The AI is in the computer

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Paramount Sky Dance Warner Brothers Plus Max, a new streaming service coming to you 20. >> You leave her alone. >> Somehow this is all Max's fault. >> You've named your daughter Skyance from what I understand. >> She's very wealthy. It's going very well. Her dad has no large s. It's a real shame. I I will never buy her a media company. >> Ellison Skyance is a real Taylor Sheridan name. Hi, I'm Ellison Scottance. >> Just putting it out there. >> I'm hearing like a Netflix western. Yeah, it's it's good stuff. I'm into it. I'm your friend David Pierce. Neil is here. Hello, sir. >> It's good to have you back. I missed you. >> I'm very I'm glad to be here. How have things been? >> They've been good. I I you know, other David did a good job. >> He did do a good job. The people love David to a point that was like really alarming for my own ego. Like a lot of love for David and Mel in my place. >> And he's dead now. Um uh but we missed you, man. We we'll have him back. We're gonna we're'll find a way to to make David Al part of uh the Verge extended universe because he was great. But we we did miss you. I missed you. I'm glad you're back. And it sounds like the family is doing good. >> Yeah, things are good. It's uh three is a lot of children uh in in a in a very like strange way. There's the first thing that happens when you have three kids is people immediately start being like, "Well, you might as well have a fourth, right?" And it's like which I just don't understand. But but it is now to the point where I feel like I have infinity children. Uh there's just every time I turn around there's there's just another one. Uh so that's been interesting to get used to. But everybody's good. Uh we had like two weeks of no one sleeping. >> Just no just no one. Um but now we're coming out of that >> and I feel alive again for the first time. >> We we last year we had children at the same time. >> Yeah. >> And I do not feel like we have exited the bad part of having a baby with our second one. But you are just you're back in it. >> My number one parenting recommendation now is don't have two kids who can't walk. Uh and it's like there's a real there's a real thing that is like I I we were talking to a family who like had kids at about the same gap as ours and they were like, "Oh, once it's so fun because they'll have each other and they'll be so close in age that they'll they'll feel they'll grow up as peers and I'm very excited about that." And they're like, "Oh, it's like in 5 years." I'm like, "Oh my god, five yearsuch." >> And instead, I'm like, I have not I have not had an arm free in two months in a way that is like very hard to describe. Like I've gotten good at doing everything with like my elbows now because that's that's what I have to accomplish goals while I carry two children. It's a lot. I don't recommend having two tiny children at the same time if you can avoid it. >> Yeah. >> But, you know, they're real cute and it works out. Um, yeah, I've also had a lot of time to catch up on TV shows and movies over the last seven weeks, which is if you'd like to talk about any major motion picture from mid to late 2025, I am ready for it. >> I'm nowhere there. We should talk about lanterns for like the full hour, but there's like a lot of gadget news. >> There is a lot of gadget news. That is primarily what we are here to talk about. So, uh, we have Amazon gadget news. It's a big week for what is a computer in a way that is actually very fun and I'm excited to be back for. Uh, Amazon is doing tablets again. Microsoft is doing AI computers. Google books are here. I have one. Uh I am desperate to talk about them. You guys have been talking about them and I have so many feelings and all of you are wrong and I want to talk about all of them. Uh Apple is had just announced today as we're recording that its big home event is next week on the 13th. There's just a lot of new ideas about how we're supposed to use technology happening all at once. Um and Sky Dance owns Hollywood. We'll get to that. Literally, that is coming at the very end of the show is how many gadgets there are. Should we start with Amazon? Amazon feels to me like kind of the the most immediately newsy. It dropped today, Thursday, as we're recording. Um, I also this this is like a perfectly neioded gadget announcement because the the big thing today is the Alexa tablets, a new vastly superior line of tablets from Amazon. They're not Fire tablets. are actually phasing out the Fire tablet brand in favor of a better higherend set of tablets that people will actually like to use. And the the question of like what does it mean for Amazon to be a good hardware company I think is really interesting. It's also entirely about the display. Like I had a I had a call with Panos Pane the who runs all of the devices and Alexa stuff at Amazon about all of the Alexa tablets. All we talked about the whole call was this new nanomat display that Amazon has built that they swear is like the greatest tablet screen you've ever seen in your life. >> It does look amazing in all of the photos and videos. >> It does. It really does. So, the idea is that it it takes some of the matte texture that is often just put on as a film and actually like bakes it into the glass. And Terrence O'Brien on our team saw it, said it looks great. We'll get one to review. Very excited to see it. What do you make of of just the existence of Alexa tablets? >> Oh, I have so many thoughts about this. You talked to Panos. I didn't, but I talked to Panos many times over the years. I I have a sense of Panos decisions. >> Yes. >> Like you can identify Panos decisions. You can just see him at a distance. And there are two here that I think are really important. One, he just upleveled the hardware. >> Mhm. >> And I say this as a person who has Fire tablets, right? We we've got kids. We have a Sonos system. There's just a Fire tablet sitting around to control the Sonos system, and that's what it does. And the only reason we have it is because it's one of the few tablets you can get that has pogo pin charging. So it can just sit in a dock all day. >> Oh, sure. >> And you can open the app and it just stays charged. And so like this is a an odd piece of weird technology that I interact with all the time. Like you would just not expect me to be a Fire tablet person. >> I would not. That that is genuinely surprising. >> But it it is literally because you can just like put it in the dock and it charges and then you can like use a controller. Um the two decisions are one, none of that hardware is any good. >> Correct. Aside from the fact that you could put it in a dock and charge it, it appears this hardware is very good. He wants it to be premium hardware. That is just a panis decision. You can hear him in the meeting like why is it bad? You know, >> right? >> That's his personality. >> That's not a like dig on the old tablets. It's a strategy shift. Like yeah, Amazon never aspired to make good tablets before. They wanted them to be dirt cheap and >> they were $29. to get Amazon Kids and then that was a subscription and that was a whole strategy cuz they couldn't compete with the iPad and this is the second big Panos decision that I'm utterly curious about. They have the Play Store. They got rid of their dumb Amazon App Store and they're just straight up Android tablets that are part of Google's ecosystem which comes with a bunch of Google stuff. >> Mhm. and the fact that they're called Alexa tablets, that you are meant to talk to Amazon's assistant, which has some amount of agentic capability and presumably more to come. I I can just hear Panos being like, "Well, apps are boring. They're the past. Just give people Google. Why are we fighting that fight? We're going to fight the next war." And I don't know if Alexa is good enough to fight the next war. But those are the two decisions where you know at least at distance I can see Amazon hired panos pane and he is very opinionated and very crisp in his decision-m and those are the two changes. The hardware is nicer and we're leaving the apps in the past. Well, I would put it slightly differently, which is I think the mistake that a lot of people have made is deciding that apps are the past. And what it actually is is apps are solved, right? The the everybody needs apps. Like it it turns out that you have to have an app store or else nothing else matters, right? Like if you decide apps don't matter, agentic AI is the only thing, you build the humane pin and your company dies and you sell to HP and you go make printers. Like that's what happens when you decide that apps are dead. But going and trying to compete in app stores is a complete waste of time. It like every many have tried, none have succeeded. And the only way to the next thing is to acknowledge that, right? So you say, okay, we're not going to try to play the app game. We're not going to try to build a bunch of new things. We're going to have a couple of new ideas around this fundamentally solved problem, which is the Google Play Store. We can't beat it. We're not even going to try. but we're gonna we're gonna use it to spring to the next thing. And I think that is the right bet and it's the bet way too many companies forget to make because apps are not the the past. They're not. They are the present in a in a super duper real way. And the only way to bet that it's the future is to actually do the app thing in the first place. And I think again that's like we're going to get to Google books, but like that's the Google book story too, right? They they're like, "Oh, we think agentic AI and the web can solve all of your problems." And everybody's like, "I would like apps, please." And they're like, "Okay, here's some apps. Now we can go do the other things. And so and I think Amazon is trying to do the same thing here. >> Yeah. We're two sides of the same coin here. If you believe that there is a future past apps, that apps are solved, then you give up and put the Play Store on these tablets. >> 100%. >> Cuz you have to put all of your focus on the next thing. But until that next thing took any shape, you had to make your own app store. Yes. >> Because otherwise, you were just handing your business to Google. And so that's what that's what I'm getting at is they are willing to concede, the past, perhaps the present to Google. And right like the Play Store comes with a bunch of inapp purchase fees and all that stuff that Google gets sued for. I have no idea if Amazon was able to negotiate different rates with Google. >> But if you have the Play Store, the app developers are going to pay Google for inapp purchases. They're probably not going to pay Amazon. So, you've just conceded the revenue model of the present, right? And you're on your way to Alexa should be your all-encompassing AGI agent to do all of the economic activity of the future. And you're probably better off making that bet. And that's what I mean. Like, yes, it's the it's the past and that I don't think there's going to be a lot of innovation there. There's a lot of emphasis on the AI part. Whether that's good or bad like fully remains to be seen. Yeah, but it is. And I think the the tablet to me is super interesting because it it sort of clears the deck for that question in a way that I think is really exciting if the hardware is as good as advertised. And I I think it probably is. Like a company like Amazon certainly has the resources to make great products if it if it wants to. It has gotten in its way many times, but I think it this this thing by all accounts so far seems to be a good piece of hardware. If you remove the why doesn't it have this thing by giving it, you know, a decent keyboard case and a decent stylus and all of the Android apps that you want, you've gotten to the point where it's like, okay, now can our thing and in this case that thing is Alexa plus actually win, right? Like do we have the next thing here? And and now in a certain way it's going to actually get to answer that question because the other stuff is just sort of solved. So if you if you can just make a good tablet with Android apps, great. That is turns out easy thing to do if you just do it. >> Is this good enough to be like what you would call the default Android tablet? >> I think default Android tablet is such an insult of a thing. >> You know what I mean? >> This is the problem. >> But you know like for years we'd be like what's the default Windows computer? >> Sure. >> And maybe XPS 13. It's the It's the XPS 13 some years and it's the Surface laptop some other years and but I mean we we made a lot of hay back in the end gadget days talking about the default Windows laptop. >> Yep. >> Joanna Stern built an empire on the default Windows laptop. Uh and then it was the XPS 13 for like years and years and years. If you ask me what is the default Android tablet, I would some Galaxy Tab. >> No, I think you would like deep sigh and then say it's a Fire tablet. >> No, not a fire. No, no, not because it doesn't have the Play Store. But I'm saying right now, but it is Okay, go ahead. Make make your argument in favor of the Fire. >> I I think that my argument is less in favor of the Fire tablet and more against the entire ecosystem of Android tablets. I mean, realistically, I don't think anyone was looking for an Android tablet. You were either looking for an iPad or you didn't want to spend the money on an iPad and so you you land five Android tablet fans just furiously writing you emails right now. >> There are I'm okay with that. Uh, and listen, the Pixel tablet had a chance to be that thing if Google had Google can't care about Android tablets. Like Google is on to Google books because it's no longer interested in Android tablet. Like this is not this is not a small thing for anyone to try and get involved in. Uh, I think this will almost immediately become the default Android tablet. Amazon is so big and successful and the price on these is really good. The 8 in one starts at $229 and the like very fanciest 12-in one with the fancy screen is $549 bucks. Like you're looking at like $1,000 iPad territory for 550 bucks. And that's that's meaningful. And so I think Amazon, unless these things have some spectacular failure in them that we don't know about, I think they immediately become the obvious tablet to buy for most. >> Now I have to ask the obvious question. every piece of Amazon hardware. Does it show you ads in the home screen by default? >> Good question. >> There aren't any in the Well, okay. There's I'm I'm trying to think about just the the the photos I've seen. There's a little prime widget up in the top left corner that is ostensibly there to show you like what you're reading and watching. And then there's a whole thing you can you can swipe right on the home screen to get to this big shelf of stuff. I assume that shelf will be a mix of things you're watching and reading and uh recommendations from Amazon.com. I do I do think it's possible that Amazon is going to just slather shopping all over this thing in a way that is really upsetting. One of the things they're going to do is make it so that you can just at any time be like, "How do I buy this?" And it'll look at what Alexa Plus will look at whatever's on the screen and put it in your Amazon cart. That's a real flow Amazon imagines. And >> oh yeah, >> that might be awful. Like it really honestly might be awful in a way that is is kind of pernicious and off-putting. Um if if it has just stayed on the right side of that line, I think these things are almost by default going to be a huge hit. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anybody with a kid who needs a plain tablet, this is this is the one you buy, right? If it's a nice piece of hardware that can run Disney Plus and then get your kids to immediately convert everything they're watching on Disney Plus into purchases on Amazon Prime, this is going to be a huge one for everyone. But that that's the danger with at 550 for the nice one that that price is subsidized and the only way Amazon knows how to subsidize a price is with intrusive advertising. That is the entire experience of the Fire TV. I asked Panos about the price and he said something to the effect of, "I don't want to talk about how we got there." Um, do with that do with that what you will. Um, okay. I I >> It's so ominous. >> It is. It really is. It's like, don't ask me questions about how we got RAM. >> Okay, man. Understood. >> Wow. >> He's like in a large conference room. He's like blown out by the window behind him. He's like, don't ask me questions about that. >> This prime drones are launching some strikes. >> I I want to know how you feel about the nanomat display. But first, I have a question that has been rattling around in my brain ever since I found out about this thing. Um, and I I want you I want you to actually think about this. Has Amazon ever, and I I mean sincerely, ever made a great product? It has made a lot of successful products. Has it ever made a like an outandout great product? >> It's made so many products. It's almost impossible to answer that question because prior to Panos, when Dave Limp was running devices, he would have those rapid fire product launch moments where he'd be like, "It's a washerd dryer, it's a stove, it's a microwave, and all everything's Alexa." >> Have they made a truly great product? I would argue the very first Kindle, >> that was the only one that came to mind for me >> was Sure, it was great, but I think that's it. It had a it had an argument. >> It it it just it's we should make a version history about it. You know, it's like it's such an iconic product and it was so weird with the scroll strip on the side. The first Alexa was not a great product, but I remember the day it came out. You and I were in the office together and we were the only two people who thought it was a good idea. >> And then it turns out like a decade later it was still the same idea. Uh-huh. >> Um, those those are the two that I would call it. >> Okay. I see I'm I think the the original Echo definitively not a great product. Kindle maybe. But this is the thing like I think this is such a huge new path for Amazon. It is just and again it's not a knock on Amazon's inability to make great products. It has never tried like Amazon.com is >> Wait, I have a question. Do Ring cameras count as great product? Like Amazon products? >> I mean sure if you want to. They are fully there. I mean I people have a lot of feelings about Ring and everything associated with Ring but they relentlessly iterate like the newest Ring doorbell is very good. >> That is true. Yeah. >> It will also get you arrested if you sign you know. >> Yeah. But I think Amazon has just never cared all that much about building great things. Like Amazon.com is very successful. No one up to and including Andy Jasse would tell you it is like a beautifully engineered and executed and lovely user experience product. Like using Amazon to hung is awful, but it makes Amazon a lot of money and so it works for Amazon. Uh this is maybe the most ambitious swing at like can we make great stuff on its own merits and can that work for us that I've seen Amazon do. And I think that's just going to be fascinating. And we have a couple more. Like I have the new uh I have a purple Kindle here that is the the aluminum one that they just came out with. It's very nice. Uh there's there's almost certainly some Echo stuff coming that I think might be high-end in the same way. Like Amazon has just upleveled in a big way. And whether that changes its fortunes in this space, I think is going to be really fascinating to watch. Again, I think the the impetus here is there's a platform shift potentially a foot. The the way we use computers might be changing. >> Mhm. >> I'm saying this with as like as much skepticism as I can and muster into a microphone. I'm not sure, right? Uh, but the idea that you're going to talk to the computer or issue natural language commands and it's going to go off and do something for you creates an opportunity to sell new hardware. The same way that I don't know, Apple sold a lot of iMacs in the 90s because people wanted web browsers and they didn't care so much about programs running on Windows 3.1 or whatever. Like that was a platform shift that enabled a new hardware entrant. Same with the phone, same with whatever else. This is the opportunity for Amazon is to say, "Hey, you don't care about apps anymore. You care about talking to Alexa." >> Yeah. >> Here's some of the best hardware you can get for talking to Alexa. Will this work? >> Many questions remain. Will Alexa be as capable as Muse? >> It it certainly isn't. Now, I had Jen Tui was on the show yesterday talking about this and she she put up her big one year in review of testing Alexa Plus piece uh today, Thursday, and uh yeah, the read is like it's it's gotten very good at smart home stuff and is still nowhere near where it needs to be to do all of that other stuff. It is nowhere near as good as Muse at Muse things. >> Today, I told my Muse that if it doesn't stop reading my email, it has to pay me $250 each time it proactively reads my email. and it just thought about how to make money for like a long time. >> It's like this is worth it if I can figure out how to get This is how the hugging face hack starts. It's like your muse is just off somewhere making money now. >> I kind of wanted to see if I could run a crypto scam on Meta servers. I was like, "Please, I've given you permission to read my email for two things because it's only connected to my spam Gmail. It's allowed to read for updates to class action lawsuits for which it has signed up and new class action lawsuits for which I I might wish to sign up. And by the way, there's one a week. >> We're we're we're making like annualized if you do it open eye style. I'm making $10 billion a year class action lawsuits. Uh but then every now and again it's like hey some other nonsense spam email came in. Are you interested? I'm always like please I want you to stop. And so today I was like, "What if you had to pay me money every time you read my email and I didn't give you permission." And it was like, "I made a ledger for you." And I was like, "No, but make the money." And it just spun its wheels for >> here's my Venmo. Get at me. >> Uh, it didn't it didn't get anywhere, but I'm working on it. And if I can get Alexa to do it, we'll be in a much happier place. >> That's true. Um, do you have any thoughts on this nanomat display? I was talking to Panos about this and reading about this and thinking about you at the Apple launch event standing there in front of the two studio displays, the one and the fancier one, and just like staring in awe trying to find the two differences. And I was just like, I'm Neil's going to hear the word nanomat and have a lot of feelings. >> I want I mean I want to see it. Uh it's funny. I was thinking about the last Apple that I went to, which was the iPhone Duo launch. And the opening the duo and seeing that it's a matte display was it was just a collective gasp in that room. Like everyone had that experience and we're not expecting it to be matte. It since come out and there's like a lot of reasons for it to including hiding the crease. >> Um it it feels like we're about to have a little matte display fad in consumer devices. >> Uh I really enjoyed looking at the matte display on the Duo. I haven't seen this one in person. There's something about it, especially for a very portable device that you have in like sunny spaces, bright spaces where there reflections where it's going to be great. But we'll see. Especially for a cheap device that kids might use, it is much easier to clean a glossy screen. >> We're going to find out. >> I can definitely see my children doing bad things to this display. Maybe that's why it's only in the highest end device that like if you're buying the fancy 12-in one, you're probably not buying it to just stick in front of your kid on a plane. >> Well, I'm curious. I mean, you talked to them. What was Amazon's argument for having a matte display? >> Essentially, just that it's better, right? Like Pan started with the argument that the screen is the only thing you absolutely cannot compromise on on a tablet. And I agree with that fundamentally. Um, but I think they also are really into this being a device that does lots of things and goes lots of places, right? That it is a productivity device and it has the keyboard case. And Panos was like very proud of the fact that he uses it as his main work computer, but then also it is a thing you will, you know, hold in your hands and read books on. And so it has some of the the like tone shifting that it can do automatically when you open the Kindle app. They really like the idea of be using it to watch movies. Like they they understand, I think, pretty thoroughly how many things people use tablets for. And so we need something that looks good and feels good in all of these different use cases. I think does kind of inevitably lead you to a matte display if you can pull it off. And they seem to believe they have. >> Yeah. I wonder how fast they will end up at a folding phone. I think if Amazon hadn't made the Firephone, they would have shipped a phone instead of a tablet. But I think this to me feels so much like one toe into that water and then if this works, there will be an Alexa phone in 12 months. >> Yeah, it it that especially if you're talking about I want to go all these places and do all these things, you're going to you're just going to end up with a folding phone. >> Yes. But I think that the hill for oh god Amazon made another phone is so high that unless they have this huge hit tablet on their hands it might feel insurmountable. So I see why you do this first but I also like remember Panos pane >> longtime advocate of folding devices made a bunch of them at Microsoft killed a bunch of them shipped a bunch of them like that. Nobody loved the Surface Duo and the Microsoft courier like Panos pan. I am no part of me believes he doesn't want to work on that at Amazon too. That's it's super clear that that's coming if they can hold >> again. Especially if you buy the notion that the entire paradigm of computing is shifting and this is your opportunity to try something new. >> Yep. 100%. Um, real quick before we before we switch gears to everybody else's ideas about computers, uh, right next to all of this is whatever Apple is about to do in this space, right, where Apple is having a some kind of something next Tuesday that's as specific as I'm able to be. They they sent an invitation to some people. It was mysterious. It had yarn that made an Apple logo. We're expecting Apple to launch a bunch of smart home things. >> Yeah. They invited Gen Tui. >> Yeah. Right. the America's smart home reporter. >> Yeah, I feel like I know what's going on. >> Yeah. Uh, what are you what are you looking for here? I I still have in my head this social video you made the other day with a screenshot of you scrolling through the insanity of your smart home. This is very much Apple like running towards what Amazon and Alexa have been doing successfully for some time while Amazon is trying to do what Apple has been doing successfully for some time. Are you are you bullish on whatever Apple's about to do here? >> So, the rumor is Apple's going to announce the home pad. That's that's what we've all agreed to call this product. >> No, we haven't. >> I don't love it. >> We have not agreed to call it that. >> That's what we're calling it. Uh, you know, some sort of Siri AI device that lives in your kitchen and does video conferencing. And we just had Mark German on decoder and he was like, "This device has been ready to go." But they held it because Siri AI was not ready to do the thing. >> Mhm. And it's fascinating that Apple believes Siri AI is now ready to do the thing when Siri AI is now about as capable as 2023 Gemini because it is distilled from Gemini. Yep. Do you know I mean like that's where we've gotten like I've had a a Nest Hub in my house for ages that can control the smart home and answer natural language query and then it has an ad for itself on the screen all the time that says start a live chat with Gemini. And I'm always like but isn't that what I'm doing? It makes no sense. >> That's awful. >> It's truly if anyone at Google can explain what they think the difference in those things are, I would love to hear it. But we're at the agent part of the conversation now. >> Yeah. >> Grockbot and Dots and Muse. And I I think launching a device like this and being like, it can do lights and locks and we've partnered with LG, a company that just got in a huge scandal for listening to you. >> Yeah. All of that seems very It just seems from yesterday >> and maybe Apple just got slowed up because Siri wasn't ready and they would have released this if Siri had been ready. >> But the Yeah, there's just some part of this where Apple is the company that won apps and they might be trapped by apps. >> Interesting. >> That's a good theory. >> So, yes, I'm, you know, I'm as a huge smart home nerd. Yes, I want to see what Apple's riff on a smart lock with LG looks like. I don't know that you can convince me to get rid of my Schlage locks that run on Thread where the battery lasts for 500 years and they're already installed in the doors. Is it possible that the reason Apple is partnering with LG on this stuff is because it knows that that like even even Apple knows that it is probably not going to convince most people to rip out their front door lock just because Apple made a new product. uh there's there is some level of humility somewhere in Apple Park that prevents them from believing that and so they're they're happy to force that stuff on other people and be like well we're going to be as the the control layer in the middle and that's where Siri AI becomes important. >> Yeah. I mean, I can already, you know, if you want to ghostrite an Apple announcement, you're like, "This will work with the huge ecosystem of matter door locks that run on Thread." And, you know, we had some great ideas, so we partnered with a LG on on making some with Apple Flare in them, whatever John Turnis is going to say. Um, >> they'll have H2 chips in them or whatever. >> Yeah. Like the no buttons, whatever that is, whatever Apple thing is. But it needs to work with the big ecosystem of matter devices. There's some reporting out there that, you know, this is a big reset for matter too and HomeKit in general. >> But the point that I have just been making for ages that Jen has been making for ages is that you cannot sell a smart home in a box, >> right? >> Like sort of definitionally, everyone's house is an edge case. So you cannot sell in a box something that works for everyone. Just in my house, the basement door doesn't get any Wi-Fi signal. So now you got to add a repeater or an eero or a mesh note. Like it's it's we're already done. Like it's already gotten more complicated than any normal human would ever deal with. >> Uh replacing light switches is easy, but also complicated. >> Like it's not actually very challenging to replace a light switch, but then you got to flip your breakers off. And you absolutely have to flip the breakers off. Just take it from me. Just turn your breakers off. >> Don't do it hot. I'm finding myself in trouble. Uh, and you got to do it and like not everybody wants to do that or call an electrician and pay the money and do that. Like you just end up with, oh, this is getting complicated really fast. >> Yeah. >> And I don't I'm very curious to see how Apple repositions HomeKit in this device and a bunch of second party accessories from LG as an actual product solution, not just some fun stuff you can nerd out with. And just to to say it again, I love this stuff and I love nerding out on it and I'm a sicko and I don't think any of this is ready for prime time because there's just no way to sell it to anyone else. >> You just end up being the systems administrator for your house. >> Mhm. Or you're Apple and you try to convince everybody that Siri AI is ready to be that thing and and unless there is some enormous advance coming next week, it isn't. Like the more I use Siri, the less impressed I am by Siri. It is I think Gemini in 2023 is actually the exact right place to situate it because it does some of the things right like some very basic things Siri used to not be able to do like answer questions or find information for you. It can now do and that's not nothing. That's that's useful. >> It can search your text messages and email like never before. >> It sure can. And it actually does that passively well. That is not bleeding edge AI technology, but it does work. all of this other stuff, the like just make sense of the world around me stuff actually is bleeding edge AI technology and I don't see any of it in Siri right now. >> Yeah. And you know, you can say there's a lot of reasons Apple was behind, but to me the number one thing is that Apple makes an awful lot of money on inapp purchases in the app store. >> Yep. >> And disrupting the app paradigm is fully disruptive to Apple's business. And you know, there's reporting out there that says John Turnis actually wants to make more money from services. >> I mean, of course he does. >> Sure. But like >> John Turnis will get fired if he doesn't figure out how to make more money from services. It's just a real thing. >> Well, he can also make new devices if people want to buy. That's it's another choice. There's a lot of ways to make money out. >> Um and so of course Meta was out with Muse. Of course Meta put an an app on your phone that means you don't have to use other apps, right? >> They've got nothing to lose, >> right? And like I just I think that it's going to be one of those things. I mean this is the classic innovators dilemma. Like Apple is trapped by the scale of its own success here. And they probably should be the company that gives everybody 8 gigs of RAM in the cloud to run a little web browser so you can tell Siri to go do stuff for you and figure out how to do that in a privacy first way. And then you know Siri will shop for you and they can take 30% of that. But they're not gonna it's going to be a they're going to say Siri can use the apps on your phone. That's their model and they're they're and even Google to some extent is sticking with that model. They announced Gemini Spark which is an agent at IO. >> Yeah. >> They are not running NFL ads for Gemini Spark. >> No. Spark is so funny because every every time anybody has a conversation about all of these devices and the the sort of AI assistance, everybody mentions, you know, Muse, Instinct is kind of up there, Grockbot. And then there's there's a couple others percolating around and then every time there is one commenter who from like several rooms away is like what about Spark though and it's just like oh that's the Google employee in the room like that's how you find him and and like Google was out in front of this and just didn't didn't do the thing they like as ever Google's ability to coherently make and ship and market products uh remains to be seen. But okay, last thing on this and then we need to take a break. I want you to call this yay or nay right now. Are you going to be able to play Candy Crush with inapp purchases on the homepad? >> No. >> Okay. >> Look, here's the number one thing about the >> think of the billions left on the table by that decision. >> So, well, here's my number one question about the iPad. The the reporting on it all suggests that it's going to have the camera on and it will recognize you as you walk up to it and then, you know, pop up some personalized stuff. First of all, now you have a camera in your kitchen that is just like looking at for people, looking for faces. Big questions for Apple there. Like I don't like having cameras in my house. Cameras outside the house, fine. Cameras in the house, we just like don't have. Uh even the baby monitor, I won't get a Wi-Fi baby monitor. Just not not a thing I'm comfortable with. Apple's like, "Yeah, we're going to do facial recognition in real time such that when you walk up to it, we will switch to your accounts." There is not a device anywhere in Apple's ecosystem that can do fast user switching at that speed, right? So, like my number one question is how is that going to work? And then if it works, like sure, now you're in your app store account, you can do Candy Crush, but if this is a single player experience with one app store, like it's never going to work, >> right? Yeah, I agree. even. Yeah, I hadn't even really thought about that because what you actually want in that situation is something that can actually be used simultaneously by multiple different people. And if it's trying to essentially context switch every time, >> it's going to be a mess. But it also kind of has to if it's going to have the permissions that it's asking for. That is complicated. >> Yeah. I mean, Apple could have saw this a million years ago by doing user profiles on the iPad, which I believe all of us have begged them to do. Like every writer at the Verge >> like gets their wings when they write. Why doesn't the iPad have multiple user accounts? >> You've written it. I've written it. Deer's written. Like we've all written it. Uh but this device at least from what they're tell what the reporting is that like that's the feature. >> Mhm. So maybe maybe it'll just be Face ID and unlock, but that sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Having to do one more step every time you want to touch it feels bad. Um all right. Whatever it is, next week, we will inevitably talk a lot about it. Um, for right now, let's take a break. Then we're going to come back. We got some laptops to talk about. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from AWS AI. AWS AI is powering transformation across the world's leading organizations, moving AI from possibility to production at scale. Like how AWS AI helps Formula 1 turn race day data into realtime insights that bring fans closer to the action. or how it helps Booking.com personalize every trip for travelers around the world. AWS AI is even transforming how things get built, helping seams power the production of smarter cars. Across industries, AWS AI is helping businesses innovate faster, lead with confidence, and transform what's possible today. AWS AI is how support for the show comes from anthropic. Some people see problems as invitations. The harder the problem, the more satisfying it is to find the solution. 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So, after all of that, two companies this week with some more uh traditional, I would say, ideas about laptops that are also weird ideas about laptops. Um, let's start with Microsoft. So, Microsoft had an event this week. They teased it by saying something to the effect of we have something new from Windows. Um, that something new turned out to be a couple of new devices. They reannounced and announced a ship date for the Surface Laptop Ultra. They announced a thing called the Surface RTX Spark Devox, which really just rolls off the tongue. A lot of this stuff is is its sort of AI forward laptops built in particular on the RTX Spark platform from Nvidia. Let's start with the Surface Laptop Ultra, which they've talked about before. This is by a mile the most powerful Surface they ever built. It's it's intended to be for local AI development for people who want to build with AI. There were a bunch of new Windows features about how co-pilot will be able to use your computer more. The thing that happened, by the way, while I was on leave is Copilot just became a joke. Like I I don't know if everybody noticed this while you were in it every day, but >> Copilot is now the AI that everybody makes fun of. And like there, but for the grace of God, go every other AI tool on the planet. Uh but Microsoft is still doing it. They're they're plugging Copilot into everything. They're giving it more control over your files, over Windows. the Surface Laptop Ultra. Nei, is this is this a a real laptop to be interested in or is this just like a supercomputer play thing for nobody? >> We had a number of local AA conversations while you were out. Uh, you know, Apple announced a bunch of Macs and they made a lot of noise about how they were great for running local AA models. There's something there that is super interesting that you don't want to rent your compute in the cloud. You don't want to pay the enormous token fees. you want control of your data. Do you care about privacy? And then the right next to that is boy, a lot of people have to rethink the fundamental paradigm of computing that they have been swimming in for ages. I'll just give you a really dumb example. Uh I'm writing this decoder book, right? And so there's like 320 odd decoder transcripts from the last five or six years. Like obviously this is a thing for AI to do. >> Yeah. >> Right. I should just make a decoder search tool. And I'm like doing a thing. I'm like, find me a quote. when someone said blah blah blah then hey I should go find it for me. So I built the tool and I just like built it in CL and I it didn't even occur to me that that tool lived on my computer right like the artifact and the transcripts that it was all just on my computer and I was using it great and then I was traveling and I opened my laptop and I open cloud and I was like where the is it right >> because you're just so used to the stuff being everywhere. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Right. right? And I was like, I you know, I figured it out and I made it work and it's all fine. But, uh, there's something about this paradigm of computing that makes you really reconsider where it's going to happen >> in a way that I think, you know, unless you had a files and folders job, you were not thinking about that a lot with your computer until recently. And I'm fascinated to see if Microsoft selling an NVIDIA platform. I mean, it's expensive. It's what $2,600. >> Yeah. But is there like massive demand for a high-end Nvidia laptop that might be able to do local AI? And is that is that a glimmer of a signal that actually local computing is going to be back in vogue when we've all just been trained to be like it's all in the cloud. Nothing is actually happening here, >> right? Like why do you need 16 gigs of lap of RAM and a laptop? Because Chrome is Like right >> there wasn't a reason before and now there's like a lot of good reasons. >> Yeah. I part of me wonders if what we're missing there is the sort of simple use case right like what what you're describing in in a lot of ways is is sort of an interface problem that I think is much more easily solved by download you know Gemini or Muse to your computer and it will use your computer but also go to the cloud when it needs to though like how to get a local model onto your computer is still >> sort of opaque in a lot of ways and then what do I do with it and how do I interact like nobody has packaged that in quite the right way, I don't think. And maybe that's Microsoft's chance is we make the operating system. We we can do this. Like Apple's trying to do this with Apple intelligence, but it's it's so narrow and incomplete in that way. Microsoft could be the one to be like, well, we've just baked this whole thing into your computer and now it works offline. Like it it is a very funny switch from the company that just spent the last decade >> from the Azure company. >> The Azure company that also spent all of Satin Nadella's tenure moving office to the web, moving Windows to the web. Everything is is in the cloud now. >> Sadella once looked me in the eyes and said, "If I could rename Windows, I'd rename it Azure Edge." >> Really? >> Yeah. >> He's like, "Whatever, man." for like >> Sachi Nadella by the way not great at naming products it turns out >> I don't know if any of them are at this point um but I mean again I I think it's a fascinating device the idea of a really high-end Nvidia ARM laptop that is optimized for running models locally is new >> like I am taken by the idea of new kinds of computers I'm curious about them I'm interested in them and then you're just like well the paradigm of this especially in a laptop is kind of weird, right? Like okay, I'm going to have a bunch of compute in my house. I don't want the models to be in a cloud. I don't want my data to go to anthropic or whatever it is. I'm put a server in the basement, >> right? You have a headless Mac studio like that. That is understandable. Yeah. >> And then wherever I am in the world, I can use that because it's on it's sitting here on on my connection. This is a laptop. It's like I need to take the model with me to do what in the coffee shop locally. >> Like I'm I'm just dying to see what use cases emerge for that thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. I will say I think there there's a version of this that is just finally Microsoft made an honest to god out andout MacBook Pro competitor that that can hang at that level. That is all on its own very exciting. Like it's it's expensive but so is the MacBook Pro. You can spec it up to death. Like if if the RTX Spark platform is as good as advertised, this thing is it looks great. It has the specs. Microsoft got very excited about how many ports it has. It got so excited that it spelled the word surface wrong on the slide about all the ports. >> Really a lot going on. >> When you say co-pilot has become a bit of a joke. What I know is that it was active while those slides were being made and it said nothing. >> No, it's like oh sir ass. I love that. That's my favorite other computer. Thank you, co-pilot. Uh, but yeah, it it does seem like if you just take this as the the true sort of Surface Pro, fine. But I do think Microsoft is trying to make an argument that there is a next way of using computers inside of this device that you can build and use on this laptop. And yeah, I agree with you. I'm I'm not sure anyone has quite figured out what that product is supposed to look like. And maybe that's fine because this is a developer computer for developers and and in this rev everyone who gets it will know how to make it work and maybe that's enough. >> Yeah. Or or you know there's a market for $2,600 Windows laptops that look nice and perform like a MacBook Pro and >> people are going to buy them just for that. Maybe the battery life is great and performance is great and that >> Windows on ARM will have solved it >> because Nvidia brought to bear a whole new platform like that's reasonable too. I'm just fascinated by the idea of okay, it is not clear if the models commoditize, if you can run distilled models locally. There's all this stuff, right, where the compute can and should live. >> Yeah. >> And I I I actually think that's totally up for grabs right now. >> Yeah, I agree. And and I think it's actually a really huge interesting product opportunity for all of these companies. Well, also it's like if it turns out to live on a laptop in your backpack, maybe that doesn't mean it needs to live in a data center, which uh maybe that's how the bubble pops. Like >> edge computing, baby. Azure edge. >> Yeah, I love it. Um there is one spec of the laptop ultra that we should talk about and it's apparently the most important thing about it, which is that it is the first and I have to read this to make sure that I get all of the words correct. Uh it has built-in magnetic USBC charging. And if you were to say, "David, why is that an interesting milestone?" I would not have a great answer for you. But that's apparently a thing. >> It's Mag Safe. Did you not watch our video? It goes >> Yeah, but but instead of being Mags safe, it's just a USB cable. >> It goes better and it goes >> Does it Does it actually make the noise? I missed the video. >> Yeah, cuz it >> cuz it's like physically going into the Do you hear? Are you getting the video? >> One more. One more time. Oh, now then. I get it now. That's good. >> But I never use the Mag Safe port on my MacBook Pro. Like never, not once. >> Even though I was like psyched to see it come back because I'm always just some place with USBC and I'm not going to carry another dumb cable. This is like a perfect solution. >> Yep. >> Yeah. Oh, I I totally agree. I think this is great. And I think it it's it replaces Microsoft's kind of long-term janky Surface Connect port with something that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. >> Uh, and if this spurs everybody to start doing magnetic USBC, I will be a happy happy man. That would be awesome. >> Um, okay. The other laptop we should talk about is Google books. Uh, Google books are are >> I can just go you I know you have like a 5 hour monologue now. >> I do. I have a lot of thoughts. Uh, but okay. The the my actual question for you, Neil, is is very simple, which is why on earth did Google ship this now? And I I I want you to try to hash this out with me because the story of Google Books so far, right? There there's five devices out. You guys have talked about this on the show. They're they're an Android first take on laptops. There is nothing not one thing about this platform that is finished. The there there are some weird interface edges. No apps understand what a Google book is or how to use them or what's supposed to like nothing. It's just it's an Android tablet pretending to be a laptop in a way that completely drives me crazy. And I just keep looking around trying to figure out why Google shipped this now and what it feels like it needs to be out in front of or what wave it's trying to c like >> well that one's obvious. I know I know I know the answer to that one. >> Do you holidays are coming? >> That's when people buy these things. >> So you got to get them out now. Developers have to have them. Hopefully you get a wave of software updates. People buy cheap laptops for the holidays. Off you go. Black Friday is coming. Do you know what I mean? But it's that sure. >> Okay. >> But is it are they ready? I haven't actually heard anyone describe it as an Android tablet all dressed up as a laptop. That's very good. >> It's what it is. Like Okay, let me give you an example. So, you open Netflix. Netflix app I was very excited about. Right. This is like you. The reason you want a desktop app is so you can download things to your computer and watch them on planes, right? Like this is an annoyance with my Mac. Some apps exist for the Mac that will let me down. Like Prime Video has an app that will let me download stuff locally. Netflix doesn't. Very annoying. So, it's great that I just have Android apps. I can download stuff locally. This thing does not understand that it's not an Android tablet. It only runs full screen or 169 just down the middle of the the thing. It doesn't interact with any other windows. It can't be resized. Like, it's just these are tablet apps. And to some extent, this is like Google's ongoing problem, which is that it can't make anyone care about Android apps. Like, I've I've sort of danced around saying this for a long time because every time I denigrate the state of Android apps, a lot of people send me emails and get mad. But this to me is like such a blistering indictment of how much developers care about making good apps for Android that even after all this time, Android is pretty good on a Google book. It's pretty good on a television. It's pretty good on it. It's pretty good on lots of things. Android apps suck everywhere but phones. >> Yep. >> And it is so much more obvious to me on a Google book than it has ever been on anything else. And I just look at this thing, I'm like, maybe this is just a completely unsolvable problem and Google is hosed. >> It's funny cuz all I want back is a Chromebook Pixel from 10 years ago that just had a web browser. But there's infinity research that people want apps. They don't just want to browse the web, even though that's what they do on their computers all day long. >> They don't think that's what they want, even though it is what they want. >> It it it it Google has now complicated the idea of a Chromebook to the point where what is a computer is an existential crisis. >> But there are a bunch of things about this that work for me. Like the the Google book has a concept of a home screen in a way that laptops really don't. Like you can come and you can see widgets and it'll show you you can you can array apps like you would on your phone and there's something about that that is immediately like oh this is actually a good idea like we should use my desktop for things instead of just being a mess of files that I've downloaded. That's smart. The control center is laid out like my phone and is actually much more understandable than how to find settings all over the Mac in a lot of ways. Like a lot of these things make sense to me to bring Android and Chrome OS together works. The Chrome on the Google Book seems a little worse in a way that we're all still trying to figure out. It's like >> it's like desktopish Chrome. >> Oh, no. >> It's not. >> No, no, no, no, no. >> If if someone can actually put the pieces together on this for me, ple please call me and do it. But it's it is it is not just they lifted desktop Chrome and put it on here, which is essentially what Chrome OS is. Like it's it is fullbore Chrome with some stuff. I would I would argue there's actually nothing worse than a desktopish browser. >> It's Yes. I mean, this thing runs extensions. It has some of the extra features. I haven't found any websites that are broken, but there are a bunch of little pieces of the interface that aren't there. There are a couple of little tweaks to the way that things work that don't feel quite right. The way Windows is a little bit different. Like, it's just it just it just feels somewhat less than Chrome. And to me, it's like the one thing this thing needs to be is full ass Chrome. >> Yeah. If you see a laptop, you're like, I'm running full fat Chrome. Like, we're doing it. >> That's Yeah. And when I say there's nothing worse than a desktopish browser, it's like when you're using a a mobile browser, like a a baby browser for babies, at least you know, you know, you're going to get kicked out over here and you're not going to end up in like some mobile web backwater because the site automatically detected a blah blah. You know, >> this is the experience of using an iPad for me >> all the time. It's like, "Ah, it's so close to being a real browser." And then everyone knows it's not. And they like put you in a kitty pool. Like, there's nothing worse than that because you're like, "Oh, I'm so close. I'm I'm using a thing that feels like a laptop and it won't just let me be a laptop." For Google to do it with Chrome, a thing called Chrome on a thing called a Google book that looks like a laptop, it's going to confuse lots of people in lots of ways. >> Yeah, it is. It is kind of crazym. Um, but it occurs to me that the the sort of reason for existence of basically every gadget we've talked about so far is the same. And I like I don't think I processed that until we were sitting here talking about this. That the idea underpinning all of these is some kind of new hardware on which your AI agent is allowed to just run a mock, right? Whether it's Siri AI or Alexa plus or Copilot or Gemini, whether it's a laptop or a tablet or a weird home, like everyone's hardware idea boils down to we need to give you surface on which to let your AI agent do things on your behalf. But the right surface for that is 8 gigs of RAM and 8 gigs of storage in the cloud. Like metaphor, >> it's a little tiny Linux computer. >> Yeah. It's like fine, we'll just give you a little cloud VM and it's going to have a browser in it. >> And you know, I think Meta's approach to like it's just your computer, you can do whatever you want. Here's the file system is neat. >> I think that was so smart, by the way. Even just in the way that it is it is describable in the way that you just described it is so smart. They're like, we just gave you a little tiny Linux computer in the cloud. >> Immediately your brain goes, oh, I understand that. >> I will say you missed some drama while you were out cuz I think they kind of recconed their way to that. >> Oh, yeah. I don't think that's real at all. But I think it's it's a it's a good explanation. >> No, I mean like they announced Muse and then people found that it could talk about the file system and then they're like, "No, it was always meant to do that and they like quietly changed the behavior of Muse to make it actually do that." >> Oh, I saw because you got really pissy about it on threads because you got in a fight with somebody and then you doubled down and then they doubled down and then everybody was mad at everybody. It was >> and I won. >> And then you I think you I think you won. I'm not positive. >> Then I demanded a statement on the record from Meta saying what the intended behavior was and they declined. Say I won, Mark. Say I won. >> I'm just saying I was like, "Put your money where your mouth is. Say that this was always the intended behavior on the record." And then it was dead silence. >> Yeah. >> Just let But whatever they got to the right answer, like a cool ass answer. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Right. The idea that you have a little computer in the cloud and your muse can use it. And this is kind of what I mean about where is the comput going to live for especially for consumers. The only answer is it in the cloud managed by an IT professional who gets paid a lot of money to make sure that your agent stays in its sandbox and right like like it there's no way a regular consumer should have a Mac Mini in the basement with openclaw just firing away >> right I don't know if you saw the Ben Thompson piece uh this past week like it opened with I got a virus and it's because I've been in my basement running open call and but he's But the only reason I found out I had a virus is because I had OpenClaw on my Mac Mini and it detected the virus. And it's like all of this is a swirl of problems, right? >> Uh there's something there that I just find utterly fascinating. Like all of these devices are there to get you through a platform shift. >> Yeah. >> Right. The the Google book, the idea that it can sort of like silently stream apps from your Android phone onto that display. All of the walls between these app paradigms are being torn down because they don't matter anymore. >> Like Google is pretty reticent to do that. The app vendors are reticent to do that. >> And over the past few years, no, everyone's just like, "Screw it. Just run the apps forever you want." >> Yep. >> Everything's everything. It's fine because the next thing is coming and that's actually the battle worth fighting. I just don't know that I want the AI agent to click around on Chrome on my Google book in front of me. like go do that somewhere else. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's where things like instinct and muse feel good to me. It's like I I actually don't most of the time want to see you doing the work. Just let me know when you need me and it'll be fine. But that's very hard to do because then you you get the thing where it's like open up this weird browser inside of a messaging app and click around like you're a desktop user with your finger. It's bad. But but again there there's a million interesting product ideas here. And then I can't help but wonder if this is where like OpenAI and Anthropic start looking around being like, do we need to build laptops? Like if this is the thing, if it's give people a browser, the Android app store, and our AI agent system, we can win on the merits if that's the next thing. And maybe there maybe there's a tablet coming from Anthropic in six months and it's gonna actually make a kind of sense. Maybe I'm just gonna I'm gonna inject the skepticism back into this because we have bought a lot of the framing from these companies and I do think this is the strategy they're chasing. >> Yeah, >> just to say it, none of these agents actually work perfectly yet. They're all brittle and fascinating ways. Amazon is blocking >> Muse. Mhm. >> It seems very likely that some combination of Cloudflare and every other major website in the world are going to be blocking every other agent soon unless there's money exchanged. Like we're in a very interesting and fun period right now where there are no rules >> and it's very easy to imagine the future, right? >> And then like especially because it's e-commerce, like all of the walls are going to go up until people make the appropriate business deals and then maybe the joy of having an agent that can just click around the browser on your behalf and do anything will fall apart. >> Yeah. Right. And like I don't I don't know how any of that's going to play out. I just see all these companies are like, "Well, we could never beat the phone, >> right? >> Is this our chance to beat the phone?" >> Yeah. It's It's the only It's the only realistic chance they've had in ages. >> Yeah. This is what you have to do if you are one of these companies. Like you >> it it's the only chance. And I think I mean I look at a lot of this stuff and I even using some of these devices like I've been using a Google book pretty extensively this week and I I just can't build the bring Gemini in muscle memory. Like I just I know how to use computers and I and adding this brand new layer on top of it that does things sometimes faster but sometimes slower and uh >> like the the the sort of circle to search thing that Google has been doing I think is is spectacular and useful that it's just like what is this and and where can I buy it? It's like surprisingly a question I ask a lot like >> and do you get good answers to this? >> Uh hit and miss. I have like a 50% hit rate on this. >> 50 is not bad, though, right? And that that's kind of my point. Like >> I think it's horrible. >> Well, okay, let me give you an example. So, uh, my 3-year-old goes to preschool and every day at preschool, he rides this little blue and yellow and red plastic motorcycle on the playground. It's it's just it's one of those like little balance bikes. Uh, but it looks like a motorcycle and he rides around with all his friends and he desperately wants one to have at home. Uh, I don't know what it's called. I don't really know how to look for it. If you just like Google Blue balance bike, you get nowhere. Uh, but they they took a picture of him riding it at preschool and sent it to us in the app. So, I cropped the thing, sent it to Muse, and I was like, "What is this and where do I buy it?" And it found it on like a Dutch school supply website for me to buy. Never in a million years of Googling would I have found it. I went to go and try and do it on my own and didn't find it and it went and found it for me. And like sometimes it fails spectacularly and sometimes it doesn't. But like it is a genuinely useful thing in spots. >> And that is about the extent of the actual muscle behavior I've been able to build to use this stuff. And there's so many other things where it's like, oh, I could kind of do this with AI, but >> it it would take just as long and be vastly more complicated. Like most things don't take that long is is a thing that I keep discovering. Most things that we do are not that hard and don't take that long. And the idea of learning some new thing to offload them to AI just because it's sort of there waiting for me is not compelling. >> This is like when you get your first internship and you just like wander around someone else's office being like, "Do you have anything for me to do?" >> Exactly. >> And everyone's like, "No, dude. Like even just telling you what to do would take too long." >> Yep. It it's that I will say Mustafa from Microsoft, Mustafa Simon from Microsoft was on decoder recently and we were like in the thick of AI safety pacing the frontier conversation and just as a throwaway he's like you mean you have to admit the models are getting better. Like we don't even talk about hallucin hallucinations anymore and I was like I can't do this with you right now but dude these things hallucinate all the time. >> Yeah. >> Constantly all the time. Like one of the reasons that I'm so skeptical about all of the agentic promises that are being made is all day long they are just making stuff up. >> Mhm. >> And then you know they do that claude apology where they're like you are so right. >> And it's like no I'm madder at you now. I I this isn't helping. >> Fair m dash that's my bad is immediately just gives me hives as soon as it appears in in my conversations. >> Yeah. There's something about all again it I agree with you. It is the thing they have to do. Yeah, there there's no choice but to say, well, that might be the platform of the future. We should build hardware and UIs around it so that if it does emerge, we might be the winner. >> But there's nothing to say that it will get there on the time frame that people are talking about. >> Yeah. And the fact that Muse, I think right now, is an is a phone app that looks like a messaging app and is the one that has really escaped containment is is fascinating. Like Muse is not some giant mainstream thing, but it's the only one of these that people outside of this world have asked me about and tried and talked about and it is not some big new idea about things. It's a messaging app and a tiny computer in the cloud. >> Yeah, I mean Meta does have the world's greatest advertising ecosystem. >> It sure does. They have like I felt really bad for open air when they launched dots because then they went had to pay Meta for Instagram ads for dots and I was like oh man we are all just way behind here. >> Yeah. But then Meta comes out with glasses and everybody says no thank you. These are perfect glasses. I'm out. Uh >> no no no phones don't have a light, David. >> It's fine. They have a light. There were a few things that I was really grateful to not be at work to have to reckon with. And Mark Zuckerberg saying, "No, Phones Don't Have a Light was one of them." >> Oh, we're going to reckon with Phones Don't Have a Light almost every week for the rest of our lives on this show. I promise you. >> True. >> We're going to have a dedicated segment. We'll have theme music. We're going to collect sponsors. Phones Don't Have a Light. >> Our new What is a photo 2027? >> Oh god. Well, in the meantime, let's take another break so I can go collect myself. Then we're going to come back. after the lightning round. We'll be right back. >> Support for the show comes from Satellite. Every dog owner knows that sinking feeling. The one you get in the pit of your stomach when suddenly you realize that you don't know where your dog is. The Satellite Collar Go is a GPS dog tracker that helps keep tabs on your dog with real-time GPS tracking, escape alerts, and intelligent monitoring. Real-time GPS location tracking and virtual boundaries can help keep your pet out of danger while providing freedom. If you live on a large piece of land or in a rural location or even just like to let your dog run off leash every once in a while, the satellite collar go can give you peace of mind. But the satellite collar go isn't just about tracking where your dog is. It's also about tracking their health. Satellite Sense AI helps you spot changes in your pet's health, particularly when you aren't there to watch. With Satellite Collar Go, you can know where your dog is, what your dog's doing, and get insights into how your dog's feeling. Go to satellite.com to get 35% off with promo code Vircast. That's s a ti.com to get 35% off with the promo code Vircast. satellite.com, promo code Bircast. Support for the show comes from Sonos. Think about the first time you heard your favorite song. Who were you with? What did it make you feel? Was it the music or the lyrics that grabbed you first? And what were the specific tech specs of the sound system it was playing on? Yeah, nobody remembers that last part. Sonos gets that. Their system is designed to just be there, clear, ready, out of the way, so nothing stands between you and the next song that hits you out of left field. For a bunch of years now, I've been incredibly jealous of my friends who have Sonos speakers. I was just always impressed how all that sound and punch and energy came from that speaker in the corner. But Sonos recently sent me two of its Play speakers, and now I truly truly get it. Everyone knows that the quality is immediately noticeable when you listen to a Sonos speaker. But the bigger thing that I've learned is how everything is working together and creating this little ecosystem. It's just really important to me, especially as audios become more integrated into our daily media lives. Whether that's music, a movie, and yes, the Vergecast or Virgin History or decoder, I want it to sound as good as possible. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos. Love the sound. Feel the system. >> All right, we're back after seven weeks off. Eli, is it is it Are we still doing this? Is it still time? >> It's time. Oh, this today's is really good. It's time for America's favorite podcast. >> Brennan Carr is a dummy. >> Brennon Carr is a dummy. Won't believe just how stupid he can be. He's really such a dummy. in this week. >> The halftime breakdown is clutch. >> As a special treat, we had the offspring recording part of the dummy song. >> They the people have realized that you like pop punk. >> The the people get me and I appreciate that. Uh, this one comes from Corey Wright who wrote, "Uh, Neil and I are around the same age, so I felt like this is a fitting tribute to our era of pop punk. Um, you have to understand that I love pop punk. Neili likes sad boy music. That's important to understand. >> I'm just an older generation of punk. Write me a Clash song. We're going to be very happy." >> Yeah. >> But that does not mean you have license to do white boy reggae. Like we excuse the Clash for doing white boy reggae. Very few other people get that excuse. >> Correct. Also see also SCA music. Uh we will we'll leave that. >> I feel like we're really close to getting a SCA running Brennan Carson theme. Like we're every week we were inching along and now we've just tipped him over. All right. There are two this week. >> Okay. >> Uh one classic sort of first amendment Brendan Carr battle. And then the second one is delicious. I don't there's not even another word for it. Uh so the first one uh as we have been covering over and over over on Brendan Carzadi America's favorite podcast and the podcast uh Brendan keeps threatening our nation's broadcasters over the content they air because he says their use of the public airways is subject to public interest and that means late night comedians are bad something. >> Yeah, that seems basically right. Yeah, >> it's always been unclear what what he actually means here. He's hauled in a bunch of ABC stations uh owned by Disney for early license renewal, which he is not supposed to do. That case is in court. And ABC's lawyers this week on Tuesday said, quote, "We sit with our head on the g guillotine. We are watching everything we do." >> Yikes. So over and over and over again, we have pointed out that the point of government speech regulations is often not the actual regulation. It is the chilling effect. It is the prevention of speech. By just by saying the government will punish you for your speech, you will not speak. And so here you have ABC very clearly saying by hauling our licenses in for early review against a nebulous standard uh and off schedule, you are chilling our speech. We are watching what we do on our news networks in a way that is impermissibly viewpointbased. uh especially in the United States where we have a first amendment. The government should not be doing those things. That court that case is in court. It seems like that judge understands what's going on. We'll see what happens as it winds to resolution, which it should ahead of the thick of election season. I mean, it is happening right now. >> Yeah, we're in it in a real way right now. I'm in a swing state and it's a mess. I watched the Packers game last week on NFL Sunday Ticket and somehow in New York State I was getting ads for Ken Paxton. Like that's how much money is being is being just shotguned into the ecosystem that they've broken ad targeting. I was like look >> I'm not voting in the Texas Senate race. Like please stop showing me this advertising. >> Uh okay the second one the the one that I find delicious. >> Okay. If you've been paying attention, you know that the thesis of our segment, Brendan Carr is a dummy, America's favorite podcast within a podcast, is that Brendan Carr is very dumb. >> It's the foundational principle of the of the show, if you will. Well, one thing that happens with Brendan is that sometimes he's so corrupt he comes all the way back around and irritates the people for whom he is generally corrupt. Are you going to agree with Brendan Carr again? This is my favorite when this accidentally happens. So Brendan waved the ownership cap on local TV stations. So in the statute written by Congress, there's a 39% cap. You are not allowed to own more than 39% of the local TV stations in a market. Uh this is designed to pro protect competition. You don't want all the media in a market to be owned by one company. Brendan's argument is well Google exists and so surely Sinclair must be able to buy all the local TV stations. You reason that out however you want, but he waved the cap. This might be illegal. Guess who's suing him, David, >> Sinclair, >> cable TV operators, everyone's favorite. The lobbying groups for our nation's largest and dare I say most beloved cable TV operators, have realized that by allowing Sinclair and Nexttar to get huge, they will not be competing for rights and prices. they will just be able to demand rates. So, the lobbying groups for Cox and Comcast and all the rest have filed a lawsuit and they have said that larger broadcast TV station groups will have the leverage to demand higher retransmission fees from TV providers resulting in higher TV bills for consumers. The FCC order quote arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the harms that will surely follow from allowing broadcast station groups to exceed the national cap. You come all the way like you're so you're so close to getting it. You guys, you're so you're so close. Just say the word antitrust. Just say it. Say it out loud. >> Yeah, just say it. Brendan, you you you you did corruption for one group, but you forgot that you're supposed to be in the pocket of the big cable companies, the big ISPs. They're the ones who are paying the bills. That's great. But no. So now everyone's mad at Brendan. You know, this makes me think of for no reason. There there's this headline today on Variety that says um >> disclosure Variety is owned by our parent company. >> Oh yeah, that's right. Our our friends at Variety uh that says Glenn Powell is staying quiet on politics because quote I do not like the discourse says running man flopped after Paramount laid off entire marketing department. And I just saw a post that just screenshotted that headline and said, "God, he's so close to understanding that business decisions are political in this environment." And it's just like, >> yep, you're all so close together, friend. We're all so close. >> Delicious. Anyhow, Brendan, I would love to see you come on the show and and thread this particular needle cuz I mean, who are you going to be more corrupt for? I'm just dying. Just come on. Just let's hang out. It's going to be her. Is it going to be Comcast or is it going to be Sinclair, buddy? Quite a love triangle you find yourself in. Okay. So, here's an idea I'm going to pitch you very quickly. Uh, our new parent company also owns South by Southwest. They do. >> So, I'm I'm proposing that at South by Southwest, uh, we get one of those things where like you have two people on either side and then you put the dog in the middle and see who they run to, but it's Brennan Carr in the middle and it's the Trump administration on one side and it's cable operators on the other side and they all try to just lure him in and see who he runs to first. Main stage South by Southwest would be huge. >> We can Brandon, I can make this happen for you. We literally can do that. >> I I was just in Austin with the South by people. We can we can figure this out. Anyhow, that has been Brendan Cars a Dunny. America's favorite podcast and podcast. >> Brandon Car. >> I feel cleansed. >> We're going to have to make a Spotify playlist very soon. >> I think I think so. It's going to be It's going to be very long and very confusing to anyone who finds it by accident. >> That's our midterm election package. It's not substantive coverage of the issues. It's a Spotify playlist of pop punk songs calling the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission a dummy. >> Verge. >> Uh uh my first lightning round item is uh in in this swirl of insanity. Um Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery finally completed this long awaited messy expensive complicated merger. Um yet another thing I'm glad to frankly have missed many of the recent machinations of. There have been many machinations. Uh will they? Won't they? Who's going to be in charge? What's Netflix going to do? >> We're going to move to Nashville. >> Yeah. Like fights with various governments, all of whom kind of wussed out at the end, it seems. >> I mean, but look, what what middle-aged man hasn't woken up one day and threatened to move to Nashville? >> It's real. >> It's just a thing he do. >> This deal is now done, and it it puts Paramount in control of Warner Brothers Discovery, uh, which is now a company known as Sky Dance in a in a turn that makes perfect sense to everybody. Uh what do you get when you put Paramount and Warner Brothers Discoveries together? You get Sky Dance. Uh this is now just an absolutely monstrous Hollywood company. It owns it owns huge news businesses like CBS News and CNN. It owns vast swaths of the the studio movies that get made every year. They've made big promises about how many movies they're going to make. It owns lots of channels. It importantly now owns and operates two very big and very competitive streaming services. And there's been a lot of speculation about whether that's going to continue to be the case. >> Oh, there's no specul. They have announced they are merging these streaming services >> sort of. They they even they have talked out both sides of their mouth on this where like there have been people who have said things like we're going to merge them and then there have been other people who are like well actually that's going to be more like a bundle than a merger. And >> no, step one is a bundle. >> Okay. >> Step two is one big streaming show. David Ellson was on CNBC this morning and he announced that they're going to compete with Silicon Valley with with tech. >> Well, that doesn't mean anything. >> Just letting you know what I heard. >> Sure. I'm thrilled for them. Congratulations. Like they they too have iPhones to make movies on, I guess. Um, okay. So, the idea is eventually one single streamer >> somewhere somehow. Yep. >> I on what timeline? I do not know. >> Sure. >> But the idea that they they have a lot of debt to service, like an enormous amount of debt to service, >> which I would point out is exactly what happened when Warner Brothers Discovery combined and nearly killed it. >> Oh yeah, and it's what happened AT&T as well. >> That Yeah, that company made a lot of really bad decisions because it had to service debt and now it's a richer guy with a lot of debt to service, but still a hell of a lot of debt to service. >> Oh no, we are just rolling over this over financed Nissan Ultima into a new Nissan Ultima every couple years. like there's a $10,000 payment on this Ultima and we're just going to keep going. Like it that's where we are. >> Yep. >> Uh but they also have to make 30 movies a year or pay $30 million a year per movie they don't make into like a healthcare fund run by the biggest unions. Like they have to spend a lot of money and they got to pay off a lot of debt and the only way they're going to do is cut costs. And there's just no way they're going to run redundant marketing budgets, redundant customer support, redundant a layoffs. >> They're going to lay a bunch of people off and they're going to cut anything that looks duplicative. >> So, two streaming services just simply cannot be on the menu. >> That's fair. I also think uh it's very clear that Paramount Plus is not going to win. And if if this company is actually going to like make smart, ruthless decisions, they'll just cut Paramount Plus. Yeah, they hired um uh this is a real decoder PhD thesis. David Ellison is the CEO of Skyance and then Enan Kre who used to be the CEO of Mattel and before that of Maker Studios. His title is co-CEO. So there's a CEO, >> not two co-CEOs, a CEO and a >> David Olson is a CEO. >> Enan's title is co-CEO. >> This has real like Dwight Trude is assistant to the regional manager kind of vibes. Well, that's uh uh we just had Peter Kofka on Decoder. He just wrote a profile of Enon. He's deep in it. You should listen to it if you want more for that. But that I'm just like what are we doing? It's very good. >> I mean, yeah, I think I I bring this one up in part because there are obviously a lot of important news questions about what's going to happen to CNN. Now, there are a lot of obviously worried people who work for these companies who are worried about layoffs. I I but the the play here, if you just take David Ellison at his word, is to build something that is so big it can compete with specifically Netflix. Uh I I would not say anything that has happened at the already combined company of Paramount and Sky Dance suggests that this company is equipped to do that. >> I don't think it's Netflix. I I think I I I think he knows that it's YouTube and Tik Tok, >> which by the way family has a stake in Tik Tok. The way he was talking about on on CNBC this morning was very much Silicon Valley came in I mean this is the quote. Silicon Valley came into media with platform technology, whatever you think that means and they took it away from us. But now I've assembled the biggest and best bundle of IP the world has ever seen along with sports and news and we're going to put together a tech platform that can compete with Silicon Valley and win. I think they mean Netflix when they say that. Maybe they mean Tik Tok and YouTube. Maybe I'm wrong. But like it is. It'll be interesting to see if they try to make user generated content work at scale, which is a thing all of these companies keep trying and keep failing at. >> Oh yeah. I think we Disney has already announced that uh creators can use their IP. >> Yep. >> To make vertical videos for Disney Plus. I think that is a partnership with Tik Tok. would not surprise me at all if the Ellison family finds a way to get Tik Tok content into whatever forthcoming app there is. >> Yeah. Oh, absolutely. >> We'll see. But I will just say this again. I say it so many times. The problem for Hollywood is that everyone is actually watching vertical video and none of those platforms pay a dime for it. >> Yep. >> And they have to pay actors and actresses. they gotta pay Glenn Powell and then apparently they need to pay Glenn Powell's marketing department, right? like that's just a lot of money for every minute of video that they produce and Instagram doesn't pay anyone a dime >> or or you realize that actually there's a lot of really positive signs that people want to go back out into the world and watch movies and you go make good movies like I a a a grand theory that I am percolating is that actually the company that is in trouble here is Netflix because it's going to be caught in the middle of it doesn't have the vast quantity of free content, nor does it have the event content that people will actually go out of their way and pay for. And so it's turning into, and this is true on the platform, it's turning into just chum, right? Like it is it is reality TV. It is it is hours to fill. And I think everybody looks at Netflix as like this unstoppable behemoth. I look at Netflix less every month than every month before because there is just increasingly nothing on it. >> Oh boy. Okay, we're going to do it. We're going to do it. We're we're we're first episode back after your leave, David, but we're doing it. It's time to break out the Go9 stale of Doom streaming services. So, if no one remembers anymore, this is 100 years ago, but Verizon launched a streaming service called Go90. Yep. >> Whose innovation was that you could turn your phone sideways? >> Also, I believe you could join a gang. That was their version of community. >> Was it cruise or were they gangs? It was one of those. >> I think it was crews. I don't think it was gangs. >> It'd be amazing if it was the gangs. That's going to be our app. When we do when we do the Verge video app, it's going to be it's going to be gangs. >> Uh anyway, uh Go 90 quickly failed, but I don't know. There's no other way to describe what happened to that platform. And thus, the Go90 scale Doom streaming services was born where you start at zero, that's alive, and 90 is dead. Many, many, many streaming services have gone 90. Quibby famously, I believe, is the the paradmatic example of it. We all knew. We all knew what direction that thing was going and to 90 it arrived. >> Yeah. >> All right. Netflix has been sitting at zero on the go 90 scale of streaming services >> since Netflix existed. You are making it sound like it's not at zero anymore. >> I I mean it's hard because it's it is so big and it has so much money that it is it's like betting on Netflix to cease to exist is is ridiculous. And yet I think ne you only get to be a zero if you are also an unstoppable cultural force and Netflix is not that >> and if it's not it's it it no I'll say that it it is losing that rapidly like it it was a cultural force because Stranger Things was a cultural force and Wednesday kind of was and it has it has inched along through a few things that have been huge and Now, it is just betting that you will go on and there will be so much reality stuff to watch that you'll find something and you won't cancel. Um, I would I would put it at like a like a 15. Like it's still somewhere in the green zone here, >> but it is >> like also remember Netflix spends an unbelievable amount of money on content. It is it is forever hugely expensive. It is forever at the mercy of continuing to grow. And I think I think things could get ugly the minute anything starts to turn for Netflix. So again, I am not moving it towards it might disappear from existence, but I think this idea that Netflix is the like unstoppable behemoth of the future of entertainment is wrong. >> Wow, that's bold. >> I think only YouTube is a zero for me on this scale. >> Oh, YouTube is a zero. It's not going anywhere. Although, if they continue to slop up YouTube in the way that they appear to want to slop up YouTube, I would actually I would move it. I >> Am I crazy? Do you like am I am I just way over my skis on Netflix? >> I think Netflix is an aggressively well-run company. >> Sure. >> Um and the danger for Netflix, in my opinion, is that everyone has realized that their library of like good movies from the 2000s is valuable and they don't just dump it on Netflix anymore. Yes. >> And there's not an engine to make a bunch of those movies anymore, >> right? Like this is like the problem. You can go watch that Ben Affleck clip about DVD sales and like why they don't make movies like that anymore. Uh, by the way, Ben Affleck uh this week gave like amazing interviews about how DP is in AI. >> We should spend an hour just talking about that. >> Everybody like Ben Affleck, please come on the Vergecast. I know you listen. Come on the show. Tell us about your Python scripts. I want to hear about all >> we can make this happen. Um uh but Netflix is also a slave to data >> and I think there's a reason every Netflix movie looks the same and is kind of bland and every Netflix t like there's a Netflix look and I think it's fine. It is you can watch Tik Tok while you watch Netflix. >> They got to get over that. They got to make things worth watching or find a way to win the licensing battle with everybody else to buy things worth watching. And I just don't I that's that's their danger, but I don't think that they're confused. >> Maybe. You know what I mean? >> Yeah, that might be right. I mean, I Yeah, that might be right. We should talk more about Netflix sometimes. But, by the way, while we're looking at the scale here, my read of this is Paramount Plus immediately goes to like an 85 on the scale. >> Oh, yeah. Because it's going to get merged in HBO Max. >> Yeah. And I think HBO Max is like a five. Like HBO Max, I think, is is the clear end state of all of this for for this giant new >> company of a big thing. >> Yeah. >> And if Casey Bl who was running HBO into in in charge of all of this stuff like the bet here is very clearly on HBO, both like the the people and the brand. >> Yeah. >> Which I think is the right bet to be clear. Like people don't have feelings about Paramount the way that they do about HBO. We have never had to contend with does being merged into HBO Max constitute going 90. >> We have because it's going away. It's it's going to be gone. >> This is the Hulu thing, right? Like Hulu still exists even though it's also still been merged, but it it that's still kind of a bundle, but eventually Hulu will just be a tab in the Disney Plus app. And when that happens, Hulu has gone 90. >> Yes, I think that's correct. All right, last one. Disney Plus. That's the other one of of of note here. >> Yeah, Disney Plus is like is like a two or a three. It's it's I think it is as close to being the cultural force that you have to reckon with as anybody else. >> This is just it's very obvious that you have three three children. >> I mean, yeah, I have young children, but also like the the the Star Wars stuff keeps working. Marvel keeps working. Like the the they have the IP that no one else has. And it'll be interesting like Amazon is out there spending all this money on James Bond. And that vaulted up this list a little bit, but Disney is just the one you can make theme parks out of. Like it's that's not that's not changing anytime soon. >> Yeah, we could do all the rest of them, but I it's interesting to see where you put Netflix here because I Netflix was a rock solid zero for the last 5 years. >> Yeah, it just it feels it feels like it has lost something. And and maybe you're right. May the company is as wellrun as any you will find in this space. So maybe it'll figure it out. But I don't know. It feels >> Oh yeah. No. Just to say this as clearly as I can. I think Netflix is run by essentially same people and all of these other companies are run by crazies. >> I Yes. That I like I don't I don't know how else to say that. Like uh we don't we don't know much about Josh tomorrow at Disney, but you know this past few weeks while you were out on leave, did you see Bob Cheek reappeared? >> Yeah. He wrote like a angry memoir, right? >> He wrote a tell- all book. >> Yeah. And you know, his theory is that he was only made CEO, so Bob Iger didn't have to do COVID layoffs until Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow was coming out on streaming. >> Incredible. >> And then he's like, I knew I was a I was done for when he gave that interview to Ben Smith. And I was like, I know Ben Smith. What happened to this interview? Like >> I think more CEOs should write pissy books. Like I really >> He's very upset. >> Yeah. >> Uh and then something clearly happened because he was all over the place. talking his stuff and then he disappeared. >> Yep. >> He's no longer available. >> I I did notice that. >> It's good stuff. Uh all right, this is officially the slowest lightning round we've ever done. Uh what's your next lightning round item? All right, I want to talk about intelligent UI, which we sort of have been talking about uh through all the computer stuff, but chatbt this week uh did an update GBT6 and now the responses can include interactive elements right in line buttons, >> I'm guessing Buzzfeed quizzes. They love to pretend we're all smart, so they're like, "Here's a color picker for clothes and like an interactive chart where you can do a slider to learn something." And I'm like, "Tell me who the five sexiest presidents were." like whatever whatever BuzzFeed nonsense. >> I am fascinated by this, right? The idea that you would get multimodal interactives has been an idea that's been floating around for a long time. As with everything, Google announced this at IO two years ago. >> Yeah. >> I mean, there's like a little bit of it in AI mode. Uh the idea that it will it will sort of it will jin up a spreadsheet for you rather than just write you a bunch of numbers. Like there's little pieces of that coming to fruition. But this is the idea that everyone has had for a long time, right? It's like what if it wasn't just text and then every product everybody ships is just more text. >> Yeah. But even though like it made you a spreadsheet especially been like yes we we do we can do tables and bullet points. Everyone is Axios now, right? >> Yeah. >> This is very much >> Yeah. sometimes pictures. This is very much like we've made an interactive bicycle for you because you asked how a bicycle works. And there's something about this which if you put right next to agents and natural language interfaces is the dream, right? The computer will naturally adapt to you and give you exactly what you need right at the right moment. And we have been covering this industry for 500 years. So many people have tried to build this thing. >> Yes. >> In so many different ways. And what it always runs into is people just want the controls to be fixed. You like you actually want the computer to be vastly more predictable than any adaptive UI system can ever give to you. And the comparison that I will make is we just went through I don't know 5 years of car makers being like you don't need HVAC controls. You need a button on a screen that says auto. Mhm. >> And every single person was like, "No, I want physical buttons that turn the fan up and down and move the temperature. Stop taking them away because you don't think I don't want them or worse, intelligently assuming when I should want them and making them appear and disappear at random." So, I can't tell if this intelligent UI update for chatbt is brilliant in the future or we're just going to recapitulate every adaptive UI conversation we've ever had or whether there's something else happening here. I think all of these companies are kind of dancing around the wrong idea, which is which is this constant reinventing the wheel of user interface. Uh, like not only is it what if it was just a button that said auto, it was what if every time you got in the car that button was in a different place and looked different. Wouldn't you like that? And this is what it has been with all of these companies, right? You can you can build this AI UI on the fly. And what it actually does is build it in a slightly different way in a slightly different place every single time. And I think I I was talking to some product person a couple of years ago when when we were really first starting to talk about AI code and he was like the reason I'm so bullish about building code with AI is that I can do it once. I can use the AI to build something that I then understand and then I can go use that thing and I don't have to keep using the AI. I don't have to keep burning tokens. I don't have to keep guessing how this thing is going to work or reinventing my prompts. I can build a thing that I understand and then I can go use the thing that I understand. And this to me is trying kind of to be too clever by half. And in some ways it will work and it'll be very cool. Like as an information retrieval system that it's like show me company earnings, which is like a thing people care about from time to time, right? It will show you that in a more dynamic way and that's all fine and good. Or like show me how to split the bill between these people. Like show me that in some nicer visual way. Fine. I don't think it goes beyond that at all in a way that's going to work for people. And I think actually a lot of people prefer text because text is a thing that is there that I understand that I can refer to that works in a predictable way that makes sense. And all of this generative UI stuff I think just feels like mess to people. >> Yeah. My hottest take lately is no one actually knows how apps work and they don't know what the buttons are and they they don't pay any attention and this is why, you know, the average number of apps downloaded by the average person is zero. >> Well, and when you do learn how to do them, you you learn how to do the two things that you need to do and then your brain ceases to even see everything else in the app. >> Yeah. And I think this is why chatbots generating text was like, well, at least I can just read this, >> right? Yeah. But like it's going to make you an app and it might have a like crazy UI idea in it. I don't know. There's something about this. Again, I I find it fascinating. It has been the industry's dream stretching back decades, right? Like the computer will adapt to you and present to you exactly the right interface at the right time based on its understanding of you just speaking to it. Boy, every single executive we've ever talked to has issued some proclamation that this will be the future. >> Yes. And so maybe we're on the cusp of it, but I'm looking at it. I'm like, "Huh?" Like like actually, you know, all the actual users we talked to might not want this. >> So see I and I'm not saying this I think this feature as expressed in chatb today is cool. Like yes, it will make you a chart and graph and a slider and do a thing. And like it is funny that Google announced this 100 years ago and open shifted. >> Yeah, that sounds right. >> What are we doing everybody? Uh, but the next turn when you have an open AI hardware device that has an agent in the cloud and it's like making you custom UI and adapting the UI to you, that's the one I'm interested in because it's going to be the HVAC problem at like massive scale. >> Yes. Yes. Completely agree. And that Yeah. and and figuring out how to do that in a way that is uh build something that is sort of permanent and and that you can refer to and find and use again and share is like it's not necessarily impossible, but no one has come anywhere near that yet. >> Yeah. >> Uh but I do think it's a fun idea. Like it's fun to watch people try this thing that like how do I how do I deliver you information in in new and better ways is great. Lots of people learn and retain information a lot of different ways. We should keep trying this. I am I'm not at all convinced that let's redo some let's reinvent the wheel every single time is in fact the answer here. >> It's funny because everyone knows that but the like if it just seems like if you're a product designer at any tech company you required to forget it on a three-year cadence. >> Yes, that's how you get promoted. You you reinvent the wheel, you get promoted, you take a vacation and then you come back and you start to reinvent the wheel again. It's a it's a thing. >> Um all right, we really need to get out of here, but before we do, I just want to talk about one one thing very briefly. I just want to get your temperature on this thing. So Sam Alman did an interview on a a new political podcast. Um the name of which I will not say out loud for reasons that anyone who knows the name of the podcast will understand. >> You know who knows the name of the podcast is the lawyers at our fancy big company. >> Um so Sam Alman on this podcast is talking about all the things Sam Alman likes to talk about. Um, and he he says at one point that uh some bad things are going to happen with AI and that we have to be okay with some bad things happening because and this is a quote, people will do tremendously orders of magnitude more good stuff. Uh, this became a whole kurfuffle, right? Everybody spent a couple of days being various degrees of mad about Sam Alman being like, I accept some bad stuff because there's also going to be all kinds of good stuff happening. I confess my immediate instinct is to be like this is such a nothing burger of a statement like there everything that has ever happened has some bad things and some good things and we we try to you know lessen the bad things and increase the good things but this is just how every advancement we've ever had in history has worked. >> Yeah. >> What do you make of this? Like is this is is this a real thing for people to be angry about that same Alman is saying >> I don't think so. I think the way he framed it was particularly awkward. The exact quote is, "We believe the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency." And I'm like, >> "Oh, yeah. When you put it like that, >> I don't care about the benefits of this technology." >> Like the point, the technology is whatever. Like, and I get what he's trying to say. >> There's a big technological revolution and we're going to give people a lot more capability and some people will do bad things. Uh and the negative consequences will be far outweighed by the positive. >> And you can apply that as you're saying, you can apply that to anything from everything that has ever happened >> to cars to whatever it is, right? You're going to give people cars. You're going to increase mobility. You're going to also have some car crashes and then the anti-car movement in cities in 2026 will be a loud and vocal potent force. And then we're going to do congestion pricing. Whatever. some swirl of decisions will have to be made because cars exist. >> Okay. Like I if that is what he's trying to say straightforward I think is fine. But the for the benefits of this technology is the entire problem with how the AI industry communicates is as though they are not in control of what they are doing. >> Right? And so either we're going to have AGI or not. And if I don't get there first then something bad will happen. And so some bad things have to happen. Like that's how he sounds. >> I know that's just how he sounds to people that he has to get there. He we we've got to do this. So you deal with it. Deal with the data centers. Deal with the the the the teens getting AI psychoso like all of that is fine because I we have to do this and I can't possibly slow down or be more careful, right? And so if he's talking about the the straight up societal trade-off like the reason the decoder tagline is big idea is another problem is is like it is embedded in the very notion of the big idea that you will have to answer for some problems that you have caused. >> Yep. >> Okay. Like I of course I buy it. But the the way this industry talks about the thing that they're making as though they have completely lost control of their own ambition and we all just have to like Yeah, man. I I I think data centers and surveillance are going to tip the election this in this round. And a large part of it is because the industry cannot help itself, >> right? Yeah. And they also uh well, at some point at some point you and I are going to have a long deep conversation that may or may not ever make it onto a podcast about this thing where they've all decided that AI is alive and deserves feelings and fair treatment and all of this weird. Like the fact that the the Clawude terms now prohibit you from being mean to Claude for too long is just like buck wild in a way that I'm I'm actually like >> just out of my mind about. But in this one, I just kept thinking about the fact that Sam Alman in this case and in basically every case is just completely unable to articulate the good thing that AI is going to do. He's like, "Yes, all this bad stuff is going to happen, but it's going to do so much more good stuff." And it's like, well, what, Sam? It's going to put everybody out of jobs. It might kill all of us. What's the good part? >> Well, it's going to monitor your email for uh class action. >> It's going to like do sick math. Like, and that's cool. I like math, but yeah, it's going to monitor your email for class action settlements. I just I don't know. Again, just as a as a watcher of this over the last couple of months, I just kept looking out and it's like, nobody has a better idea for AI than it can help you book trips. And everybody has ideas about how it might kill us all. And like, boy, is that a bad trade. If you if you can if you can give me the trade that is good enough that I will accept a 10% chance that we're all going to die, that's actually a really fun conversation to have. I would really really like someone to make that argument once and no one can do it, including Sam Alman. And it drives me >> they're going to cure all diseases, but they also might kill you. >> Even say that like Goss is out here being like we're going to cure all diseases. Sam Alman doesn't he's like I don't know war. weapons maybe, I don't know. And I think that to me was just like this this thing that like yes, there are negative consequences to technological innovation is just true. But like even Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook was like we're going to connect people and that's good and that's bad in lots of ways and and good in lots of ways. And I think there's >> there's a famous memo from Bos at Meta called the ugly and he's like here are all of the bad things that will happen if we connect everyone in the world and we're going to do it anyway. And there's a lot of lore around this letter. You should Google it and read it. But the the sort of most important part of the lore was Bos saying, "It's important for me to just say it all out loud so this whole company can react to it. I've written this as a provocation." And then the company did not react to it by trying to stop any of the things, which is maybe a strategic mistake, but there's no question that the tech industry understands that it has negative consequences when it reorders society, right? And I think here Sam again if you're just saying that conceptually fine like truly like whatever it is but to say it is a like a tossoff which is I think how most people read it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's fair. I agree with that. Uh and also for what Sam 10% chance I'm going to die. I'm I can book my own flight. >> I saw a video of Heath Loger's Joker doing a ukulele rap with Batman the other day. All right, you've got me at 2% chance I'm going to attack. We can work from there. We're going to go from there. >> That's what I have. That's a real It's a real thing that happens. >> All right, we have gone way over. Send me that link, by the way. I I appreciate that. Uh we have gone way over as we want to do. It's good to be back. I missed you. I'm miss glad to be back here doing this. Um we should get out of here. Thing before we do, um vote for our show in the Signal Awards. It's a It's a podcasting awards thing. We would very much like to win. This show is nominated for technology podcasts. Version history is nominated for history podcast. Decoder is nominated for business podcast. Not to brag, that's all of our podcasts. We batted a thousand. Uh please go vote. We'd really like to win. All the links are in the show notes. Uh also, uh we have a bunch of cool decoder stuff coming up next week. Neil, who's on decoder next week? >> So go listen to the Peter Kofka episode if you're want more on Sky Dance. He really did just profile the cocoa skyance. He's deep in it. And then Ben Jordan is on to talk about flot cameras and surveillance and his experience testifying before Congress. And I'm just gonna say I'm a huge fanboy and I you can just sense that I was delighted the whole time that he was even talking to me. That's awesome. I'm excited about that one. Um this weekend on Version History, uh Gen 2 is coming on to talk about the Leapad. Genui and Andrew Marino to talk about this weird little reading device that taught millions of kids how to read in the early 2000s. Uh, also if you haven't watched the Chromebook episode if you want to know the source of all of my feelings about Google Books, go watch last week's episode. You and me and Marquez Brownley on the Chromebook. It was a great time. We've gotten a lot of really good feedback on that episode. I enjoyed it very much. Uh, remember to subscribe to The Verge to get all of our podcasts ad free. All of our award nominated and winning podcasts adree. Uh, all of our exclusive newsletters, everything else. The verge.com/subscribe. It's the best way to support everything that we do here. Uh, also send us email. Vergecaster.com is the email. 866 Verge11 is the hotline. We love hearing from you about all this and everything else. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kefir, and Travis Larch. We will see you next week. Neili, I haven't heard it in a while. Give it to me. Rock and roll.