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0:47

and welcome to VergeCats, flagship

0:50

podcast of advanced ray tracing. The technology

0:52

that everyone flammers for every day. Kids

0:54

going to school screaming for advanced ray

0:56

tracing. Taylor Swift, get out of here.

0:59

It's advanced ray tracing. She also wants it.

1:02

She does. Yeah. Loudly and proudly

1:04

at the VMAs. Demanding. That's all

1:06

she talks about. Hi, I'm your friend Eli. Alex

1:09

Kranz is here in the studio. We're together. Yes,

1:11

this is so exciting. And we're not CGI, even

1:14

though the ray tracing looks like we are. Yeah,

1:16

look at those reflections. Oh my God, they're incredible. No

1:18

one can stop them. David Pierce is

1:20

here. You know how Tom Cruise has

1:22

like made his thing that he is

1:24

the enemy of motion smoothing? Taylor Swift

1:26

should do this for ray tracing. Taylor,

1:28

if you're listening and I know that you are, please

1:31

make a thing where you come on at the beginning

1:33

of every video game and you tell me how important

1:35

it is to turn on ray tracing. This

1:38

is your moment to do real good in the

1:40

United States of America. Be

1:42

like, big visual fidelity over performance. Post

1:44

about that with your cat, Taylor. I

1:46

will say, what? I will say

1:49

that in the comments of our YouTube, there's

1:51

a sort of raging mini conspiracy theory about

1:53

whether David is actually in a living room

1:55

or in front of a green screen. And

1:58

we're never gonna tell. We're also

2:00

never going to tell you how long the show is supposed

2:02

to be. We're just going to

2:04

keep saying we're going over and David is going to keep clipping

2:07

a little bit. Not all the way. I

2:10

don't think I've ever seen David sit on that

2:12

couch. Yeah. No one's ever been

2:14

back there. What couch? All right.

2:16

Wait. What? But

2:19

once we get ray tracing enabled on David, you'll

2:21

never be able to tell if he's screen screened

2:23

or not. It's going to look so sick back

2:25

there. Full volumetric static image of a living room.

2:29

We're going to send millions of dollars. Just so many

2:31

like, oh my God, the sun hits it. The

2:33

reflections. If you're looking for more mediocre

2:36

Star Wars shows, just wait until we

2:38

enable David's volumetric set. Oh,

2:40

there we go. Now. Okay.

2:43

Liam, this just changed everything. Now, instead of

2:45

having my one maybe real, maybe static background,

2:47

I get to have a new one every

2:50

single podcast. We're doing this. I do.

2:53

I will say I have a, uh, I think

2:55

like eight foot wide green screen underneath

2:57

this couch. You've given it away. Well,

2:59

I guess it's a second eight

3:01

foot wide green screen. Right. It's

3:04

the green screen behind the green screen.

3:06

But there, the setup to

3:08

make it work with my computer was

3:10

so complicated that we just gave up,

3:13

which is why I don't have a more interesting

3:16

background. Unfortunately. Well, soon we'll get you running

3:18

the full volume and Sean Favreau is going to direct you

3:20

in a request deal. I'll

3:22

wear the helmet. That's how he directed the Lion King. I'm

3:25

into it. I think it might've been a rift actually. I

3:28

was like, he, we were a headset. Yeah. Cause

3:30

he, when they made the Lion King, it's like

3:32

all, it's all CGI. So he directed it in

3:34

a headset. I don't know

3:36

exactly why he was in that set, but there's a lot of

3:38

photos of him at that set directly. It's

3:41

good. Okay. There's actually news talk about including a

3:44

legitimate ray tracing segue to what

3:46

is arguably the news of the

3:48

week, which is

3:50

the PS five pro. Not, not the

3:52

iPhone. But the iPhone, I guess the

3:54

iPhone happened this week. This

3:57

is a lot. If I'm being completely honest

3:59

based on. just the vibes on

4:01

theverge.com, the PS5 Pro might be bigger

4:03

news than the iPhone. Which I think

4:05

says something about the iPhone

4:07

this year, but also says a lot about how

4:09

a lot of people feel about the particulars of

4:11

the PS5 Pro. I just legitimately forgot that I

4:13

was the iPhone. It

4:15

was in my mind, we did a Verge cast, the

4:18

week ended, I took a flight home, it was a

4:20

red eye, I was asleep, I

4:22

woke up in New York. That's a

4:24

new week, everybody. Start the calendar

4:26

right over. But I think

4:28

you're generally correct, David. In

4:30

the room, it's very hard for me to tell. Because

4:33

it's just an artificially hype environment. But

4:36

out here in the world, even other reporters

4:38

I've talked to, interest is low.

4:42

Yeah, it's not great. Not

4:44

only that, but it was so disappointing

4:47

that I think the general Apple

4:49

vibes are bad because of it.

4:51

Like a lot of people all

4:53

over the internet, and some

4:55

of them at this website that we

4:57

work at called theverge.com, who are

5:00

generally people who like Apple and think stuff that

5:02

Apple does is cool are like turning

5:04

on the company. Like to the point where it's

5:06

like, is this an inflection point where Apple has

5:08

lost the plot? Like that's a thing you see

5:11

over and over and over now. Yeah. It's wild.

5:13

I would say I saw John Gruber, who I

5:15

saw at the event. John

5:18

lives a charmed lifestyle. He came to the event armed

5:20

only with a pen and a notebook. I

5:23

love that. Incredible.

5:26

Incredible. I mean, I think he had a phone on him, but he

5:28

had no laptop. But he tweeted

5:30

afterwards, Apple misses Steve Jobs like everyone else, or

5:32

some variation of that sentence, which is a lot.

5:34

That's a big one. MG

5:36

Siegler, who is also a friend, wrote an entire blog post

5:38

about how Apple needs an editor. It has too many products

5:40

and it can't say no. And

5:43

part of his thesis

5:45

was they're too stuck to the

5:47

way Steve Jobs would have done things, and

5:50

they need to make more aggressive

5:52

changes. His example, of course,

5:54

being the iPad. Just let it

5:56

run Mac OS, which is kind of like a hard diversion, you

5:59

know? extreme nerdery, but

6:02

you see that vibe is out there, right?

6:04

This is a company that's no longer saying

6:06

no. It knows it's

6:08

about to make more money from services than the

6:10

hardware. So it's just making all the

6:12

hardware without a point of view. I don't

6:14

know, man. I think the thing that's weirdest for me is

6:17

they're gonna ship the phones without

6:19

the software. It's sloppy

6:21

feeling. And there's just something about

6:23

that that they wouldn't have done that before. Yeah.

6:26

Well, it was only a couple of years ago where they

6:29

did that whole thing where they said, we're gonna slow down

6:31

on all of our software because we are going too fast

6:34

and we're getting too sloppy. And then

6:36

to see them just kind of do

6:38

it again, but even more aggressively is

6:40

surprising. Yeah. So we'll see. And

6:43

there's, I think a big question that I have in general

6:45

is whether any of the AI stuff comes to anything. We're

6:48

gonna talk about some AI products later on the show. There's some interesting ones

6:50

that have come out. Some stuff is

6:52

happening that is legitimately interest

6:54

raising, whether it's gonna make all of the

6:56

money that the AI industry is currently spending,

6:59

who knows? But Apple's in a rush to ship

7:01

this stuff for what? I

7:04

don't know. See, I agree with you, David. To

7:06

my mind, the PS5 Pro is it's

7:09

generated more interest because

7:11

it is a more considered product. It has

7:13

a stronger point of view on what's

7:15

gonna happen next. Whether you agree with that

7:17

point of view or not. Yeah, yeah, you

7:19

can disagree with that. But it's

7:22

just, it's a stronger statement of

7:24

whatever Sony thinks is next. Well,

7:27

Microsoft is making the opposite statement. It's like, maybe we

7:29

should shut this down. And

7:32

there's some turmoil happening in that industry and

7:34

there's winners and losers. And it just seems,

7:37

at least on the smartphone side, and we have covered smartphones

7:39

since the day the Verge started. We

7:42

began this thing in 2011 because of

7:44

smartphones. And it feels like

7:46

whatever wave that is has crested into a

7:48

steady state. Even though, just over there

7:53

are some of the most interesting smartphones that

7:55

have ever existed. Like the Tri-Fold. Yeah, like

7:57

the Honor Tri-Fold. It was at the top

7:59

of CNBC. That's how

8:01

I know things have like broken out of

8:03

gadget world is like when more mainstream outlets

8:06

cover things in weird ways. And

8:08

so he looks at the top of the CNBC

8:10

website on Apple day or the day after. And

8:13

it was like the normal stuff like rate cut. No,

8:15

yes, who knows? Like CNBC. And

8:17

then just in the middle of that was $2,800 triple

8:19

fold smartphone. And

8:22

it was like, that's the key word. Like

8:25

a bunch of finance bros. Like, hell yeah. I

8:28

want to spend $3,000 on a. They want

8:30

to watch the charts go up and down. Yeah. And

8:32

the biggest phone they can. And it's like, that is

8:35

more interesting to people than whatever is happening. It wasn't

8:37

Apple announces iPhone 16. And

8:39

there's something there. It's a gimmick. Who

8:41

knows? We'll see. But there's just

8:43

something. Something is up. Yeah,

8:46

we're gonna, you know, we're gonna carry on with the

8:48

coverage. Ideally, we will review the phones. We'll have something

8:50

to say about them. But like I said, I'm still

8:52

open to audience feedback on how

8:54

to cover phones that are launching

8:57

without the core software. We've

9:00

gotten a lot of that feedback, by the way. And I think

9:02

it's, it's interesting to me. And

9:05

I would say the plurality of the folks who

9:07

have reached out to us agree with me that

9:09

you in particular are so hung up on this

9:11

software that hasn't launched, because I would say there

9:13

is very little indication that anything in that software

9:15

is going to like meaningfully change your life in

9:18

any way. Like this

9:21

is, this is the, the AI story right

9:24

now is you have to tell people you

9:26

have an AI strategy and what cool products

9:28

are there that exist that are mattering to

9:30

lots of people all the time. The

9:33

thing is, you don't have to do that

9:35

unless you're totally beholden. You get fired and

9:37

your company goes out of business if you

9:39

don't. You have to, you're so beholden to

9:42

the stock market. You're so beholden to your

9:44

shareholders that you are not actually considering what

9:46

is a good product. And

9:49

that feels like what we're butting up against

9:51

is people chasing the shareholders at the expense

9:53

of the audience. Oh, I agree. I think

9:55

it's the whole thing. And actually shipping is

9:57

all downside. Like, yeah, when, when

9:59

you put this. stuff out in the world, that's

10:01

when all the bad stuff happens. It's like the

10:04

old Silicon Valley line, right? Like don't start making

10:06

money because then people start asking why you're not

10:08

making more money. Like don't start shipping AI because

10:10

then everybody will ask why you're not shipping better

10:12

AI. Like this Google has been through this 10

10:15

times over at this point. Like it just keeps

10:17

shipping stuff and it's broken and people freak

10:19

out and it's bad. And it is just

10:21

nuking its core business in the name of

10:23

chasing AI stuff. And people are starting to

10:25

wonder why, but if

10:27

you don't tell investors that you have

10:30

an AI strategy, you won't have a

10:32

job long enough to see any of

10:34

it through. So it's like, if I'm

10:36

Apple, I think this is

10:38

a total conspiracy theory that is not actually what's going

10:40

on, but like it is not a stupid idea to

10:43

slow roll this as much as you can. Talk it

10:45

up and don't ship it is like a pretty solid

10:48

save your ass strategy. But it's totally out of character

10:50

for them. It's totally out of character. But AI has

10:52

been out of character for everybody. Like so

10:54

many companies have not been themselves since

10:57

chat GPT launched. That's true. I

10:59

will say I've been playing with a Pixel 9 pro these

11:01

past few days and every

11:03

time you pick up that phone, it's like, do you want me

11:05

to do something for you? Have you met Gemini? Here I am.

11:09

Would you like to add yourself to this photo? You're not

11:11

in this photo. Put yourself in the photo. Yeah. And you're

11:13

like, can you just turn off Bluetooth? And it's like, I

11:15

can't. So sorry. It

11:17

is like a version of Clippy from hell. You

11:19

know, it's like, do

11:21

you want me to add some text to this email

11:23

for some reason? I could. Yeah. Why not? Why not?

11:27

It's fine. It's just a very, it's

11:29

a weird time. That said, we'll pick

11:31

up the Apple stuff later. One

11:34

thing to note, I hear what you're saying, that

11:36

it's weird that I'm focused on the software isn't

11:38

shipping because I'm Mr. Review what's in the box.

11:41

One thing that did get announced just in

11:43

the time between the event and today, the FDA

11:46

actually did approve the hearing aid features

11:48

for the AirPods 2. Which I continue

11:50

to believe will be the biggest, the

11:54

most impactful announcement of this event. Yes. So that

11:56

did happen. We assume it will ship later this

11:58

fall now because they have the. clearance, that's

12:01

a big deal. But that's it. I

12:03

don't, we're waiting on everything else. All

12:06

right, let's actually talk about PS5 Pro. What

12:08

is it, Alex? Yeah. You know, have

12:10

you ever like looked at

12:13

a computer and you're like, what if this

12:15

computer was a little cheaper? Yeah.

12:18

It didn't do as much stuff. It

12:20

played video games really, really well, but

12:22

it was also twice as much as another

12:25

thing we have that plays video games really,

12:27

really well. Yeah. And

12:29

it just plays it a little better. Is this just

12:32

like a GPU upgrade for the PS5? It basically

12:34

is, yeah. It's a GPU upgrade. It's

12:36

got a much bigger GPU. They

12:38

are claiming much better ray tracing

12:41

and also their version of DLSS,

12:43

which is an NVIDIA thing that

12:45

like upscales, so much more intelligent

12:47

AI chip. But it's not actually DLSS. It's

12:50

not actually DLSS because that's in video. It's

12:52

just their AMD based Rifon. Right.

12:54

They're AMD based, but not actually the

12:56

AMD version. This is a Sony version

12:58

of the same

13:00

thing AI upscaling. And those are kind of the

13:03

three big deals out of it. And the other

13:05

big part of it is that the price, it's

13:07

$700. The normal one's about 450. And

13:11

so it's not quite twice, but it's

13:13

expensive. And it's also

13:15

got disk drive. And

13:18

people are having a lot of feelings about the disk drive. Well,

13:20

you can get an accessory one, right? You can

13:22

get an accessory one, but it's kind of like remember when

13:24

they took the disk drive out of the

13:27

MacBook and everybody lost their mind? It's

13:30

the same thing. It's like physical media. I love

13:32

physical media. It feels like physical media has been

13:34

like on an uptick. And now it's like, oh,

13:37

so I've just been $700 for this and then

13:39

another $80 for the disk drive. What

13:43

this feels like to me is

13:45

as if Apple revved

13:47

the Mac Pro and was like, this

13:49

thing is sick, fastest

13:52

ever. Everything is amazing. You're

13:54

going to love it. It has one USB-C

13:56

port. Yeah, that's it. Enjoy.

14:00

It doesn't make any sense to me that you would

14:02

make your highest and most impressive

14:04

looking thing which has

14:07

a Venn diagram of users that I

14:09

would say overlaps fairly aggressively with the

14:11

section of users who care about things

14:13

like physical media and having a collection

14:15

of discs and cares about the liner notes

14:17

and all this stuff. Those two

14:19

people are the same person and

14:21

so the idea that you're going to be

14:23

like, we're going to give you all the

14:25

power in the world but

14:28

no physical media is just so strange to

14:30

me. Even if it were going to make

14:32

this thing more expensive, if it was $800 and had a disc drive, I

14:35

would understand it way more than I understand $700 and no

14:37

disc drive. But you can spend

14:39

$780 and get the disc drive. You

14:42

can. Yeah. But

14:44

I think it's the fact that it's called the pro. It is so

14:46

much more expensive and then it doesn't have

14:48

a disc drive. So that's where people

14:50

are getting concerned. But at the same time,

14:53

as we talked about earlier, this is where they're heading,

14:56

right? They've been heading this way for a long

14:58

time. They don't want you to have a disc

15:00

drive. They don't want you to using the discs. They want

15:02

you. They certainly do not want used games to

15:04

exist. Yeah. They want you buying the

15:06

thing on their store and then when it doesn't

15:08

work, going and buying the new upgrade on their

15:10

store over and over and over again. They're

15:13

very happy with that and most of the

15:15

developers and stuff seem pretty fine with that.

15:18

It's just the real hardcore fans.

15:21

The hardcore fans so far are really excited about this

15:23

thing. Wait, I like a disc

15:26

drive. I like physical

15:28

media. I like owning software. I think my

15:30

prerequisites on this are, you know, my credit

15:32

is there. You've talked about it a bit.

15:36

Yeah. So let me just make the

15:38

argument here. The PS5 in

15:40

particular from Inception has been all

15:42

about wicked fast SSD speeds. Yes.

15:46

So you were never playing the game off the optical disc. You

15:48

were always copying it to the SSD. So

15:51

the disc is like a totem. Yes.

15:54

Right. You're always downloading the game.

15:56

You're holding it and you're like, yeah, I can do

15:58

this. Theoretically you can play parts. the game off of

16:01

the desk, but for the most

16:03

part, it's downloading it on versus

16:05

the computer. You're definitely at least copying enormous

16:08

chunks of the game from the desk. Yeah, and then

16:10

you have to do your day zero updates and all

16:12

of that stuff. So what, I'm just

16:14

like, if you, like I am a person with a vinyl

16:16

collection, and you know, it's like, I

16:18

like to put on a record and then like shake

16:20

my fist at the man because they can't,

16:23

the internet has nothing to do with listening to music

16:25

in that case. I think the concern here is that

16:28

now you can't, if you want to play a PS4

16:30

game or something, if you want to play an older

16:32

game, you can't, you know, you have to pay extra

16:34

for that. If you want to watch a movie, which

16:36

like the PS5 has historically been a very good Blu-ray

16:38

player, you have to now pay extra for that. And

16:41

it's got that pro moniker. So you're like,

16:43

okay. I see what you're saying. This is

16:45

just like value for dollars. Yeah, it's just

16:47

like, it's just a squirrely space, but like

16:49

the PS5 Pro is really cool, but

16:53

I'm like a graphics nerd. So I'm like, yeah, this

16:55

is sick, but also I don't need to spend

16:57

$700 on this thing. I've got

16:59

a PS5 with a disc drive. It

17:01

rules. The thing that actually gets me

17:04

is right next to this,

17:06

they released Astrobot, which is like game

17:08

of the year. Yeah. I've

17:10

been playing Astro's Playroom with Max. We are like

17:12

gonna, we bought the controller, which is adorable. We're

17:16

gonna play Astrobot whenever she tires of Astro's Playroom. Then

17:18

you want to six year old is like, yeah, just

17:20

keep playing this game. Yeah, she's the first five minutes

17:22

over and over and over. You're good. We

17:25

don't need to introduce new ideas or spend money,

17:28

but like from what I can tell Astrobot is the reason

17:30

to buy a PS5. It

17:33

is not the reason to buy a PS5 Pro. It

17:35

just feels, those things feel disconnected to me in

17:37

a way that seems ridiculous. Yeah, because the Astrobot

17:40

is focusing in kind of like the Nintendo play

17:42

style of, of Nintendo is all about, it doesn't

17:44

care about the graphics as much. It cares about

17:46

how the game plays. Whereas PlayStation and Xbox have

17:48

historically been like, we care about how the game

17:50

plays, but also we want it to look fucking

17:52

sick. And in this case,

17:54

they're like, like

17:57

we've got this one side where we had this Astrobot and

17:59

you can use the... and all these really

18:01

incredible ways, feels like a switch. It feels just

18:03

new and dynamic and fun. And

18:05

then we got this like... Other

18:08

thing. Yeah, this thing so you can go

18:10

play Gran Turismo. What's the best argument for the

18:12

PS5 Pro? Do

18:15

you really like Spider-Man 2? I

18:18

mean, that's like the core argument for the PlayStation.

18:21

Yeah, really. The PlayStation 3 is literally

18:23

to have the Spider-Man font on it. So...

18:26

It really is like, the core argument

18:29

is, do you really like The Last

18:31

of Us and Spider-Man and

18:34

some of these other games that have actually implemented ray

18:36

tracing? And do you really wanna... You

18:39

really, really like that. And if

18:41

so, go get this, because it's gonna look a little

18:43

sharper, it's gonna look a little cleaner. I think if

18:45

you are playing on a... Or if

18:47

you're playing your console on a monitor, it

18:50

makes sense. Sure. If you're playing it

18:52

on a big TV in a huge

18:54

sunlit room, don't do this. That's

18:57

just a waste of money. You will not be able to

18:59

appreciate a single bit of

19:01

this. I will say, I think the most

19:03

compelling argument of this, and I think, is

19:06

his name Mark Cerny, the lead architect? Okay, I can

19:08

never remember if it's Matt or Mark. It's like the

19:10

same. It's Mark. It's two different people in my head,

19:13

but anyway, it's Mark. Said

19:15

basically that the thing that they've seen

19:17

is that everybody is forever making trade-offs

19:19

between performance and fidelity, right? So

19:21

like, do I want it to look good or do I

19:23

want lots of frames? And that

19:26

is like kind of the gaming performance

19:28

trade-off. And with the PS5 Pro, you

19:30

don't have to make that trade-off, right? Like you can have very

19:32

high settings at very high frame rates. That's

19:35

not a thing that most people

19:37

will notice, but it is

19:39

the kind of thing that matters, right? Like

19:41

it's, I see that as

19:43

the same argument for like why the

19:45

two of you spent six times as much money

19:48

on your televisions as I did. It's

19:51

not for everybody. Because my eyes worked, David.

19:53

Yeah. Then why not

19:55

spend $700 on this? And I

19:57

happily set it to fidelity mode. and

30:00

falling off cliffs. It's great. They

30:02

announced just today that they're going to lay off 650 more Xbox

30:04

employees. This

30:07

is just a wave of layoffs and strategy shifts.

30:10

All after they fought too thin

30:12

nail to buy Activision because

30:15

something. Because they want to have

30:17

everybody wants their little fiefdom, and you have to

30:19

go and buy the console to get into play

30:22

the games, rather than just play them on a

30:24

PC, which they can all theoretically do, because

30:27

architecturally, they're all the same. Well, sure, but

30:30

Sony at least has a, well, first of all,

30:32

it's the winner of this generation. Yeah, because it's

30:34

got the good games. If you don't count the

30:36

switch. Like, it's legit. Which is one every generation

30:38

that it's been anywhere near. Right? And the new

30:40

switch we think is coming out that will probably

30:42

win whatever generation it's a part of. The

30:45

cycles don't quite let up. But Sony

30:47

has beaten Microsoft pretty

30:49

soundly this generation. I

30:52

hear what you're saying, like the underlying software,

30:54

or the underlying hardware architectures are similar. Like,

30:56

they're AMD chips. But the

30:58

PS5 is an opinionated

31:00

device. Yeah.

31:03

Right? Sony has a lot of thoughts about

31:05

the PlayStation, and what it's for, and what

31:08

the game should work like. And Mark Cerny

31:10

has a lot of ideas about settings. Right?

31:14

There's a vision there, for better or worse, and

31:16

you cannot feel it, and you can be mad

31:18

about the disk drive. Yeah. But Sony has confidence.

31:21

Microsoft has confidence. I think Phil Spencer is a

31:23

confident person. They have a lot of ideas. But

31:26

actually, it feels to me

31:28

like they knew they were losing. They

31:30

wanted to make a big swing, and they

31:33

have just whiffed on a bunch of their big

31:35

swings. They whiffed on cloud gaming, which was supposed

31:37

to be the biggest swing of all. They haven't

31:39

pulled it off yet. This Activision deal, they

31:42

let Call of Duty be the sideshow, but it

31:44

was really about Candy Crush. And Phil has said

31:46

this to us. Mobile

31:49

gaming is the future, and no one has a foothold there. We got to win

31:51

there. That was also kind

31:53

of a weird sideshow of cloud

31:55

gaming. And none of that. I

31:58

don't think anybody, any consumer, if you're a. to

34:00

catch the basketball. He's like, I'm

34:02

just, the money comes and I'm here to get it. And I was

34:04

like, I don't think that's what a CFO does, but it was a

34:06

learning experience for me. He was

34:08

great. I think Sony is just like, here's a more

34:10

expensive one. Catch the money. We're

34:12

just here. If you have $300 extra, we'll take it from you. Yeah,

34:16

that's true. This is the game

34:18

both of these companies have been playing

34:20

for like this whole generation, right? And

34:22

Microsoft's bet has been for

34:24

years now that we are on the cusp

34:26

of a giant shift in how this entire

34:29

industry works, how we play the games, where

34:31

they are, how they're architected, the kinds of

34:33

games that we play. Like Microsoft has been

34:35

making this bet for a long time now.

34:38

I think Microsoft still thinks it's right and is

34:40

running out of patience for it to

34:43

actually happen. Sony is just sitting

34:45

around saying, look

34:47

at all this money flowing in. And

34:49

then the question will be, if you fast forward a few

34:51

years, is Microsoft going

34:53

to be right before it gave up? Or

34:56

is Sony just gonna have so much money at the

34:58

end of it that who cares? But like Sony

35:01

is basically betting that this shift is going

35:03

to happen slowly and Microsoft is betting that

35:05

it's gonna happen fast. Okay, I'm gonna end

35:07

by saying one thing that will make

35:09

everybody mad. Or that you will completely

35:11

agree with. I don't think there's a middle ground. It's

35:14

weird that Microsoft has tried to run away from

35:16

the idea of the Xbox being a thing that

35:18

just plays games really well for so long. It's

35:21

never one of that. Right, it's like the

35:23

whole Xbox One side quest with where it

35:26

had IR blasters and

35:28

HDMI pass. Like, people

35:31

got so mad at me when I was like,

35:33

this is a disaster. My ongoing theory about this

35:35

is that every once in a while there's an

35:37

executive meeting at Microsoft and somebody turns to Phil

35:39

Spencer and goes like, why are you here? And

35:41

so he has to like explain why Xbox is

35:44

part of Microsoft. And eventually that morphed into like

35:46

talking about Azure. And then it was

35:48

just toast. Right, can we run, this is what I mean.

35:50

Like, for a second, okay, we're gonna do it. We're gonna

35:52

take over the, we're gonna

35:54

have a dish network integration in the Xbox.

35:57

Like, they were all the way down the rabbit hole that stuff

35:59

and they walked. it all back to games and

36:01

then it was reasonably successful again. And then

36:05

the, this generation, they

36:07

were starting with games and they're like,

36:09

well, we lost to Sony. We're going

36:11

to stream the games from Azure. That

36:14

will disrupt the whole market. And that just has not

36:16

panned out. And it just seems

36:18

like if they, maybe some focus

36:20

on the main thing would continue to be successful.

36:22

But that's back it up to the first thing.

36:24

And it's a, it's a, how do we be

36:27

part of the windows strategy thing inside of Microsoft

36:29

and then fast forward to this generation. And it's

36:31

a, how do we be part of the cloud

36:33

first strategy of Microsoft? Like I think there is

36:35

a very compelling case to be made that the

36:38

best and worst thing going for the X-Box team

36:40

is that they work for Microsoft. But you

36:43

know, I was going to say that I think part of

36:45

the reason they've been doing all this flip-flopping is because their

36:47

first party games haven't landed the same. Like

36:50

they just don't land like, like

36:52

Sony's first party games move consoles.

36:54

People buy consoles for Sony's first party games.

36:57

I don't know. Halo was good for a while. Halo,

36:59

name another one. Halo

37:02

two. You see like,

37:04

and Microsoft went on this whole buying spree.

37:06

They were like, we're going to buy all

37:09

of these companies. And then they got, they

37:11

got told, okay, you cannot make call of

37:13

duty exclusive. Not exclusive. Like,

37:16

like first party exclusives, you know, the

37:18

last of us, Spiderman, those

37:20

are exclusive. They come to the PC eventually. And then

37:22

you can sort of play it through X-Box, I think

37:25

through the cloud, but you have

37:27

to wait a while. If you want

37:29

to play the last of us, which all the other

37:31

gamers are playing and everybody's talking about, you go get

37:33

a pay station. Well, but yeah. And

37:35

I think that all, like that, that all sort

37:37

of flows from the same circles, right? Where it's

37:39

like, okay, if, if our job is to sell

37:41

consoles, how do you sell consoles?

37:43

You sell consoles with really good games. But if our job

37:45

is to like increase the market share

37:47

of, of our cloud services

37:49

arm of our company, you just prioritize

37:52

things very differently. Yeah. Yeah.

37:54

I think full sensor would take deep

37:56

issue with that characterization of X-Box, but

37:59

it's, it's. So

48:01

they do, you'll see some apps, and this is

48:03

why, there are a lot of iOS apps that

48:05

look the same on an iPad, because you can

48:07

basically just sort of like, paint by numbers into

48:09

a template, and it'll do it at all the

48:11

different sizes. And some folks do that,

48:13

and that's fine. But like, if you wanna build an

48:15

app with different ideas

48:17

about navigation, or different animations, or

48:19

like, literally to load a page

48:22

at all the different sizes an

48:24

Android device can be, is a

48:26

challenge. Especially if you like, care about

48:28

how it looks and works. And

48:30

then you throw in all the different

48:32

devices, and all the different, you know,

48:34

screen refresh rates, and there's just so

48:36

many variables. But the sheer raw, like,

48:39

X by Y size of the app,

48:42

has been the biggest holdup for Google

48:44

forever. Because it's a thing people have

48:46

not invested in doing, because Android tablets

48:48

were not any good, Android apps and

48:50

Chromebooks didn't work, and nobody cared

48:52

about foldable phones. And so like, as each one of

48:54

those gets better, they all get better, and that's very

48:57

cool. I think I'm just kinda surprised, because like, in

48:59

web design, we had this whole moment where everybody was

49:01

like, you know, you can just download

49:03

this little theme, and it's a responsive theme,

49:05

and it's gonna automatically resize it for anything

49:07

you do. And the fact that Google

49:09

doesn't just have like, here's the lazy way. Well

49:11

no, but somebody built that theme. That's

49:14

like, that theme doesn't just exist. If

49:16

you listen carefully, that's the sound of

49:18

every web designer listening to the show

49:20

screaming. You're welcome. I

49:23

like to teach you all. Here's just the WordPress

49:25

theme that just exists. Yeah, I paid $40 for

49:27

it on theme course. Taking our

49:29

site from desktop, mobile,

49:32

we had an MDOT site for a minute, to

49:35

responsive was a nightmare. Just a few more minutes.

49:37

Responsive design is really hard. It's really

49:39

hard. It's gotten a lot easier, because it has become

49:41

so much more important, but it is really

49:44

hard. Well I think, my question is, why doesn't Google

49:46

do that work? Actually, can

49:48

I tell you a fun fact about responsive design? I

49:52

love a fun fact. My fun fact

49:55

about responsive design, is that it was a

49:57

Vox Media designer, Scott Kellum, who invented some

49:59

of those. now

58:00

on YouTube, there are more Chinese hands-ons

58:02

with this thing that are starting to trickle out.

58:04

But they're all just the thing

58:07

unfolding. That's the only content that exists

58:09

is a very controlled demo

58:11

of a thing unfolding. What else do

58:13

you need to know? That's the whole

58:15

job. Well, does the

58:17

operating system do anything when you turn it into a

58:19

sheet of paper? We

58:23

need to see before and after. Don't worry about

58:25

the process. One of the things

58:27

that I am very curious about in this next turn

58:29

of phones, we've been

58:31

talking a lot about Pixel Fold. It seems to

58:33

be very popular amongst the gadget population, whether

58:36

it's going to move Google's market share at

58:38

all. It won't. But if you're a

58:41

particular kind of gadget nerd, it is the

58:43

device that everyone's talking about and into lately,

58:45

which is interesting. It

58:48

feels like folding phones that

58:50

bifold. They've reached a point

58:54

where now they're just maturing in

58:56

iterative steps compared to where

58:58

the Galaxy Fold started. Which means Apple will

59:00

have one next year. Maybe. You

59:03

can still feel the same. It's not perfect, but

59:05

it's right in a way. You can see that

59:08

little crease when you open it still. Yeah. You

59:10

can definitely feel it with your finger. But

59:13

it's hit that point. And so

59:15

now, are we just at... Okay, add

59:17

another one? Do

59:20

we think... I mean, the Chinese phone market

59:23

and the Indian phone market are full of

59:25

these ideas. Do bonkers hardware stuff

59:27

and see what happens. Markets

59:30

around the world are generally more open

59:34

to weirdness just because

59:36

of the way our carriers are and Apple's time

59:38

message domination. They're a whole bunch of vertical stuff

59:40

that means we don't get cool phones first. Oh

59:44

no. This one video has the guy

59:46

actually folding it and you watch it

59:48

all realign itself. It

59:51

looks cool. I mean, Huawei did have to build their

59:53

own operating system because, again, the

59:55

amount of sanctions the United States government put on Huawei just

59:57

changed the direction of that company. That's

59:59

fine. But it

1:00:01

just seems like this is a weird, you look at

1:00:03

this, you look at how people are excited about it

1:00:05

in a way that the first set of foldables didn't

1:00:08

really capture, but now maybe the technology is mature

1:00:10

enough. I think there's like also,

1:00:12

there's a weird cultural element here too, because we're

1:00:15

seeing all of these things happening in other countries

1:00:17

in the United States is so focused on the

1:00:19

iPhone and the iPhone is so stuck in class,

1:00:24

slab, land, and like

1:00:27

Google, it's really nice that Google is coming in, but

1:00:29

Huawei's been doing this for a while. A lot of

1:00:31

the Xiaomi's been doing this, a lot of these other

1:00:33

country companies have been doing really,

1:00:36

really cool stuff with phones that

1:00:38

just don't come to the United States. In

1:00:41

many ways, it's less like they're doing weird stuff, it's

1:00:43

more like we're getting a little left behind. Yeah,

1:00:47

I mean, again, it's so hard to break

1:00:49

into the US smartphone market because of the

1:00:51

essential duopoly of Apple and Samsung, the carriers

1:00:54

are more or less enforced. So

1:00:57

it goes, we've talked about this so many

1:01:00

times, but I'm just wondering from a hardware

1:01:02

perspective, do we think the

1:01:04

regular folding phones have reached their sort of

1:01:06

like, we're done with this, we don't need

1:01:08

to figure out any basics here, Because

1:01:11

I think a lot of people, the

1:01:13

folks are comfortable with that little crease, it doesn't seem

1:01:16

to bother people that much, and they figured out the

1:01:18

front of the phone, right? Like with the Pixel Pro,

1:01:20

that was the thing everybody really likes about it, is

1:01:22

that they figured out the front, so you can just

1:01:24

use the phone as normal, you never even have to

1:01:26

open it up. But then when you do wanna like,

1:01:28

have a good time, you

1:01:31

open it up and enjoy yourself. I don't know.

1:01:33

David, David, you have long, Take me

1:01:35

out of this. You have long insisted

1:01:38

that it'll be the flip

1:01:40

style. Yeah. Does seeing a triple

1:01:42

fold change your mind? It should. No,

1:01:46

I think the triple fold is

1:01:48

an interesting tablet replacement

1:01:51

way more than it is an interesting phone replacement.

1:01:53

Like I think phone that turns into smartwatch is

1:01:55

a way more compelling thing to most people than

1:01:57

you do. than

1:02:00

tablet that turns into phone. But

1:02:03

to your point about the hardware, on one

1:02:06

level, we are getting there. This stuff

1:02:08

is pretty good. There's work left to

1:02:10

do. They need to get more

1:02:12

rugged. The cameras need to get better. The

1:02:15

screens need to continue to improve. The

1:02:18

whole thing needs to get thinner and lighter. These phones

1:02:20

are big. They're big. And

1:02:24

there's a lot of work left to do. But in terms

1:02:27

of like, can you make a phone that kind of works

1:02:30

open and closed? Like the answer to that is

1:02:32

yes. Right, and I think we've landed on, especially

1:02:35

with this last generation, Samsung

1:02:37

has gotten closer to the right size. OnePlus is getting

1:02:39

closer to the right size. Google is seemingly

1:02:41

very close to the right size. I

1:02:45

think what you're seeing from a lot of these

1:02:47

companies, and Huawei and Xiaomi and others have done

1:02:49

this for years, is like unbelievably

1:02:52

cool, really high-end tech demos that like, they

1:02:54

don't think a lot of people are gonna

1:02:56

buy this phone. But

1:02:58

it gets people excited. It's like, it's a branding exercise

1:03:01

as much as it is like an

1:03:03

actual phone to sell to humans. I

1:03:05

disagree. It's so cool

1:03:08

looking. It is 2800. It's

1:03:10

2800. Look, you put that on like a 10

1:03:12

year plan. The whole point

1:03:14

is that it's cool looking. Yeah, a 10 year

1:03:16

plan paying like $30 a month. This

1:03:20

would be great. Didn't you just complain

1:03:22

about the PS5 pros cost? If

1:03:25

it could fold it like an accordion, I'd

1:03:28

take it all back. If it was like

1:03:30

big GPU but also folded like this, yeah. You

1:03:33

put the motion in, I'm sold. No,

1:03:35

I do think we're gonna hit a point where

1:03:37

people start doing even weirder stuff

1:03:40

with this, but also like there's

1:03:42

a thing that's coming that

1:03:45

is a lot of new wacky

1:03:48

experimenting in phone hardware. And

1:03:50

I'm very excited about it. Like

1:03:52

it got stagnant for so long. And

1:03:55

then a couple of people tried folding phones and it

1:03:57

didn't really work. And I think everybody decided. maybe this

1:03:59

isn't gonna be the thing. And now it feels like

1:04:01

it might be the thing. And I think like

1:04:05

nothing is gonna beat the candy bar phone

1:04:07

anytime soon, if ever, but

1:04:09

the like the experimentation is coming back.

1:04:11

And I think that's awesome. Yeah. I

1:04:14

mean, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is all

1:04:16

6.9 inches, almost seven.

1:04:19

We're starting to strain the boundaries of how big a

1:04:21

phone can be before it has to fall. I wanna

1:04:24

accordion that immediately. I've been, you know, the

1:04:26

first thing I did in the hands on era, just fold

1:04:28

one. List of things you

1:04:30

said about what folding phones need to get better. They

1:04:32

need to be more durable. The screens need to be

1:04:34

better. That's the

1:04:36

same list of qualities that you could have applied to

1:04:38

the first iPhone. Oh, for sure. Right? And

1:04:40

so it's just, they're on the same path, right?

1:04:43

And that's what I mean. Like we figured out

1:04:45

the core technology and now we're just iteratively improving,

1:04:48

like around the edges to get them even better.

1:04:50

That feels like a moment. I'm not

1:04:52

sure where that moment is gonna lead to. The

1:04:54

fact that we're like, screw it, two screens fold

1:04:56

out, kind of feels like maybe they

1:04:58

figured out how to get one screen to

1:05:00

fold out and that now we're just seeing what else we

1:05:03

can do. Put another fold in.

1:05:06

I'm just, I'm dying for the three screen

1:05:08

phone. Well, I mean, just think about the

1:05:10

difference in how

1:05:12

the screen looks and feels from

1:05:14

the first Z fold to

1:05:17

now, right? Like just the sheer

1:05:19

amount of like material science improvements that have

1:05:21

been made to get to this point is

1:05:23

crazy. Those things were like plastic and was

1:05:26

it, it was Dieter, right? Who like accidentally

1:05:28

peeled part of the screen off thinking it

1:05:30

was a screen protector. Like that was not

1:05:32

that long ago. No, no, Dieter had a

1:05:34

tiny amount of dust in his review and

1:05:36

had to broke the screen. And then somebody

1:05:38

else peeled off the screen protector. And

1:05:41

then Samsung delayed the launch of the first Z fold.

1:05:43

That was not a long time ago. And

1:05:45

now like four years ago. Yeah, like the

1:05:47

speed with which that stuff, and that was

1:05:49

always the gating factor, right? Like the question

1:05:51

was not how do you build a good

1:05:53

hinge? It was, can you make a screen

1:05:56

that works like this? And works means a

1:05:58

lot of things. But I think the answer

1:06:00

to that is like, yes, and we're almost

1:06:02

there. And so I think you're right that like

1:06:05

the path now is way more about software

1:06:07

and it's way more about use cases and it's way more

1:06:09

about details. And again,

1:06:11

it's way more about do people actually want

1:06:13

this, which also is can you make this

1:06:15

thing for $800 and not $1,800? And

1:06:19

those are like, those are big hills to climb, but they

1:06:21

are, I think, like, I

1:06:23

don't know, to just ruin the analogy, they're like

1:06:25

hills you can see the top of. Whereas I

1:06:27

think not that many years ago, like can we

1:06:29

make this screen not fall apart was genuinely,

1:06:32

I think, kind of up in the air. And now

1:06:34

you can just do it in a little accordion. Just

1:06:36

boop, boop. You just walk up to any phone you see

1:06:38

and fold in half. Dude, I'm telling you, there's one shot

1:06:41

in this Huawei video where it's open on two. So

1:06:44

it just looks like a normal foldable phone. And

1:06:46

then he just kind of reaches below and pulls

1:06:49

up the third part and the UI just gloriously

1:06:51

expands. I've watched that like 25 times since

1:06:54

we've been sitting here talking. It's awesome. It's

1:06:56

sick. It's coming. I'm telling you, it

1:06:58

got more attention from a certain audience

1:07:01

on iPhone day than the iPhone. Yeah. So

1:07:03

there's something to that. All right, I want to

1:07:06

end by putting two Google stories together right next

1:07:08

to each other. Because I think they're kind of

1:07:11

really interestingly putting right next to each other. We've

1:07:13

actually talked a lot about Google on this episode.

1:07:16

They seem in one way to

1:07:18

have a bunch of confidence. And

1:07:20

maybe that confidence is just like, we have to put Gemini

1:07:22

in front of you. So here it

1:07:24

is. But we reviewed the Pixel Watch

1:07:26

3 this week. V reviewed it. She gave it an

1:07:29

eight. People like it. People

1:07:32

really like this watch. It is a confident

1:07:34

product. The integrations

1:07:36

across the sort of Pixel and Google

1:07:38

ecosystem are solid. We've been talking a

1:07:40

lot about the Pixel 9s. For

1:07:43

all of their general issues with

1:07:45

swerving reality into chaos because of

1:07:47

their absolute nihilism about AI image

1:07:50

editing, they're good phones that people like. And

1:07:54

the Pixel Watch 3 is a good watch that V really likes.

1:07:56

And I think people who buy into the ecosystem are going to

1:07:58

like it. There's something happening on that

1:08:00

side of the house for Google, where they've fallen

1:08:03

into a groove, the hardware is good, there's

1:08:05

a thesis in the software, even if the... Every

1:08:09

time you pick up Pixel phone, it's just like Gemini. There's

1:08:12

still a thesis, there's a point of

1:08:14

view, which I think is very strong. They haven't had a point

1:08:16

of view for quite a while. That's

1:08:19

that side of the house. On the other side of the house, well,

1:08:21

their search engine just got rules to be a

1:08:24

monopoly, and they are

1:08:26

on trial again right now for

1:08:29

antitrust for their ad tech

1:08:31

stack. There's

1:08:35

trial, it's witnesses, there's documents, Lauren Finer's in

1:08:37

the courthouse covering it for us. It's

1:08:40

all very boring. It's a bunch of suits talking about display

1:08:42

ads on the web. If

1:08:44

you want to go to sleep, programmatic advertising is

1:08:46

the thing to talk about. What's

1:08:49

fascinating is, one, in all the documents, all witnesses,

1:08:52

the way Google's business people talk about its

1:08:54

business is ice cold. There's

1:08:57

no Google cuddle bugs there at

1:09:00

all. It is literally, how do

1:09:02

we own this market? Here's the value,

1:09:04

the value is... There's a line in one of the emails, it's

1:09:06

like the value here is that we own everything. That's

1:09:09

the thing that makes this powerful, is we own every part of

1:09:11

the stack. They're just saying

1:09:13

it out loud. Then you have

1:09:15

the clients, the actual people buying advertising, being like,

1:09:18

Google's technology here is bad. We're

1:09:20

just stuck with it. The core

1:09:22

ad tech server that Google's been using to serve all the

1:09:24

programmatic ads all over the web, they're like, this is bad.

1:09:26

This is 20-year-old technology that we would like to get away

1:09:28

from, but we're stuck with it because there's nowhere to go.

1:09:31

That is a weird dynamic for Google. On

1:09:35

the one hand, with the

1:09:37

AI stuff with Gemini, maybe they got caught

1:09:40

on the back foot, but

1:09:43

it provided some amount of focus for the

1:09:45

company, it seems like. It's

1:09:48

reflected in these Pixel devices. I think you

1:09:50

can see it. There's

1:09:53

a reason for them to be the way they are, which

1:09:56

is really interesting. If

1:09:59

not for a chat... GBT with the Pixel 9 have

1:10:02

been had this much focus? Like I don't know the answer

1:10:04

to that question. Like they weren't on

1:10:06

this path all by themselves. It took

1:10:08

this weird sort of diversion from OpenAI to

1:10:11

bring them here, but it worked. And then on the other side

1:10:13

of the house, the money, people are

1:10:15

like, this is a monopoly. We don't like using

1:10:18

this technology. And it feels

1:10:20

based on what happened in the

1:10:22

search trial, like the government knows

1:10:24

how to beat Google. This

1:10:26

is the case, I would remind everybody that

1:10:28

Google tried to avoid a jury trial

1:10:31

by just sending a check to

1:10:33

the United States government for what it calculated to be

1:10:36

the maximum amount of damages. Like

1:10:38

on its Wells Fargo account, they're just like, here's

1:10:40

some millions of dollars. Is this good?

1:10:45

We'll put it in the show now. There's a picture of the

1:10:47

check. You can look at the check. Google

1:10:49

sent a check. That's how monopoly

1:10:51

works, right? Here you go. Literally how monopoly

1:10:53

works. They were

1:10:55

so desperate for this not to be

1:10:57

happening that they just fronted the money

1:11:00

for a settlement. And

1:11:02

so I would just juxtapose those two things.

1:11:04

I think it's, you see this

1:11:06

company, it kind of like at war with

1:11:09

itself a little bit, because the thing that

1:11:11

is funding everything is at

1:11:13

all of this risk. And the

1:11:15

future is like coming into focus over here. Except

1:11:18

that in so many ways so far, all

1:11:20

of Google's future stuff has just been ancillary

1:11:22

to the other thing, right? I

1:11:25

think the most damning critique you could make of everything Google

1:11:27

has done in 25 years is that

1:11:29

it actually doesn't care about anything but search.

1:11:31

And so everything gets subjugated to

1:11:33

the needs of search. Like the people who build Chrome will

1:11:36

tell you they could have built a better browser, except that

1:11:38

what they had to do was optimize for search queries, which

1:11:40

is a weird thing to have to optimize for in a

1:11:42

web browser. And so like, and this is a story you

1:11:44

hear over and over from Google is everything eventually loses at

1:11:47

the hand of the search team. And I think

1:11:49

you could make the case that the only team as powerful

1:11:52

at Google as the people who make the search engine are

1:11:54

the people who make the ads. And like

1:11:56

that is who is now

1:11:59

being thrown in. into this fight and to

1:12:01

your point, like the thing we

1:12:03

say a lot on this show is that what happens at

1:12:05

one trial has very little to do with what happens at

1:12:07

the next trial. And I think that's probably true in Google's

1:12:09

case here too. Like all this stuff is still very up

1:12:12

in the air, but the thing we

1:12:14

heard over and over in the last

1:12:16

trial was Google's

1:12:18

argument was Google is

1:12:20

very good, which is why we keep winning.

1:12:22

And it's very hard to argue that there

1:12:25

are better products out there than Google and

1:12:27

yet Google still lost because the

1:12:29

argument came up over and over that actually what Google is

1:12:31

doing is preventing that from happening, right?

1:12:33

That like maybe the reason there isn't more

1:12:36

competition for Google is because Google has not allowed

1:12:38

it. And amid meta, the judge was very receptive

1:12:40

to that argument. This

1:12:42

one in which the overwhelming thing seems to

1:12:44

be, actually this sucks and there's nothing anybody

1:12:47

can do about it is like, even

1:12:50

the way Lauren was covering the first couple

1:12:52

of days, you get the sense that the

1:12:54

people accusing Google of being monopolists are

1:12:56

very confident coming into this. And

1:12:59

how that means it'll go, who knows? But there is

1:13:01

a real sense of like, the

1:13:04

argument is extremely strong in

1:13:06

this particular case. And it's gonna come down to market

1:13:08

definitions as it always does and it's gonna get deeply

1:13:11

wonky. And I'm going to court at least once

1:13:13

next week. And I could not be more excited

1:13:16

to listen to people yell at me about ad

1:13:18

stacks for weeks, but yeah,

1:13:21

it is. Like Google is both kind of feeling

1:13:23

itself and fighting for its life like all at

1:13:25

the same time. And it's very odd. I feel

1:13:27

like I need to disclose here. We

1:13:31

have ads on our website. What?

1:13:34

We have free things. Oh my God. And

1:13:37

Vox Media's president of revenue and growth, Ryan

1:13:39

Pauli is on a list of potential witnesses

1:13:41

in this trial. Oh my God. I

1:13:44

haven't talked to him about it. I don't know

1:13:46

if he's gonna get called. He's just on the list. Cause

1:13:50

we run a programmatic ad network called Concert,

1:13:53

theoretically competes at Google. That's

1:13:55

not truly not our side of the house. Like it's

1:13:58

all the way over there. I love it. Great hair. I will

1:14:00

say that. That's the one thing I know about. He does a

1:14:02

great hair. Agreed. But this

1:14:04

thing where you say, anybody

1:14:06

listening, pull over in your car and think

1:14:09

about the internet. That's my instruction to you.

1:14:11

Do you like the ads that you're seeing? There's

1:14:14

a million companies, a

1:14:16

million ad tech companies, that are like, we can make

1:14:18

better ads. And all of them are like, and

1:14:20

then you run into the monster. And you give

1:14:22

up. Most of those people flip

1:14:24

the ad tech companies, or they try to bundle them

1:14:26

up to create a new monster, and they get rich.

1:14:28

And then they live a healthy life on LinkedIn, complaining

1:14:30

about the monster. They're well-practiced

1:14:32

at this. They're

1:14:34

available to you. The reporting

1:14:37

is easy to do. It's just kind of what you're

1:14:39

really trying to sell an audience, even what I'm trying

1:14:41

to sell to you right now listening, is there's a

1:14:43

reason ads on the internet are bad. And

1:14:46

it's because the market is not actually

1:14:48

competitive for better ad experiences. OK. But

1:14:51

which is worse, ads now, the

1:14:53

ad experience now, or

1:14:55

in the 1990s, where it

1:14:57

would be a pop-up of porn that would

1:15:00

then infect your computer. Well, so in the

1:15:02

1990s, I was a teenage boy. So

1:15:05

you're like, that rules. I'm

1:15:08

the teenage girl. I was like, what? Early

1:15:11

2000s, I was like, this is great. This is what I was here

1:15:13

for the whole time. Can I just say one more

1:15:15

thing on this before we leave this subject? One

1:15:17

of the things I have

1:15:19

been paying a lot of attention to, and I'm well

1:15:21

aware that this is a giant generalization, but it has

1:15:23

really jumped out to me in reading some of these

1:15:26

court documents so far. A

1:15:28

thing you hear a lot from people in

1:15:30

and around the tech industry is that if

1:15:32

you want to believe that in the early

1:15:34

days of the tech industry, it was a

1:15:36

bunch of well-meaning hippies who just wanted to

1:15:38

make the world a better place, and

1:15:40

then that eventually got morphed and

1:15:42

ruined, they all blame

1:15:44

the MBAs. They're like a bunch of people

1:15:46

graduated from Harvard Business School and came here

1:15:48

because they thought that's where the money was,

1:15:51

and they changed the culture, and they ruined

1:15:53

everything. And boy, does

1:15:55

that ring true when you read some of these documents. To

1:15:57

your point about these people being ice cold, it's like, I don't know.

1:16:00

These are the MBAs. These are the people who are like, oh,

1:16:02

you want to build a cool product? I don't care. That's

1:16:04

not interesting to me. We're in charge of this

1:16:06

money machine. Make us money. And

1:16:08

that is the thing that runs Silicon Valley now.

1:16:11

And it's just very hard because Google does such

1:16:13

a good job of, for

1:16:15

the most part, being very

1:16:17

cuddly. I think there's a

1:16:19

reason Google still has one of the worst logos in world history.

1:16:24

It's cuddly and dumb and it still kind of looks

1:16:26

like Marissa Meyer, Drew, herself. And

1:16:29

there's a reason there was a slide on the YouTube off. This

1:16:32

is a company that its entire image

1:16:34

was friendly. And then in the background,

1:16:36

Eric Schmidt, former chairman and former CEO of Google

1:16:38

just a few weeks ago, was like,

1:16:40

here's what I would do if I was running an

1:16:42

AI company. I would steal everything and then have the

1:16:44

lawyers figure out the copyright problem. And it's like, oh,

1:16:46

that's because that's what you did with YouTube. Fully

1:16:50

what you did with YouTube, even though Viacom was dumb in

1:16:52

that lawsuit. And their own people kept

1:16:54

uploading videos to YouTube in the middle of

1:16:56

the copyright lawsuit, which is why they're lost.

1:16:58

It's a true story. But

1:17:01

there's a ruthlessness inside of Google that I'm

1:17:03

just seeing playing out right now. And the

1:17:05

thing I'm pointing out in particular is

1:17:08

viewed a certain way, its products,

1:17:10

the Pixel products in particular, have never

1:17:12

been better. Like,

1:17:15

they're good this time. They

1:17:18

have a point of view. They have clarity.

1:17:20

And then over here, the things

1:17:23

that have been reliable Google, like

1:17:26

ATMs, are kind of in chaos because of the

1:17:28

regulatory pressure. And I'm just not sure how that

1:17:30

plays out together. That's what happens when

1:17:32

you have the MBAs run stuff. No

1:17:35

MBAs on the Pixel team, please. That's how you stay out

1:17:37

of court. You stay away. All right, we got to

1:17:39

take a break. We'll be back with a lightning round. Support

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for the Vergecast comes from Mint Mobile. These

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1:18:50

right, we're back. The lightning round. I

1:18:53

will say that there are now ads on the YouTube. When you watch

1:18:55

it on YouTube, there are some ads. Those are

1:18:57

not official sponsors of the lightning round. The lightning round still

1:18:59

has a whole few sponsors. There were

1:19:01

so many commenters on YouTube who were happy for us that

1:19:04

we finally sponsored the lightning round. I just want to say

1:19:06

thank you to all of you rooting for us. But

1:19:09

it is misplaced. Give

1:19:11

us money and then be happy about that. I

1:19:13

do get emails and I try to take the money,

1:19:16

but I don't know how because it's not my job.

1:19:19

I can't be like, I take Stripe. It's just not like a

1:19:21

thing. All

1:19:23

right, lightning round. Krantz, what you got?

1:19:26

You know how trucks are huge? This

1:19:28

is actually kind of a sad one to you. Because I

1:19:30

know you love a big truck. Every time I see a Raptor

1:19:32

now, I'm like, my baby. But

1:19:34

sometimes trucks are too big. They're not

1:19:37

sometimes. Many times the trucks are too big.

1:19:39

If they come up to my shoulders, I'm like 5'8". That's

1:19:42

too tall. The US is finally

1:19:44

taking aim and they are proposing these new rules

1:19:46

and they were going to use crash test dummies.

1:19:49

But instead of for crashing, it's for pedestrians

1:19:52

because... So we're going to run the car into

1:19:54

people. Crash test dummies. Dummies.

1:19:56

Yeah, just a little poop. I think that's really nice

1:19:59

because a lot of the time... now we've been seeing

1:20:01

these really big trucks and then you see all of

1:20:03

these YouTube videos and stuff of people in these really

1:20:05

big trucks and they can't see little

1:20:07

kids in front of them. And it's like, somebody

1:20:09

should check that out. And apparently

1:20:11

the government was like, we should check that out. Presumably

1:20:13

the only way to do that is

1:20:16

to make the truck smaller. I will never be able to

1:20:18

describe to you why I just started imagining, it's

1:20:21

the Beatles, Abbey Road cover, but it's

1:20:23

four crash test dummies, wind up like

1:20:25

the Beatles, and then just like a

1:20:27

cyber truck just floors all four of

1:20:30

them. That's like too big. That's an

1:20:32

AI prompt right there, David. Coming

1:20:35

soon to a runway generator near you.

1:20:37

Just immediately what popped into my head.

1:20:39

But there is a lot of

1:20:41

optimism about these rules. People seem to be

1:20:43

really, really excited about it. It feels like

1:20:45

it's a good first step. So

1:20:47

it's after all these years of just watching

1:20:49

the trucks get huge, it's nice to be

1:20:51

like, hey, how about they don't get that

1:20:53

tall? So, Neela, you're

1:20:56

a truck guy. Is

1:21:00

this gonna piss off all the truck people? Sorry, I

1:21:02

just typed the Beatles, Abbey Road cover, but it's crash

1:21:04

test dummies into Grock. The

1:21:08

AI image generator, that's so bad. This

1:21:13

is what you get when there's literally no, I'll

1:21:16

send it to you David, when there's literally no

1:21:18

safety standards on your AI image generator, that's why

1:21:20

I picked Grock. Because it won't

1:21:22

stop me. Their heads are huge. Yes, as a

1:21:24

person who once owned a truck and

1:21:27

still thinks of my truck fondly. For

1:21:30

example, when I use Grock to generate crash test dummies

1:21:32

as the Beatles, Abbey Road cover, I think about moving

1:21:34

back into the woods and driving my truck again, instead

1:21:37

of living in society. What I wonder is, do

1:21:39

people buy the giant trucks because they're the good

1:21:41

trucks and people want good trucks. So if they

1:21:43

make the good trucks a little smaller, it'll be

1:21:45

fine. Or have we gotten to a point

1:21:47

where like, I need big truck

1:21:49

and if I can't have big truck, big

1:21:52

mad. No, actually two

1:21:54

things, there's two data points

1:21:57

that kind of refute the idea that people actually want the

1:21:59

big car. Some people want big cars.

1:22:02

One, the Ford Maverick is a

1:22:04

small truck that is just selling like gangbusters.

1:22:07

It's a hit product. And

1:22:09

then two, people are starting to import these Japanese

1:22:12

K trucks. I actually saw one at the Apple

1:22:14

event driving down the road in front of Apple

1:22:16

Park and it

1:22:18

was like an attention magnet. And then there's just these

1:22:20

little trucks and the beds, they're still like five and

1:22:22

a half foot beds. The beds are about the same

1:22:24

size as a full-size truck. They're just small. Right,

1:22:27

so they're as useful, but they're just small. And I think

1:22:29

you're seeing a bunch of interest in

1:22:31

small cars again, like the market wants them.

1:22:34

And then you look around and all the cars are

1:22:36

so gigantic. Like I think pendulum just swing back and

1:22:38

forth. There's like tax stuff where you buy a car

1:22:40

for your small business. You can write off the full

1:22:43

depreciation that has pushed like the

1:22:45

dentists of America buying giant SUVs. I

1:22:48

think that stuff is coming to an end or changing

1:22:51

in some way. And so I just think

1:22:53

like between the market, the regulatory pressure,

1:22:55

and then just the reality of you getting a

1:22:57

car that's so big, you

1:22:59

need cameras to drive it. That's too much.

1:23:01

It's getting weird, right? Like when

1:23:04

the solution to we, you can't see children as

1:23:06

we put cameras all around the truck that can

1:23:08

see the children for you, you're

1:23:11

just in a weird spot. So

1:23:13

I think I look at like, I

1:23:15

thoroughly enjoyed owning a Raptor. It was very fun,

1:23:18

but I lived near no one. And every time

1:23:20

I drove that thing into New York City, I

1:23:23

encourage if you ever have the opportunity to drive

1:23:25

a Ford Raptor through the

1:23:27

West Village at night during dinner time when

1:23:29

everyone's eating outside, listening to The

1:23:31

Cure with open windows. Take

1:23:33

it. That was just a weird experience all

1:23:35

the way around for everyone. Everyone

1:23:38

was like, what is happening right now? The

1:23:41

car is just incompatible. The city, it's incompatible with the suburb

1:23:43

I live in now. It's just too big, which is why

1:23:45

I got rid of it. And

1:23:47

I just see a push, particularly like the Rivian R3. That's

1:23:50

a smallish car. Yeah. The

1:23:52

IONIQ 5, the Hyundai IONIQ 5,

1:23:55

it's actually big, but they designed it to look like

1:23:57

a small car. Like

1:23:59

it's SU- SUV-ish proportions, but it's designed

1:24:01

to look like a classic hatchback.

1:24:04

And I think people are attracted to it so incredibly well

1:24:06

because it feels small, even though it isn't technically

1:24:08

as small as it looks. So I just think

1:24:11

there's more interest in smaller

1:24:13

stuff as opposed to just

1:24:16

like full-on Yukon cells. You have to crawl into

1:24:18

them. I was in a friend got at one

1:24:21

of the big Ram 3500s and I was like,

1:24:23

hold on, do I have, do you have like

1:24:25

a step or something? How do I get into

1:24:27

this thing? It was just nightmarish. I do miss

1:24:29

my Raptor very much. I'm just saying it one

1:24:32

more time. I think about

1:24:34

it all the time. The car ruled. I drove it all night.

1:24:36

I was going to go home and start asking Becky if he

1:24:38

can buy a big truck before it's illegal to have a big

1:24:40

truck. No, it's fine. We

1:24:43

have a very cranky Mustang inside. It's a good time.

1:24:46

All right, David, what you got? So mine is

1:24:48

news that actually happened like right after the Vergecast

1:24:50

last week, but I have been thinking about

1:24:52

ever since, which is that Meta finally

1:24:54

sort of showed off what WhatsApp and

1:24:56

messenger are going to look like now

1:24:59

that they're being forced to interoperate with

1:25:01

other chat networks. This is one

1:25:03

of those things that has been sort of burbling forever.

1:25:06

We've known that this is going to

1:25:08

happen because of some EU regulation that

1:25:11

basically says any sufficiently large messaging platform

1:25:13

has to interoperate with other messaging

1:25:15

systems. But there's just a

1:25:17

couple of screenshots that they showed off. One, they

1:25:20

look great. You're going to be able to

1:25:23

either have separate or combined inboxes. The way

1:25:25

you can have multiple email accounts in one

1:25:27

email client seems like obviously how this

1:25:29

should work, excited that it's going to work that way.

1:25:31

I always kind of thought they were going to do

1:25:33

like you have an inbox and then the like Facebook

1:25:36

side inbox thing that you have to go way out

1:25:38

of your way to do, but they're actually seem

1:25:41

to make it a sort of first party messaging

1:25:43

system, which is very cool. And

1:25:45

then also there's a screenshot that

1:25:47

shows basically how you

1:25:49

will set it up in each app and

1:25:52

meta invented two

1:25:54

messaging apps just for the sake of these

1:25:56

screenshots. One is called spruce and one is

1:25:58

called blurb. And I have

1:26:01

been designing and product managing Spruce

1:26:03

and Blurb all week. And

1:26:05

I have a lot of thoughts about them as messaging apps. Which

1:26:08

one do you think is better, Spruce or

1:26:10

Blurb? Spruce is like business-y. It's like, Spruce

1:26:12

is kind of like where you go to

1:26:14

like LinkedIn vibe. Blurb is like yo, where

1:26:16

it's just like, it's just down to clown

1:26:18

on Blurb. You're just blurbin'? Oh, it's blurbin'

1:26:20

baby, yeah. Yeah, I got you. Are you

1:26:22

just like yo, you wanna blurb later? Like

1:26:24

that has connotations, you know what I mean?

1:26:26

Well, no, in yo, you could only yo.

1:26:29

Yeah, well, okay, you're right. Blurb is more than yo. Got

1:26:32

it, okay, just be clear. You can yo in

1:26:34

Blurb, to be clear. Yo is a

1:26:36

feature of Blurb. Yeah. Yeah.

1:26:39

Yeah. Yeah. And

1:26:42

two super yos equals one Blurb. It's

1:26:44

important to understand that. I got it.

1:26:46

I have an app on my phone

1:26:48

called Bonk. Yeah. Yeah.

1:26:51

Is there- Casey Newton got really excited about Bonk

1:26:53

for a minute. Bonk was yo with Bonk's. Bonk

1:26:56

was yo with Bonk's. Bonk was

1:26:59

like real time collaborative yo. All

1:27:01

right. Yeah,

1:27:06

but I just think this is very cool. And

1:27:09

as far as we can tell, all of this is

1:27:12

just coming to the EU. Again,

1:27:15

this fascinating schism happening between the experience of

1:27:17

technology in the United States and the EU,

1:27:19

and in many ways the EU is going

1:27:22

to be much cooler and more open and

1:27:24

more interesting. But just the

1:27:26

way this looks and the way this works has

1:27:28

me actually sort of excited about what messaging might

1:27:30

look like. So I thought that was cool. Yeah.

1:27:32

By the way, the EU thing that you mentioned

1:27:34

is, I think is gonna be part of my

1:27:36

solution to how to review the iPhones

1:27:38

and talk about them. Because Apple intelligence

1:27:41

isn't coming to Europe. So

1:27:43

we're just gonna make like European iPhone content.

1:27:46

Continental iPhone content. I love this. And

1:27:49

then we'll make like freedom loving American

1:27:51

content. Bald eagles everywhere. Yeah,

1:27:53

where the iPhone is just constantly summarizing everything.

1:27:55

It's like text. It's like, cool. Summarized.

1:38:00

the real plus and minus of it right now. Maybe

1:38:03

this will help people engage in local communities. I

1:38:05

will have to see this picture. And

1:38:07

there will be no label on it because no one figured out

1:38:09

how any of that works. And maybe it never will. That's

1:38:12

it, that's the VergeCast everybody. Yay.

1:38:14

Fold your phone in half. Any

1:38:17

phone, it doesn't have to actually be a folder. Just

1:38:19

get out there and start folding phones in half. Brute

1:38:21

strength. Rock and roll. And

1:38:27

that's it for the VergeCast this week. Hey, we'd love to

1:38:29

hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE11. The

1:38:33

VergeCast is a production of The Verge and

1:38:35

Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced

1:38:37

by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it,

1:38:39

we'll see you next week. Support

1:38:45

for the VergeCast comes from Mint Mobile. Having

1:38:48

a phone is an expensive necessity for most

1:38:50

of us, but you can save a ton

1:38:52

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