The Studio and MKBHD recorded a vlog style “Year in The Life” of everything that they did in 2025.
I’ve grown to love more of the behind the scenes style of The Studio channel in general. I think the concept of the channel is genius. You end up having a relationship with all of the people who work at MKBHD.
★Great, wide ranging interview with Marques Brownlee by Mr. Mobile. Really insightful questions and you can see how Marques thinks about how and why he makes videos and some of the strategy behind what he puts out.
★David Sparks aka MacSparky on Apple getting around Masimo’s patent dispute:
I was happy to see the blood oxygen sensor come back to the Apple Watch late last week. After months of being disabled due to a patent fight with Masimo, Apple turned it on again — but only after securing approval for a workaround that cleverly meets legal constraints.
Like David, I love it when my professional world collides with my Apple/tech world. One of the hosts of ATP has been having issues with his two Mitsubishi heat pumps. I made a video where I comment on his account and give my two cents.
★It’s unbelievable that this midcentury modern home is in the middle of Hawaii in Oahu. The home and the views are spectacular. Be sure to stay until the end for old video footage of the home being built.
★Speaking of commencement speeches, Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD gave the commencement speech to his alma mater in 2024.
★It’s graduation season and that means it’s commencement speech season. I’ve said before that my all time favorite commencement address is Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. For the 20th anniversary, the Steve Jobs Archive published an upscaled 4K version of the speech on its site and on YouTube (embedded below).
There are some previously unknown nuggets of information that they share about the speech.
He did not know he wasn’t the students’ top choice for a speaker. They wanted comedian Jon Stewart, who had given a popular commencement address the year before. Arnold Schwarzenegger, movie star-turned-governor of California, was the third choice.
I give a fair amount of presentations in my work and this gave me some comfort.
Steve showed only one sign of nerves—and you had to really know him to recognize it. From his opening comments (“This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation”) to his closing wish that students “stay hungry, stay foolish,” he read his text verbatim.
He even wrote emails to himself with bulleted talking points. Be sure to read all of them.
★From Bloomberg:
As chairman, Bren remains the ultimate decision-maker at Irvine Co. He’s tan, athletic, “forceful and confident,” says James Doti, the former president of Chapman University, a private liberal arts school in the city of Orange. “He speaks. You listen.” Bren comes into the office every day, where he works on the ninth floor, at a desk overlooking the Fashion Island shopping center (which he owns) and, farther in the distance, the exclusive Harbor Island (an artificial island where he has a mansion). He’s been known to sign off on construction documents and profit and loss statements by hand.
I went to UC Irvine for undergrad and lived in Irvine for many years once I started working. It is the next city over from Laguna Beach and we spend a lot of time at Irvine Spectrum. I knew of the ubiquity of The Irvine Company back then, but this is the most I’ve read about the company and its chairman, Donald Bren. For someone like me who lived in and around Irvine and notices “things”, this was a fascinating read.
Fun fact: you know you’re at an Irvine Company property if the markings for the parking spaces are painted green.
More on how trump’s tariffs are completely idiotic, Nicole Narea at Vox (Apple News+ link):
Vietnam was hit with 46 percent tariffs, one of the highest rates on the schedule that the White House unveiled. That’s because Trump has sought to target Vietnam and other countries that have a high trade surplus with the US, believing that they’re “cheating” America. However, he ignores the reason why Vietnam has a trade surplus with the US: It is relatively poor and cannot afford to buy many American-made goods.
Any one with a high school education can figure out why there is a trade deficit with certain countries and why it wouldn’t make sense to hit them with tariffs.
★Kyla Scanlon on her weirdly named newsletter, Kyla’s Newsletter:
Trade deficits: These don’t automatically mean a country is “cheating.” A trade deficit means we import more from a country than we export to it. This can happen for benign reasons like strong consumer spending, the US dollar’s global strength, or the fact we don’t grow certain crops here. If we reduce imports from China via high tariffs, we might just buy from Vietnam or another country (likely Latin America based on the tariff rates). The overall deficit just shifts around because we simply cannot produce things like bananas or coffee here. Also, these are countries that send things to us, like Cambodia, so we have a giant trade deficit – but it isn’t because they are taking advantage of us, it’s because they simply can’t afford to buy our things. There is no way to ‘even out’ that deficit, and it really shouldn’t be a goal.
Just an overall great piece on this whole tariff bullshit.
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