the Enhanced version with more bandwidth and faster speed.

In regards to Amazon and ratings, I always sort by most recent first when I read the reviews. There are two reasons for this. One, if there has been a sudden recent drop in quality I can quickly find out and two, it seems like products are sometimes being swapped recently. By this I mean that when I read the reviews it will be obvious that the older ones are not for what is currently being sold. Generally the newer reviews will note this anomaly.
The other issue I have with ratings is that a one to five range is not enough. Often I'd give a seven or a nine to a product if that were an option. Instead I end up giving a four or a five. I suspect I'm not unusual in doing that. Which i likely why one to five is the typical scale as it encourages score inflation.

Personally, I think they should have just a three step reading system when it comes to Amazon products one didn’t work 2 worked as expected 3 better than expected

I like specifically reading 3/4 star reviews on Amazon, since so many Amazon sellers run the scam where they promise customers a gift card in exchange for a 5-star review. At least with 3 or 4-star reviews, you know the reviewer wasn't paid off for their review and it's likely to be more honest as a result.

The moment at 21:20 where Marques goes "Yup" and points is so funny

Loving your review .. making me laugh while learning so much new technology info. 5/5 for content and laughter factor. 🙃😊

On the subject of the robot; i mean it's cool that it can do it and a great showoff. Much better to use a robot crane with multiple attachments that can choose depending in what it picks up. Cameras etc to decide placement, articulating limbs so it can place things not only on the highest level of a scaffolding. I don't think a robot having to do platforming which seems more difficult and may cause instability/movement in the scaffolding is a great idea. Once again that said is great that it can do it, just not practical in the real world for the specific task it showed.
Tinfoil hat: I wonder if in software with robots or drones you can find a follow command but hidden in the code there is also a chase and an engage command! Horror

The episode was fun to watch, it was like there was the filter of seriousness removed and you were having fun .

Amazon reviews are basically worthless. They are mostly fake and/or purchased. I’ve received a ton of products with a note inside promising money or another product if I give a 5 star review. I’ve gone back in my order history and found old products that have been completely changed to new ones in order to harvest the reviews. Amazon is literally one of the least valuable places to find product feedback.

On the subject of leaving reviews; I tend to leave balanced reviews and rarely give a five star because I caveat with durability and qol additions. I usually go between two and four.
On the subject of reviewing reviews; I'm usually a pretty conscious buyer so I read reviews preferably in multiple sites, if possible ordered by date and going from worst to best. A search query on the reviews for the feature that is most important to me if also a great tool.

Must say the Mac mini is looking pretty sweet starting at $499

That Home Max sold poorly but was fantastic!

For products, if I enjoy something I typically err with a 4/5. I have to be raving and recommending it to go with 5/5. However with services like Uber, I default to 5 unless there's something inherently wrong with the basics being provided... more binary. What I prefer is for review sites to break down the reviews into more granular aspects. Like a restaurant review with Google tends to break it down to Food, Service, and Atmosphere. I think this makes sense as sometimes you may not care about service and atmosphere but just great food.

Loved your work and neutral reviews about phones good to see your work bro keep it up

When it comes to ratings I trust the thoughtful 2-4 stars over 1 or 5 ratings most times. Overall ratings will catch my attention, but I really read the 2, 3, and 4s to see what people thought to gauge my decisions ... at least on Amazon.
Also--we need to see footage of Marques when he goes out in public wearing the sandals

Sorting by most helpful is essentially prioritizing peer-reviewed comments which is pretty great when ways to artificially inflate scores is a possibility for any highly-reviewed product. It's rather binary but when you consider that research articles aren't published alongside their mandatory, anonymized peer reviews (which kinda wild tbh), it's a surprisingly useful and novel implementation that I wish saw more use.
I would be interested in sorting reviews by word count with a spam filter in place. The really long reviews just have more time put into them and while sometimes it devolves into an excessive rant, there's typically just more information up for the user's consideration.

The shaving mirror I got for the same reason has a water reservoir on the back, and you just pour some hot water in which prevents it fogging up (mostly). You then have to empty it of course but it does work relatively well and was not insanely expensive. Nor is it stylish or made of anything fancy which I don't care about.
It's totally worth it for me though.

I can’t believe I have just discovered this podcast. So far I’m loving it.

I agree with the thoughts of HomePod. No clear innovation, not sure why it’s a “version 2.0” when it feels more like version 1.5… Marques - is there any way to predict when the Apple silicon will plateau out? With intel after the pentium series it wasn’t until the “i” series that things started to evolve. I ask this because, how much power is enough? It seems like we already have a ton with M2 now so not sure how future versions will be impactful in a meaningful Way! Just a thought (hope this wasn’t gibberish lol)

Pulling the MacBook Air out of an envelope was crazy. But Steve pulling that iPod nano out of his tiny denim pocket was WILD. I’ll never forget that moment.

I can’t tell how much I love these people and this podcast.

Including 96 GB of RAM will be important once the new hardware ray tracing is out. For now, Apple just wanted to see if they could do it. :-)

I hope there will always be you 3 guys, I enjoy David in the podcasts so don’t kick it 😅

Random but might help explain why the humidity sensor on the new homepod 2 is nice, people in area's with bad winters have to worry about humidity when it gets cold, humidity under 20% can make your home feel very dry. Humidity under 10% can make it hard to sleep because of how dry it feels, or even make you have consistent nose bleeds.

My issue with reviews is they are historic and see so many where recent reviews are poor - should be able to set how far back your overview is based on to cover for either that or where a product has been fixed but has those initial bad ones hanging over it

I think adding david was the perfect thing. Not like Marques and Andrew were not doing a good job already, but David just made it perfect

😂I love this podcast, also because the producers are always struggling to reach the mic! why don't they just get each their own, especially Ellis, he's always so stretched out tryna reach it 🤣

there are (relatively) expensive soundspeakers that did/do well. I guess Audio Pro C10 is not so well known in the States but it is one of - if not THE best sounding speaker in it's category (way better than Sonos) and it was/is a hit. (yes I'm biased I have one). It sells in the 400-450EUR range, worth every cent.

Rarely give 5. If it's good they get a 4 (would be 4.5 in most cases but they don't have that button or system). I also read the 3+4 star reviews more than the 5 or 1. I'm on board with the home owner dude 👍

While I like to think I'm well informed on tech devices so, I use the Clip-Share reviews of phones, tablets, laptops etc. as a 2nd opinion. But, for many things I may not have researched a lot on (things like robot vacuum, electric toothbrush, backpacks etc.) I heavily rely on New York Times' Wirecutter. They've been a pretty solid source for many of my purchases lats 3-4 years.

I wish they would have continued with the review topic, it was VERY interesting. I hope this spirals into a video on the main channel

on the reviews topic: I almost always sort by date (so newest first). If I'm on Amazon I also sort by country because different places can have different suppliers and suppliers change over time. It also helps a lot when you look at software because it always shows the newest reviews with the newest software.

6:29 ARC also does that because thats what ARC means i.e. audio return channel. eARC is just enhanced ARC which means it can do advance audio codecs such as Dolby Atmos which regular ARC cannot do.

A lot of the 5 star jargon comes from corporations and companies pushing to get those perfect scores to justify/prove how good their product is internally or to investors. I worked at a job that required us to get reviews of our performance and anything less than a perfect score was an automatic failure - that’s not feedback, that is getting people to tell you you’re awesome and not wanting to view the results through a nuanced lense.
Think about it, we see people/places everywhere asking us for reviews/surveys on a daily basis. And they almost always insist on the best score possible because I’m willing to bet it’s a similar scenario where anything less than perfect is considered a failure. Everything is not so black and white and less than perfection is not failure. Nobody is perfect and it can be crushing to have to live up to an impossible standard.

HomePod does allow you to choose your media source and anyone who comes over my house typically has an IPhone and is in love with the HomePod. I also have to where guest can control the music from their devices once they’re on the wifi network. I think just because you guys aren’t solely using iOS you tend to down play it’s feature sets because they don’t matter to you. 23:40

For reviews I do tend to read the middle scores (2-4's) the most because the one's and five's don't seem like they would accurately portray the item.
Almost nothing gets a five star review from me, because those need to be really exceptional.

The subtle updates for this new m2 MacBook pros was just enough for me to upgrade from my 2015 13” macbook. Thankfully I didn’t buy last years model for Christmas

I didn’t think I cared to know little things about tech but this podcast grew on me bc of y’all so s/o to you guy fun talk

In terms of reviews, you need to be reviewing the product based on what was advertised. If the new MacBook doesn't have wifi 6e for example, I don't think it's fair to give it a lower review because it never advertised that it would. Reviews, in my eyes, are a way of telling others that the advertised product is and does what it said it would

New markets! I think that is the key. Both HomePods are now in a lot more markets. So many new customers that wasn’t able to buy HomePod 1 at all. I have never heard the HomePod 1 but I do own a HomePod mini that was grey imported before they officially started selling them here. Now both the new and the mini are sold here in most of Europe. A larger market than the entire US. Comparing it to SONOS line up, if it’s up there with the SONOS 5 then it’s actually a BARGAIN at 299. SONOS 5 is 529! And the HomePod support Atmos too that only the SONOS sound bars do since they’re geared towards home cinema and not spatial audio. I might get one actually. I have $3500 worth of SONOS speakers at home but switched to a HomeKit home a while back so HomePods might have a place here.

25:58 When I first moved into my house, there was a ton of echo and every time the house settled, it sounded like somebody was in my house walking around, so I started to get used to ignoring every sound as being just the house settling. Then one time I hear a noise and think, “No, it’s just the house settling,” and then I happened to look towards my HomePod and saw the light was on. So what I had written off as the house settling was Siri saying “huh?”. That really shook me knowing that I could hear a human voice in my house and I wouldn’t think anything of it.

Really great and funny podcast this week😂

The worst thing on Amazon is how companies will change the item's listing and port the reviews from a completely different product to something new and completely unrelated. Amazon needs to get it together. For instance, I bought an electric shaver which had great reviews. Long story short, the shaver was terrible and the reviews were for a purse. Yoinks!

My current MBP 16' is a beast, no need to upgrade for a many years. Each time I use a windows laptop, which I have purchased a few mid-high tier ones, always disappointed with some aspect of it. Then I just go back to using my MBP 16 or even the older M1 MBA anyway 🤣

HomePods really need native Spotify support. The handoff feature actually works with Spotify but because music is going over airplay, there’s over a second of lag

I have a first gen HomePod and it really does sound fantastic. For entertaining, it was well worth the few hundred bucks if you care about sound quality. I'm not saying it's the only product in that price range worth buying, and if you're not loaded up on Apple ecosystem stuff it would be a silly purchase. But, if you are all in with Apple stuff and you want to really hear your tunes, it's not overly priced. How many people fit that description, not so sure.

For windows, Just hit the windows key and type camera and the camera app will come on and you will be able quickly see yourself without recording or anything. I do this all the time to quickly see my self before a zoom meeting or something.

eArc (and by extension Dolby Atmos) is also available in HDMI 2.0b.
Yes the bandwidth increase with HDMI 2.1 provides room for eArc, but the return channel bandwidth on HDMI 2.0 wasn't bandwidth-saturated like the downstream image bandwidth.
HDMI 2.0b also added HDR.
Regular Arc has been around since HDMI 1.4.

The only thing stopping Spotify from being in the HomePod is Spotify. Apple provides that ability which Pandora is using but Spotify hasn’t done it. Plus you can AirPlay with Spotify.

The same happened with me when I try to get books, people put 5 stars for books with better content, and I can read reviews for the same. Where the actual thing that matters is the quality of the print and the paper, and how good of a feeling it has when you hold it. 1/10 review talks with the context that this isn't a book, this is a commodity. The rest of the people post how good the content in the book was, and all that book review stuff.

Marques is like the responsible dad trying to keep his unruly kids in line lol

I'll only get the M2 Mac Mini if they finally fixed the infamous "mouse glitch" that made me return my M1 Mac Mini, it was that distracting. Love the lower price, though so I might try it regardless....but I do not just expect it to work like I mistakenly did with the M1 version.

FWIW, the lack of native support of Spotify on HomePod is a Spotify issue and not an Apple issue. Apple opened up support for third-party music services on HomePod in 2020. The lack of support seems to be another way Spotify is taking shots at Apple. It's actually one of the top 10 requests on the Spotify Live Ideas community page. I've gotten used to Airplay in my HomePod ecosystem, but I agree it's annoying...especially since it natively works in CarPlay.

I can totally relate to your point about customers focusing on reviews that are 1s and 5s, as I typically 1s first and then the 5s to make a concise decision on my purchases for products or services, BUT very occasionally I do check the 2s and 4s. Why? I suppose I find reviews with 4s are customers who are picky and reviews by 2s are those who have legitimate issues, no comment on 3s... lol
The reviews with 1s I feel really sets the expectations of the drawbacks of the product and 5s are obvious. Typically, I purchase products with reviews at minimum 4.5/5, that's just personal preference.
I apply this frame of thought to all my reviews.
Cheers

The HDMI explanation was priceless…Great Job!!

This was one of the best episodes ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The way the robot was moving on that Boston dynamics video is MIND BLOWING I literally don't believe it it's like a cartoon but In real life

This was such a fun episode 😇

About the review part, AirBnB has a very nice feature where you can search for words in the reviews. For example, in my case, I wanted to make sure the parking lot of the accommodation is spacious. So I type in "Parking" and boom, see what people have to say about whether it is a tight parking lot, if it was great, or whether there are any issues. In Andrew's mirror case, he could've searched for "fog" if there are any reviews that mention it. It is great to look through them and see what people have to say about it. if there aren't any reviews that mention it, that can also be an indicator.
The whole Podcast was fun to listen to, appreciate it! :)

I usually watch these podcasts on Google Podcasts but when you guys do something funny (or show something) I switch it to Clip-Share. I watched this entirely on Clip-Share and realized that there are no ads like there are Google Podcasts? I love Google Podcasts because of the features like silence trimming and continuous playback speed rather than discrete (fixed) values of Clip-Share but the no ad thing is interesting 🤔
Also, I rate this podcast 10/10 and it's a real 10/10 because this is the only podcast I listen to. Can't imagine listening to anything other than tech for an hour lol

Hi, refreshed my knowledge on the Atlas robot, really hope those are not capable with ChatGPT, because if they are, that'll be a literally immortal machine 0_0
And since i watch you really recent, watched about 20 episodes, and note what i forget to leave a like because i'm falling in conversations 🥴

the home pod going "huh?" at the squeaky air-conditioner got me 😂

I could see the next iMac doing a Mac Mini and doing M2 with a M2 Pro option.

There was some episode of Radiolab (or Reply All? I can't remember the podcast) that talked about how businesses that sold stuff on amazon would give money or free stuff to consumers in exchange for amazon reviews... The motivation is that better reviews pushes their product higher up in amazon search engine. And most people will just buy the first or second product they see in amazon's search engine. Also, somewhat related: Remember how businesses would pay Yelp to remove or hide bad reviews...

Amazon should just ask you to rank your purchases by satisfaction, allow you to change it any time and use that data

Most people use smart speakers just for the virtual assistant. When it comes to listening to music at home, I've found that many just play it off their smart TVs either through apps or Airplay, especially with a soundbar.

FYI, EARC is the upgraded form of ARC. EARC allows transmission of lossless audio from the tv to the Audio Receiver, whereas ARC was lossy.

Apple has opened the API for Spotify to work on Homepod, but Spotify has refused to use it to integrate with Homepods.

I think a lot of people are also depending on their soundbar for audio quality.. Like I have a smart home and I have HS8's in my office and soundbar for living room. All I want my homepod to do is work with the smart home stuff and thats it. Tbh i feel like a apple tv will be better for smart home stuff lowkey

I understand using the brick as an example bc you're rating it off its basic function, but the rating system for bricks can get quite intricate with the more variables that are considered. I'm sure you know that though, and you're just coming at it from a tech perspective.

They going to create a dynamic island for both the pad and laptop just like it is on the iPhone 14 Pro

My only interest in the Google Home Max is the simple Aux input. I would love to have one speaker on my desk that sounds good, has Google assistant, and can play audio seamlessly through my monitor (as I switch between desktop & laptop frequently so Bluetooth is more complicated than it's worth). Unfortunately they don't offer the Aux input on any other Google/Nest device. Which makes me consider the $300 (used) $350 (New) possibly worth it for my situation.

Marques is right about the like button on Clip-Share to me it must remain because there's times people will feel compel to dislike a content. Removing it will make people frustrated because a content may be rather useless or foolish and there'll be no way to dislike it.

11:36 - Yes, search for camera and use the default camera app from the Windows OS. It's just called camera. Works wonders ✨️

The dislike button was replaced by the time spent watching/engagement metrics. You can cluster when people leave the video, or when people comment positively or negatively. You can also correlate followup video clicks, or if the engagement increases/decreases overtime.