Samsung’s new folds, flips, and Apple clones | The Vergecast - video Dailymotion

The Verge

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss the announcements from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event, Redbox shutting down, and more tech news from this week.

Transcript

00:00:00Hello and welcome to our chest, the flagship podcast of saying they don't look like airpods

00:00:07at all.

00:00:09Not even a little bit.

00:00:10Nope, those aren't airpods.

00:00:13That's not what that they sure they look like airpods, but they don't stop it.

00:00:17Anyway, we're going to talk about samsung unpacked today.

00:00:19I'm your friend.

00:00:20Eli David Pierce is here.

00:00:21Hi.

00:00:22I feel like we just did talk about sense.

00:00:23Like you, you, you've ruined the whole thing already.

00:00:25That was so quick.

00:00:28Alex Kranz is here.

00:00:29I'm your friend who thinks they're not really airpods if they've got cool lights on them,

00:00:33right?

00:00:34Like that changes the game.

00:00:35Sure.

00:00:36In the same way that buying knockoff airpods on canal street changes the game.

00:00:39Alex, you're in Texas.

00:00:41Are you okay?

00:00:42I am totally okay.

00:00:44I am.

00:00:45I am far away from the hurricane.

00:00:46We didn't even get any rain here.

00:00:48Okay.

00:00:49Sucked.

00:00:50Sorry to everybody who doesn't have power.

00:00:51That's not good.

00:00:52That also sucks.

00:00:53Stay cool.

00:00:55If you can, if you can please, or you know, talk to your local elected officials.

00:01:03There's a lot to say there.

00:01:04My favorite story of the hurricane, if you can have a favorite story from a giant hurricane

00:01:08has caused a great deal of hard way to start a story is, uh, is the people like the Texas

00:01:14power utilities don't have apps.

00:01:17So people are using the Whataburger app to find what areas still have blackouts because

00:01:22the Whataburgers are offline rules.

00:01:24It's a life finds a way, you know what I'm saying?

00:01:28Life finds a way.

00:01:29All right.

00:01:30Well, hopefully we can be a little ray of sunshine in this time.

00:01:33If you are stuck down there, there's a lot of gadgets you talk about.

00:01:36Samsung did have unpacked a bunch of phones.

00:01:39Motorola has new flip phones, which Alison reviewed, uh, there's a bunch of streaming

00:01:42news.

00:01:43Uh, Alex today was once again, horny for David Zaslav and slack quite openly.

00:01:49That was a real thing that happens today.

00:01:51And we had a lightning round on sponsored as always.

00:01:56I'm trying to sell our soul here.

00:01:58People.

00:01:59Uh, we get a lot of increase.

00:02:00I will say this.

00:02:01We get a lot of inquiries at price points that are entirely too low for my soul.

00:02:06Just keep that in mind.

00:02:07We're a reasonable cost for your soul.

00:02:09We're trying to buy boats.

00:02:10All right.

00:02:11Not dinghies.

00:02:13That's the lighting.

00:02:14It's not dinghies.

00:02:15That's, that's going on a shirt.

00:02:16I don't know.

00:02:17I don't know what it's advertising, but we're putting that on.

00:02:19I can buy my own unicorn floaties for my daughter.

00:02:22I don't need your help.

00:02:25All right.

00:02:26Let's get into it.

00:02:27David, tell us about unpacked.

00:02:28It was like a big one.

00:02:29Yeah.

00:02:30I sort of, this is a very weird year.

00:02:32So Samsung, I think probably tries the hardest of any tech company to have cool events, which

00:02:40you guys say that's fair.

00:02:41Like Apple has the big ones, but they're increasingly like at Apple park in a theater.

00:02:46They make a video.

00:02:47We like kind of know how they're doing it.

00:02:49Samsung is like Samsung tries so hard, like so hard.

00:02:53So I can explain this.

00:02:54Cause we've been talking about this for a long time and it's gotten weirder in a weird

00:02:57way.

00:02:58Like the weirdness of it is getting weirder.

00:03:00It's self weird.

00:03:01Yeah.

00:03:02Okay.

00:03:03Do you know what I mean?

00:03:04Like the mechanism of weirdness is getting weirder.

00:03:05So Apple for the longest time had like massive cultural influence.

00:03:11Like Steve Jobs was like, I don't know.

00:03:12Here's Coldplay.

00:03:13They're going to tell you how good the iPod is.

00:03:14Yeah.

00:03:15Bono's on stage.

00:03:16So one year famously scrubbed from the internet, Kanye West closed out a WWDC by playing gold

00:03:23digger.

00:03:24Is that true?

00:03:25And let me tell you, that audience did not scream prenup dead silence.

00:03:33It is impossible to find this video that is removed.

00:03:36Apple just deleted it.

00:03:37Wow.

00:03:38But Kanye was like, hello.

00:03:39We want prenup.

00:03:40And it was just like, we do not, sir.

00:03:45And Apple play just goes, I'm under NDA so weird.

00:03:49The weekend has played at a WWDC a straight singing about cocaine at 10 30 in the morning.

00:03:56Weird.

00:03:57But Apple is able to do it.

00:03:58Like their brand has the cultural capacity for these moments.

00:04:04And now they don't, which is weird.

00:04:07Like they've gotten so corporate, they're making infomercials.

00:04:09They're like, I tried to use these AI tools and I couldn't like, you know, it's like,

00:04:13it's weird.

00:04:14It's a WWDC, but they still have the cachet.

00:04:17Samsung has been trying to buy it for years.

00:04:20So they're like, I don't know.

00:04:21Here's a Broadway play about how women can't use phones, which is a real thing.

00:04:24They did.

00:04:25Yep.

00:04:26That's a real story.

00:04:27Here's more famous people.

00:04:28Sidney Sweeney was at this event, which we should talk about.

00:04:31Very odd moment with Sidney Sweeney at this event.

00:04:33So they keep trying to buy celebrities and influencers to get to the level of cultural

00:04:38relevance that Apple has long had.

00:04:41But Apple doesn't actually, they're not that company anymore.

00:04:45They're just bigger.

00:04:46They're like a nation state.

00:04:47And I will say to Samsung's credit, I mean, speaking of nation states, Jesus, but to Samsung's

00:04:53credit, it is still very invested in doing these things live in a way that Apple has

00:04:58gone full.

00:05:00Let's all sit here and watch a video.

00:05:02Samsung is like trying to create spectacle in a way that I kind of appreciate.

00:05:06I appreciate it.

00:05:07But that's what I mean by the mechanism of the weirdness is getting weirder.

00:05:10That's been the disconnect is like Apple's the cool one and Samsung's trying to buy the

00:05:15coolness.

00:05:16And now it's like Apple doesn't even try to be cool.

00:05:19Like whatever.

00:05:20Which if I know one thing about being cool, that's how to actually be cool.

00:05:25They're just like over it.

00:05:26And Samsung is like, here's even more stuff, like more hype, more spectacle.

00:05:32Here's Sidney Sweeney.

00:05:33Here's Sidney Sweeney being forced to react to like a deepfake of herself.

00:05:40Truly bizarre.

00:05:41Let's come back to that.

00:05:42So, but this one was, they did it in Paris, which on the one hand makes a certain kind

00:05:46of sense because Paris is it's where the Olympics is happening in the summer.

00:05:49It's a big deal.

00:05:50All this stuff.

00:05:51On the other hand makes no sense because it's two weeks until the Olympics.

00:05:54It's not like it's the middle of the Olympics.

00:05:56Like it's this long break Olympics, like it's just weird that Samsung picked to do this,

00:06:02but whatever.

00:06:03They did it in Paris.

00:06:04Lots of people went, they seem to fly in a ton of like creators and influencers and people.

00:06:10Lots of folks in Paris.

00:06:11We didn't have anybody there, but lots of folks were there and had what seemed like

00:06:16a giant, like warehouse sized theater thing.

00:06:19It was like the Samsung event.

00:06:21And then like a, like a really dirty rave was like the vibe I got from this building.

00:06:27So Paris.

00:06:28Yeah, that's fair, touché.

00:06:31And it was, the reason I'm so hung up on the Apple comparison here is because Samsung basically

00:06:37got up and launched a bunch of Apple products, like, like in a very direct, real way launched

00:06:44a bunch of Apple products and they launched phones that I think are cool and interesting

00:06:47and we should talk about.

00:06:48And the Ring.

00:06:49But there are two in particular where you're like, Oh, thanks Apple.

00:06:53And it's just Samsung is like doing a weird thing where it is becoming less Samsung-y

00:07:01all the time.

00:07:02It's like doing Google AI plus Apple hardware and, and kind of pretending that that is Samsung.

00:07:08Uh, and I think that's bizarre.

00:07:10Isn't that what happens when you work on Saturdays, you just say, what if we take these two and

00:07:14smush them together?

00:07:15What if we cut our costs by just firing the design teams entirely?

00:07:19Yeah.

00:07:20I don't know.

00:07:21Let's just do the two Apple ones first because the other products are fundamentally more

00:07:24interesting.

00:07:25Right.

00:07:26So it's the Galaxy Buds and the Galaxy Buds Pro, which just fully look like AirPods and

00:07:30AirPods Pro.

00:07:31Right.

00:07:32And they're like little beans.

00:07:33Yeah.

00:07:34And they were kind of cool.

00:07:35Like, I wouldn't buy them, but they were kind of cool.

00:07:38And now they look like AirPod Pros, AirPods, just the stems.

00:07:43They got stems.

00:07:44They're a little bit more angular.

00:07:45Uh, they do have LEDs on them, which is, which has listeners now, I appreciate more than

00:07:50it.

00:07:51Almost any other thing you can add to a tech product.

00:07:52Yeah.

00:07:53You know what you want is LEDs right next to your ear canal where you'll see them all

00:07:55the time.

00:07:56It makes perfect sense.

00:07:57Where everyone else can't tune.

00:07:58Right.

00:08:00I think people should be like, that dude's listening to tunes.

00:08:03Only if it like pulses with their music.

00:08:07Yeah.

00:08:08You want like RGB lighting for your ears basically.

00:08:09Where's the party speaker effects for these headphones?

00:08:12So no one else can see them and you can't, no one else can hear what you're listening

00:08:15to and you can't see the lights.

00:08:17That's the place for party speaker LEDs.

00:08:19So you know, we're at this weird place in headphone ville where the best headphones to

00:08:26buy for your phone are often the one that the phone maker makes.

00:08:30Yes.

00:08:31Because they have all co-opted Bluetooth as a standard and built proprietary features

00:08:35for their own products.

00:08:36We didn't do this forever.

00:08:38They've all done it.

00:08:39Like whether or not you think that's good or bad.

00:08:40They have all done it.

00:08:41Apple has done it with the AirPods, uh, where they use Bluetooth, but then there's a bunch

00:08:44of proprietary features.

00:08:45Samsung has done it with the Galaxy Buds.

00:08:47Google has done it with the Pixel Buds.

00:08:48Just down the line.

00:08:50Everyone's approach to this is if you want the coolest stuff, you have to buy our proprietary

00:08:55earbuds.

00:08:56And if God help you, if you want to use the Galaxy Buds with an iPhone, they're just going

00:08:59to fall back to Bluetooth.

00:09:00Yeah.

00:09:01So if you're a Galaxy owner, like you have a Samsung phone, I think the question is whether

00:09:05you want to advertise it with the stuff in your ears.

00:09:09Well, I think it's slightly differently.

00:09:11I think if you're Samsung, there is a perfectly reasonable set of decisions you make to land

00:09:17on.

00:09:18We should just make AirPods, which is, uh, they, they cited the evidence and there is

00:09:22some evidence out there that that basic shape is actually more comfortable for more people.

00:09:28Uh, with the, the stem, it balances the weight.

00:09:31It also points a microphone towards your mouth instead of the microphone, just sort of pointing

00:09:35out to the side of your head, which a lot of these things do.

00:09:37Uh, but also I'm curious if you guys feel this way, but in, in my circle, at least there

00:09:44is AirPods and there is knockoff AirPods.

00:09:46And that is, that is the perception of wireless headphones.

00:09:49Everybody knows what AirPods are.

00:09:50And then all the other ones are like, Oh, those aren't AirPods.

00:09:53And I feel like if you're Samsung, you're like, okay, well we want something that integrates.

00:09:57And if it happens to add a glance, look like AirPods.

00:10:01And so people think they're AirPods.

00:10:02That's actually not the worst thing in the world.

00:10:04And I think like, maybe it is that simple.

00:10:06Yeah, no, I think we're saying the same thing in slightly different ways.

00:10:09Like, do you want your headphones to advertise that they're not from Apple?

00:10:13And that means you don't have an iPhone.

00:10:15I think a lot of companies have killed themselves trying to differentiate from Apple.

00:10:21We are not Apple turns out to be like a pretty bad branding exercise most of the time.

00:10:25I don't think Samsung's ever done that.

00:10:28They've always kind of been like, yeah, we're Apple, but for Android, like, Oh, you live

00:10:32in any other part of the world where Apple doesn't make sense or it's too expensive or

00:10:35whatever.

00:10:36No, Samsung waxes and wanes on the, we are not Apple.

00:10:39There have been times of maximum, we are not Apple from Samsung.

00:10:43And I think this is a low point.

00:10:46Like this is very much a low point in Samsung's like, are we totally differentiated?

00:10:50Like every, for years they had bigger phones and they were just like, they were making

00:10:54the ads that, you know, people stand in line for the iPhone and then someone would come

00:10:57by with like a surfboard sized Samsung phone.

00:11:02So the point that that marketing actually worked against Apple, it came up in various

00:11:06lawsuits that like Apple executives were saying like Samsung's branding was causing market

00:11:13share loss.

00:11:14Like very famous, like Phil Schiller was like screaming at Apple's ad agency because that

00:11:18was where, and it turned out it was just the screens were bigger and people love big, cheap

00:11:21screens.

00:11:22And then Apple was like, here's the iPhone six.

00:11:23And it just stopped.

00:11:24Yeah.

00:11:25I mean, and it's worth pointing out that all of this is incredibly cyclical, right?

00:11:29Like Apple spends most of its time building features into the iPhone that already exists

00:11:32on Android devices.

00:11:34Apple got bigger phones way after the whole Android universe did.

00:11:37Like everybody is just perpetually shoving towards each other at all times.

00:11:42It's just particularly jarring when you see it in something as simple a shape as these

00:11:49headphones, because it's not just like a slab of glass in the way that all phones are a

00:11:52slab of glass.

00:11:53There are a lot of shapes that headphones can be.

00:11:55And I don't know that there is necessarily like a perfect, correct way for headphones

00:12:00to be, but we've just decided that AirPods are the thing.

00:12:03And it's very clear that Samsung looked at it and said, AirPods are the thing.

00:12:06And the best, smartest thing we can do is just make AirPods.

00:12:09I'm just going to point out that the shapes of headphones, the designs of headphones,

00:12:13the sound quality of headphones, all much more varied and competitive when the headphone

00:12:17jack was still on phones.

00:12:20Just going to say it out loud.

00:12:21When there was an open interconnect that allowed for high quality audio to pass from your device

00:12:24to the headphones, the variability in the market, the variability in styles was real.

00:12:30It was big.

00:12:31Also, as someone for whom AirPods don't feel great in my ears, it's a real bummer that

00:12:35this is what we've decided.

00:12:36Yeah.

00:12:37Yeah.

00:12:39There's the two sides on the Galaxy Buds.

00:12:40There's the Pro, which are in-ears, and then there's the regular ones, which are more AirPod-y,

00:12:44which are like just shove it in.

00:12:46They just hang.

00:12:47They're just like in there.

00:12:48We've got to do the tests.

00:12:49We've got to try them out.

00:12:50I'm always curious to see if anybody's actually managed to make Bluetooth call audio sound

00:12:55good.

00:12:56Here in New York City, the number of people who use wired headphones all day long, it

00:13:00feels like it's just going up.

00:13:01I think people are just like over it, which is interesting, but that's New York.

00:13:05It's not everywhere.

00:13:06So we'll see.

00:13:07We're going to review the things.

00:13:09The first feature, yep, you just made an Apple product, is the Galaxy Watch Ultra.

00:13:13This I think is actually the worst offender of the group.

00:13:15It's so bad.

00:13:16Yeah.

00:13:17I mean, first of all, it's called the Ultra.

00:13:19They've added the icons, like the menu switcher, Dealey, the home screen is the Apple Watch

00:13:24home screen.

00:13:25They even launched it with an orange band.

00:13:28And a quick button.

00:13:29And a quick button, which is orange.

00:13:31The colors are the same.

00:13:32Weird.

00:13:33Just weird all around.

00:13:36Yeah, it's just like a full-on copy, right?

00:13:41I think it feels like the only really big difference is the squircle shape, which I

00:13:46absolutely hate that word and want it to die.

00:13:49Agreed.

00:13:50And the crown doesn't turn.

00:13:51And the crown doesn't turn.

00:13:52Well, it does, but it doesn't scroll.

00:13:54Yeah.

00:13:55Which, sure.

00:13:56The fact that it doesn't scroll, but it turns, is just like mind-boggling to me.

00:14:01Yeah, I just, I don't know.

00:14:02I'm so torn on this yet again, because I think on the one hand, what we've learned

00:14:07in the last couple of years is that Apple got the Watch Ultra really right in a lot

00:14:11of ways, right?

00:14:13It went super hard on this idea that this is a thing for people who are going to use

00:14:17it aggressively outdoors.

00:14:18So we're going to optimize for battery life.

00:14:19We're going to give you extra information about how you're doing.

00:14:23We're going to add some GPS-y stuff into it.

00:14:26We're going to make it more rugged for you to do more rugged things.

00:14:29And all of that has, I think, largely proven right, but has also just proven popular.

00:14:34Like, there are a lot of people, including a lot of people, who don't need all of that

00:14:40stuff.

00:14:41Here I am.

00:14:42Who wear Ultras.

00:14:43Right.

00:14:44And so I think if you're, part of me is like, it's a real sort of abdication of creative

00:14:49responsibility for Samsung to not find something more interesting to do.

00:14:52But also, it looked around and was like, oh no, Apple maybe just got this one right, and

00:14:58maybe we'll just go do that and build it into Samsung-y stuff.

00:15:01Because ultimately, that's what people are asking us for.

00:15:04Right?

00:15:05Like, the thing you hear all the time is like, where is the Apple Watch for Samsung?

00:15:09And it has like steadily moved towards that.

00:15:12And this just feels like they just went the whole way and were like, you know what?

00:15:15Screw it.

00:15:16The Apple Watch Ultra's pretty good.

00:15:18Let's do it.

00:15:19But I want to say one thing.

00:15:21There's one very important differentiator here.

00:15:23It is vastly uglier.

00:15:25Yeah, the squircle.

00:15:28It's not even a squircle.

00:15:29It's got a round face on a squircle body with the weird touch ring that they do.

00:15:36It's one too many bezels.

00:15:38It's a chunk.

00:15:39It's a chunk in a way that the Ultra's a chunk, but the Ultra feels like a singular idea.

00:15:45And this is just like, yeah, one too many bezels.

00:15:48It's like a case inside of a case inside of a case in a way that just feels tacky.

00:15:54I do sort of like some of the color combinations.

00:15:59Some of the pictures we've seen with some of the like really aggressive, like information

00:16:04dense watch faces, you look at them and it's like, okay, there's a certain amount of like,

00:16:10I could control a smart city from my watch with this.

00:16:13And like, could I be Batman with this watch on?

00:16:16Like potentially.

00:16:17But it is, I think, it feels, it's either over designed or under designed.

00:16:22And I genuinely can't tell which one it is.

00:16:24Does the screen feel like too much screen to y'all in a way that the, yeah, the Apple

00:16:30Ultra, I feel doesn't quite scream screen at me as much as this does, but I have neither.

00:16:36So I don't, I think the Ultra is too much screen.

00:16:38I think they're both too much screen.

00:16:40Like anytime I'm around somebody with an Ultra, both, dear God, you're right.

00:16:43Anytime I'm around somebody with an Apple watch Ultra, I'm like, I can just sit here

00:16:48and read your email.

00:16:49Like you get a text message.

00:16:50It's like, we both got that text message.

00:16:53It's a lot of screen.

00:16:55And this, this is, I think very clearly going to be the same thing, but people seem to be

00:16:59fine with that.

00:17:00Like, I guess that's just a thing we're getting comfortable with.

00:17:04There is some other Samsung stuff here in that, you know, Samsung is just a weird company

00:17:10with weird ideas and they like to be ahead of the curve.

00:17:13So they've added like new sensors for health stuff.

00:17:18And the best part is that the, they call it the bioactive sensor.

00:17:22And they're like, what if we just had more colors of LEDs to the sensor and measure more

00:17:26things?

00:17:27And the funniest one here is like, no one can quite do the blood sugar measurement,

00:17:33which everyone wants to do.

00:17:35Like Apple struggled with it.

00:17:36Samsung is obviously struggling with it, but like there's a lot of people out there who

00:17:39would love an ongoing blood sugar measurement.

00:17:41Yeah.

00:17:42For a variety of reasons.

00:17:43So they've just added something called the experimental advanced glycation end products

00:17:48index metric.

00:17:49Which is nothing to do.

00:17:50Hold on.

00:17:51One more time.

00:17:52One more time.

00:17:53The experimental advanced glycation end products index metric.

00:17:57It sounds like a like third rate stock exchange, but it's an index of everyone's blood sugar

00:18:06is what it is.

00:18:07It's like, I ate a cookie, the A-G-E-I went down.

00:18:14So it's not, it's not, it's not supposed to be that you were not supposed to read that.

00:18:19But Samsung says it looks at your diet and life cycle to reflect your overall biological

00:18:24aging process, which is worse than so much.

00:18:27It's like, who's the billionaire that's just slowly turning himself younger.

00:18:31Oh yeah.

00:18:32The vampire blood guy.

00:18:34Peter Thiel is like, I got to get this Samsung Galaxy one to Ultra.

00:18:37It's like, I need this immediately, but no one else does.

00:18:40This is the differentiation in this market.

00:18:42Like everyone figured out watches are either you want a big screen cause you'll have a

00:18:47big screen like me, or you want all these health and fitness features, or maybe you

00:18:51just want notifications and two factor codes.

00:18:55But at the high end, it's all health and fitness.

00:18:57Yep.

00:18:58Like that's what sells the extra watch features to people.

00:19:00There's a reason that new health specific features are not coming out at a high rate.

00:19:05Like one, the tech isn't quite there.

00:19:06Two, there's a bunch of regulatory hurdles.

00:19:08Three, they have to make sure they're actually safe and say what they say they're going to

00:19:11do.

00:19:12Great.

00:19:13That means you, you end up with like fake, like wellness health features, uh, like the

00:19:20advanced experimental, like the experimental advanced glycation and products result.

00:19:25And it's fine, but there's always the danger that people take that stuff way more seriously

00:19:30than they should.

00:19:31Just like 10,000, like people take 10,000 steps very seriously and like, that's just

00:19:35made up.

00:19:36Like people just made that up and like, here we are.

00:19:40And like, there's a piece of this puzzle where I think these watches are going to end

00:19:44up being more samey because the thing that ultimately differentiates them is kind of

00:19:47caught up in a lull of innovation and regulatory behavior and all that stuff.

00:19:53And famously like aggressive lawsuits against Apple from other companies.

00:19:58Uh, no, I think that's right.

00:19:59And there's the, what was it?

00:20:00Is it the health score?

00:20:01Is that what Samsung calls it?

00:20:03This, this like all in one tracking thing that they're doing with the watches to basically

00:20:08give you sort of an overall picture of your score, but like everybody's doing that right

00:20:12now.

00:20:13Right?

00:20:14Yeah.

00:20:15But I think it fits exactly what you're talking about.

00:20:16And Eli that it's, it's the sort of thing that as a, as a very casual data point is

00:20:21helpful, right?

00:20:22Where it's like, okay.

00:20:23Uh, like I was just looking at this weather app, it's called lazy weather.

00:20:25And its whole job is to tell you, is it going to be warmer or colder than yesterday?

00:20:30Right?

00:20:31Like based on the assumption that like, that's actually all you really need to know.

00:20:33And that is to that extent, a health score is useful, right?

00:20:38It's like, am I, am I, am I better or worse?

00:20:40Like how, how am I doing?

00:20:41And that's like, it gives you that answer, but all these things, as we get more of these

00:20:45sensors and more of this data, all you're actually doing is giving people tools they

00:20:50don't understand with which to do things that may or may not be helpful.

00:20:55And it feels like we are so deep down the road of like, here's some numbers without

00:20:59giving people real ability to like do things with them.

00:21:03Well, and this age index in particular feels like it is trying to ride on the, like ride

00:21:10the wave of continuous glucose monitors.

00:21:12It's trying to sound like, oh yeah, we kind of care about glucose monitors and diabetes

00:21:16and all of that.

00:21:17But also we can't legally do any of that because none of that actual technology exists in a

00:21:21safe way.

00:21:22So to be clear, Samson would not explain what the experimental advanced glycation end products

00:21:27index is.

00:21:28I was reading up on it all, like as soon as I saw that word, I've been very into continuous

00:21:32glucose monitors right now because I've got a diabetic in the family.

00:21:36And as soon as I saw that, I was like, what is that metric?

00:21:39That's not the one I talk with the doctors about.

00:21:42And just immediately was like, oh, this is, I don't want to say bullshit, but like close

00:21:48to it.

00:21:49Right.

00:21:50All Samsung will say, just to repeat this, all Samsung will say is that it looks at quote

00:21:55your diet and lifestyle to reflect your overall biological aging process.

00:22:01Sure.

00:22:03This is why I'm happy to announce a line of VirgCast supplements, which will bring your

00:22:06biological age lower.

00:22:08Why?

00:22:09If I only, if I had 10% more grift in my body, you wouldn't be out here hustling for lightning

00:22:17round sponsorships.

00:22:18By the way, we will not allow supplement companies to advertise the lightning round.

00:22:24I'm putting that out there unless the price tag is high enough.

00:22:27Unless they're like really good supplements.

00:22:29Unless they rule.

00:22:30Yeah.

00:22:31I think even the, one of the big things Samsung announced with these watches is that they

00:22:35have a FDA de novo clearance for sleep apnea stuff.

00:22:39And that's another really good example, right?

00:22:41Because what that doesn't mean is that this will tell you if you have sleep apnea.

00:22:45It's very hard to not understand it as that, but that is not what this is.

00:22:49What it means is this is a device that will give you data that is not harmful and potentially

00:22:56interesting and that you should take that data and take it to a medical professional

00:23:00who can help you make sense of it.

00:23:02And that is kind of indicative of like the best of most smartwatches.

00:23:06And this is true of Apple and Google and basically everybody in this space right now that they're

00:23:11all so careful to remind you constantly, like these are not medical devices.

00:23:16This is not medical advice.

00:23:17These things are just indicated as ways to give you information that might be helpful

00:23:21in a certain context.

00:23:23And you should take it to your healthcare provider and consult with them like over and

00:23:26over and over.

00:23:27That's the thing.

00:23:28But what it's actually doing is it's going to pop up a thing being like, you didn't sleep

00:23:30well.

00:23:31What do you think that's about?

00:23:32And it's like, are we, what problems are we really solving for people here?

00:23:35Um, so I come from a family of doctors and they all talk about, uh, you know, like there

00:23:41are laws in most States now that say you have to have access to your medical records right

00:23:45away.

00:23:46And a thing that is real is you go in for tests and then you get the result of your

00:23:50test before the doctor gets it.

00:23:52And then people don't wait.

00:23:55They start furiously Googling numbers and they call the doctors having already formed

00:24:01conclusions and the doctor's like, hold on, uh, you have no idea what you're talking about.

00:24:06Yeah.

00:24:07Apparently I didn't have kidney failure.

00:24:08I just needed to drink more water.

00:24:10Yeah.

00:24:11This is like a real thing that happens like all the time.

00:24:13Yeah.

00:24:14Um, and I think that's fascinating in this context, right?

00:24:16Where you were like, you're just putting on people's wrists for a couple hundred bucks.

00:24:19You know, like this is good at hikes.

00:24:21Also it will terrify you.

00:24:22Um, and I, I'm saying like the, the bleeding edge of these devices is health features and

00:24:28we're just kind of at a place now where they can't make the real claims.

00:24:31So they're just making up other ones.

00:24:34We'll see how it goes.

00:24:35In any case, it looks exactly like an Apple watch ultra, except uglier in like a real

00:24:39way.

00:24:40All right.

00:24:41So that's the two copies, right?

00:24:42Yeah.

00:24:43Yeah.

00:24:44Like the, you put in, you put the AirPods through chat, GPT, it's spit back AirPods with

00:24:47LEDs, like done and done, nailed it.

00:24:50Then there's the other stuff.

00:24:51We should talk about the ring because the ring is easily the most interesting product

00:24:54they have.

00:24:55Yes.

00:24:56And it is the one where a Apple has nothing, although we've heard about some attempts,

00:25:00some research projects at that company.

00:25:02But there are other, you know, the aura ring exists, but it seems like Samsung is, has

00:25:06a shot here.

00:25:07Yeah.

00:25:08I think it does because the aura ring is really like, it's kind of one size.

00:25:12Most of the other ring makers are kind of like, yeah, we do one size.

00:25:15You can get different sizes of the ring, but ultimately the battery, everything else is

00:25:19the same.

00:25:20Samsung is doing what most big tech companies do, which is like, we're going to have multiple

00:25:24sizes.

00:25:25So like the largest ones have a little bit more battery than the smaller ones because

00:25:28they can put more in it.

00:25:30And that's just cool and smart, but also it just sounds a lot like an aura ring with better

00:25:34integration for Samsung specifically in a way that's like exciting.

00:25:39And they have smaller ones that this is like, I think Victoria Song, our wearables writer

00:25:44said that this might be one of the like smallest available smart rings for people.

00:25:48It still looks gigantic on her hand.

00:25:50It does.

00:25:51But she has, she, she will be the first to tell you she has small hands and is not a

00:25:55super indicative.

00:25:56Also shout out to V who I believe wore four other rings to the hands on with the galaxy

00:26:02ring.

00:26:03Like that is just showing up like a straight up mafioso, like brass knuckles, but it's

00:26:09all smart rings.

00:26:10Like I, hell yeah.

00:26:11It's so good.

00:26:12I'm either going to a Samsung event or the Jersey shore.

00:26:14We're going to find out.

00:26:15I might buy the ring sizer because you can just buy Samsung's ring sizer for 10 bucks

00:26:21and you figure out what your ring size is, which is useful.

00:26:25And then you get a credit when you buy the ring.

00:26:26I think that's really smart.

00:26:27Like compared to the other, you have to wear this on your body fitment ideas we've seen

00:26:31like Apple making you go to the store.

00:26:35Yeah.

00:26:36Like this is actually very clever.

00:26:37It's obviously easier with a ring than a thing that you have to wear on your face and we're,

00:26:39you know, prescription lenses and all that with the vision pro.

00:26:41But I think it's very clever that as we kind of go into wearables world, fitting stuff

00:26:48to your body becomes an interesting challenge and it's not solved.

00:26:52So I thought that part is really cool, but the part where it's, it's the same product

00:26:57as everyone else, but it's more integrated in the system because Samsung owns the operating

00:27:00system.

00:27:01I can't, I don't know how I feel about that at all.

00:27:03Yeah.

00:27:04Well, one thing that is better about it is that it also has like an actual case instead

00:27:09of just a little dongle you have to periodically find and stick the ring on and the case looks

00:27:14interesting.

00:27:15Did you guys look at the case for it?

00:27:18The case is, is it gigantic?

00:27:20I can't tell if this case is gigantic or not.

00:27:23It feels like gigantic and also so much fake crystal.

00:27:26Yes.

00:27:27Yes.

00:27:28Yes.

00:27:29It's like a Claire's jewelry case.

00:27:30Yeah.

00:27:31I love it so much.

00:27:32I don't mean that as an insult.

00:27:33Like it, it just is what it is.

00:27:35And it is true that it's better that it is a case than what you get from aura and others,

00:27:41which is essentially just like a puck that sits on your desk, which is fine for what

00:27:45it is, but it's easy to lose and doesn't travel very well.

00:27:48And I think a case that is properly a case makes a lot of sense.

00:27:51And I think actually the thing I'm most excited about, about the galaxy ring is that Samsung

00:27:55seems to have gotten the ring wearing experience closer to right than just about anybody that

00:28:04we've seen.

00:28:05Like the thing is pretty light.

00:28:06It's pretty thin.

00:28:07It's, it's concave, which will make it a little easier to wear and like bang around on a desk

00:28:11and stuff.

00:28:12Then some of the other sort of convex ones that we've seen, uh, it's, it's, it comes

00:28:16in a bunch of different sizes.

00:28:17Like the battery life is long.

00:28:19It seems like no additional subscription, right?

00:28:22There are like little bits and pieces of what it's going to be like to own this that I think

00:28:26are going to be really important because we're still very much at a moment where like, unless

00:28:30you are a psycho who wants to track their sleep and no shade to those psychos, there's

00:28:34lots of them out there.

00:28:36Unless you are that person, there are not a lot of compelling reasons to wear a ring.

00:28:41So we have to figure out like what, what is this thing for?

00:28:45And the smart thing that Samsung did is be like, this is going to be a nice thing to

00:28:47wear before you really have a hundred reasons to use it.

00:28:51It's just a bunch of sensors, right?

00:28:52Yeah.

00:28:53Yeah.

00:28:54It does heart rate tracking.

00:28:55It does a skin temperature sensor.

00:28:57I've often wondered what my skin temperature is.

00:28:59Uh, and then it's had a bunch of sleep feature.

00:29:01Like the watch, we just had this whole conversation about like, they're adding more kinds of sensors

00:29:07to the watch ahead of their ability to actually tell you what they mean.

00:29:10It feels like, well, we also made a bunch of them smaller now we can just put them in

00:29:13a ring.

00:29:14Well, they're also better on a ring, right?

00:29:15Like the, having that stuff on your finger 24 hours a day is a vastly better data collection

00:29:21system than having it on your wrist sometimes, right?

00:29:23Like if you are the person who wants that data and cares about it and is going to take

00:29:28it to your medical professional, a ring is, is just a better venue for that in almost

00:29:32every way.

00:29:33Yeah.

00:29:34I want smart rings to work.

00:29:35Like I really, I really do.

00:29:37If you had a smart ring, would you give up on your watch?

00:29:39No.

00:29:40And the reason I don't have a smart ring frankly, is because every time I wear an aura, I wear

00:29:43an aura for three days and I'm like, what on earth is the point of me having this thing

00:29:47on?

00:29:48Because I'm not like at, at that, if you're like a nine or 10 out of 10 on a, like how

00:29:54much do I care about tracking my body sensors, a person, a ring is great.

00:30:00I'm not that.

00:30:01And so like having it tell me I got bad sleep when I wake up tired is like not interesting

00:30:06to me.

00:30:07So I ended up just putting the aura back in a drawer and the ring is still the galaxy

00:30:11ring is, is going to have that same problem.

00:30:13So this brings me to Neelai Patel's theory of wearable bullshit.

00:30:20So if you remember this, by the way, this theory still needs a better name I'm in the

00:30:23market for, but if you remember, it's important that it has Neelai's name in it though.

00:30:28It's mine.

00:30:35That's how you can, you can buy, I'll sell you naming rights to the theory of wearable

00:30:39bullshit.

00:30:40So this is the Samsung Exxon theory of wearable bullshit presented by Citibank.

00:30:46So the X axis, right, is a value.

00:30:52And then the Y is fiddliness, like how much you have to care about the thing or it's the

00:30:56other way around.

00:30:57It doesn't matter.

00:30:58Those are the two axes.

00:30:59Well, there's also a Z that you refuse to acknowledge, but that's okay.

00:31:02Many people have sent us many versions of this truck, right?

00:31:06And so my, my, my, the paradigm object on the chart of things you attach to your body

00:31:12is regular glasses, which are a little bit fiddly.

00:31:15You have to clean them.

00:31:16You got to care of them.

00:31:17You can't lose them, but they, if you need them provide you an immense amount of value.

00:31:21So you're like, I'm going to put these on my face all the time because they allow me

00:31:25to see, and then I will deal with having to clean them and owning a microfiber cloth and

00:31:30all the rest of the stuff that you're supposed to do with glasses.

00:31:32You just use your shirt.

00:31:33Right.

00:31:35Uh, somewhere on that list is like the original Apple watch, which was too fiddly, required

00:31:40a lot of care and didn't do well as a product.

00:31:44Then there's the current Apple watch, which actually has pretty good battery life, doesn't

00:31:47require a lot of care and has a lot of value for people like exceeded the, the, the line.

00:31:53Then there's a vision pro, which is very like anything that goes on your face, the fiddliness

00:31:57is off the charts and it can't deliver as much value.

00:32:00Yeah.

00:32:01Like face computers just can't deliver the value to make this worthwhile.

00:32:03You just keep going down and down the list.

00:32:05The ring has a problem in that it delivers no value to you.

00:32:08It is a totally passive computer that you have to fiddle with and put on your body and

00:32:14then all the value that's delivered is like at some later point you will look at some

00:32:19data that was collected.

00:32:20Well, and I think if you're, if you're the kind of person who has like a preexisting

00:32:25thing for which that is useful, great.

00:32:28Like if you are someone who knows you struggle with sleep and you're trying things and actually

00:32:31collecting that data on an ongoing basis helps you great.

00:32:35That makes total sense.

00:32:36A ring is going to be really useful.

00:32:37And the upside of a ring is that the fiddliness score is much, much lower.

00:32:41Like a thing that you wear on your index finger and take off once a week to charge while you

00:32:45shower super low on the fiddliness meter.

00:32:49But the problem is that even its potential to do more stuff is not that high.

00:32:54I don't think it's that low on the fiddliness meter.

00:32:56I wear a ring every day.

00:32:58Yeah.

00:32:59I never think, I pick it up when I leave the house.

00:33:01It serves an important function, uh, which is to remind ladies that I'm taking, um, uh,

00:33:09it's a symbol of my ongoing devotion to my divorce lawyer of a wife.

00:33:14Um, uh, and I, I just never think about it.

00:33:17I take it, I put it on, I take it off.

00:33:19I never think about charging it, whatever.

00:33:21It has an obviously important societal, emotional function that it does.

00:33:28It's like symbolic, but there's, it's zero fit.

00:33:31Like anything over zero is actually the standard.

00:33:34I think that is probably only some of our audience has that issue because a lot of their

00:33:40audience probably also enjoys to wear a little couple of different rings, replaced rings.

00:33:45Like I wear-

00:33:46But they're also zero.

00:33:47No, because you take like, I cannot tell you, it's jewelry, right?

00:33:50Like jewelry, you're, you're constantly, a lot of people are constantly fiddling with

00:33:53their jewelry.

00:33:54Do you think that Galaxy Watch is jewelry?

00:33:56It fundamentally is.

00:33:57It's not jewelry I want to personally wear.

00:34:00Well, but it doesn't have the function.

00:34:01No, it does.

00:34:02It's, it's a ring.

00:34:03It's showing, it's, it's putting that extra bling on your hand.

00:34:07And I think a lot of people do like to have that extra bling.

00:34:09The Aura ring has definitely attained like status symbol status over the years.

00:34:15Yeah.

00:34:16It's, it's got like a, it's got like a bling kind of quality to it.

00:34:19And I think the rings in a way, like the Apple Watch quickly became, went from fashion, we

00:34:24all laughed at it being fashion and immediately into-

00:34:27It failed as a fashion, famously failed as a fashion.

00:34:29Yeah, famously.

00:34:30We were all like, that's stupid.

00:34:31And we all just stopped treating it like fashion and it just became a watch on your wrist.

00:34:35The ring is still, I think both more capable of it.

00:34:39So if you're someone who doesn't want to have a giant watch on your wrist, and you do want

00:34:42those metrics, like, okay, you can put on the ring, the ring, and you can still wear

00:34:45your Breitling or your Rolex or whatever to show that off.

00:34:49And I think that's who this is for.

00:34:51That's the market.

00:34:52Yeah.

00:34:53I feel like people with $6,000 watches that, that they don't want to replace it.

00:34:57This is why Silicon Valley billionaires love the Aura Ring.

00:34:59This is my aspirational ring.

00:35:01I just figured this out.

00:35:02I guess when I say, is it jewelry?

00:35:04I agree with you that like, it's jewelry.

00:35:06Yeah.

00:35:07I meant, does it look like jewelry?

00:35:09The Aura Ring, actually, they tried very hard to make it look like jewelry.

00:35:12And one of the only reasons that I wouldn't just swap out my wedding ring for it is you

00:35:17can, I think you can only wear it on your index finger, right?

00:35:19Yeah.

00:35:20You're supposed to only wear it on your index.

00:35:21So it's like, it doesn't do the other thing, but there's a world in which you just infuse

00:35:25my existing jewelry with the tech and it looks good enough and that's fine.

00:35:28I just think that the Samsung one doesn't, doesn't wait.

00:35:32The Neil Patel theory of wearable bullshit does not have a fashion scale.

00:35:35That's the Z axis now.

00:35:37You've you've yeah, this is, this is about fiddliness.

00:35:39Do you know what's very fiddly is fashion, Neil?

00:35:46All right.

00:35:47Looking good.

00:35:48I can make this work, man.

00:35:49I need to think about this for like five more seconds and I'll come up with something.

00:35:55But no, but I, I really think the problem is the, the ceiling for what you can do with

00:36:01a ring right now seems really low because like even, even like the next thing you think

00:36:06of is like, Oh, maybe it'll vibrate for notifications.

00:36:09Do you know how insane it would feel to have your, the base of your index finger vibrate

00:36:14every time you get a text message?

00:36:16Like insane disaster.

00:36:17You'd go to your doctor and be like, I have all of this medical information and Samsung

00:36:24is doing a thing where they're like sort of gently pointing it.

00:36:28Like maybe this is a way to gesture control some stuff.

00:36:31Like they have a little bit of the like pinchy pinch stuff going on, but only if you have

00:36:35a Samsung phone, right?

00:36:36And so there's like, but even that is like probably, probably not.

00:36:41I just don't think that's the thing yet.

00:36:43What if, I mean, we're hearing a lot more about XR nowadays and, and if you just like

00:36:49mixed reality, that's just another word for mixed reality.

00:36:52And what if that's a, like the kind of their way of this is how we're going to control

00:36:56it in the future.

00:36:57I do think if, if you want to like galaxy brain take the galaxy ring, I think that's

00:37:01probably I, that's all I want to do.

00:37:03Also, I just realized if Samsung comes out with a headset and doesn't call it the galaxy

00:37:07brain, I'm going to be furious.

00:37:08It's entire AI service suite called galaxy brain.

00:37:13How do we have this idea?

00:37:15David Pierce's galaxy brain.

00:37:17You can have one.

00:37:18Yeah.

00:37:19God.

00:37:20Uh, all right.

00:37:21We're going to try out the ring.

00:37:22The, I think V is very excited to get it.

00:37:23We'll, we'll know much more about it soon.

00:37:24Uh, the last piece we should talk about are some phones.

00:37:27I just want to point out that we're almost 40 minutes into this segment just now talking

00:37:31about the phones, which actually tells you every single thing you need to know about

00:37:34these new phones.

00:37:35Yeah.

00:37:36They are more expensive.

00:37:37I am so disappointed in these new phones.

00:37:39Like of all the things, like I can understand why you would copy Apple in making certain

00:37:44things.

00:37:45I can understand why you go all in on AI even before there are a lot of really compelling

00:37:49use cases.

00:37:50But this thing where Samsung was so far ahead in foldable phones and flip phones and seems

00:37:55content to just like squander that in the name of making everything a smidge better

00:38:00and not doing anything new or interesting every year, it's really starting to bum me

00:38:03out.

00:38:04Well, do they have competition in this space?

00:38:06Like, is there anybody that's actually pushing?

00:38:08Well, so there are, we should talk about the Motorola razor plus, which Alison reviewed

00:38:12this week, which she loved.

00:38:15She just loved it.

00:38:16That thing is one very good camera away from maybe being the best Android phone.

00:38:20Yeah.

00:38:21It's got a weird processor.

00:38:23It's like who even can describe this snapdragon eight S three M or whatever it's called.

00:38:29Yeah.

00:38:30Wait, let me find it.

00:38:31What is it?

00:38:32Uh, it's the snapdragon eight S gen three, which is just a weird mid tier.

00:38:37Yeah.

00:38:38Uh, it's weird.

00:38:39It's, it's just a weird, it's one of those are like, well, this phone last two years

00:38:42or five.

00:38:43Like Alison called it like an entry flagship, which is like, sure.

00:38:47All right.

00:38:48Here we are.

00:38:49Um, anyway, it's talking about the Samsung ones first.

00:38:52Um, the flip six is the one that, you know, is sort of more interesting because I think

00:38:57that form factor is more interesting.

00:38:58Also, it's the thing that's changing the most.

00:39:01Like those are the phones that are changing the most because the cover screens are getting

00:39:05bigger and bigger.

00:39:06Um, but it's basically just like a little bit lighter and cost more money.

00:39:11Yeah.

00:39:12Also a little more rugged, which is meaningful, especially for the flip.

00:39:15Uh, they're, they're getting better at making that thing into like an actual phone that

00:39:19you can treat like an actual phone, a little bit more, a little, yeah, it doesn't even

00:39:24have dust resistance.

00:39:25Like, don't listen.

00:39:26You can, you can drop it in the toilet now.

00:39:29That's a victory.

00:39:30Yeah.

00:39:31It'll probably be fine.

00:39:33Uh, and then the fold six boy, I couldn't tell you.

00:39:38It's literally like one of the main features they talked about is that when it's flat,

00:39:43it's flatter.

00:39:44Like, what, what are we doing here?

00:39:47It's just, and again, I, I, part of me wonders like what are, are we several physics miracles

00:39:55away from there being a new thing you can do here because Samsung is making little bits

00:40:00of this better.

00:40:01The, the cover screen, it's, it's a little wider on the outside, which I actually appreciate.

00:40:05It feels less like a TV remote and more like a phone.

00:40:08Uh, it's just the same thing though.

00:40:11Like the, the, Samsung is not even really like coming up with really cool new ideas

00:40:15about how the software here could work, which at least Motorola is pushing really hard for.

00:40:20How do we make the outer screen useful and the inner screen useful and have them interplay

00:40:23with each other really well.

00:40:25Samsung feels like it is just not pushing that nearly as hard.

00:40:29And so it's like, what, what do you, what, what is the case for why I should buy these

00:40:33things?

00:40:34Samsung?

00:40:35I don't think they care.

00:40:36I mean, presumably they'd like me to buy their phones.

00:40:38I think they want us to buy the phones, but, but I think they are, Samsung often feels

00:40:42driven by, by external pressures.

00:40:44It often feels driven by the market and like it's decisions are based in the market and

00:40:48like, Oh, we do the folding phone cause nobody else is doing it.

00:40:50And we get there first and we get there before Apple and Apple just hasn't done it.

00:40:56Hasn't even talked about doing it.

00:40:57The rumors are scant, right?

00:40:59And so, and that's their primary competitor.

00:41:01Like we want to say Motorola or Pixel or whatever, let's be real.

00:41:05Their primary competitor is Apple.

00:41:07And if Apple's not doing anything in the space, then why should they invest in making the

00:41:12phone better when they can just rest on their laurels?

00:41:14Well, I think also we've, Alex, you mentioned Saturday, Samsung, their sales are down.

00:41:19They're trying to make more money.

00:41:20Saturday, Samsung, man.

00:41:23Their efforts are going to marketing and more dollars from the same product.

00:41:29Of course they're not putting tons of money into making, like changing things too much.

00:41:33At the same time, like they still employ the software engineers and designers, like make

00:41:39it more interesting is like a totally valid critique here.

00:41:42Like the phone opens, you can, you have a little phone that turns into a big phone.

00:41:47What happens then?

00:41:48Right.

00:41:49And that, that seems to be set aside.

00:41:50That does, I think, bring us to the Motorola phone where Motorola does seem to have a lot

00:41:54of ideas.

00:41:55What happens when you have a little phone that gets even smaller and you have a big

00:41:59cover screen and like their ideas about how apps even appear on that cover screen and

00:42:03how you might control them all pretty good.

00:42:06Yeah.

00:42:07Yeah.

00:42:08It's the idea of like, what if you only had to tap on your phone two times to accomplish

00:42:10something on the outside screen is like, I don't know if that is the framework, but that's

00:42:14kind of what it feels like.

00:42:15And there's just little bits and pieces where it's like, okay, this is a screen you're going

00:42:18to have sort of looking at you all the times.

00:42:21We're going to make it fun and cute and animated.

00:42:23And if you want to like do something, you're probably going to open up the phone.

00:42:26So in this case, what we need to do is just give you all the things that are like one

00:42:30or two taps and just put it right in front of you.

00:42:32So it's like, what's next on your calendar, get to AI, stop the music.

00:42:35Like, I love that.

00:42:37And this is like the thing about flip phones that I'm enthusiastic about is it is I, sometimes

00:42:41you should only have access to a tiny portion of your phone and that is how you do it on

00:42:47that outside screen.

00:42:48I think Motorola is getting this really right in a way I find very exciting.

00:42:51Also, it seems like there, when you unfold it, their screen is less creasy looking than

00:42:56the Samsung one.

00:42:57Yeah, it's only 1080 P and it's like 6.9 inches.

00:43:00So it's like super long and not that high res and that makes me face right now.

00:43:06You just really, yeah, I just, you love a garbage phone.

00:43:11You're single handedly driving all of the sales of the books.

00:43:14Yeah, that's, that's been a wild couple of weeks, but wait, one of the, one of the things

00:43:20that I've heard a bunch of people say about this Samsung launch, and I think this might

00:43:24be true for Motorola and stuff too, is that we're now in Samsung's case, six generations

00:43:29into the flip and fold universe.

00:43:32And anecdotally, at least, and based on, you know, talking to people and what we've seen,

00:43:37these are not winning in any meaningful way, right?

00:43:40Like they're not taking market share away from the Galaxy S lines and the iPhone and

00:43:47the other popular candy bar phones.

00:43:49And so you wonder if instead of Samsung and others looking at these phones saying, this

00:43:54is how we win, they're increasingly looking at them as just like kind of a sideshow and

00:44:01maybe, and, and if that is the case, of course you slow down and you put less interesting

00:44:07resources into doing it.

00:44:09Especially for Samsung, which has a gigantic business selling candy bar phones, like maybe,

00:44:14maybe we should be less interested in these because the world is less interested in these

00:44:19for Motorola, like they kind of have nothing to lose by swinging big for something new.

00:44:24And the razor is the best brand Motorola ever had.

00:44:26So like, I get why they're doing this that way, but for Samsung, like we've been waiting

00:44:32for this to become Samsung's thing for so long now.

00:44:36And I wonder if Samsung is increasingly convinced with every generation that maybe it's

00:44:41just not going to be.

00:44:42Is it just too expensive?

00:44:43Is that why it just hasn't become the thing?

00:44:46That's why I haven't gotten one is it's almost two thousand dollars.

00:44:48I think for foldable phones, very much so.

00:44:52I think the flip phones, you could like maybe have a debate about whether it is meaningfully

00:44:57more useful to have that.

00:44:58I would argue that it is, but I think you could debate that.

00:45:01But the like the fold problem is A, they're huge and B, they're twice the price.

00:45:07Like I just it's that is going to be so hard to come back from for any of these companies.

00:45:11But you get three times the screens for twice the price.

00:45:14You do. Yeah.

00:45:16I mean, the dollar ratio is off the charts.

00:45:19That's your Saturday Samsung pitch.

00:45:21Two extra price, three extra screens.

00:45:23They'll give you a TV with it.

00:45:24So you get that in Cupertino.

00:45:27That's true. You can also get a TV with it.

00:45:28All right. We have talked about everything for too long.

00:45:31We're way over already. We're only halfway through.

00:45:34I think that makes sense. We'll be back with more of our chest.

00:45:41All right, we're back.

00:45:44We have this next segment list is streaming lightning round, and I'm just looking for

00:45:47where Alex talks about David Zaslav's outfits, which is a real thing that occurred today.

00:45:53You know, we're not going to talk too much about him.

00:45:55He he's at the is it is it Sun Valley where he's at with all the other billionaires

00:45:59right now? He's just layered up.

00:46:01He's got a scarf, a vest, a shirt.

00:46:03Oh, my gosh. Like he had like a bandana at one point.

00:46:06I was like, sir, I love his sartorial choices.

00:46:10But but he expressed a lot of enthusiasm this week for for the big Paramount Sky

00:46:18Dance deal. And that's the big deal.

00:46:20So we should tell people what we haven't talked about Paramount Sky Dance because

00:46:24it's just been like a cloud.

00:46:26Whether you think that cloud is dark or light is up to you.

00:46:29But it has been a cloud that has not reached a resolution.

00:46:33So Paramount, which owns CBS, Alex's favorite broadcast network.

00:46:38I got a story for this.

00:46:39I got a way to tell explain this.

00:46:41All right. I'm just gonna let you drive.

00:46:43So once upon a time, there was a family and the dad went out and he put together a

00:46:49huge corporate conglomeration and they called it National Amusement, which is very

00:46:53good. Yeah, great.

00:46:55They're nationally amusing.

00:46:57And in there was CBS and this big storied century old studio, Paramount, all of that

00:47:03in there. And then on the other side, there was another family and they did something

00:47:07called Oracle. And Larry Ellison made a lot of money from that.

00:47:11And his kids got into films and they started producing.

00:47:15And his daughter made a lot of good movies and then made some bad ones.

00:47:18And his son made some really successful movies like Top Gun that the new Top Gun.

00:47:24Yeah, he was a baby when the last was he even alive when the last one came out?

00:47:28But he did that.

00:47:29We're not going to find out.

00:47:30We're not going to find out. Don't worry about it.

00:47:32This doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

00:47:34What matters is that there is the two families.

00:47:36And they said, you know what, we should really get together.

00:47:39And the tech family should buy the media conglomerates family's business and just

00:47:46make an even bigger business.

00:47:48And then there was a lot of winging about there was a lot of like whinging about

00:47:51that. There was a lot of, oh, should I do this?

00:47:52I don't know. Sherry Redstone, the current owner of Paramount, was really concerned.

00:47:56She didn't know how she wanted her.

00:47:58She didn't want her dad's legacy ruined.

00:48:00She wanted money.

00:48:02And that's the plot of succession, everybody.

00:48:04Yeah. Yeah.

00:48:05This is the plot of succession.

00:48:06That's what happened. And eventually David Ellison went to his dad and was like, Dad,

00:48:10you're a billionaire.

00:48:11Can I borrow a couple of billion, say six of your money and put it in, sweeten this

00:48:16pot? And Larry said, I got your son.

00:48:19And now his son owns one of the largest film studios in Hollywood.

00:48:24Well, it hasn't closed yet.

00:48:25So it hasn't closed yet.

00:48:26Yeah, that's true. It hasn't closed.

00:48:28He will potentially own it, provided the lawsuits that are already cooking up amongst

00:48:33the investors who are mad that they're not getting as much of this pot.

00:48:37Those those don't screw things up, provided there is Apollo or another investor

00:48:41doesn't come in and say, actually, I can provide even more money than Larry Ellison.

00:48:46I feel like that's probably not going to happen, seeing as Larry Ellison already put

00:48:49six billion in. I feel like this is probably David Ellison's company.

00:48:54And we've been seeing that all around Hollywood.

00:48:57We've been seeing that from a lot of the reporters, Variety, Matthew Bellany over at

00:49:01Puck. A lot of folks have been talking about this.

00:49:03Matthew Bellany had a really good interview with Ellison about this, where he was like,

00:49:06yeah, I'm going to do all this tech stuff.

00:49:09And that was really interesting about all of this is he's pitched this as like tech

00:49:12taking over. And I think we'd argue that tech already took over, given the success of

00:49:17Netflix and even smaller stuff like Apple.

00:49:19But this is really officially like tech has taken over Hollywood.

00:49:23And he's got big ambitions about using A.I.

00:49:26for workflows that that's as much as he said.

00:49:29I can just read you the quotes.

00:49:31Yeah, they're great.

00:49:32Quotes are wild.

00:49:35A slide deck for investors said A.I.

00:49:38would turbo charge content creation and drive efficiencies in streamlined operations.

00:49:43Terrifying. Ellison said the art will challenge the technology and the technology

00:49:48challenges the art, which.

00:49:52OK. And then and he also said, we believe that understanding the symbiotic relationship

00:49:57between art and technology is essential to be able to meet this moment.

00:50:00There are a lot of technology companies that are rapidly expanding into media.

00:50:03We believe it is essential for Paramount to be able to expand its technology prowess to be

00:50:07both a media and technology enterprise.

00:50:09Those are quotes that come up when you say chat GPT.

00:50:11Write me some quotes about like, do you remember the paper that was like, we found a

00:50:17huge increase in the word delve being used because of chat GPT.

00:50:21Like, that's what that sounds like to me.

00:50:23That's a bunch of nothing like that's that's what you say.

00:50:26There are two there are two things that are real.

00:50:28There are one thousand percent the things you would expect all of those words to

00:50:34mean. Ellison proposed upgrading the advertising technology to give marketers more

00:50:39information about what audiences they're reaching.

00:50:43So we're doing some data collection and algorithmic ads and that we are working to

00:50:47improve the algorithmic recommendation engines that Paramount Plus uses, hoping

00:50:51subscribers will spend more time on the streaming service and viewer.

00:50:54So we're doing engagement.

00:50:55Sure. I don't think those are actually the actual tech that they're going to be doing,

00:51:00like investing in.

00:51:01I think I think the advertising is everybody's investing in that right now.

00:51:04Peacock, if you talk to anybody at NBC right now, they will not hesitate to be like, have

00:51:08you heard about our our new ad tech platform?

00:51:10We're really all in on ad tech platforms for streaming.

00:51:14It's great. Can I just read you more words?

00:51:16Yes. I wish you wouldn't.

00:51:18Ellison also said Skydance will work in partnership with Oracle to create a cloud based

00:51:23animation studio.

00:51:24Skydance used the studio in the cloud to produce part of Spellbound, which is coming out

00:51:29later on Netflix. We intend to scale that business across all of our production

00:51:33workflows and animation.

00:51:34That's just we're going to buy a bunch of GPUs.

00:51:37Like, what are we talking about?

00:51:38It's also kind of worthless because the guy who runs Skydance animation right now is John

00:51:43Lasseter, who famously got punted from Pixar because he couldn't keep his hands to

00:51:48himself, allegedly.

00:51:49Yes. And that's who's running it.

00:51:51They have not had a lot of successes.

00:51:53Most of their other animated properties have not had hit that like John Lasseter used to

00:51:58have a golden hand.

00:51:59Right. Like he'd look at anything and it'd make a billion dollars.

00:52:02Nowadays, it's like we barely sold luck to Apple TV.

00:52:06We're making a deal to get this thing sold over at Netflix.

00:52:10That all felt like things he was saying to get Sherry Redstone feeling comfortable to do

00:52:16this deal because Sherry Redstone was holding up the deal in big ways.

00:52:21And right now, everybody in Hollywood has a lot of anxiety about tech companies and about

00:52:25tech infrastructure and how they can compete with stuff like Netflix, who has, like for

00:52:30what it's worth, the best algorithms when it comes to streaming and actually getting

00:52:34content in front of people's eyes.

00:52:36And it just felt like, let's alleviate this woman's anxieties by saying, hey, I a

00:52:41bunch. Sure.

00:52:42And giving her six million dollars.

00:52:46Yeah, that probably helped.

00:52:48Yeah. Anyway, I would just remind you, the listener, that these are the things that

00:52:53people say when they buy the studios.

00:52:56Famously, it's what he said about Warner Brothers, which, again, provided the world the

00:53:02four, three grayscale Justice League.

00:53:06Yeah, we don't know what this is going to look like.

00:53:08What movies will David Ellison remaster is square in grayscale.

00:53:14I think it's the only question.

00:53:15It's going to be a possible movie.

00:53:17It's going to be six hours long.

00:53:20Mission Impossible 2 is going to be black and white and square.

00:53:23And it's going to be nuts.

00:53:25Anyway, so this is like the big story in streaming.

00:53:27We haven't talked a lot about it because it hadn't happened.

00:53:30But now it's happened.

00:53:31And if the deal closes and as Alex said, all these lawsuits get resolved.

00:53:35I think we're looking at a bunch of tech money and tech ideas coming for the studio

00:53:41that famously owns Top Gun, coming for CBS, coming for famously on Star Trek, famously

00:53:47on Star Trek. It's going to be weird.

00:53:50There's there's a real weirdness coming for this zone because this is just a flood of

00:53:55new money, but also.

00:53:58Just the ideas that you would expect the money to have, but dressed up in ever larger

00:54:05ambitions. Yeah, that that is exactly it.

00:54:08I'm curious to see what they do.

00:54:09I'm curious to see if they unload any of these properties and what kind of like movies

00:54:14and shows we actually start seeing if Taylor Sheridan gets the boot.

00:54:18I have been, by the way, furiously Googling for what studio in the cloud means.

00:54:22And it it's just a thing they say.

00:54:24Yeah, it's called a data center.

00:54:26This is the thing. It's like everybody already does it.

00:54:28Anything. It's called working remote.

00:54:31This is a rich guy who couldn't build a cool studio buying a cool studio.

00:54:36Like if I had the money to do it, I would do it.

00:54:40Skydance is like cool, but not that cool.

00:54:42Paramount is cooler.

00:54:44The end. The closest I've come to understanding what student cloud means is it's a it's

00:54:50like a square in the deck that just says studio in the cloud and it's a Skydance animation

00:54:56is building a studio in the cloud.

00:54:57That's the first bullet.

00:54:59It's great. You turn on slack.

00:55:01The second bullet is transition from on prem to cloud based production and hosting

00:55:06infrastructure, which is fine.

00:55:08That's a thing.

00:55:09You know, dentist's office across America are switching from on prem to cloud based

00:55:13infrastructure, and it feels like Oracle is just going to get its six billion dollars

00:55:17back because it turns out they're building it with Oracle.

00:55:20Yeah. OK, but does it it's got to mean something.

00:55:26Listen, I were like minutes away from you reading the Salesforce website again, and I

00:55:30can't have that. We need to move on.

00:55:33All right, Alex, you got a lot left in this lightning round.

00:55:35Well, yeah, I mean, what else do we got?

00:55:36Well, so Redbox, we had this great story from from Yonko last week that was all about

00:55:42Friend of the Verge, about how Redbox was in dire straits and why it was in dire straits.

00:55:48And now it's shutting down its parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.

00:55:53Yeah, that's that's the real name of the company.

00:55:55The second time in several weeks, the Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, it's

00:55:59come up. You'll recall that we looked at the Crackle website, which is owned by Chicken

00:56:03Soup for the Soul.

00:56:05We'll see for how long now for now.

00:56:08Yeah, they they got a new CEO last week and his job is literally to come in and fix

00:56:13companies that are in dire straits.

00:56:15And for Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, that means Redbox is toast.

00:56:19It had already been really bad.

00:56:20A lot of folks probably if you if you're listening to this and you tried to go rent

00:56:24out a Redbox in the last couple of months, you're going to be like, well, I'm going to

00:56:27go rent out a Redbox in the last couple of months, would struggle to get any anything.

00:56:33A lot of them have been shut down and now it's it's done.

00:56:36RIP Redbox.

00:56:37So what's happening to all the DVDs and the Redboxes today?

00:56:41You just go and you break the box open and you take it.

00:56:44So Alex is like, do looting.

00:56:46The problem is that all of the technicians who who manage those things have all been

00:56:52grounded because all of their cars are getting repossessed.

00:56:55Because that's brutal.

00:56:57They haven't been paying the bills for the cars that they rent.

00:57:00So like like Walgreens, 7-Eleven, everybody's just unplugging them.

00:57:06And I think you're just going to start seeing more of these unplugged and just

00:57:09sitting there. And I'm not saying you should loot them, but that's it.

00:57:14That's where that ends.

00:57:15You don't lose. No, but I'm not saying you should just don't don't do that.

00:57:21I can hear the footsteps of the lawyers coming down the hallway right now.

00:57:25Huh? Where is she?

00:57:27So do you think this is just straight up streaming killed Redbox?

00:57:30Is this that's where I'm at, because like when you read Yonko's piece, this all

00:57:35happened. The like the big turning point for Redbox was when in 2021, when

00:57:41everybody said we're going to stop releasing everything physically and putting

00:57:45it in theaters and we're just going to do it all.

00:57:47Wait, just streaming.

00:57:48What was the other thing going on in 2021?

00:57:50You know, but see, that's the thing.

00:57:54If they had if they had said like there's a lot of the people who are buying who

00:57:57are renting these were in places where they don't have streaming and they would

00:58:01also like to watch whatever King Kong and Godzilla are getting up to in 2021.

00:58:06And those just weren't coming out.

00:58:08So they couldn't rent anything.

00:58:09So nobody was renting from Redbox because none of the studios were releasing the

00:58:13stuff. Right.

00:58:14But I think I think you can make a extremely compelling argument that covid

00:58:19killed Redbox more so than you can make one that streaming.

00:58:23No, because how is covid going to do it?

00:58:25Everybody's at home anyway.

00:58:26These things are outside.

00:58:27We didn't go outside for two years.

00:58:29You still have to go to the grocery store where the Redbox is.

00:58:32There was a there was a Redbox at the CVS in the woods.

00:58:36People people gazed at it and then they thought, I don't have a DVD player.

00:58:43I mean, there is that.

00:58:44Well, and part of Redbox's thing was access for people who didn't have great

00:58:49access to streaming, either because it's expensive or because they lived in places

00:58:53without great connection or like there was a there was a real this is a

00:58:57complement to streaming or like a this is a thing you do when you can't do

00:59:01streaming, not this is a real competitor to streaming.

00:59:04And so, Alex, to your point, I think as fewer and fewer people didn't have

00:59:08streaming, it's probably true that Redbox didn't fill that need for as many

00:59:13people. But the problem for me is this is also just spectacular corporate

00:59:18mismanagement. This company took on a mountain of debt to buy a company it

00:59:22probably couldn't afford chicken soup for the soul.

00:59:25I think it was like three hundred and twenty five million dollars in debt to

00:59:27buy Redbox banking on.

00:59:29We're going to make a ton of money back one DVD at a time, made a bunch of weird

00:59:32decisions and it all fell apart.

00:59:33So part of me is like maybe streaming killed Redbox, but I don't think we ever

00:59:37actually got to see streaming kill Redbox because I think like chicken soup for

00:59:40the soul killed Redbox.

00:59:42Yeah, well, Redbox was like not doing great when when chicken soup for the soul

00:59:47bought it because it just it just on a SPAC, it just got in public via SPAC,

00:59:51which can we just sorry, there's there's like all of that.

00:59:57This company is called Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, right?

01:00:01Like you already know, like this started as a set of books for live, laugh, love

01:00:06moms. Right.

01:00:07And they're like, we're a media empire now.

01:00:09At no point we're funded.

01:00:11We should change our name like you already know that this is just a bunch of

01:00:15weird like zombie media, zombie ideas.

01:00:20Like, I'm glad you brought this up because this does violate my theory that you

01:00:23can't survive a bad name for your company.

01:00:26And Chicken Soup for the Soul is very much a bad name.

01:00:31Yeah, right. Sorry.

01:00:32Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.

01:00:34When did this book come out?

01:00:35Sentence people say.

01:00:36The fact that I'm Googling Chicken Soup for the Soul as a book is going to be so

01:00:39bad for me.

01:00:40So this is technically spun.

01:00:41They spun off from the Chicken Soup for the Soul for the books because that's

01:00:45like the book.

01:00:45They don't even have the books yet.

01:00:47They spun that off.

01:00:48This is a whole other company.

01:00:51Yeah, this is the entertainment company.

01:00:52The books are Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC.

01:00:56All right, we gotta, I gotta end this.

01:00:58Also the worst website I've ever seen in my entire life.

01:01:02But it's just that you can't survive a bad name, especially when you're not even

01:01:05connected to the live, laugh, love books anymore.

01:01:09Yeah.

01:01:10You just out there buying companies for too much debt that are already been half

01:01:13killed by COVID and streaming and thinking this will work.

01:01:17And it didn't.

01:01:18Can I say that the book company has Chicken Soup for the Soul for kids?

01:01:24It's good.

01:01:24Okay.

01:01:24That's enough.

01:01:25Next lightning round item.

01:01:27If you start a company, don't call it Chicken Soup for the Soul.

01:01:30I think that is probably the lesson.

01:01:32And also if your entire company is distributing physical media, you, you,

01:01:36you should have plan B.

01:01:39Well, they did.

01:01:40They had a big, long plan for how to go digital with all of this.

01:01:44And Redbox has been trying to do a streaming service for like 10 plus years.

01:01:49Right.

01:01:49But then you're just, you're just, you're just Netflix.

01:01:52Yeah.

01:01:54I mean, that's what Paramount's trying to do.

01:01:55And we didn't yell at them for that.

01:01:56So.

01:01:57Well, I can't wait to see what Chicken Soup's plan to go into the cloud is.

01:02:02Chicken Soup in the cloud for the soul.

01:02:03Larry Ellison buys Redbox.

01:02:06Do you think we're good?

01:02:08As, as long as they get off-prem and I would point out that Redbox, one of the

01:02:13single most on-prem businesses of all time, Redbox in the cloud, so many

01:02:18prems, think about it.

01:02:19What if a Redbox put in the cloud?

01:02:21All right.

01:02:21What's next, Alex?

01:02:24Uh, the next is, I, I never pause when I'm watching TV.

01:02:28I learned because I don't get pause ads.

01:02:30Do you guys get those?

01:02:32When you're just watching a show and you're like, I gotta go to the bathroom.

01:02:34So you pause it on.

01:02:35Amazon prime is the one I noticed it on the most, but I think there are other

01:02:37streaming services.

01:02:40Sling TV is now doing it.

01:02:41That's the big news this week.

01:02:43Um, I was like, what is a pause ad?

01:02:45Oh, I'm watching TV.

01:02:47Wrong is what I learned from all of this, but basically pause ads happen when you

01:02:52pause something and then it just decides to display an ad while you're going to

01:02:56the bathroom.

01:02:58Exactly what you want.

01:02:59Sling TV is now doing it, but they also have a little thing at the bottom saying

01:03:03you can go turn this off, which prime and for free, you just go to the settings

01:03:08and turn it off, uh, which is different than what prime and Hulu are doing.

01:03:13So good on you.

01:03:14Sling like bad on you.

01:03:15Sling, but also good on you is more and more of these companies move into like

01:03:20ad tiers, right?

01:03:22Pay money, but still have ads, which is what they all are now.

01:03:24Um, the desire to get more money is going to result in more and more ads being

01:03:29more and more, but you can just see it coming.

01:03:30It's a tsunami of weird ideas.

01:03:32Uh, and they're just out of space.

01:03:35Like the goal, we get like a right rail of just ads.

01:03:38Dude, you can already get a free TV that is, uh, has a physical rail of ads.

01:03:46It's literally a thing.

01:03:47So I will say, I think pause ads are fine.

01:03:50Like in terms of finding ways to show giant ass ads on my TV in a way that is

01:03:56non-interruptive, this is the best one they've ever invented because it's like,

01:04:00if I'm pausing my TV, who cares?

01:04:04Like, what do I want to see on the TV?

01:04:06It's do I care if it's a frozen, like moving shot of someone's face or if

01:04:12it's like a Toyota ad, I don't care.

01:04:14I think it's like, fine.

01:04:16I'm getting up to leave the room anyway.

01:04:18Like that's why I paused the show.

01:04:20I think it's like when you're having like a phone call, right?

01:04:22Like somebody calls you and you're like, Oh, I need a pause.

01:04:24And then it's like, it's going to play a video.

01:04:28There's sound.

01:04:29I feel very differently.

01:04:30Yeah.

01:04:32Most of the Amazon ones at least are just like a static image that is just like

01:04:36you, you press pause a Mr.

01:04:37And Mrs.

01:04:38Smith and a thing pops up.

01:04:40That's just like Jeep and then just freezes for as long as you need it to.

01:04:45Uh, and I think that's fine.

01:04:46Do you know what I hate?

01:04:48I'm just going to complain about ads for a minute here and then we can move on.

01:04:50Is there's now a thing that happens on Hulu and probably some others, but I

01:04:55noticed that the most on Hulu where at the beginning of a show, it will ask you

01:04:58to choose your ad experience.

01:05:00It's like, which Charmin ad would you like to watch?

01:05:03Uh, and we've gotten to the point now where Anna, my wife will sit there and

01:05:06yell at the TV.

01:05:07I don't care.

01:05:08And I'm always like, Anna, that doesn't accomplish anything.

01:05:10And she's like, but I don't care.

01:05:13And it'll like linger there for 10 seconds.

01:05:14Then if you don't do anything, it'll just choose for you and then play the whole

01:05:18ad anyway.

01:05:19And I'm like, no, if you're going to make me watch ads, you pick, don't make me do

01:05:23the work to pick my own ads.

01:05:25I agree with that.

01:05:26Use your damn algorithms and show me the ads.

01:05:28Use AI to collect more data about you unless you generate more data, David.

01:05:32Apparently it costs money to go from on-prem to the cloud.

01:05:35Drives me nuts.

01:05:36But if I, if I could choose between like in, in like dynamic interstitial ads and

01:05:42pause ads, give me pause ads every time.

01:05:44The problem is it's both.

01:05:46And it's going to be a bunch of other stuff too.

01:05:47And they're, they're just going to send you that way.

01:05:50It's, it's coming.

01:05:51All right.

01:05:52One more.

01:05:53Oh, in the streaming lightning round.

01:05:56Do you want to talk about it?

01:05:57Well, actually, let me do it.

01:05:59I'll do it this way.

01:06:00Okay.

01:06:00Uh, all right.

01:06:01I want to call out one more that isn't technically streaming, but I think is

01:06:04really interesting for our lightning round of video over the internet, uh, which is

01:06:09Adam Missouri, who runs Instagram, uh, put out a video this week where he's like,

01:06:13I just want to make it clear.

01:06:14We're not, we're not going to do long form video, which is interesting

01:06:17for a number of reasons.

01:06:19Uh, one, he was like, the whole point of Instagram is to connect you to your

01:06:21friends.

01:06:22So when you like open a friend's video and then you're like in reels by accident,

01:06:26and then you're in reels for accident for two hours, he's like, that's great.

01:06:29That's what we want.

01:06:30Um, because you are more likely to share a short video with your friend and then

01:06:34they'll watch it and they'll end up in the wheat, the reels rabbit hole and they'll

01:06:38share some videos.

01:06:39And he's like, that's great.

01:06:40Long videos.

01:06:41You won't watch all the way through and you definitely won't share them.

01:06:44And they've apparently measured this and they know this and calls it a symbiotic

01:06:46relationship between connecting your friends and short videos, which is

01:06:50interesting on its face.

01:06:51The second thing that's interesting is that Instagram is super tried to do long

01:06:54form video and compete with YouTube before it was called IGTV.

01:06:57I went to the IGTV launch.

01:06:58It was one of the weirdest days of my entire life.

01:07:01And this was the previous administration of Instagram.

01:07:03This was not in the series Instagram.

01:07:04This is like the previous leaders of Instagram, but they tried, they were like,

01:07:07Oh, we'll just be YouTube now.

01:07:09And they utterly failed.

01:07:11And now they, they, you know, they were like, we'll be tick tock now.

01:07:14And they've succeeded.

01:07:15And tick tock is like, we'll be YouTube now.

01:07:18And I don't know how that's going, but it's interesting to see Instagram be

01:07:21like, huh?

01:07:22No.

01:07:23When in fact, all of these streamers have to compete with reels and YouTube

01:07:28and like YouTube is growing fast.

01:07:29It's on TVs actually.

01:07:31So it's interesting to see all of this other action happening.

01:07:35And then Mr.

01:07:35Area being like, no, we're going to, we're staying right here.

01:07:38Short form video.

01:07:39I think it's the right call.

01:07:42And I will say that I think you're describing that, that like symbiotic

01:07:44thing makes perfect sense to me.

01:07:46And anecdotally it feels true, right?

01:07:48That like the idea that I'm a going to sit here and watch one single 30

01:07:53minute video on Instagram, just send it to a friend, right?

01:07:57It just feels preposterous.

01:07:59Right.

01:07:59And I think like, I think all the time about like, when you talk to people

01:08:02about the, the act that you do on tick tock, it's scrolling, it's not viewing.

01:08:08Like the thing that you do on tick tock is flip channels.

01:08:10That is more important than what is actually on the screen that you're viewing.

01:08:14It's, it's the activity that is the thing, which is what's different from like TV

01:08:20or even YouTube, which is less of a scrolling thing, but YouTube is becoming

01:08:23more scrolly with shorts and stuff like that.

01:08:25Instagram is, has always been scrolly.

01:08:27And I think trying to undo that and be like, this is now a destination that

01:08:32you're going to spend a half hour at a time without touching your screen.

01:08:35I think it was just never going to happen.

01:08:36It's also like a much harder thing to sell ads against, which is, I think

01:08:40a reason it makes a lot of sense.

01:08:41It's really easy to sell ads that are a video between two other

01:08:44videos that you're scrolling on.

01:08:46And this, this just feels, this feels very obvious to me, except that these

01:08:51companies usually can't help themselves from all trying to be each other.

01:08:53So to hear Adam just kibosh it entirely was pretty interesting.

01:08:57It's also funny because it's the money like YouTube makes a lot of money and

01:09:02they're like, we're not going to make that money, which is super YouTube

01:09:04just has no competition.

01:09:06It is the place for long form video on the internet, which is weird.

01:09:11Well, it's a place for independent long form video, right?

01:09:14Like, like it is effectively the VHS tape of, of the modern era where it's

01:09:19just like, Hey, or cable access.

01:09:21It's just like, Hey, I need a platform.

01:09:23I don't want to go make a deal with David Ellison.

01:09:26This is what I do.

01:09:27I put it, I just put it on YouTube.

01:09:29Like functionally, that's what YouTube is becoming.

01:09:31And, and it's getting more and more like that, even though it's UI

01:09:35and stuff, isn't like that.

01:09:37And I think it makes sense.

01:09:38Well, but a really weird thing is that you can just like rent

01:09:41Paramount movies on YouTube.

01:09:42No one does it, but you can just be like, I'm going to rent mission

01:09:45impossible.

01:09:46Yeah.

01:09:47You can subscribe to streaming services through YouTube.

01:09:49Yeah.

01:09:49You can watch movies on cable access in the olden times too.

01:09:53Like, and I think Instagram to me is more like, now I'm going to go just

01:09:58completely switch up the analogy and, and say that Instagram is kind of like

01:10:02the drive through margarita bars.

01:10:05I don't know if you, they're in Texas and they rule.

01:10:07I was going to say that I got to move to Texas.

01:10:10Yeah.

01:10:10That's like, you see those in Louisiana and Texas.

01:10:12And it's like, yeah, you drive through, you get your, your beautiful treat.

01:10:15You drive home.

01:10:16You have, it's like, bam, bam, you're done.

01:10:18And it feels like long form video is like, what if we did fine dining at the

01:10:23drive through margarita bar?

01:10:26So it's like, what if you went to Sonic, but your meal was a hundred dollars?

01:10:30And it's like, that's not, that's not the plot of the bear.

01:10:32I just serve the sandwiches out the side window.

01:10:38Just isn't that the bear people love the bear Instagram.

01:10:44You could be the bear.

01:10:45All right.

01:10:46That is where we need to end this entire look.

01:10:50If you know the people who run chicken soup for the soul entertainment, bring

01:10:52them to us.

01:10:53I have a, I have a number of questions.

01:10:55What kind of zombies are they?

01:10:56All right.

01:10:56That's it.

01:10:56We got to take a break.

01:10:57We'll be back with the actual lightning round.

01:11:03Okay.

01:11:03We're back.

01:11:04We are way over.

01:11:05Just like bananas over.

01:11:07It's, you know, it's the summer.

01:11:09Every time we think we have nothing to talk about, we have a lot to talk about.

01:11:11That's how it goes.

01:11:12But we got to do this lightning round.

01:11:13Quick lightning.

01:11:15So you hear what I'm saying?

01:11:17Yeah.

01:11:17All right, David, what's yours?

01:11:19Okay.

01:11:20I have great news.

01:11:20My lightning round is several gadgets and an entire lineup of accessories.

01:11:24Does that, does that seem good?

01:11:25Are we excited?

01:11:27Uh, oh, and it's, it's two different companies involved.

01:11:31Well, it's a company inside of a company.

01:11:33Uh, so once upon a time there were smartphones.

01:11:36Uh, no.

01:11:37So CMF, which is the sub brand of nothing, uh, which is an insane sentence to say

01:11:43all that, uh, launched a bunch of stuff this week, uh, a new set of earbuds, a

01:11:49new smartwatch, and I would say by far most interestingly, a new phone, uh,

01:11:54called the CMF phone one.

01:11:56It's $199 Android phone.

01:11:59Uh, that basically lets you replace the back of the phone with a couple of

01:12:05different accessories and different colors, or add like a lanyard.

01:12:09What's the other one?

01:12:10A wallet you can put on.

01:12:11And I think there's one that's a kickstand that you can just stick

01:12:14on through an accessory port.

01:12:16Uh, by all accounts, it's kind of a like mid rangy Android phone, but it looks

01:12:21awesome.

01:12:22It's orange, it's 200 bucks.

01:12:23And this is for some reason, the Android phone I have been most excited

01:12:27about in a very long time.

01:12:29Like nothing is out there being like, we're going to make tech more fun again.

01:12:32This is the most interesting thing in that mold that I think nothing has ever

01:12:38done.

01:12:38And it's a $200 Android phone.

01:12:40And I'm very excited about it.

01:12:41Like it rules.

01:12:43Yeah.

01:12:43I just like, what if, what if we tried new things, right?

01:12:46Like I really spending all that time with the books, Palma has gotten me

01:12:50like obsessed with this idea that what if you took a phone and just tweaked two

01:12:54things about it?

01:12:54Like what this, if we, if we take this form factor, we're all obsessed with

01:12:57and just turned it a little, can you change that?

01:13:00And that one of those is like, what if the screen folded?

01:13:02One of them is like, what if it was the ink?

01:13:04And one of them, like I've been obsessed with modular phone ideas for forever.

01:13:07And I really continue to think there is something to like, what if you could

01:13:11make your phone several different things.

01:13:14Oh, overtime.

01:13:16And this is such a cool version of that.

01:13:18And they did a really like Ikea ish thing here where it has some like exposed

01:13:22screws and you can actually open up the back of your phone and see the inside of

01:13:26your phone.

01:13:27It's just, it just seems fun.

01:13:29And again, it's like, it's a, it's $200 like, yes, more of this, please.

01:13:33It's weird because what you want is what you would expect is that the phone parts

01:13:37of the phone 15 years into phones more would be a commodity by now, right?

01:13:45Like an Android phone should just be a commodity.

01:13:47And then the way it looks and works and feels in your hand, and it's, that just

01:13:50hasn't played out for, for a million reasons because of carriers, because of

01:13:53competition, because Google, whatever it is, uh, e-sims, like whatever you think

01:14:00has restricted this market from being competitive and modifying the Android

01:14:05part.

01:14:05It's happened with Android parts, like with the other parts of Android phones,

01:14:09like cameras that go into Android phones are now everywhere.

01:14:12The sensors are everywhere.

01:14:13Android runs everything.

01:14:14But like the phone thing that hasn't happened.

01:14:17You're totally right.

01:14:18Uh, at least the United States, we're going to have, we're going to have

01:14:21listeners in other countries, pretty good.

01:14:22Like India and China.

01:14:24We'll be like, no, this, this is pretty competitive out here.

01:14:26Um, but this is like one of those things where I was like, Oh, if only we had a

01:14:30little competition, we'd have way more ideas like this.

01:14:32Yep.

01:14:32Um, it is cool.

01:14:33I'm assuming that it is a very slow phone because it's $200.

01:14:38Yeah.

01:14:39But I, like, I saw a bunch of reactions from people that were like, they, people

01:14:43were, I got a bunch of people asking me, like, is this a good reading device?

01:14:46Cause it has a, it has an OLED screen.

01:14:48Uh, it has a, I think 5,000 milliamp battery, which should last a while.

01:14:52Uh, it'll run Android apps.

01:14:54And then I saw a bunch of people who were like, this is going to be a

01:14:56kick-ass gaming handheld.

01:14:58And to me, it's like, this is, this is the stuff, right?

01:15:00Like we don't, what if we didn't have one device that we demanded to do

01:15:03everything, but instead we could just buy these things that are $200 and

01:15:07actually just like sort of push them towards one use case or another.

01:15:12And instead it's like an overlapping Venn diagram of things that look like phones.

01:15:15And I think that's super fun.

01:15:17I like that more.

01:15:18I'm going to buy the hell out of this thing, but also the earbuds and the

01:15:22watch also both look pretty cool.

01:15:24And the earbuds in particular, uh, yeah, really great.

01:15:29Like total, I love a little pointless fidget spinner of a dial on a case.

01:15:33Like good job, CMF.

01:15:35And the ones last year, if I remember correctly, were better than we expected

01:15:40for something pretty cheap.

01:15:42I think these are like, these are yeah.

01:15:45$59 they're cheap.

01:15:47And for a pair of kind of AirPods Z looking things, uh, by all accounts,

01:15:52they've sounded pretty good in the past.

01:15:54So I'm, I'm pretty optimistic here.

01:15:55I'm very, I will say it was surprising to me that this week we got to kind

01:15:59of AirPod knockoffs and nothing was the one that didn't have LEDs in it.

01:16:07You're going to change AirPods.

01:16:08What's the first thing to do?

01:16:09You had LEDs.

01:16:10Yeah.

01:16:10All right.

01:16:10I'll do mine quick.

01:16:11And then Kranz.

01:16:12We should end with yours.

01:16:13Cause yours, you should end on outrage basically.

01:16:15Uh, so I'll just pick one.

01:16:17I had two, but I'll just pick one.

01:16:18You know, we're paying a lot of attention to AI and copyright.

01:16:21Like I think it's kind of a house of cards and there's lots and lots of lawsuits.

01:16:25Sarah Silverman is suing, uh, AI companies.

01:16:28There's the, the record labels are suing Suno and Udio, which are AI companies.

01:16:33The New York times is suing open AI on and on and on.

01:16:37The one that I thought was really interesting and kind of like a long shot

01:16:40was a bunch of developers sued over GitHub co-pilot because it can

01:16:45obviously spit out code.

01:16:46And this is like the main thing that people have been excited about with AI.

01:16:49Most of their claims got tossed out this week, except for the one that said

01:16:52they're violating the open source licenses, which is a really weird circle.

01:16:59Uh, so they were like, look, the GitHub co-pilot can just spit out code.

01:17:02They trained on a bunch of our code.

01:17:04They didn't have the copyright to that code.

01:17:06Uh, that code is copyrighted and that's copyright infringement.

01:17:10Like pretty straightforward.

01:17:11The judge is like, none of that makes any sense.

01:17:12This isn't what's really happening.

01:17:14Interesting precedent.

01:17:15And then they said, but it is true that there were software licenses for that

01:17:20code, open source software licenses.

01:17:22They didn't abide by them because the code they spit out, uh, should

01:17:25have the same licenses.

01:17:26That's how open source licenses work.

01:17:28So now we might have it weird open source legal battle over AI and not a

01:17:32copyright legal battle over AI, which is equally weird because all of those open

01:17:36source licenses absolutely depend on copyright law because that's what they

01:17:41are, their licenses to copyrighted work.

01:17:43So there's just this weird knot of weird, of like copyright law

01:17:47problems happening with this one case.

01:17:50And if you're a really optimistic AI person, you say, look, it was fair use.

01:17:54Yeah.

01:17:54Like all these claims got thrown out.

01:17:56If you're very negative, you say, well, that was just a weird one.

01:17:59And the, the big ones to come are still going to define how this

01:18:04whole industry survives or thrives.

01:18:06Does it feel like that's where all of this is headed that we're, we're starting

01:18:09with kind of a hundred different versions of the same fight and what we're going

01:18:13to end up with is like two of the most consequential ones, and then that will

01:18:17percolate out because it does feel like, I mean, we've talked a lot about a lot

01:18:21of these lawsuits and they're all different, but they're all also kind of

01:18:23the same and you wonder if we're going to get to a point where everybody decides

01:18:28like, okay, let's, let's figure out what we're actually fighting about and then

01:18:30fight about that instead of fighting about like a hundred variations of that

01:18:35thing.

01:18:36Well, this is America, Jack.

01:18:39Like, no, it's going to just be chaos.

01:18:41Like that's, that's the way our system is designed to work is like, there isn't

01:18:47yet a king of America.

01:18:49I mean, there is now.

01:18:50Yeah.

01:18:51Soon, soon there might be.

01:18:53Um, uh, but the, the notion that there's just some definitive answer or that

01:18:59everyone will quit their whining.

01:19:02So the New York times can get through, it's not going to happen.

01:19:04So what you're going to get is this like mishmash of precedents until Congress

01:19:08passes a law that unifies all these precedents into like a regulatory

01:19:11framework.

01:19:12Seems unlikely.

01:19:13Or there's a Supreme court case that, uh, I don't know, throws out 50 years of

01:19:18precedent for no reason.

01:19:19That's the, they love doing that.

01:19:21And you just have to like work through the process.

01:19:23But in the meantime, everyone's just going to take their shots.

01:19:26And I think one of the things that's interesting is like, there are so many

01:19:29shots and they're all kind of weird, right?

01:19:32They're all just like picking off at the edges.

01:19:34But again, I've been saying like only one has to like go through for the bottom to

01:19:38fall out and these companies have to pay.

01:19:40And the thing you're saying is they're all kind of the same case.

01:19:43It's all the same argument.

01:19:44You took our stuff without permission, whether or not you need that permission

01:19:47is like the thing that makes the internet go.

01:19:51In like the realist way.

01:19:53And so if you change the boundaries of what you need permission for, uh, to use

01:19:57or reuse or remix or sample or whatever, you kind of change the economy, the whole

01:20:02economy changes around it.

01:20:04Uh, which is why it's kind of wacky that it's just a bunch of shots.

01:20:07Like who knows?

01:20:09Yeah.

01:20:09But this one in particular is interesting because it's going to end up being an

01:20:11open source contract case.

01:20:14And we haven't had one of those in a very long time.

01:20:17Okay.

01:20:18That was mine.

01:20:18Alex, bring us home with some pure outrage.

01:20:21Yeah.

01:20:21Some pure outrage.

01:20:22So do you guys remember the, what is it?

01:20:25The unofficial Apple weblog?

01:20:28Yeah.

01:20:28To, uh, I used to work, I worked at Engadget and they were our sister site.

01:20:31Yeah.

01:20:32They were your sister site.

01:20:33To all, it was like old school.

01:20:34One of the original Apple blogs used to love reading it.

01:20:37One of my best friends used to work there.

01:20:40One of my best friends got very upset this weekend because, uh, Christina Warren

01:20:46former, former, she works at GitHub now and she was suddenly writing at Tua again.

01:20:52She herself wasn't, her byline was appearing at Tua, uh, just next to a bunch

01:20:58of like clearly AI written schlock.

01:21:00And, uh, she wasn't the only one.

01:21:02A lot of former reporters from Tua had their bylines appear on the

01:21:06site because earlier this year, it seems to have been acquired from Apollo.

01:21:11It left the Yahoo land for Apollo.

01:21:15And, and then Apollo seemed to have sold it to someone else.

01:21:18And that someone else who we still don't entirely know who they are or what they

01:21:21do, we're just filling up, filling up this empty blog with content and allegedly

01:21:28like the, the explanation that they had on their site was on the Tua site was,

01:21:32yeah, we, we don't have any of this content.

01:21:35So we're replicating it with AI.

01:21:36So we don't lose these important archives.

01:21:39That's not how archiving works.

01:21:42It's very good, by the way.

01:21:43It's a very good, like, what if I made some stuff up?

01:21:46Yeah.

01:21:47Just full stop.

01:21:48That's not how any of that works.

01:21:49Uh, people were very upset.

01:21:50Christina Warren was, was among them and she reached out and, and they, they

01:21:56promptly changed the name of her character and changed the headshot.

01:22:00So it was no longer her.

01:22:02And, uh, it's just a big bummer in the world.

01:22:05It's just a bummer that sites are getting picked up and just filled with AI garbage.

01:22:11Um, I think it is particularly a bummer for those of us who've worked at a lot of

01:22:14these smaller sites and stuff.

01:22:15Uh, who, who knows where my byline could appear next?

01:22:20I'm excited to find out.

01:22:22This is like Google did earlier this year, a thing Google normally doesn't do, which

01:22:28is come out and basically say aggressively and clearly that it was making changes to

01:22:35its search algorithms such that this is no longer a good idea, right?

01:22:39Because the reason you do this is you, you buy a domain that has real authority in the

01:22:44hopes that it will still rank in Google.

01:22:46You fill it with nonsense.

01:22:47That nonsense ranks well on Google.

01:22:49You sell a bunch of ads, you make some money.

01:22:51It does work.

01:22:52Like it is, it is a strategy.

01:22:54It's not necessarily a strategy for like half of media online, right?

01:22:59And it, and it, and it works.

01:23:01And Google has been saying aggressively that it is trying to prevent this from

01:23:05working.

01:23:06And yet it pretty clearly seems to continue to work.

01:23:09I just don't know when Google's going to be able to do that because this has been like

01:23:13the, the only difference here is the scale of crappy content.

01:23:17Like somebody would have done this without AI as well, right?

01:23:20They would have hired a bunch of people with no name and said, just write a bunch of

01:23:24content, put it on the site.

01:23:24We've seen that happen before.

01:23:26I think IBT was an example of that.

01:23:28And in this case, it happened to be at AI.

01:23:31It happened to be this early Apple blog full of like well-known tech bloggers.

01:23:36And that's just so terrible, terrible move to make in that case.

01:23:42Don't do that.

01:23:42You want to choose like better homes and gardens.

01:23:46No, they're still around.

01:23:47They're still around.

01:23:47Yeah.

01:23:48But you know, you want to choose something maybe not tech adjacent to do this with

01:23:52if you're going to be gross.

01:23:53It was a weird choice to do it on an Apple blog.

01:23:57I will, I will agree with that.

01:23:58But this is the thing like Mia Sato on our team wrote this great piece this week

01:24:02about the guy behind, I think the company is called Advan, I think is the name of

01:24:07the company, uh, which is the one that did a lot of the AI stuff that became a huge

01:24:12mess at Sports Illustrated.

01:24:13Like this, the internet is so quickly becoming this.

01:24:17And I've been thinking a lot about this, like after, uh, the MTV archives went away

01:24:21and the comedy central archives went away, like speaking of two websites that a lot

01:24:24of people know and trust and would believe if someone bought them and filled them

01:24:28with spam nonsense, like there's just going to be such a long run of this.

01:24:32And it's, it's going to get weirder before it gets normalized in whatever way it's

01:24:38going to look like.

01:24:39To be clear, I don't think Google can stop it.

01:24:41I, yeah, I don't think they can.

01:24:43I, it's not, and that's not because of antipathy towards Google.

01:24:46I think the problem is so hard.

01:24:49And then the internal philosophical reckoning for Google is even harder.

01:24:56So the problem is you have to say a bunch of AI generated sludge is bad.

01:25:01Yes.

01:25:02Right.

01:25:02We're going to not rank it.

01:25:04Sludge that you're charging people $20 a month per person to make.

01:25:07Right.

01:25:08So you're like, okay, you, you just, there are two wolves, you know, it's like, what

01:25:12are you going to do?

01:25:14Like, you have to say the output of your own models is bad at some point.

01:25:18Like that is the task ahead of the search team.

01:25:21And I don't know that they can reckon with it fully.

01:25:23Like, well, and let's be real.

01:25:25Like what are Google's AI overviews for web searches, if not more or less exactly

01:25:30the same thing?

01:25:31Yeah.

01:25:32We'll see.

01:25:33By the way, I've been, um, the overviews have been, uh, they're still, some of them

01:25:37are still very bad.

01:25:38They're also moving them around the pay.

01:25:40I don't know if you've noticed this.

01:25:40I have not.

01:25:41They've they're moving all over the page.

01:25:43Sometimes they're at the top.

01:25:44Sometimes they're in the middle.

01:25:45Sometimes they're at the bottom.

01:25:45Like they're still doing them, but they are, they haven't figured out where they

01:25:50go or when they should appear or how they should look.

01:25:53Uh, and then one of them, uh, David ML from, uh, MKBHD's team and way form and

01:25:59everything else.

01:26:00Uh, he said he posted that the answer to like, how do you check the film in your

01:26:05camera is getting like much worse.

01:26:07Oh no.

01:26:08So it was like, how do you see if there's film in some model of film camera and AI

01:26:12overview is just like, open it up in bright sunlight.

01:26:15Like it says in bright sunlight.

01:26:16Yeah.

01:26:18Uh, and he found it on some Reddit thread, but it's like crazy.

01:26:20It's like, what is going on?

01:26:23You wouldn't know afterwards if the film can't, if the camera is exposed.

01:26:28Uh, this is what happens when you're like the future of all intelligence is Reddit.

01:26:31It's like, is it?

01:26:32Yeah.

01:26:33Uh, all right.

01:26:34That's it.

01:26:34We've we're way over.

01:26:36We're way over.

01:26:38Look, they're all, everything's going to look like AirPods.

01:26:41And then the robots are going to tell you to do dumb shit to your cameras.

01:26:44That's the future.

01:26:45I'm excited for it here at the verge.

01:26:46We know we're going to write about, all right, that's it.

01:26:48That's our chest.

01:26:50Rock and roll.

01:26:53And that's it for the VergeCast this week.

01:26:55Hey, we'd love to hear from you.

01:26:57Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11.

01:26:59The VergeCast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network.

01:27:03Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James.

01:27:06That's it.

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