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Art et designTranscription
00:00Hey what's up guys, MKBHD here. Coming at you from the basement studio. We're back. This
00:09is clearly not your regular scheduled programming. Fortunately I'm cooped up here because I finally
00:15caught COVID. Two years, or I should say, COVID finally caught me two years in. Don't worry,
00:22not to worry, I'm fine. I've actually long recovered, I'm just waiting to test negative
00:26a few times more before I go back into the studio, trying to be smart and safe about
00:29it. But while I am cooped up down here, I'm just kind of like, there's not much around
00:33so I can't do much with the typical studio stuff. What can I do? And my idea that I had
00:38was I'm going to share some opinions that I have that could be considered hot takes,
00:45some spicy hot takes for you, real things that I actually believe at the end of 2022.
00:51So I haven't done this before, this might ruffle some feathers obviously. I think we've
00:54sort of done a little bit of this on the Waveform podcast, probably a little more actually on
00:58the studio channel. I remember we had a segment where we all gave our tech hot takes. But
01:03you know, forgive the production quality, this is me and a camera and a Yeti mic, which
01:08is not even meant to be held like this. I just happen to have this mic here while I'm
01:12home. So anyway, we'll see if you all agree with me or not on any of this stuff, but let's
01:18just jump right into it. So number one, for me, crypto investing is basically all just
01:26gambling. So look, look, I know I'm supposed to be the tech person. I'm very optimistic
01:30typically about technology. And so I'm always trying to see the potential future of Web3
01:35and NFTs and the blockchain and Bitcoin and Ethereum and all this stuff. But I'd still
01:42consider myself a skeptic because it's so hard to see through all of the noise is what
01:49I think is a charitable way of calling it. So much noise. I actually got asked recently
01:53on Dr. Mike's podcast. And it was funny. That's like one of the first times I've actually
01:56been asked publicly about crypto in a while. But he asked me about what I think about it.
02:01Here's what I said. How involved or interested are you in the NFT space or crypto space?
02:09As close to zero as you can be without being zero. I have to like keep an eye on it, but
02:13I have so much skepticism and like me too. Every time something gets pitched in an inbox
02:18or in person or I see anything, it always just defaults to how much money you can make.
02:24And I need to know some other benefits. Anything tangible, like how useful it'll be. I've seen
02:31a little bit, some whisperings here and there about like, maybe the deed of your house will
02:35be an NFT one day. Maybe. I don't know. I have a safe with a deed in it. I feel like
02:39an old person when I say this, but like, I'm a skeptic.
02:45A thousand percent with you.
02:47And that is still, for me, a hundred percent true. Do I own some crypto still? Yeah, I do.
02:54How much? Doesn't really matter because I can't use it for anything. I mean, you do see the
02:58headlines once in a while, right? Every once in a while, a couple months, you'll see a headline
03:02about a new business that's like starting to accept Bitcoin or Ethereum or some crypto or
03:06something like that. I remember Tesla did this briefly and then they stopped. And I was like,
03:11that headline surfaces every couple months and I notice it and I wait for the fallout and the
03:18continuation, but it just never happens. And so basically what's happened is all of this
03:22promise of like this decentralized world of the future of crypto and NFTs and all of this stuff.
03:28It's just promised for me. And it's all been reduced to like, when I open my inbox and I see
03:33a new crypto pitch every single time, it's just about how much money you can make. If you invest,
03:40if you buy, the price goes up and then you make money. But what else? What other reasons? I need
03:46other reasons. So I'll continue to hold the Bitcoin that I have. It's fine. It's not even
03:51that much. But I think for me, if I can't explain why something is more valuable other than lots of
03:58people are interested in it right now. So it's kind of hot. So the value is up. If there's nothing
04:03else to it, then it's as good as gambling to me. So, OK, number two, my number two hot take
04:10is actually just that TikTok and YouTube can and will coexist. They'll both be completely fine.
04:17Now, maybe this is just a little less spicy than the others. But I mean,
04:20every time I get asked about TikTok, one of the biggest questions I hear a lot is like,
04:23should YouTube be worried? You know, the massive, massive rise of TikTok over the past few years,
04:29especially with the pandemic, has been gargantuan. You feel like it's unavoidable
04:35that this overlap, that TikTok just comes up and just starts eating YouTube's lunch.
04:39But I think the key thing still for YouTube and TikTok is there are such different use cases
04:46that they don't overlap at all. I mean, a tiny bit maybe of your time, but almost not at all.
04:51On YouTube, what's this? A YouTube video, right? You go to YouTube to sit down and actually spend
04:56some time watching a video that you either searched for or was recommended to you on
05:00the homepage and you chose it to watch it. You spend more time per video on YouTube.
05:05It's got a whole search engine attached to it. So you'll find videos based on what you're
05:09interested in. And TikTok is like, I'll sit down and I'll have like two minutes or something and
05:14you'll just open it up and scroll a few times and then close it and that's it. You just get that
05:18quick dopamine burst, that quick adrenaline boost, that instant gratification. And you never
05:23actually choose the videos you want to watch. It just gets sort of served to you.
05:26So it kind of reminds me of like YouTube and Netflix. YouTube is the world's online video
05:32library, but Netflix, while it is technically also an online video library, is different and
05:38you expect different things in different places and so they can coexist and that's totally fine.
05:42That's why I think TikTok's also just going to have a huge separate pie. It's not taking a slice
05:47of YouTube's pie. It's just a new pie. And I think with YouTube Shorts, YouTube responded pretty
05:52correctly in also offering a competing product to TikTok because it is related. And they also
05:58managed to beat TikTok's monetization model right off the bat, very quickly. They offer
06:02revenue sharing as of either right now where they're about to start, where TikTok is still
06:07stuck on the creator pool that everybody draws money from. So bottom line, they're going to be
06:13fine. They're separate pies and you can stop asking me that. That's not that hot of a take
06:17actually. Okay. Number three. Number three. Regular people don't care about panel gaps.
06:26They just don't care. And I'm talking about Tesla right now, of course. So one of the biggest
06:30things you always hear in car reviews when people talk about Tesla and compare it to other cars,
06:34especially, you hear this in the enthusiast community and in reviews a lot, is, oh my God,
06:40the panel gaps. The panel gaps, the build quality in this car is terrible. The gap between the panel
06:46here on the hood and on the door is bigger than this gap between these panels. And it's smaller
06:50than the gap between these panels. It's so inconsistent. It's jarring. It's a poor build.
06:54And that's actually true. That's actually true about Tesla's cars. They're much less consistent
07:02than the manufacturers who have been established and who have learned to refine their processes
07:07over the past 50, 100 plus years. But this to me reminds me of, I'm sure there's an equivalent in
07:13the smartphone world where like reviewers notice this. Maybe it's like refresh rate on screens. I
07:17don't know. Reviewers notice this and really care about it and harp on it a lot. But guess what? At
07:22the end of the day, people are still buying Tesla's and it's just because the panel gaps are so low
07:30on the list of things that you think about when you're buying a car that it happens to still be
07:35fine. Like this is similar with McLaren. McLaren is notorious for obviously other electrical issues
07:40and build quality issues. But McLaren's are all these beautiful hand-built sports cars. And you
07:46often will see sizable gaps, sizable differences and panel gaps on McLaren's. But guess what?
07:53People still love their McLaren's because that is really far down on the list on why someone
07:57was looking at and thinking about buying a 765LT. But the thing is, I want Tesla to get better at
08:02this. Like having panel gaps is not good in your cars. And they've had all kinds of notorious build
08:07quality issues in the past. As they've aged, they got out of building in a tent and they've been
08:13working towards improving on their way to the likes of the German manufacturers and the others.
08:18How do you get around this? And I think really, I look at it like this. This is how I look at it
08:22right now. If you could buy a Model 3, but you had to trade some other feature from the Model 3
08:30from a different car that's really well built. Like, okay, Tesla Model 3 versus Mustang Mach-E.
08:36You could have a Tesla Model 3 with perfect panel gaps. Everything about the build quality of
08:41the car looks like it was built by Ford, but you have to trade something with the Ford.
08:45You trade Tesla's supercharger network and you get Ford's public open access charger network.
08:52Would you take that Tesla? No, actually, I wouldn't. Because obviously, the supercharger
08:57network is a huge part of why people end up buying a Tesla. So okay, what about you get
09:01the perfect Tesla Model 3, but you get the Ford's software? And would you take that? No,
09:09I think most people still would probably take the Tesla with the panel gaps. And you just keep
09:12going down the list. Would you take the Tesla Model 3 with no panel gaps, but trade something
09:16else about it? You find performance. Is it the tires? Is it the paint? Something else about it.
09:20And I think what you'll find is that most people will take the Tesla as is with its current set of
09:24features. So basically, I think Tesla has done the math and they will continue to focus on the
09:29things that they believe are reasons why people do buy their cars. So differentiating themselves on
09:35the battery technology, on the drivetrains, on supercharger network for that matter,
09:41on their software, on all these other things. And the second that panel gaps and manufacturing
09:47issues meaningfully impact their bottom line, then and only then will they make a large concerted
09:53effort towards changing that. Because I think in the meantime, they're just going to slowly
09:57improve in the background. And just as they make more cars, they'll get better at it. Now,
10:00when I do get around to reviewing my Tesla, will I point out the panel gaps? Sure. But I don't think
10:05most people are there to see that. All right, here's my last hot take. Last one is that 5G
10:12sucks. 5G sucks right now. 5G is actually worse than 4G. Do you remember the promise of 5G?
10:195G was supposed, it was going to be this amazing thing with this world changing future. We're going
10:24to have blazing fast internet in the palms of our hands everywhere we go. And there's going to be
10:30no latency anywhere. There's going to be doctors doing robot surgery halfway around the world with
10:37these magic gloves that connect via 5G. All this crazy stuff was going to be promised. Nobody would
10:43ever wait for the buffering of a YouTube video ever again. And the metaverse would finally be
10:48real. All these promises of 5G. And it's turned out, yeah, none of that's happened. None of that's
10:53true yet. Now, not even that is the hot take. I know that we understand that it takes time to
10:57build the infrastructure and it's just not here yet. I did a video a couple of years ago now on
11:02the state of 5G and what that meant. And I would go up to a cell phone tower and I would get actually
11:07one gigabit per second down. But then you'd walk around the corner or behind a tree and you'd get
11:12fractions of that speed. And it's like, okay, clearly you need a ton of those antennas to
11:16cover the entire world for that to be a real possibility in the future. And there's no way
11:20that happens quickly. That's going to require billions and trillions of dollars. So yeah,
11:24we're not there yet. Okay, we get it. But what I'm trying to say is 5G right now is worse than 4G.
11:31It's slower, it's less consistent, and it's more expensive. I think we've seen a lot of carriers,
11:36especially here in the US, for example, we've got T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T. A lot of them,
11:41especially AT&T, are using the low band 5G, not even mid band. And low band 5G can actually feel
11:49slower than 4G right now. And on top of that, there's all these weird shenanigans that they
11:52play with, like the status bar on your phone. I've seen on the iPhone, like 4G, 4G+, 5G, 5GE,
11:595G+, UWB, all these weird titles, and none of them are particularly encouraging. I'll get a 5G
12:05logo on the corner of my phone. I'll do a speed test. It'll be slower than 4G. So 5G at this
12:10point has really just turned into a thing that smartphone manufacturers can point at and be
12:15like, look, our phones are new. This is something that we did that's different from last year.
12:19But really all it's ended up doing is making our phones more expensive, because those radios are
12:23more expensive, making our battery lives worse, because now if you don't have 5G, it's switching
12:28back and forth, and 5G is battery consuming, and making our phone plans more expensive all
12:36at once while giving us not that much of a good experience. So 5G sucks right now. I think also
12:44expectations are the thief of joy, and 5G really sucks because the expectations and the promises
12:49were like way up here, and we're nowhere near that yet. 5G is brutally bad. Hopefully that changes.
12:55I want to be an optimist. I hope a lot of these things change, to be honest. But yeah, those are my
13:00those are my hot takes right now. Here's another hot take. We have the best merch in the entire
13:04YouTube game. I'm wearing the Parallelogram sweatshirt right now, shopped out on kbhd.com,
13:08as I wear the Maddien shirt right over it. Now, that's not a hot take. Everyone knows
13:13we have the best stuff. But anyway, that's been it. Let me know what you think. I promise the next
13:17video will be back to your regularly scheduled programming. I hope to be in the studio soon.
13:21Fun episode of the podcast just went up. Check that out. But in the meantime,
13:25I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.