Nilay, David, and Richard Lawler talk about all of the coming Apple gadgets and software, from the new iPad Mini to the upcoming week of Mac announcements to the many flavors of iOS and Apple Intelligence heading to a device near you soon. Then they talk about the other news in AI, from Anthropic's new computer-using model to the growing set of lawsuits against AI companies. In the lightning round, they discuss the Boox Palma 2, T-Mobile's "lifetime" deals, and the battle over FTC's click-to-cancel rule.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Hello and welcome to Vertcast, the flagship podcast of Jelly Scrolling.
00:00:06We're sorry it's still there, alright?
00:00:09Use your eyes.
00:00:10I'm your friend, Neal.
00:00:11David Pierce is here.
00:00:12Hi.
00:00:13I hate that I know what Jelly Scrolling is.
00:00:15You got in a lot of trouble this week, buddy.
00:00:17I did, and then I was immediately vindicated, and it's been a fun week.
00:00:21I'm excited to talk about this.
00:00:23We'll come back to this in a moment.
00:00:24Richard Lawler is here.
00:00:26Hello.
00:00:27I'm somehow unaware of the massive Jelly Scrolling scandal.
00:00:31Richard doesn't Jelly Scroll.
00:00:32That's one important thing to know about Richard.
00:00:34How do you know Richard doesn't pay attention to stakes-free Apple drama?
00:00:39He doesn't know about Jelly Scrolling.
00:00:43Welcome back, Richard.
00:00:44What a fan favorite, Richard Lawler.
00:00:47My people, they made the request, and we came through.
00:00:52There will be crypto in all of your wallets.
00:00:54It's coming.
00:00:57Richard will give you a Bitcoin if you vote for the Verge cast.
00:01:00It's quantum locked, so it's already there, and it's coming all at the same time.
00:01:04It's a thing.
00:01:05I believe it was Richard who today pointed out, what was it?
00:01:08Starbucks is failing, and some other company is failing, and you're like, these are the
00:01:11two companies.
00:01:12Nike.
00:01:13Nike.
00:01:14Starbucks and Nike.
00:01:15Tell your theory.
00:01:16Say your theory about Starbucks and Nike.
00:01:17Starbucks and Nike, they were both out there just promoting NFTs, and there were lots of
00:01:20companies and lots of brands doing NFT things a few years ago that now are acting like they
00:01:25didn't.
00:01:27But they were out there, and they were doing it big.
00:01:29They were really, really pushing it.
00:01:31I don't think that they are going down now or that they're having the struggles they're
00:01:34having because they did NFTs, but I think that if you look at the companies that were
00:01:38really into it, where the executives looked at NFTs and didn't immediately say, that is
00:01:43nothing and move on, that they had something wrong in their boardroom.
00:01:47Their executives, they weren't focused on what was going on and what their customers
00:01:50really wanted.
00:01:51Right.
00:01:52The NFTs aren't the cause, but they're a symptom of the problem that is causing all
00:01:56these other problems.
00:01:57Right.
00:01:58And the problem is, you have no idea what you make or sell, and you think selling nothing
00:02:01is a functional business.
00:02:02You think NFT shoes are the same as shoes.
00:02:05It's not.
00:02:06Should we make good coffee or the idea of coffee?
00:02:10I think we will sell experiences behind digital tokens.
00:02:14Hey, hey, hey.
00:02:16Don't knock selling experiences behind digital tokens.
00:02:19What is a podcast in our RSS feed except an experience behind a deeply fungible digital
00:02:25token?
00:02:27Never mind.
00:02:28There's a lot to talk about this week.
00:02:31Quite a lot to talk about.
00:02:32There's David reviewed an iPad mini.
00:02:34I would say that as someone who edited that review, it felt like a hostage situation for
00:02:38David.
00:02:39We'll talk about that.
00:02:41There's a bunch of other Apple news.
00:02:43iOS 18.1 is coming out next week with Apple Intelligence, which means Apple has already
00:02:48started seeding iOS 18.2, which has the actual features in it.
00:02:53Very confusing what worked through all of that.
00:02:55Then there's a week of Mac announcements to come.
00:02:57Greg Joswiak is posting at that right now.
00:03:00There's a bunch of AI news as always, including some deeply funny humane news.
00:03:04And then we got a lightning round.
00:03:06All right.
00:03:07But let's start with the drama.
00:03:09Look, every now and again, The Verge gets itself mixed up in a bunch of high stakes
00:03:14drama, journalism, ethics.
00:03:17What are we doing here?
00:03:18And we did that this week.
00:03:19And then David also pissed off a bunch of people by talking about the iPad.
00:03:24So the iPad mini came out.
00:03:26They updated the chip.
00:03:27It supports Apple Intelligence at eight gigs of RAM.
00:03:29David, you reviewed it.
00:03:31You were disappointed.
00:03:32There's no other way to put this.
00:03:33No, that's right.
00:03:35Disappointed is fair.
00:03:36So I have been an iPad mini person forever.
00:03:39I think I've owned two different generations.
00:03:42I bought my wife and my dad iPad minis over the years.
00:03:47This thing is awesome.
00:03:49And I love it and believe in it and have used it many times for many years.
00:03:54Apple shipped this one and I don't know how else to frame it except it did the literal
00:03:59least it possibly could in a way that felt rude.
00:04:05This was not a case of just sort of chip upgrades that make the thing not necessarily brand
00:04:12new but commensurate with the times.
00:04:15Apple gave this a worse version of last year's chip and changed nothing else.
00:04:20And you're supposed to be like, oh, thank God, a new iPad mini.
00:04:24And the thing that Apple knows, and Nathan Edwards, who worked with me on this piece
00:04:28a lot, the thing he kept pointing out is like, Apple knows that if you want an iPad mini,
00:04:32you're going to buy an iPad mini because it's the iPad mini and you want an iPad mini.
00:04:36And that is how Apple has you.
00:04:39It is the most self-selecting device Apple makes.
00:04:43And so why would Apple try if it doesn't have to try?
00:04:46It's just going to do the absolute literal bare minimum and just, here you go.
00:04:55Do you want it?
00:04:56You're going to have it.
00:04:57If not, like, and so I just got to this point where I was like, this thing is, it's not
00:05:01that it's not good, it's just that it's not nearly as good as it could be.
00:05:05And Apple only had to try a tiny bit to make it way better.
00:05:10And it just didn't.
00:05:12And the thing I wrote was like, this feels like an iPad designed by a supply chain, not
00:05:15by a designer.
00:05:17And it's just true.
00:05:19I cannot shake that feeling.
00:05:20And so it is both a good tablet and a deeply disappointing one, which is a very strange.
00:05:26It's a thing we deal with a lot with the iPad, honestly, and frankly, is like, we want the
00:05:30iPad to be more than it is.
00:05:32But what it is, is very good for what it is in a lot of ways.
00:05:35And so we felt this tension more and more.
00:05:37And I feel like with this one, it just tipped the other way for me, where I was like, this
00:05:40is just not, it's just not a good buy.
00:05:42Lots of people are going to buy it.
00:05:43Lots of people are going to like it.
00:05:44But it is not good.
00:05:45Yeah.
00:05:46And it's funny because, you know, the old one will be around on sale for quite some,
00:05:51like in true Apple fashion, you'll be able to get the old one for a minute, right?
00:05:55On some discount.
00:05:56Yeah.
00:05:57And the only meaningful difference is it doesn't run Apple intelligence.
00:05:59And like, is that a meaningful difference to anyone?
00:06:01And will it be anytime soon?
00:06:02Well, especially because the iPad mini in particular is a secondary device.
00:06:07Like almost definitionally, you have another thing if you have an iPad mini, right?
00:06:12Like the iPad maybe can replace your laptop and maybe you want Apple intelligence there.
00:06:19I'm struggling to make the case, but you know, maybe you do the, there's no one who's like,
00:06:24I need my notifications on my iPad mini summarized, right?
00:06:28My travel laptop is my iPad mini is not a sentence people say, yeah, it's just not.
00:06:33And so it's like, yeah, all this stuff that Apple does where it's like, help me write
00:06:36this email is not an iPad mini thing.
00:06:40Like really good Siri might someday be, but, but again, like, but you have your phone.
00:06:46I don't think anyone should buy any Apple products on the basis of Apple intelligence
00:06:50right now.
00:06:51And the iPad mini might be the one that needs it the least at this moment.
00:06:55And so, yeah, I just got to this point where I was like, unless your iPad mini is broken
00:07:00and you are desperate for a new iPad mini, there is no reason this thing is compelling.
00:07:06And it turns out a lot of people disagreed with me about that.
00:07:09Or what is actually true is there are a lot of iPad mini people out there.
00:07:13So, so what's their case?
00:07:15And I guess my question is, what's the problem with this one?
00:07:17So it's using the A17 processor from the iPhone and not the M4 that the other tablets and
00:07:22the laptops use?
00:07:23A17 pro from the iPhone 15 pro, but it appears to be the, like the bend version, right?
00:07:29So it benchmarks slightly below the iPhone 15 pro, and it also has one fewer GPU core,
00:07:38which in both cases suggests that it's basically a chip that came off the manufacturing line
00:07:43for whatever reason, not up to full capacity.
00:07:46And that's like a normal thing.
00:07:47A lot of companies do this, right?
00:07:48Like when they sell you a middle range processor, often it is a sort of imperfectly manufactured
00:07:55version of a better processor.
00:07:57Like that's a super normal thing.
00:07:58People do it.
00:07:59It's fine.
00:08:00But it's just like, this, this brand new product is giving you a worse version of last year's
00:08:05chip in a time when Apple is like, A, telling you that you need all the performance you
00:08:09can possibly get in order to run Apple intelligence, has massively upgraded a bunch of its other
00:08:14iPads.
00:08:15There's just no way to look at this other than it got the worst of the worst.
00:08:19Like literally the part spin.
00:08:21Yeah.
00:08:22Like it's a Chevy with the Cadillac logo on it.
00:08:24Exactly.
00:08:25The Pontiac iPad is just fine.
00:08:27Yeah.
00:08:28So we should talk about the jelly scrolling.
00:08:29Cause I think if people understand the iPad mini got a chip bump and nothing is very compelling
00:08:34and that's why, and the iPad mini has effectively no competition.
00:08:36There's not some like eight inch Android tablet that's crushing it.
00:08:40Right.
00:08:41And the iPad mini has for whatever it's worth, the iPad app library, which doesn't exist
00:08:47on the Android side.
00:08:48Correct.
00:08:49Also pilots use it.
00:08:50I don't know if you knew that.
00:08:51The pilots are out of control.
00:08:52The pilots.
00:08:53And apparently there are like hundreds of millions of pilots out there flying planes
00:08:57directly to Apple stores.
00:08:59Yeah, exactly.
00:09:01Landing right on Michigan Avenue.
00:09:03Outside of the fifth Avenue store instead of people, it's just a bunch of tiny planes
00:09:07lining fifth Avenue to get to the store.
00:09:10Right in like Michigan in the pontoons swimming up to the Apple store.
00:09:15Okay.
00:09:16Don't do that.
00:09:18If you're listening to this and you're like, I should fly my float plane to the Chicago
00:09:23Apple store.
00:09:24I'm just encouraging you not to do that.
00:09:25If you do send us a video because we will put it on our website.
00:09:30That's the opposite of not showing the person running out of the field during the football
00:09:34game.
00:09:37Opposite incentive.
00:09:38All right.
00:09:39So there's whatever the spec bump, the thing that got people really lit up is not you dare
00:09:42to criticize an Apple product.
00:09:44It's that the screen on the iPad mini is notorious for jelly scrolling, which is when you scroll
00:09:52one side of the screen moves faster than the other, which warps everything on the screen.
00:09:57This is one of those things where some people can see it and some people can't.
00:09:59But unlike 120 Hertz refresh, like once you see it, you're done, you're hooped.
00:10:06It's never, it's like motion smoothing.
00:10:08It's like you can ruin someone's life by pointing this out.
00:10:11And do you know who ruined my life?
00:10:12Dieter bone.
00:10:14Dieter.
00:10:15With his 2021 review of the iPad mini in which he spent a long time talking about how bad
00:10:20the jelly scrolling is.
00:10:22And I think he, he either there or somewhere else linked to a test you can do to test for
00:10:26jelly scrolling that actually it just basically moves a thing across the screen so you can
00:10:30see it.
00:10:31And it's a line.
00:10:33And the idea is if the line appears to bend, it means the screen is not refreshing in a
00:10:37uniform way.
00:10:39And once you see it, Holy Lord, can you not unsee it?
00:10:43And you can, you can super see it on the 2021 mini.
00:10:47So yeah, the, here are several things that I know.
00:10:49I know that jelly scrolling was a big problem on the 2021 mini.
00:10:53I know that Apple said in 2021, it's not a real problem.
00:10:57Don't worry about it.
00:10:58Everything's fine.
00:10:59That's you.
00:11:00You can go back and find that.
00:11:01Those are statements Apple gave that was like, yeah, this is a normal thing that happens
00:11:04on screens.
00:11:06Don't worry about it.
00:11:07Like bad response.
00:11:08But that was the response.
00:11:09I also know that Apple this year tried to fix it.
00:11:14They changed the way the display controller works in order to ostensibly refresh the screen
00:11:18more uniformly.
00:11:20This one is better.
00:11:22It is certainly less jelly than the 2021 model.
00:11:27I sat, I mean, I like, so our reviews all went up at nine and at like nine 30, a bunch
00:11:32of like the, the Apple blogs and stuff do the roundups of reviews.
00:11:37And because the jelly scrolling was a tiny low stakes, you know, controversy in 2021,
00:11:44they all are talking about the jelly scrolling.
00:11:45I was the only reviewer of that early batch that said jelly scrolling still existed.
00:11:51And these are, it's a bunch of other like good, smart reviewers, people whose work that
00:11:54I like.
00:11:55So I was like, Oh my God, did I get this wrong?
00:11:56So I went upstairs and got Anna's 2021 mini, uh, grabbed the 2024 mini and sat here for,
00:12:02I don't know, 90 minutes, just scrolling, scrolling, everything I could find up and
00:12:06down.
00:12:07Do you believe your own eyes?
00:12:08That's like, I didn't for like an hour and a half.
00:12:11And then either our own staff, I think it was Chris Welch who posted a link and was
00:12:14like, everybody else disagrees with you, David, are you sure you're right?
00:12:16And I was like, no, uh, that's, that's one of the most in-character Chris Welch things
00:12:22I've ever heard.
00:12:23Yeah.
00:12:24Oh, for sure.
00:12:25Yeah.
00:12:26And it's like, typically when I disagree with like Federico Vatici, it's like, I should
00:12:28internally really think through life.
00:12:31Uh, but I went and looked and like, it is, it is better than it was in 2021.
00:12:37Like you can really see it's, it's like the, the 2021 screen is like a ship on the ocean,
00:12:43right?
00:12:44It's like rolling waves as you scroll.
00:12:46The new one is better.
00:12:47It is, it is meaningfully better.
00:12:49It's still jelly.
00:12:50It scrolls like, and, and the way I think about it is like the, the easiest one to see
00:12:53for me was, uh, you go to the Amazon homepage and it's a bunch of white boxes with like
00:13:00images and texts and stuff inside.
00:13:01And if you scroll quickly, the right side of the box appears to pull down and then up
00:13:06faster than the left side.
00:13:08So it just, it just every, and then it catches up and it, but it's like you're, you're turning
00:13:13a rectangle into a parallelogram and then back into a rectangle as you scroll.
00:13:16And it's not horrible.
00:13:18Like on the 2021 one, Anna has never looked at me and been like, is this scrolling weird?
00:13:22Like it's not ever tell her I'm not going to.
00:13:24So this is the thing, right?
00:13:25It's like, it's not, and even a lot of the reviewers were like, I didn't really notice
00:13:29it then.
00:13:30And I definitely don't notice it now.
00:13:31And that's a fine.
00:13:32And B I think representative of just about everybody's experience.
00:13:35But once you see it, you can't unsee it.
00:13:37And it is there.
00:13:39And the great thing for me was our views ran on Tuesday.
00:13:41The thing started shit.
00:13:42I got 24 hours of people being like, you're a monster who has an agenda against Apple
00:13:48or for jelly scrolling or something.
00:13:50And then 24 hours later, a bunch of people who reluctantly were like, oh no, he's right.
00:13:53There's some jelly scrolling.
00:13:54Some people still don't notice it.
00:13:56Some people see it.
00:13:57I am absolutely confident it's there, but it's also fine.
00:14:01Like don't not buy it because of the jelly scrolling.
00:14:03Well, you have no choice.
00:14:05It doesn't make it better or worse, but also you have no choice.
00:14:07If you're a pilot, you have no choice.
00:14:09You're like, this is what I, this is who I am now.
00:14:10I have to see this parallelogram.
00:14:12I think if you have the things strapped to your thigh, jelly scrolling is not going to
00:14:16be a huge issue.
00:14:17It's just a thought.
00:14:19That's a sentence that only makes sense in the context of aviation and almost in no other
00:14:24context.
00:14:25Yeah.
00:14:26Like as you walk about the subway in New York City, you're like jelly scrolling is an issue.
00:14:32Would you like to scroll up?
00:14:34It's too big for a pocket.
00:14:35So you just kind of wrap it around your thigh.
00:14:37That experience of writing the review that everyone disagrees with and then being fully
00:14:39vindicated by it, uh, much later, the longer it takes, the better it is.
00:14:44I'm just telling you, like you had 24 hours, I'm, I'm reading, they cut vision pro production
00:14:50this week and I'm like, I told you so.
00:14:54So that's the iPad mini.
00:14:56You can get one, scroll away.
00:14:57Let us know what you think.
00:14:58If like motion smoothing, it's the thing you start to see and then you blame us forever.
00:15:03That's not our fault.
00:15:04If you don't see jelly scrolling, don't run the test and just believe that I'm wrong.
00:15:09Like truly your life will be better if you just send me a mean message about how I'm
00:15:12wrong and then move on with your life.
00:15:14Yeah.
00:15:15There's nothing worse you can do for yourself than learn how to evaluate screens.
00:15:19It's really true.
00:15:20This is why Neely has been so ruined.
00:15:22Why am I a cranky Richard for that matter?
00:15:24Both of you are like true.
00:15:25It's a monster.
00:15:26You should not do it.
00:15:27Yeah.
00:15:28Yeah.
00:15:29Why are Richard and I trauma bonded for life?
00:15:32Uh, we can look at screens.
00:15:33Okay.
00:15:34So that's the iPad mini.
00:15:35We can set that aside.
00:15:36But please continue sending David notes about the words jelly scrolling.
00:15:39That's very good.
00:15:41Then there's what's going on with like this next week of announcements to come, which
00:15:45it seems like Apple has very purposefully lined up a bunch of things in a way that I
00:15:52don't want to say it's confusing.
00:15:54It's just noisy, right?
00:15:57Like there's just a lot of Apple noise coming next week.
00:15:59There's Apple intelligence launching.
00:16:01There's a week of Mac announcements.
00:16:0418.2 is in developer beta.
00:16:08If you were a casual, I don't know that you would understand what shipping what's not
00:16:11what works with what, right?
00:16:13Cause there's just going to be this like flood of stuff.
00:16:16And in particular, 18.1 is coming to the phone.
00:16:20So now Apple intelligence really is here, but then you're going to see a bunch of demos
00:16:24of like Jen Moji, which is not only in the developer beta for 18.2, which most people
00:16:28can't get, but on a wait list inside that developer beta.
00:16:32Can you peel this apart for me, David?
00:16:34No.
00:16:35Uh, and I, I honestly, I have, I think that's on purpose, right?
00:16:40Like every time I watch an ad for the iPhone 16 and it's running Apple intelligence, I
00:16:46want to like throw things at my TV.
00:16:47It's so disingenuous at this point to sell this stuff based on look, here's a Siri feature
00:16:53you can't use.
00:16:54But anyway, so I think just to like run down the list of stuff and Richard, you should
00:17:00tell me what I'm missing because I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm missing stuff.
00:17:02Uh, iOS 18.1 is launching for real, like out of beta and onto people's phones on Monday.
00:17:10That's the very first run of Apple intelligence stuff.
00:17:14Some of the like, help me write stuff.
00:17:16Some of the message summaries, which appear to mostly just be funny for hilarious reasons
00:17:21and not actually useful in anyone's life.
00:17:24Did you see the one that's ring notifications and it was summarized as five to 10 people
00:17:27are at your door.
00:17:30Easily the best one.
00:17:31That's very good.
00:17:32That's very good.
00:17:33There, yeah, there's one running around that I think is like, I think it's a, it's a joke,
00:17:37but it's like, it's a text from somebody that's like very busy right now, semi-colon not ready
00:17:41for a relationship.
00:17:42And it's like, well, I got dumped, I guess.
00:17:46But so 18.1 is coming, but 18.2, which as you mentioned, I think is going to be a much
00:17:51bigger change for some reasons we should get into, uh, is in developer beta now, which
00:17:55typically means we're somewhere between a few weeks and a couple of months from shipping
00:17:59for real.
00:18:00I don't know if Apple has promised when that's supposed to be coming.
00:18:03I've lost track of the timeline, but it's basically all supposed to happen somewhere
00:18:06between right now and like spring.
00:18:08So do it that way too well.
00:18:11But 18.2 seems like the real iOS 18.
00:18:15That's what I, this is what I'm getting about by how noisy next week is going to be.
00:18:19We don't know what week of Mac news is coming.
00:18:22We can guess, right.
00:18:23There's been a lot of leaks.
00:18:24I think we're going to get M4 MacBook pros.
00:18:27I think we're going to get this new Mac mini that's in a much smaller case that looks like
00:18:32an Apple TV that maybe some other Macs, but like maybe the SiMac that people have been
00:18:38talking about.
00:18:39I don't know.
00:18:40But like, so there's a week of Mac news to come.
00:18:42So a bunch of Apple noise, which is great.
00:18:45I'm actually, if they do with Apple, if you're listening, if you do a 32 inch iMac, I will
00:18:49buy that thing tomorrow.
00:18:50Just saying Jaws.
00:18:51So that's great.
00:18:52So like dead ahead Mac news.
00:18:54There are new Macs.
00:18:55They look different.
00:18:56At least in the case, the Mac mini will generate some headlines.
00:18:59Then on Monday you get iOS 18.1 is here.
00:19:01Apple intelligence is here.
00:19:04And then what actually people will have on their phones is almost nothing, right?
00:19:09Like truly almost nothing.
00:19:12It's message summaries.
00:19:13A little bit of help me, right?
00:19:15It's a new Siri animation that isn't connected to an actual new Siri.
00:19:19Weird.
00:19:20Yeah.
00:19:21That's just weird all the way around.
00:19:22Yes.
00:19:24So what people also see if they go to any tech website, including our own is a bunch
00:19:27of coverage of 18.2, which is now out, which has the features people want and not just
00:19:32the AI features people want, like big features people want, like alternative browsers set
00:19:37as default, alternative message clients set as default.
00:19:41Other browser engines being able to set web apps on the home screen in the like big sweeping
00:19:47changes to iOS 18.
00:19:49And then also the, the good Apple intelligence features like visual intelligence in Genmoji,
00:19:57like things at chat, GPT integration, the stuff that people thought would be there from
00:20:02the beginning.
00:20:03So that just feels like a lot of stuff to parse out at once.
00:20:07My ongoing theory about Apple intelligence is that the only three features most people
00:20:14like think are cool and get excited about are Genmoji, which I actually think is going
00:20:19to be a big deal.
00:20:20I think like it might be sticky, but I think a lot of people are going to use it in the
00:20:26way that like, I don't know if this has been y'all's experience, but like tap back emoji
00:20:30now or like completely normalized in my life.
00:20:32Like every, everyone I text with uses the tap backs now, which I think is awesome.
00:20:37And like that is the Genmoji is like the next step to that, which I think is going to be
00:20:42cool.
00:20:43Can I just say, I desperately wish email had tap backs.
00:20:45Yes, it is.
00:20:46It is such good messaging UI, like bring it everywhere.
00:20:51Let me like an email, like, and let them see that I liked the email so I can just be like,
00:20:55yep, I read it.
00:20:57Please don't follow up again.
00:20:58Like, we're good.
00:20:59If you ever liked an email, that's fair.
00:21:02Well, no, at least I'm down an email, you know, everybody watched the show, the bear,
00:21:05and then everyone went through the phase where they talked like a Chicago line cook for like
00:21:09a summer.
00:21:10And yes, I heard.
00:21:11The word heard is just an IRL tap back.
00:21:14That's all it is.
00:21:15And that's all I want to do with most of my email is just signify receipt.
00:21:21Yeah, I see what you said here.
00:21:23I have no further reactions.
00:21:27That's it.
00:21:28That's nothing.
00:21:29You are getting nothing else for me.
00:21:30What is the emoji for that?
00:21:31Is it the, is it the face that's not smiling or frowning?
00:21:34It's just the completely neutral faces Dieter.
00:21:39So then what's the, what's the, is it just a, is it just, by the way, that's true that
00:21:43he sent me that emoji more than anyone else in my entire life.
00:21:47Uh, no, I don't think there is one.
00:21:50You just need a, like a check.
00:21:53That's the one.
00:21:54Check is good.
00:21:55I use the raise hands emoji for that a lot.
00:21:56That's horrible.
00:21:57That's like a celebration.
00:21:58No, no, no.
00:21:59That's good.
00:22:00That's what it's for.
00:22:01Yeah.
00:22:02Raise hands.
00:22:03Raise hands can be like, oh, thank you.
00:22:05Or it can just be like, got it.
00:22:07Or it can just be like sick.
00:22:09I'm under arrest.
00:22:10It's just a, it's a sort of like, I'm under arrest.
00:22:13It's just, it's just acknowledgement.
00:22:14That's all it is.
00:22:15If you think raised hands is, I'm so confused.
00:22:18A lot of our converse, I have to rethink a lot of our conversations.
00:22:22Do you think I'm telling you I'm being arrested every time?
00:22:24All right, so Jen Moji tap backs and being arrested are coming to iOS.
00:22:34That's what we're getting.
00:22:35But yeah, anyway, so Jen Moji is, is the first thing I think people are going to care about
00:22:39that is actually like a net new thing.
00:22:41The second one is chat GPT, which I think it remains to be seen if that's actually going
00:22:45to really be baked into iOS in a way that people care about right now, it seems kind
00:22:50of clunky, but it is a thing people will like go find and do on purpose.
00:22:54And then the third one is visual intelligence, especially because of the camera control.
00:22:57So I totally agree with you that like the first sincerely new Apple intelligence things
00:23:04are all in 18.2.
00:23:06And they're also pretty big, complicated things.
00:23:10So I would not be shocked to see this in a dev beta longer than some features we've seen
00:23:15from iOS before.
00:23:16But also the part where 18.2 everywhere, including United States, lets you set default phone
00:23:23and messaging apps is a big change to iOS and that's 18.2.
00:23:27The part of 18.2 where the beginnings of different browser engines in the EU, huge, like earth
00:23:35shattering change to iOS 18.2.
00:23:38Richard, what do you know about how this is actually going to work?
00:23:40Because I'm skeptical of this being actually a big deal in terms of the browser changes
00:23:44in the default changing.
00:23:45Yeah.
00:23:46Like, what does it mean when you do that?
00:23:48Do we know anything?
00:23:49The way that I am reading it is that you will actually be able to have a different browser
00:23:53engine.
00:23:54And because what we've had so far as people, you can have Chrome on your iPhone, right?
00:23:57But it's still Safari underneath.
00:23:59It just looks a little different.
00:24:00But you can if you can actually have your own your own browsing engine, you can have a lot
00:24:04more features.
00:24:05You can enable a lot more things than they are able to right now.
00:24:08Right now, they're limited by what Apple wants to do.
00:24:11I think that those are things that they will be massive, as you're saying a lot.
00:24:14But the things that people might notice, I know, at least in our newsroom, Jen was excited
00:24:19seeing this announcement about the mail app having categories like Gmail has had forever.
00:24:24Yeah.
00:24:25Like there's all we've seen the on device AI scanning, they talked about how that's going
00:24:28to do a child safety thing in iMessage.
00:24:30I think they're going to be a lot more like kind of small features of things that it does
00:24:34on the device now that just haven't been there.
00:24:37And those may be bigger than any of the Apple intelligence features right away.
00:24:41Yeah, I think upgrading the apps people use.
00:24:44Yeah, that's always better than use a new thing.
00:24:47Right.
00:24:48Like if you use mail every day and now mail has new features, you'll be happy.
00:24:51I'm just getting at the idea that iOS 18.2 is going to fast follow 18.1 when it is actually
00:24:58full of huge changes to how iOS works and Apple intelligence.
00:25:04The first real set of Apple intelligence features, I just suspect that one's going to be longer
00:25:09in the future.
00:25:10And then we're going to talk about AI agents and stuff in the second section because there's
00:25:13a bunch of that news.
00:25:14But, you know, the real promise of Apple intelligence is a Siri that is actually smart and can do
00:25:19things for you.
00:25:20And that is a million years away from what I can tell.
00:25:23Yes, it is not.
00:25:25It is not here.
00:25:26We can say that with great confidence.
00:25:29But the thing on the defaults that I can't figure out is I think a the browser thing
00:25:35is very cool in theory.
00:25:37But Thomas Ricker pointed out this morning that it's been nine months and no one has
00:25:42built the browser.
00:25:44So like Google and Mozilla like where you at friends build us build us the better browser
00:25:50prove to us this will actually work.
00:25:53And the second one I really want to know is about messaging apps because I actually think
00:25:55being able to change your default messaging app on iOS could be like massively consequential.
00:26:01But only if you can do SMS and RCS in the US on those things like what this will mean
00:26:08for a lot of people, especially in the EU, is that when you tap a phone number, it'll
00:26:11go to WhatsApp, right?
00:26:12Like that's a that's a big victory for all those people.
00:26:15And I think it's like a pretty neat sort of one to one mapping of features that is just
00:26:20it just makes more sense, right?
00:26:22That is instead of having to copy it and then paste it, you just tap it and it'll go
00:26:26to WhatsApp.
00:26:27That's great.
00:26:28For me personally, and for people in the US, the question is, can I SMS from another app?
00:26:32And I'm assuming the answer is no.
00:26:35And until you can, the default is sort of meaningless.
00:26:39So my theory as to why Apple is willing to do this everywhere, specifically with messaging,
00:26:45is that it actually isn't going to do very, yeah, I've always gives up the ones that it's
00:26:49like fine.
00:26:50Yeah, right.
00:26:51You want to leave?
00:26:52You can leave on us.
00:26:53Yeah.
00:26:54Do you want to switch to a browser engine that doesn't exist or like go use a messaging
00:26:57app that's worse?
00:26:58Knock yourself out.
00:27:01The browser one in particular is interesting because, you know, the Safari team will be
00:27:06upset that I say this because I say it a lot and they're always upset.
00:27:10But Apple has intentionally limited what Safari can do on the phone to keep web apps from
00:27:16competing with App Store apps.
00:27:18That is real.
00:27:19Yeah.
00:27:20That is in the heart of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Apple.
00:27:26Evidence of that is presented and every browser maker will tell you we would love to do more
00:27:32things on the phone browser and let web apps flourish like they have on the desktop.
00:27:37But there's only Safari and Apple has carefully calibrated Safari at exactly the level they
00:27:42need to to keep everyone away until the DOJ woke up and filed a lawsuit.
00:27:48So things like game streaming, Microsoft really wanted to do that.
00:27:52They tried to do it in the web browser, if you recall, and they just kind of couldn't
00:27:55get there.
00:27:56Like it's not compelling.
00:27:57The apps don't feel like real apps.
00:27:59Safari will just like be like, you know what, I'm out of memory.
00:28:02Shut everything down.
00:28:03Like there's a million things that are a problem there.
00:28:06So the idea that Chrome can show up and let you build real web apps inside of Chrome or
00:28:13Chrome will be more powerful, all of that is great.
00:28:16But then the reality of it's still a mobile phone.
00:28:18It still has a battery.
00:28:19It still has a limited amount of RAM.
00:28:21It's still often on a cellular connection.
00:28:24I think those things are real, you know, they're just meaningfully real.
00:28:28And I think that a lot of people are taking a lot of time with it.
00:28:31And then on top of it, who do you really want here?
00:28:33You want Google to show up with Chrome and Google and Apple are currently in a international
00:28:40regulatory dogfight about how much Google pays Apple to be the default and then opening
00:28:45up a new sphere of competition for applications in the app store versus web kit versus blink
00:28:53web apps.
00:28:54I mean, I, that seems like Google would have to give up negotiating with Apple in the future,
00:29:00right?
00:29:01In like a very real way.
00:29:02Do you know what I mean?
00:29:04Like Google's like, screw it.
00:29:06Here's Chrome on the iPhone.
00:29:08You can run web apps in it that are great.
00:29:11This will disrupt the iOS app store.
00:29:14It feels like that is a move that's nuclear enough to foreclose any amount of future Google
00:29:19Apple negotiating, which they need to do because Google is about to be forced to stop paying
00:29:24Apple billions of dollars a year to be the default search.
00:29:28All very complicated.
00:29:29It's essentially like a declaration of war if Google does that.
00:29:32And the thing I keep thinking about is from the search trial, one of the things that Apple
00:29:37was really worried about with Google and their deal was that if Apple didn't set Google as
00:29:43the default, Google had a bunch of apps on the iPhone that were super popular.
00:29:49And it was really worried that Google would just start getting people to use the Google
00:29:53app.
00:29:54And that because it had such a wide surface, like if Google put a banner at the top of
00:29:58YouTube and Gmail and docs and everything else that they have on the iPhone saying,
00:30:04download the Google app and do all of your searching there, it could do that.
00:30:06Like Google could engineer scale in that way, unlike almost any other company.
00:30:12And Apple was really worried about that happening.
00:30:14If they took Google out of the default position in Safari, this is the, this is the inverse
00:30:19of that, right?
00:30:20What Google could say is now you can run full featured Chrome web apps, which have become
00:30:26very powerful in the last few years, uh, as progressive web apps on your phone.
00:30:32Like Google, it could essentially like undo the whole app store model under this new system.
00:30:39And if in a purely competitive world, that is obviously what Google would try to do,
00:30:43right?
00:30:44They say, don't, don't download apps from the app store and give up 30%.
00:30:47Just install the app running on Blink and Chromium because now you can on your iPhone.
00:30:53And that would, that would put these two companies at like incredible odds with each other.
00:30:57But it's also, if there weren't many billions of dollars between the two of them, exactly
00:31:01what Google would do.
00:31:02And that is the heart of the DOJ case against Apple.
00:31:05Right.
00:31:06Totally.
00:31:07The thing that that lawsuit claims at its core is, well, web apps did this to windows.
00:31:15There's a reason they haven't done it to phones and it's not battery life.
00:31:18It's because Apple has kept blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:31:21We'll see.
00:31:22It's like, it's very funny to go from, you can install native web apps and iOS 18.2 to
00:31:26look at this thicket of lawsuits.
00:31:29But that's really what's happening here.
00:31:30Like that thicket of lawsuits is directly impacting how these products are designed.
00:31:34Yeah.
00:31:35And I think it's also, we should just talk about this Tim Cook, a big Tim Cook interview
00:31:40in a Wall Street Journal magazine, because it's a big argument for the, I think his,
00:31:45his quote is best, not first.
00:31:48Yeah.
00:31:49Right.
00:31:50Like he, he's like, we'll make the best products on the first products.
00:31:52And that is in reference to the vision pro, which we should talk about for one second
00:31:56and definitely in reference to AI.
00:31:58Right.
00:31:59He's like, we're not first out of the gate, but we're going to be the best with these
00:32:01over time.
00:32:02These are our big bets.
00:32:03So the vision pro, he basically is like, here's how I use it.
00:32:06I lie flat on my back on the couch and I watch TV.
00:32:09A real quote.
00:32:10Fun fact.
00:32:11That's how Richard watches TV too.
00:32:12And he's like, at $3,500, yeah, at $3,500, it's not a mainstream device.
00:32:17Fine.
00:32:18Right.
00:32:19Like they took a shot on a weird product and whatever.
00:32:22And they did admit there was a VR headset.
00:32:23Fine.
00:32:24They're going to make a cheaper one with AI.
00:32:26It's like, I get that you're saying, you know, you want to be the best thing.
00:32:30And you certainly have the distribution advantage because you have the iPhone.
00:32:34You can just get it in front of more people fastest.
00:32:36But if you looked around, like this week, Anthropic is saying, Claude can now just use
00:32:43computers like there's just a, there's the level of innovation in the industry is like
00:32:50out of control.
00:32:51Like everyone is racing as fast as they can, whether or not that's going to come to anything
00:32:55we should talk about.
00:32:56It's this thing that where Tim Cook is saying, these glimmers of Apple intelligence are evidence
00:33:03that will make the best thing.
00:33:05I'm not, I just, I'm not so sure about it.
00:33:07It's evidence that they're making something now they are sort of, at least in this kind
00:33:11of artificial intelligence race that Google and Microsoft and everyone have been just
00:33:15driving forward over the last, I guess, year, 18 months now.
00:33:19But I think that's the question.
00:33:21Is it any good?
00:33:22Is it what people want?
00:33:23Is it going to do something other than generate a new emoji that you will send to only other
00:33:29people with iPhones?
00:33:30Yeah.
00:33:31I don't know.
00:33:32Is it going to kill your battery?
00:33:33We don't know.
00:33:34That part.
00:33:35Actually, we definitely do not know.
00:33:36Like if you make Genmo jail, they are going to destroy battery.
00:33:38David will soon find out.
00:33:39And also potentially the world.
00:33:41Yeah.
00:33:42I, I don't know.
00:33:43I read a lot of this Wall Street Journal pieces.
00:33:46Like what else is Tim Cook supposed to say?
00:33:48Right?
00:33:49Like, seriously, I don't even, I don't even blame the guy.
00:33:51Like this is, uh, seven months ago, he was telling everybody how he liked to do everything
00:33:57in a vision.
00:33:58Like, this is just what you do.
00:34:00And I think Apple is in a position now where it is forced to try to make the case that
00:34:07this stuff is really great.
00:34:08So Tim Cook is waking is saying he like wakes up in the morning and checks his email and
00:34:12having summaries of his emails as a game changer.
00:34:14Like, I just don't believe that, like maybe having a bunch of emails, slightly better
00:34:20triaged for you is a game changer in your life.
00:34:24I don't think that's true for very many people.
00:34:27Can you imagine if you were an Apple executive and you're like, this email got summarized.
00:34:32Yeah.
00:34:33Tim Cook didn't read my shit.
00:34:34I think, I think Tim Cook can afford an assistant.
00:34:37Like if, if that were the game, if that were truly the game changer that he needed, what
00:34:41has he been doing until now?
00:34:43And why has someone not been summarizing Tim Cook's emails for like, like how much value
00:34:50have Apple shareholders lost?
00:34:52Because Tim Cook insisted on reading every word of every email for the last 10 years.
00:34:56Well, no, he's famous.
00:34:57He's, he's one of the CEOs who's famous for reading customer emails and like forwarding
00:35:00them off.
00:35:01But you can email Tim Cook and like some Apple SVP three layers down the chain will write
00:35:07back to you because he'll, he'll do that.
00:35:09I don't know if he does it the way that Jeff Bezos used to do it, which is forward the
00:35:13email to a deputy with just a question mark.
00:35:16Like just at like all hours of the day and night, which is truly incredible.
00:35:21Yeah.
00:35:22Why am I getting this email?
00:35:23Yeah.
00:35:24Do you think Tim Cook uses enterprise software?
00:35:25No.
00:35:26I'm just asking.
00:35:27Like, has this man ever logged into Concur?
00:35:29No.
00:35:30Do you think he knows his frequent flyer number?
00:35:31He has a plane.
00:35:32I was going to say, I bet he does.
00:35:33I bet he knows his United number.
00:35:36No way.
00:35:37Because Apple famously has like a big thing with United.
00:35:39For people who are not Tim Cook.
00:35:41Apple's famous thing with United is they own a plane and sometimes they say the word United
00:35:46on it.
00:35:47Yeah.
00:35:48That's reasonable.
00:35:49I'm reading this profile and I'm looking at the two big product launches this year and
00:35:55the profile is very much about Tim Cook making big bets.
00:35:57Right.
00:35:58And it's okay.
00:35:59The Vision Pro, whatever.
00:36:00You got to put one foot in front of the other and yes, the Meta glasses exist and yes, the
00:36:05Quest 3S is even cheaper than before, whatever.
00:36:09It's much more like his argument is we will eventually do this best and that will win.
00:36:15And I actually don't know if that is the case right now in these two categories.
00:36:19Well, his argument for the Vision Pro is that they're getting this started for the developers.
00:36:22They're getting the ecosystem kick-started and that these early adopters, the people
00:36:28who are going to make things are getting into it.
00:36:30But I'm not seeing that yet.
00:36:32I'm not seeing the people who are making and using these tools and that's kicking a flywheel
00:36:36of innovation that's going to help them make something that someone else will use years
00:36:40from now.
00:36:41Have we actually gotten anywhere with this $3,500 device?
00:36:44Isn't that also the opposite of the best not first strategy?
00:36:48Yes.
00:36:49Nothing about the Vision Pro suggests best not first.
00:36:52Nothing.
00:36:53$3,500.
00:36:54$3,500.
00:36:55Yeah.
00:36:56Seven out of 10.
00:36:57God damn it.
00:36:58All right.
00:36:59He said one other thing in this profile that I just want to sit with for a second.
00:37:05He said he uses every Apple product every day.
00:37:08Every product every day.
00:37:09That's a quote.
00:37:10Our own Wes Davis tried to figure out how you would do that.
00:37:15Apple makes a lot of products.
00:37:16Wes owns a lot of them, including a $3,500 Vision Pro.
00:37:20I would say that he made a valiant effort and failed because there are too many Apple
00:37:26products.
00:37:28Using every kind of iPad in a single day is not a good idea.
00:37:32It's not just that there are too many Apple products.
00:37:33It's that they overlap in complicated ways.
00:37:38Kevin Cook's thing is he claims to have a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, and an iMac at
00:37:44the office.
00:37:46God help you if you try to use all three of those devices during a single workday.
00:37:51What?
00:37:52That's what kicked me off because I was like, Wes, you should do this story.
00:37:57It's one thing if you say I use one of every kind of product we make every day.
00:38:01I use one Mac, one iPad, one phone, one AirPods.
00:38:04I think that's what he means.
00:38:05Using one product every day and then specifically calling out three Macs is like, oh, you mean
00:38:10every product.
00:38:11Right?
00:38:12Does that include both sizes of the Apple Watch?
00:38:15Both sizes of the Apple Watch.
00:38:18All 15 SKUs of the Apple Watch.
00:38:20Do you think he's like, well, time to switch the Apple Watch with cellular?
00:38:25That's a lot of products.
00:38:28I actually think the evidence is that he doesn't use most of the products most of the time.
00:38:33The number one thing that came up in the comments was, this guy does not use Apple Home.
00:38:36There's no way.
00:38:37Right?
00:38:38No one believes it.
00:38:39No, Tim Cook's a Sonos guy.
00:38:40Let's be real with each other.
00:38:41He's definitely a Sonos guy.
00:38:42I could buy it.
00:38:43Well, Sonos supports AirPlay.
00:38:47Joanna Stern interviewed Craig Federighi at Wall Street Journal Tech Live this week.
00:38:50You can go watch that.
00:38:51She has some Apple intelligence.
00:38:52And two things she said of note related to that, Richard.
00:38:56She asked him about Siri, and he said, I use Siri every day.
00:39:00Siri serves 1.5 billion queries a day, which is interesting and we should come back to.
00:39:05And he said, I use it to open my garage, which is fine.
00:39:10Implies that Craig Federighi has a HomeKit garage door opener, which is challenging actually
00:39:16for a variety of ways.
00:39:18And that he chooses to say, Siri, open the garage every single day instead of just pressing
00:39:25a button.
00:39:28As somebody with two different kinds of HomeKit garage door openers, I love the idea of Apple's
00:39:33SVP of all software going on Amazon and ordering a $30 Miros garage door opener and wiring
00:39:39it into his thing.
00:39:42I love it with all of my heart.
00:39:44And I am absolutely certain that did not happen.
00:39:47I don't know how he's opening his garage door with HomeKit, but that's the way you do it.
00:39:52And I just, I love the idea of him being like, my ecosystem is working while he's like, screwing
00:39:56the thing into the terminals.
00:39:59I wonder if at Apple, when you get like promoted to SVP, instead of getting, you know, a Rolex
00:40:05or a company car or whatever, they just hand you a giant box full of Apple connected gear.
00:40:11And they're like, you have to have this in your house now.
00:40:13Like this is, this is the setup.
00:40:15Yeah.
00:40:16Welcome.
00:40:17Yeah.
00:40:18You're now in charge.
00:40:19You're in HomeKit now.
00:40:20Actually, I, you know, as somebody who runs HomeBridge to bridge a lot of stuff into HomeKit,
00:40:26I know that a lot of the people who work on HomeKit at Apple also run HomeBridge.
00:40:31This is a real thing.
00:40:32Huh?
00:40:33Like a lot of HomeKit engineers are like, yep, we're going to build the plugins to integrate
00:40:37Reigns.
00:40:38It's a real thing.
00:40:40And if you are those people, let us know, because I have a number of feature requests
00:40:42for you.
00:40:43And also I just want to say thank you.
00:40:45I don't know.
00:40:46I don't know that you can use every Apple product every day, but if you are listening
00:40:49to this and you can figure it out, send us your chart.
00:40:52We'll read the chart next week.
00:40:54That's all I really want to say.
00:40:55Tim is mostly an iPad guy, right?
00:40:57In my head, Tim is an iPad guy.
00:40:59Tim has got to figure it out.
00:41:00He's circling things in red and sending PDFs back to people.
00:41:03All right.
00:41:04We got to take a break.
00:41:05Again, if you can figure it out, let me know.
00:41:07We're going to come back.
00:41:08We're going to talk about some AI with Richard, which is going to be incredible.
00:41:11Get ready, Richard.
00:41:13All right.
00:41:14We're back.
00:41:15We're going to let AI drive this segment.
00:41:16It's going to be great.
00:41:17Take it away, Claude.
00:41:18That is actually fun.
00:41:19Maybe I'll do that for the next one.
00:41:20I'll just upload all the stuff in our rundown to NotebookLM and let it make the podcast.
00:41:24And then we'll run it because it makes like a 12-minute podcast.
00:41:27We'll run it at the end of an episode, and people can decide which one they like better.
00:41:30That's actually pretty good.
00:41:31I will say that the chances that that's going to happen is pretty good.
00:41:34I think it's going to happen.
00:41:35I think it's going to happen.
00:41:36I think it's going to happen.
00:41:37I think it's going to happen.
00:41:38I think it's going to happen.
00:41:39I think it's going to happen.
00:41:40I think it's going to happen.
00:41:41I think it's going to happen.
00:41:42I think it's going to happen.
00:41:43I think it's going to happen.
00:41:44I think it's going to happen.
00:41:45That's actually pretty good.
00:41:46I will say that the chances that that is a more evenly paced VergeCast is very high.
00:41:54Yes.
00:41:55More focused.
00:41:56Anyway.
00:41:57Do they have more catchphrases than Neely is really the question?
00:41:59No, absolutely not.
00:42:00So there's a lot of AI news this week.
00:42:03The big theme is that everyone figured out that chatbots aren't going to make them enough money.
00:42:09And so now we have to build robots that can take actions on our computers.
00:42:13Is that about right, David?
00:42:14Yeah.
00:42:15I think there's basically like two big pieces of AI news this week, which is we have to give AI more stuff to do.
00:42:25And then, oh, God, what if we give AI more stuff to do?
00:42:29Let's sue the AI companies.
00:42:31So I'd say those are the two things.
00:42:33So let's just take them one at a time.
00:42:36The biggest news, I would say, in terms of things that got the AI people excited was the new update to Claude, which is Anthropic's chatbot.
00:42:47It's competitor to GPT-40 and Lama and whatever else.
00:42:52It can now use a computer for you.
00:42:54They released a very cool demo video, which is just one of the researchers sitting there.
00:42:59And he basically opens up a spreadsheet and is like, hey, I need you to pull data out of this and put it into an email for me.
00:43:06And it goes through and it clicks around and it says, oh, I can't find this data in here.
00:43:09So it opens.
00:43:10I think it's like a vendor software thing.
00:43:13Searches through that, finds the information, puts it where it is.
00:43:16The idea is that it can actually click around and look at and use your computer and pull data from it.
00:43:22It was actually tracking what it was doing as it was going.
00:43:25So it was saying, like, I hit the page down button and I put the cursor over here and I typed this into the – seems to work very well.
00:43:31It is one demo.
00:43:33And it's not a product that Anthropic is shipping.
00:43:35It's a thing in the API that other people can build on top of.
00:43:38I've already seen someone build an app that can sort of do this on a Mac.
00:43:41Oh, really?
00:43:42Yep, sort of.
00:43:43I will say Anthropic is productizing its AI better and faster than any of its competitors right now in a way that I think is really interesting.
00:43:52But that is the thing, right?
00:43:55That's what everyone is out there trying to build, that it's a more elegant version essentially of what Rabbit is doing with the large action model.
00:44:03I mean, it's the same thing.
00:44:04It just clicks around a web page for you.
00:44:05I mean, is Rabbit doing it?
00:44:06They said they would do it.
00:44:08And they have built something that does something.
00:44:11And some people have tried it.
00:44:12And it does mostly nothing but some things.
00:44:17I'm sorry.
00:44:18Something that does something, and some people have tried it, is the AI industry.
00:44:23Right.
00:44:24Can you actually do anything useful with what they've built?
00:44:26No.
00:44:27Yes.
00:44:28Again, we have the CEO of Rabbit on Decoder.
00:44:30You can listen to it.
00:44:32They're in a very different spot than Anthropic.
00:44:35And we had Mike Krieger, who's the head of product at Anthropic.
00:44:38And your point about they're better at productizing is because they have a great product person.
00:44:42Yeah.
00:44:43And all the AI companies are trying to hire product people.
00:44:47Yeah.
00:44:48I hired Kevin Wheel, who's done a bunch of really interesting product stuff for social companies over the years.
00:44:52This is the playbook now.
00:44:53Everybody's after this.
00:44:54And the first product everyone's thinking of is beyond a chatbot.
00:44:58What can we do?
00:44:59And it appears to be Super Siri.
00:45:03Right?
00:45:04The thing that everyone is trying to build is the ultimate Google Assistant or Super Siri.
00:45:09Or this vision that everybody had when Alexa first hit the scene ages ago, which is you're going to talk to the computer.
00:45:15And the computer is going to do stuff.
00:45:17And then the sort of how underneath this user story no one could do forever.
00:45:23Right?
00:45:24Like, here's what Alexa can do.
00:45:26You can play music and set timers and not much else.
00:45:28Here's what Siri can do.
00:45:29Apparently, open Craig Federighi's garage door.
00:45:32That's what it can do.
00:45:33But then because it can't understand actual language, you're stuck.
00:45:38You have to write every query and match every query.
00:45:42Now you can understand actual language.
00:45:43Now you've got to do the next thing.
00:45:44And then the solution seems to be we'll just have it use a computer to do that for you.
00:45:50And then AI will solve that problem, too.
00:45:52Yeah.
00:45:53And it's actually the I encourage everyone to watch the Anthropic video because it's actually sort of inadvertently a really interesting breakdown of how this tech works.
00:46:01Like, it essentially just goes through and takes a series of screenshots and OCRs the information out of the screenshots and then says, oh, I don't have what I need from this screenshot.
00:46:10But I see I see from the scroll bar I can page down or I see there's a thing over there.
00:46:14Like, the key here is basically taking this thing that people know how to do but is very complicated to teach computers and just breaking it down to a bunch of very simple things, which is like, look for this number next to this name.
00:46:30And if you don't see the name, search for it in this thing.
00:46:33Like, it's actually a bunch of pretty discrete steps.
00:46:36It's just very hard to explain to a computer in an efficient way.
00:46:39But like you said, now that a computer can understand language and images, essentially, all you have to do is figure out a way to keep feeding it language and images.
00:46:48And it can do something with it.
00:46:50And I think, like, the Anthropic video was the most convinced I've been that this is doable because it's like, here's just a bunch of screenshots.
00:46:57And it's like, it's the same thing that Microsoft is pitching with recall.
00:47:01And we've seen from some startups and stuff.
00:47:03Like, if you just turn the universe into a series of screenshots, AI can actually make a lot out of that for you.
00:47:12Well, it's not that far off from the way that autonomous vehicles work.
00:47:15I mean, they're not necessarily looking at things the way that a driver does.
00:47:19But they're taking these pictures many, many, many times a second.
00:47:22Totally.
00:47:23And reacting based on that.
00:47:24And it's just doing this on a computer, which, to some extent, more and less complicated because of the way things are already labeled.
00:47:31Yeah.
00:47:32It is amazing to me how many people building all kinds of AI products I talk to who just want to use the self-driving car metaphor.
00:47:40It's very funny.
00:47:41And I think you're right.
00:47:42It is a really similar problem.
00:47:43It's also a really similar, like, challenge over time to get from, like, very good to perfect.
00:47:49But it is, like, you're totally right.
00:47:51I think that's exactly the right comparison.
00:47:53The really interesting thing on the computer side is self-driving cars can't, like, be recursive in that particular way.
00:48:02The most interesting Clawd demo I saw was Clawd asking itself to generate code to solve a problem.
00:48:08Whoa.
00:48:09You can Clawd with Clawd.
00:48:10So it's like, you're like, do you solve this problem for me?
00:48:12And it's like, okay, the best thing I know how to do is open a web browser, open Clawd, prompt myself, get an answer.
00:48:19And, like, that is really clever.
00:48:22You know, there's all these benchmarks that, candidly, I think are too early in the world of AI benchmarks to mean anything.
00:48:31But they're like, here's a test we ran that humans score 70% on.
00:48:35Clawd is at, like, 7.
00:48:37It's nowhere.
00:48:38But it's twice as good as the next nearest thing.
00:48:43And then Rabbit is like, we're not doing a good job with Spotify.
00:48:49Sorry.
00:48:50I'm going to get another angry email.
00:48:51Who is doing a good job with Spotify?
00:48:52Can you use Spotify?
00:48:53Well, I think we are all at about 7% using Spotify.
00:48:57Spotify is like, it's a podcast.
00:48:59Like, that's not what I wanted.
00:49:02But the idea that a computer will figure out how to use itself is powerful.
00:49:06The idea that the computer can generically use any computer and reason its way to, I should just use Clawd to solve this, powerful.
00:49:14And then underneath it is, I think, just like the industry has to come to grips with the idea that we're not programming computers anymore.
00:49:24Like, an API is the best way to use Spotify.
00:49:28Yeah.
00:49:29Right?
00:49:30Like, there's a lot of tasks where just telling the computer what to do and having it do it deterministically is the correct solution.
00:49:36And we're headed towards a place where a robot taking an infinite number of screenshots of a Windows desktop clicking on stuff is going to support the billion-dollar valuations of the AI companies.
00:49:49And it's like, I don't actually know.
00:49:51I don't know about that.
00:49:52I don't know.
00:49:54It's probably broken, and I don't believe you.
00:49:57Well, this is a good pivot into the Humane stuff, which is the other kind of, I don't know, agent might even be too kind to what Humane is trying to do.
00:50:07I mean, every company is doing this.
00:50:08Microsoft announced some agent-y stuff this week.
00:50:10In response to the Anthropic News and some of the Microsoft News, OpenAI leaked out that it's working on some agent stuff.
00:50:18Again, the future of Siri that they have described is, I'm so sorry for this word, agentic.
00:50:25Yep.
00:50:26Whatever I keep saying.
00:50:27So the future of Siri is agentic.
00:50:29Apple has a different way of building it because they actually have the apps running locally on their operating system, and they control the operating system.
00:50:35So they can do more API layer stuff.
00:50:37But everyone's headed here.
00:50:39And then Humane, sort of like, here they are.
00:50:43You skipped right past that, by the way, but that is Apple's single biggest advantage in all of this, I'm increasingly convinced, is that Apple is going to, with the new Siri, just launch a thing.
00:50:54I think it's either called Siri Intense or App Intense, and basically it allows developers to open up things that Siri can go do inside of their apps.
00:51:03That's the answer, right?
00:51:05The only reason to go do this much more complicated deterministic thing is if you can't convince the world to open up APIs to you.
00:51:14And Apple is maybe the only company that can just tell developers to give it access to stuff, and most of them will do it.
00:51:22We'll see about that.
00:51:24We will.
00:51:25It's possible that I'm wrong, but historically speaking, Apple is the only company on Earth that tells developers to jump, and they jump.
00:51:32Netflix, still not on Apple TV or Vision Pro, or integrated into the Apple TV app or on Vision Pro.
00:51:38True, that is true.
00:51:40There are not many companies as powerful as Netflix in those negotiations.
00:51:43That's true.
00:51:44So I think if Apple can do that, it puts Apple way ahead, because you don't have to solve really complicated AI problems if you just are handed the structured data.
00:51:54Then Siri has to do the beginning and end, which is understand what you want and figure out how to go do it.
00:51:59Make sense of the universe is not part of it, and that is the hard part.
00:52:03But the humane thing is, so there were two bits of humane news this week that I very much enjoyed.
00:52:09One is that humane drastically cut the price of the AI pin from $699 to $499.
00:52:17And if you're saying, David, that sounds too expensive.
00:52:19Is there still a $24 a month subscription?
00:52:21The answer is yes, there is.
00:52:24But they're still here.
00:52:27They're still trying to ship stuff and do stuff.
00:52:29And the other bit of news that has been, it's like kind of news but kind of not news.
00:52:36Om Malik went and met with Bethany and Imran, the co-founders, and saw their operating system, which they call Cosmos, but it's OS at the end, capitalized, because it's an operating system.
00:52:48It's very good.
00:52:49Running on some kind of car dashboard.
00:52:52It was not exactly clear, but the idea was humane now wants to license its AI operating system to other companies.
00:53:02The WebOS story.
00:53:03Yes.
00:53:04That's what I said.
00:53:05This is BlackBerry.
00:53:06It's Palm.
00:53:07It's WebOS.
00:53:08You name it.
00:53:09Yeah.
00:53:10Yeah.
00:53:11And so, A, perfectly reasonable idea.
00:53:14I think there are a lot of bets right now about who the AI operating system is going to be.
00:53:20Wait, is that a bet?
00:53:22I don't get it.
00:53:24Amazon is about to spend an awful lot of money and try to convince you to spend some money on the idea that it might be Alexa that can underpin all of your AI devices.
00:53:34Google, that's what Gemini is trying to be.
00:53:36I mean, that's what GPT 4.0 is.
00:53:39All these companies are going to make most of their money baking their stuff into other products.
00:53:44That is the win here, if you can pull it off.
00:53:47That's what I mean.
00:53:48But that's not an OS.
00:53:50I'm looking at this humane image of what Cosmos, whatever it's called.
00:53:58Cosmos.
00:53:59It's called Cosmos.
00:54:00But the OS is capitalized.
00:54:02You just have to kind of hit it hard.
00:54:03You hit the last Cosmos.
00:54:06It's Reboven, Eli.
00:54:08Oh, my God.
00:54:11I don't want to talk about Reboven at this time.
00:54:14So you look at their block diagram of how Cosmos works.
00:54:16And all they've really done is they've sort of replaced like applications with the word agent and then added like 15 more blocks on top of that that are basically like we hear you speak and then we understand what you want and we go to one of these agents.
00:54:30And the part where you replace the application layer with agents is a big deal.
00:54:36If that's the thing that's going to happen, that is like a 50-year industry-wide project, not a thing you can ship to HP to put in a car, which is kind of what the article says is going to happen.
00:54:49It's very confusing.
00:54:51Maybe.
00:54:52You still need applications.
00:54:54Sure.
00:54:55You still need a Spotify to exist so you can click on it.
00:55:00Yes.
00:55:01As long as you need Spotify to exist, the easiest way to play the music is to pay Spotify money to use the API to just play the music.
00:55:09Rivian's going to get Apple Music.
00:55:11And you're like, cool.
00:55:12And I was like, here's how they're going to do it.
00:55:13You're going to ask Alexa to open a web browser and open Apple Music and click on Apple Music and app.
00:55:19You'd be like, what?
00:55:21Or you can sign a deal with Apple to put the Apple Music app running on the Rivian, which is what they did because that is sane.
00:55:30And there's no reason that you have to give up on the way that we've run computers up until now just because you need to license.
00:55:39I'm deeply confused by this.
00:55:41Yeah.
00:55:42I think the same argument we've had a lot about all of these AI devices is like, isn't this just another app on your phone?
00:55:49Could an AI system credibly replace a lot of what you do in Android Auto or CarPlay over time?
00:55:57Yes, absolutely.
00:55:58Is good Siri the solution to CarPlay?
00:56:01100%.
00:56:03That is not the future of iOS.
00:56:07It's part of it, right?
00:56:08And I think there are a lot of instances in which agents are going to be useful and powerful and valuable.
00:56:15But the idea that they're going to immediately overthrow the whole ecosystem we currently have is just wrong.
00:56:24I think, again, if you're an OS maker and if you're humane and you're desperate to have a reason to stay alive, you have to make this bet.
00:56:34The big swing is we are going to be the one who controls all the agents.
00:56:39And if you're the one who controls all the agents, you become very powerful.
00:56:42The problem is there aren't any agents.
00:56:43The ones that there are aren't very good.
00:56:45And also, no one needs them yet.
00:56:48It's a tough sled.
00:56:51I think the thing I struggle with every time we get into this discussion or we're talking about these things is let's say that it works perfectly, that they get all the bugs out, that it's smart, it's fast, it's efficient.
00:57:02It's still like clicking around and using a thing.
00:57:04How many times a day do you click on something and the page doesn't load?
00:57:10And maybe they can make it smart enough to, OK, now I need to refresh or I got an error and I need to go back and I need to do it again.
00:57:15But if I'm just sitting there saying, hey, man, I told you to do the thing and it's like, yeah, the page isn't loading.
00:57:21Sorry, bro.
00:57:22Honestly, if my computer would be more honest with me about why it's not working in that specific way, in that specific tone, that would rule.
00:57:31It was like, I'm sorry, bro.
00:57:33This connection is shit.
00:57:35That's what Siri should do.
00:57:36Instead of being like, here's some stuff I found on the web, it should just be like, sorry, bro, I don't know.
00:57:41Yeah.
00:57:42I would like it better.
00:57:43Do you have Verizon?
00:57:44Because AT&T is sucking right now.
00:57:46That would be incredible.
00:57:48Yeah.
00:57:49That's what AI is for.
00:57:50Think for a second and then it's just like, I don't know.
00:57:53Does it matter?
00:57:54Who cares?
00:57:55The vibes are off.
00:57:56The vibes are off.
00:57:57I'm very curious about all these AI agents.
00:57:59Everyone's pitching them now because they have to.
00:58:03I really think the business imperative for why are we spending all this money, why are we running all these GPUs all day and all night is not chatbots.
00:58:12It's not image generators.
00:58:13It's not disinformation at scale.
00:58:17It's a little bit disinformation at scale.
00:58:19That's like fun.
00:58:20It's like a fun little, it's like the garnish of the business.
00:58:26Do you want to see a picture of Elon Musk jumping up and down and turning into a monkey and then exploding?
00:58:30We can do that for you.
00:58:31Is that a business?
00:58:33I don't know.
00:58:34It does not appear to be paying anyone's bills.
00:58:37But I can make you an all-powerful robot that can use a computer for you and fill out and do this spreadsheet work that you don't want to do.
00:58:46Maybe someone will pay a lot of money for that.
00:58:49And so you just see them charging towards, well, hopefully we can pull this off.
00:58:53Hopefully we can get so good at this that the business pays us for it.
00:58:56And we're going to cover it a lot because it is the dream, right?
00:59:00You just talk to a computer and it goes off and does something for you.
00:59:02I'm just not sure any of this technology can actually pull it off yet.
00:59:05And then underneath it, this is the next thing we should talk about, is the fact that all of this is built on a bunch of models that are trained in a bunch of copyrighted information that none of the lawsuits have been resolved yet.
00:59:17And more of them show up every day.
00:59:19So just this week, News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, it's a Murdoch Empire company.
00:59:26They sued Perplexity for infringing on all of its content.
00:59:30Perplexity gets to the paywall.
00:59:31Perplexity is sad.
00:59:33Perplexity is sort of like perpetually sad that it's getting sued for copyright infringement.
00:59:36Perplexity is the one that Wired and Forbes and others have repeatedly also pointed out is, I think the Wired headline was, Perplexity is a bullshit machine, which is very good.
00:59:46Yeah.
00:59:47And then wrote another story about how Perplexity stole the story about Perplexity being a bullshit.
00:59:52It was just very good.
00:59:55And Perplexity, so far, has basically been like, ah, it's the internet.
00:59:59Everything's probably fine.
01:00:01We can just have it.
01:00:02And it's really only been a matter of time until this came for Perplexity in a pretty big way.
01:00:07I think it was, was it this week or last week that the New York Times sent a cease and desist to Perplexity, essentially alleging the same thing?
01:00:14Yep.
01:00:15Was that last week?
01:00:16It was last week.
01:00:17It was last week.
01:00:18And we should know the Times also sued OpenAI.
01:00:20That's an ongoing lawsuit.
01:00:21Our company, Vox Media, the business side of the company, signed a deal with OpenAI, as did Condé Nast, as did a bunch of other publishers.
01:00:28Like, this is in the air.
01:00:30Yeah.
01:00:31That's a disclosure, by the way.
01:00:32We have nothing to do with that deal.
01:00:33But this is just, like, in the air.
01:00:35The Atlantic signed a deal like that, and they actually have a cool set of OpenAI-powered tools on their website, one of which is just a Chrome plug-in that, as you browse the web, it shows you relevant stories from, like, the 150-year history of the Atlantic.
01:00:51Which is neat.
01:00:52Like, yeah, I wouldn't read old Atlantic stories if not for an AI.
01:00:56Like, it works like C+.
01:00:58Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
01:01:00But, like, they're building stuff with it.
01:01:01Yeah.
01:01:03But the foundation of this entire industry is, like, copyright infringement or alleged copyright infringement.
01:01:09Just this week, as well, Kevin Bacon, Kate McKinnon, 11,500 other creators just, like, issued a letter saying, this is an unjust value transfer.
01:01:20We made all this work.
01:01:22This is our life's work.
01:01:24You've taken it all, and now you're supporting these valuations without giving us anything in return.
01:01:29You can feel about that any way you want.
01:01:31I know a lot of people who feel, like, this is history's greatest crime, and Sam Altman should be in jail.
01:01:36I know those people exist because they write to us every time we talk about this on The Verge cast.
01:01:40We welcome you here.
01:01:41Then there's another group of people who say, well, look, it's just a computer reading everything in the world.
01:01:45It's the same way that if you could read everything in the world and then summarize iMessage notifications, you would do the same thing.
01:01:50Which is a stretch, but also an argument you can make.
01:01:53And I have no—this is a coin flip.
01:01:55Pure coin flip.
01:01:56I have no idea how this is going to take off.
01:01:58But if you believe that the future of Alexa and Siri and Google Assistant and Humane and Anthropic is taking a million screenshots of your computers and clicking around for you, all of that is built on the foundation of copyright lawsuits that have not yet been resolved in any way, shape, or form.
01:02:14And it's kind of like, you know, this industry is headed towards a cliff.
01:02:18Like, full cliff.
01:02:20One way or another.
01:02:21The one other part of this backdrop that we should talk about is all of these companies right now are trying to raise gigantic, astonishing amounts of money.
01:02:31OpenAI just raised the biggest round of funding ever.
01:02:34Anthropic is out trying to raise a ton of money.
01:02:38Perplexity is out trying to raise a ton of money.
01:02:40There's a real sense from all of these companies that they are going to need just vast oceans of cash to do some combination of build God, find a way to sell this stuff to enterprise customers, and protect themselves from lawsuits.
01:02:55Like, I think every one of these companies is trying to make the case that this stuff is going to be so big and so lucrative in order to be able to fund the fight to get there.
01:03:07And it's such a bizarre dynamic where it's like they are simultaneously promising how great the world is going to be and like battening down the hatches, right?
01:03:15And they're like Microsoft and OpenAI this week was another piece of news that they're giving a bunch of money to newsrooms to make them make more AI stuff.
01:03:25And it's just like, what a bizarre inversion of this same thing where they're like, we are going to give you money to take your stuff or we're just going to take it for free.
01:03:35But here's some money to make AI stuff.
01:03:38They're giving some money.
01:03:40They announced $10 million and 5 million of it is in credits for the software.
01:03:45Oh, is it really?
01:03:46That's annoying.
01:03:47Which is not the same thing as money.
01:03:49No, it's not.
01:03:50It is super not.
01:03:51But all of this stuff is like it's everything is running as fast as possible in these like mutually exclusive ways, except that it sort of feels like if the money gets big enough, it'll just be okay.
01:04:07So this is, I, I haven't thought this all the way through and I'm curious for reader feedback on this.
01:04:13What the first cast is for.
01:04:14If the money gets big enough, I think the judges and the copyright cases are going to be like, look at all of your money, pay it to them.
01:04:23Like at some point you're like, I made a thing so valuable by taking all of this stuff without permission.
01:04:30A judge is going to say, well, that, that is actually a value transfer that doesn't make sense.
01:04:35Right?
01:04:36If you needed all of this to raise your $6.9 billion open AI, then it stands to reason that that stuff is valuable and you should take some of the money you raised and pay it to the people whose work you need to make your product that supports the valuation.
01:04:52But that's kind of my point, right?
01:04:53I think if you're open AI, you say, okay, listen, judge, finest, finest $1 billion.
01:05:00That's so much money.
01:05:01One whole billion dollars.
01:05:04Oh, it's cool.
01:05:05We got five and a half.
01:05:06And this, this is what I mean.
01:05:07Like, I think there is a sense among these companies that if they can just build a big enough war chest, they can either buy out or wait out all of their problems.
01:05:15And those are tech problems.
01:05:16Those are regulatory problems.
01:05:17Those are fights with publishers.
01:05:19Like that just gives them the money to wait.
01:05:22And I, I, I, there's a reasonable evidence that they're going to be right about that.
01:05:28The wild card is, are we due for some kind of judicial end to this that just knifes through the whole industry?
01:05:36And that I think everybody is lying to you if they think they know the answer.
01:05:41Yeah, that's definitely a coin flip.
01:05:43The other thing that's happening is that they're also getting attacked from the other side on the output side.
01:05:47Not just the copyright infringement accusations of what they've done, but who is responsible for what these tools do.
01:05:54There's a lawsuit that has been publicized, written by the New York Times and other outlets.
01:05:58We wrote about it where a character AI and Google are being sued after this, this team died.
01:06:03And one of the main questions about this is, so if I interact with your generative AI tool and maybe I put in a prompt and it says something back to me, is anyone legally responsible for what happens next?
01:06:15Who, how much, what, what are you supposed to do?
01:06:18What, what should be the rules there?
01:06:19What should, what safety should you implement?
01:06:21Should these things be usable by children?
01:06:23None of these questions have been answered yet.
01:06:25And there, that could be another problem.
01:06:27Yeah.
01:06:28And that is the realist problem, especially for the character AI's of the world where they're sort of like advertising that these are therapy tools.
01:06:36And it's like, well, if you lead people to these outcomes, you're probably responsible for them.
01:06:41And no one has thought any of this through.
01:06:44I'm just saying it's neat to talk about agents and Siri or Alexa that can just do stuff for you.
01:06:50And then there's like, oh shit, it's doing stuff for you.
01:06:53Also, the foundation of this might be Kevin Bacon gets a billion dollars.
01:06:57Like weird, weird outcome.
01:07:01Can I just read you the one sentence thing that they all signed on to?
01:07:05Yeah.
01:07:06It says the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works and must not be permitted.
01:07:15Okay.
01:07:16Like, I'm just, I'm amazed they got 11,500 people to care about that enough to sign.
01:07:23Oh no, no, no.
01:07:24We could get 11,000 people to sign a statement like that tomorrow.
01:07:27Verge commenters alone would sign that statement.
01:07:30It's just such a like, I don't know.
01:07:32Milk toast way to be like, I am gently mad at the AI industry.
01:07:37I don't think that's gentle.
01:07:39It's a major unjust threat that must not be permitted.
01:07:42What do you want them to say?
01:07:43Sam Altman should be arrested.
01:07:4511,000 people.
01:07:46It's just like money, please.
01:07:48No, it says must not be permitted.
01:07:50It says livelihoods.
01:07:52You know what that is?
01:07:53It's this is not, it's not, it's money.
01:07:56Money.
01:07:57The unfortunate part is that it already happened.
01:08:00Yeah.
01:08:01Cat's out of the bag, Kevin.
01:08:02No dancing in this town, bro.
01:08:04Yeah.
01:08:05Open AI raised $7 billion so that it can give Kevin Bacon one of them, and then it can move on.
01:08:10The other thing that's going on in the AI world, which we'll just skim over because it is an election year,
01:08:15and everyone can see the weird AI election misinformation for their own eyes,
01:08:18is that the companies that make these tools and have promised labeling and metadata for years
01:08:25and have done nothing, while all of this is getting fully out of control,
01:08:28are slowly starting to add labels and metadata to their own work.
01:08:33So Google is going to open source its watermarking tool for AI-generated text.
01:08:38We'll see how that goes.
01:08:39That one, that's the hardest one.
01:08:41But Google Photos is now going to show AI-generated metadata in the photos,
01:08:47like there'll be a label to text the metadata.
01:08:50It's a slow, slow burn.
01:08:53And then Apple, Craig Federighi, in that same interview with Joanna,
01:08:56said that he wants photos to be photos, he doesn't want real photos to be fantasy,
01:09:00and that they are also showing some information in the photos.
01:09:03This is not enough.
01:09:05Flatly, none of these companies are doing enough.
01:09:07They've all talked a huge game about things like C2PA and content authenticity,
01:09:14and we're kind of at like, we're going to do EXIF data and labels that people can change.
01:09:21While the misinformation is like running rampant everywhere.
01:09:24Has Craig Federighi seen that photo of the bridesmaid with like three arms?
01:09:28Because somebody should tell him about that.
01:09:30Yeah, that was like a panorama mode thing.
01:09:33It wasn't even AI.
01:09:34It wasn't even AI.
01:09:35It's just the pace of all of that is so backwards to me,
01:09:38because the logic for going slow on all of this from all of these companies
01:09:42is like we have to really test this stuff and harden it and make sure it works
01:09:47and make sure it can't be easily removed and we have to understand how it fits into the product.
01:09:53And absolutely none of that care is being taken with the tools that these same companies are making
01:09:58to make the things that are the problems in the first place.
01:10:01So it's like, it's very hard to take seriously this group of people who's like,
01:10:05we have to take our time and do this right.
01:10:07When the people who sit like three cubicles over are the ones being like,
01:10:10want to put guns in your pictures? Here you go.
01:10:14It's true.
01:10:16And that is the funnest team at Google, actually.
01:10:22One of the buildings in Mountain View is just the Just Add Guns building.
01:10:26Yeah, very good.
01:10:27All right, we got to take a break.
01:10:28We're going to come back with a lightning round.
01:10:30Clear our palates.
01:10:32I'm very excited for the one that I've assigned to Richard.
01:10:34I'm going to be very honest with you.
01:10:36I'm very excited.
01:10:42All right, we're back.
01:10:44Lightning Round, sponsored by no one.
01:10:46No one.
01:10:47For all of your not money needs.
01:10:50See what I did there?
01:10:51Yet.
01:10:52That's what it could look like if you paid us money.
01:10:54Someone money.
01:10:55Not me.
01:10:57We'll get there one day.
01:10:58All right, it's Lightning Round.
01:11:01David, I think you need to start with, honestly,
01:11:04the news that should have led the entire Verge cast.
01:11:06I just want you both to be very proud of me that I made it
01:11:09over an hour into the Verge cast,
01:11:11and I have not mentioned the books Palma 2 once.
01:11:13I haven't even, I haven't even teased it.
01:11:15The best thing about the books Palma 2 is that we've entered
01:11:18the stage of covering this thing where we,
01:11:21there was a leak of it and we covered the leak and then the
01:11:24announcement of the tiny e-reader.
01:11:28We're deep in the weeds.
01:11:29The Verge is the official news source of the books Palma,
01:11:34and I feel very good about this.
01:11:36What I like is that they got the sequel out fast enough that my
01:11:39pre-scheduled six month out tweet asking people if they know
01:11:42where their books Palma is.
01:11:43It hasn't even gone up yet and they're already selling the sequel.
01:11:46They got me on this one.
01:11:48Somebody posted on threads today,
01:11:50accusing me of being in league with books to get rid of all their
01:11:54inventory on the one before the two came out.
01:11:57And they're like, you timed this on purpose, didn't you?
01:12:00Big books.
01:12:01Big books.
01:12:02Yeah, that's me.
01:12:04They fund everything,
01:12:05everything in the basketball hoop you see behind me.
01:12:08So the books Palma 2, still $280,
01:12:11which is still too expensive, but it's, it's still,
01:12:14it's a smartphone sized e-reader to answer your question, Richard.
01:12:17I use mine every single day and I love it very much.
01:12:21It fixes a couple of the things that were wrong with the last one.
01:12:25Uh,
01:12:26mostly it was a little slow and it ran a really outdated version of
01:12:29Android.
01:12:30Now I suspect it will be less slow and it runs a less outdated version
01:12:33of Android.
01:12:34It doesn't run a current version of Android, but it's better.
01:12:37Uh, it's still, it's the same size.
01:12:40It's the same screen.
01:12:42It has, uh,
01:12:43I believe the same amount of Ram and the same amount of storage.
01:12:46It's just like a gentle upgrade of the same device.
01:12:50Uh,
01:12:51which I think is fine.
01:12:53I, to me,
01:12:54honestly,
01:12:55the fact that books just made another one of these is the thing that
01:12:58is most exciting and interesting books is basically like a spaghetti
01:13:03at the wall kind of company.
01:13:04They just make every single product size and skew.
01:13:08You can imagine third Dyson, but for E Ink screens.
01:13:11Yeah.
01:13:12And, and that's fine, right?
01:13:13Like you can go on their website and buy just about any dimension of
01:13:16E Ink device that you want.
01:13:18And I think just the fact that this one is getting a second rev
01:13:22suggests that it is successful and,
01:13:25and meaningful to people just by the way,
01:13:27just in case people are wondering what I mean by Dyson is if you want
01:13:30something with a fan in it,
01:13:31Dyson will sell it to you suck,
01:13:33blow anything with a fan,
01:13:34however tall you'd like your vacuum to be.
01:13:36Dyson has you,
01:13:37they got you so good.
01:13:38Uh,
01:13:39there was,
01:13:40there's one,
01:13:41I believe that launched in just China that also doesn't have a camera.
01:13:46Yeah.
01:13:47Uh, which I think is pretty cool.
01:13:48And as a thing,
01:13:49uh,
01:13:50there were a bunch of people when I wrote about the Palma in the first
01:13:52place,
01:13:53we're like,
01:13:54I would love for one of these without a camera for just a variety of,
01:13:57you know,
01:13:58security and privacy and family reasons.
01:14:00But,
01:14:01uh,
01:14:02the one that's shipping around the world still has a camera.
01:14:04Why?
01:14:05I,
01:14:06they say,
01:14:07use the camera on your books.
01:14:08Palma too.
01:14:09No,
01:14:10literally not once.
01:14:11Uh,
01:14:12when I wrote about it,
01:14:13I forgot it existed until somebody I was talking to asked me if I had
01:14:15ever used the camera.
01:14:16And I said,
01:14:17no,
01:14:18I forgot it had a camera.
01:14:19Um,
01:14:20but their thesis is that you might use it for like scanning and digitizing
01:14:24stuff,
01:14:25which like,
01:14:26sure.
01:14:27But to me,
01:14:28it's like,
01:14:29yeah,
01:14:30it's way better.
01:14:31But yeah,
01:14:32I,
01:14:33I think this thing is,
01:14:34I'm excited about it.
01:14:35I'm hopeful that they'll ship me one and I can review it.
01:14:37Uh,
01:14:38I think the thing books is trying to do,
01:14:41it got kind of right the first time,
01:14:43like that combination of the size of the thing and the fact that it's
01:14:46ink and the fact that it runs Android apps is awesome.
01:14:49Uh,
01:14:50we tried to get Panos Pane to look at one.
01:14:52He refused to do it on camera.
01:14:54It was very upsetting.
01:14:55Uh,
01:14:56and yeah,
01:14:57we'll,
01:14:58we'll see.
01:14:59I got a lot of people asking me,
01:15:00should I buy this one or the new Kindle paper?
01:15:02Wait,
01:15:03people want ink devices,
01:15:04man.
01:15:05Yeah.
01:15:06I will say,
01:15:07I encourage everyone to pull over in your car and then look at our article
01:15:10with books.
01:15:11Want to click on it and scroll down and look at books,
01:15:14his own press photo of a guy holding the books,
01:15:16Palma too.
01:15:17He's very much like,
01:15:18what am I doing here?
01:15:19Yeah.
01:15:20He's,
01:15:21he's like,
01:15:22what is this thing?
01:15:23He's like,
01:15:24how did I get here?
01:15:25He's like,
01:15:26yep.
01:15:27It's true.
01:15:28It's just a guy in a beige sweater.
01:15:29He's like,
01:15:30why does this have no colors?
01:15:31It's like his face.
01:15:32It's like,
01:15:33I,
01:15:34I hate this book.
01:15:35I don't want to be reading it.
01:15:36It's very,
01:15:37it's very much the face.
01:15:38I imagine Richard made the first time.
01:15:40Like this is the face that made you pre-schedule the tweet,
01:15:46like right here.
01:15:47It's good.
01:15:48And,
01:15:49and I'm,
01:15:50I'm glad that these things exist.
01:15:51Like someone should make like an Android thing with an eating screen that
01:15:54runs apps.
01:15:55It's great.
01:15:56I just think that people will probably put them down and forget that they
01:16:01bought them.
01:16:02Just as I believe this gentleman put this one down.
01:16:05It's why,
01:16:06it's why if you asked him about it right now,
01:16:08he wouldn't be able to tell you what are you talking about?
01:16:10What now?
01:16:11That was a job.
01:16:12Like,
01:16:13this is why the problem is the price with really,
01:16:17with all of these devices,
01:16:18like the Palma or something like it at 99 bucks,
01:16:22like sold,
01:16:23right?
01:16:24The,
01:16:25the Kindle succeeds for that same reason.
01:16:26It's like,
01:16:27if you buy a Kindle and use it a bunch and then forget about it for a
01:16:29while and then use it a bunch and then forget about it for a while,
01:16:31you've paid the correct amount for it.
01:16:33280 bucks is too much for that use case.
01:16:37Yeah.
01:16:38That said,
01:16:40I will be purchasing.
01:16:41I got to go use my books.
01:16:43Palma one,
01:16:44at least one more time to make it worth it.
01:16:45Apparently.
01:16:46All right,
01:16:47Richard,
01:16:48you've got the best one at all.
01:16:49Yes.
01:16:50Senior citizens.
01:16:51Very,
01:16:52very upset.
01:16:53Very,
01:16:54very upset at T-Mobile of all companies because it won't honor its lifetime
01:16:57price guarantee.
01:16:58Turns out,
01:16:59um,
01:17:00they lived,
01:17:01I guess,
01:17:02longer than T-Mobile thought when you,
01:17:03when you tell people that they're going to,
01:17:04that you're going to give them a lifetime price lock,
01:17:06you figure out how long could that last longer than you think.
01:17:10T-Mobile,
01:17:11they probably figured that out the same way they do security.
01:17:14That's rough.
01:17:16That's why everyone has a secondary number.
01:17:19Right there.
01:17:20Uh,
01:17:22thousands of FCC complaints,
01:17:24uh,
01:17:25that from people saying they,
01:17:27they signed up for price lock in what,
01:17:292015 to 10 years ago.
01:17:31So T-Mobile assumed everyone would die within one decade.
01:17:34They had a senior plan that was marketed specifically to people 55 and up
01:17:38with lifetime price lock.
01:17:40Yes.
01:17:41And it included this,
01:17:42and those are not people who you want to disappoint on a lifetime offer.
01:17:45They will remember.
01:17:49Has anyone ever not lived to regret the lifetime price guarantee?
01:17:54Like this always makes me think of back in the day when the airlines would
01:17:57sell the people like the $250,000 lifetime fly,
01:18:01wherever you want first class thing.
01:18:03And then there were the people who were like,
01:18:05all right,
01:18:06challenge accepted.
01:18:07I live in the sky now.
01:18:08Yeah.
01:18:09And eventually all the airlines are like,
01:18:10well,
01:18:11you can't do that.
01:18:12And they're like,
01:18:13remember when you said lifetime and like the,
01:18:15everyone is just don't do this.
01:18:20If you can't do it,
01:18:21just don't do it.
01:18:22And then there are the companies that offer a lifetime deal and then go out
01:18:25of business.
01:18:26And it's like,
01:18:27what are we doing?
01:18:28Y'all like,
01:18:29well,
01:18:30that's a win.
01:18:31That means you outlived it.
01:18:32It's the lifetime of the executive who approved it.
01:18:34Right?
01:18:35Yeah.
01:18:36A hundred percent in the FCC complaints.
01:18:37There are some,
01:18:38some choice quotes.
01:18:39Architects.
01:18:40I could dug them all up.
01:18:41One of them,
01:18:42I am not dead yet.
01:18:43A customer in New York wrote bluntly.
01:18:48That's very good.
01:18:50There was one person who complained that their price is going up $50 a month
01:18:53because they had 10 lines.
01:18:54I'm like,
01:18:55wow,
01:18:5610 lines.
01:18:57It's good.
01:18:58We've got that lifetime guarantee.
01:18:59That's I mean,
01:19:00that's fair.
01:19:01I'd get everybody on that plan.
01:19:02You guys want to join my plan?
01:19:03I will take this opportunity to remind the virtual audience,
01:19:06the T-Mobile existence,
01:19:07current state,
01:19:08because the government allowed it to buy sprint in a deal,
01:19:11which took our nation's number of viable nationwide wireless carriers from
01:19:16four to three.
01:19:17And to solve that problem,
01:19:18the government made dish network,
01:19:21make a network.
01:19:22That network is called project Genesis or Jenna five sis.
01:19:25That network does not exist.
01:19:27Just,
01:19:28I don't know what to tell you.
01:19:30You can go to the website.
01:19:31The website sometimes doesn't load when you go to the dish network project.
01:19:35It's sometimes just isn't there.
01:19:38Just physically doesn't load.
01:19:40And then if you do get it to load,
01:19:42you can buy a,
01:19:43what is it?
01:19:44A Motorola edge plus like a 2023 Motorola edge plus that's the phone they sell.
01:19:48And that phone,
01:19:49if you go look at the subreddit,
01:19:51we'll mostly roam onto AT and T's network.
01:19:53Perfect.
01:19:54I don't see the competition,
01:19:56baby.
01:19:57What I'm just saying,
01:19:58you know,
01:19:59I don't know.
01:20:00It's election season.
01:20:01I'm,
01:20:02that was the deal negotiated by Donald Trump's antitrust division.
01:20:07To preserve competition in the wireless market.
01:20:09We did it y'all.
01:20:10When I think of AT&T,
01:20:11Verizon and T-Mobile and the biggest threats they face every day.
01:20:14Can I just read you one paragraph from their story?
01:20:17Yeah.
01:20:18It's like an aside in the middle of the story,
01:20:20but it is the best knife in the whole story.
01:20:22Last year,
01:20:23T-Mobile notified some customers that it would automatically switch them to
01:20:26newer,
01:20:27more expensive plans unless the customers called the company to opt out of
01:20:30the change.
01:20:31T-Mobile customer service reps were instructed to tell users,
01:20:33we are not raising the price of any of our plans.
01:20:35We are moving you to a newer plan with more benefits at a different cost.
01:20:40It's not whether the price is more or less,
01:20:42you guys,
01:20:43it's just different.
01:20:45It's just different.
01:20:46I'm sorry.
01:20:47I'm just reading the project Genesis subreddit.
01:20:50None of it's good,
01:20:51man.
01:20:52Anyhow,
01:20:53wireless carriers and ISPs,
01:20:54your favorite.
01:20:55Now to further enrage you about our nation's wireless carriers and ISPs,
01:20:59I will inform you of my lightning round item,
01:21:03which is that the federal trade commission passed what's called the click to
01:21:07cancel rule.
01:21:08This is the rule that says if you sign up for something,
01:21:12canceling it has to be as easy as signing up,
01:21:15right?
01:21:16So you can click on something to sign up for a subscription or yearly
01:21:19membership or whatever to get out of it.
01:21:21You got to be able to click one button.
01:21:22These are called negative option contracts.
01:21:24There's a whole thing.
01:21:25There's like three or four different laws to try to solve this problem.
01:21:28And the FCC put up a rule a while ago.
01:21:31Everyone complained about the rule and now they pass the rule.
01:21:33This is like Lena Khan's FCC saying,
01:21:35this is bad for consumers to make people dance through cancel flows or to
01:21:41hide,
01:21:42you know,
01:21:43options where the price escalates.
01:21:44It's got to be as easy to get out as it was to get in.
01:21:46This is an objectively correct stance,
01:21:48right?
01:21:49Everyone loves this rule.
01:21:50There's not like a secret thing that I'm missing about why this might sucks
01:21:53for consumers.
01:21:54This is just great.
01:21:55No,
01:21:56this is what happens when you make millennials call the New York times
01:22:00to cancel their subscriptions.
01:22:01Millennials hate phone calls.
01:22:03A hundred percent.
01:22:04And so,
01:22:05you know,
01:22:06the Lena Khan FCC is like doing its thing.
01:22:07Uh,
01:22:08guess immediately who sued to stop this rule.
01:22:12If you guessed our nation's ISPs and wireless carriers,
01:22:14you would be correct.
01:22:17So I was going to guess Jim's.
01:22:19That was going to be my,
01:22:20Jim's is in there.
01:22:21A bunch of advertisers are in there.
01:22:23Uh,
01:22:24ADT.
01:22:25ADT is in there.
01:22:26So it's,
01:22:27it's their trade groups,
01:22:28right?
01:22:29The NASH,
01:22:30the NCTA,
01:22:31which is the,
01:22:32the ISP trade group that represents Comcast,
01:22:34charter Cox.
01:22:35Um,
01:22:36it represents streaming services like Disney,
01:22:38AMC,
01:22:39Paramount,
01:22:40Warner brothers,
01:22:41discovery disclosure.
01:22:42Comcast is an investor,
01:22:43our parent company.
01:22:45I take that for what it's worth.
01:22:47I think they suck in this case.
01:22:49Um,
01:22:50the IAB,
01:22:51which is the advertising,
01:22:52the internet advertising bureau,
01:22:54that's Google,
01:22:55Netflix,
01:22:56Amazon,
01:22:57Meta Visio,
01:22:58Apple,
01:22:59the ESA is ADT.
01:23:00So all of these huge companies are through their trade organizations.
01:23:05Basically suing the FTC and saying,
01:23:08no,
01:23:09we do not want you to make click to cancel mandatory.
01:23:13And the argument is the FTC is trying to regulate consumer contracts for all
01:23:17companies and all industries across all sectors of the economy from forbidding
01:23:21businesses for making customers cancel services,
01:23:24using a method that differs from how they signed up.
01:23:26Yes,
01:23:27that is what they're trying.
01:23:28That's correct.
01:23:29And so the,
01:23:30the argument here is freedom in America requires us to be able to fleece our
01:23:34customers.
01:23:37Like get the nanny state out of here.
01:23:40It's wild underneath that.
01:23:43This is some real wonky legal stuff,
01:23:45uh,
01:23:46is how they will probably attempt to go after this.
01:23:49So the FTC is a,
01:23:51you know,
01:23:52executive agency of the government.
01:23:53It has some powers or some powers.
01:23:55It doesn't have the main power is like it's rulemaking authority.
01:23:59It's like ability to like make decisions basically.
01:24:02And that was basically just overturned by this Supreme court.
01:24:10We'll link to it,
01:24:11but there was this concept called Chevron deference where the courts would
01:24:15defer to the agency.
01:24:16Like,
01:24:17you know,
01:24:18best like you're staffed by experts.
01:24:19You made this decision.
01:24:20We will defer to your rulemaking process if you get sued.
01:24:23But this Supreme court threw that out.
01:24:26So now the courts get to decide if these rules make sense,
01:24:30which is basically just like an explosion of how our government works.
01:24:33Anyway,
01:24:34all that means is,
01:24:35uh,
01:24:36Comcast gets to sue Lena Khan for making these sort of get up your ISP
01:24:39agreement.
01:24:40And that is stupid.
01:24:41Uh,
01:24:42so that's good.
01:24:43This is going to,
01:24:44it's amazing that these companies are buying this amount of bad press.
01:24:47They should just make better products.
01:24:49But here we are.
01:24:50This always just makes me think of the,
01:24:52the place we've gotten to a streaming TV where basically what we've done is
01:24:56just very slowly reinvent cable,
01:24:58but it's easier to cancel now.
01:25:00And in,
01:25:01in a very real way,
01:25:02that's a giant victory that like I pay as much,
01:25:06it's a worse user experience in a lot of ways,
01:25:08but at least I can cancel it success.
01:25:12And it is just bonkers how few things have gone that way.
01:25:16Like it's,
01:25:17I,
01:25:18there are so many things I pay for because I just can't figure out how to
01:25:21cancel it.
01:25:22Like literally the,
01:25:23the,
01:25:24just to name one,
01:25:25the wall street journal,
01:25:26which,
01:25:27uh,
01:25:28I'm not important enough to need to subscribe to if we're being honest with
01:25:31each other,
01:25:32you don't get a free journal subscription cause you used to work there.
01:25:34You're not an alumni club.
01:25:35No,
01:25:36I barely got it when I was there.
01:25:39They were like,
01:25:40listen,
01:25:41you read about like smart home stuff.
01:25:42Like don't you,
01:25:43you don't need to read our journalism,
01:25:45but like you,
01:25:46you have to call a number and find a person.
01:25:48And I like,
01:25:49I sat on hold for a while,
01:25:50one time and gave up.
01:25:51And it's like,
01:25:52this is not how this is supposed to work.
01:25:53This just sucks.
01:25:54Yeah.
01:25:55And it is like that everywhere.
01:25:56I had to go to my gym to cancel.
01:25:58Like the third time ever I went to the gym was to cancel the gym.
01:26:02It was awful.
01:26:03Well,
01:26:04David,
01:26:05I think you should take better care of your health.
01:26:06So sign up for another gym membership and then never get out of it.
01:26:10Uh,
01:26:12that's it.
01:26:13We were way over.
01:26:14I'm furious that I can't cancel more things more easily.
01:26:19I don't even know my Hulu password,
01:26:20but I'd cancel it.
01:26:21If you want to cancel the Verge cast,
01:26:22you have to call Neely and we'll never tell you his number.
01:26:25That's it.
01:26:26Call the Verge cast line and explain to us why you need to cancel the show.
01:26:29Uh,
01:26:30that is a dangerous prompt.
01:26:31Think twice,
01:26:32make it funny.
01:26:33That's it.
01:26:34That's the Verge cast,
01:26:35rock and roll.
01:26:38And that's it for the Verge cast this week.
01:26:40Hey,
01:26:41we'd love to hear from you.
01:26:42Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11.
01:26:45The Verge cast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:26:48Our show is produced by Liam James,
01:26:50Will Hoare,
01:26:51and Eric Gomez.
01:26:52And that's it.