Tech News Weekly Episode 224 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jason Howell , and I are back in the studio, super excited about that. We start by talking to Rene Ritchie of youtube.com/Rene Ritchie about Apple's upcoming peak performance event. And he gives us a sneak peek of his predictions on what we can expect. Then Sean Hollister of the Verge drives in to tell us about the steam deck from Valve. He's got it in hand and gives us the lowdown on that device. Before we head in with our stories of the week, I talk about Twitter's birdwatch and how it's sort of kind of expanding to more folks. And we get a HandsOn review of the OnePlus buds Z2 from Jason Howell stay tuned. You don't wanna miss it.

... (00:00:46):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:01:04):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 224 recorded Thursday, March 3rd, 2022. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by express VPN. Going online without express VPN is like leaving your laptop exposed at the coffee shop table while you're under the bathroom. Secure your online data today by visit express vpn.com/tnw and get an extra three months free on a one year package

Mikah Sargent (00:01:28):
And buy it pro TV. It pro TV has everything you need to level up your it skills while you enjoy the journey, visit it pro.tv/tn w for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use the code T N w 30 at checkout,

Jason Howell (00:01:47):
And by progress progress has the technology you need to secure, analyze and integrate your applications, network and processes. Find out more and download a free trial at progress.com/twi.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:01):
Hello, and welcome to Tech News Weekly. The show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news coming to you live from the TWI studios. What? Hi am Micah Sergeant

Jason Howell (00:02:13):
I'm Jason, Helen, I, and welcome to 50 people in the audience. You guys thank you so much for coming up. Thank you so much for being here. Actually, this is just three of us, two us two, and then behind the desk, but that's closer. Close enough for me

Mikah Sargent (00:02:26):
That look that's one more audience member, actually, two more audience members at a time than we usually have.

Jason Howell (00:02:31):
Totally, totally.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:32):
My dogs don't count. So they just stare and just so like, why can't we sit on this up? Hey, there's

Jason Howell (00:02:38):
There's now we've got four. All right, we're doing good. Now.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:40):
Now it feels like a true show. My last comedy, fewer people than this anyway let's, let's kick things off with a fun story. Some of you may have heard that Apple's event is right around the corner. We had kind of thought that there was going to be an event on this coming Tuesday, March 8th. But Apple didn't announce it on the, at the normal date and time that it does, which is usually on the Tuesday before the event around 9:00 AM Pacific time. So when that time passed folks thought, Hey, maybe because of what's going on between in Ukraine and Russia, that that could be why Apples, maybe not doing it. Maybe there are some supply chain things who knows, but maybe there won't be an event on March 8th that it would be the Tuesday following that. However, the next day several of us received emails that said, Hey, look, there is going to be an Apple event on March 8th at 10:00 AM Pacific where the tagline was peak performance and that's P E E K as opposed to P E a K performance. Joining us today to give us a prediction preview of the upcoming Apple event is Rene Ritchie. Welcome back to the Renee.

Rene Ritchie (00:04:01):
Always great being here. It's great to see you and Jason, everybody live.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:04):
Yeah, it's good to see you too. All right. So let's kick things off with the, the, the sort of fun thing that folks do. I'm curious, have you seen any reactions to the peak performance title and people kind of trying to read what this invite might be giving a hint at what this invite might be giving a hint? Anything like that?

Rene Ritchie (00:04:27):
Yeah, I mean, I'm just happy. It's not peak as an angry performance because that would be a whole different

Rene Ritchie (00:04:33):
English being a wonderful language. Yeah. I mean, every, every time just to be clear, Apple's graphics, design department doesn't know anything about what's in the event, they just get hit. Like they're just get given a list of things of themes from the marketing department and they make up a cool image. And sometimes in hindsight it's really accurate. And sometimes in hindsight it's not, and this time it's really like a logo you know, that's sort of wa like broadcast waving sound streaming out of the, of the Apple logo, but it's a very, you know, typical Apple logo. It is dark instead of bright, like last year for the April event, it was a white background and the typical six colors of the Apple logo this time, it's black background, really dark logos. And that to me is like pro everything. Apple does. That's dark is pro. Usually the iPhone is bright. And then the iPhone pro is the, the nighttime comes down and pro interfaces are dark where the other ones are more silver pro devices are silver, sorry, or like space gray when the consumer devices are more silver. So maybe it gives us a hint that they're gonna have some pro stuff there, but it's always hard to tell Micah, I just love that every year, no matter what every event, no matter what people think, oh, the glasses are coming, finally, the glasses are

Mikah Sargent (00:05:40):
Coming,

Jason Howell (00:05:41):
But there's something to the perspective of this invite. That's the thing that gets me, right. The animated invite. It it's almost like it moves, it moves in a very VR sort of way. I don't know. And maybe I've just spent too much time inside of a VR Goggle, but they've

Rene Ritchie (00:05:54):
Been doing that though since like for the last two years, they make an, a an AR augmented reality version of whatever logo image they have. Ah, and you can move around and go in and out in, in three dimensions. And then Greg Jos act, their senior vice president of marketing does his from like the top of Apple park or the roof of the ring or the Steve jobs theater just to flex. And everybody goes, oh, wow. It's, it's AR it's, you know, they, they must be doing it this time, but it's, it's really just a, like, I make a fun little Easter egg for everybody.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:19):
They've yeah. They've been doing the, the AR invite for a while. In fact I'll, I'll keep talking while Anthony might be able to go over to my Twitter and see, I took a photo of the augmented reality invite Easter egg dearly sort of sitting on in the background of the shop that I do whenever I'm working from home. So I, I wanna look less at that and more at the the, the tagline here, peak performance. I like this tagline because this is a clever way there, and there's the, the image if you're watching. So essentially you've got that fun portal portal, Apple logo next to a D Mifflin Dundee award from office. And yeah, that was a fun little thing. So this is the most Mica photo I've ever seen. Right? You could go to Apple's website, go to the Apple events page, and basically, could you just tap on the logo?

Mikah Sargent (00:07:09):
And then anyone with at least an iPhone will be iPhone iPad. Those devices will be able to pull that up and do it in their home. But the peak performance, what I think is clever about this is we, this could be any of Apple's devices when they come out with a new device, the performance is improved. So to have this look at the new performance that could apply to anything. And yeah, I don't, I don't think that personally don't think this has anything to do. I know Leo kind of had a thought that maybe this could have something to do because of the word peak AR VR. I still think we're out from that. I think this was just like a look at the next level of performance that we're going to be bringing to the Mac. Although the iPhone se I mean, that is not traditionally a performance device. So will do we still think that the iPhone se is going to be one of the devices announced at this event?

Rene Ritchie (00:08:05):
Yeah. And there's a couple ways that could go. And, you know, I, I agree with you. I think the VR headset is September at the earliest, maybe next year, the AR glasses are much further out, maybe three years out. So those, I think Apple's gonna keep teasing them because they see AR and VR as like L CD and Ola. They're not specific products, they're things that are gonna be in the next decade of products. So they don't mind talking about 'em, but we'll see different products roll out over the years for those, for the iPhone. Se I think the peak performance is gonna translate like three ways. One is just like, everything is gonna get a little bit better. They could put out the iPhone se and the iPad air five in press, nobody would blink. They could also do them as very short segments. The way they'd be doing the $329 iPad, where it gets like three minutes, the, the slide has mostly iOS features on it. Not really cuz you can't fill it out with just the new hardware features, but you get 5g across the line, which is better performance. You get a 15 bionic across the line, which is better performance. And then we get a, we get a look at M two probably because we're 18 months out of M one and that's not pro level performance, but much better entry level performance for everybody.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:11):
Nice. Nice. So let's talk about updates to you. You mentioned the iPad. What, what are the expectations for an iPad at this event?

Rene Ritchie (00:09:23):
Yeah, so we got the iPad air, got their redesign it's redesign in 2020 at the September event. And then the iPad mini got the same redesign last year at the 2021 event, but it also got 5g and it got the AFI 15 and those are two things the air doesn't have. So I think it's really about bringing that up to par getting 5g across the line, which is helpful. I mean, like not everybody's has great 5g service, but they're retiring 3g bands and fi even the low spectrum 5g, the low band 5g, which isn't as fast as even LTE. It is, it is better range. So it helps people. Who've just never, never been delivered on the promise of LTE. And then mid band is getting better and better, which is a bit faster, but again just brings service to more people. So I think that is really gonna be helpful, especially over the next couple of years. And then that chip set is just the latest, greatest chip set. So you're gonna be getting other five years of updates, you know, it'll handle other five years of updates when you buy it and that's important value for people

Mikah Sargent (00:10:19):
Now, the big Kahoona the thing that I know many of us are looking forward to is our updates to the Mac lineup. Can you talk about what different max we could see at this event and sort of what is expected in terms of performance as we peak at this event?

Rene Ritchie (00:10:41):
Yeah, absolutely. So Apple just started rolling out their pro Silicon. We saw that with the M one pro and the M one max last October in the new MacBook pros and that needs to roll out across the Mac minis. The highend Mac mini is still on Intel across the IMAX because the high end iMac is still on Intel and the Mac pro is still on Intel. So they've gotta do all those three. I think at least we'll see the Mac mini, if nothing else this year. So if this month we'll see the Mac mini on the M one pro and the M one max, which like the Alex Lindsay types are just gonna light up all over. And then probably the iMac pro and the Mac pro WWDC you know, and, and later, and then M two, which is basically M one was based on the a 14 bionic and M two is probably gonna be based on the a 15.

Rene Ritchie (00:11:25):
And that means the efficiency cores are gonna be quite a bit faster. The performance cores are gonna be quite a bit more efficient and the graphics cores are way, way better twice the system level cash. So it is a faster cooler chip. It's not gonna have as many cores as the pro machines. That's the big differentiator is they have still, you know, eight cores instead of 10 and another eight cores instead of 32 that you get on the M one max. So they're not gonna be great for like multi multithreaded pro workloads, but they'll be much better, much cooler, much more efficient for devices like a colorful Mac mini or, you know, maybe towards the end of the year, a whole new designed smaller MacBook error.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:04):
And then we also have the, the it's likely that we'll see the official launch date, the introduction of the next version of iOS 15. And we don't, oh, I, I wanna be clear. This is not the time. Whenever we'll see iOS 16, it's just simply a point release, but this release has quite a few different features in it that I know I have been testing. My co-host on Iowas today. Rosemary orchard has been testing. What can folks look forward to in the next version of iOS? And do we think that the iPhone se should that be announced that that launch date will correspond with the launch date of the next version of iOS?

Rene Ritchie (00:12:46):
My guess is that we'll get the new versions of iOS. I iPad OS on that day, you know, they'll just be, I dunno whether they're gonna say it, but they'll just make 'em available because the last beta was pretty much felt like a release candidate. I don't know if they have to give developers like a week or something just to finalize it. But to me that that's just good to go and shipping the new devices on that. When, when it's not like the new iPhone new iPhone gets like two weeks, you they're gonna like, the pre-orders is gonna be two weeks, almost everything else Apple says they're available today, go pre order. It we're living in the 2020s. So who knows exactly what the supply chains look like and who knows if you don't order the minute they're available, how long that's gonna project out to. But I think, I, I think a lot of stuff is gonna hit us right away at the event.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:27):
All right. Well, Rene Ritchie, of course always appreciate you joining us here on Tech News Weekly. Of course folks can and head to youtube.com/Rene Ritchie to check out your great work. Is there anywhere else they should go to follow you online

Rene Ritchie (00:13:41):
Mac break weekly right here on Twitter, every Tuesday with Andy and NACO Leo and Alex Lindsay.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:46):
Awesome. Thank you, Renee. We appreciate

Jason Howell (00:13:48):
It. Thank you, Renee.

Rene Ritchie (00:13:49):
Thanks guys. Great to see you.

Jason Howell (00:13:51):
Good to see you too. We'll see you soon. All right. Up next. This the, was it worth the wait kind of sounds like maybe a little bit not, I don't know, but people are really excited about it. So we're gonna talk about it with Sean Hollister from the Verge. But first this episode of technic weekly is brought to you by the VPN that I use express VPN using the internet without express VPN is like leaving your laptop, exposed at the coffee shop table, right? Your, your computer's open, your laptop's open, whatever, and you decide, I need to go to the bathroom. And then you assume that things are gonna be fine, right? But what if one day you come back from the bathroom and you realize it's gone. Things are not fine. Well you can apply that to, you know, browsing the web.

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Jason Howell (00:16:17):
Another thing that I noticed with other VPNs, I don't experience that with express VPN secure your online data today by visiting express vpn.com/tnw. That is, and I'll spell it out. E X, P R E S S VPN express, vpn.com/tnw. And you can get an extra three months free when you go to that URL. It also lets them know that you heard about it through Tech News Weekly express vpn.com/tnw. And we thank them for their support of this show. All right, gamers have been super excited about the release of Valves, steam deck for a while. Been hearing about it for a long time. And in the past week, we've actually seen some of these reviews finally hitting the web for the first time after all of this weight, does it actually you know, live up to the its promise, what people are really excited about? Well, Sean Hollister is here from the Verge, spend a ton of time with the steam deck and joins to talk about it. Welcome back. Sean's good to have you back.

Sean Hollister (00:17:16):
Hi, thanks for having me. How's it going?

Jason Howell (00:17:17):
It's going awesome. And even better to have you on today. So thank you. So first of all, let's start with kind of the promise of the steam deck. What is so different about this device that has had gamers really getting excited about the, the potential of,

Sean Hollister (00:17:35):
To talk about the steam deck. You really gotta start talking about the Nintendo switch today is actually the five year anniversary of the Nintendo switch came out, May 3rd of what was it? 2017

Jason Howell (00:17:44):
That blows my mind. And I saw that headline today. I was like, no, it hasn't been five years,

Sean Hollister (00:17:49):
Five years crazy. Five years. Yeah. And the thing the switch did right away was it took this idea of you can play a big sprawling game and it let you do that on the go. And we'd had game boys before that we'd had Nintendo DSS, we'd had a variety of competitors, but here was something you could take your big games on the go like Zelda. You can then plug that into your TV, output that on a big screen. And it feels like a full console with full console controls, even though you can take it with you. And so what a bunch of gamers started doing including myself is they said, wow, this allows me to play a lot of games, other play that I wouldn't be able to before. It gives me more time to play games. I'm gonna start asking companies to put games there. I'm gonna wait to buy them until I can get them there. And that is great. If you've got money to build a new switch library, but what's say you've already got a gigantic library of PC games on steam, the largest digital distribution platform for PC games. What if you could have a, a Nintendo switch that is also a PC. And so that is what this steam deck is. And I almost just hit myself in the face with it,

Jason Howell (00:18:57):
Which wouldn't be too difficult, cuz it's gigantic.

Sean Hollister (00:19:00):
It's big, it's big. Let's actually show you that for a moment. So this is this is the original Nintendo switch and let me get the reflection off there and the original Nintendo switch. And this is the steam deck. Oh wow. And I can, I can completely cover and, and basically fit the entire switch into the grips of this thing because it is, oh, kidding. So much bigger,

Jason Howell (00:19:20):
Much bigger than I

Sean Hollister (00:19:21):
Thought. Yeah. You know,

Jason Howell (00:19:22):
It is portable. I mean, it's still portable though. Right. And that's, that's kind of the promise, right? Is that it is a portable device. It might be a little bit larger than the switch, but you can still totally throw that in the backpack and have a gaming PC in a portable form factor. So you started your piece by acknowledging that you on one hand it's is a dichotomy between being insanely fun. You enjoyed it obviously, and a total mess. So, so talk a little bit about those, those stark differences.

Sean Hollister (00:19:56):
Yes. Yes. So when you play games on this thing that are designed to work on a console and, and actually run on this system and you just get into those games, most of them, when they, when they work, they work really well. And the controls just melt into my hands and the speakers sound great. And the, and the screen is pretty decent and there's, it, it just, it's just right. It just feels right. And then when they don't work, which is very often and when they're bugs that crop up which was incredibly a often during my review process getting a little bit better you're completely frustrated. Well, why am I beta testing this thing for Valve? And it's okay for me to beta test this thing for Valve, I guess a little bit, because I'm a reviewer I expect, you know, I'm, I'm gonna see some issues when I'm reviewing products, but, but they're selling this thing now.

Sean Hollister (00:20:51):
They're, they're not this isn't a preview of a device that's going out, you know, months and months later, people are starting to get these in their hands already. They put down money for it. And the nice thing about this, one of the huge things going in the steam deck favor is that it's only $400 at the entry level, top set at $650 for the highest end configuration. So it is not a lot of money compared to the amount of performance you're getting. And so I was jazzed during this review. Oh my gosh, I'm playing these games really well. It's like PS four quality in the Palm of my hand, Palm of two hands that are very carefully holding this thing. I'm above my head in bed. So it land on my face, but okay. But yes, that's a lot of power to be carrying around with me and way the heck more than the switch.

Sean Hollister (00:21:37):
I mean, I played games on this, like the witchers three, which you can see side by side on a switch and, and this console and it's night and day, how much graphical, how much more graphical quality you're getting compared to an Nintendo switch, but the switch, you pop a game into it. And it works every time. And the controls are just there and they work every time. And the deck, some games won't work because it's a Linux operating system on this console. Instead of windows where the games are based. And sometimes there are issues that they use or interface, which it felt like they were changing every moment right down to the review date right down to our embargo date. They were, they, we got multiple updates a day for this console. We got they, they would break new things when they were fixing old things.

Sean Hollister (00:22:25):
Sometimes I would pop in it one, one when cool thing about the system. So you can just swap in a new SD card full of games. So the Nintendo switch, you put a cartridge in here, you get one game per cartridge, unless you're willing to put all of your games on internal storage, download them and buy them as digital games from the E shop here, you can pop in an Nintendo on a micro SD card. And instead of one Nintendo switch game, you get 12 PC games or however many you fit on the SD card. I've got a 400 gigabyte SD card here, nearly doubling the size of the internal storage loads of games on it's great. But sometimes they just wouldn't show up. I pop the card in the games would not be there. I'd have to restart the whole system.

Jason Howell (00:23:04):
Oh, that's bizarre. So, okay. So some of these issues, as far as games, either not working properly on the device, not appearing, I mean, it's, is it safe to say that this is, this is stuff that will be addressed by Valve going forward so that, you know, if you buy the steam deck in say six months or a year, it's, it's more likely that like your entire library is going to work or is it just kind of the reality that some games at the end of the day are gonna work here really well and some games aren't gonna work at all, and that's just kind of what you get for what they've created.

Sean Hollister (00:23:38):
I would say that the compatibility they've already built is really impressive. I would say that two thirds or more of the games that I have tried on this and wanted to work have worked. The exceptions are games that have anti cheat software that isn't quite compatible with Linux. And they had to do some workarounds and they're relying on developers to like implement those workarounds. There's some issues there, but the compatibility was already good. During the review process, it's getting better. Some big games have been unlocked since my review. Like you can play apex legends on this system. Now you can play Eldon ring. The brand new from software game. Persona four golden was, was a game that did not work on Linux versus the windows compatibility layer for ye years. And all of a sudden they said, okay, we know we're pushing out this piece of hardware.

Sean Hollister (00:24:30):
We want this to be a great experience. We know people care about that game. We're gonna make that game work and they did. And so that's happening Valve says, and you can, you can decide whether you believe them or not. But Valve says, this is going to be a multi-generational thing. They want to not only improve this system, but they want to build out other portable game systems down the road, including, you know, esteem, deck two. They haven't said the word steam deck two, but they're basically saying, we're gonna build a steam deck two. We're gonna keep this going. We're going to let let other companies freely use our software so they can build their own portables around this. They are in invested at the end of the day in steam in having an ecosystem of games and having a storefront that generates a lot of revenue for them by selling games to you digitally. And there's, they're threatened a little bit by the Nintendo switch. The fact that I was not buying my games for PC anymore, because I wanted to take them with me. Now, there's a way for them to do that. They claw back that revenue

Jason Howell (00:25:27):
Stream. That's huge. Yeah. That's a, that's a really great point right there. So if you had to, you know, name a game or two that you felt were like the shining example of, of this device proving itself, like, you know what I mean, at the end of the day, this I could play this particular game and that is amazing. It was enjoyable. It just worked like what would a game or two be you know, out of

Sean Hollister (00:25:54):
Your experience. Yeah. Let me give you three examples really quickly. Let's let's go from, let's go high end and then like low end as well. So at the high end, this can play Eldon ring, which is a game that literally just came out. Yeah, it's a, Alling epic adventure from the folks who built, brought us dark souls. It's this it's this fantasy. It's great. The graphics are, are, are solid. It is, it is a game that it's the kind of game that you would generally not be able to run on a very low end PC you'd need to get a decent system, not a high end system, but a decent system run this and it plays here. Control is a game from, I believe a 2018. It's got all kinds of physics. You can, you can, it's got telekinesis so you can pull objects out of the world and throw debris across things.

Sean Hollister (00:26:39):
And, and things will splinter everywhere. As you're trying to navigate this, this mystery and this kind of this anyway, it is a very, very mysterious like sci-fi game where you're exploring this anyhow. So that, that works brilliantly well on here, but also some Indy games. I was playing into the breach on here, which is a game that I, I, I typically only play in little bite size chunks. Now I'm playing it here all the time. I got sucked in for a couple hours. Vampire survivors is an early access game that just recently came out on PC. It's the kind of game where I would used to, I would used to say, I'm gonna wait for it to come out and switch. And I just bought it here and I'm like, okay. And now I'm just playing it on the deck. It's great.

Jason Howell (00:27:20):
Nice, nice. Now, one of the other concerns, questions that I have of course is the quality of the controller and not just the controller, but the fact that, you know, most of these games that you're talking about, if they're made for the PC, it's pretty safe to say they're made for a much larger screen than what you have on a portable device. So a lot of the menus, the, you know, the potentially the touch points, you know, these things, it that we totally take for granted on a large screen, you shrink that down into a small screen, and I'm sure that you run into unintentional issues as a result. So how is that part of the experience, both, both, you know, interacting with this large screen game on a smaller screen, and then also kind of the control mechanism, you know, you're not using a mouse anymore, you're using a handheld controller. Like, what was that like for you?

Sean Hollister (00:28:10):
Yeah. I'm gonna try to pull up an example while we talk, assuming it's still on here because there's a, there's a great illustration of that. Okay. So here's the let's take a moment, but I'm gonna launch the original portal and I'm gonna launch into the breach for you as a couple examples of this. And so basically one of the important things going in here is that Valve wants you to be very aware of whether a game's gonna run well on steam deck before you buy it, hopefully makes sense before you spend the time downloading it even. So it's got some compatibility checkers and it's library. And one of the things that looks for is explicitly whether the UI is going to be large enough. And so what they've been doing very recently, and this is, this is very recently since my review, even they've gone back and they've added high higher resolution and also, but larger user interfaces.

Sean Hollister (00:28:58):
I don't know if you can see that, oh yeah. Too. So much of their games. This game did not used to have a menu with large text. Oh, this was designed for screens. That'd be close to your face. They've done that with portal. They've done that with halflife. The other thing is they have, they, they will certify whether the default controls and the default graphics configurations will work on this. So the idea is, and this is not always true in many cases, it's not true, but for games that they have verified that the idea is that you will just in install, it you'll buy it, you'll install, it, you'll play it. And it'll just work. And there's some wiggle room there, and then they need to work on it more. There's some work that they need to do, but in many cases, it's true.

Sean Hollister (00:29:37):
But the other thing about this is you have a tremendous array of control. So this thing has these touch pads, which are a carryover from the steam controller, a failed kind of a failed peripheral for them that they launched a number of years back with the steam machines. It was a cult classic, and a lot of people glued onto it because it had these amazing track pads. And so what these are is they are a virtual track ball. I don't wanna say a mouse because they don't act like a mouse. Like you can fling these across the screen. Oh. And you can feel the momentum of a virtual ball beneath your fingers because they have these linear actuators beneath them that can provide vibration and sensation. And it's not a lot, like you're not gonna like feel textures or anything like that, but you can feel that something is moving beneath it.

Sean Hollister (00:30:22):
Something is going on and it's great. It's also got the new, it's also got analog sticks on both sides now, D ad and buttons, not only triggers and bumpers, like you'd find an Xbox controller, but also these back buttons. I love to be able to just have those under my fingers, keep my thumbs on the sticks. I never have to take them off my thumbs off the sticks cause I can just press these buttons and these buttons instead of reaching for the face buttons, that's super handy. And gyroscopic aiming is huge too. So in a lot of games, you're like, okay, well, if I want to get precision control over a cursor game, a point and click game or a shooter, I'm gonna have to like move a joystick carefully with my, you know, my Xbox controller and hope that the auto aim is good enough to get me in the right place.

Sean Hollister (00:31:04):
Well here, not only do you have the touch pad for some of that accuracy to give you kind of a, a direct control over the cursor, but you can also have this gyroscopic aiming where if you let, just leave your thumb on the thumbs stick or leave it on the touch pad, you can get the cursor to move around an haven't enabled in this game, but you can get the cursor to move around that way as well. So you just tilt the system, various directions and for fine control over the cursor or the aiming radical, super handy.

Jason Howell (00:31:33):
Dang. Yeah. This thing. Okay. I, I find myself as you're talking about it, like totally forgiving a lot of the negatives, a lot. Sounds like it, it promises and delivers a lot, even if it doesn't deliver everything.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:47):
Yeah. A lot more features than I expected. I didn't know that about the, the touch pads with the little actuators underneath. So it's clear that there was more thought put into it than just let's make a portable method of letting people play games. It's like, let's make a portable console for people to play games, but also let's think about very, very much think about the way that people use these different kinds of input methods and try to pack that all into one device. That's pretty impressive.

Sean Hollister (00:32:20):
Yeah. I think, I think all the problems in the steam deck are solved. The question is how long is it gonna take to solve them? Will Valve solve all of them with the first revision, the first hardware that people are buying you know, how long are they going to commit to this? If it turns out not to be a success. Now they're saying, you know, they've shipped, they're shipping tens of thousands that they might be. I think, I think there's some suggestion they might have sold in the million already. We don't have firm data on that, but you know, if, if it's success, of course they'll wanna keep going with it and make sure that, you know, people are taken care of. If it isn't though, I, I would still say that Valve's track record is decent. The steam controller and the steam link, which was an HDM.

Sean Hollister (00:33:04):
I streaming puck that they released a number of years back. Those kept getting updates. I think that the link might still be getting updates after they was clear, they weren't gonna be a success after they stopped going on sale. You know, they sold out of these things and they were like, okay, we, we believe in this, we're gonna keep support ordering it. We're gonna keep pushing out new fixes and features. So decent track record. Then again, if you look at the desktop version of steam it, it is, it is, it has a lot of power user features in this platform that people are using to launch their games on pace. A but it's also very messy and has been for a very long time. I think Valve cares a little bit more in general, about power users than they do about creature comforts, pick up and play. It just works kind of mentality. And so this is a bit of a change for them to say that they're doing that and I'm eager to see if they follow through.

Jason Howell (00:33:55):
Yeah. Interesting. I'm so happy that we were able to bring you on today. This was fascinating. And I think we will go a long way, you know, your review and others go a long way to, you know, obviously illustrating the downsides, but illustrating the potential and why a device like this needs to exist. So wanna thank you for coming on with us today. Sean Hollister is senior reports, editor at the Verge. You're awesome. Sean, where can people follow you online?

Sean Hollister (00:34:22):
Yeah, I'm at Verge.com. I'm at Starfire 2, 2 58 on Twitter.

Jason Howell (00:34:26):
I love it. All right. Thank you, Sean. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.

Sean Hollister (00:34:30):
Thanks for having me. All

Jason Howell (00:34:31):
Right, bye.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:31):
Thanks so much up next Twitter sort of, kind of rolls out its fact checking features to more people. But first this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by it pro TV. You know it pro TV. Are you thinking about getting your CCNA certification? Well, having your CCNA shows, you're knowledgeable in networking fundamentals in IP services in security fundamentals, automation, and programability it. Pro TV has the classes and skills you need in everything. The month of March is dedicated to Cisco at it pro TV. So you can check out their free weekend. That's from March 19th to the 20th, which includes courses, Cisco CCT, routing and switching, Cisco CCNA, Cisco cyber ops associates, Cisco CCNP, enterprise Encore, Cisco CCNP enterprise, and NACY that's E N a R S I and Cisco CCNP security score. That's S C O R and last Cisco CCNP security, S N CF, Cisco certified DevNet associate.

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Mikah Sargent (00:36:28):
You can check out the Cisco NA a S webinar featuring Anthony Sequi. So check those out for sure. And don't forget your I T team needs to level up and enjoy the journey. So check out an it pro TV business plan for your team today, visit it pro.tv/tnw for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use the code T N w 30, that's it pro.tv/tnw and use code T N w 30 for an additional 30% off for the lifetime of your active subscription, it pro TV build or expand your it career and enjoy the journey. Thanks so much to it. Pro TV for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly and for prepping people for that Cisco career. Thank you so much. All right. So Twitter, back in early January of 2021, it was they announced it on January 25th, 2021.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:28):
They came out with this feature called birdwatch birdwatch was a set of features that would allow into the, of jewel who use Twitter to be able to go in and sort of fact check tweets. So what would happen is you find a tweet and it maybe doesn't have all the context that you think that the tweet should have. Someone can go on to that tweet and sort of add notes to it, pin some notes to it and say, Hey here, why I think that this needs some more information. So an example would be someone saying white chocolate is chocolate. That is the answer. And then I would go on there and say, as a bird watcher, I would clip a note to that from like the international chocolate association that says chocolate is not chocolate because it contains no cocoa solids. And therefore it is not a chocolate, that's some context then someone who's a liar might come on there and share a, an a link from some goof who says the white chocolate is a chocolate because it has the word chocolate in the title. Obviously I'm very right in that situation and the other person is very wrong, but

Jason Howell (00:38:42):
There are some things that obviously you feel strongly about this. I feel very strongly about this, but you're right. 

Mikah Sargent (00:38:46):
Thank you. But there are some some, some examples of course, that have much more clarity and what's nice is that there's actually a, and I'm, I'm trying to find it now. I think anybody can go to the birdwatch dot twitter.com I think is, is what it is. And it will let you kind of see overall what, and yeah, I'm trying to make sure that that's what it is. There is a way to go

Jason Howell (00:39:22):
That takes you there. I believe twitter.com/i/birdwatch is what it results to

Mikah Sargent (00:39:26):
That's. Yes. Perfect. So this gives you some examples of different tweets that have gone out where people have left comments. So one is recently vice president Kamala Harris was talking to a group of kindergartners about about Ukraine and Russia. And there was a very simplified explanation of Ukraine and Russia, and what's going on there. And that quote was taken out of context to give people it seemed as if she was saying that to just everybody and this very simple, simple, simple quote. And so someone added some notes to kind of clarify, one person said the lacks context, Kamala Harris was visiting a kindergarten and was asked by the teacher to explain a complex political issue to six year olds. And she did well someone left a note on that to talk about how this was actually part of a response to a layperson who was asking the question.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:28):
And so, and it also included a link to kind of give more information about that. So basically it gives people the ability to learn a little bit more about if they, rather than taking that first bit of knowledge. And I think that's super important when it comes to the way that we as humans kind of absorb information. Because a lot of times what ends up happening is you read something at some point and you lose the original context for that factoid, that bit of data, but to hold onto that bit of data. And so you go on and you may tell other people it and forget kind of where you got that data point, what the situation was when you were reading about it. And so that is a, a way that misinformation. And remember, we talked about the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is spreading false falsehoods, but not with the intention of spreading falsehoods. You believe it's true.

Jason Howell (00:41:27):
You see a thing you're like, it need, need to retreat that

Mikah Sargent (00:41:30):
You treat

Jason Howell (00:41:31):
It without thinking, and you don't realize that

Mikah Sargent (00:41:32):
You're spreading exactly information. Whereas disinformation is purposely spreading false information, you know, it's not true, but you spread it anyway. So that can be very helpful with that Twitter recently, and this is the, the new story, the new part of it where Twitter has now after having this in a PA pilot program for so long gone and made available not birdwatch itself, cuz you had to sign up for birdwatch if you wanted to be a part of it. And then they let some people in to kind of join the group of people who were going in and tagging these tweets and leaving notes. But what they're doing right now is they opened up those notes to a random group of people in the United States. So there are and I'm trying to find now where it is the number of people that they are opening.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:27):
It's a starting today, a small and randomized group of people on Twitter in the us will see birdwatch notes directly on some tweet. They'll also be able to rate those notes, providing input that will help bird watch's ability to add context that is helpful, helpful from different points of view. So what's important to understand is that this is not adding more people to birdwatch. This is not more people being able to go in and add notes. This is simply letting those notes be seen by more people so that they can get the context there. So all very interesting. I did sign up. Yeah, I just

Jason Howell (00:43:02):
Signed up, I was able to sign

Mikah Sargent (00:43:03):
Up right now. Nice. I signed up originally for it to be one of those fact checkers. Just because occasionally there are times where you go, oh yeah, I'd love to add some context to that. And so there is an option to join and then they will notify you, should you be included? They will, th this is interesting because it's not just an automated process. There is some kind of investigation that takes place to get an understanding of who you are based on how you tweet and what information you've shared in the past, et cetera. But this whole conversation led me to think about something that I have seen a lot more recently than I ever have. And I believe it was even just last week on this show. And it may have been two weeks ago, but the week where we talked to mark Garman about the the Amazon Astro robot and how that was last week.

Mikah Sargent (00:43:57):
Yeah, last week. So we talked to mark Garman of Bloomberg about the Amazon TRO robot and how some people asked to be part of this process. So you would go on to Amazon's day one editions page sign up, and then later Amazon would invite you to purchase the product and then be able to have it before anyone else. And one of the things that mark had talked about, he's like, look, these folks, in many cases, they buy the product and they may not. Cuz the whole idea is that you get the product and then you send Amazon feedback so they can get an idea of what it's like, what works, what doesn't, but they had to buy the product in the first place. It wasn't that it was given to them in exchange for providing feedback, you have to buy it. And they also expect you to provide feedback for

Jason Howell (00:44:45):
It. Right? It's like you have to do the work after you pay the money. Exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:49):
And so there is sort of a trend of these companies and this isn't and I like, I wanna be clear this isn't an exact comparison here because you're not buying anything with this example, but a really interesting comparison in tech companies where or trend rather in tech companies where they have users who are paying customers or customers doing the work without pay. And it's like, it it's sort of in the vein of having this sort of volunteer experience, it's you know, oh, you get to it's or the exclusive experience in the case of Amazon, you have to buy the product within, they want you to do the work of being a tester for it. In this case, Twitter has over and over again, been criticized for its its poor handling of, of misinformation, the spread of a misinformation and also bullying and, and all of that kind of stuff, the abuse that exists on the platform.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:50):
And so the they've offered this potential solution, but it's left on the users of the platform to do these things and to make this possible. And I find it really interesting how we continue to see this and see this kind of climb of companies going, yeah, we'd like for you to do this and there are enough people out there that they, that wanna volunteer that want to do it and are okay with that. But it does make you kind of go, you know, Hmm, is this, is this right? Is this sort of something that Twitter should be doing itself, like should hire its own employees to do this, or is the idea that we value this service enough that it's sort of this community built service, right. That everybody is in on making it. But the problem there is that, well, there are some people who are getting paid, you know, to, to, to keep Twitter afloat, the developers and the folks who work for Twitter.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:49):
And so should it not be their job given that they're paid to do it versus someone out in the world who is, is, is doing this thing. So I'm, I'm curious about your thoughts on that because you just signed up for it. I signed up for it. I'm okay. Doing it. I just think as a whole, I do have that question of like, is this right? Should we be doing this? Or should this be something that Twitter should do given that it serves ads to us and make money off of us as users, then it's also asking us to fix its platform.

Jason Howell (00:47:19):
Yeah. Who's gonna do this. You know,

Mikah Sargent (00:47:21):
Who of

Jason Howell (00:47:22):
All the people that sign up, there's gonna be a smaller percentage of people that actually do something with, with that. And you know, there, there's actually also some kind of like self education that comes out of something like something like this in particular. Right. whether whether it's right or wrong for Twitter to do it, it does enable people to kind of like flex that muscle of critical thinking yes. Around this stuff. I think there's some,

Mikah Sargent (00:47:47):
What's the term that 

Jason Howell (00:47:48):
A

Mikah Sargent (00:47:49):
Sift sift. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Howell (00:47:50):
Right. So it, so it definitely gives people an opportunity to, and a reason and almost an assignment to practice that. Yeah. Whether Twitter should be paying for it, you know, people to do this internally or not, that's at least I, I suppose a a silver lining as far as that's concerned, but what comes for me because I'm an Android guy and you know, I followed Google for however long is just the fact that, that I'm beat down on this to a certain degree because man Google's been doing this forever. Right. Like Google has been releasing products and services and everything under the, and, and it's a very developer driven company. Yeah. And so they do it under the guise of, yes, nothing's perfect. You're gonna help us beta test this

Mikah Sargent (00:48:36):
Gmails and beta for

Jason Howell (00:48:37):
Years. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And we all, we all were okay with it because it gave us early access or, you know, we kind of feel special. Yes. We feel special. And, and that ends up being a, a part of the trade off. Right? Yeah. Like when I went to this URL and saw the joint thing, I was like, oh, I can join. Okay. I will. I put no thought into whether I was gonna actually contribute or anything. I, of course I'm also doing a show. So I'm thinking about other things, but I immediately jumped on board because I was like, well, I've got the opportunity. So of course I will. And so I don't know. That's, that's what kind of

Mikah Sargent (00:49:12):
Comes up? Is it a dark pattern, the psychology of the join button, the psychology of, of the exclusivity age.

Jason Howell (00:49:19):
Oh, totally. I think there's something to that. Yeah, absolutely.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:22):
That's, that's the part where I do feel a little bit because time is the one thing except for the, you know, the, the time traveler that exists somewhere in this world, it's like somewhere, not for me, but for everybody else, time is the one thing they can't get back. And so people are spending their time doing this. And it is, there is a part of me that feels kind of weird about a company that is making money off of us, of these other ways. Yeah. Having us then do this work, but you're so right for me, I, the value that I would get from something like this is I just love learning new things in general. Sure. And so if I can take that drive that I have to learn new things and also help other people in theory, get the actual truth of a, a situation then that's that's value to me. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:50:15):
That's

Mikah Sargent (00:50:15):
So it works for me in that way.

Jason Howell (00:50:16):
For sure. And if you're, if you are in this case, if you are a, a big time Twitter user, you know, as a Twitter user, I want the platform to improve. Yes. I want it to be better. So this is a, this is an opportunity, I suppose, you know, again, is it an opportunity?

Mikah Sargent (00:50:31):
I don't know, join joining the club

Jason Howell (00:50:33):
For some, this will be an opportunity for them to actually to learn a little something about their own usage of Twitter and also improve the platform that they love so much. Yeah. Or that they use so much

Mikah Sargent (00:50:44):
Twitter send me a birdwatch membership, ship jacket, and suddenly I'm like, okay, I'm good.

Jason Howell (00:50:51):
They'll they'll give you an octagonal profile photo so you can feel, feel special. Yes,

Mikah Sargent (00:50:55):
Exactly. Oh

Jason Howell (00:50:57):
Boy. Right on. Well up next, I'm gonna review these little guys, the OnePlus buds, Z two wireless earbuds. I've been testing these out for a little while. And so why I want to give you my thoughts on them. But first this episode of tech weekly is brought to you by progress. Progress has been enabling enterprise experiences for decades and has assembled the technologies that are, are gonna empower businesses to thrive in a post COVID world, kind where we're headed right now. Most companies don't have the resources to invest in tech as digital Goliaths. They actually need to use technology to create differentiation with a smaller investment, and they can achieve this by turning to progress as their trusted provider with progress. Any organization can actually achieve the level of differentiation that is critical in today's business environment, whether you happen to be an it professional who's, you know, concerned about networking and infrastructure security and compliance or enabling web and digital experiences.

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Jason Howell (00:53:06):
You can find more and download a free trial at.com/twi. You don't wanna miss out visit progress.com/twi for your very own progress swag back. Thank you so much to progress for their support of this show. So, yeah, so I have here the OnePlus buds Z two one plus sent me a pair of these four of you. I actually have them inside the case here, and I've been using these for a while. I've I've over the last several years, used so many Bluetooth wireless earbuds. And so I'm always curious to kind of see where we're at, where the trends are heading, and these are only a hundred dollars. So these are pretty inexpensive in the realm of wireless in comparison. Yeah. I mean, you could go on to Amazon and you could find like 20, 30, $50 earbuds, but what you're gonna get for a hundred dollars here, you're gonna get some of the features that we're starting to see in the top of the line, earbuds things like active noise cancellation.

Jason Howell (00:54:02):
Okay. Okay. So for a hundred dollars it a and C on these earbuds, one thing to consider though, is that some of the features that you get out of these are only available on OnePlus devices. So they're only available when you're paired with OnePlus device, and it's not that that's abnormal. Apple does this with AirPods, you know there's certain features that work between an iPhone and AirPods. Samsung does this with their buds as well. But so OnePlus is kind of doing the same thing here. And I'll, and I'll name some of those, but you can kind of see, I always like to start with a case cuz the case is, you know, you interact with it so often. Exactly. Right. And I kinda like that it's at like a long slender type case instead of a really big, you know, thing that that is gonna fit strangely into your pocket. My, my one kind of criticism is that it's so slippery. Like it's, it does

Mikah Sargent (00:54:53):
Look super SLE and slippery. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:54:54):
It is. And like getting it open sometimes. And I mean, even the earbuds are kind of like a shiny plastic, but you know, it took me a while to kind of like when I have it in my ear like this, and then I go to put it in here. It took me a while to kind of get it. It sounds so petty, but get this like this like wrist flip action to get it to fit in there properly. But it snaps in with the magnet nicely and everything. The case itself is I P X four rated. So that basically is just like splashing water essentially, which is probably all you really need on a case you do have the USBC charging port in the back. It is not wireless charging supported, but again, you know, any of those, like it doesn't have this, it doesn't have that consider that you're spending a hundred dollars.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:37):
You know, I'm just glad it's USBC and not micro

Jason Howell (00:55:39):
Us hall. Totally. Yeah. And OnePlus has been doing that with their recent with their earbuds for a couple of years now. Thankfully they've been pretty good on the, the transition to us. See the bud design themselves. I mean, I feel like, you know, I haven't used an AirPods pro, but I feel like they have a very similar kind of footprint to the AirPods pro I have used some of their previous, the, the OnePlus buds Z before them. And this stem was definitely a little bit longer. So they've shortened the stem, any of the interaction that you're gonna gonna do with this ear, bud is done on this flat surface right here. So, you know, tap to do different things, which is fine, except that there is no volume control on the tap controls. And I don't know. Does do the AirPods have volume control on the air, on the touch?

Mikah Sargent (00:56:23):
Not the, yeah, no. The AirPods pro the, the stem is, it has a little force sensor in it, so you squeeze it, it just does play pause, and then you can tap and hold to trigger Siri. Now I am curious, is it capacity touch or is it vibration? What, what is it that actually is working there on the side? What makes it,

Jason Howell (00:56:47):
Oh yeah, it's a capacitive touch surface

Mikah Sargent (00:56:48):
Because I don't like there are this

Jason Howell (00:56:51):
Is the air pods pro I believe. So you have the stem look at

Mikah Sargent (00:56:54):
The, and the former identical, the former AirPods before the AirPods pro came. They had that, or actually, I can't remember if it was them, but there are several pairs of headphones where it is sort of a it's I think it's, it's a little accelerometer or something inside, so you have to

Jason Howell (00:57:12):
Like make it move. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (00:57:13):
But when you do that against your ear, you can hear every single Baba pop as you're trying to make the sound

Jason Howell (00:57:18):
Well. And not only that, these things fit into your ear canal, any sort of movement kind of shake, not loose, you know, and some of your buds are resilient to that sort of thing. Others, you don't want to, you know, once you have it firmly a place, you really don't wanna mess with it exactly. As far as that's concerned. So yeah, I mean the, the touch sensitivity is fine. I just, I've used buds that do allow for volume control enough so that I'm really used to it. And so when I don't have access to that, even in the control, even in the settings, which there is an app that you can use to kind of customize some of the touch controls and everything, but you can't set volume control as a function. And that is something that I totally would set up if I had the ability. So I guess I knock it, but apparently, you know, I just assumed that the AirPods could do that,

Mikah Sargent (00:58:03):
But they're very into you using for things. So you can say, got it set the volume to 75, or turn up the volume

Jason Howell (00:58:09):
Down the volume. That's something you can do. Wait, what what's that? That's something that you can do scooter

Mikah Sargent (00:58:14):
X in the chat. I don't, am I wrong, Anthony? I didn't think you could adjust volume with your air pump if

Jason Howell (00:58:21):
You could then that's news

Mikah Sargent (00:58:22):
Toil. Yeah. Okay.

Jason Howell (00:58:24):
Okay. Well, we might I'd have a, maybe

Mikah Sargent (00:58:26):
The support document says use Siri too.

Jason Howell (00:58:30):
Yeah. To

Mikah Sargent (00:58:30):
Adjust the volume.

Jason Howell (00:58:32):
Well you looked that up the, the buds themselves are IP 55 rated, so that's water resistance, dust resistance. And you know, I was, I was pretty active with these, went for some, some jogs, which is kind of the tests that I like to do with earbuds to see, okay, do they Jostle loose? Do I have the right size and everything? And you know, so if you're sweating, if you're out, you know, jogging in the rain, you're not gonna have any issues with these. And I thought that was fine. It also has the automatic ear detection. So you remove it from your

Mikah Sargent (00:58:59):
Ear. That's nice pauses.

Jason Howell (00:59:01):
That's, that's pretty sweet. That's an important sound, of course. Oh, oh, oh. And by the way, one of the OnePlus only features of these is instant pairing. So which I didn't really have a problem pairing these to my pixel six, which is the device that I primarily use them with. But you have that nonetheless, if you have a OnePlus device sound of course is really important with, with earbuds. Right. And you know, another OnePlus only feature is Doby Atmos support. Okay. So if you are into that, which I'm not really, I haven't really, you know, explored that whole avenue very much, but if you are you will need a OnePlus device to do that. So sound shaping. You do not get any sort of EQ or anything in the app, which I always find that to be a really big downside on your buds. I'm actually surprised. Yeah, me too. I

Mikah Sargent (00:59:50):
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a firmware update at some point that would

Jason Howell (00:59:53):
Allow that. Yeah. Eventually you, I kind of, again, that's a feature that I think I take for granted. I feel like EQ is really easy to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you don't get that. And I have even updated, you know, the firmware and everything to its most recent and not available yet, but the sound itself you know, I would say it was okay, like, keep in mind again, these are a hundred dollars earbuds, right? Sound quality really emphasizes the low end, which you see on kind of the lower, the lower end yeah. To, to mid-range earbuds, right. They wanna like hype certain frequencies to make them, or they think to make them sound better. And what you end up getting out of these are an emphasized low end the mid and high end and particularly the mid, I just found it to be kind of a little papery.

Jason Howell (01:00:42):
It all kind of flat you know, I listened to a good amount of music and I, it was never, my listening experience was never like, oh yeah. You know what I mean? Like sometimes you get that right sound and you're like, yes, this sounds amazing. And I just didn't get that with these, but again, a hundred dollars. So there you go. Yes, I mentioned the noise activation, or sorry, the noise canceling active noise canceling a and C is another word for that. And the, the original bud Z did not have that. So now with this upgraded, bud Z too, you do get the active noise cancellation. You have two steps of active noise cancellation. If you, if you have their pro headset headphones, you get steps. And I would say the quality's a little better there, here. Yeah. The, I mean, it's fine.

Jason Howell (01:01:27):
Like it, it does the job. But I mean, I've, I've certainly heard better, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Again, a hundred dollars. I tended to use the more aggressive setting all the time. And of course, when you're doing that, you know, your battery is, is depleting. So can keep that in mind. I was able to get around, eh, around four to five hours of battery on these with a C active, I almost always use a C on, so you get probably closer to six to seven without that. So you get obviously longer battery life if you're not using the a and C but you know, four to five hours, there's better out there yeah. Than that. But I'm rarely ever listening to something longer than four to five hours anyways. Yeah. They

Mikah Sargent (01:02:10):
Usually end up right back in the, the case before that happens.

Jason Howell (01:02:12):
Totally, totally. And then, you know, the, the case, I think adds another 20 hours if not more, if you don't use ANC. So so yeah, that's, that's kind of it overall the OnePlus bud Z two, I'd say, you know, know what you're getting a hundred dollars is, is not that expensive. And if you're, you know, if you're looking on Amazon for the cheap, like 50, $60 earbuds, I'd probably recommend, you know, you have the extra $40 to just plunk it, but I've also used a lot of earbuds that are better in the 150, $200 range. You know, that, that price difference. It, it feels easy for me to say, oh, it's just $50 more. I, I totally get price sensitivity. Not everybody can do that. Yep. So you gotta buy what you can, but definitely in this category of devices, if you can plunk down a little bit more, you're usually gonna really like, see, notice the difference. You're gonna hear the difference in the sound quality, and maybe you're gonna get wireless charging outta the case, that sort of stuff. So, yeah. Nice. So there you go. The

Mikah Sargent (01:03:15):
One come into any other colors. I don't remember if you said

Jason Howell (01:03:17):
That. No, no, no. I believe it's just is black. I could be wrong on that actually.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:22):
Black and white. It looks

Jason Howell (01:03:23):
Like buds Z two. Oh, there you go. Okay. So you've got a white option as well, but they are all very shiny,

Mikah Sargent (01:03:30):
Definitely shiny, slippery,

Jason Howell (01:03:33):
Shiny and slippery.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:34):
You might want to buy some of those those things you put in the bottom of a bathtub stick one of those on the top, on the bottom.

Jason Howell (01:03:40):
Oh boy. How do you take your new earbuds and make them ugly? You get a, you get a bathtub stomp pad wrap on it. So there you go, buds Z two. And thank you to OnePlus for, for sending me these for review. Appreciate it. All right. I think we've done it. We've reached the end of this episode of tech news. We do this each and every week here@twi.tv. Just go to twi.tv/t N w every Thursday. We publish a new episode. When you go to that page, you can subscribe in all the different ways including jumping out to YouTube, if that's your preference, but we've got, 'em all there. Twi.Tv/Tnw.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:18):
Yes. And if you'd like to get all of our show a free, if you'd like to support us directly then you can do that by checking out club TWI, twi.tv/club TWI for seven bucks a month. You get every single one of TWI shows with no ads. Super awesome. You'll also have access to the TWI plus bonus feed that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else. I'm very excited to be doing a new about once a month where I am talking to the non hosts here at TWI. So it's gonna be a chance to get to know the folks behind the scenes that are doing things that will publish in the twit plus bonus feed as well as be able for folks to tune in, live on the discord server. Well, the at is a great place to go and chat with your fellow club, TWI members.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:05):
If you are wondering what the heck is a discord server, if you've used slack or Microsoft teams, it's a lot like that. You go in, you can chat with your fellow club, TWI friends, and then those of us here at TWI as well. My co-host on Iowa today. Rosemary orchard is one of the most active people in the discord. It's super awesome. All of that seven bucks a month, super fun. And if you'd like to support a show directly and get that ad free experience, you can do that. If you use Apple podcasts, just open the Apple podcasts app. Look for Tech News Weekly. You find the audio version of the feed. You'll see a button where you can subscribe for 2 99 a month. You'll get that ad free version. If you wanna tweet at me or follow me online, I'm at mic a Sergeant on many, a social media network. You can check me out this Saturday, I'll be back in the studio for the tech guy. Oh, nice,

Jason Howell (01:05:53):
Congrats.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:54):
And next week. Be sure to tune in, live on Tuesday for a whole day where we've got iOS today at 8:00 AM Pacific, instead of 9:00 AM Pacific followed by that will be the Apple event where Leo and I will cover that. And then afterwards you can watch Leo and the, the crew for Mac break weekly. So Tuesday's bound to be a pretty Apple Tuesday, a very aply Tuesday. What about you, Jason Howell?

Jason Howell (01:06:21):
Well, you can find me on Twitter at Jason Howell doing other shows in the network, like all about Android TWI TV slash AA. And yeah, that's, that's really about it. Those are the important things. Always wanna thank everybody who help us do this show each and every week, of course, Burke was in here. So ging around some monitors, a mid show. Anthony is here in place of John Ashley this week. So Anthony, thank you for TD and editing the show and always thanks to you for watching and listening. We'll see you next week on Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:54):
Goodbye.

Ant Pruitt (01:06:56):
We

Jason Howell (01:06:56):
Can finally do

Mikah Sargent (01:06:57):
That. It happened.

Jason Howell (01:06:59):
Wow.

Ant Pruitt (01:06:59):
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