The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss previews for the Apple event, gadgets at IFA, the latest with Snap, and a whole lot more.
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00:00:00Hello and welcome to Rich Hast, the flagship podcast with the Fine Woven Appreciation Society.
00:00:09There are no members.
00:00:10The wrongest one we've ever done.
00:00:12I was like, I don't want to be a member of that.
00:00:14I don't want that flagship.
00:00:15We're still looking for our first member.
00:00:16If you could sign up today, that would be much appreciated, but we're not in it.
00:00:22Yeah, you have to join.
00:00:24We just cover the society.
00:00:26We are not members of the society.
00:00:27We're the official podcast of the Fine Woven Appreciation Society, but we've never joined.
00:00:33Hi, I'm your friend Eli.
00:00:34David Pierce is here.
00:00:35Hello.
00:00:36Alex Franz is here.
00:00:37Hey, what's up?
00:00:38This is a big one.
00:00:39This is the Apple iPhone preview episode.
00:00:41Next week is the event.
00:00:43A bunch of us will be there.
00:00:45David noped out.
00:00:46That's largely correct.
00:00:48David was like, screw it.
00:00:49I've seen these phones before.
00:00:51The rectangles, he said angrily.
00:00:54But there's a lot to talk about.
00:00:55We're expecting a new iPhone, a new watch.
00:00:57AirPods are going to talk about all the rumors, all the things we're expecting.
00:01:00It's also IFA in Germany.
00:01:02I've covered this thing for 15 years.
00:01:05I'm like, it's Germany, right?
00:01:06We've got a team out there looking at just a wild collection of gadgets, including I
00:01:11just saw this laptop whose lid rotates by itself.
00:01:14Well, like like Rainbow Room style, it just sort of slowly spins around.
00:01:19It's like a classic two in one where you open it, you flip it around and turn it into a
00:01:23tablet.
00:01:24It's like that.
00:01:25But you didn't have to do it.
00:01:26I like that.
00:01:27Yeah, it doesn't none of it seems reliable or good, but that's right.
00:01:35That's what's happening in Germany today.
00:01:37So we had a whole lightning round of gadgets and then we got a lightning round unsponsored.
00:01:41Although I will say to the one person who sent a email saying I now have an entire corporate
00:01:47marketing budget.
00:01:48We're going to spend your corporate marketing budget.
00:01:50This is what happens when you do a show for effectively 15 years.
00:01:53The people get jobs.
00:01:58So there's there's some people who sent some emails.
00:02:02We're excited about this.
00:02:03All right.
00:02:04We got to talk about Apple.
00:02:05Let's start.
00:02:06There's there's a lot of rumors, I would say.
00:02:09But we're at the top line is they're iterating all of their core products.
00:02:13Yeah, it's a it's a weird moment.
00:02:15So you said there's a lot of rumors.
00:02:16And my immediate reaction was like.
00:02:20Kind of.
00:02:21It's a weird year in the sense that if there is something big coming, we don't know anything
00:02:27about it.
00:02:28Like there's not even there's not even light rumors that there might be something big.
00:02:32And every year there's like the maybe this will be and there's just none of that.
00:02:35So either this is going to be a pretty straightforward Apple event or we actually don't have that
00:02:41much information.
00:02:42And so obviously, I hope it's the second thing.
00:02:44It's kind of rude, though, because like action button on all models, that feels like a big
00:02:48deal.
00:02:49No, it doesn't.
00:02:50It doesn't have an action button on it.
00:02:51So it's huge for me.
00:02:52Let me clarify what I meant by a lot of rumors.
00:02:55I didn't mean a lot of important rumors.
00:02:58I just meant the volume of rumors is high.
00:03:00The number of things that people are saying will happen is larger than normal, in my opinion.
00:03:07I think that's right.
00:03:08But none of them add up to like earth shattering.
00:03:12Except for the action button, which if you are on an iPhone 14 pro like I am, is very
00:03:18exciting.
00:03:19All of the rumored buttons.
00:03:20Do you think it's that one?
00:03:21Okay, wait, can we actually talk about this for a second?
00:03:23So I, I posted on the site the other day, a really great shortcut that someone uses.
00:03:29I'm sorry, I'm forgetting who it was, where they had set it up so that like they figured
00:03:34out quicker than I did that you can use the action button to open the camera and then
00:03:37again to take a picture.
00:03:38So you can use it like as a basically press and hold and then press and you have immediately
00:03:42taken a picture.
00:03:43I think that's awesome.
00:03:44I so I posted this on the site being like, this is a really cool use of the action button.
00:03:50Do you use the action button?
00:03:51And the overwhelming response I got from people is I never, ever, ever, ever use the action
00:03:54button.
00:03:55I forgot that it existed.
00:03:56I don't care about it at all.
00:03:57So Neely, you, I know, set it up to do a chat GPT thing.
00:04:02Do you actually like use the action button all the time?
00:04:04It's it has reached gimmick status.
00:04:08Okay, so we should just contextualize this.
00:04:10What I say of all of the rumored buttons.
00:04:12They're rumored to be adding a camera button, a dedicated camera button to the pro and then
00:04:17bring the action button to all the models.
00:04:19So we'll get to that.
00:04:20My use the action right now is it's linked to the chat GPT shortcut where you press it
00:04:25and it's slow.
00:04:26There's nothing about this.
00:04:28It's fast.
00:04:29You press it.
00:04:30Chat GPT launches.
00:04:31It flashes up some message.
00:04:32It's like checking connection and a wheel spins and you're, it's already gone.
00:04:36You've already been like, I don't care about the question I was going to ask anymore.
00:04:39And then you can ask it a question and we can listen to you.
00:04:41That's a little dicey as well.
00:04:43If you're in a loud environment, people are talking.
00:04:45It's not great at that.
00:04:46But the thing at the end of all that, you ask it a question, natural language, and then
00:04:50it just tells you an answer in natural language.
00:04:53And sometimes that answer is a pure hallucination and sometimes it's not, and you can close
00:04:56that window and just read it, which is much faster than listening to the voice.
00:04:59And all of that feels like a little glimpse into the future.
00:05:02I'll give you an example.
00:05:04Max and I are playing untitled goose game together, which is extraordinarily fun.
00:05:09If you don't know this game, it came out years ago.
00:05:11You're just a, you know, a miscreant goose.
00:05:15Just getting into trouble, just honking at stuff, enormously fun.
00:05:20It's like Grand Theft Auto, but you're a goose.
00:05:21I don't know how else to describe it.
00:05:23That belongs in that category of games that there is no way to say it in words.
00:05:27That sounds good.
00:05:28But yet it is amazing.
00:05:30But if you have like a six year old, you're like, this is a great video game to play.
00:05:33Like one, you just like run around honking at stuff.
00:05:35It's great.
00:05:36Rules.
00:05:37So we're having fun.
00:05:38And we couldn't figure out some puzzle.
00:05:39And I just asked Chad, where is this thing in this game?
00:05:43And it just told me the answer with like bullets.
00:05:45That's cool.
00:05:46And there's a whole universe of moral complaints you could lodge at opening eye for scraping
00:05:52all of the work and all of the labor of a million video game journalists who publish
00:05:55the explainers.
00:05:56And that's all in the background.
00:05:57But the thing just worked.
00:05:58And so that is really something.
00:06:00There's something there.
00:06:01And I hope all the people get paid for all their work in whatever way.
00:06:05But that one use of the action button to me is the most important use of the action button.
00:06:10Can you have a natural language voice assistant?
00:06:13Can you actually add a new kind of input mechanism to a computer?
00:06:18Yeah.
00:06:19And that one's really janky and weird.
00:06:22You can very, very clearly see how, oh, you can make that a million times better.
00:06:25And I think we're expecting to see Apple add these features to Siri.
00:06:28I don't know if it will be on this phone or at this event, but you can just see how it's
00:06:32going to get there.
00:06:33So I think the reason I'm excited about it is because of the books, Palma, it also has
00:06:36a button like this.
00:06:37You can program.
00:06:38Because I have one.
00:06:39I've actually used it.
00:06:40We got it.
00:06:41We got the books, Palma, so fast.
00:06:42It's been so fast.
00:06:43I'm speed running.
00:06:44I'm speed running today.
00:06:45It's been seven minutes since we started the show.
00:06:46Yeah.
00:06:47We haven't even gotten into the remarkable yet.
00:06:48Don't worry.
00:06:49I'm ready.
00:06:50But with the action button, can you do like just go to home or go to use it as a back
00:06:56button?
00:06:57No.
00:06:58So you can set it to run shortcuts and then you can set it to run like five or six different
00:07:03system level things like turn on the flashlight.
00:07:05Yeah.
00:07:06I don't think it has OS level navigational capabilities.
00:07:08Never mind.
00:07:09I'm less excited.
00:07:10I think maybe with some of the assistive features in iOS, you might be able to do some of the
00:07:16stuff, but it's not like top level functionality.
00:07:18Yeah.
00:07:19You could probably rig up a shortcut to go home, but that's a deeply weird use case.
00:07:24But I think, yeah, like back as a system gesture, I'm not sure you could do.
00:07:28Maybe you could.
00:07:29But again, that would be a like weird shortcut hack.
00:07:31That's not just sort of a thing.
00:07:32Or it's buried in some set of assistive technology configurations.
00:07:39And a lot of times what Apple does, which I think is really interesting and honestly
00:07:42really cool, they pioneer or they test new ways of using the products as assistive technologies
00:07:50first.
00:07:51And then they bring them to everyone because the thing to say about assistive technologies
00:07:56is making things more accessible is actually better for everybody.
00:07:59So things like Pinchy Pinch on the watch started out as an assistive technology.
00:08:04There's a bunch of other stuff across iOS that start off as assistive technology.
00:08:07And there's like a lot of them.
00:08:08Yeah, like the mouse on the iPad started as an assistive technology.
00:08:12Great.
00:08:13The mouse.
00:08:14Yeah.
00:08:15Definitely.
00:08:16That's a great one.
00:08:17The double tap on the back to do stuff is also another one that started as an assistive
00:08:18thing.
00:08:19There's a lot of it.
00:08:20Yeah.
00:08:21There's a lot.
00:08:22So that system is so configurable.
00:08:23I'm just saying I'm not 100% sure, but if it was going to be somewhere, it would be
00:08:27in there, I think.
00:08:28Yeah.
00:08:29But it's, they've limited what you can do with the action button in the system level.
00:08:32It's just a handful of things.
00:08:34And then you can run shortcuts.
00:08:35So when I push it, it runs the chat GPT shortcut, right?
00:08:39Which is fine, but it's not like I push it and the computer knows what I want.
00:08:44It's like, I'm going to run the shortcut that opens this other thing.
00:08:47This is where I say again, that shortcuts is a failed experiment and Apple should be
00:08:51ashamed of itself for not doing better with shortcuts.
00:08:53Because what you just said is either you can do one of four things or you have to have
00:08:57a master's degree in computer engineering to be able to do anything else with your phone.
00:09:02Well, what's supposed to happen, to be clear, what's supposed to happen is the app developer
00:09:06shipped the shortcuts, right?
00:09:07So my chat GPT shortcut is from OpenAI.
00:09:10They're like, here it is.
00:09:12We've added it to your system library shortcuts.
00:09:13And what they want you to do is map it to the action button.
00:09:15So like they're using the pathway to get to that button that Apple provides, but you still
00:09:21have to know a bunch of things about shortcuts and that OpenAI built the shortcut and it
00:09:27is there.
00:09:28And you can, instead of being like, I'm looking at the list of things that can do, and one
00:09:32of them is open chat GPT, right, right, exactly.
00:09:36Like there's a, one of the things that you can do on the Mac that I think is the better
00:09:39version of this is basically just walk it through a menu set.
00:09:43Like you can set up a keyboard shortcut to anything, any menu in any app on a Mac, just
00:09:48by saying, I want it to be this command.
00:09:50I'm like, that's how shortcuts should work.
00:09:52And it just doesn't.
00:09:53Yeah.
00:09:54It's kind of like that, just way more complicated.
00:09:56So I'm looking at the actual list of the action button, by the way, it's, you can turn on
00:09:58silent and ring, which is the classic mute switch.
00:10:01Yeah.
00:10:02Boring.
00:10:03You can switch a focus mode, which is one of those features that other people are super
00:10:06into or do not care about classic.
00:10:10And by the way, focus ones have been this way since like Palm OS devices, because that's
00:10:14where they came from.
00:10:15I had mine set up to turn, do not disturb on and off.
00:10:19And actually that was great.
00:10:20Basically just as like a shut my phone up thing.
00:10:22I like, I changed nothing in do not disturb except I turn on notifications and sounds
00:10:27off.
00:10:28Yeah.
00:10:29So you can, and the idea that you're going to push a hard button on your phone to switch
00:10:31focus modes is like very fascinating to me, but sure you can watch the camera, which is,
00:10:36I think this is the reason everybody sets it to camera because of the default choices.
00:10:40It's the thing that makes the most sense for the most people.
00:10:42For sure.
00:10:43You can have it turn on the flashlight, which is just like, if you're, you want to seem
00:10:47like an old dad, set that button to flashlight.
00:10:50You can launch voice memo, which is cool.
00:10:52You can run the translator.
00:10:53There's a magnifier, which was fun to play with for a day.
00:10:55And then it turned out you can do a shortcut and then you can add the other accessibility
00:10:59features or you can set it to no action.
00:11:00So just of these choices, I think it makes sense why camera is by far the most important
00:11:07one.
00:11:08Yeah.
00:11:09And it also, why it makes sense that Apple is rumored to be adding a dedicated camera
00:11:12button to the pro phone.
00:11:14But so this is the reason I asked though, is because I think we're at such a deep point
00:11:20of maturity with these devices that again, this is purely anecdotal, just based on my
00:11:24own experience of talking to other people, but I don't think the attach rate of the action
00:11:27button is that high.
00:11:29And I think in part because it's the button that is too high on the phone, like I will
00:11:33die on that Hill.
00:11:34They put the button in the wrong place.
00:11:36But partly it's just because we all know how to do all those things on our phones already.
00:11:40Right.
00:11:41And if I launched the camera a hundred times a day, learning a new pathway to get there
00:11:47is actually more work than it's cracked up to be.
00:11:50And I think one of the things that Apple is doing this year with its software is making
00:11:55all those bits and pieces more customizable.
00:11:58So you can do more stuff in the control center and you can do more stuff on the lock screen
00:12:01and you can change the two things at the bottom that were flashlight and camera.
00:12:04Now those are customizable.
00:12:06And Apple has this idea that like, okay, we're going to give more people more tools to do
00:12:09stuff however they want.
00:12:11And I wonder how big the group of people who are going to make those changes and be thrilled
00:12:15about them is versus the number of people who are just like, you know what, we're 17
00:12:20years into the iPhone.
00:12:21I kind of know how to do things.
00:12:23None of this actually matters.
00:12:24And I think the camera button is going to be the most interesting version of that because
00:12:28if the rumors are true, it's not just going to be a shutter button.
00:12:31It's actually going to be like pressure sensitive.
00:12:32So you'll be able to like press once to press half press to focus and then press to take
00:12:36the photo, which is like a genuine value add on top of anything you can do on the phone.
00:12:43Now it's just jankier to do it.
00:12:44There's a rumor that it will be touch sensitive for zoom, so you can slide your finger back
00:12:47and forth.
00:12:48I didn't see that.
00:12:49That's cool.
00:12:50Wait, they're going to put a slide on it to zoom.
00:12:51Yeah.
00:12:52But that is the rumor.
00:12:53Like I said, there's a lot of rumors.
00:12:54Yeah.
00:12:55Wait, but Apple's going to put in like a fancy button.
00:12:59But no headphone jack, like they found the room just to hurt me.
00:13:04I did.
00:13:05I did.
00:13:06Yeah.
00:13:07I mean, at this point, the if you believe that the future of this, the technology industry
00:13:14is multimodal AI, then having immediate access to a camera so the phone can look at things.
00:13:20If you believe the future of the industry is AR, having immediate access to the phone,
00:13:23you can see why you're like, okay, I need, I need to make this a button.
00:13:27Yeah.
00:13:28What's harder to understand is why the action button persists if the adoption rate is so
00:13:31low.
00:13:32Yeah.
00:13:33And it, it's like funny to me that one of those options isn't just open an app, right?
00:13:37If I had a button on my phone that just opened threes, it'd be like this button rules.
00:13:41Well, you can do that with shortcuts, right?
00:13:43But this is, this is where I go back to like shortcuts as a, you have to dive through this
00:13:46other system as opposed to, I don't know, like I think a lot of people tend to use like
00:13:51one app a lot.
00:13:53Yeah.
00:13:54And the idea that this, you can't just like make this button open that app from the jump
00:13:57from your lock screen.
00:13:58It's kind of weird.
00:13:59And I think it's Apple is just sort of restricting that a little too much.
00:14:05And so I'm hopeful that what we see is the action button gets more useful in one way
00:14:09and they move all the camera usage to the other button.
00:14:12Because otherwise it's the touch bar again, isn't it?
00:14:16Otherwise you're going to have two camera buttons on your phone.
00:14:18Like there's supposed to be a lot of people with pro phones who have effectively two camera
00:14:22buttons on their phone.
00:14:23Right.
00:14:24They're like, this one's when I'm feeling spicy.
00:14:26This one when I'm feeling not spicy.
00:14:28This is the nudies button and the non nudies button.
00:14:31Wow, guys.
00:14:32I mean, iOS 18, I believe that there's going to be like password protected.
00:14:38There we go.
00:14:39We did it.
00:14:40That's the thing that's driving iPhone development.
00:14:42It's these two.
00:14:46We'll be announcing some subscription offerings later in the show.
00:14:51So those are the highlight features of the two buttons coming to the front.
00:14:54I think that's what everyone is expecting.
00:14:56That's the leaks.
00:14:57We've seen case leaks where the case manufacturers are having to deal with this potential capacitive
00:15:02touch sensitive button on the pro phones.
00:15:05Then obviously we're seeing camera upgrades, potentially a new ultra wide camera on the
00:15:11pro, potentially a big zoom upgrade on the pro max.
00:15:14I would say the thing that I'm looking for most is processing upgrades.
00:15:19I don't know if Apple's going to talk about this.
00:15:21I think iPhone photos are, they're just starting to look a little wild.
00:15:27I think people are noticing.
00:15:28I think like lots of people are noticing.
00:15:30I think we've talked to the Halide developers.
00:15:33Process Zero, their minimal processing system in that app is like a huge hit.
00:15:40I think it's because people are like, oh, photos with shadows are pretty good.
00:15:44What if my photo looked the way I thought it was going to look when I took it?
00:15:47What a crazy idea that would be.
00:15:49I'm really curious to see if Apple responds to any of this anyway, because the trend for
00:15:54all of these cameras, I think they all kind of look the same now and they all, for a minute,
00:15:58do you remember when Google first did the pixel, they were talking about what artists
00:16:01they were inspired by?
00:16:02Oh yeah.
00:16:03And like they were like paintings and shadow and use of contrast and there was this notion
00:16:08that cameras would have different looks and they're like, wait a minute, what if we do
00:16:13Coney Island?
00:16:14And now they're all incredibly bright across the board.
00:16:18There's like no dynamics.
00:16:19So I'm just interested to see if Apple starts to dial us back because I've heard the criticism.
00:16:24And the criticism is in both like Kyle Chayka writing in the New Yorker and Alex Earl saying
00:16:30her beach videos look great.
00:16:33The criticism has hit like the full spectrum of American life.
00:16:36Yeah.
00:16:37One, especially for Apple, which has for so long kind of hung its hat on being the one
00:16:43down the middle, right?
00:16:44Where Google and Samsung both got very kind of opinionated about what their photos were
00:16:48going to look like.
00:16:49Apple's whole thing was like realism and beauty and everything was going to be great.
00:16:53And their idea was like, we're just going to, we're going to touch it up, but we're
00:16:56not going to change it.
00:16:57And I feel like they've, they've tipped over that line over the last couple of years, particularly
00:17:01with the fifteens.
00:17:02I think that like, I like the photos less on the iPhone 15 than almost any iPhone before
00:17:09it.
00:17:10Yeah.
00:17:11I have an upgrade.
00:17:12Becky has a 13 and it used to be that I made sure she had the new one every year cause
00:17:14we did, what do we do?
00:17:15We take pictures of our kid.
00:17:17So there's like, we should always just have the best one.
00:17:19Then we just stopped at the 13.
00:17:21It is the most restrained of the modern ones, but it's still not that restrained.
00:17:25So I'm just curious about this.
00:17:27Like you can, you can throw hardware specs at this camera, but it's the processing pipeline
00:17:32that is actually more interesting now.
00:17:34And I, I don't know how they're going to talk about it.
00:17:36I don't know if they're going to diverge on the regular and the pro.
00:17:40I'm just very curious to see where this goes.
00:17:42Can you imagine the pro like good photos?
00:17:45The regular is just like, no day glow.
00:17:47We don't believe in highlights.
00:17:49We take the highlights crank all the way to the top.
00:17:51Honestly, there's a, there's a version of that that I think is completely possible because
00:17:55a bunch of the rumors about the camera are about the camera hardware that Apple is getting
00:18:00increasingly good at doing teeny tiny optical zoom lenses inside of the iPhone stack and
00:18:06that it's able to actually build better optics into the phone.
00:18:11And in theory, if you can do better optics, you can do less processing, which gives Apple
00:18:16more leeway to say, we're going to do less in your photos are going to still look good.
00:18:20Whereas if you go down to the base level phones, it's just not going to be as good.
00:18:24And so it is by definition going to have to do more work.
00:18:26So like if Apple is going to have a process zero type thing, I can absolutely imagine
00:18:31it being a pro only.
00:18:32So I have heard almost the exact opposite.
00:18:35Really?
00:18:36I just made that up.
00:18:37It just seems logical.
00:18:38But have you heard actual stuff about this?
00:18:40Yeah.
00:18:41So I've been talking to some folks and we have to see how it goes with the new phone.
00:18:46You are correct that Apple is getting better at optics or getting better at doing the thing
00:18:49inside the phone, like building the actual camera hardware.
00:18:53But they're ruthlessly optimizing it to collect as much light as they can.
00:18:59Everything else they're kind of letting go because they can fix it in the pipeline.
00:19:03So Apple's view of this, as much like Google's view, is they're not building a camera.
00:19:06They're building a whole integrated imaging pipeline and has some goal.
00:19:11And if you can compensate for everything else except light collection, then you should just
00:19:16ruthlessly prioritize light collection because it's the most important thing.
00:19:20And then you can fix fringing or distortion or whatever else might happen at your lens
00:19:26level because you have all the light.
00:19:28So you can mathematically correct a bunch of errors that you get in the actual hardware,
00:19:33but you can never really mathematically correct for I didn't get enough light.
00:19:37That's fascinating.
00:19:38Basically just turning it into like a big data problem and it's like, OK, the more the
00:19:42more light we can throw at this problem, the better we can do, which I would not say makes
00:19:46me hopeful for the idea that we are going to get something that looks less process.
00:19:49This is why I was having this conversation.
00:19:50It was right after we published Sarah's piece about not being ready for image editing everywhere.
00:19:57And you kind of get to this place where the iPhone is already like kind of like doing
00:20:01a lot of sharpening in text and people see the text is weird if you over zoom on an image.
00:20:06You can see it's invents faces in weird ways or not quite faces and people are like, what
00:20:10is happening here?
00:20:11And it's like, oh, it's just a bunch of image processing has gone awry.
00:20:15And so I'm just very curious with this phone in particular, Apple is not shipping a bunch
00:20:21of Apple intelligence, but they are right on the cusp of it.
00:20:25So this is kind of the last phone that's going to take pictures, right?
00:20:29Like straightforward pictures.
00:20:31And then every phone after this is going to be like pictures with Apple intelligence or
00:20:34whatever the next thing is.
00:20:36And I'm just curious to see if they pull it back a little bit so they can go forward in
00:20:40a different direction or if they just stay it with.
00:20:44Like have you seen the sky?
00:20:47Look at the sky.
00:20:48Yeah, I mean, it all does make me think of like, do you remember that art project we
00:20:53talked about?
00:20:54I don't know, got a year or so ago that it was it was the camera, but it didn't have
00:20:57a lens.
00:20:58But every time you hit the shutter, it would like collect your location and mapping data
00:21:02about where you were in all the satellite imagery and then stitch that into a photo
00:21:05that feels increasingly close to where all of this is going.
00:21:10I would like to remind you specifically, David Pierce, that when I wanted to spend five hours
00:21:15talking at Samsung, taking photos of the moon, you were like that.
00:21:19And now you have just described the moon situation.
00:21:21No, no, no.
00:21:22When you said you wanted to do that, we all bought tacos and then did it at South by Southwest
00:21:27for an hour.
00:21:28That's true.
00:21:29All right.
00:21:30I had to pour some tequila into David and then we talked about Samsung generating images
00:21:34of the moon instead of taking photos of the moon.
00:21:38Philosophical conundrum, because every photo of the moon is technically exactly the same
00:21:40because the moon doesn't change.
00:21:42Right.
00:21:43Again, we could spend five hours talking with them, but it really all that stuff increasingly
00:21:49feels less like a weird thing and more like just where all of this inevitably is going.
00:21:55Yeah.
00:21:56Like I said, I think this camera in particular is just a moment like it is for sure that
00:22:02the next camera will have a bunch of stuff built into it.
00:22:05This one, they're not shipping a bunch of it yet.
00:22:08So what's it going to be?
00:22:09What is this destination look like?
00:22:11And is it the final destination?
00:22:12Yeah.
00:22:13Well, and Apple's already starting to do some of the like AI post-processing stuff where
00:22:16you can move things around and remove them from photos.
00:22:19It has a lot of the stuff we've been talking about Google doing.
00:22:22And I think it's going to be really interesting to see, A, how good that stuff is on this
00:22:26camera and B, how close it is in the pipeline.
00:22:31Because like Google and others have been putting it in other apps and making it like a slight
00:22:36sideline feature.
00:22:38Apple, we will see how quickly this becomes like just a normal part of the image taking
00:22:43process.
00:22:44It's going to be fascinating.
00:22:45Other stuff, we're seeing rumors again, lots of rumors that there's going to be colors
00:22:51like saturated colors instead of all the pale stuff, particularly in the regular 16.
00:22:55I think the Pro will probably still come in some muted colors.
00:22:59Mark Gurman thinks there's going to be a gold.
00:23:01People have been wanting a gold iPhone back.
00:23:04Some minor improvements to screens, displays are there.
00:23:07But the big rumor is that everything's going to get a little bit bigger.
00:23:09So 6.3 on the little iPhone and 6.9 on the Maxes, which is fascinating.
00:23:18They already do the plus size phones at 6.7.
00:23:20So we'll just see where they land on a bunch of screen sizes.
00:23:24But I think they're trying to differentiate the plus from the Max because big phones are
00:23:29just the thing people like.
00:23:30As much as we complain about them, people love a big phone.
00:23:34But that has to have a maximum, right?
00:23:36People's hands have maximums.
00:23:40We can't all palm a basketball.
00:23:42But some of us can.
00:23:44And they will have a phone finally.
00:23:45And many people aspire to, apparently.
00:23:49Well, obviously, the next turn is folding.
00:23:51Oh, right.
00:23:51Yeah.
00:23:52Well, that's what 25, 26, I think, was what they were saying.
00:23:55That's what we keep hearing.
00:23:56Yeah.
00:23:57And that it might be a flip before it's a fold, because that is the correct and good thing.
00:24:01And flip phones are better than fold phones.
00:24:03They're different.
00:24:04There's a pixel line fold in the office.
00:24:06Chris Walsh has one.
00:24:07And I was looking at it the other day.
00:24:08I was like, this phone rules.
00:24:09Like, it is a beautiful piece of hardware.
00:24:11And I was like, they got the aspect ratio on the front right.
00:24:13And he was just like, yeah, I never unfold it.
00:24:15I was like, well, this is the problem.
00:24:18So what's funny is I was at the doctor the other day.
00:24:23And when the guy checking me in found out what I did, we started talking about tech.
00:24:27And he had Motorola's new Razr with the big screen on the front.
00:24:31And he said exactly the same thing.
00:24:33He was like, this phone's so awesome.
00:24:34I never even opened it up.
00:24:35And I was like, well, there it is.
00:24:36But why do you have it?
00:24:38You just have, like, an original iPhone, basically.
00:24:40You just want the binky of having a giant phone if you need it.
00:24:43Just like everyone has the binky of wanting an Android tablet.
00:24:47There's one thing that's deeply reassuring in all technology.
00:24:49It's the state of Android tablets.
00:24:52That will always work, and the apps will be great.
00:24:55That's, I mean, that's the phone.
00:24:57Those are the phone rumors, right?
00:24:58We're expecting slightly bigger screens, action button on the regular 16,
00:25:02camera button on the Pro, you know, some upgrades to Wi-Fi and blah, blah, blah.
00:25:07But really, it's, we're adding buttons to everything.
00:25:12They might change the camera, right?
00:25:13Like, they might change the positions of the cameras.
00:25:16The rumor is that they'll do that to make spatial video support better.
00:25:21But, like, I think-
00:25:22You don't think that's a reason?
00:25:23I think they just rotate the cameras every couple of years.
00:25:26Yeah.
00:25:27I think there's just a wheel with three camera lenses on it, and they spin it.
00:25:30And they're like, all right, that's it this year.
00:25:31Like, it looks different now.
00:25:33I mean, there's reasons to orient these cameras in all kinds of ways.
00:25:36But I think they strive to make obvious visual changes more often than we think.
00:25:42Because the dumb consumer psychology is if it looks different,
00:25:45you think it's different.
00:25:47Then you open it up, and it's iOS.
00:25:49And you're like, well, nothing here has really changed.
00:25:52So we'll see.
00:25:52I do think there are two interesting AI-y upgrades that have been rumored.
00:25:58One is obviously the new chip.
00:26:01We saw the M4 in the iPad, and that was like a whole big AI story.
00:26:06The rumor for this one is that it's still going to be A-series chips.
00:26:09But presumably, there will be a whole big, like, oh my god,
00:26:12look how fast it is AI story about this one.
00:26:15Yet again, we're in a place where it's like,
00:26:19when was the last time you needed all of the horsepower of your iPhone?
00:26:22No one does, ever, for anything.
00:26:25Who knows?
00:26:26And then the other one.
00:26:27Neon for chat TPT.
00:26:27Yeah, right.
00:26:29Shortcuts does take all of your processing power.
00:26:31That's real.
00:26:33And then the other one is a rumor I was just reading earlier about,
00:26:36apparently, there's some indication that there's
00:26:38going to be a much-improved microphone, which, for me,
00:26:42as a person who uses Siri all the time for reminders and random nonsense,
00:26:47and if, indeed, Siri is going to be the core of Apple Intelligence,
00:26:52as a lot of people are expecting, and big redesign coming this year,
00:26:56better microphone goes a really long way towards making
00:26:59a lot of that stuff really work, which I think would be very cool.
00:27:02But the question then is, have you made a very slightly better microphone,
00:27:07or did Apple solve something here that I'm going to be very curious to see?
00:27:11They're going to claim they solved something, no matter what.
00:27:13For sure, I'll be clear about that.
00:27:15But again, if you think the future of input
00:27:18is multimodal AI, where you can just talk to a computer,
00:27:22where it can see stuff, these are little upgrades that actually add up
00:27:25to an idea, like a whole idea, which is there
00:27:28are more ways to communicate with this computer about what you want,
00:27:32and it will have more ways to communicate back at you.
00:27:35But Apple Intelligence isn't shipping it.
00:27:36That's actually the question with these products, right?
00:27:38Is you're going to announce new iPhones.
00:27:40You're going to announce basically a bunch of iterative upgrades
00:27:43that seem really nice.
00:27:45And then the big software turn that makes them worth buying,
00:27:49that Apple, I think, is banking on driving a huge upgrade cycle,
00:27:52isn't going to be here, right?
00:27:54We're not expecting that potentially all the way into next September.
00:27:58Like, the rollout of iOS 18 Apple Intelligence features
00:28:03is just going to take a long time, particularly with the big ticket ones.
00:28:06What now?
00:28:07Like, what are we going to get today?
00:28:09Like, we're not getting the apps can plug into Siri
00:28:12so you can talk to Siri and have it execute
00:28:14a bunch of actions across your app.
00:28:16Like, that's not, that's probably a year, right?
00:28:18So what are we going to get today?
00:28:19Is it summarizing notifications?
00:28:21Like, I don't think that's going to be enough.
00:28:23Those are already, seeing people on the beta
00:28:26get the summarized notifications is so funny,
00:28:28because it's so not helpful.
00:28:32So many of these things are like, I send somebody
00:28:34a 70 word long text message, and it summarizes it in 58 words.
00:28:39Like, what have we accomplished here?
00:28:41This is nothing.
00:28:42We're not doing, we're not doing anything.
00:28:43So a copy editor is very pleased with that, though.
00:28:46Like, 20 words, that's nice, cut.
00:28:48Yeah, and I think with all of this, again,
00:28:50like, we're still very much in this place of
00:28:53what is any of this for, right?
00:28:55And I think the thing that has been true about Apple forever
00:28:58is it has done a better job of telling the
00:29:00what this is for story than anybody else.
00:29:03And even with the iPhone, it does a very good job
00:29:06of explaining to you why you need all of the
00:29:09incredible processing power on your phone
00:29:12that you're never going to use.
00:29:13It's why they have the games on stage.
00:29:14It's why they did the AR stuff on there for years.
00:29:15Like, they do a very good job of being like,
00:29:18here's the thing we built,
00:29:19and here's why it's going to matter in your life.
00:29:21And I don't think that quite landed at WWDC.
00:29:26Whatever did land is not shipping yet.
00:29:29And so like, this is just another crack
00:29:32at that same story for Apple.
00:29:33And both how it has refined that story
00:29:36over the last few months,
00:29:37and whether it has figured anything out,
00:29:39to me, is like the big question of this event.
00:29:41And I'll add one more thing to it.
00:29:43In the amount of times Apple and other companies
00:29:47have shot themselves in the foot
00:29:49trying to tell that story.
00:29:50Totally.
00:29:51Because, you know, Google got in trouble
00:29:53for the Gemini ad at the Olympics,
00:29:54where the dad asked the AI to write a letter
00:29:57on behalf of a little girl to an Olympian.
00:29:59And everyone's like, this is garbage.
00:30:00Like, don't do this.
00:30:02Apple has had a number of ad-related controversies lately.
00:30:05And then one of their demos for summaries
00:30:08is Apple Intelligence summarizing
00:30:11the Steve Jobs think different speech.
00:30:13Oh yeah, that's right.
00:30:14From the ad, you know?
00:30:15It's like, here's the crazy ones.
00:30:17What?
00:30:18Like, don't summarize that.
00:30:21No.
00:30:21That's the art, you know?
00:30:23Even though it's a commercial,
00:30:24people regard that in a very emotional way.
00:30:26And being like, here's what we can do now.
00:30:28We can make that dumber.
00:30:30It's not actually the message you're trying to send.
00:30:32And so, I think Apple's looking at all of this
00:30:35and saying, okay, this is the real shot
00:30:38to communicate to customers.
00:30:39WWC is for developers and hardcore nerds,
00:30:41and you're listening to the show,
00:30:43and that's you.
00:30:44That's just you.
00:30:46But we love you, to be clear.
00:30:47We love you.
00:30:48That's us, that's us.
00:30:49Right, and that's the first cut
00:30:51where they can be technical,
00:30:52and they can talk about token sizes,
00:30:53and APIs, and all the stuff they talk about at WC.
00:30:56The iPhone event is, we're gonna put this thing
00:30:59on local news broadcasts around the country
00:31:01to be like, look what it can do.
00:31:04And I don't think they know,
00:31:05besides read my boss's email
00:31:10and give me the bullet points of it.
00:31:11Erase people.
00:31:12Right, if I had a shortcut,
00:31:13if I set the shortcut button
00:31:14to just be like, no, but nice,
00:31:17I could just motor through my inbox.
00:31:19You know what?
00:31:21That'd be really good.
00:31:22Right, that'd be great.
00:31:23But can they tell that story?
00:31:25Like, I don't know.
00:31:27So, I think that's gonna be a real question,
00:31:29because the features aren't shipping yet.
00:31:30Right.
00:31:31And so you're still kind of concocting these demos
00:31:34about stuff that doesn't exist yet
00:31:35for a phone that might not be able to do it.
00:31:37And that is, I think, a real puzzle.
00:31:39But it also seems like they may
00:31:42potentially plow through a little bit of this,
00:31:44because we're seeing a lot of other devices rumored,
00:31:47like more than I usually think of for an Apple event.
00:31:50Right, okay, so that's the phone.
00:31:51So I just want to wrap up on the phone.
00:31:53The phone has a question mark in it,
00:31:54which is like, how are they gonna talk
00:31:56about AI features that aren't there?
00:31:57The rest of them are, except for the AirPods,
00:32:01which I think we're expecting some amount of redesign,
00:32:05the Apple Watch seems like another bump.
00:32:08Right?
00:32:09But there may be three getting bumped.
00:32:12Yeah, that's the one spot where it seems like
00:32:15if there is going to be something new and exciting,
00:32:19it's gonna be in the Watch.
00:32:20Like, there's been some, is there a, you know,
00:32:23Apple Watch Series 10, Series X wild thing to happen?
00:32:29I think there's probably not,
00:32:30but there's been like a little bit of smoke around.
00:32:32Maybe there are some surprises
00:32:33in the Apple Watch line coming this year,
00:32:35because it's the anniversary.
00:32:36Well, the big rumor was that they were gonna get
00:32:38blood pressure monitoring or sleep apnea detection.
00:32:42And both of those sound pretty dead in the water
00:32:45for this year.
00:32:46Because they're in a giant lawsuit with the company.
00:32:48Yeah, because they're in a giant lawsuit.
00:32:51And like, blood pressure monitoring,
00:32:53they haven't gotten FDA clearance or anything, right?
00:32:55And they have to, you can't just be like,
00:32:58yeah, we can test your blood pressure.
00:33:00No FDA approval, that's not gonna happen.
00:33:03So yeah, it sounds like they were trying to line
00:33:05a bunch of stuff up for the Apple Watch 10,
00:33:08and it just sort of...
00:33:11Yeah, so I guess it feels like what we're gonna get
00:33:13is a very minor bump to the Ultra, because basic,
00:33:17I mean, look, the Apple Watch has like the best lock-in
00:33:19story of all time.
00:33:20Yes, yep.
00:33:21If you have an iPhone, you can only buy this product.
00:33:24That's it.
00:33:25There it is.
00:33:26Unless you're one of the people who wants to buy a Garmin,
00:33:28in which case, you buy a Garmin and use it sometimes,
00:33:31but then you might still have an Apple Watch.
00:33:33Like, weird, right?
00:33:35So like, their need to competitively upgrade
00:33:38these products is very low.
00:33:39And then the products are really good.
00:33:41Which is just a pretty disastrous one-two punch
00:33:44of wanting to see huge upgrades.
00:33:47Yeah, it does seem like we're gonna get
00:33:49a bigger, regular watch to be the size of the Ultra,
00:33:55which is both cool and sort of alarming.
00:33:58Like, I hate, truly hate, that we are going to normalize
00:34:02these gigantic screens on our wrist.
00:34:04Like, Nilay, I can read your watch
00:34:05through Riverside right now.
00:34:07I can see what's on your watch.
00:34:08That can't possibly, this is not good.
00:34:10How are we doing this?
00:34:12It's just, yes.
00:34:13I stare down Tim Cook's watch at every event.
00:34:15I'm like, what's on there, buddy?
00:34:19Look, I'm at like, make the Apple Watch Ultra black
00:34:22and I'll buy a new one.
00:34:24Great, that's what I want out of this product.
00:34:26There's been some rumors about colors.
00:34:28But yeah, there's this rumor that we'll see
00:34:30the Apple Watch Series 10 or the Series X,
00:34:32which is the 10th anniversary,
00:34:33and have like, magnetic bands, and be thinner,
00:34:35and be the design jump.
00:34:37And I strongly think that in a time of sort of like,
00:34:42declining sales and like, upward going services revenue,
00:34:46that Apple's desire to do that is quite low.
00:34:50Yeah.
00:34:50Because again, the product is like, perfect lock-in.
00:34:53Like, what are you gonna do?
00:34:55Right, like, Tim Cook's staring you down.
00:34:56You're like, all right, you're leaving with an iPhone?
00:34:58Would you like to buy AppleCare,
00:34:59a set of AirPods and an Apple Watch?
00:35:01Because you can't buy anything else.
00:35:03Yeah, I doubt it's very popular to first buy a watch
00:35:07and then buy an iPhone, right?
00:35:09So it's not like they're trying to sell some-
00:35:12Who is that person?
00:35:13This is what I mean.
00:35:14Like, the impetus to get people in
00:35:17if you're trying to make the Apple Watch great
00:35:19is you're like, okay, there are a bunch of people
00:35:20who will switch for an Apple Watch,
00:35:22and I don't think that exists.
00:35:23I think, like, the Apple Watch is not the first thing, right?
00:35:27So I feel like it's either the iPad or the iPhone.
00:35:29I think it's the first thing.
00:35:30There's one tiny category, and I'm only saying this
00:35:32because it's like the third day of elementary school here.
00:35:35Parents are buying Apple Watches for their kids
00:35:37who don't have phones.
00:35:37Fair, that's real.
00:35:38As tracking devices, as texting devices,
00:35:40and then you just, you're in the ecosystem.
00:35:43Then they gotcha.
00:35:44Yeah, that's something.
00:35:45And that is, that I think is like the beginning
00:35:48of something potentially big and interesting,
00:35:51but that feels very new, and we'll see.
00:35:54Like I said, I think we're gonna see upgrades
00:35:56to the Apple Watch.
00:35:56I just think it's all gonna be pretty iterative.
00:35:58That is my bet.
00:35:59There is this rumor that you'll see the big upgrade.
00:36:02We'll see how it goes.
00:36:03The AirPods seem like the bigger change.
00:36:05Yes.
00:36:06Right, we're expecting new AirPods, AirPods 4,
00:36:10maybe new AirPods Pro,
00:36:13and it seems like that's where you're gonna get
00:36:14the design change, and I think that is partially
00:36:16because they're still up in competition.
00:36:19Like you can get other Bluetooth earbuds.
00:36:21And there are, in fact, lots of really good ones out there.
00:36:24Yeah, so you can see a little competition,
00:36:26and obviously AirPods haven't changed in a long time.
00:36:28But if they change the design,
00:36:30what are all of those horrible knockoffs
00:36:33at 7-Eleven gonna do?
00:36:35Immediately change.
00:36:36The good news about that industry is,
00:36:38boy, does it adapt.
00:36:40Yeah.
00:36:41Exactly.
00:36:42The factory in Shenzhen,
00:36:43across from Apple's factory in Shenzhen,
00:36:45is on red alert.
00:36:49So AirPods 4 might have noise canceling.
00:36:53They'll be more of an open-ear design.
00:36:54They'll sit on your ear instead of all the way in,
00:36:56the way that the Pros do.
00:36:58Which would be a big deal, right?
00:37:00The ANC plus the hang on your ear instead of stick in it,
00:37:06super hard to do.
00:37:07Chris Welch was pointing out in our Slack the other day
00:37:09that lots of companies have tried this
00:37:10and basically no one has ever done it very well.
00:37:13As somebody who hates the ear blocking of the AirPods Pro,
00:37:17like I just don't, I just don't like them.
00:37:19Yeah.
00:37:20It feels bad in my ear.
00:37:21They make my ears like hot and pressure, I don't like it.
00:37:23So I use the hangy ones,
00:37:24but then I don't get any of the noise cancellation.
00:37:26So if you can get the best of both worlds there,
00:37:29that's pretty awesome.
00:37:30Yeah.
00:37:31But super hard to do, technically.
00:37:33I'm looking, and then the AirPods 3,
00:37:35maybe we'll see, they'll add some more sensors
00:37:38to complete the health story
00:37:40that Apple's trying to tell all of this stuff.
00:37:42Potentially a new case, we'll see.
00:37:45What I don't know is whether they're gonna upgrade
00:37:47the AirPods Max, which they have not touched
00:37:49in a million years.
00:37:50Yeah, right?
00:37:51What do they do?
00:37:52Which they'll use lightning.
00:37:53Oh, there we go.
00:37:54So they'll just get like a USB-C upgrade?
00:37:56Or they can make them not weigh 5,000 pounds.
00:37:59That's a choice.
00:37:59They'll take out some of those weights, those Beats weights.
00:38:02Those, oh man, I forgot the Beats used to put weights
00:38:05in the headphones.
00:38:06They can make the case good.
00:38:07There are lots of things you could do
00:38:09with the AirPods Max.
00:38:09But I love the little purse.
00:38:11It's adorable.
00:38:13Here, would you like your headphones to be dirty?
00:38:16They sure will.
00:38:17We've forgotten to put them in a case in this case.
00:38:20We'll see.
00:38:21I mean, there's a spatial audio story to be told here,
00:38:23but it seems like of all the things that we expect
00:38:26to change, the AirPods lineup is the most ripe
00:38:29for actual change.
00:38:31Yeah.
00:38:32Because it's the thing that you can,
00:38:33well, one, people lose them.
00:38:35And then when you lose them, you might buy new headphones.
00:38:37And when you buy new headphones,
00:38:38you actually have choices in the market.
00:38:41Yeah, well, and again, if Apple is trying to tell
00:38:43this like big multimodal AI story,
00:38:46headphones actually end up being really important.
00:38:49And my big hope for AirPods Max has been
00:38:52that like that could be a place where Apple can start
00:38:55to do more like local AI processing
00:38:58inside of your headphones.
00:38:59Like give me the AirPods Max
00:39:01that can do some of that stuff
00:39:03just inside of the headphones.
00:39:04Like I want an AirPods Max
00:39:07that has all the software of an Apple Watch
00:39:10in my headphones.
00:39:11Is that a bad idea?
00:39:12Probably, but that's what I want.
00:39:14I wanna just be able to run with headphones
00:39:16and nothing else.
00:39:17And they could do that in the Max.
00:39:18Would you tap on the little ear cup
00:39:20and send a heartbeat to your wife?
00:39:23Yeah, I just send my heartbeat to Neely
00:39:24like three or four times a day.
00:39:26It's true, it's really weird.
00:39:27Yeah.
00:39:28Have you ever gotten a weird blacked out video
00:39:30of just thumps?
00:39:30And you're like, oh, David loves me.
00:39:32The other rumor is I sincerely doubt this will happen,
00:39:39but an M4 Mac mini is on the list of things.
00:39:42Like, that's October.
00:39:43That's October.
00:39:44I think we'll see new Macs in October.
00:39:45That's been the schedule, right?
00:39:46Yeah.
00:39:47I'll be shocked.
00:39:48But you know, if they don't do anything with the phone,
00:39:51it would make sense to do the M4.
00:39:53There's just been a lot of smoke about the Mac mini,
00:39:56which is weird.
00:39:57So I think like we're obviously due
00:39:59for a refresh of Mac books, right?
00:40:02The M4 is out there.
00:40:04It's time for all of this from like the studio on down.
00:40:09But the mini is the only one
00:40:10that anyone is talking about right now,
00:40:12which is maybe just like a function of the rumor mill
00:40:14and the way that these things work.
00:40:15And an October event is not that far away.
00:40:17So it could very well be.
00:40:19But this one is particularly just sort of out
00:40:22in the ether right now.
00:40:23The mini's also the one that's getting
00:40:25a major case redesign, right?
00:40:26Like the other ones aren't getting big case redesigns.
00:40:29If you believe it's gonna get a big case redesign,
00:40:31it is definitely happening in October.
00:40:33Yeah.
00:40:34Apple is very good at being like, look at this thing.
00:40:37Yeah.
00:40:38One thing at a time.
00:40:39I think it's really likely
00:40:40that we're just seeing a lot of smoke right now
00:40:42because there's a lot of leaks
00:40:44because it's a whole new case,
00:40:45but it's gonna happen in October or not.
00:40:47That's my bet.
00:40:48Is that Apple wants all of your attention
00:40:50to be on the iPhone, which makes all the money
00:40:52and the services component of the iPhone,
00:40:54which makes all the money.
00:40:55And that is what you're gonna pay attention to.
00:40:57And then in October,
00:40:58we can talk about whether or not
00:40:59they're gonna make an M4 Mac mini
00:41:01or a 27-inch iMac or whatever.
00:41:03I'm just saying that
00:41:04because I desperately want a new 27-inch iMac.
00:41:06Just trying to speak it into the world.
00:41:07That's how I feel about the M4 Mac mini.
00:41:09Like, give it to me now, please.
00:41:10The rumor is that it's gonna be like closer
00:41:13to the size of an Apple TV
00:41:14and it's just gonna have a bunch of USB-C ports.
00:41:17Like, yes, that's, yes.
00:41:19That's it.
00:41:20That's all you have to do.
00:41:20Inject that into my veins right now.
00:41:22Make it under $1,000, please.
00:41:25I feel like I use all the ports in this Mac mini.
00:41:28Oh, I use all the ports
00:41:29and I have a dongle in my Mac mini.
00:41:30Yeah, I have a Thunderbolt 4 dock plugged into a Mac mini
00:41:33because I use all the ports in the Mac mini.
00:41:35Yeah.
00:41:36All right, I'm telling you that's October.
00:41:37We'll talk about this again another time.
00:41:38I think you're right.
00:41:39That is it.
00:41:40I mean, that's the list of things.
00:41:42David, you have some prompts here
00:41:43to which I will answer both with the same answer.
00:41:46Yeah, this is,
00:41:47well, so we play a version of this game every year,
00:41:48which is basically just before we get off the Apple stuff,
00:41:52we're gonna give ourselves something to be held to.
00:41:55We each had to come up with a prediction
00:41:57that you think genuinely will happen, Neeli.
00:42:01You have to think it's going to happen
00:42:04that we haven't yet talked about.
00:42:05And then one thing that you're desperately hoping for
00:42:08but have no evidence is real.
00:42:10I'll go first and then just to give you guys time
00:42:14to think about this.
00:42:16My prediction that I think will happen
00:42:17that we haven't talked about
00:42:18is I think we're gonna get a Ted Lasso season four trailer.
00:42:20God damn it, that was mine.
00:42:22I don't know what it's gonna be.
00:42:23It might just be Jason Sudeikis
00:42:25just like saying four words
00:42:26because they haven't shot anything.
00:42:28This is how we do trailers now, right?
00:42:30It'll be the back of his head.
00:42:31I mean, do you remember the Apple event
00:42:32where like they all just stood on stage
00:42:34and said, we're making a TV show.
00:42:36I made fun of that for a year
00:42:37and then they made all of their shows.
00:42:38So the rumor is he's not gonna be in it very much.
00:42:42He's, he, he apparently like-
00:42:43Let's keep doing that.
00:42:44Do you think it's gonna be called like dead lasso?
00:42:47The rumor is it's probably,
00:42:49it's gonna be about a woman's football team.
00:42:53It's really, come on.
00:42:53It's just Ted Lasso in the Severance universe
00:42:55and it's called dead lasso.
00:42:57It's just dead.
00:43:00But yeah, I'm just,
00:43:02I'm just very excited about Ted Lasso.
00:43:04Yeah.
00:43:05But he's not gonna be there.
00:43:06And like any good company,
00:43:07they're like, let's just go back to the well.
00:43:09They just signed all those people in the last few weeks.
00:43:11It feels like this is where they're gonna-
00:43:13Apple is just speed running the TV industry, right?
00:43:15Like they've pissed off George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
00:43:17Congratulations.
00:43:18Now they're bringing back the hits.
00:43:19Like this is just what you do.
00:43:20Great job them.
00:43:22And then the thing I'm desperately hoping for,
00:43:23but have no evidence is real,
00:43:25is I want a cellular connected set of AirPods.
00:43:30I want a thing.
00:43:32I will switch to Apple music.
00:43:34As God is my witness,
00:43:35I will switch to Apple music
00:43:37if you just let me stream directly to my headphones.
00:43:40It's all I want.
00:43:42Is that a bad idea?
00:43:42Yes, but I want it anyway.
00:43:43I don't care.
00:43:44Would you like text from it?
00:43:46Directly to the brain.
00:43:47Yeah.
00:43:49All right, Nila, you go.
00:43:50What do you got?
00:43:52My prediction,
00:43:53one thing that I'm hoping that will happen
00:43:55that we haven't talked about.
00:43:57No one thing you think will happen
00:43:58that we haven't talked about.
00:44:00It has to be real.
00:44:01Right.
00:44:02Yeah, you have to think it's gonna happen.
00:44:06Okay.
00:44:07Apple TV home screen upgrade.
00:44:10Oh?
00:44:10Ooh, okay.
00:44:12That's a good-
00:44:12They're due.
00:44:13It won't happen.
00:44:14They are due.
00:44:15They won't do.
00:44:16They would have announced it at WWDC,
00:44:17but they're way overdue
00:44:19on just scooting that stuff around.
00:44:22Yeah.
00:44:23Can I just say, by the way,
00:44:24I bought an Apple TV because it was on sale
00:44:26from Verizon for $90 for some reason,
00:44:30plugged it into my crappy TCL Roku TV,
00:44:33set it so that it just goes straight to that input
00:44:35when I turn on the TV,
00:44:36and now suddenly my TV viewing experience
00:44:38is like 75% better.
00:44:40Yeah, you got rid of the Roku.
00:44:40Boy, is Roku bad now.
00:44:43And boy, did the Apple TV make it better.
00:44:44I don't think we've talked about this very much in the show,
00:44:46but our own Will Joel,
00:44:48senior creative director Will Joel,
00:44:50has a Roku TV,
00:44:51and the thing happened to him
00:44:52where it just started motion smoothing.
00:44:54This also happened to me at my sister's house
00:44:56over the Fourth of July
00:44:56where her Roku TVs just turned on motion smoothing.
00:44:59So he wrote about it,
00:45:00and he wrote, people in the forums are all mad
00:45:02about this motion smoothing
00:45:03just being turned on in Roku TVs.
00:45:06We have not yet written the follow-up,
00:45:07but they got back to him somewhat irritatedly,
00:45:10and they're like,
00:45:10we have not turned on motion smoothing.
00:45:13We've turned on per-frame interpolation,
00:45:17which is motion smoothing.
00:45:18Yep.
00:45:19It's the same thing.
00:45:20Same thing.
00:45:21It's the same.
00:45:21They're like, we're not motion smoothing.
00:45:23We're going into the spaces between frames
00:45:25and making up additional frames.
00:45:27And it's like, that's motion smoothing.
00:45:29That's the one. So he's gotta write it up.
00:45:30But Roku has secretly turned on motion smoothing
00:45:33on millions of TVs with no ways to turn off,
00:45:34and now they're denying they even did it.
00:45:36Throw them out.
00:45:37Get Olettes.
00:45:38Yep.
00:45:39They're too busy counting that ad money they get.
00:45:41They don't care.
00:45:42All right, that's my prediction we haven't talked about,
00:45:44but on the closest that I think is real.
00:45:47Can I say the one thing that will definitely not happen?
00:45:48Yeah.
00:45:49Apple will definitely not announce
00:45:51a single other car maker
00:45:52who's taken them up on next generation car play.
00:45:54Okay.
00:45:56Okay.
00:45:57I like this.
00:45:58Is this the one that you're hoping for,
00:45:59but have no evidence is real?
00:46:01Someone, please, dear God, do car play.
00:46:05I mean, I will say the Decoder inbox right now
00:46:07is full of car makers who are like,
00:46:09let us justify why we're not doing this anymore.
00:46:12Who would you like it to be?
00:46:13If you could be CEO for a day
00:46:15and make somebody adopt the new car play
00:46:17for either good or chaos reasons,
00:46:19which car maker would you want it to be?
00:46:21It would be Honda or Toyota, in my opinion,
00:46:23who have some of the ugliest in-car interface designs.
00:46:28Of all the mainstream cars,
00:46:30it's like, just tell your designers
00:46:32that lowercase letters exist.
00:46:34They refuse.
00:46:35Like, we're just doing all-cap software, everybody,
00:46:39all the time, just lowercase.
00:46:42That's the level we're working at with Honda and Toyota.
00:46:46All right, Tranz, what do you got?
00:46:47All right, so my prediction that I think will happen
00:46:49was also a Ted Lasso, so we covered it.
00:46:52Well, now you have to come up with a new one.
00:46:53Yeah, I wrote it down.
00:46:54I want to be very clear.
00:46:55I didn't make it up.
00:46:58Do you think Jason Sudeikis will be there?
00:46:59That's the real question.
00:47:00No, I don't think he will be.
00:47:01I think if they have anyone, it'll be Hannah Waddingham,
00:47:03because she has never turned down a press tour.
00:47:08If somebody's like, hey, you want to show up?
00:47:09She's like, I'm here for you.
00:47:10Maybe she'll be the musical act at the end.
00:47:13We should get Hannah Waddingham.
00:47:14Can we get her to come on the Verge cast?
00:47:16Yeah, I bet she would.
00:47:18She seems like good people.
00:47:19Yeah, let's do it.
00:47:20Yeah, she seems fun.
00:47:21We'll make it happen.
00:47:21Liam, let's get that done.
00:47:22Chop, chop.
00:47:24All right, and one thing you're hoping for,
00:47:26but have no evidence is real.
00:47:28Ray-Ban Metaglasses, but Apple.
00:47:32Just because I really like the Ray-Ban Metaglasses,
00:47:35but the meta AI sucks.
00:47:38I want to talk to Siri.
00:47:39She's also suck, or excuse me,
00:47:41Siri also sucks and is not gendered,
00:47:46but it sucks in a more familiar way.
00:47:49Well, it sucks in a way
00:47:50that actually accesses other apps on my phone.
00:47:52Yeah, like I-
00:47:53Whereas meta sucks on it all by itself.
00:47:56It just sucks over here.
00:47:57Meta's like, I can play your Spotify.
00:48:00That's it.
00:48:01I'm like, well, stop.
00:48:03I didn't do my no evidence for,
00:48:05which is the only thing I,
00:48:07I predict this at every Apple event I have for a decade.
00:48:10Just make a TV.
00:48:12Just make a TV.
00:48:13It's your, what are you doing, guys?
00:48:16You love services businesses.
00:48:18Do you know what every TV maker is doing right now?
00:48:20They're just doing services.
00:48:22They're giving them away for free.
00:48:23You could charge real money, Tim.
00:48:26You could be like, I don't know,
00:48:26this TV costs $3,000 and people would buy it
00:48:28and still pay for your weird new cable bundle
00:48:31that you're making, but not saying that you're making.
00:48:33Yeah, but they got to spend all their money
00:48:35on the weird cable bundle.
00:48:36They can't afford the TVs.
00:48:37Apple releases an iPad at studio display size.
00:48:42Is that a television?
00:48:44What is a TV?
00:48:46I mean, every TV is just an Android tablet.
00:48:50Okay, but like, I feel like if the tablet is larger
00:48:53than the child holding it, it goes into TV territory.
00:48:57That's pretty dependent on the size of the child.
00:48:59Yeah, but like most-
00:49:00So wait, you're saying as my child gets older,
00:49:04at some point it stops being a TV?
00:49:07It's the tablet diagonal.
00:49:08Yeah.
00:49:09Like size of child versus size of tablet.
00:49:11Exactly.
00:49:12And then age is like the Z-axis.
00:49:16Okay, in four-dimensional space,
00:49:18this is a TV is what you're trying to say.
00:49:20Exactly.
00:49:21I'm just saying, make a TV.
00:49:23It is almost comical that the one category
00:49:27that they could thoroughly dominate,
00:49:29they are just like, eh, healthcare.
00:49:33Well, and what's funny is for all the reasons
00:49:36that it actually never made sense
00:49:38given the company that Apple is to make a TV,
00:49:41it actually now kind of does.
00:49:43Right.
00:49:44You're gonna sell a giant computer that hangs on the wall
00:49:46and that people pay money every month to use.
00:49:50Yeah.
00:49:51Just do the thing.
00:49:53Please, I beg of you.
00:49:54Gene Munster needs this.
00:49:56Panasonic is making TVs again.
00:50:00Somebody who just owns the brand name is making those TVs.
00:50:03I'm just saying.
00:50:05It's like, whatever, we'll do it.
00:50:06Do you remember us?
00:50:08I had a Panasonic OLED, it was great.
00:50:09Okay, we should take a break.
00:50:11We'll be back.
00:50:12We got an incredible gadget lighting round coming up.
00:50:15Stay tuned.
00:50:17Support for The Verge cast comes from Life 360.
00:50:21It's back to school season,
00:50:22which means it's time for new routines, new activities,
00:50:25and maybe new responsibilities for your kids.
00:50:28Maybe they're getting themselves to school these days
00:50:30or carpooling to and from practice.
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00:50:35but you still wanna make sure they're staying safe.
00:50:37You might wanna try Life 360,
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00:51:25Okay, we're back.
00:51:27We're already over.
00:51:29We've had a lot of people asking lately
00:51:31how long the show is supposed to be,
00:51:32and the answer is we're never gonna tell you.
00:51:36That's the, it's the joke.
00:51:38Yeah.
00:51:39You will notice the show is almost
00:51:40very consistently the same length.
00:51:42But we're always over in our minds.
00:51:43We are always over.
00:51:45It's never as long as it's supposed to be.
00:51:47The other thing that is true,
00:51:48as I make the show longer with this fan thing
00:51:49about how long the show is gonna be,
00:51:52when we make it shorter, everyone yells at us.
00:51:54But then when we ask people for feedback on the show,
00:51:56they tell us to make it shorter.
00:51:57So we're just trapped in like a paradox loop of feedback
00:52:02where the show can only ever be this long,
00:52:04but it's never long enough, and it's also too long.
00:52:06Yep.
00:52:07The other thing people need to understand
00:52:08is you're just doing this all the time.
00:52:10Like, Nilay is just sitting in front of a microphone
00:52:12talking about things all the time.
00:52:13We just occasionally record it and then ship it.
00:52:16So it can be as long as we want, but it's also just always.
00:52:19Imagine what our meetings are like.
00:52:22Let's drop in on Nilay VERGEcasting the new one.
00:52:27All right, it's IFA,
00:52:28which is a German word for gadget show.
00:52:32Sure.
00:52:33We got a team there.
00:52:34There's a million gadgets being announced.
00:52:36I think we should do this as a lightning round.
00:52:39We should just go through them all, except the first one,
00:52:41there's no chance we're gonna get through this
00:52:43in lightning round fashion
00:52:44because it is the Remarkable Paper Pro,
00:52:47which Alex's headline is,
00:52:48is as outrageous as it is luxurious.
00:52:51Alex, what is going on here?
00:52:52Okay, so they took the gallery e-ink display,
00:52:57and then they-
00:52:58Which everyone remembers the gallery e-inks.
00:52:59Everybody knows this.
00:52:59Classic gallery.
00:53:01It's a well-known-
00:53:02People in the street, all day, talking about the gallery.
00:53:04I had people come up to me.
00:53:05And was like, oh, the gallery, what's up with gallery?
00:53:07Yeah, like when I go to the grocery store,
00:53:08people were like,
00:53:09do you think gallery's coming this year?
00:53:12And I can say, yes, it finally came.
00:53:13So there's two ways to do color on e-ink.
00:53:18One is you push the black and white ink pixels
00:53:21in the e-ink against a color filter.
00:53:23That's how Kaleido works.
00:53:25That's how like anything from books or Kobo,
00:53:28and probably if Amazon ever does it,
00:53:31that's what they'll use is Kaleido,
00:53:32because it works really, really fast.
00:53:34Then there's gallery, which looks way, way better.
00:53:37The color is way, way cooler
00:53:38because they get rid of the filter
00:53:40and all the pixels being moved are actual color pixels
00:53:43of cyan, yellow, and magenta.
00:53:46And that's what they did here.
00:53:48And usually you don't want to do that
00:53:49because it's slow and sucks, but it's fast.
00:53:53How did they make it fast?
00:53:54They made it fast.
00:53:55When I asked, they were like, we can't tell you.
00:53:59That's like the magic sauce here
00:54:00is they figured out how to refresh it quickly.
00:54:02Yeah, yeah.
00:54:03The display has cocaine in it.
00:54:05They call it the canvas tech stack.
00:54:08And I don't know, I'm not entirely,
00:54:11I have some theories of what they've done.
00:54:13I've been playing with it a lot.
00:54:14I'm going to keep playing with it, but it just, it works.
00:54:17But there's like a really obnoxious flashing problem
00:54:19with anything that you write in color.
00:54:22Anytime you write in color,
00:54:23it like has to refresh the entire display.
00:54:25As soon as you stop writing, that sucks.
00:54:29Yeah.
00:54:30But then for just regular writing, it works perfectly.
00:54:32But it looks great.
00:54:33I mean, like you've just been like holding it up
00:54:35into the camera as we've been talking
00:54:36and like the screen looks awesome.
00:54:38Let me, I'm going to pull up another photo
00:54:40because I just keep doing that.
00:54:42Poor Liam was at the office the other day
00:54:44and I was like, Liam, look.
00:54:46And he's like, please just stop showing me color pictures
00:54:48from like, like that just looks like real nice art.
00:54:52Yeah, it's nice.
00:54:53It's just real pretty.
00:54:56Yeah, it's one of those, don't buy it.
00:54:58Please don't buy this.
00:54:59This is not for normal people,
00:55:01but this is such like the fact
00:55:03that they pulled it off is really cool.
00:55:05Yeah.
00:55:06So to your don't buy it point, like.
00:55:09It's like, I'm going to buy this.
00:55:11I do, I want it more than I am proud of.
00:55:14So the thing Remarkable has done really well
00:55:17is like relentlessly focused
00:55:19on doing a very small thing really, really well, right?
00:55:21Like the Remarkable tablet,
00:55:23all the way back to the first one
00:55:24is like a thoroughly mediocre reading experience
00:55:28and just like deeply lovely to write on.
00:55:31The keyboard case, I have only used a little,
00:55:33you've used it a lot more, is wonderful by all accounts.
00:55:38So it's like, as a note-taking machine,
00:55:41this thing is really expensive.
00:55:42It's what, $579?
00:55:44Yeah, it starts at $579 without the case.
00:55:46Like the typing case is like $229.
00:55:48Yeah, so you're looking at like a $900.
00:55:51Don't do that, but also do it.
00:55:53Yeah, but that's the thing.
00:55:54And I'm like, I just, even if you don't buy it,
00:55:58I appreciate that Remarkable is just like,
00:55:59we are going to make digital handwriting,
00:56:02note-taking awesome and have like done it.
00:56:04Like kudos to you, Remarkable.
00:56:06You did the damn thing.
00:56:07Great job.
00:56:08I have the Remarkable 2 here and I love it.
00:56:12I never write by hand because my handwriting is awful.
00:56:14And I find myself using this thing
00:56:15just because it's really nice to write on.
00:56:16Well, and it's actually pretty,
00:56:18I also have awful handwriting
00:56:19because as a child I wanted to be a doctor
00:56:21and I thought you had to have bad handwriting.
00:56:24But it actually does a really good job
00:56:25of taking that and putting it into text
00:56:28if you need to do it.
00:56:29Like it sucks a little bit, but not like awful.
00:56:32And it's just like, it does the one thing
00:56:34really, really, really well.
00:56:36And it executes it so wonderfully
00:56:38and takes this technology that I never thought
00:56:41I would see being used this way
00:56:43and doing it remarkably, very well.
00:56:47Very good, we're gonna move on now.
00:56:48Yeah, it's great.
00:56:50I did the dad joke, so.
00:56:52That's good, well, you're gonna review it.
00:56:54I assume.
00:56:55Yeah, yeah, I did like kind of a mini review of it.
00:56:57I've only spent about six or seven days
00:56:59with it at this point.
00:57:00I want to spend more time with it.
00:57:01But it's a remarkable tablet.
00:57:03If you've used another one,
00:57:04it'll be the exact same thing,
00:57:05only now it's color.
00:57:07Okay, Honor announced a super thin foldable IFA.
00:57:11It's very cool.
00:57:12And what we're seeing,
00:57:13and I'll put it right next to
00:57:15Huawei announced a tri-fold phone.
00:57:18I forgot that the thing IFA does,
00:57:20like when IFA is at its best,
00:57:21IFA is the time where they're like,
00:57:23oh, you silly Americans,
00:57:25you don't get to have the good gadgets.
00:57:26Yeah, yeah.
00:57:27And it always makes me sad.
00:57:28Right, it's like you have locked down cell networks
00:57:29that prevent you from having the cool phones.
00:57:31You know, I think I said earlier
00:57:32that the Pixel 9 fold is great.
00:57:35It's like the end of that road.
00:57:38I think the same with the newer Samsung folds,
00:57:39like they're done.
00:57:42We figured out how to do that thing.
00:57:43They look as good as they're gonna look.
00:57:44The hardware is great.
00:57:45The form factors are getting there.
00:57:46And now they're like,
00:57:47what if you folded it twice?
00:57:50Like, what if you made them thinner?
00:57:52Like, we're just adding these refinements now
00:57:54to the form factor.
00:57:55I'm not sure that the form factors
00:57:58were the revolution in the phone industry
00:57:59that everyone was hoping they would be,
00:58:01but I think the tri-fold is really interesting, right?
00:58:04Like, what if you can get to a landscape tablet
00:58:07in this form factor?
00:58:08It's like kind of wild.
00:58:09Especially if you can make it thinner,
00:58:10you can fold it yet one more time.
00:58:11They didn't actually show it, right?
00:58:13Like they showed glimpses of it
00:58:16while Andy Lau is just thinking about
00:58:17how much he loves movies.
00:58:19Yeah, I think the official reveal of it
00:58:21is I think the day after the iPhone event.
00:58:24So we'll have that to talk about next week also.
00:58:28But yeah, there's a video that,
00:58:30we'll put it in the show notes, you should look at it.
00:58:31It's just, you get a brief look at it closed
00:58:33and then a brief look at it open.
00:58:35And it's like very thin and very cool and very futuristic.
00:58:38I have lots of questions.
00:58:40Yep.
00:58:40What about creases?
00:58:41What if instead of one crease, you had two creases?
00:58:43Wouldn't that be so fun?
00:58:44Probably not.
00:58:46The Pixel line definitely still has a crease.
00:58:48TCL, we love an ePaper phone apparently.
00:58:51It's not eInk.
00:58:52Here in the Gooks Palma fan club.
00:58:55Welcome.
00:58:56All right, friends, this is just your segment.
00:58:58I know, I'm so happy.
00:58:59What kind of wacky, inefficient display technology
00:59:01do we have here?
00:59:02They're not the only ones doing this.
00:59:04Like a whole bunch of people at IFA this year
00:59:06are like, we're doing color eInk.
00:59:09And you're like, are you?
00:59:09And they're like, we're doing electronic paper.
00:59:11And you're like, okay, is that just an LCD
00:59:14and you took the light out?
00:59:15And they're like, yes, that's what it is.
00:59:19Yeah, with NexPaper, NexPaper always loves to call it that.
00:59:22All they're doing is putting a matte finish on the display.
00:59:25That's about it.
00:59:26In this case, there's a button
00:59:28and the button will turn everything monochrome
00:59:30and make it look more like a Books Palma.
00:59:32Wait, but Alex, you forgot the best part.
00:59:34What is the button?
00:59:35What is the mode the button engages?
00:59:37It's like maximum eInk, right?
00:59:39It's max ink mode.
00:59:41Max ink mode.
00:59:42Max ink mode.
00:59:45Don't give me regular amounts of ink.
00:59:47Give me max ink.
00:59:49But then there's no ink at all.
00:59:51It's fine.
00:59:52I'm fine with it.
00:59:54But yeah, TCL's been doing this NexPaper thing
00:59:57for five years now.
00:59:59And it's not fantastic.
01:00:02This is their moment.
01:00:03The Books Palma finally kicked the door down
01:00:06and now the next cycle is everyone's
01:00:08gonna have a max ink mode phone.
01:00:10But you are seeing.
01:00:12I heard it when I spoke with the folks at Remarkable.
01:00:14We're seeing it in a lot of the announcements out of IFA.
01:00:16This idea of drawing our attention away from the screen
01:00:20and doing a dumber screen, a simpler screen,
01:00:24is really starting to take off.
01:00:26Yeah, and it's funny because the iPhone is like,
01:00:28what if your screen was alive?
01:00:31Yeah.
01:00:32It's trying to bang you.
01:00:33And then everyone else is like,
01:00:34what if it looked more like paper?
01:00:36And I'm not sure how that...
01:00:38Those are two very different directions.
01:00:39Yeah, I don't think they're ever gonna meet up.
01:00:42I think what's gonna happen is a bunch of old people
01:00:44are gonna get e-ink stuff
01:00:46and a bunch of young people are gonna get
01:00:47the phones that bang you.
01:00:49I got real ages there.
01:00:51I don't know where I am on that spectrum yet.
01:00:53I would say my instinct is that recent history
01:00:55is that it's actually the old
01:00:57who have weird relationships with technology.
01:00:58But we'll see how that goes.
01:00:59This is true.
01:01:00All right, one last gadget in this section
01:01:02then we should talk about the wave
01:01:04of Lunar Lake laptops that just hit.
01:01:06This is my favorite one of all of IFA.
01:01:08It is DJI has a new selfie drone.
01:01:10It's $190, it's called the NEO.
01:01:12You can launch it from the palm of your hand, 4K 30.
01:01:15It can do pre-programmed stuff.
01:01:17Tom Strucker has a video of it hitting a tree
01:01:18and staying alive and completing its little pre-programmed
01:01:22do a circle around me flight path.
01:01:23All that's whatever.
01:01:25Great, I mean, I'm a sucker for these.
01:01:27I will probably buy one.
01:01:29But it has voice controls.
01:01:33And the voice, the wake word for the voice controls
01:01:37is hey, fly.
01:01:39Like.
01:01:45That's what my brother said to a hamster one time
01:01:46before he threw up.
01:01:47I just love the idea of it and it's really small.
01:01:49So like there's a photo of Thomas putting it in his pocket.
01:01:52And the idea that you're gonna pull out a drone
01:01:54from your pocket, hold it up and be like, hey, fly.
01:01:56And it's gonna take off and like do a 360 around you.
01:01:58This is all I've ever wanted from technology.
01:02:01I don't know if it's gonna work.
01:02:03You know, we gotta see it.
01:02:05Yeah.
01:02:05But I love that that's the wake word that shows.
01:02:07It's very good.
01:02:08And I appreciate like Thomas wrote it
01:02:10as if it's two separate sentences.
01:02:13It's like you point at it and you go, hey, fly.
01:02:16Like you're just, you are demanding that it fly.
01:02:20And I love that.
01:02:22Very confusing.
01:02:23Of course it's DJI, so it's a drone itself is $199.
01:02:27But then you gotta buy the battery thing
01:02:29and the handheld controller.
01:02:30And you're gonna end up spending a lot of money.
01:02:32And this happens to me every two years on the dot.
01:02:35And then I use the thing twice and put it away.
01:02:38It's so funny to me that this thing
01:02:40and the new GoPro launched in the same week
01:02:42because I have the exact same opinion about both of them,
01:02:44which is that no one cares.
01:02:45There's this like small group of people.
01:02:47They have already hit whatever product market fit
01:02:49they are ever going to find.
01:02:51And we had this idea that action cameras
01:02:53were gonna be a mainstream thing.
01:02:54And then we had this idea that drones
01:02:55were gonna be a mainstream thing and they just aren't.
01:02:58And that's okay.
01:02:59And I think this one will be fun because it's $200
01:03:01and it seems to be very easy and very resilient.
01:03:03So like if there's ever going to be a new group of people
01:03:06who buys these, this is the one.
01:03:08I just wanna push back just ever so gently on this
01:03:11because I broadly agree with you.
01:03:13I watch a lot of car videos on YouTube
01:03:15and the presence of action cameras and drones
01:03:17that you can destroy has made car videos
01:03:19on YouTube infinitely better.
01:03:21So I would just like to say, I think they should keep going.
01:03:25Oh, I think they should keep going also.
01:03:27But I think this idea that like,
01:03:29I mean, this thing that DJI just shipped is the Snap Pixie.
01:03:33Like it just is that, but it works with not Snapchat
01:03:37and thus will be more successful.
01:03:38But like, there's this idea that,
01:03:41oh, if we just make a little flying selfie camera,
01:03:44easy to use, everybody will want it.
01:03:47Just not true.
01:03:47Yeah.
01:03:48Especially, just like imagine, I don't know,
01:03:50Lollapalooza with 15,000 people at the chapel run show
01:03:54being like, hey, fly.
01:03:55At once.
01:03:59You just hear the boom as all those little engines take off.
01:04:04I hope it does.
01:04:05And I hope they pay some artists
01:04:07to write a song called Hey Fly for the drone.
01:04:10It's my dream.
01:04:11All right, Lunar Lake.
01:04:12So just to color in Lunar Lake a little bit,
01:04:15this is Intel's newest laptop chip.
01:04:16They need to compete with Windows going on ARM
01:04:19and the new Qualcomm chips, the AIPC that Qualcomm is doing.
01:04:22There's a lot of color about Intel,
01:04:24which is having its struggles lately.
01:04:26The most important thing to know is that
01:04:28I think Lunar Lake is being made by TSMC.
01:04:30Like Intel isn't making their own chip,
01:04:32which is a big deal.
01:04:35Like just a huge monumental deal,
01:04:36but like here's the next wave of these laptops.
01:04:40They have big promises about battery life and performance,
01:04:42obviously performance per watt.
01:04:44But the reason is because someone else is making chips
01:04:47on the most advanced process node.
01:04:49So just a weird, these are like historical computers
01:04:53because they're the ones that might signal
01:04:55the end of Intel as we know it.
01:04:57Yeah.
01:04:58Weird.
01:04:59And then I just need to point out
01:05:00the Lenovo Autotwist AIPC is a motorized two-in-one.
01:05:06Yeah, wait, I still, I'm looking at a picture of this thing
01:05:08and I still don't understand how it works.
01:05:10I think Lenovo was like,
01:05:12well, we've already put one gimmick in here with AI.
01:05:15What about a second gimmick?
01:05:17Lenovo just likes to see what they can do.
01:05:20Lenovo loves a gimmick sometimes, especially for a big show.
01:05:23Oh, wait.
01:05:24So this is basically like Apple's center stage thing
01:05:28where the camera will follow you,
01:05:29but it's for the whole screen.
01:05:31The whole screen just like spins around on the base
01:05:33looking at you with the power of AI.
01:05:35Oh, man.
01:05:36Okay, now what needs to happen is Razer needs to make
01:05:40a circular treadmill desk that you just walk around all day
01:05:43while your screen slowly follows you in circles.
01:05:48And then everyone-
01:05:49If the treadmill also charges the screen,
01:05:51now we're talking.
01:05:52Yeah, hell yeah.
01:05:53So our folks spent time with it
01:05:55and I just want to read this sentence.
01:05:57The concept unit responded to voice commands
01:05:59within a second or two,
01:06:00but the motors are slow,
01:06:02taking about 10 seconds to transform.
01:06:04If you watch the video, it's just like,
01:06:07it's so slow.
01:06:08You're like, sure, thanks Lenovo.
01:06:11All right, then Acer had a couple as well, right?
01:06:13Alex, what's going on with these?
01:06:15They have one that's called Project Dual Play.
01:06:17And Acer, I love because I always forget
01:06:19that they're like, they make okay laptops.
01:06:21They make really wild gaming laptops.
01:06:25And this one has just got like a controller in it.
01:06:27No, sure.
01:06:29It's not even, Alex, you're not even doing it justice.
01:06:31Imagine if the trackpad underneath your keyboard
01:06:36on your laptop just popped out
01:06:37and became a game controller.
01:06:39Yes.
01:06:40That rules, dude.
01:06:43No notes on that idea.
01:06:44I love it so much.
01:06:46Where do the joysticks go?
01:06:47What do you do with the buttons when it's docked?
01:06:48I have a lot of questions.
01:06:49There are no pictures of this thing
01:06:51with the controller docked as the mouse.
01:06:53I don't understand it at all.
01:06:54Also, what happens if you need to use a mouse
01:06:57while gaming?
01:06:59You don't.
01:07:01You just keep going.
01:07:02I guess the middle of the controller is still a trackpad.
01:07:05Yeah, but again, amazing.
01:07:08I love it.
01:07:09No notes.
01:07:09It's my favorite thing that's happened.
01:07:11I kept thinking it had a display in it.
01:07:12A button at the top of the keyboard releases the controller
01:07:14and causes two five-watt speakers to pop out
01:07:16from the sides of the laptop.
01:07:18Oh, I thought those were like PC card slots.
01:07:21They're little, they look like little handles
01:07:23that you would grab.
01:07:24This is great.
01:07:25This thing has to be so thick.
01:07:28Oh yeah.
01:07:29That's not the point.
01:07:29I know.
01:07:30The point is that when you take out the game controller
01:07:33built into the keyboard deck,
01:07:34two little speakers pop out and RGB lights light up.
01:07:37I hope they go pshh when they do it.
01:07:39I want to see the person playing this at Starbucks.
01:07:43Yeah, this is great.
01:07:44Leaving their whole tower behind.
01:07:45They're ringing this thing.
01:07:46They're playing Fortnite with their friend.
01:07:48Okay, and then here,
01:07:49I just want to end with talking about Intel and Qualcomm
01:07:51one more time.
01:07:52Yeah.
01:07:53Acer announced a bunch of 14-inch laptops.
01:07:55Some have Lunar Lake, some have the new Snapdragon X,
01:07:58some have the AMD Ryzen AI 300, which is quite a name.
01:08:01It claims all of them have 24 hours of battery life.
01:08:04That's not surprising.
01:08:07Do you believe this?
01:08:09No.
01:08:10Big battery life has been like one of the ongoing claims
01:08:12at IFA.
01:08:13Like Dell has said its battery life is getting better
01:08:16with all these things.
01:08:16Like if this is true, it's awesome, right?
01:08:20Like if we're going to get to the point
01:08:21where all of these things do these table stakes things
01:08:25very well, but then Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD get to compete
01:08:28and sort of do the different things
01:08:29that each of them does well, that's amazing.
01:08:32I have absolutely zero reason to believe
01:08:36that that is actually the case.
01:08:37I also want to point out that these claims
01:08:39are fundamentally unmeasurable.
01:08:41So for the Intel Swift AI laptop,
01:08:45the quote is 29 hours of video playback,
01:08:4723 hours of web browsing.
01:08:49The AMD is 19 hours of web browsing,
01:08:5027 hours of video playback.
01:08:52And the Qualcomm one is 19 and a half hours of web browsing
01:08:54and 28 hours of video playback.
01:08:56I'm just pointing out this requires someone
01:08:59to watch videos for over a full day
01:09:01on three different computers and or browse the web
01:09:04for nearly a full day.
01:09:05And I don't, I'm very motivated to test these claims.
01:09:09Well, also I think probably-
01:09:11I don't know if we can do it without breaking
01:09:13the labor law of the United States.
01:09:14I suspect-
01:09:15In some kind of clockwork orange situation.
01:09:17No, you use a GoPro.
01:09:17I used to have to do these tests
01:09:19and we would just point a GoPro at it.
01:09:21And then the next morning come in and like, be like,
01:09:23okay, let's see if it recorded it.
01:09:26And sometimes it didn't.
01:09:26And you're like, okay, I guess I tested it again.
01:09:29This will be fun.
01:09:30Let's charge fast.
01:09:31This is the market for GoPros, David.
01:09:32Yeah, that's the market.
01:09:33And then you scream, hey, fly!
01:09:34And then it-
01:09:35They just stare at a computer.
01:09:37It just sort of hovers and watches your laptop
01:09:39doing a video playback test.
01:09:40I don't even know 24 hours of video playback
01:09:41is a useful stat for anyone in the world.
01:09:44I think it was once.
01:09:45And I think there was a lot of reviewing reviewers
01:09:48who were using video playback
01:09:50as like the primary way to do battery testing
01:09:52for a very long time.
01:09:53And so like, but also 24 hours isn't a lot nowadays.
01:09:58Like given the size of these batteries,
01:10:00yeah, these things should be able to like do this.
01:10:04It should be relatively easy for them to do this
01:10:06if they put a big enough battery in the laptop.
01:10:09No, I certainly understand why in the beginning
01:10:12when video playback was like particularly chip bound.
01:10:15Hard, yeah.
01:10:16It made sense once.
01:10:17It was like a very heavy task.
01:10:19All video playback now on these computers
01:10:21is being routed to an ultra efficient,
01:10:23specialized part of a chip
01:10:25that is doing it for almost no power.
01:10:26Well, the only reason they're useful
01:10:29is because they're apples to apples, right?
01:10:31Like this is a thing we've dealt with for forever,
01:10:33for like as long as the Verge has existed,
01:10:35how do we benchmark battery life in a way
01:10:38that is both real and actually like objective
01:10:42apples to apples?
01:10:43It's impossible.
01:10:44You can't do it.
01:10:45There's just no way.
01:10:46So you have to do the thing
01:10:47where you're like I ran this test
01:10:48that doesn't mean anything,
01:10:48but is at least one-to-one,
01:10:51and then I just use it like a person
01:10:53and try to report battery life.
01:10:54This is a thing that does work.
01:10:55If you have ever angrily commented
01:10:57in one of our laptop reviews
01:10:58about why we continue to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
01:11:01it is exactly for this reason.
01:11:03Totally.
01:11:04It's just we just picked a game,
01:11:05and that's the game that Monica picked, quite honestly.
01:11:09Monica shouldn't pick that game,
01:11:11and now we're gonna play Shadow of the Tomb Raider
01:11:12a couple times a year for the rest of our lives.
01:11:14It had some challenging like graphic stuff.
01:11:19There was like the tress locks, the hair, geometry.
01:11:25I buy it all.
01:11:26I'm just saying like these numbers,
01:11:28what they are meant to say
01:11:29is we are not competitive with Apple,
01:11:31but I think it is astonishing
01:11:33that Acer is basically saying
01:11:36it doesn't matter what chip you use.
01:11:38Within a few percent,
01:11:39we're getting the same battery life
01:11:40from not only two different Intel like x86 chips,
01:11:45but also the ARM chip,
01:11:46and the ARM chip is worse on the web browsing test.
01:11:51Weird.
01:11:51You see, I just don't think it is.
01:11:53It's actually worse than Intel on both tests.
01:11:55It's an hour worse than the video playback test as well,
01:11:57which is not what you would expect.
01:11:59I don't think that is weird
01:12:00because I think all of these,
01:12:01they've all been kind of coming to the same conclusions
01:12:04on how to design these chips.
01:12:06They've all been designing the chips
01:12:07very similarly the last few years.
01:12:09They're putting these all in very similar devices.
01:12:13It kind of makes sense
01:12:16that some would be a little better,
01:12:17some would be a little worse.
01:12:19Maybe somebody just got hit with too many ads
01:12:23on the AMD one and the Qualcomm one
01:12:25versus the Intel one for web browsing,
01:12:27and that's why the battery life is higher for Intel,
01:12:29but it's not super surprising.
01:12:32I think it is cool.
01:12:33I do think it's cool that they're claiming 24 hours
01:12:35because a couple of years ago,
01:12:38they'd be like, we got six.
01:12:41And that's cool.
01:12:43Four times more battery life in four or five years,
01:12:45that's awesome, but hard to test.
01:12:49I'm just saying, I think these laptops
01:12:50are a real make or break moment for Intel.
01:12:52But if they've actually managed to compete with ARM,
01:12:55compete with Snapdragon, that's a big deal,
01:12:58but it means that they are gonna be dependent on TSMC.
01:13:01If they haven't managed, I don't know what happens next.
01:13:04Well, they're trying to not be dependent on TSMC, right?
01:13:07Like they said, we have to do this
01:13:09because we just aren't there yet,
01:13:11but we're gonna go build all these new fabs
01:13:12and we're gonna get there.
01:13:14So this is supposed to be like their placeholder.
01:13:18Right, can Intel build the fabs and hit the process nodes?
01:13:21Yeah, we'll see.
01:13:22Dicey, we'll see.
01:13:24But so these are important laptops.
01:13:26We're gonna have lots of reviews.
01:13:28Tom is gonna write lots of notepad columns
01:13:30about what's going on with Windows and Intel
01:13:32because the industry is gonna turn around these laptops
01:13:34and I don't know if it's gonna go away.
01:13:36All right, we gotta take a break.
01:13:37We're gonna come back with a true lightning round
01:13:39on Sponsor.
01:13:45We're back with a lightning round.
01:13:48I'm gonna start with the first one,
01:13:49which I think is very funny.
01:13:50As you know, we track connectivity here very closely
01:13:52at The Verge.com.
01:13:53Verizon once decided that Fios was not its future,
01:13:57sold off a bunch of Fios assets and customers,
01:13:59and bet everything on a little technology
01:14:01we like to call 5G,
01:14:04which you will recall was supposed to enable everything
01:14:06from robot surgery, which never happened,
01:14:09to self-driving cars,
01:14:10which only happened in two cities with no 5G involved.
01:14:13You just name it.
01:14:14You just name it.
01:14:15Remember?
01:14:16Remember 5G?
01:14:17By the way, the camera button on the iPhone 16 Pro?
01:14:20It's supposed to be where the millimeter wave antenna
01:14:21is right now.
01:14:22Perfect.
01:14:25I don't know where the millimeter wave is gonna go
01:14:26or if it's even gonna still be there.
01:14:27But do you remember all this?
01:14:29Sure do.
01:14:30Yeah.
01:14:31Turns out 5G accomplished nothing
01:14:33and now Verizon is gonna spend $20 billion
01:14:36to buy Frontier, which it sold a bunch of Fios assets to.
01:14:42Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon, says,
01:14:43"'The acquisition of Frontier is a strategic fit.
01:14:46"'It will build on Verizon's two decades of leadership
01:14:48"'at the forefront of fiber,
01:14:49"'and it's an opportunity to become competitive
01:14:51"'in more markets than the United States.'"
01:14:52The two decades of leadership were building the network.
01:14:55It sold to Frontier and is now buying again.
01:14:57Yeah.
01:14:58So Verizon was like,
01:15:02what if really fast wired internet was not important?
01:15:06And then realized a decade later
01:15:09that very fast wired internet
01:15:10is actually like pretty important.
01:15:12Indy Theron, investor at a parent company, Vox Media.
01:15:14I am often accused of being hopelessly biased
01:15:18in favor of wired connections.
01:15:21It comes up on the show a lot
01:15:23that I think wired connections are good and reliable.
01:15:25Headphones, for example,
01:15:27as Alex painfully brought up earlier.
01:15:30I think two of the official stances of the Verge cast
01:15:32are more buttons are better and plug it in.
01:15:36Wired connections are better than wireless ones.
01:15:39When I covered Starlink,
01:15:40I was accused of being in the pocket of big Comcast
01:15:42because I pointed out that wired ethernet
01:15:43is more reliable than sending internet to space,
01:15:47which seems obvious on space.
01:15:50Big Comcast, gotcha.
01:15:52Yeah, right.
01:15:53So basically Verizon was like all in on its own 5G bet,
01:15:56high on its own supply.
01:15:57They thought this was gonna do whatever it was gonna do.
01:16:00And they started selling off these assets
01:16:01and they thought they weren't durable.
01:16:02And the reality is over and over and over again
01:16:06that in particular wired internet connections
01:16:08are what people want.
01:16:09Like if you give people the choice
01:16:12between some weirdo wireless line of sight
01:16:17IR tin can internet connection
01:16:20or like fiber to their house,
01:16:22they will always pick the fiber.
01:16:24And so it's just been more durable over time.
01:16:25And it doesn't, I don't think that actually
01:16:28is a knock on 5G.
01:16:29Like I know we're gonna get emails
01:16:31because we always get emails.
01:16:32A lot of people have like 5G home internet connections now
01:16:36because they have no access to the other thing.
01:16:37And the 5G home internet connection is an upgrade.
01:16:38It's the same thing with Starlink.
01:16:40If your options are nothing in Starlink,
01:16:42Starlink is great.
01:16:42But if your options are Starlink
01:16:44or 5G home internet or fiber,
01:16:47a lot of people pick the fiber
01:16:48and the fiber is really useful.
01:16:50So it's just like Verizon just got high on its own supply
01:16:52and it's spending 20 billion dollars to go in a circle.
01:16:54You know what's nuts?
01:16:55This is a total tangent that we shouldn't go down.
01:16:57But just a thing I realized as you were explaining that
01:17:00is like you just described what's happening
01:17:01to the whole tech industry and AI right now.
01:17:04Everybody's like, what if we threw away
01:17:05everything we were good at
01:17:06because AI is going to change everything
01:17:08about everything forever.
01:17:10And it's like, you wanna know what happens
01:17:11when it doesn't is this.
01:17:13You spend 20 billion dollars
01:17:15to undo your own weird ideas about the future.
01:17:18They sold these customers to Frontier in 2015
01:17:22for 10 and a half billion dollars
01:17:23and it's rebuying them for 20 billion dollars.
01:17:25Frontier made out like a bandit.
01:17:27I mean, did they go bankrupt in the interim there
01:17:30and then have to go do a whole restructuring?
01:17:33Who among us hasn't gone bankrupt
01:17:34at one point or another?
01:17:35Especially if you're a cable company CEO,
01:17:38this is just like what you do.
01:17:39Yeah, this is true.
01:17:41You're sending the bankruptcy forms from your yacht.
01:17:43You know, you're fine.
01:17:45All right, David, what's yours?
01:17:47I just wanna talk briefly about Snapchat.
01:17:50So Alex Heath was on the show with me two weeks ago,
01:17:54I think, and one of the things he said
01:17:56was basically like Snapchat is both more popular than ever
01:18:00and also maybe in more trouble as a business than ever
01:18:03and I think there is no better way to look at that
01:18:06than a note Evan Spiegel posted on the company website
01:18:09that we reported on that one of the things it's going to do
01:18:13is start putting ads in your chat lists,
01:18:16which to me is one of the things
01:18:18that has been like untouchable in a messaging app forever.
01:18:22Like ads in the messages and ads
01:18:24between the threads in my inbox
01:18:27have been two things that companies
01:18:29are very afraid of doing.
01:18:30Like Google does it in your Gmail a little
01:18:32and everybody hates it and it sucks,
01:18:34but like Snap is about to start putting ads in your chats
01:18:38like with your friends
01:18:39and basically Evan Spiegel's reason for doing it
01:18:43was like our business is bad
01:18:46and investors are mad at us about it
01:18:49and it's just the whole thing
01:18:50just like reeks of desperation from Snapchat
01:18:53and I think that is fascinating.
01:18:55Like this company is absolutely ubiquitous
01:18:58among like a certain generation of internet users.
01:19:00It is everywhere among like my high school age nephews,
01:19:05like Snapchat is how you live your life
01:19:07at that age right now
01:19:08and yet this company just cannot figure out
01:19:10how to make any money
01:19:12and it's just a really, really strange.
01:19:14And they can't do the one thing that they should do,
01:19:17which is charge a fee.
01:19:19Right, because my nephews are 17
01:19:21and they're not gonna do that
01:19:23and Evan Spiegel's quote is,
01:19:24the growth of our digital advertising business
01:19:26is one of the most important inputs
01:19:27to our long-term revenue potential
01:19:29and investors are concerned that we aren't growing faster.
01:19:32Like if you're a CEO of a big tech company
01:19:36writing like a here's why we're doing a product thing,
01:19:38that's not what you say
01:19:40and when you've gotten to the point
01:19:41where that's what you have to say,
01:19:43that like you are deep down the road of like,
01:19:46yeah, what choice do I have?
01:19:48Like that is where Snap is.
01:19:50Thanks.
01:19:51Snap on the Go90 scale.
01:19:52The Go90 scale of doom streaming services,
01:19:54I understand is not about Snapchat,
01:19:56but we're very close.
01:19:5875.
01:19:5975.
01:20:00I think Snapchat as its own public company
01:20:06is at a 75
01:20:08and I think if we were in a different world
01:20:11of antitrust regulation and big tech questions,
01:20:14Snap probably would have been bought
01:20:16by somebody at this point.
01:20:18Oh yeah, Google would have bought
01:20:19and killed Snapchat by now within a heartbeat.
01:20:21Yeah, so I think 75 might be a little high,
01:20:25but only because of like bigger macro reasons.
01:20:28I'm gonna say 65.
01:20:29I think it's so sticky.
01:20:32It is so sticky.
01:20:33It's like you cannot overstate
01:20:35how much people love Snapchat.
01:20:37But it's only sticky for the people who actually use it.
01:20:40If not enough people use it, it's not growing.
01:20:42No, but like tons of people use it.
01:20:44Again, it is more popular than ever.
01:20:45It's huge.
01:20:46It just can't make any money.
01:20:47Like this to me is the fun.
01:20:49But it's not that huge, is it?
01:20:51Like how many people are using it?
01:20:52Yeah, I think it's like 800 million.
01:20:53Like it's huge.
01:20:54Oh, that is?
01:20:55It is sufficiently large.
01:20:56It's just that teens sending each other silly selfies
01:21:01is not a monetizable business, it turns out.
01:21:03Is that what they're sending each other?
01:21:04Without ruining it.
01:21:05And so what they're gonna do
01:21:06is they're gonna ruin it.
01:21:06It all comes back to this idea, doesn't it?
01:21:08Yeah.
01:21:09The question now is basically for Snap
01:21:11is going to be how bad can we make this before you leave?
01:21:14And that's a sad place for a company to have to get to
01:21:17when it really feels like that's where Snap has gotten.
01:21:19Yeah.
01:21:20I will say if they don't light up
01:21:22some kind of actual subscription,
01:21:26they will be past 65 or 75 very quickly.
01:21:29I think they have to charge money.
01:21:30I mean, there's like, you know,
01:21:31Snapchat Plus is like, it's a thing.
01:21:34Sure.
01:21:35But there's never really been any energy behind that.
01:21:38Yeah.
01:21:39Ugh, that's sad.
01:21:41All right, Kranz, what you got?
01:21:43Bringing on the sadness was Concord.
01:21:44Concord, you may have heard about in the last eight years
01:21:48because it was gonna be a new live service game from Sony
01:21:52and they spent over eight years making it
01:21:55and then it came out
01:21:56and they've already pulled it within a month
01:21:58of it coming out because just nobody was playing it.
01:22:01It hit at the wrong time.
01:22:03It didn't have any of the cool features.
01:22:06Like when it started,
01:22:07I don't think Fortnite and Pub Underground
01:22:09were even really a thing for most people.
01:22:12And that's all happened since then.
01:22:15So it came out at the wrong time.
01:22:17It's been, it had a disastrous launch
01:22:19and it's been so bad. Was it bad?
01:22:22Like, what was the problem?
01:22:24Okay.
01:22:25It was just boring, yeah.
01:22:25And it was just like, there's been such a glut
01:22:27of these free-to-play live services video games.
01:22:30Everybody thought that this was gonna be
01:22:32how they were gonna make all of their money.
01:22:34And over time it's been like, oh wait,
01:22:35no, a few of them will do it
01:22:37and some will carve out their little fiefdoms.
01:22:40Some will be Fortnite,
01:22:41which everyone under the age of 14 plays.
01:22:44And otherwise it's like,
01:22:46there's not a lot of room for this
01:22:48because there's a finite number of people
01:22:49who wanna play video games.
01:22:51And then that group gets smaller and smaller
01:22:53the more specific the games are.
01:22:55And then you need a lot of people to play it
01:22:57in order to make it interesting.
01:22:58And then this happens.
01:23:00Well, but I also feel like if I rewind a few years ago,
01:23:04the big idea in the industry was like,
01:23:06okay, live service games are the thing.
01:23:08And what's gonna happen is the same thing
01:23:11that happens in the gaming industry, right?
01:23:12There's gonna be a big one
01:23:13and then there's gonna be a next big one
01:23:14and then there's gonna be a next big one
01:23:15and there's gonna be a next big one.
01:23:16And it turns out like, no,
01:23:18it's just gonna be Fortnite and League of Legends
01:23:20the whole time.
01:23:21And Minecraft is gonna keep being huge
01:23:23and Roblox is gonna keep being like,
01:23:24it's just been the same handful of giants for so long now.
01:23:30And it is astounding to me how big those games still are
01:23:34and how much saying power they've had.
01:23:36And it just feels like all these companies
01:23:37made the right, they like bet on the right industry
01:23:41and were just completely wrong about how it was gonna go.
01:23:43Yeah.
01:23:44Yeah, in this case, they were just way too late.
01:23:46Like Concord, eight years in development
01:23:48for a live service video game is just, that's way too long.
01:23:54And also, isn't the lesson from PUBG
01:23:55just like ship your shitty game and it'll be fine?
01:23:57Yeah, ship it and go.
01:23:59Sort of.
01:24:01Ship your game with an innovative new business model
01:24:04and a dynamic new gameplay mechanic before anyone else.
01:24:07And then it'll be fine.
01:24:08Yeah, sure.
01:24:09And then Concord didn't.
01:24:10It's been eight years doing this
01:24:11to not use it as Fortnite is a different lesson.
01:24:13But it sounds like this may be like teaching,
01:24:15this may be that one of those learning moments
01:24:18for the video game industry.
01:24:19They may be going, oh wait, we don't need to do this.
01:24:21But I mean, EA still exists.
01:24:23So presumably we will get a ton more of these.
01:24:25As someone who just bought the new Madden,
01:24:27which is so hard.
01:24:29Yeah.
01:24:30I will say that no one's learning anything.
01:24:31I will say Sony, by the time you're listening to this,
01:24:33Astro Bot will be out for the PS5.
01:24:35And that game, by all accounts,
01:24:36looks to be the game of the year.
01:24:38People are obsessed with this game.
01:24:40They love it.
01:24:41Yeah, I bought the controller.
01:24:42I've been playing Astro's Playroom with Max.
01:24:44Oh, nice.
01:24:45And so we bought the controller.
01:24:46We're just obsessed.
01:24:46And I'm very excited by this game.
01:24:47And it's like a totally different lesson.
01:24:49Like, what if you made a jewel-like platformer
01:24:52with a lovable character
01:24:53that had innovative gameplay mechanics?
01:24:55The Nintendo playbook.
01:24:57Yeah, but it's a, what if we made Mario again?
01:24:59And I understand saying make Mario again
01:25:01is like, fine, you know?
01:25:03Nobody ever thought of that.
01:25:04That's weird.
01:25:06Can I make Jurassic Park again
01:25:07exactly the way it was when I was eight?
01:25:09That's gonna save the movie industry.
01:25:12But it's funny that Sony is doing both things
01:25:14at the same time.
01:25:15Yeah.
01:25:16And one of them is gonna be a way bigger hit
01:25:17than the other.
01:25:18Yeah.
01:25:19All right, here's my last one.
01:25:19I just wanna call this out.
01:25:20We are deeply committed to covering the Fediverse
01:25:22and all things open social web.
01:25:24And this one's very small,
01:25:26but I think it has glimmers of a big idea.
01:25:29It's called Sub.Club.
01:25:30It's from the company that makes Mammoth,
01:25:32the Masson client.
01:25:34It's paid social feeds.
01:25:36So one of the things I think about all the time
01:25:39is people subscribe to, I don't know,
01:25:41platformer or 404 Media or all of our friends
01:25:43who have Substacks or Ghosts or whatever.
01:25:46And the way that that dynamic usually works
01:25:49is the social media is the marketing
01:25:50to get you to subscribe to a newsletter.
01:25:52But the social media is often the content.
01:25:54Like, it's the thing.
01:25:55And no one has figured out how to monetize a feed at all.
01:26:01And, you know, paid Twitter posts never took off.
01:26:05There was that button there,
01:26:06and there's some of this.
01:26:07On some of the platforms,
01:26:08there's some kind of premium subscription stuff,
01:26:11but none of it happens at scale,
01:26:12and certainly none of it supports anybody at scale.
01:26:14I think the idea of the open social internet,
01:26:17interconnected, federated networks,
01:26:19having this built into them from the beginning
01:26:21is super powerful.
01:26:23And the idea that you subscribe to some creator,
01:26:25and as part of it, you get authenticated
01:26:26into one of their feeds
01:26:27that you can subscribe to anywhere
01:26:29as opposed to just on Twitter
01:26:30or just on YouTube or just Instagram,
01:26:32that's a big deal.
01:26:33I don't know if this one's gonna go anywhere.
01:26:34I'm just excited to see the ecosystem
01:26:37is starting to generate these new ideas
01:26:40about what could you do
01:26:42if all of these networks actually work together.
01:26:44And one of those ideas is like,
01:26:46what if you could pay creators directly,
01:26:48and what you get is also their social media
01:26:49and not just links to this stuff
01:26:52that you pay for somewhere else.
01:26:54Yeah.
01:26:54Yeah, this ecosystem is finally starting to productize
01:26:57in really exciting ways.
01:26:58And the other thing that launched this week
01:27:00was Reeder, the RSS Reeder app, R-E-E-D-E-R.
01:27:04The guy who made it,
01:27:06it's like the best RSS app that exists,
01:27:09made a new one that is all just following feeds.
01:27:12So you can, instead of it being an RSS feed from a website,
01:27:15you can now follow,
01:27:17you can get a YouTube subscription in there,
01:27:19and you can get Mastodon feeds in there.
01:27:21And it's another one where you put a bunch of feeds in
01:27:24that are all these different things,
01:27:25and it just renders in this one multimedia timeline,
01:27:28and it's one of those things that turns your brain on
01:27:30to like, oh, I get it now.
01:27:31And what you're talking about is the idea of
01:27:33what if I could pay for just your stuff, right?
01:27:38And it's like, you can put a podcast
01:27:39into an activity pub feed,
01:27:40you can put a video into an activity pub feed,
01:27:41like all this stuff I just,
01:27:43I subscribe to the things that you make,
01:27:45and then I get to consume them,
01:27:46and you get to make them, and everybody wins.
01:27:47It's like, that's the stuff, man.
01:27:49Yeah.
01:27:50That's the thing that gets me really excited
01:27:51about all of this.
01:27:52And I know that people are gonna point out,
01:27:53you can do some of this on Patreon,
01:27:53you can do some of this over here.
01:27:54And the thing is, all of those are closed networks.
01:27:58You as a creator have to give all of your business
01:28:00to YouTube, or all of it to Patreon,
01:28:01or you have to manage lots and lots
01:28:03and lots of different platforms.
01:28:04And the idea here is that all of these platforms
01:28:07will support these core interoperable models.
01:28:11All of that has to happen.
01:28:13All of it, none of it's happened yet.
01:28:15But we're committed to over covering,
01:28:17because these glimmers of what if it was different
01:28:20are starting to become real.
01:28:22Like, you can just see them across the ecosystem.
01:28:24Like, oh, this is where investment is that isn't,
01:28:28we're gonna spend a trillion dollars
01:28:29stealing everything on the internet to train.
01:28:31Oh, yeah, like, this is much more like,
01:28:34what if it was sustainable to make things
01:28:36for other people on the internet,
01:28:38which is just not, there hasn't been this kind of
01:28:41very sincere engagement in that for a while yet.
01:28:44Okay.
01:28:46That's it.
01:28:46We're miles over.
01:28:48Six hour Vertcast, it was real.
01:28:50We gotta go.
01:28:51We gotta get on planes.
01:28:53We're at the Apple event next week.
01:28:54We got stuff to write about.
01:28:56IFA's gonna keep happening.
01:28:57You can read coverage of the Matter spec.
01:29:00It feels like every time Jen goes to a trade conference
01:29:03and a different Matter executive shows up
01:29:05and promises her it's gonna be better.
01:29:06That's on the website.
01:29:08There's more gadgets on the website,
01:29:09because IFA is ongoing.
01:29:10Check it all out.
01:29:11But we gotta go.
01:29:12That's it.
01:29:13That's the Vertcast.
01:29:13Bye.
01:29:14And that's it for the Vertcast this week.
01:29:20Hey, we'd love to hear from you.
01:29:21Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11.
01:29:24The Vertcast is a production of the Verge
01:29:26and Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:29:28Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James.
01:29:31That's it.