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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Marques Brownlee (a.k.a. MKBHD).
A few weeks ago he posted a new episode of his podcast with him and a few others. They talked about Nothing Chats and Sunbird, the iPhone getting RCS and the usual OpenAI drama. At some point Marques mentions the fact that iMessage with RCS will still be "unencrypted". Following that they ponder over why RCS wouldn't have this fabled encryption, such a weird thing that RCS doesn't support encryption from the get-go, and after brainstorming for a bit someone adds the information that it indeed will be encrypted in-transit, but not end-to-end encrypted. And what comes next boggled my mind: Silence ensues. No-one says anything. You only see the faces of four grown-ass tech influencers that are stunlocked and completely unable to process what this neverheard difference between encryption methods might mean. It all just ends with "I've been trying so hard to figure out what that means. I can't." And then.......then they simply move on, not even addressing for a second this knowledge gap and solving it right there on the spot. You can watch it if you want. What hurts the most is that Marques' co-star, David, the guy that looks the most confused, made a 1+ hour history-lesson type video a few months ago about the history of the internet and the importance of HTTPS encryption.
Now, if we're talking about visual quality and overall visual production quality, his videos were insanely enjoyable to watch. I also don't want to shame anyone for not knowing something and I understand that this is in part the consequence of an ever growing company at this point. The channel is still growing and has reached 18 millions subs. Him (and his team) also cover a constantly growing tech sphere, from phones to laptops, from e-vehicles to supercars, from tech politics to tech blunders. But coming from a guy that has been a "tech influencer" on YouTube for 14 years, a guy that over the years had the chance to interview Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Sundar Pichai and surely had the chance to surround himself with experts on all sorts of topics, a guy that dedicated entire videos to Nothing Chats, the role of Quantum Computing in encryption or the dangers and potentials of the Metaverse, this kind of shocked me. I just couldn't take him seriously anymore and I hate myself for it. But it's like my grandma not knowing the difference between a normal call and a WhatsApp call, expect that he's been talking about tech for more than a decade.
he's a apple shill mkbhd
He's really not.
He's not an organic tech reviewer. All of his devices are sponsored. He exists in a completely different world than the vast majority of his audience. Money is not an object for him and he promotes always having day 1 tech. He essentially shills for whomever is giving him today's device to review and he's been very pro-Apple in his editorializing.
That's true to some extent, I guess.
I've always thought his approach has remained broadly consistent to his roots (I've been subbed to him since he was much, much smaller) but yes, the products he reviews now are almost always provided to him rather than being bought by him personally. This becomes true of any channel of his size, but I've not seen his opinion change as a result.
He addresses the topic about bias in this short , but we can look to his phone of the year awards to assess his biases objectively. For every year since the awards began in 2014, an Android device has always won Phone of the Year. An iPhone has never won an award for Best design, Best Value or Best Big Phone since records began either.
iPhones have won best camera system since 2018, but he maintains that this is due to the superior video capabilities of iPhones, but still prefers the 'look' of a Pixel photo, or the hardware of a Samsung (20x zoom etc). Androids dominate every single category simply because there are so many companies developing and competing against each other to make better and better Android devices.
Marques is personally almost always rocking a Pixel or Samsung Galaxy device as his main daily driver (because he loves the customisation and the freedom that android devices give him), and has an iPhone in his other pocket for apple things. He calls out bad Android and Apple devices in equal measure, and he actively advised against buying a newer Mac because the M2 and M3 products just don't give you enough of an upgrade over M1 to make it worthwhile.
I watch every single video he puts out and just don't see the Apple shill thing. He has always come across as an Android fan to me, but I hear the Apple shill thing all the time.