The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss this week's tech and gadget news.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Hello and welcome to the Verge cast, the flagship podcast of David finally admitting it's just
00:00:07a three.
00:00:12That's what we're known for here.
00:00:14Just being broken down and saying, you know what, three.
00:00:18I'm your friend, Eli.
00:00:19This is Alex Kranz.
00:00:20I'm thinking what a two is.
00:00:22That's on fire.
00:00:25David Pierce is here.
00:00:27The Verge's very own three, David Pierce.
00:00:30Yeah.
00:00:31Let's listen.
00:00:32I've heard worse.
00:00:33I'll take it.
00:00:34No, David, you're a ten in all of our hearts, especially now that you've admitted the truth.
00:00:42Lots to talk about in the show.
00:00:43David reviewed the Rabbit R1, which that's the whole show.
00:00:46That's two hours right there.
00:00:47We have what we're calling a money round.
00:00:50There's a bunch of money news we talked about, including LinkedIn adding games when you think
00:00:56about money.
00:00:57There's a bunch of gadget stuff.
00:00:58There's some Pixel 8a leaks.
00:00:59There's an iPad event next week, or what we assume is an iPad event next week.
00:01:03We got to talk about that and do some preview of that.
00:01:05And then, of course, the lightning round.
00:01:08The Verge's very own lightning round.
00:01:10Still woefully unsponsored.
00:01:13Very upsetting.
00:01:14Pixar should sponsor it.
00:01:15Yeah.
00:01:16See, any number of companies.
00:01:17Lightning McQueen round.
00:01:18Come on.
00:01:19It's right there.
00:01:20As a man who, for obvious financial reasons, needs to sell his Raptor, the Ford Lightning
00:01:25is right there.
00:01:26It's true.
00:01:27It's right there.
00:01:28Alex, I haven't talked to you about this yet.
00:01:34We have to get rid of the pickup truck.
00:01:35It was my mountain adventure pandemic binky pickup truck, and now it's got to go.
00:01:39You live far too close to New York now to own a pickup truck.
00:01:42Yeah.
00:01:43It is incompatible with my neighborhood.
00:01:46How many points is a turn in the street?
00:01:49I'm just knocking over houses.
00:01:51I'm just like, whatever, I'll pay the fine.
00:01:55No one has a post box anymore.
00:01:57Yeah, it's all over.
00:01:58But I'm just saying, we didn't call it the Raptor round.
00:02:02We could.
00:02:04Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, is clearly in charge of the podcast marketing budget.
00:02:12We will name the Lightning round after any car.
00:02:15I'm not above that.
00:02:16For a price, I would call this the Kia Forte round.
00:02:19It would be no problem.
00:02:21Okay, never mind.
00:02:22Yeah, that's fine.
00:02:24Again, the conceit of the Lightning round is it goes fast.
00:02:26It actually never goes fast.
00:02:27Anyway, we're going to get to it.
00:02:28The Kia Forte round, I'm telling you.
00:02:30It's right there.
00:02:31That's a music term.
00:02:32I think that.
00:02:33It goes okay, and then if you have a USB stick, you can steal it.
00:02:37You can steal the Lightning round.
00:02:39But we're going to be there in like 45 minutes.
00:02:43Between now and then, you can convince your CMO to sponsor it.
00:02:46Give us a call.
00:02:47There we go.
00:02:48Liam is waiting for you.
00:02:49All right, let's start with the news.
00:02:51The Rabbit R1 was released.
00:02:54David, you went to the party.
00:02:56You talked about it last week on the show, how you felt about the thing.
00:02:58This week, you've written a review.
00:03:00I don't think if people in the Vergecast audience are paying attention to the gadget ecosystem,
00:03:04I don't think your review is surprising because there was no embargo.
00:03:09People just got them.
00:03:10It was only people who bought them that had them.
00:03:11They were just talking about it.
00:03:13The problems have been obvious the whole time.
00:03:16I think Marques was like, this product is almost unreviewable.
00:03:18It is so broken.
00:03:20But you did it.
00:03:21You actually reviewed it.
00:03:22You gave it the score, the full Verge organized review treatment.
00:03:28It didn't seem to go well.
00:03:30It didn't go well.
00:03:31It's been a very funny experience because I think coming at this after the Humane experience,
00:03:36which is sort of a normal high-end gadget review experience where they give it to a
00:03:41group of people, it's under embargo.
00:03:43It's a very secretive thing.
00:03:45People are not talking about it on social.
00:03:47There's not tons of sort of real-time feedback coming from people.
00:03:51And then this comes out, and Rabbit just hands it out to hundreds, and then the day after,
00:03:55what seemed to be thousands of people.
00:03:57I picked mine up at that event last Tuesday night, and people started getting theirs in
00:04:02the mail on Wednesday.
00:04:04And these are just users.
00:04:06I bought one.
00:04:07I bought one in order to get it to review.
00:04:09Everybody who has one bought one.
00:04:11And it turns out a bunch of people who have spent months being really excited about this
00:04:16thing that has been super hyped as a cool way to use AI to get stuff done and feels
00:04:21like the future in a Star Trek communicator, and then you take it out and you say, order
00:04:24me a ride.
00:04:25And it says, this app is going to take a long time to load, and then fails.
00:04:28It turns out that sucks.
00:04:31And so it's been a really interesting experience over the last, what, nine days since it came
00:04:35out, watching people go through basically the same process I have, which is you start
00:04:40with, oh, this thing is fun.
00:04:42It's cute.
00:04:43It's whimsical.
00:04:44It's adorable.
00:04:45And you use it for a couple of very straightforward things, and it does those things okay.
00:04:50For days, it didn't know what time it was.
00:04:53Mine would tell me the time if I asked, but it was three hours off.
00:04:57And because Rabbit's AI is like trying to be very clever, it wouldn't let you set the
00:05:01time zone manually.
00:05:03It also, you would ask it the weather, and it would just invent a place for it to be.
00:05:06There were a couple of people in the office at The Verge who have seen this and were asking
00:05:11it.
00:05:12And I got asked three times in a row, sitting in my basement in Washington, DC, and it gave
00:05:17me the weather for New York, Philadelphia, and Budapest.
00:05:19No.
00:05:20Three times in a row.
00:05:21That third one's a wild card.
00:05:22Yeah.
00:05:23It's like, all right.
00:05:24At least the other ones were former capitals of the United States.
00:05:27Maybe it just really is.
00:05:28Budapest never, I think, George Washington never went to Budapest, as far as I'm aware.
00:05:33As far as I can tell.
00:05:34Yeah.
00:05:35Yeah.
00:05:36I can't even think of what the similarity between those three cities is.
00:05:38There isn't one.
00:05:40Three of them are former capitals.
00:05:42Seats of the United States government.
00:05:43Two of them.
00:05:44No.
00:05:45No.
00:05:46That thing you just did ascribes way too much thought and intelligence to what is actually
00:05:50happening on this device.
00:05:51They're just places where Ben Franklin was hammered.
00:05:53That's fine.
00:05:54It was Ben Franklin hammered in Budapest.
00:05:57That's all it said.
00:05:59But, yeah, so I go through this whole process, and by the time I'm actually sitting down
00:06:05to be like, what is the story of this device?
00:06:09It's both that it is so woefully underbaked.
00:06:15They've been promising really interesting stuff since the beginning, and we made a lot
00:06:18of fun of Humane for a year for just the weirdness of that device.
00:06:23But Rabbit just kind of came out, and they were just like, here's the thing.
00:06:25Here's what it does.
00:06:26It's a fun toy.
00:06:27It's $200.
00:06:28And it's like, OK, that might be something.
00:06:30And they just didn't do it.
00:06:31They just didn't build the thing they told us they were going to build.
00:06:34So I'm going to ask the same question I asked about the Humane pen, which a lot of listeners
00:06:38have just been asking us as though we know.
00:06:42Why did they ship this this way?
00:06:44I have a lot of theories about this.
00:06:48The answer is I don't know.
00:06:50And I will say the most specific answer is I don't know why they shipped it now and not
00:06:56in three months.
00:06:57I can tell you why they shipped it now and not in 12 months, because inventory is expensive.
00:07:03You have to make decisions on what you buy and when way in advance.
00:07:08And actually to make a bunch of stuff and then stick it in a warehouse and then update
00:07:12it, repackage it, and ship it is wildly expensive.
00:07:16And so once you've started the logistics train, it's really, really, really hard to stop it.
00:07:22So I think that's the simplest reason.
00:07:24Everybody made this date call a long time ago and didn't finish building the thing before
00:07:30it had to ship.
00:07:31And rather than eat the like very real cost of delaying it a few months, they just shipped
00:07:38the unfinished thing and said big stuff coming in the summer.
00:07:40But both Humane and Rabbit have been out there being like, oh, yeah, tons of stuff coming.
00:07:47Jesse Liu, the CEO of Rabbit stood in front of the screen showing the roadmap and it has
00:07:51this big long list of stuff that absolutely needed to be there on day one that is coming
00:07:55quote unquote this summer.
00:07:57While I was using the device on Tuesday, they shipped a big software update that fixed the
00:08:02time zone thing.
00:08:04So my Rabbit now reliably knows what time it is, which is very exciting and like kind
00:08:07of fixed the weather.
00:08:08It doesn't give me Budapest anymore, but it also gives me like 20 miles from my house.
00:08:13So we're like, we're getting there.
00:08:16And that but that's the kind of stuff.
00:08:17Oh, it also fixed the unbelievably disastrous battery life that this thing had.
00:08:21Like if I sat here and just used it for 60 minutes, it died.
00:08:25And if I just turned it on, put it on my desk and didn't touch it, it would die in
00:08:29six hours.
00:08:30I mean, it was unbelievably bad.
00:08:32And it's much better now.
00:08:34It still is like a one day device, even if you don't touch it at all, which is still
00:08:38pretty bad.
00:08:39But it's better.
00:08:40But this is the stuff that is just like literally inexcusable to ship to people who paid for
00:08:46your device.
00:08:47And I'm sensitive to all of the business reasons that that is hard to guess.
00:08:52AI is changing really fast.
00:08:54These companies don't have infinite amounts of money and supply chain victories, but you
00:08:59just can't.
00:09:00You just can't do it.
00:09:01I mean, people have lobbed a lot of like really negative assessments at Jesse Liu since this
00:09:08thing came out and has been kind of a boondoggle for him, right?
00:09:10Like a lot of people are resurfacing the fact that he was formerly CEO of a company that
00:09:15promised NFTs and the metaverse didn't deliver on that and then kind of moved over, which
00:09:22is not a really great look for him.
00:09:25And it's just like, and I've heard the accusations on Reddit just flying fast, right?
00:09:31Saying that this was a grift, that everybody was just kind of like misled into this thing
00:09:35that was clearly like a beta product that they had no intention of thinking was real.
00:09:40And I don't like, there's no reporting behind any of this.
00:09:42This is just rumors.
00:09:43But the rumors are furious.
00:09:44Yeah.
00:09:45The like, Jesse is a grifter thing is a very real thing that is floating out there.
00:09:50I think I forget what the name of the law is, but it's never ascribed to malice.
00:09:55What can be described by incompetence, right?
00:09:57Like that's what this is to me.
00:09:58Like this is just a startup that made a bunch of really big promises and didn't pull it
00:10:02off.
00:10:04That explains everything that is happening here.
00:10:05Right.
00:10:06And I think frankly, like that was the NFT thing.
00:10:08Everybody got really excited about this huge thing that was happening.
00:10:10Thought it was going to be really cool.
00:10:11Thought they could buy it.
00:10:12No.
00:10:13That was grifting.
00:10:14Some of it was grifting.
00:10:15Almost all of it.
00:10:16There was one event where they had an NFT wall and everyone was like, eww.
00:10:21Sure.
00:10:22Now, a lot of people were not saying eww back then.
00:10:26Yeah, because they were at the top of the pyramid.
00:10:27I mean, we were.
00:10:28Yes.
00:10:29I would point out that the Verge staff almost universally was saying eww.
00:10:32Oh, I agree.
00:10:33And then there was Richard Lawler who was saying eww, but also in a way that suggested
00:10:37I told you so.
00:10:38Like he was like pre I told you so.
00:10:40Before they even announced what NFT meant, Richard was like, mm-mm.
00:10:44I told you so.
00:10:46Those were the two reactions on our staff.
00:10:49Look, I'm much more inclined to believe this is some hardware startup disaster.
00:10:56At $199, it's hard to grift anyone.
00:10:58I mean, if you're broke ass and you were like, this is going to be my cool gadget.
00:11:02Yeah.
00:11:03At $199.
00:11:04Like a lot.
00:11:05Some people just feel bad.
00:11:06I'm just saying, if you're in the grifter game, you're trying to make more money than
00:11:09that at a pop.
00:11:11The thing that gets me is a lot of that conversation is related to just the reality of these products.
00:11:17There were teardowns of the Humane AI pen and the Rabbit R1 from iFixit this week.
00:11:22They're Android phones.
00:11:23That's what they are.
00:11:24And people took that to be a sign of the grift.
00:11:29That's not a sign.
00:11:30This thing is just running Android on a chipset that you can get.
00:11:33But so is your TV.
00:11:35Right.
00:11:36And the Rabbit interface is really just an Android app.
00:11:38And you like smash those ideas together.
00:11:41This thing is broken.
00:11:42Doesn't quite work.
00:11:43And it's really just Android phone.
00:11:44This is a grift.
00:11:45And I think it's actually quite important to pull those ideas apart.
00:11:48I agree.
00:11:49Because like you just said, Alex, almost everything is an Android phone.
00:11:52Yeah.
00:11:53Like your fridge probably is also an Android phone.
00:11:55Everything is a time bomb.
00:11:58Everything is just waiting to unleash Bixby upon you.
00:12:01Everything can run an APK if you try hard enough.
00:12:04That's actually, whatever that, that's a law.
00:12:06Alex's law.
00:12:07That's Alex's law.
00:12:08You can horsepower an APK in almost anything these days.
00:12:11It would be shocking to me if this thing wasn't running Android or some commodity smartphone
00:12:17hardware.
00:12:18That's what's cheap.
00:12:19At $1.99, again, maybe an easier thing for them to have done would have been to buy a
00:12:26bunch of used Galaxy A-series phones and put their app on it.
00:12:31Because then at least they would have told the time reliably.
00:12:35It's weird.
00:12:36The thing that I can't quite wrap my head around is if you're going to build on top
00:12:38of the existing thing, which almost everybody does, why didn't you get the easy parts for
00:12:44free?
00:12:46Why didn't you get, I know what time it is, or I can do a GPS lookup to pull the weather?
00:12:52That stuff is all in the operating system.
00:12:55Not being able to tell the time is actually, I can't quite wrap my head around, even if
00:12:59you install the most open source version of AOSP, Android Open Source Project, on the
00:13:06most open dev hardware that exists.
00:13:09It's not like clock doesn't come for the ride.
00:13:13That's the part I don't get.
00:13:14It's like all the energy got focused on the hard part and they didn't take the free stuff
00:13:18for free.
00:13:19Yeah.
00:13:20It was like, they're doing too much.
00:13:22Nobody was there just going, no, y'all, we're doing too much.
00:13:25Let's scale it back.
00:13:26We got this really kick-ass hardware.
00:13:29In your piece, you talked about it, that the hardware is nice.
00:13:33It's cool.
00:13:34I tried one this week.
00:13:35It was really cool to handle.
00:13:36I expected the buttons to be more ... I expected everything to be softer, like the soft-touch
00:13:41plastic, but it wasn't.
00:13:42That was a bummer.
00:13:43I forgot where I was going.
00:13:44My new startup is 100% buying used Galaxy A-series phones, installing ChatGPT on them
00:13:49and being like, this is the future, which is more or less the piece Alison wrote this
00:13:53week.
00:13:54Right, right.
00:13:55But that's the part.
00:13:56David, did they talk to you about this?
00:13:57Has Jesse said anything about it?
00:13:58I know they put out one statement in response to people leaking their APK, saying like,
00:14:04this isn't going to work on your Android phone, it calls our cloud services, our open-sourced
00:14:09version of Android is heavily ... all the stuff you would say, but there's just a part
00:14:14where not getting the basics for free is just really weird to me.
00:14:17There's a real fake-it-till-you-make-it thing happening with this that I think is what a
00:14:23lot of people on the internet are responding to, right?
00:14:26That quote-unquote source code leak basically showed that rather than use some fancy AI
00:14:32thing, Rabbit is actually just using this software called Playwright, which is a very
00:14:36well-known automation software.
00:14:38It's like if you have a website that you want tested out to see what works and what doesn't
00:14:43and if all the links go to the right place and so on and so forth, that's just like a
00:14:46thing a business can run.
00:14:47I think it's owned by Microsoft.
00:14:49This is well-known technology.
00:14:51It is not hard to teach a computer to use a website, right?
00:14:55And the idea that that's all Rabbit is doing really rubbed some people the wrong way.
00:15:00But I think in general, these companies feel like they have to do the whole thing and really
00:15:06reinvent the wheel or else you're just a smartphone.
00:15:10And we're in this moment now where I think the next phase of this will be starting to
00:15:15push the two things back towards each other a little bit more.
00:15:18We're going to get smartphones that do more sort of one-touch AI stuff.
00:15:22We're going to get devices that are more connected to your phone.
00:15:25But if I'm Rabbit or Humane, you rewind even a couple of years and what they're all saying
00:15:29is we have to do our own thing, build our own platform, own the whole experience ourselves
00:15:34because that's the only way for us to be successful.
00:15:37And I think if you start with that assumption, that is how you run into, holy God, this is
00:15:42so much harder to do all of this than we thought.
00:15:45And it's how you end up with devices like these.
00:15:48Like I think you can't take the Android clock because people look at it and be like, that's
00:15:51the Android clock.
00:15:52Why don't I just use my phone?
00:15:53You could just not show the clock to people.
00:15:55Yeah.
00:15:56You change the UI.
00:15:57Yeah.
00:15:58We're talking about the old HTC flippy clock widget, although if they brought that back,
00:16:02that would be sick.
00:16:03That would be sick.
00:16:04I mean, that thing was iconic.
00:16:06So good.
00:16:07What is the most iconic Android widget of all time?
00:16:09It's the HTC flippy clock.
00:16:10You cannot convince me otherwise.
00:16:12I would agree.
00:16:13Or the circle clock from the T-Mobile G1.
00:16:14No, no.
00:16:15It's the flippy clock.
00:16:16The flippy clock?
00:16:17Yeah.
00:16:18When I think Android, I think of that with like the background and everything they have.
00:16:20Yeah, that weird cartoony vibe.
00:16:22Yeah.
00:16:23Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:24Beautiful.
00:16:25Let's just talk about all the Android phones now and how you can start a startup shipping
00:16:27all the Android phones.
00:16:29But honestly, I think part of that is related, right, you're two years ago, you're starting
00:16:33this thing.
00:16:34You could say, all right, we're going to ship an AI app for people's phones.
00:16:38And then you run right into, and then Apple and Google won't let us because that threatens
00:16:42their business.
00:16:43Right.
00:16:44And we're now in literal, direct, exact, precise competition with those companies and the other
00:16:48best funded companies on planet Earth.
00:16:50Right.
00:16:51But now you can't, like all the antitrust stuff that has happened, alternative app stores,
00:16:56all this stuff.
00:16:57Now you can.
00:16:58I kind of fully expect to see a wave of startups that are like rabbit, but an app, right, without
00:17:06all the hardware noise.
00:17:07Say like, look, you can just run this on iPhone now because Apple can't stop me, or at least
00:17:10in the EU.
00:17:11I don't, you know, I don't know what's going to happen with Google in that particular way,
00:17:15but at least in the EU, Apple now has to allow these alternative apps for all this stuff.
00:17:19And that is interesting to me.
00:17:20I don't know if it'll work.
00:17:21I don't know if Apple's just going to Sherlock everybody at WWDC this year, but it feels
00:17:25like the rabbit and the humane caught a moment and a vibe when they were, no one could build
00:17:31an app like this on the, like, Apple just wouldn't let you ship that app.
00:17:34I'm confident.
00:17:35Especially because they probably buy stuff and Apple wouldn't get a cut of that money.
00:17:40Like, there's a million reasons why Apple wouldn't let you ship that app.
00:17:42Yeah, I think that's right.
00:17:43Well, also, it would have been a crappy app.
00:17:45Like.
00:17:46Yeah, it wouldn't have worked.
00:17:48Yeah, right.
00:17:49Like, like the talent and what we really saw, the real success of the R1, the reason it's
00:17:54a three and not a one or a two is because the hardware is nice.
00:17:59Because the hardware is nice.
00:18:00Yeah.
00:18:01Like, they did this core and the user interface is pretty.
00:18:04It's not always pleasant.
00:18:05It's fine.
00:18:06Yeah.
00:18:07It's fine.
00:18:08Yeah, it's fine.
00:18:09But no, you're right.
00:18:10Yeah, right.
00:18:11Like, like, there was some, some genuinely good stuff there and it, one, had nothing
00:18:14to do with rabbit.
00:18:15It frankly seems primarily a teenage engineering did the good parts and, and yeah, like, they
00:18:21just never would have made it as an app.
00:18:24Yeah.
00:18:25And their whole, their whole thing was we want to be the next Apple, which is enormously
00:18:29ambitious on, on an easy day and, and, and their climate is like godly ambitious.
00:18:36Yeah.
00:18:37The fact that DoorDash just doesn't work on this thing and Uber just doesn't work and
00:18:42Spotify is broken.
00:18:43It's like you're, yeah, you could say it could, it should just be an app, but those apps tend
00:18:49to work on phones.
00:18:51Yeah.
00:18:52You can get food from DoorDash on phones.
00:18:54You, you pretty successfully, a hundred percent of the time DoorDash is like, here, your order
00:18:58is completed.
00:18:59Uh, the fact that they shipped it broken with those integrations, Jesse, I think he tweeted.
00:19:05He's like, my hope for this round of reviews is a six.
00:19:08He actually tweeted the number that he was hoping for and it's like, wow, did you use
00:19:14your product before you shipped it?
00:19:16Like not giving yourself the seven is incredible, right?
00:19:19You're like world of no sevens.
00:19:21I'm not an eight.
00:19:22I'm a six.
00:19:23It's tough.
00:19:24That's rough.
00:19:25Yeah.
00:19:26Well, I think about it like the Phil Libin who used to be the CEO of Evernote, uh, and
00:19:30then it was investors now running, which is that cool like video chat app.
00:19:34He said to me once a couple of years ago, and I may have said this on the show before,
00:19:37but I think about it all the time.
00:19:38He said, when I look at a product, my question is always, is this primitive or is this stupid?
00:19:44Uh, because you can't fix stupid, but primitive usually gets better, right?
00:19:49He was like, if, if you, and he was like the, the first iPhone, like perfect primitive,
00:19:53the thing barely worked.
00:19:55But the minute you looked at it, you were like, oh, there is, there is something inside
00:19:59of this.
00:20:00But if he was like, if I don't have that reaction to this, if there is no good version of this,
00:20:06it's just stupid.
00:20:07And I think where I've come to is like, I think rabbit might be stupid in a way that
00:20:14I think humane is just kind of primitive, right?
00:20:16Like I, and I'm happy to have this argument with you.
00:20:18And I would love to have this argument.
00:20:20I am still convinced that the idea of like a wearable on body device that is easier to
00:20:27access than your phone is something, I don't know how big that something is going to be.
00:20:31I would bet money.
00:20:32It doesn't have a laser projector involved at all, but like there is, there is some teeny
00:20:36tiny nugget of AI wearable that I still find compelling a handheld device that isn't my
00:20:43phone that does everything my phone tries to do, but worse, I don't see it.
00:20:49Maybe there is some technological AI miracle coming that makes these like large action
00:20:54model agents work.
00:20:56And if so, I look forward to being proven wrong on this one, but like I don't see the
00:21:00runway for the R1 from what it is now to something that is like genuinely interesting and different
00:21:09from my phone so that I will carry both of them.
00:21:12I just don't see it.
00:21:13Let me pull apart one idea in there and then I can disagree with you about the rest.
00:21:17You mentioned large action models, which we have not really talked about in the context
00:21:20of the R1, but when you think about these products and how their companies are talking
00:21:24about them, Humane, a bunch of stargazy, navelgazy phones are ruining your life.
00:21:32Yeah.
00:21:33Right?
00:21:34Like just stuff, just whatever, whatever that vibe is from Humane, big things, thought leader
00:21:40stuff.
00:21:41Rabbit is like, we made a large action model that will use computers for you on your behalf
00:21:48if you give us your login information, which is a very like small idea in practicality.
00:21:54It's a huge idea in the world, right?
00:21:57It's the idea of you will have an agent, but the actual idea is really quite small, which
00:22:00is why they could fake it with Playwright, which is just like user testing software,
00:22:06right?
00:22:07They're running a bot farm.
00:22:08They got a hundred sausages waving at a hundred Android phones somewhere just using computers
00:22:12for you.
00:22:13I mean like that is so much closer to true than it should be.
00:22:17Like that's a joke, but you're not all that far from describing what Rabbit is actually
00:22:22doing here.
00:22:23Right.
00:22:24But I'm saying on the split, right?
00:22:27If your idea is, is it primitive or stupid, the idea that, okay, we're going to automate
00:22:35the use of a bunch of websites and we're starting with like a commercially existing tool that
00:22:40already automates websites for you and we're going to try to like fake it there until this
00:22:43large action model idea is ready and then we're just like going to do a bunch of computer
00:22:47vision and horsepower our way through the web.
00:22:51That's the point, right?
00:22:52But they're nowhere on that journey except to have used some commercially available like
00:22:58user testing software.
00:22:59Poorly.
00:23:00But I would add like they attempted to use it, but they didn't do it.
00:23:03And that, that's where I land, right?
00:23:04It's not, there's one thing where it's like, okay, we tried to do something and didn't
00:23:08quite do it.
00:23:09And then there's another one that's, we promised you we were going to do it and just didn't.
00:23:13Yeah.
00:23:14That's, that's pretty hard to come back from.
00:23:15And then, but I'm saying within what Humane is selling is like, you do not need a phone.
00:23:20Your phone's killing you and we know it cause we invented it, which is an amazing thing.
00:23:25Beautiful.
00:23:26Um, that's what you want to be there.
00:23:27You'd be like, those cigarettes were ruining you.
00:23:28I know this because I am Dr. Tobacco, please try this Juul, which is the story of Juul,
00:23:35right?
00:23:36Um, a hundred percent by the way, the story of Juul is they hired a bunch of tobacco scientists.
00:23:40But Humane is like, we're, we got you hooked and now we're going to break it by selling
00:23:44you our pin.
00:23:48That promise is like even more nascent, right?
00:23:49Like the technology doesn't work, but it also might be the wrong promise.
00:23:52That's like what I'm hammering on here, right?
00:23:54Like the idea of the software agent will go use software on your behalf seems more achievable
00:24:01than we're going to fully replace your phone.
00:24:03Oh, I think that's right.
00:24:05I think I have, uh, in the course of several weeks of talking to people kind of in and
00:24:11around Humane and reviewing this device, I think even Humane is slowly starting to give
00:24:17up on that vision.
00:24:19I think if you gave them a time machine and let them go back 12 months ago, they would
00:24:24not start to tell the story about how your phone is killing you and we need to take away
00:24:29from your phone.
00:24:30Uh, I think they realize how deeply weird their entire like marketing strategy was for
00:24:37a long time.
00:24:38And even if you look at what they've done publicly, like they've tried to sort of chill
00:24:43a little bit, which I think it's been good, but again, I do agree.
00:24:46And this is, I think the most consistent piece of feedback we get every time we cover one
00:24:50of these devices is people saying, why would I use this over my phone?
00:24:53And the answer is you wouldn't, and you're not going to anytime soon.
00:24:57And that just is what it is.
00:24:58Right.
00:24:59So maybe you just assume that as like ground truth.
00:25:02And at this point I do.
00:25:03Right.
00:25:04And I think that's why the Humane price is so absurd.
00:25:06$699 plus a subscription for a phone number and a text messaging system, neither of which
00:25:13are attached to your actual phone number is like preposterous, but still like boil it
00:25:17down even further.
00:25:18And it's just like the thing that device is seems closer to being something to me than
00:25:24what the R1 is.
00:25:26I just, I think they're both stupid.
00:25:30That honestly might be true.
00:25:31Like, I think, like, I don't think either one is primitive.
00:25:33I think they're both.
00:25:34I think Dave is just trying to justify giving one a four and one a three.
00:25:37No, I get, I totally understand the three and the four.
00:25:39I was telling somebody at the office earlier today cause I edited that review and I looked
00:25:43at that three and I was like, well, you know, the Humane pen like promised a bunch of stuff
00:25:48and badly delivered.
00:25:51Rabbit promised a bunch of stuff and didn't deliver at all.
00:25:55But it didn't catch on fire or physically harm David.
00:25:59That's true.
00:26:00I feel like we got a recount for this.
00:26:03No, I think, I think you could make a fair argument that they both should have been threes.
00:26:06There's no version of the argument that they both should have been fours, which is why
00:26:09I gave it a three.
00:26:10Like I, there's no, I, I hemmed and hawed on the AI pen and this one was easier.
00:26:16And frankly, I think the simplest way to look at it is just price and realistically for
00:26:22what these things do, they're both too expensive.
00:26:25And I think what $200 means to somebody versus what $700 means to somebody, I don't know.
00:26:29If you're buying one of these things, you have disposable income anyway.
00:26:32Like I don't know.
00:26:34I am perfectly happy for everyone to yell at me about the score.
00:26:36I feel very good about this score.
00:26:38I feel fine about the score.
00:26:39What I'm getting at is that the rabbit, it's like a toy, right?
00:26:42It's $199.
00:26:43You can have it.
00:26:44It's broken.
00:26:45I buy so much broken tech garbage all the time.
00:26:49But the idea of the Humane, that you're going to wear it, it's going to be in your body.
00:26:51This is the part where I just like disagree with you, right?
00:26:53That's fine.
00:26:54Like, I think that will just be a watch.
00:26:56Yes.
00:26:57If, if it's going to be anything else, it'll be the meta glasses, but like the little Star
00:27:03Trek communicator badge on my curve of wearable bullshit.
00:27:07It's like, boy, I better hope I'm wearing a shirt today.
00:27:12Star Trek exists in a world where there are no toilets.
00:27:14I'm also always wearing a shirt.
00:27:16I don't know why I picked that one.
00:27:17Like, I'm not like, I'm not doing Baywatch, you know, but it's just like that thing.
00:27:25Like it is demanding in a particular way that you adjust your wardrobe around it.
00:27:31And I, there's just a part of me, it's like, that's the part that's destined to fail.
00:27:35Maybe.
00:27:36Right.
00:27:37It goes here.
00:27:38Maybe.
00:27:39I think the answer is it's going to be lots of things.
00:27:40Like, I think, I think a watch is going to work for lots of people.
00:27:43I think glasses will work for some people.
00:27:44They're not going to work for me as somebody who doesn't wear glasses or contacts.
00:27:48I think the idea of wearing a pair of glasses all day is just a non-starter for me.
00:27:51Like, I'm not going to do it.
00:27:52All right.
00:27:53Mr. Fancy Pants with the nice eyeballs.
00:27:55Sorry.
00:27:56Sorry, y'all.
00:27:57The next time I see you, I'm shining my iPhone flashlight.
00:27:59I don't know if that's going to hurt you or anything.
00:28:03It just doesn't feel good.
00:28:05Yeah.
00:28:06I appreciate that.
00:28:07But no, I think, I think the answer can be lots of things.
00:28:09Right.
00:28:10And I think the, the, like the breast pin communicator thing is also kind of weird.
00:28:15My honest bet is that the first thing is going to be headphones.
00:28:17Like, I really sincerely believe that we're due for like a giant explosion of AI stuff
00:28:23into your headphones.
00:28:25And it's going to solve a lot of problems.
00:28:27Apple is going to get to that faster.
00:28:29Taking notes as you say that.
00:28:30I said this on Tuesday's show, but my absolutely baseless unreported conspiracy theory is that
00:28:34the AirPods Max are going to be AI products.
00:28:37And that's why it's been so long since they've been updated.
00:28:39Oh, no, it's going to be the pros.
00:28:41No, the Max's are big.
00:28:43They can have a big battery.
00:28:45Yeah, but I like, I don't know.
00:28:47I remember the first time I put in AirPod Pros and I like just asked my phone to do
00:28:51something through the headphones and I was like, oh, this is magic.
00:28:55And like, if you can do that, like consistently and regularly.
00:28:58But I think also to the other, to if you pull that out further, what we were all really
00:29:03seeking is a voice assistant.
00:29:05Yeah.
00:29:06Yeah.
00:29:07And like, like AI is the buzzword, but actually we're just all revisiting the voice assistant.
00:29:13And the R1 does it horribly, like sassy.
00:29:17The R1 is so sassy.
00:29:19Every time I asked it something, it was like, hold on, let me think about it.
00:29:22And I'm like, well, I paid for you.
00:29:24I mean, I didn't, Parker did, but still, chop, chop, nightmare restaurant customer.
00:29:33I am absolutely.
00:29:34I paid for this.
00:29:35One of my favorites is when you ask it to do something it can't do.
00:29:38Normally, it'll say like, I'm unable to do that.
00:29:40And then every once in a while, it will just say, I cannot set a timer.
00:29:43It's like, all right.
00:29:45Excuse me.
00:29:46Look, I like the idea that Apple's going to subsume this entire market.
00:29:49WWDC is coming up.
00:29:51We have heard now the drumbeat of AI, AI, AI.
00:29:56I've heard someone actually say to me, Tim Cook is putting a lot of pressure on himself
00:30:00to deliver AI at this WWDC.
00:30:01That's a real sentence I heard from someone who knows.
00:30:07You got to make Siri good.
00:30:08Yeah.
00:30:10Let's not kid ourselves.
00:30:11And I think that's going to be hard, because the problem is, yes, large language models
00:30:17are very good at making these assistants loquacious, but they don't make them smart.
00:30:23There's still the core problem of we don't know how to regularly interact with a voice
00:30:27assistant in a comfortable and normal way, because you're still going to be like, hey,
00:30:31can you say it?
00:30:32And you do the voice, your Siri voice.
00:30:34What's your Siri voice, Nealey?
00:30:35Oh, I don't.
00:30:36I don't.
00:30:37You don't have one?
00:30:39I don't.
00:30:40I don't have a notification button on my phone to chat GBT, which is equally frustrating.
00:30:42But do you have to do like a special voice, like an intonation to get it to respond to
00:30:46you properly?
00:30:47No.
00:30:48We do it to the Google assistant in our house.
00:30:52What's your Google assistant voice?
00:30:54Loud.
00:30:55Just loud.
00:30:56Just shouting across the house.
00:30:57Yeah.
00:30:58I'm not going to do it, because it's going to let off everyone's, you know.
00:31:03David, what's yours?
00:31:05Mine's very sort of monotone and careful.
00:31:09Yeah, you're talking to the robot like a robot.
00:31:13I'm always just like, Siri, please remind me tomorrow at 9 a.m. to take out the trash
00:31:19before the trash arrives.
00:31:21And then it says, and then it always is like, got it, added reminder.
00:31:25And I say, thanks.
00:31:26And it goes, I can't help you with that.
00:31:28Cool.
00:31:29That's pretty good.
00:31:30I just want to put a point on the Siri thing, because I've spent a lot of time getting like
00:31:34emails and posts from people being like, Apple's going to do this.
00:31:37Do you all know how long Apple has spent trying to make Siri good?
00:31:40And do you know how bad Siri is?
00:31:42It's real bad.
00:31:43And not only would Apple have to take the state of the art in AI and put it inside of
00:31:48Siri, it would have to make the state of the art in AI much, much, much, much better in
00:31:52order to do the things that we are asking for.
00:31:55Like there is no extant proof in the universe right now that it is possible to build the
00:32:01kind of high quality assistant we're looking for.
00:32:04Like, Siri will get better when they plug in a large language model.
00:32:08That just seems to be true.
00:32:10It won't be good just because Apple does that.
00:32:13Yeah.
00:32:14The thing that I've been knocking around in my head as I read these reviews of these devices,
00:32:20I think about what's coming at this next set of developer conferences, Google IOs are happening
00:32:24around the corner.
00:32:25I'm confident we're going to see a bunch of AI stuff from Google at Google IO, right?
00:32:29Microsoft Build is coming up.
00:32:31We're going to see another round of AI stuff.
00:32:33There's a rumor out in the world that we're going to see GPT-5 soon.
00:32:36Who knows?
00:32:38We're going to see another version of this.
00:32:40What all of them have to show us is whether these things are getting intelligent.
00:32:48Because right now all they've shown us is they can fire out a bunch of language.
00:32:52Yeah.
00:32:53Loquacious, not intelligent.
00:32:54And like, I know people who talk a lot.
00:32:59I'm really good at being loquacious and not intelligent.
00:33:01And I think that term remains.
00:33:03We'll see.
00:33:04Well, it's just not there yet.
00:33:09Sam Altman today was like, I'll spend as much money as it takes to build AGI and it'll be
00:33:12worth it.
00:33:13It's like, dude, I can get on a horse and be like, fly and throw money at the horse.
00:33:19There's no proof that this thing can do that thing.
00:33:23You haven't gotten there yet and you haven't even demonstrated that you're on the right
00:33:27path.
00:33:29I'm still seeing you riding a horse, throwing money at its head.
00:33:32Just fly!
00:33:33Fly, goddamn you!
00:33:34I hate horses.
00:33:35I had a girlfriend in high school with a horse and I realized I was very allergic to the
00:33:44horse.
00:33:45Didn't you ride into your wedding on a horse?
00:33:47I did.
00:33:48Did you?
00:33:49Did you just sort of make it ran money off of the horse while you rode into the wedding?
00:33:52I was just screaming, fly, goddamn it!
00:33:58If you're a horse person and you're listening to the Verge cast, first of all, how?
00:34:01What Venn diagram led you to us?
00:34:04Please let us know.
00:34:05You can email us at alexgrantz at theverge.com.
00:34:07But also we love you.
00:34:08But also, yeah, I'm sorry that personally it's the horse thing for me is a real problem.
00:34:13Anyway, we got to take a break.
00:34:17That's a good, it's good a place to end it, isn't it?
00:34:22We'll be right back with the money round.
00:34:25We'll be right back.
00:34:29We're back with the money round.
00:34:34When I was in college, there was a parking garage by my house and it had a big sign that
00:34:40said cash lane and my friends and I, we were like, we got to make that cool somehow.
00:34:46We're in the cash lane.
00:34:47Like, if you can figure it out, let me know.
00:34:49I don't know if that parking garage is still there, but I'll, might've been torn down.
00:34:52It's 20 years ago.
00:34:53Also, if you would like to generate an AI image of Neeli in the cash lane and send it
00:34:57my way.
00:34:58I would very much appreciate that.
00:35:00Please do it.
00:35:01And if you run a bank and you'd like to sponsor this, the cash lane round.
00:35:06That's cool.
00:35:07I feel like the banks aren't really promoting the idea of cash anymore.
00:35:12They're not fans.
00:35:13They don't use cash.
00:35:15If you run Cash App and you are a jacked horse, you should just come on the show.
00:35:21We have a number of questions for you, sir.
00:35:25All right.
00:35:26Money round.
00:35:27There's kind of a lot of money floating around.
00:35:29Let's stay in the AI for one second.
00:35:32A bunch of sort of like search AI money moving.
00:35:36The one, Google's antitrust trial, which we have not talked a lot about because it has
00:35:40been very shrouded in secrecy.
00:35:42We have talked about that.
00:35:44Google has done a good job sort of shrouding its trial in secrecy.
00:35:47It is now barreling towards closing arguments in the search antitrust trial.
00:35:51Like today, right?
00:35:52Yeah.
00:35:53So we're covering that and a bunch of documents have been released because various news organizations
00:35:57have basically been like filing motions with the court being like, this is crazy.
00:36:02You've got to release the evidence in this case.
00:36:04So the New York Times and others have been filing motions to get evidence unsealed in
00:36:07this case.
00:36:08A bunch of those motions gone through a bunch of documents sort of flooding out here at
00:36:11the end before closing arguments.
00:36:14The thing that I think is most important when you talk about some other stuff is that we
00:36:19now have the number for how much Google has paid Apple to be the default search placement
00:36:24on the iPhone.
00:36:25It is $20 billion in 2022.
00:36:28I'll be the default search engine on the iPhone.
00:36:32Which is crazy.
00:36:33So much money.
00:36:34That is a crazy amount of money.
00:36:36Like so much money.
00:36:37Like more money than either of the two companies we just talked about in the first round like
00:36:42have.
00:36:44Or will ever make probably.
00:36:46So the argument here is if you're running a search engine, if you have AI ideas, you
00:36:53just need a lot of data.
00:36:55And Google gets a lot of data from iPhone searchers who are clicking on things, who
00:36:59are picking results.
00:37:01That helps them pick better results, obviously helps them serve a lot of ads, it's worth
00:37:04a lot of money.
00:37:06Do we think that Google is making money on the $20 billion it pays Apple?
00:37:11Yes.
00:37:12It's a rev share.
00:37:13This is the thing that a lot of people miss about all of this.
00:37:15This is not just like a flat fee that Google pays to Apple.
00:37:19I don't know the exact details of it, but from a lot of what we got in the trial, Google
00:37:25is sharing revenue with iPhone using people with Apple.
00:37:33So if I'm searching on my iPhone, Apple is getting a percentage of that revenue from
00:37:37me every time I use Google.
00:37:40Google wouldn't do this if it wasn't profitable at this point.
00:37:44Google's market share is so large and so substantial.
00:37:47And a big part of the case that Google is making is Apple saying, we picked it because
00:37:52it is the best search engine, and not because there is some financial agreement.
00:37:57Separately, also, there is a very lucrative financial agreement.
00:38:02But this is a giant victory for both Apple and Google.
00:38:06And I think the idea that's out there that Apple kind of has Google over a barrel is
00:38:11just not true.
00:38:12So two things there.
00:38:14One, if it's a rev share, that means Apple's making a bunch of money on Google's ad tracking,
00:38:23which seems challenging for Apple to defend.
00:38:26Oh, yeah.
00:38:27At the same time that Apple is running around talking about how insecure Android is for
00:38:32precisely that same reason.
00:38:34So Apple's just collecting a bunch of money on the revenue Google makes through Google
00:38:38Search, which is entirely advertising based.
00:38:40Weird.
00:38:41Just weird.
00:38:42Fully weird to consider.
00:38:44Second, it is beneficial for Google to keep any competitors away.
00:38:50I mean, that's the heart of this trial, right?
00:38:52Is if Apple picked Bing, whatever, there would instantly be another search engine at scale.
00:39:00And Google cannot afford that.
00:39:02So yeah, sure, it's making a deal that works for everybody, and it's probably making some
00:39:05money.
00:39:06But I suspect even if it was losing some money, it would be worth it to keep another search
00:39:11engine from emerging.
00:39:12Oh, yeah.
00:39:13Satya Nadella, remember, last, whatever that was, last fall, it feels like ancient history
00:39:17now, got on the stand and said he would have done it for free just to get the queries coming
00:39:22from iPhone users.
00:39:23Because better queries would have meant better results, would have meant better ad placements,
00:39:28would have meant more expensive ads, would have meant more queries, and like on and on
00:39:31and on and on it goes.
00:39:32And basically offered this whole thing, you can keep all the money, Apple.
00:39:39We just want the searches.
00:39:41And Apple said no.
00:39:43And that was a total nonstarter for them.
00:39:45And you're totally right, like, obviously, it's a huge victory for Google to get this.
00:39:49And it's why, at least according to testimony, we've heard Apple's share of that revenue
00:39:53has gone up over time.
00:39:56But still, like, Google, Google is not in the habit of losing $20 billion to maintain
00:40:03its place as the dominant search engine that everybody uses.
00:40:08It just hasn't had to make that choice yet.
00:40:10And I don't think this is that choice.
00:40:12Yeah, Google just likes losing money in other weird ways.
00:40:15Right.
00:40:16Google likes to throw money at, like, roller skating executives trying to build self-driving
00:40:19cars.
00:40:20Yeah.
00:40:21Not search ads.
00:40:22I was really surprised, though, by the part where they said that Apple's, like, the 2020
00:40:28payments that Google paid was 17.5% of Apple's operating income.
00:40:33That seems like an awful lot.
00:40:36It's nuts.
00:40:37Am I, like, misunderstanding the numbers there?
00:40:39Do I not understand business?
00:40:40I mean, that essentially means a fifth of Apple's profit is coming from this deal.
00:40:48Because Apple is pure profit.
00:40:49And Apple would tell you it's not, that all the money that they put into making the iPhone
00:40:52terrific is what makes that come from.
00:40:54But that's, like, a bunch of mealy-mouthed nonsense.
00:40:57It is pure profit to Apple, and it accounts for a huge amount of the money that that company
00:41:01makes.
00:41:02Yeah.
00:41:03And that's just wild.
00:41:04It's so much money.
00:41:07That Apple is that dependent on Google.
00:41:09I don't know if it's dependency.
00:41:13Yeah.
00:41:14I think that's where I'm like, do I understand business correctly?
00:41:17Well, it is in that if it went away, it would be a dependency.
00:41:22And maybe this trial will lead to some outcome in which it changes and the money changes
00:41:26in different ways.
00:41:28But I think what it actually speaks to is the phone market slowing down.
00:41:33Apple itself is looking for whatever next thing will exist.
00:41:37They just spent $10 billion on the car and shut it down.
00:41:41They spent half of that Google money trying to build a car.
00:41:45One year of Google money.
00:41:47Literally the equivalent of Apple getting on a horse and screaming fly.
00:41:50It just didn't work.
00:41:52Didn't work.
00:41:53You can't get in a midsize crossover and be like, don't have a steering wheel.
00:41:56Like, you can't do it.
00:41:58What Apple is addicted to is monetizing every interaction you have on the phone.
00:42:02Yeah.
00:42:04It has just led the company into more and more perilous waters because that means a
00:42:09bunch of people are now mad at Apple all the time, including a bunch of European regulators,
00:42:13including our department of justice, whatever it is.
00:42:16But the fact that Apple makes as much money as it does when people merely search for things
00:42:23in the web browser.
00:42:24It's insane.
00:42:25It's brutal.
00:42:26Yeah.
00:42:27Yeah.
00:42:28I think that was the really surprising part.
00:42:30Anytime you type in, you're helping Apple make a shit ton of money.
00:42:34Right.
00:42:35And maybe that's fine.
00:42:37Apple's free to run its business how it wants.
00:42:39But you can see that the chain reaction of Apple saying it's our phone and every single
00:42:45thing you do on our phone should generate revenue for us as the backstop to the upgrade
00:42:51cycles are slowing, the phone market overall is contracting, all that stuff.
00:42:56They hedged it by saying, okay, everything on your phone is not being monetized.
00:43:00We're going to be aggressive with app developers.
00:43:02We're going to have this deal with Google, everything.
00:43:06We're going to shut down ads with app tracking transparency, which is maybe a good thing,
00:43:09but then we're going to move the entire market of app install ads to the app store and the
00:43:14app store, it's getting really weird.
00:43:16All of those things are just them monetizing the software on the phone or the experiences
00:43:20you have on the phone.
00:43:21Yeah.
00:43:22I think this trial has shown us this is real.
00:43:26This is a real pressure Apple feels, and they're collecting a bunch of money from Google
00:43:30for the thing most people do on the phone most of the time, which is search for things
00:43:34in the web browser.
00:43:36And then on the flip side, more documents in the trial reveal Microsoft is terrified
00:43:41of this, and they're looking at Google's investments in AI and what they can accomplish there.
00:43:47They freak out, and that's why they go invest in open AI.
00:43:52You just see it.
00:43:53Google's at the center of a lot of things happening in tech right now because they're
00:43:56just throwing money around.
00:43:59Google did have a good quarter this last quarter.
00:44:00They did well.
00:44:01It turns out people are still using Google Search.
00:44:03But you can see the threat it's under, and you can see Google turning the revenue lever
00:44:08on Google Search to have it make money instead of be good.
00:44:15More documents in the trial.
00:44:16Ed Zitron wrote this up.
00:44:18The title was The Man Who Killed Google Search.
00:44:21And basically, the thesis of that story, which we'll link to, is the revenue teams at Google
00:44:25came to Search and said, we need to make more revenue on Search.
00:44:28The Search team was like, no, Search is pure, and the Search team lost.
00:44:32Yeah.
00:44:33And we've all felt it.
00:44:34We've all felt it.
00:44:36Very keenly.
00:44:37Well, I think one of the things that has come up a bunch in this trial that Ed also points
00:44:41out in his piece is that the question of what does good Search look like is so mealy and
00:44:50hard to put your finger on that literally what you are goaling your team against changes
00:44:57the way that you do business, right?
00:44:58So if you're Google and you say, okay, the thing that we are going to measure is number
00:45:03of Search queries.
00:45:05The main thing we are going to do is make Search queries go up.
00:45:08Like Sundar Pichai always talks about this when he was running Chrome, right?
00:45:10The goal was the fastest web browser.
00:45:13And they built a bunch of things around that, but that was the goal.
00:45:15And so if you run towards the fastest web browser, you build a certain kind of web browser.
00:45:19If you run towards do the most searches, you're actually not incentivized to make the
00:45:24Search engine great because it means people will actually search less because they found
00:45:27what they needed faster.
00:45:29But in a certain way, you also say, okay, if we get people to do more searches, it must
00:45:33mean people like Google because they're doing more searches.
00:45:36And both of those things are true, and yet they're completely mutually exclusive.
00:45:41And I think this is what in a lot of ways seems to have happened to Google as they got
00:45:45to the point where they were like, okay, we make money when people do searches.
00:45:48We need people to do more searches.
00:45:50And so they started spending money on deals like with Apple and Mozilla and others.
00:45:55They started changing the way that the pages work and the results were delivered in order
00:46:00to get people to do more searches.
00:46:02And that just sends you down a really ugly road.
00:46:05You make people do more searches, but it actually you don't care about the experience as long
00:46:10as people are doing more searches.
00:46:12And that's just that that's what the thing that I think feels bad to people.
00:46:16It's the what's Cory Doctorow call it and shitification.
00:46:18I hate that word, but it's a really good word.
00:46:20I wish he'd come up with a better term.
00:46:23It's a very useful like construct, but it's an awful word.
00:46:26I love it.
00:46:27Have you ever tried to type it?
00:46:29I can't.
00:46:30I have never once typed it successfully on the first try.
00:46:32No, but by the time I get to around to being like, I should type this like 15 people have
00:46:37said it or typed it before I do.
00:46:39That's true.
00:46:40Because it's the default response to anything getting worse, whether it counts or not.
00:46:43Because specifically what Cory means is that most web platforms products start by delivering
00:46:49a surplus of value to you because they're all losing money at the beginning.
00:46:53Then they take away that value from their advertisers, right?
00:46:56They squeeze advertisers for dollars.
00:46:58Then that lever is fully pulled and then they look at you and they turn the knob away from
00:47:03you.
00:47:04Right.
00:47:05And that's just the cycle of the subsidized web platform.
00:47:08Yeah.
00:47:09And that's what's Google stuff.
00:47:10Yeah.
00:47:11You can just see it with Google search.
00:47:13First they squeeze the advertisers and then that is not great.
00:47:17So now they're like, now it's you.
00:47:21Google product recommendations, the house fresh people, they're starting to get more
00:47:26expensive.
00:47:27So you search for a product on Google and they're starting to recommend you slightly
00:47:30more expensive products.
00:47:32That part like shocked me because they did a really good bar graph there.
00:47:36I was just really impressed with the bar graph and everything was like red and orange and
00:47:40showing it was really expensive.
00:47:41And then the house fresh was at the very bottom, bright green, smallest bar.
00:47:45Yeah.
00:47:46We're always the cheapest.
00:47:47And I was like, respect it.
00:47:49It turns out a fan blowing air through a filter is not necessarily an expensive product.
00:47:54We'll link to all of this stuff.
00:47:56But the point of this is like Google's dominance of the ecosystem actually extends in every
00:48:01direction, right?
00:48:02It's pushing Microsoft to invest in OpenAI.
00:48:06One of the documents here is Satya Nadella forwarding an email from Kevin Scott, the
00:48:11head of AI, explaining that Google's getting better at stuff to the CFO of Microsoft.
00:48:16I mean like this is why I want to invest in OpenAI.
00:48:19This is the reason.
00:48:20Here's my, as the CEO, justification to you as the CFO of spending $13 billion over the
00:48:27next few years to compete with Google because we see the opening and we're behind.
00:48:32And then on the other side, you see Apple just, again, a huge percentage of their incoming
00:48:38revenue, which is pure profit basically because they're not doing anything.
00:48:46That's a danger zone for them.
00:48:47If this trial ends in some different thing happening, Apple starts to go off course,
00:48:52which is crazy to think about.
00:48:53Well, I think the thing that strikes me there is like we've always talked, everybody talks
00:48:59a lot about how clever Apple is and how good it is at making money and how good its products
00:49:03are and how its products have really driven it to this place where it's really good at
00:49:06making money.
00:49:07Does this kind of like prove that wrong, the fact that they were making so much money off
00:49:13essentially doing nothing?
00:49:16It's like hard to begrudge Apple for being like.
00:49:19Free money is free money.
00:49:21Free money is nice.
00:49:22But like it just feels to me like no one eats for free in Tim Cook's house.
00:49:26It does seem a little bit like the vibe of Apple has shifted from like a bunch of geniuses
00:49:33around those Blondwood tables designing stuff to like a handful of unbelievably good negotiators
00:49:41winning deals.
00:49:42And like that is the sort of mental picture that I have of Apple now.
00:49:45It's just like Eddie Hugh and Craig Federighi just like rolling into rooms being like, what's
00:49:51up losers?
00:49:53I win.
00:49:54On a segue.
00:49:56I would point out that this is the other antitrust trial.
00:49:59Yes.
00:50:00Right.
00:50:01That specific thing.
00:50:02How much power does Apple have?
00:50:03That's the DOJ case against Apple.
00:50:06We'll see.
00:50:07I don't know how that one's going to go.
00:50:08But that thing, the vibe you are describing, Eddie Hugh shows up to Hollywood, passes out
00:50:13in your boardroom.
00:50:14You still have to give him a deal.
00:50:15Like there's reporting that happened.
00:50:17I'm not just making that up.
00:50:18I don't know if that's true or not.
00:50:19But there's reporting that that's happened before and you still have to make the deal.
00:50:23That's just Apple's power being expressed.
00:50:24Okay.
00:50:26That's the money stuff.
00:50:27That's the Apple, Google, Microsoft money stuff.
00:50:28Yes.
00:50:29Other money stuff.
00:50:30Less fun.
00:50:31Less exciting.
00:50:32Peloton, which Vee just wrote a big profile of, which we're very prescient now.
00:50:37She's like, what's up with Peloton?
00:50:39The answer is the CEO is quitting and they're laying off hundreds more people.
00:50:46Which is weird.
00:50:47So the CEO, Barry McCarthy, joined Peloton.
00:50:50His whole thing was that he was like a Netflix guy.
00:50:54And Peloton's a subscription service.
00:50:55So he's going to do a good job at the subscription service.
00:50:59He did not do that.
00:51:02He is laying off 15% of the staff, which is about 400 people around the world.
00:51:06That's the fifth round of layoffs.
00:51:09Well he's leaving.
00:51:10And by the way, last quarter he said on the earnings call, we're done with layoffs and
00:51:14the ship is turning.
00:51:16He was wrong.
00:51:19Very wrong.
00:51:20Extremely wrong.
00:51:22And then he's leaving.
00:51:25He took over from the founder, who was a little more chaotic.
00:51:28He was supposed to be the adult.
00:51:29And now...
00:51:30It's two board members are now in charge, which is like, that's never a good sign when
00:51:35it's like, yeah, two board members are going to be in charge until we find a new CEO.
00:51:38Yeah.
00:51:39Ooh, that's rough.
00:51:40Yeah, that too just got clipped.
00:51:43Yeah.
00:51:44Yikes.
00:51:45So we'll see what happens with Peloton.
00:51:46It's obviously very sticky.
00:51:47People love it.
00:51:49Instructors are famous.
00:51:50You should go read Vee's piece.
00:51:51It kind of lays out what's happening here.
00:51:53We'll re-link it.
00:51:54It was from a few weeks ago.
00:51:55Again, she saw this future coming.
00:51:57By the way, Barron McCarthy has never responded to requests to be on Decoder.
00:52:01And I suspect now he never will.
00:52:03I know why.
00:52:04I will say, just two thoughts on that.
00:52:06One, I think reading the comments of that Peloton story was really interesting because
00:52:10the number of people who drew a direct line from the existence of Apple Fitness Plus to
00:52:16the demise of Peloton is really fascinating.
00:52:19I have no data on how successful Apple Fitness Plus is, but just purely anecdotally speaking,
00:52:24in my life and the people I know, it's gone very well.
00:52:29Fitness Plus?
00:52:30Yeah.
00:52:31It's out there.
00:52:32It's a thing people know about.
00:52:33It's not that expensive.
00:52:34It's on your device.
00:52:36People who are buying Apple Watches are prone to that kind of thing anyway.
00:52:39It gives you the classes.
00:52:40It just seems like Peloton maybe thought it had a moat that it didn't, I think.
00:52:46Yeah.
00:52:47And to add that to the, they got very excited because everybody bought one during the pandemic
00:52:53and they said, oh, maybe this will be our demand forever, which was just an insane thing
00:52:57to decide at that particular moment in time.
00:53:00But it's just interesting that I think the question about Peloton has always been, how
00:53:03do you take a thing that is by all accounts very good and people really like and botch
00:53:08it so spectacularly?
00:53:10And I think maybe I have underrated the extent to which it has been kind of eaten alive by
00:53:16some of the other products out there.
00:53:17Yeah.
00:53:18I mean, I think Connected Fitness is a thing.
00:53:21V has written about it.
00:53:23People want these products.
00:53:24Peloton is a gold standard brand though, right?
00:53:27It is.
00:53:28It is.
00:53:29People love Peloton.
00:53:30I feel like the people who are using Apple Fitness are not necessarily the same people
00:53:32who use Peloton.
00:53:33The people who use Apple Fitness are like me, where every three months I'm like, this
00:53:38is the time I'm going to start working out all the time and become a total gym rat in
00:53:43my house.
00:53:44That's who's using Apple Fitness, right?
00:53:46It's people who are like, this is easy.
00:53:48I can just hop into this.
00:53:49Peloton is like, I'm going to spend thousands of dollars on this equipment.
00:53:52I'm going to have it in my home and I'm going to use it.
00:53:55And pay a subscription fee.
00:53:56Yeah.
00:53:57And pay a subscription fee.
00:53:58I think those are very kind of different audiences.
00:53:59That could be.
00:54:00Peloton is also stupidly expensive and has remained stupidly expensive for way too long.
00:54:04Yeah.
00:54:05It's like $45 a month for our subscription.
00:54:07Yeah.
00:54:08It's ridiculous.
00:54:09I can pay for 10 HPO Max's worth.
00:54:11And I will.
00:54:12It's not even true.
00:54:14At this point, it's like one and a half HPO Max's.
00:54:16Speaking of boards that should take a hard look at the CEO.
00:54:19I already know who you're talking about.
00:54:23Elon has gone, quote, absolutely hardcore with Tesla layoffs.
00:54:28He fired the entire supercharger team, including the people who are in charge of refurbishing
00:54:33and installing new superchargers, which seems very bad because everyone just signed up to
00:54:38use their connector.
00:54:39Well, you heard the rumor.
00:54:40The NACS connector.
00:54:41For why he did this.
00:54:42Why did he do this?
00:54:44So the rumor is that the head of the supercharger unit said, no, I like push back on the number
00:54:50of layoffs that she was asked to do.
00:54:52And he was like, no, you're fired to everybody on your team to prove a point to the rest
00:54:57of the team.
00:54:58That was some of the reporting we saw this week.
00:55:01And the point is, no one can do a good job as someone.
00:55:06Yeah.
00:55:07I think it sounds like the piece was mainly about how he was really just pushing himself
00:55:14out there.
00:55:15And he's like, he's in charge and just reasserting his authority after being at Twitter all this
00:55:19time and coming back in and being like, do what I say.
00:55:21If you don't want to do what I say, you're gone.
00:55:23And so is your team.
00:55:24Well, that's a long running Elon Musk trend of wanting to be the shiny face on everything
00:55:30and demanding to sort of disappear for a long time and then come back and exert total control
00:55:36and then disappear for a long time again.
00:55:38That tracks with a lot of what we've heard about his management style over the years.
00:55:42Is there something I'm missing in the why Tesla would slow down its investment in superchargers?
00:55:48Because everything I've understood about this company, and I do not proclaim to be an expert
00:55:52in Tesla, would suggest that actually the supercharger network is one of the things
00:55:56it should be investing in the most.
00:55:58Right.
00:55:59Especially because now there's expanding demand for it.
00:56:02Right.
00:56:03Right.
00:56:04If you look at Rivian and Ford and all these other companies using it, you can't name a
00:56:11company in North America that's not about to use NACS and sign a supercharger deal.
00:56:14If they're all coming online, the demand for supercharging is going to go up and they're
00:56:19going to pay you money to use it.
00:56:20Does Elon Musk just not want to be a gas station mogul?
00:56:24Is that just where we're landing?
00:56:26I think that's why this theory that he did it to exert his dominance essentially is so
00:56:32popular because it doesn't make sense.
00:56:35But then you hear the rumor about how Elon always wants to be in charge and that theory
00:56:41makes a little sense.
00:56:42Andy and I did an entire episode on Tesla on Decoder this week.
00:56:45So just go listen to that.
00:56:46We can move off it.
00:56:47But we didn't talk about superchargers enough on that episode, I think.
00:56:51And this to me is like you take your greatest advantage and you're like, stop.
00:56:55Yeah.
00:56:56It's just bonkers.
00:56:57Yeah.
00:56:58It makes no logical sense.
00:57:00If you ask people, like, yes, people love the fact that the cars get over their updates
00:57:04and have fart mode and all this stuff.
00:57:06What is the real reason people buy a Tesla when they're in the EV market?
00:57:09Charging network.
00:57:10Yeah.
00:57:11And like you just literally no one's working out.
00:57:14Like if one breaks right now, it's unclear who will come and fix it.
00:57:17Yep.
00:57:18Weird.
00:57:19And they canceled a bunch as well too, right?
00:57:21Yeah.
00:57:22I saw a tweet this morning, I think, that was like, I wonder how many charging startups
00:57:27will trace their founding day to whatever it was, April 30th of 2024.
00:57:32And like, feels kind of feels kind of right.
00:57:36Somebody, somebody has to show up and solve this problem in order to make electric vehicles
00:57:40work.
00:57:41And it is increasingly unclear who that's going to be.
00:57:43I think so.
00:57:44My tweet too.
00:57:45And I was like, zero, like, this is an incredibly, enormously expensive business to be in.
00:57:51You got to go buy real estate, you got to buy a shitload of electricity, you got to
00:57:55work with every, like, software problems, the stuff does break, just like the capital
00:58:00expenditure to do this is so high.
00:58:02Like, there's a reason Electrify America is the big one.
00:58:05It's because Volkswagen had Dieselgate and that was their make good.
00:58:08That's why Electrify America exists.
00:58:10I'm surprised like Shell and Exxon aren't just being like, yeah, all right, we'll do
00:58:15this.
00:58:16Like just diversifying into it.
00:58:18Somewhere the CEO of Wawa is like drawing up a pitch right now.
00:58:21Yeah.
00:58:22Like Bucky, well, Bucky's already has superchargers actually.
00:58:26Bucky's should win.
00:58:27I'm good with Bucky's just like owning electric charging infrastructure in the United States.
00:58:30I feel like I super know why Shell and Exxon aren't getting into the EV charging game.
00:58:35Yeah.
00:58:36Yeah.
00:58:37They don't want anyone to use.
00:58:38They're at my house right now keeping me from selling the Raptor.
00:58:39They're like, this gets eight miles to the gallon and you're going to have it forever.
00:58:43Yeah.
00:58:44See, I hope the CEO of Exxon's at my house right now.
00:58:46I have a number of questions for you too, sir.
00:58:49All right.
00:58:50Let's take a break.
00:58:51We're going to wrap this whole thing up with a lightning round.
00:58:52We'll be right back.
00:58:55Okay.
00:58:56We're back.
00:58:57I need to apologize to everyone at the top of the show.
00:59:01I said we were going to talk about gaming coming to LinkedIn, which I know everyone's
00:59:04on the edge of their seat.
00:59:05I forgot to put that in the money round because that's where all LinkedIn discussion goes
00:59:12per the bylaws of the United States.
00:59:14Yeah.
00:59:15Anyway, they're adding mobile games to LinkedIn.
00:59:17Did you see the guy, by the way, who posted the thing on LinkedIn proposing and saying,
00:59:22here's what it taught me about B2B sales?
00:59:25He was proposing to his like fiance, like on a beach.
00:59:28Yeah.
00:59:29And it was a picture of him proposing and he says, here's what it, here's the experience
00:59:33taught me about B2B sales.
00:59:34I thought for the longest time that was a joke.
00:59:37I think it was actually real and it has broken me in a way that I cannot describe that that
00:59:43is a thing that someone did on the internet.
00:59:45Did you learn anything about B2B sales?
00:59:47No.
00:59:48Or proposing.
00:59:50I came away with nothing.
00:59:51Yeah.
00:59:52You're a person who proposed.
00:59:53I did.
00:59:54I did it on LinkedIn.
00:59:55Actually, I just, we were, we were playing LinkedIn games together and I just said, let's
00:59:59get married.
01:00:00I, what I learned about that was, uh, I should know that the answer is yes before I do it.
01:00:06That was my, that was the big secret to B2B sales for me.
01:00:11And that your proposal should involve a lot of one sentence paragraphs that are like vaguely
01:00:15motivational.
01:00:16Yeah.
01:00:17Well, as a person who introduced David to his wife, I can tell you what I know on B2B
01:00:21sales, which is be hammered on a boat and just shove David into a girl.
01:00:28You're going to have a baby.
01:00:29So that's a hundred percent what happens is literally, that is the story.
01:00:36Here's what I learned about B2B sales.
01:00:38You need a lot of tequila.
01:00:39That tracks.
01:00:40That tracks.
01:00:41Uh, also Laura, the bigger the boat, the better.
01:00:44Yeah.
01:00:45That's what I know about B2B sales.
01:00:48Absolutely.
01:00:50I mean, honestly, both of those are probably good sales tactics.
01:00:53That's right.
01:00:54I was like, yeah, just in general, those are good sales tactics.
01:00:56Uh, anyway, LinkedIn is a mobile games platform in an effort to make it stickier because the
01:01:02only idea people have on how to make things sticky and have you come back to them is casual
01:01:07mobile games.
01:01:08Consider this.
01:01:10LinkedIn doesn't need to be sticky.
01:01:11That's what I'm trying to get at.
01:01:14Like LinkedIn buddies, you're doing fine.
01:01:17People need a job.
01:01:18They go on LinkedIn.
01:01:20They don't use LinkedIn.
01:01:21It works.
01:01:22If you find yourself in life being like, ah, I got to get back on Pinpoint and like open
01:01:26link, you know, like reevaluate, throw your phone into the ocean.
01:01:29What if it's actually really good?
01:01:31What if it's like Wordle?
01:01:35You can only play each game once per day and after your daily session you'll get access
01:01:38to your metrics.
01:01:39So it is Wordle.
01:01:40It's Wordle.
01:01:41They made a Wordle.
01:01:42Can you imagine like, oh, there's all these people now who are like, you know, I wake
01:01:45up in the morning, I do connections, I do Wordle.
01:01:47It's like a huge success story for the times.
01:01:49Great job by them.
01:01:50I think if I ever found myself at a coffee shop and somebody was like, oh, hold on.
01:01:54I got to do cross climb for the day.
01:01:55I'd be like, I'm going to go.
01:01:56Yeah.
01:01:57I'm going to, I'm going to leave.
01:01:59You know too much about B2B sales.
01:02:00We're not going on four dates.
01:02:01It's like the ultimate red flag.
01:02:08Do we find out if the woman he proposed to said yes?
01:02:10I'm assuming she said yes.
01:02:12I don't know.
01:02:13Because if like the last thing he learned about B2B sales was like, don't take no for
01:02:16an answer.
01:02:17That's not great.
01:02:19Ooh.
01:02:20That's rough.
01:02:21That's rough.
01:02:22All right.
01:02:23So I promised you we talked about LinkedIn gaming and I, we have in a matter of speaking.
01:02:28Yeah.
01:02:29You can do it if you want.
01:02:30All right.
01:02:31Um, I was really stalling in the hopes that Jim Farley, CEO of Ford would call in to sponsor
01:02:35the lightning round.
01:02:36He did not, uh, mostly because we published the show after we recorded.
01:02:40So he didn't know I was waiting for that.
01:02:43There's that.
01:02:44And I, I didn't text him.
01:02:45Yeah.
01:02:46Jim, quick question.
01:02:47The lightning round needs to be sponsored by horse girls, um, incredible slander that
01:02:51we brought to them earlier in the show.
01:02:53I think we need to give them this one.
01:02:55They got it.
01:02:56It's all you girls.
01:02:57There was a second one in law school.
01:02:58I think it really cemented the situation for me.
01:03:03Uh, I wasn't a great person for many years.
01:03:07Then after mastering B2B sales, I got married.
01:03:10All right.
01:03:11Lightening round.
01:03:12We got us, we, this is important.
01:03:14This one's important.
01:03:16There is an Apple event next week.
01:03:18Yes.
01:03:19By all accounts, this is new iPads.
01:03:20David, you wrote a spicy headline this week.
01:03:23The last thing the iPad needs is a spec bump.
01:03:25Yeah.
01:03:26I'd say this is more than a spec bump.
01:03:27We're going to get all that iPads spec bump.
01:03:29This is like my dream spec bump.
01:03:31Sure.
01:03:32You and Liam are both going to be psyched and everyone else on earth is going to say,
01:03:36what is Olette?
01:03:37I don't care.
01:03:38Leave me alone.
01:03:39No, I, I think, I mean, we, we've been asking this, what is the iPad for and what
01:03:47is Apple trying to do with it question for a while.
01:03:48And I was on the, they just need to make the iPad a touchscreen laptop train for a long
01:03:53time.
01:03:54I'm, I'm now off that train because the MacBook Air is that, is that thing.
01:03:59Like it's not a touchscreen, but it is, it is a damn good laptop.
01:04:02It is the laptop.
01:04:03People who want laptops should buy.
01:04:05Problem solved.
01:04:06The iPad needs to figure out the other thing that it wants to be.
01:04:09Yeah.
01:04:10And what's interesting is it seems like, and again, I'm like a little bit kind of making
01:04:15a mountain out of a molehill here, but the, if you just look at the invite to the Apple
01:04:20event, it's called let loose.
01:04:21And it is just, it's just an Apple pencil.
01:04:23It's not like hiding that it's an Apple pencil.
01:04:26It just is an Apple pencil.
01:04:28And to me it's like, okay, if Apple wants this to work, the thing that it needs to focus
01:04:32on is accessories like sell, take the idea of the iPad as just, it's a screen and you
01:04:38can attach every other piece of the device that you want to it and take it off as you
01:04:43need it or don't.
01:04:46And Apple has gone like an inch down this road.
01:04:48They have two different keyboards for different kinds of people who want different kinds of
01:04:52keyboards.
01:04:53There's the pencil.
01:04:54Do you remember when they had the smart connector that no one ever used because Apple never
01:04:56opened it up to anybody?
01:04:58That was the thing.
01:04:59Apple is like, is like this close to being a really interesting modular accessory system
01:05:05around this really great tablet.
01:05:08And it just, it needs to stop worrying about having more processing power because it already,
01:05:14it has had too much processing power for like six years.
01:05:17Like no one is using all of the power of their iPad in part because they can't because there's
01:05:22not enough powerful software to do it.
01:05:25But also because you're not giving people the literal physical tools they need to make
01:05:29the most out of this device.
01:05:30So I think as we go into this event, I'm like, whatever, I'm sure I'll end up buying an OLED
01:05:35iPad because that is like a sickness I have in my life.
01:05:38Because you love black levels.
01:05:39I do.
01:05:40I mean, infinite contrast.
01:05:43But like, I just, I don't know.
01:05:44I feel like I'm, we've all sort of gone blue in the face yelling like, what is an iPad
01:05:49actually for?
01:05:51Somewhere Dieter Bohn is like shaking his fist at our podcast right now.
01:05:55But I just like Apple's like right there and it's like, just go, go finish the thing.
01:06:00Make me some accessories, build the iPad out.
01:06:03So two things.
01:06:05Rumor is they're going to put an M4 chip in these iPads, a massive increase in processing
01:06:12power that the thing does not need.
01:06:15Second, they need to change the software.
01:06:19That's actually what it needs.
01:06:22The hardware ecosystem around it, whatever.
01:06:25Make accessory manufacturers make more stuff.
01:06:27To make any of that worthwhile, you need more software capabilities.
01:06:31And they can't do that because WWC isn't until June.
01:06:34You needed the next version of iOS.
01:06:36What can they show us besides an OLED screen?
01:06:40An M4 processor.
01:06:41Right.
01:06:42And a die, like a chip die diagram of the M4 being like, look at this neural engine.
01:06:49Read it and weep.
01:06:50Yeah.
01:06:51There's going to be a lot of unlabeled graphs.
01:06:52Yeah.
01:06:53There's going to be, there's a pencil and it's going to have replaceable nubs, but like
01:06:59cooler replaceable nubs than the current pencil has.
01:07:02And there's an aluminum magic keyboard.
01:07:05That's also not software.
01:07:08The rumor from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is that it will lean into being a laptop, or
01:07:15the Pro will lean into being a laptop.
01:07:16I mean, I expect a full model refresh.
01:07:19The iPad model range right now is out of control.
01:07:21Yes.
01:07:22So they should end with an iPad that is cheap that makes sense for students, an iPad Air
01:07:27that is like the mainstream one, and an iPad Pro that is expensive and has all the stuff.
01:07:31Yeah.
01:07:32Sure.
01:07:33That's theoretically what they have now, but it's all very blurry.
01:07:36And then a pencil that works with everything, one assumes, and maybe some of these keyboard
01:07:40cases and whatever else that work with everything.
01:07:41I hope it still has a lightning port in the original.
01:07:45The base one?
01:07:46Yeah.
01:07:47I like, I just hope that they just whiff it on a port.
01:07:52There's like one last lightning port.
01:07:54Yeah.
01:07:55You're just like, what?
01:07:57I just think the future of the iPad Pro should be, this is a modular Mac, and you should
01:08:03just let the iPad, the base model iPad be like, this runs Disney Plus.
01:08:07I just want to point out that you sort of like, you just hand, literally hand waved
01:08:11away the iPad that everyone buys and uses.
01:08:15I think people buy the cheap one.
01:08:16That's what I'm saying.
01:08:17The iPad Pro is not the most important iPad by a million miles.
01:08:23Yeah.
01:08:24But again, I think the cheap one runs Disney Plus.
01:08:27Sure.
01:08:28I think that's what it's for.
01:08:29Like, here's the cheapest TV in your house.
01:08:31Fine.
01:08:33The iPad.
01:08:34No, there's a Westinghouse you can get for like 90 bucks.
01:08:37You sign up for a bank account at Chase, and they gave you a TV.
01:08:41Sure.
01:08:42But like, that's what I mean.
01:08:43Portable.
01:08:44Portable TV.
01:08:45But like, yeah, this is like, here's this content consumption device that occasionally
01:08:49lets you tap out an email.
01:08:50It's like, that's the base model iPad.
01:08:53I don't...
01:08:54Fine.
01:08:55I don't want that thing be this weird appliance.
01:08:57I'm just saying for everything else to solve that problem of like, what is this for, actually
01:09:02should just be a Mac.
01:09:03Like, they should just let you run Mac apps on it at this point.
01:09:06Like, why not?
01:09:07I do agree with that.
01:09:08I don't think it should be exclusively that, but I think that is one thing it ought to
01:09:14do.
01:09:15Right?
01:09:16In the way that you can now run some iOS and iPad apps on your Mac, it should pull in both
01:09:21directions at this point.
01:09:23Yeah.
01:09:24I don't think Apple will ever let it go because then they will have made a touchscreen Mac
01:09:27by accident.
01:09:28And that really implicates a lot of things about everything they've ever said.
01:09:31But I just don't know why you wouldn't converge the iPad Pro and like, the cheapest MacBook
01:09:38Pro.
01:09:39Because one time, years ago, they said they will never do that.
01:09:42And now like, will really like, ruthlessly mock them when they do it.
01:09:46I mean, Apple says they're not going to do things until they do it all.
01:09:49That's true.
01:09:50Like, if you look at your Mac and you think about what it would be like to use Mac OS
01:09:56as a touchscreen, it's a nightmare.
01:09:59Like, just think about the amount of time you spend in a menu bar and how it would feel
01:10:03on a 9.7-inch screen to try to poke at those little icons in the corner.
01:10:07Like, bad times.
01:10:08Oh, no, no, no.
01:10:09It's a great time.
01:10:10I'm checking out this product right now from Ioneo.
01:10:14I think that's how you say it, Ioneo.
01:10:16They do like, little handheld game consoles.
01:10:19And they have one called the Flip DS, and it's got Microsoft built in.
01:10:25Yeah.
01:10:26It's just a tiny DS-shaped Windows machine.
01:10:28Oh, no.
01:10:29And the only way I can like, turn it on, because hardware-wise, gorgeous, don't worry, reviews
01:10:34are coming.
01:10:36Software-wise, it's just Windows and they didn't really do anything.
01:10:39So and there's no keyboard, so you have to like, I have to use my pinky.
01:10:44I can't use my regular finger.
01:10:45I have to use my pinky to like, hit a button to turn on a keyboard.
01:10:50And then it's beautiful.
01:10:51It's sick.
01:10:52It works every time.
01:10:53It takes 20 minutes.
01:10:55I love it.
01:10:56Yeah.
01:10:57And that's the Apple experience I'm looking for.
01:10:58Yeah.
01:10:59That's what I want from Apple, too.
01:11:00Everyone should let me have like, tiny, tiny screens that I have to use my pinky to work
01:11:05on.
01:11:06Yeah.
01:11:07And every time you push that button, Apple makes $20.
01:11:09Yeah.
01:11:10We all win.
01:11:11All right.
01:11:12Lightening round.
01:11:13Crayon, what you got?
01:11:15Do you remember when Razer made their mask?
01:11:18They made like, three masks.
01:11:20Oh, sorry.
01:11:21Do you remember when they made the Zephyr?
01:11:23Yes.
01:11:24And it was kind of see-through and it had the RGB.
01:11:27They actually, they appeared at our Junior's.
01:11:29They did.
01:11:30And they refused to answer any questions about the medical backing of this device.
01:11:34Yeah.
01:11:35And shocker, they didn't have backing.
01:11:42This mask, they said, had like, N95 grade filters and stuff.
01:11:45That was just a lie.
01:11:48It was not the truth.
01:11:51Maybe a lie is too hard.
01:11:52N95 grade is an amazing phrase.
01:11:56Yeah.
01:11:57It's like, it's not N95.
01:11:58It's like, N95-ish.
01:11:59Yeah.
01:12:00And that's not anything.
01:12:03That's just not a thing, you know?
01:12:08And so, they are now being required to fork over $1.1 million in refunds to customers.
01:12:15And I think the real question here is, who are the people who bought the Zephyr mask
01:12:20and are now getting their refund?
01:12:23Because you did that?
01:12:25Yeah.
01:12:26That means like, thousands of people bought that thing.
01:12:28Wasn't it only like, a hundred bucks?
01:12:30It was more expensive than that.
01:12:32Oh, okay.
01:12:33Oh, no.
01:12:34It started at a hundred dollars.
01:12:35Yeah.
01:12:36So, but still, you bought it and I haven't seen you wear it.
01:12:42I feel like I would have, if that many people bought it, I would have seen at least one
01:12:45on the street.
01:12:46The only one I ever saw was at our 10-year party and it was the razor guy wearing it.
01:12:53Yeah.
01:12:54And Cameron and our health reporter at the time, Nicole Wetzman, who by the way, joined
01:12:58The Verge before the pandemic and then was our health reporter during a global pandemic.
01:13:01Like, right before the pandemic.
01:13:03Yeah.
01:13:04I feel like every time I see Nicole for the rest of my life, I'm so sorry.
01:13:08But anyway, but Nicole was there and she was like, so is this certified?
01:13:12Is it actually?
01:13:13And then like, over and over again.
01:13:14And they're like, we'll get to it.
01:13:16It was a very weird moment at our party, I must say.
01:13:18It was super weird.
01:13:20When you think about The Verge party, you think about our health reporters being like,
01:13:22are you lying?
01:13:23That's, that's what, and then there's tequila.
01:13:27Yeah.
01:13:28I mean, that was exactly the party, it was great.
01:13:32Weird product, weird moment in the global history to be like, this RGB N95 is a fake.
01:13:39It had like speakers in it.
01:13:41It was a very odd product.
01:13:42God, it was, it was see-through.
01:13:44That was the part that was, was rough.
01:13:46It really is a very specific artifact of a very specific time, that thing.
01:13:50Yeah.
01:13:51You will look at that thing and you will always know exactly when it came out and exactly
01:13:54who made it and exactly what happened to it.
01:13:57It tells a whole story.
01:13:58All right.
01:13:59I have a lightning round item here.
01:14:00Yeah, it's my Instagram algorithm updates and what it means and a TikTok ban and da
01:14:04da da da da.
01:14:05But then I'm just looking at this headline that says Google is building a fart button
01:14:08into Android and it is, they're putting a soundboard into the phone app of Android.
01:14:17Yes.
01:14:18So you get what are called audio emoji so that you can just play them during phone calls.
01:14:25Oh, I shouldn't have that power.
01:14:27You get clapping, laughing, crying, which is a literal sad trombone, partying, a drum
01:14:34sting, which is ch ch ch, and then a fart sound.
01:14:39This is, and I want to, I want to not be hyperbolic here.
01:14:44This is the worst idea I've ever heard from a technology company, maybe ever in history.
01:14:50It's like, do you remember when Google's last idea about the phone was like, we'll have
01:14:53the robot make reservations for you.
01:14:55They're like, no, no, no, dude.
01:14:57They're like, you should be able to womp womp your friends in the middle of a phone call.
01:15:00I love that you can just be on a phone, phone calling back.
01:15:05Like that's great.
01:15:06This is also very good.
01:15:07What this reminds me of is like, you know, when the Apple rolled out the reactions thing
01:15:11in FaceTime and so everybody was do, you would like do the, an accidental thumbs up on camera
01:15:16and it would in some horrifically inappropriate moment do like fireworks explosions behind
01:15:23you or like a really happy thumbs up or whatever.
01:15:25This is going to be that because I guarantee you, Google is going to put this button in
01:15:28a place that is too easy to find and people are going to be having like, you know, hard
01:15:33conversations with their boss or their family or whatever.
01:15:36And all of a sudden they're going to, their face is going to tap a button of their phone
01:15:40and it's going to go womp womp.
01:15:43This is not a good idea.
01:15:45I love it.
01:15:46Like the fact that we haven't had soundboards built into the default dialers, it's just,
01:15:51why weren't we doing that?
01:15:53Just in case you wanted to make sure no one ever makes phone calls ever again.
01:15:57Here's this.
01:15:58It's very good.
01:15:59I'm hoping they demo this on stage at IO.
01:16:00Like if they take a huge chunk of time at IO to be like, we've invented audio emojis.
01:16:06You can make fart sounds during phone calls.
01:16:08Hyper realistic.
01:16:09This is what it's for.
01:16:11Surprise and delight your customer.
01:16:12This is why we make the technology.
01:16:14Billions of dollars have gone into the mobile phone supply chain, the software, the open
01:16:20source development of Android itself.
01:16:23Billions of dollars, thousands of years of human effort cumulatively.
01:16:28We built these networks, 5G is a phenomenon, and now you can just make fart sounds on phone
01:16:35calls.
01:16:36You don't even have to use your mouth.
01:16:37Like innovation.
01:16:38Yeah.
01:16:39I love it.
01:16:40Can I tell yet one more story from my youth?
01:16:41Yeah.
01:16:42Is it a fart story?
01:16:43No.
01:16:44Well, it is in its way.
01:16:45Adjacent.
01:16:46Okay.
01:16:47So my dad and I made swear words and fart sounds and I super hit one in the balcony
01:16:52of the room that we had our high school morning meeting from and just ruined that meeting
01:16:58for weeks.
01:16:59It's good work.
01:17:00I mean, that's what you're supposed to do.
01:17:03I got suspended from high school like a lot.
01:17:07Like all time record.
01:17:08But like for good cause.
01:17:10My dad was like, are you going to go to school?
01:17:11And I was like, well, I'm getting good grades.
01:17:13He's like, fine.
01:17:15That was the trade in my household.
01:17:17You got good grades.
01:17:18My dad was like, I'll talk to your principal again.
01:17:21Yeah.
01:17:22It was a small town.
01:17:23It was a private school.
01:17:24There was nowhere for me to go.
01:17:25All right.
01:17:26I think that's the first cast.
01:17:27Stay in school, kids.
01:17:28Love a fart button.
01:17:29Try hard.
01:17:30No, that's it.
01:17:31That's the first cast.
01:17:32Next week is going to be a huge week.
01:17:33We got an Apple event.
01:17:34We got this.
01:17:35We're going to find out what's going to happen with the iPad.
01:17:44This Google trial closing arguments are today.
01:17:46We're going to hear a lot about what's happening very soon because that's a bench trial.
01:17:50A lot of tech news is coming.
01:17:52And then soon after that, I.O. starts and developer season is off to the races.
01:17:55So take a breath, pull over in your car.
01:17:59Just think about what it means to be a large action model.
01:18:04It means nothing.
01:18:05It actually doesn't mean anything at this point in time.
01:18:07It's a three.
01:18:08I had to work so hard not to make a fart noise.
01:18:10That silence.
01:18:11See, that would have been perfect.
01:18:12Oh my God.
01:18:13All right.
01:18:14That's it.
01:18:15That's my chest.
01:18:19And that's it for The Verge cast this week.
01:18:21Hey, we'd love to hear from you.
01:18:22Give us a call at 866 Verge 1 1.
01:18:25The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:18:29Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James.
01:18:32That's it.
01:18:33We'll see you next week.