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- Hey, what's up? MKBHD here.
So a lot happened during 2021.
And also, a lot didn't happen. Huh.
Let's rewind and recap.
So in 2021, on the MKBHD channel,
we ended up making 93 total videos,
all about tech, tech products, tech explainers,
talks with creators and people in the tech world.
This is the 93rd video that we're watching right here,
which is technically less than my goal of 100 videos roughly
during the course of the year
and way less than my 121 last year.
So it would be easy to get down on that
but this year we also started three other channels.
So my podcast, the Waveform podcast, is now in video form.
We built up a video studio for it
and new episodes have continued to drop
every single week on Fridays.
That's where we really get into the weeds
and the details on tech stuff.
That's a whole channel.
There's also a Waveform Clips channel, started up this year.
I'll link both of these below that Like button.
I'm gonna guess, 'cause I don't know,
but that you shoot them with an iPhone, is that right?
And we also started up The Studio channel,
which is a peek behind the curtain,
you know, into how the team works here at The Studio,
how we cover the tech world,
and how we make all of these videos,
like how we turned a 1,000 mile,
two-day road trip experiment
into an informative, structured piece
about gas versus electric cars.
We've got members, we've got the whole team,
most of the team here.
We're gonna be in these cars,
probably trash talking a little bit
and turning it into a bit of a race,
but to see exactly how much time charging
at these different infrastructures adds to a road trip.
So when you include all of those,
the total goes from 93
to 93 plus 34 plus 96 plus 17
to equal 240 videos this calendar year,
which is amazing
and I'm very proud of all of them
and the work that we put into them.
And really, moving forward,
the saying that's still always in the back of my head
every time I'm making something like this
is more better, more better.
Really, anytime you try to make more of something,
typically the quality goes down,
and anytime you spend a lot of effort
into making something better,
typically you make less of them.
And so our goal with the whole team at the MKBHD Studio
is to make both more and better, and that's for you.
So now here's five really large movements I observed
in the tech world this year.
So number five, short-form content is here to stay.
It's hooked, it's caught on, and it feels pretty permanent.
And you know, for a while,
we've known short-form content is getting popular.
The explosion of TikTok over the past two years,
but now Instagram adding Reels
and YouTube really leaning into Shorts,
building it onto the website.
It feels much more here to stay.
We always knew there was something to it. It's arrived.
So I've experimented with Shorts a little bit
and we even did one or two on The Studio channel.
And I wouldn't be surprised
if we ended up making an entire dedicated Shorts channel
just to play with this short-form format
'cause I do have a lot of fun with them,
but I just wanna make,
I don't just wanna make it because it's popular,
I wanna make good ones.
So anyway, stay tuned for that.
We'll probably play with that a lot
in the next year or so in 2022.
But yeah, short stuff, it's here.
Then number four, NFTs,
crypto, Web 3.0, Dogecoin.
It's funny, I don't talk about, you know, finance stuff
necessarily that much on this channel,
even though obviously it's a big part of the tech world,
this whole crypto boom.
But, you know, there was a little bit of a peak of it
here and there.
I did make a video about Dogecoin, the rise and fall of it,
what exactly it is, what a meme coin is.
But also, we've been talking about Bitcoin on the podcast.
Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million
and then he hopped on the Waveform podcast
and we talked about it and about being a creator
and how digital art is being taken to the next level
with this sort of stuff.
So I'll leave a link below if you wanna watch that one.
But yeah, let me know if you'd be interested
in more crypto coverage or crypto videos
or anything sort of like that in 2022.
So then number three, custom silicon.
Underrated, I really feel like this is underrated
for how much this is changing the landscape of tech
and how much it will continue to do so going forward.
So we already knew the A-series of chips in iPhones
were custom designed by Apple,
but then they brought the M1 chip
in this Apple silicon takeover of their whole lineup
into MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and even iPad Pro,
and they did really great.
Then we saw the next level step up of M1 Pro
and M1 Max chips in the MacBook Pros,
and those had huge, huge performance and efficiency gains
over the Intel versions.
Google's Tensor chip in the Pixel had a bunch of advantages
over the previous chips off the shelf
that allowed them to make Pixel 6 one of the best,
actually the best value phone of the year,
thanks to Smartphone Awards.
And this is something I fully expect to continue
much more into next year.
More phone manufacturers,
even tablet and laptop and headphone
and other company manufacturers
doing more with proprietary silicon
that they design in house.
So if I was Qualcomm or Intel right now,
I'd be paying very close attention to this.
Then number two, alternate form factors.
They gain just a little bit of momentum
and a little bit more usability every single year.
Really, it started back when we got Samsung's Z Flip3,
which gave you basically all of the normal experiences
of a flagship phone that could fold in half,
and that actually launched at basically the same price
as a lot of other flagship phones, 999,
which is right inside a lot of other flagships.
But we've, since then, of course seen many others.
We have the larger Fold3,
we have the midsize OPPO Find N,
the Razr gave us something different.
There's also the Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold,
there's also Huawei Mate X2, Surface Duo 2.
There's just a bunch of different experimentation
and playing with the form factor,
but it's all getting more usable
and slowly coming down in price.
It's not immediately here
but it's clearly working its way towards being arrived.
So there will be more
and I'm sure they'll all be better in 2022.
But that leaves us at number one,
which is EVs, electric vehicles,
and specifically, a lot of those trucks.
I've said this before
but every year for the next decade
is going to be the most interesting year yet
for electric cars.
Now, for the past two or three years or so,
we've been getting a lot of promises.
You know, this company promises they'll have 20 EVs by 2030
and this other company promises
to electrify their whole lineup in the next 8 to 12 years.
Great, great. That's all great.
The promises are great
but now it's time to start shipping them.
So in 2021, we got the headliners,
we got Rivian R1T, we got the Hummer EV,
we got Ford F-150 Lightning announced at least,
we got Lucid Air, we got Tesla Model S Plaid.
That's all already enough to get a lot of people interested
but they're also pretty premium
so you also get things like the Volkswagen ID.4,
the Nissan Leaf, the MINI Cooper S,
a lot of the lower priced EVs
that will actually move volume.
And I think it's pretty easy to say
there will be way more next year,
and it's gonna be fascinating
to see how they all differentiate themselves,
what features they'll offer, how their tech gets better,
how many miles they'll be able to offer
at certain price ranges.
It's gonna be good.
I fully plan to check out as many as I possibly can
and to hopefully bring you guys videos of those.
And I'll continue to write articles for "Top Gear"
while I'm at it.
Now, okay, in the spirit of rewinding,
not everything was amazing
and perfectly exactly how we expected in 2021.
So here's the top five things
that didn't come out during 2021
that maybe we were hoping for or that we expected to.
So number five, the Samsung Galaxy Note.
It is interesting.
We didn't get a new Note this entire year.
The last Galaxy Note was the Galaxy Note20
and that wasn't a great phone,
but we had an entire gap for 2021
where there was no phone with an S-Pen built in.
There were phones that supported the S-Pen
and that was an interesting clause, the S-Pen's not dead.
But now I wonder
if we're going to ever see another Note again,
if they're just saving it for early next year,
we'll have to see.
Now number four, a foldable Pixel and/or a Pixel watch.
We got Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro
and they were both really interesting phones
in a lot of ways,
the Tensor chip, the new set of cameras,
the new hardware design, the new Material You software.
All of that very interesting to watch
but, no pun intended, there was no watch.
And, you know, we were hoping to see
maybe like an Apple Watch equivalent for Android
straight from Google,
and that seems to be rumored heavily
but we haven't seen it yet.
I honestly think it could be a couple years out.
And same thing with a foldable Pixel.
We have all the software support
from Google for foldables now
but we don't have a sort of standard Google foldable.
I also don't think we're gonna be seeing that anytime soon.
The rumors keep churning in the background,
which is kind of interesting,
but yeah, that's a little ways out.
And number three, Tesla's stuff,
Cybertruck being one
and then Plaid Plus and Roadster being others.
So really, the Cybertruck was one
that we're I guess maybe starting to hope we might see
on the road this year but it is delayed.
Chip shortage, a lot of things got delayed this year,
this is one of the casualties.
And now it's officially, well, hopefully coming
at the end of 2022.
But also, Tesla announced the Plaid Model S
and the Plaid Plus Model S.
The Plaid Plus ended up getting completely canceled
'cause it was unnecessary
and they ended up just shifting all of that
into Tesla Model S Plaid production.
A very strange turn of events,
I haven't seen a car announced
and canceled like that before,
even after they took orders for it,
but that was sort of a blip on the Tesla radar.
And our Roadster friend is still not out.
I don't know. I didn't think it would be out by now.
I was kinda hoping, back in 2017 when they announced it,
that it would be out by 2021
even though it was a 2020 announced car.
Bleh, it's later. It's like 2023 or '24 now.
So number two, an Apple silicon true desktop.
And I say true desktop meaning the Apple silicon iMac Pro
or Apple silicon Mac Pro.
So we have the Apple silicon M1 iMac,
which had a lot of really nice things to it.
It's a thin all-in-one for a sort of everyday crowd,
not too performance focused but obviously very capable.
Now we're looking forward to seeing
what they can really unleash
with a bigger chip in a desktop.
And for me, iMac Pro seems like it'll be really cool,
probably high refresh rate, high resolution,
nice black bezel maybe,
but then Apple silicon desktop like the Mac Pro,
that's the one I really should be waiting for.
And then number one, any sub-$30,000 EV.
Well, almost. I'll say any good one.
I mean, we had, okay, the Nissan Leaf came out,
it had like a $29,000 starting price
and I think it had about 150 miles of range,
something like that.
But what I'm really looking forward to
is when we start getting the premium EV experience
lower and lower in price,
whether that's the Tesla Model 2 that's rumored
or maybe that's some other company
that's beating them to the punch,
but I would love to see a sub-$30,000 accessible EV
with, let's go, 220 miles of range or more,
to really make it more
than just a quick, little commuter vehicle.
That would be awesome to see.
It didn't come out last year, didn't come out in 2021,
I think we might see it in 2022.
But anyway, that's it for my rewind for 2021 tech.
I'm gonna wrap it up on a positive note
by giving you down below
five great tech videos that came out this year
that weren't published by me
that I still think you really should watch.
So just open the description down below the Like button
and check out all the stuff down there.
But either way, that's been it. Thanks for watching.
Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.