I love the community that sprouted up around me and the rest of the tech
YouTubers. It really does feel like we're one big family sometimes, doesn't
it? But like every family, there's at least one of us that's the weird uncle
with the crazy polit excuse me tech hot
takes. And if I had to pick one out, let's just say it's probably not Austin.
But if there's one thing I've learned reading an obsessive amount of YouTube
comments is that I'm not the only one with awful takes. I mean, look at this
one. I mean, sure, forcing USBC on mobile phones forever isn't the best
idea, but come on. Apple's been using lightning, which is USB 2, for 10 years.
Doesn't exactly feel like they're trying to innovate over there. So, that's
right, folks. Today I'm going to be reacting to some of the absolute worst
takes from you guys, courtesy of those of you who were primary sex
characteristicy enough to share them on Twitter.
Internally, we have a rule. Don't attack the audience no matter how wrong or how
stupid they are. But we're making an exception today because you guys
specifically put yourselves out there ready for my rebuttals. Let's kick
things off by elaborating on this a little bit. Yes, in the very very long
term, everyone being stuck with USB type-C could ultimately be a problem.
Except that in the phone space, ah man,
see, I'm going to get myself in trouble here. I don't see us needing more than
five or 10 gigabit per second
ever. By the time we do, it's likely that companies like Apple and their
followalongs will have ditched cables altogether in favor of more wireless
charging and wireless data transfer standards. So, I see your point, but
also you're wrong. Max here. MacOSS is
just plain better for professionals. Professional what? Man, I see that
argument all the time. X is better for
pros. Y is only for Do you know how many
different kinds of professionals there are? Some professionals never leave a
web browser, in which case Chromebooks are probably just plain better for them.
What about professional engineers? macOS is dog for that. Stuart says Samsung
SSDs should not be put on the pedestal they seem to stay on. Years ago, they
were the safe bet. They are not the only option anymore. I don't know if this
even qualifies as a hot take. The only reason Samsung has ended up on the
pedestal that they have is because they were consistently at or near the top of
the performance charts and perhaps more importantly consistently among the
lowest RMA rate drives as rated by Puget
Systems. As for whether that's changed, I'd have to check if Puget has released
their latest reliability report. Oh. Oh, update on Samsung SSD reliability from
last month. Blah blah blah. incredibly low failure
rate. Something changed in the last year. 980 Pro two terabyte. Wow, they've
switched over to Sabrin. I still remember like it was yesterday when
Sabrin came out of absolutely nowhere with these great products and they've
just continued to innovate from there. Good for them. But with that said, I
think this is a really valuable lesson here that no matter which brand it is,
you should never be loyal to the brand and always evaluate the product
individually. God, on the other hand, tech reviews are often wildly removed
from the intended user experience. What someone who switches phones several
times a year wants in a phone is not representative of the user experience
most companies are targeting. This one I'm not sure I agree with. There are
things about the tech reviewer lifestyle that can give us blind spots. For
example, when I was reviewing a super low-end device, I would make it a habit
to carry an iPhone or at least a high-end Android phone around in my back
pocket in case my kids or my pets do something adorable so they're not stuck
with a potato camera. That's not a luxury that someone buying that phone as
their only device would have. However, when you are fully switching between
devices one after the other, I feel it can actually give you a much keener eye
both for what is better about one and what's worse. And that's part of the
reason that you guys watch us for that experience that we've built up using all
these different devices. Oh, Max is
back. Apple's 30% fee is fine and fair.
As an app developer, I'm not happy to have to pay it, but I'm not delusional
about why it's there. It's not an Apple tax. It's a platform fee, just like
Shopify, Amazon, whoever. See, that's the difference. You list a bunch of
things that are not monopolies.
Amazon, for all of their anti-competitive behavior, is not a
monopoly. You can go shop on walmart.com or Bestbby.com and you can decide to
shop somewhere where they have a lower markup. The point is not whether the 30%
is fine and fair. In fact, it's the same 30% that Valve takes on Steam. The point
is that Apple lacks competition and they unilaterally decide that 30% is fine and
fair. That's the problem. The fact that
you're even making this argument means that you fundamentally do not understand
what's going on here. Appleism monopoly isn't a valid argument
because a property developer has a monopoly on selling apartments in the
building they built. Except there's other buildings.
Is this guy serious? Yeah. Oh, Mathematica Ken. The cheapest cell
enabled iPad works better and has more features than the most expensive car
infotainment system, right?
That ain't even a hot take. That's the coldest take. It's ice cold. I am going
to take so much crap for this video. I don't even thin and light laptop with
eGPU set up like a desktop is better
than a traditional tower PC. So, you have both the performance when you're
stationary and the ability to take it with you on the go. You're not wrong,
but you're out of touch. See, the issue is not that the convenience of a thin
and light with an eGPU isn't great. The issue is that it's so expensive. I mean,
even ignoring how costly GPUs have gotten, you're adding what now? another
$300, $400 for the enclosure that goes around it, plus whatever extra you end
up paying for a laptop that has a nice gaming capable CPU and a four-lane PCIe
Thunderbolt connector on it. It's a very costly option and it's loud. Shank Mods.
Well, this can't be that bad of a hot take. Pebble is the only smartwatch ever
made that doesn't suck. 100% agree with you. I've been trying to go back to it.
I've been trying to use that one you gave me, but I had trouble getting Rebel
to work in less than 3 minutes and then I put it down and kind of forgot about
it. I will deal with it. DVI is the best video connector.
Okay. But DVIDL, okay, dual link DVI
slightly better. Smartphone hardware peaked at the Note 9. Okay. Are you just
Are you trolling me? Are you mocking me?
Specifically as a gaming device, the Raspberry Pi is overrated. The number of
people that talk about like Raspberry Pi. Okay, if all you want to play is
like mameim stuff, sure. How many people
unironically sit and while away the afternoon playing mameim games? Natural
DL. The days of Skype were great, and I understand why Discord didn't overtake
Skype and popularity immediately. With that being said, Discord is on top more
out of necessity and ease of use rather than being a clear winner. I got to say,
trying to use Discord for the first time, it's kind of a crap interface. And
if Skype had been slightly less garbage,
I think a lot of gaming communities would not have bothered to switch over.
Though, I'm going to counter with my own hot take. If Microsoft hadn't nerfed
then killed MSN Messenger, we wouldn't have needed either of them. The reason
we stopped using Skype though was nothing to do with the functionality of the software and everything to do with
some vulnerabilities and I think it was the protocol. Basically, there were
these tools called IP resolvers that
assuming that you had someone's Skype username, you could use to get their IP.
So whether you were gaming with people you didn't know that well or say hosting
a live video podcast, if anyone figured
out what your user account was, they could resolve your IP and DOS you great.
Physical keyboards on phones from 10 years ago infinitely better than
touchscreen keyboards of today. That is Wow, is that ever wrong. As someone who
has gone back to a phone with a physical keyboard not that long ago, let me tell
you, it felt good back then, but it was crap. Special characters, forget about
it. Hot take. The removal of headphone
jacks is a positive step forward.
One, if Bluetooth headphones are owned by most people prior, then it's not
really an issue. But they weren't. Two, cables are annoying and get tangled.
Wireless do not. Okay, but they get lost. Three, wireless price equals wired
price. The [ __ ] are you talking about?
Why would you say stuff that's just demonstrably false? Wireless price
equals what? No, it isn't. Terry says,
"Ray tracing is pointless. Doesn't add anything of value to gameplay, and most
of the time, you're moving too fast in game to actually appreciate the better
reflections. Use that extra horsepower for more frames. I have to stop you here
because in a utopia, right, where ray
tracing hardware is plentiful, basically everyone has it and game developers can
assume that if they build their game lighting engine with ray tracing in mind
that everyone will be able to run it. In theory, it actually dramatically
simplifies the process of lighting a game, which adds a layer of realism and
immersiveness that simply cannot be
replicated with our fakey light reflections that we've been doing for
the last 20, 30 years. The problem is
that we're in this in between stage right now where it does feel gimmicky
and it does have a significant performance impact, but you can tell
that NVIDIA in particular is playing an extremely long game here. And I do think
ray tracing is here to stay and it could be a benefit in the long run.
Smartphones for $300 are now sufficient for all tasks in terms of hardware. No
one should spend more money. Yeah.
Yeah. I can't I can't even disagree with that. They're sufficient. However, there
are certainly features that are beneficial on smartphones that cost
more. For example, you cannot get a $300
smartphone that does this. It simply
doesn't exist. Kizu, ultrawide is, and I
quote, garbage. All right. I was big on
the ultra wide train for a long time. Then I came around to actually Wendell
from Level One Texas's argument where he kind of goes, "Have you looked closely
at the pricing of these things? They basically cost the same as a 16x9
monitor that's the same width but also happens to be taller. So in terms of
pixels per dollar, it's much better. If you really want the ultra wide
experience, why don't you just put black bars at the top and bottom of your
screen?" And if you have an OLED, that's a pretty strong argument, especially if
you're sitting in the dark. But then I got my hands on Corsair's 43in curved
monitor and I was sitting just kind of using it as part of the review process
and I was like there's nothing quite like it, is there? Steam Deck is
destined to be discont I don't even need to keep reading this. That's a terrible
take. Steam Deck is going to Steam Deck has already changed the gaming industry.
Valve is now officially a console manufacturer. They are planning for a
long life cycle for this thing. They are courting developers. They're doing all
the right things and they've got the revenues to support this product in the
long term through their yes 30% take on
Steam game sales. Steam Deck is here to
stay. Karen, I love motion blur.
What the especially at higher frame rates? Why
don't you put Vaseline on your screen? Honestly, if you like blur, I mean, why
do we even bother trying to build low persistence displays? Why don't you go
get like a Dell flat panel from 2005?
You'd love it. You get this nice little smeary trail behind every moving object
on the screen. It's great. The one justification for motion blur, okay, is
games that run at 30fps and you need
some way to hide that awful jutdder as
you're panning the camera around. That's why it exists. It doesn't exist because
it looks good. Dex Fox, switching to an EV isn't as environmentally impactful as
one might think, especially when everyone's expected to buy the new shiny
thing. Expanding public transit, building walkable cities, and preventing
e-waste is far more impactful. No doubt.
The problem is, you know, I'm assuming this, but I have no way of verifying it.
No, you're from Salt Lake City. I would have assumed you're European cuz a big
part of the problem is that in North America I don't see any path back to
walkable cities. There is literally nothing within walking distance of my
house. And the only way to fix that would be to bulldo entire neighborhoods
and build more like what like shopping
centers, restaurants, entertainment.
It ain't happening. RCS Rex Linux will
never take off like people say it will. Linux has already taken off. Do I need
to remind you Steam Deck? A million units in sales. Do you think a million
Linux gaming computers ever in the
entire history of Linux existed before?
Well, there are a million now, right now
in people's hands. Miss Micro USB. Micro
USB along with micro HDMI is one of the
worst connectors ever made. I don't believe I actually do not believe. I
think they are lying about the advertised durability of micro USB. That
thing is a piece of garbage. USBC is not
a good standard. There are too many inconsistencies in implementation and
Apple was right to resist it for iPhones until their hand was forced. Don't take
my word for it. Apple thinks you're wrong. Look at the way they equip their
higher tier, more functional, more premium products with USBC, like the
iPad. With PC makers like Lenovo selling laptops with Fedora and successes by HP,
we'll see many more desktops and laptops with Linux.
2025 is the year of the Linux desktop. 2025, man, you're giving yourself over 2
years for this to come true. That's enough time for Windows 12 to come out
and be like two sucks in a row. And if
that happens, you might be right. Jeff says SSD was the only technological
revolution in the computer world for the last two decades.
Two decades. Good gravy. Going all the
way back to 2003. No. Multicore.
Multicore was huge. Do you not remember? If we didn't get multi-core processors,
that SSD would be bottlenecked by your stupid single core processor. NVIDIA
didn't kill SLI based on greed. NVIDIA killed SLI because high resolution
gaming and the faster GPUs they kept building necessitated such a fast
interconnect between the GPUs that it just got so cost ineffective for the
limited number of users and game developers that were being served by SLI
technology. It just stopped making sense. I get it. I don't have to like
it, but I get it. Okay, Narwhal. In
terms of features, AMD's drivers on Windows are so much better than
NVIDIA's. I love that I can see performance
metrics, overclock, and undervolt my GPU.
Um, wow. Spoken like someone who has not
used an NVIDIA card in a very long time. GeForce Experience is not the driver.
That's a separate utility. You don't even have to install it. Like, yeah,
sure, it's just another game launcher or whatever, but it also has performance
metrics. It doesn't allow you to overclock an undervolt, but I mean, I
would make the argument that it's fine to have a third party utility for that,
especially given how much more functional they are anyway, even
compared to AMD's built-in tools. And
features, NVIDIA has way more features.
I mean, look at the last week alone. They just announced VSSR, their video
upscaling feature that uses your GPU to smooth and sharpen web video. It's
really cool. and AMD has absolutely nothing to respond to it. 99% of
techtubers love to talk about how great AMD is and how everyone should buy it,
but the end of the day, name a techtuber that uses AMD as a daily driver outside
of a challenge. I've been daily driving an AMD CPU for
three and a half years. Yeah, ever since I upgraded to Threadripper.
What's up? PCs are at the verge of being obsolete for gamers.
Looking at the performance, affordability, and range of games on
current consoles, this is just cyclical.
It's It always happens. The first year
or two after a new generation of consoles launches, they are untouchable
in terms of price toerformance ratio, and then Sony and Microsoft just sit
there and let the hardware stagnate and become obsolete. PCs catch up, and then
a new generation of consoles comes out. It leaprogs and so on and so forth. This
is what happens when you ignore all the historical context and focus only on the
moment at hand. There is no point unlocking your frame rate. Your PC will
render frames that can't be displayed past the refresh rate, creating
unnecessary strain on your hardware and costing more electricity, which is a waste of money and worse for the
environment. Unfortunately, you are wrong. When you render at a higher frame
rate, even higher than your display can support, what you're doing is you are
reducing the latency and therefore the perceived performance of the game, even
if you don't see more than one of those frames for every refresh rate of your
display. We made a whole video about it featuring Shroud. It's got like over 10
million views. Maybe that view count should be 10 million and one after you
watch it and get yourself educated. Pure future proofing is possible. For
example, by getting a powerful CPU now would allow you to upgrade your GPU
later when games become more demand. You drank the Kool-Aid Pier. If you get
the mid-range CPU today and buy the mid-range CPU 3 years down the road when
it's time to upgrade your GPU, that would be a better experience overall
than spending twice as much on your CPU today. It's just math. Polaris. Apple is
not overpriced, especially when you consider how long their products last
and that they make all their own hardware, too. No, they don't. Uh, I
don't mind paying the Apple tax to get a MacBook that will last many years over a
PC that I will upgrade in future. Okay. The fact that you choose to upgrade your PC is a completely irrelevant point to
how long that PC will last. And this is something I've seen so many times. I'm
reminded of the time that my uncle's business partner showed me his amazing
MacBook Air. He goes, "Look how fast this thing boots. It's outstanding. You
know how they did it? Solid state drive?" I go, "Yeah, I know, Phil. I've
got an SSD in my computer at home. Apple didn't invent them. It's just the fact
that Apple users tend to compare against
PCs that are not as well equipped as the
Apple computers that they're comparing against. So, while you're kind of right
in that there is no Apple tax, by being
right about that, you are wrong about how long that device will last you.
Because if you buy a high quality PC device that's at the same price and
similarly equipped, it can last you a very long time. At this point, Noctua
just can't release any product that they're becoming irrelevant. Like, are
you buying an HD15 at this point considering other options? Yes, man.
Noctua has so many benefits beyond just the performance. The fact that you can
get new mounting hardware for new sockets as they come out. Nothing would
prevent you from using a Noctua cooler from like 12, 13 years ago. Emailing
them being like, "Hey, I need mounting hardware for socket AM5 and you're ready
to go." Gavin says mega transfers per second is the right performance metric
for DRAM and not mehz. I don't know. We
switched over to mega transfers per second mostly just to bother Ian. Dr.
Cutrris, oh my god, Max is back. Lack of
side loadings on iOS is a good thing and it should remain a closed system. People
only want it because it makes piracy easier without having to figure out jailbreak and apps sync. Yeah, it would
have nothing to do with just common sense things that Apple doesn't build
into their operating system like, oh, I don't know, T9 dialing or whatever else.
Alternate app stores are a huge security risk because you can't know if the
official Instagram app downloaded from not CCP app store has been what? Well,
then you would just download from the official app store. This is the thing that Apple users who argue about this
seem to not really understand. The existence of alternate app stores does
not in fact mean that you would not be able to use the official one.
Neural canvas AI art is the modern-day renaissance that is yet again giving
everyday people the ability to creatively express themselves. The only
people complaining are the ones who see their art as nothing but a cash cow and
not showing up their passion and creativity. Okay. Wanting to be fairly
compensated for your work does not mean that you see art as a cash cow rather
than a showing of your passion and creativity. It means that you expect the
value of what you've created to turn into some kind of value back to you if
it's creating value for someone else. Um, this is a pretty bad take. Using
gyro aim on a controller with aim assistant acceleration turned off is
better than a m better than a mouse and keyboard, though. Better than a
controller. Yeah, but you probably just aren't very good with a mouse and keyboard. Headphones are the worst. They
heat up your ears and destroy your hearing. Speakers for the win. They only
destroy they only destroy your hearing if you turn them up too loud just like
speakers. That's clean.
That's And they they heat up your ears. I mean, I guess Ryzen CPUs are touted to
be the best value processors on the market. Okay. A we talked about brand
loyalty and just painting with broad brushes. Not necessarily. But let's
continue. While that's true on benchmarks and in-game performance, they
tend to be less userfriendly because of all the frequent bugs and glitches the
plat What are you even talking about? Are you talking about first gen Ryzen
Ryzen 1000? You are so out of date here,
Retro Breezy. What is Mac even good for?
All I see is that Mac and iPhones are products for rich people to only buy
them for the excuse that they have money. Anything Mac can. So, Windows and
Linux can do better. Um, no. There are exclusive softwares
that you can only get on Mac. I mean, we did a whole video on reasons that macOS
is just plain better. If you use Final Cut, man, you are going to want Mac. In
fact, even running Premiere, we find that it is more stable on macOS than it
is on Windows. Another thing Mac's really good for is continuity. Okay?
being able to take what you're doing between devices. There's just no analog
like it on the PC side of things. I've really tried, but have never been able
to understand the appeal of gaming while on the go. Just not the same as a
monitor with a proper mouse and keyboard. All I have to say is I guess
you've never really commuted on transit. Cuz when I was taking the Sky Train back
in the day, having a Nintendo that I could just have in my pocket or in my backpack, absolute gamecher to take away
the boredom. Dark mode may be better for your eyes, but in terms of legibility,
light mode greater than dark mode. I'm a light mode boy, not going to lie.
There's a couple of sites that I go dark mode on, like our forum, for example. I
I tend to use dark mode, but in general, eyebrows in light mode. Edge greater
than Chrome. I mean, I'm not going to argue that Chrome isn't kind of a piece of crap these days, but I just can't get
used to the Edge interface. Car shouldn't have an infotainment system.
The screen in the dash is all that's needed. C Ferrari 296 GTB. No. Yeah. I
No. No. No. 100% I would rather have a
touchcreen that I can interact with. Like I want to type in a destination or
something like that. What am I going to do? Use that ridiculous stupid Audi
little like touch trackpad and draw letters on it like a child and
fingerpainting or something? No. No. No. No. No. No. Honorito apparently got a
reply from one of our staffers on this.
Okay. As someone who loves tech gaming, etc. I wish games were shorter. Games
have trended towards padding their hours with grindheavy content to justify their
cost. Yeah, it's not even trended towards that has literally always been a
problem, right? Arcade games were unnecessarily difficult so that you
would have to keep feeding the machine with quarters and then during the rental
era, you know, your SNES, PlayStation games were unnecessarily padded so that
you couldn't complete them during the rental period and you'd have to buy them. Then as we moved into the
subscription model era, games were padded so that you would pay for the
subscription for longer. Looking at you, World of Warcraft. And as you move into
the mobile era, games are padded so that you have to keep grinding or better yet
buying endgame armor, weapons, and items and perks and all of that so that you
can compete. I mean, it's literally always been a problem for one reason or
another. You're totally right. Regarding Lionus' stance on unionizing, at a
certain headcount, there is just a need for some representation of employees.
This should not be about failing as a boss, but having a structure where every
employee has the ability to get his voice heard. Well, it's not 100. I can
tell you that much. Honestly, my stance on this isn't going to change. If people
felt like we weren't taking care of them, yeah, I would feel like we failed.
If you want to interpret that as a bad thing, you can. But you're reaching
pretty hard. Legally, I cannot put up any kind of barriers to unionization
here. So, I never would. But if it was
necessary, yeah, I'd feel like we suck. We have a hot take from the one and only
Andy. Screen bar is the best lamp in the world. Good god, Andy. You're not going
to win this with me. Pointing a light at your screen is literally the opposite.
Hear me out. No, I will hear nothing.
The light beam will not shine on your screen.
Tell your union representative and I'll sit down with them about it.
Someone put a screen bar online. No.
Union. The difference between 1080p and 1440p
is way different than going from 144 hertz to 240%. Yep, you're right. Eric
says, "I prefer my 1989 ModelM over any modern gaming keyboard. I use it for
gaming all the time." Yes, it's a good keyboard.
I wouldn't personally use it for gaming. It has kind of a long travel for gaming,
but the difference is pretty small. 5 in
16x9 is the perfect smartphone size.
Strong disagree. I actually really like
the taller screens that we have today. That was a huge difference maker for me
as someone who reads a lot and means less scrolling. It's definitely better.
Most modern mechanical keyboards are an ergonomic nightmare. People use thick
wrist rests with them because the keyboards are too darn thick weight. So,
are you saying that you think Apple's approach is better? Well, if you like
that, I got a mouse to sell you with the charging port conveniently located on
the bottom. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll enjoy the one where
you guys take shots at me and Linus reads mean comments.