Sheryl Sandberg leaving Meta, Volvo using Unreal Engine in its cars, and a WWDC '22 preview

Nilay Patel, David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Alex Heath discuss Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg stepping down after 14 years. 29:45 - Transportation editor Andrew Hawkins joins the show to discuss that latest car news, including Volvo using Epic's Unreal Engine to create 'photorealistic' graphics in its cars. 1:00:04 - Segment three covers what to expect at Apple's WWDC next week. Sheryl Sandberg on leaving Meta Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down after 14 years Meta’s head of AI to depart in group reorg Volvo will use Epic's Unreal Engine to create 'photorealistic' graphics in its electric cars GM is slashing prices for the Chevy Bolt amid high demand for electric vehicles Ford announces new Mustang, Ranger, and commercial EV in major Midwest expansion DeLorean offers a first look at its gull-winged Alpha 5 EV revival Buick is rebranding as an electric-only automaker Polestar's experimental EV, nicknamed 'Beast,' is getting a limited production run Porsche strengthens ties with electric supercar startup Rimac in new funding round iOS 16, notifications, and Macs: what to expect at WWDC 2022 The Murena One shows exactly how hard it is to de-Google your smartphone Google is combining Meet and Duo into a single app for voice and video calls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Today on The Vergecast, Alex Heath joins us to talk about the executive shakeup at Meta. Then Andy Hawkins will join us to round up all the electric car news from this week. And of course, we've got WWDC predictions for next week. All that and more coming up right after this.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:49Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Vaporware Cars. A phrase which, by the way, has taken hold across the industry. Vaporware is like a very 90s tech phrase. And I want to say this show brought it back. Yes. Because everyone's saying it again. There was another, I want to say, another site which I love and respect. I don't want to like, but they used the phrase Vaporware Cars in the headline. And I was like, that was me. I know I did that. It's good to have a legacy. It's all I want. Just dunk on the fake cars. We'll do that later. Andy Hawkins is going to join us. We're going to talk about the car industry. Right now, I'm your friend, Eli. David Pierce is here.

• 2:25David Pierce?

  Hi, I'm your friend who will always write nice things about you on Facebook when you quit your job. Always, no matter what.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  Congratulations on your big next step. Alex Cranz is here.

• 2:35Alex Cranz?

  I will, I will go get my door and tell them to leave me alone.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  Alex Heath is here.

• 2:42Speaker 05

  Hi, I am sick of the lean in jokes.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  All right, there's a lot of news this week. Sheryl Sandberg has left Meta, formerly known as Facebook. We've had a bunch of car news to talk about. WWDC is next week. There's some gadgets. But let's start with what I would say is the news of the week. Sheryl Sandberg, who was the COO of Facebook for 14 years, and really the architect of the first version of that company, which is now known as Meta, kind of surprised everyone and just announced she was leaving yesterday. And then there was a flurry of press. And I will say, one of the funniest things that can happen in media is when like 19 websites all publish an exclusive interview at the same. We did not, we did not put the word exclusive in our headline. But Alex talked to Sheryl yesterday, but everyone else had it like, it was just a PR blitz of Sheryl

• 3:30Nilay Patel?

  Sandberg leaving Facebook. Alex, you talked to her. You're obviously our reporter on the Meta beat. What's going on there?

• 3:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would say that this was the most shocking, non-shocking news. If you've been following Facebook like I have or work there. It wasn't a surprise necessarily that she left. I guess the timing was a little bit of a shock. But honestly, this has been the biggest, most speculated question that I hear over and over from current and former employees is, you know, when is Sheryl going to leave? That's been the question for the last few years. So it was really a matter of, you know, when and not if. And turned out that the when was very soon. She's going to be officially stepping away, but will stay on the board this fall.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  So why was it a non-surprise? Why are people speculating so much that she was going to leave?

• 4:23Speaker 05

  She's really stepped back from what she was brought there. There to do, which was scale the ads business and people have been using this, I don't know where this came from, but this phrase like quote adult in the room, which I find to be frankly ridiculous, but that was how it was kind of positioned early on was she was like the grown up that's there to like scale this startup. And you know, she did that successfully on the ads business, but really you could almost chart it to the 2016 election. Since that period, her influence internally and also, you know, public visibility has waned quite a bit. And it's happened as Zuckerberg has taken more control over a lot of the areas that he used to give to Sandberg.

• 5:07Speaker 05

  Cause back in the day, he really didn't care about things like comms, legal areas that now he has to care about. And he's really just exerted a lot more influence. He's always obviously been the most influential person, but I think people have noticed that her profile has has been reduced.

• 5:29Alex Cranz?

  I kind of want to push back on that a little because like he did have to care about those things, right? Like, that's why she was hired. And I think that like that idea, the adult in the room, which is like, we're kind of making all of these tech founders sound like babies. But they were also kind of being babies, like most of them weren't familiar with all the big business things that they needed to be doing, like having functional HR departments, legal departments, all of those expectations. And so people like her were brought into these companies to to make them real, to make them like viable and last longer than the star of the the founders, right?

• 6:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, Zuckerberg was 23, I think, when Sandberg joined. And now, you know, he is the same age she was when she originally joined. So a lot has changed and yeah, he has to care about this stuff. And I mean, really like he just didn't, he didn't want to actually focus on the business. He wanted to focus on the user side of scaling Facebook at the time. And Sheryl really became the archetype for having, you know, a business minded leader come into a tech startup and do the stuff that the.

• 6:36Nilay Patel?

  Let's be honest, male founder didn't want to do, which was like actually building a business and like making money off this thing.

• 6:44David Pierce?

  Well, and it's kind of a relic of a bygone era to some extent in tech. Like you just never see it anymore. But there was that time where like, you know, Sergey and Larry brought on Eric Schmidt and the Twitter guys brought on Dick Costolo. And there was this sense of like, okay, we're, we're going to build a thing and then we're going to bring in somebody who knows how to sort of manage a large thing to manage that large thing. Uh, that is not how it works anymore. And you got to figure if Facebook was starting now, Mark would probably be less inclined for a bunch of reasons to like bring somebody up as high on the sort of podium with him as he did with Cheryl. But it was, it was a relatively non-weird move 15 years ago when this happened, right?

• 7:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, Eric Schmidt comparison is really interesting. So that, that happened five-ish years before Larry Page and Sergey Brin have always hated being in charge of Google. Like famously are not actually in charge of Google anymore, even though they totally control it. They own all of the shares of Alpha, all the controlling shares of Alphabet. So Larry Page is like the most powerful man in tech that literally no one ever hears from.

• 7:45David Pierce?

  I mean, it's kind of a perfect setup. That's the dream.

• 7:48Nilay Patel?

  That's all I want. Just like quietly behind this. Um, but Eric Schmidt, they brought him in as CEO of Google. And one of his remits was like, I need to build a business. And the person who built the business inside of Google during that time was Sheryl Sandberg. Right. She led the charge into Google's advertising business. She built that whole system. And then she meets Mark Zuckerberg. He's very focused on the user side, has no idea how they're going to make money. And brings her in and she builds the Facebook advertising machine. So like a lot of what we think of as money on the internet was built or scaled by Sheryl Sandberg, which is not how I think she thinks of her legacy. And I, I think that dichotomy is like very difficult to reconcile.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  I think she said in one interview that she was put on earth to scale organizations or something like that, which is, is quite a thing to say as you're calling.

• 8:41Nilay Patel?

  Right. But I don't think like, that's one way of thinking about it. She's put on earth to make a small thing really big. I was put on earth to build personalized advertising the internet is a very different sentence.

• 8:51David Pierce?

  To monetize the hell out of stealing your privacy, like the Sheryl Sandberg story.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  And like kind of unapologetically and I you mentioned all the scandals around the election. Sheryl Sandberg is the one who said, I don't think anyone was radicalized by Facebook around the insurrection.

• 9:06Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  Right. Like she's always sort of said, nope, this isn't us, even as she is aggressively scaled whatever business into personalization or targeting or filter bubbles or whatever criticisms you might have at Facebook. They all kind of redound to the business model.

• 9:20Alex Cranz?

  Is that why she's gone? Like Alex, is that kind of like why internally they wanted to get rid of her because of that reluctance?

• 9:27Speaker 05

  No. So I do not buy this narrative that's already out there that she was pushed out or I mean, it's clear that, you know, her and Mark are not as tight as they used to be. But, you know, she's had a lot going on with, you know, her like husband, like, I don't think she ever fully recovered from, you know, her husband dying years ago. And she kind of checked out from Facebook at a time when it was going through a lot of this controversy around the 2016 election and after and Cambridge Analytica. And yeah, I just think the company's in a different spot. I mean, yeah, like you could tie a lot of the problems to like what she oversaw, especially as it relates to comms and she oversaw the policy group, you know, for a

• 10:10Speaker 05

  long time. But she, for a long time, as long as I can remember, has not actually been over the group that makes the products for advertisers, right? Who like builds the targeting. She's been over the salespeople, the people that are responsible for selling the stuff that Zuckerberg's team makes. So I think that was always a tension is that she was always like on the receiving end of like the downstream effect of like what the product team made. And so, yeah, she she built, you could say she built the ads business. She certainly built Facebook as a reputable place for advertisers in the eyes of the market. But the engineering, the code was never really under her domain. So that's like an important distinction that I think is important for people to know.

• 10:56Nilay Patel?

  The flip side of it is the thing you're talking about. She did oversee policy, right? And Facebook just renamed itself and they're wholly focused on the metaverse. They're wholly focused on this next generation platform. Like, one question I've had around Facebook, around Meta for a long time is like, internally, do they have they, do they think they've hit the end of the road on what they can accomplish with social networks and advertising? And now that is their core business that needs to be maintained, hopefully grow a little bit, but the era of rapid growth there is over and they've got to focus on the next thing. And like, running that thing is no longer, if you're Sheryl Sandberg and you, you're on this earth to scale organizations, like your runway to scale that is potentially over.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, she hasn't been into the metaverse stuff that, for sure. And the legacy that she has is like, no longer the future of the company, right? Like you just said it, like, they, they've stalled out really on user growth. Like, their new COO Javier Olivano is like, the guy who got Facebook to a place where like, they have reached almost everyone on planet Earth with internet access. So, there, the new focus is like, how do we compete with TikTok? How do we retrain our algorithms to be able to like, predict what you want before you tell us? Which was, is like, the key insight that TikTok has like, ushered into Silicon Valley, that I've kind of realized that in, in recent years. So that's what they're focused on, on the social media side. But, yeah, I don't think she was in it for the long haul for this, this metaverse stuff.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  The only thing that's really notable here is like, if the COO of almost any other company leaves, we would not talk about it, there would not be a flurry of press, we wouldn't open the ver chass with it. Like- There are not a lot of CEOs you could name. Like Jeff Williams is a, like, smart guy, he seems very capable, he's next in line to be the CEO, he's in charge of the Apple Watch. If he left, you'd be like, and Jeff Williams left, and like, we'd move on. Sandberg is like, a, a major figure, right? She was, she was perceived as having been in charge of Facebook in some major way. Even Zuckerberg's note about it was like, moving forward, we will not replace her, we will have a different, more traditional kind of COO. I think maybe for people who have been following it for 14 years, describe why she holds that status. Cause I think it's an important thing to underline

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  that for a long time, Sheryl was one of the most powerful people in the valley because she was perceived as the person in charge of Facebook.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've been trying to think about why that was. I mean, they certainly positioned her that way up until Cambridge Analytica, when like Mark really took the reins back in a kind of full way. It's such a good question. I mean, it's tied up, I think, in like her persona with Lean In as well. And just like, she really leaned into being a public figure in a way that I think has been unusual for COOs, like you said, to date. But yeah, why is it? I mean, because she she did scale at least the sales side of the ads business and let them kind of hone in on how they were going to compete with Google, having come from Google. So she was critical in that way. But I really just can't overstate

• 13:54Speaker 05

  how like, in the last several years, like, I literally, like, last week, I was a Facebook employee was saying, like, we're all just asking, like, where is Cheryl? Like, we don't see her anymore. She's not involved in things anymore. She hasn't been. She's done a few things, and she's still been on earnings calls and stuff. And we'll open the office in Dubai and stuff like that. But she hasn't been involved in the nuts and bolts of the business, really, like she used to be for quite a while. So I think people were just waiting to see when this was going to happen. And it's almost like, you know, I liked how Casey Newton put it in his column, where it's like, you know, when do you leave? And like, is there a chance that you leave a little too late, right? Where it's like, maybe you should have left earlier when you were. And that's, that's an interesting thing to

• 14:35Speaker 05

  think about in retrospect is like, her influence had already really waned for a while. And maybe she should have left when it was still at its peak. But yeah, I don't know. It's it's gonna, there's gonna be a lot of people writing about this. I don't know if I have much more to say about her legacy at this, at this point.

• 14:50David Pierce?

  There's just such an interesting personality dynamic at play there, which I always found really fascinating. And I think, like, it's been very clear over the last several years that Mark was dragged into being like, the public figure who goes in front of Congress and has to sort of answer for what the company is doing and all that stuff, like, kind of kicking and screaming. And that is just not like, the thing that interests him in a way that like, to your point, Alex, that was Cheryl's sweet spot, right? Like, she's, she's good at that. It's a thing that interested her, like, that it's very funny to read the interviews and imagine that the underlying thing is she's running for president. Because it makes absolute perfect sense if everything she says is followed by vote for me 2024.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  She was in line to be Treasury Secretary if Hillary Biden won.

• 15:32David Pierce?

  Yeah. Exactly. And so I think especially in the early days of Facebook, it just made for a sort of perfect dichotomy where like Mark, Mark had essentially unlimited power and could just be the one building the thing and reaping the benefits and going to Hawaii to go surfing. While Cheryl was the face of the thing and that worked really well for a really long time. And she, I think, was a good face for Facebook longer than I think anyone would have expected, to be honest. And then it really turned really hard the last few years. And I think it just like, it's, it's just really interesting to look back because it was her stock was up so high and then just sort of cratered over the last couple of years. And part of that is self inflicted, like the things she said after January 6th. And part of that is like how we've come to view Meta and Facebook over the last couple of years.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, she's a lifelong Democrat and it's hard to remember now, but Facebook was beloved by Democrats up until the Trump election, right? Like Obama came and spoke at Facebook headquarters and they really were like in lockstep with the party in a lot of ways. And Cheryl's definitely lost a lot of political clout as a result of the Trump era and how people perceive Facebook's role in that, whether it's like fair or not. And I think she feels that and she, you know, told me she wants to focus more on, you know, her philanthropy and lean in. And I think the Roe v. Wade stuff is, is a obviously very big deal for her work.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  And I think she wants to be able to do that stuff. And I have a feeling that really, I'm not going to say leaning in, oh my God, leaning into that work is probably hard. When you're also the COO of Facebook slash Meta and there's all that baggage there. And so being able to just kind of cut ties now, if she's really wanting to do that, makes sense. And like, she's getting remarried this summer and like, I think that's just kind of a new chapter thing. I, I really have asked around and I, I don't think there was like some big disagreement here that led to like a final straw. I think this is, if you've studied the org chart tea leaves like I do, you've seen this coming for the last couple of years.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  She's been setting up her reports to, to basically run everything without needing her there.

• 17:41Alex Cranz?

  She's not the only one, right? Like we, we saw Peter Thiel left the board pretty recently too. Like there's a lot of these kind of mentors of Mark. Are are leaving. It's almost like, yeah, okay, we did it. We did what we could do here. We've given you as much knowledge as we can.

• 17:55Nilay Patel?

  You're on your own, buddy.

• 17:56Alex Cranz?

  You're on your own. Or maybe he's saying, I got enough out of you. Get out.

• 18:00Nilay Patel?

  I I think it might be a combo.

• 18:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like, like, it definitely feels like the business, you know, is is really transformed. It's changed. It's grown out of those those early stages where we all kind of like ripped on it. And now we're like, oh, it's a big deal now.

• 18:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, so let's talk about, you know, you can't say org charts to me without me taking the bait instantly and immediately. Mark announced a bunch of stuff, but it does seem like not a lot of changes. Like, there are some new people in some new spots, but they're all the same people that everybody knew.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, all the same people, more people reporting to Mark. I think this is Mark just, you know, more fully kind of saying like, I am running things. I'm running everything like intricately. So like the head of HR, head of legal is now reporting to him directly, which hasn't happened, I think, ever, or at least since like the very earliest days. Yeah, I mean, now, aside from Boz, the CTO who's over Reality Labs, I would say that the second most powerful executive is definitely the new COO, Javi, as he's known internally, who is basically invisible externally, but is the the growth czar and is over a lot, including all of integrity and growth and marketing and and all the salespeople now, too.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  So those are the, I mean, besides Zuck, it's Boz and Javi definitely are the two most powerful executives.

• 19:19David Pierce?

  Both of those names you just said, Alex, I think are super interesting because the extent to which Cheryl singled out Boz in the interview with you as the guy leading the Metaverse charge. It's like if you're betting the company on the Metaverse and Boz is the guy in charge of the Metaverse, like Shrep never got talked about, the the previous CTO in those kinds of terms. He was just, he was more of a sort of, you know, wizard behind the scenes, making stuff happen. Boz is this like big personality out in front, building the thing. So I was very surprised to see how much like shine she was sort of putting on him. Maybe I'm reading too much into that.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  I read that much more negatively.

• 19:54David Pierce?

  Tell me more.

• 19:55Nilay Patel?

  Just in the sense of like, yeah, I don't know. It's that guy's problem.

• 19:59Nilay Patel?

  Like, I don't know. I don't know. These like nerds and face computers like talk to Boz. Like, I just like felt it very differently.

• 20:07David Pierce?

  That's fair. Well, and then Javi, Mark coming out saying Javi is going to have a more traditional COO role felt like a very clear sense that like, this is not my partner in the business in the way that he used to talk about Cheryl. He's not on my level. Like, there is Mark and then there's a bunch of people who work for Mark. And that is sort of clearer than ever as the, as the org chart. And it just seems like he is now clearer than ever that he is like, everything that happens here has to roll up through me. And whether that's a good idea or not, I think remains to be seen. But it's interesting to see it all sort of consolidate more and more underneath Mark as like the sole guy who runs everything.

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  I would just push back and say, that has always been the case. Mark has always been the sole guy who has run everything.

• 20:50Alex Cranz?

  It hasn't though, right? Because like, we saw Cheryl, even now, we're seeing her still get like blamed for a lot of the issues, like, right?

• 20:57Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's the thing she says.

• 20:58Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but like, she's been a pretty handy scapegoat. And now it's like, he doesn't have those anymore.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  But like, Mark Zuckerberg literally faces a shareholder vote every year, where the shareholders of Facebook are like, there should be more oversight over Mark Zuckerberg. And then he has all of the controlling stock, and he says no, and then they lose the vote.

• 21:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  This happens almost every year. No, it's every year. It's every year. It's crazy.

• 21:24David Pierce?

  That's true in the big picture, in like the, in like the Larry Page way, right? Like, that is true, the sort of absolute control. But in terms of like, day to day decisions, it just seems like Mark has like beaten this drum over the last several years that like, he just wants to be in the room for more stuff. And there have been these stories about like, things moving slowly because only Mark could decide on them. And a lot of like oversight and content moderation questions. And it just seems like that trend continues to go where like, the only person who can thumbs up or thumbs down anything is going to be Mark. And I don't know how you run a company as big as Meta on that.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  He said a thing to Casey several years ago, maybe just, I don't know, what is time? Where he's like, I just need Facebook to be understood. Like, I don't need to be liked. We just, I need to talk more so people understand us. And I actually think Sandberg did a bad job of that. Because she was always in politics, sales mode, which was her role. And I think she just like, when that role is needed, she's excellent at it. But Mark is the one who goes on Capitol Hill and is like, Senator, we saw ads, right? And he's got the credibility as the guy who built it to like, cut you down in that way. And that's still like his highlight moment on Capitol Hill. Like, He's the one who made it. And I think he's, he's comfortable taking that on. Actually, I will pay Mark Zuckerberg a compliment at this time. Ready? This, and the Verge has to be over.

• 22:37Alex Cranz?

  Forever.

• 22:38Nilay Patel?

  Compare and contrast to, to Jack Dorsey, right? Who refuses to lead Twitter.

• 22:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  And is like constantly performing this guilt that Twitter requires a leader. And so decisions don't get made. And when decisions do get made, it's his deputies who take the heat and like receive the harassment campaigns. And Dorsey's like, I swim above it all because at the end of the day, Twitter should just be us. Or like whatever he says, right? Like, whereas Mark is like, no, I'm definitely in control of Facebook. Like, these are my choices. And I, I think that is just a much healthier like attitude for the, if you're gonna be that powerful, you might as well be like, yes, in fact, I make all the decisions. Like, I don't think Rockefeller and Carnegie sat around being like, why do I control the oil industry?

• 23:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're like, no, I got it. And I think Mark is like, inhabits that in a way that, I'm not, this is not like, I'm, I'm complaining Mark Zuckerberg, not John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie. I just want to make that very clear.

• 23:38Alex Cranz?

  Uh huh.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  I went to a school with a literal church called Rockefeller Chapel, like, I'm deeply aware of the problems with the Rockefeller. Um, I don't think that like Dorsey takes that role. And I think Zuckerberg actually wants that role. He wants to be the one who invents the next future, invents this next platform, brings it into existence. I think that he has not actually done that, right? Like, I think that's the thing he wants. He wants to be the innovator who leads us into a future. I do not think the blue app is that thing.

• 24:07Alex Cranz?

  I mean, it innovated the way elections work.

• 24:11Nilay Patel?

  You don't want that.

• 24:12Alex Cranz?

  That was an innovation.

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  You don't want that. You don't get Rockefeller Chapel because you invented 2016.

• 24:19Alex Cranz?

  No, I get it. Yeah, like, I think that's also why, you know, Twitter is not the big behemoth it is like that Facebook is, right? Like, Facebook's enormous. Twitter is relatively small comparatively. And I think that is partially because, like, Dorsey doesn't own it.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  One company has a leader and the other one doesn't.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  Yep. Also, just like a consistent vision and like a level of execution, which is Javi, the new COO, really represents that, like, no other social media company is, like, demonstrated besides maybe TikTok now in terms of the scale that they were able to achieve. So, yeah, I mean, we're, we're all very correct in saying, like, Zuckerberg controls everything, but I really, I don't think we should understate, like, Javi and Boz are definitely like the two sides of the brain. Like, Javi's like the here and now, Boz is the future. And Mark's very focused on the future. But I think Javi is, has a lot of problems ahead of him. Because, like, he's also over the products, like, the ads products that they have to build to solve all the Apple stuff, the regulation stuff, all of that.

• 25:22David Pierce?

  Well, and he's the one who has to get Meta to the metaverse.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  He has to fund it.

• 25:27David Pierce?

  Yeah, he has to fund the metaverse. And he has to, like, make Reels a big enough business long enough that, that this company continues to be like a viable thing all the way through, however long it's going to take them to build the next thing. And I think that is like, it's a weird stage of, like, I think managed decline is sort of overstating the situation. But it kind of feels like that, where it's like, okay, this is probably as big and powerful as this thing is ever going to be. And the goal is just to keep it as close to that as you can, until we see if the next thing is real. And that's, that's very different from, like, growth hacking your way to, you know, giant social media superstardom.

• 26:02Speaker 05

  Actually, we gotta let you go, Alex. But one last thing I just want to ask you about. The future of all these products, Reels, whatever, is this content recommendation system. Zaka said it's going to be run by AI in some way.

• 26:14Nilay Patel?

  Day after Sandberg leaves, Meta's head of AI is leaving and that group is being reorg. Is that related? Is that a big shift? Is this just shakeup time? What's going on?

• 26:23Speaker 05

  It's shakeup time. There's a big focus. I think it was probably the biggest focus besides the Metaverse stuff to make AI a bigger priority throughout the company and specifically TikTok's flavor of AI, which is not like you tell me a bunch of things about your interests and then I show you stuff I think you like. Like, I'll just show you stuff I think you like and I will learn from your passive consumption of it, which was like really a new way of thinking about how to do recommendations that I think took Facebook by surprise with how much people liked it. And so they've, they're reorging the whole company, not just with this head of AI leaving, but in other ways that I'll report on soon, to really focus on how can we recommend content to you as

• 27:09Speaker 05

  well as TikTok does. And they really do see it as like existential to staying where they are just in the current 2D era of social media. And they're investing a lot in it. So that's like the next like near term chapter to watch there as it relates to that.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, that's a good place to end it with a tease for another blockbuster. Alex Heath's scoop.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Stay tuned.

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  I love it. Thank you so much.

• 27:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, thanks, guys.

• 27:34Nilay Patel?

  We'll be back in a minute with Andy Hawkins, Talk Cars. We'll be right back.

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• 28:43Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Andy Hawkins is here. Hey, Andy.

• 28:45Speaker 08

  Hello.

• 28:45Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 28:46Speaker 08

  It's going great. How are you guys?

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  We are doing well. We're going to make a hard shift from Sheryl Sandberg and the future of AI in the metaverse to cars and the graphics inside the cars. Everyone just come for this ride. It's going to be great.

• 28:59Alex Cranz?

  There's graphics.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's all the same. It's all the metaverse in the end. So actually, there's a bunch of car news I want to talk about with you. But I want to start with this trend that I know you've been paying a lot of attention to, which is game companies are signing deals to put their game engines in cars. So Volvo just signed a deal to use Unreal Engine from Epic in its EVs. What is going on here?

• 29:20Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think it's it's kind of an interesting trend because I think that the game companies have obviously stated an interest in sort of expanding beyond the world of just games. They want to be involved in film and television. And now it looks like the automotive world is a very attractive target for them as well. The Epic actually has an office in Detroit that they, from which they interact with a variety of the automakers that are based there. And Volvo, obviously not based in Detroit, based in Sweden, but they're the first European automaker to make a deal with with Epic to use Unreal Engine for, and I quote, "photo-realistic visualization" in its next generation of EVs.

• 30:04Speaker 08

  So it's basically boils down to like, you know, just better, prettier, nicer to look at HMI in these in these cars.

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what's HMI?

• 30:13Speaker 08

  Human machine interface.

• 30:16Alex Cranz?

  I got to ask because I was like, reading this piece and I'm like, I love all of these things. I love reading about all of these things. Isn't a human machine interface just a UI? Isn't this just like? A fancy way to say UI.

• 30:28Speaker 08

  We're just giving fancier names to very pre-established.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  No, you can't be a UI expert and then be like, but I also don't work at Apple. You see, you had to create a new industry for you to be the leader.

• 30:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like.

• 30:40Speaker 08

  Alex, do you want to be a user or do you want to be a human?

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then the car, you have to, I'm gonna start calling my car the machine.

• 30:48Alex Cranz?

  The machine.

• 30:50Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna take the machine out to the store.

• 30:51Alex Cranz?

  The machine is low on gas today. Like, what is this? Is this just, you know how?

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  It's good.

• 30:57Alex Cranz?

  Car companies for the longest time have been so slow to improve their human machine interface, right? Like, that was the whole deal of Tesla is it made it, they put a tablet in there and everybody else was like, we're gonna do this garbage, like Subaru's OnStar monstrosity. And like, this just feels like they're still behind. Like, they're still like, not getting the point.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  No, but now they're using Unreal Engine.

• 31:22Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they're using, but they're still calling it human machine interface.

• 31:25Speaker 08

  Thing, right?

• 31:26Alex Cranz?

  Like, why don't you just get the lady who made macOS? She can design use of user interface.

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  Alex, I understand that you're happy at the interface and you're like, 82 Civic or whatever.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  Like, you're so mad. She's turning like bright red on the camera right now.

• 31:43Alex Cranz?

  I'm just like, why are you calling it that? Andy, can you please help me?

• 31:48Speaker 08

  It's like putting lipstick on a pig a little bit, right? Because it's certainly the case that like infotainment in modern cars is a pretty hit or miss kind of concept, right? Like, you know, you mentioned Tesla, and one of the big things that people loved about Tesla was that it's just a much better way to interact with your infotainment system in your vehicle than say, you know, Sync4 and Ford or the iDrive system in BMW, which, you know, have, over the years, gotten better for sure, but don't have a pretty strong foundation on which to stand. So I think you're seeing, this is why obviously, systems like, you know, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are so popular amongst peoples because they just like, don't want to deal

• 32:33Speaker 08

  with the crap that the car comes with. They just want their phone's screen on their car's screen.

• 32:38David Pierce?

  I have two things I want to say about this. One is that we all just said infotainment a bunch of times and nobody said anything about it. So if that's allowed, I think human machine interface is gonna have to be fine.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  No, it is very funny. I agree with Alex on this. It is hilarious to think of the system in most GM cars or Ford Sync as a human machine interface. Like, if that's the best we can do, like, we should just give up. Like, let the machines do it.

• 33:04David Pierce?

  I think that thing where you put the cassette in and then plugged your iPod into the cassette, that was a perfect human machine interface. I don't need anything else.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, who picks the fonts on these things? I'm fully coming around to Alex's point of view.

• 33:16Alex Cranz?

  They're so bad. Like, all of them are bad. And it just feels...

• 33:19Nilay Patel?

  Whoever picks the fonts for the interface at GM, like, we should find them. If you know who they are, put them on the show, because I have a number of questions.

• 33:28David Pierce?

  My second thing was that, Andy, what I want to know is my, my running theory for a couple of years has been that eventually a lot of these car manufacturers would just give up on caring about software and either just like build dumb boxes that you can plug your phone into because that works for a while. Or there would be some third party who would like start to solve this and that would happen. But instead, what has happened is all of these companies have like centralized software development inside of their own companies. Why, why is this the strategy they've taken? Why do these companies care about making software? Shouldn't they just give up and make cars? Like, there's plenty of other problems to deal with in the future of cars other than HMIs.

• 34:05Speaker 08

  I mean, it's the tired old cliche that like, you know, the modern car is now just sort of like a smartphone on wheels in a lot of ways that, you know, there's now this expectation that you're going to get all these more, all this more interoperability and it features, you know, in the vehicle. You know, instead of just like a clunky button that you, that you press to turn on the air conditioner, you have to go through five menus now, right? So it's something that I don't know that their customers necessarily want, but I do feel that the OEMs in particular feel pressure in order to match with what Tesla's doing. And a lot of these new EV startups that are obviously putting a lot of emphasis on software. But I think it's really kind of leading to kind of a situation where you get a lot of feature bloat. You know, I think...

• 34:48Speaker 08

  You're gonna reach a breaking point at a certain point with a lot of customers who just can't really, they just want buttons, you know, it's, it's, it shouldn't be that difficult to give the people what they want.

• 34:58David Pierce?

  So in that metaphor, we're like in that moment where it like the early 2000s, where every phone maker was making their own OS with their own app stores and they all were trash. And Qualcomm was like, here's Brew, do you want this? And we just have to like muscle through that and get to somewhere where actually some good software comes out of this.

• 35:16Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, you're at a slightly different place. You're at the part where Android comes out, like literally Android again. So Ford is like outsourced most of its sync development to Google to build whatever next sync is on Android. Google has horrible names for this. So Google Automotive Services or Gas is like a thing. You can have a gas car.

• 35:40David Pierce?

  My gas powered electric car. I love it.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. GM is running Android on a bunch of stuff with Google services. Toyota is doing Google services everywhere. That's Android. FCA, no, Stellantis, the company formerly known as FCA, runs a forked version of Android, which is a choice. And then they're all because you have to put in the chips and their smartphone chips effectively to run the stuff. They have GPUs and then you can say, okay, we're gonna go buy Unreal Engine and use that as our, our graphics layer to make this. So they're actually like, they're one step further down. We're giving up the stuff we're definitely not good at. Like the idea of Volvo making its own Unreal Engine, I think is hilarious.

• 36:21David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  It would be a very safe game engine, but like they know they can't do that. And so I think now they're looking at these like big chunks of software, the same way they look at like, seat suppliers or engine components is like, we need these foundational chunks, but we're, we'll build the experience on top of it. And then Andy, I think the thing that like scares me about it is in the end, the point is they want to take the steering wheel away from you. And then you control the interface so they can put ads on those screens.

• 36:49Speaker 08

  Oh yeah, 100% that's going to be sort of the outcome here. And it was interesting because I spoke with our gaming and entertainment editor, Andrew Webster, about this, since he has a lot of experience covering Epic. And you know, he made the, I thought, which I thought would be a really good point, which is that like, you know, Epic is really interested in the automotive space because cars are so much easier to render than humans in a realistic way. While they are obviously doing a lot of work in film and TV, the automotive industry is kind of like a little bit of a lower lift for them because they can just make, you know, this is why, obviously, there are so many racing games that come out every year. There's just like easy thing for them to do to render in a realistic way, you know, a Volvo car on a screen to show you how much battery charge you have left, for instance,

• 37:33Speaker 08

  or where you're going on your navigation system.

• 37:36Alex Cranz?

  Just to clarify, what they did is that like they're not using Unreal to develop the user interface, human machine, whatever you want to call it. They hired them so they can use like the code to make a fancier version of the Volvo, the car model.

• 37:52Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the idea, so like the Rivian runs Unreal 2, right? A truck which is slowly coming out of vaporware status. Like every time anyone sees a Rivian, I get a tweet about it now. I saw one the other day. It was amazing. I spent a few hours driving around the other day. It was really fun, great car, and the entire, both screens in the car are Unreal. And so like, all the user interface is running in Unreal Engine. But the big thing about the user interface is when you do stuff, when you change the modes of the car, it's showing you the car in the state of the car.

• 38:23Alex Cranz?

  That's just...

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Now, this is like fundamentally silly in one way. But on the other hand, it's like good user interface design.

• 38:31Alex Cranz?

  Is it?

• 38:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because you're like, what door is open? And instead of looking at like the little icon, it's like, it's just showing you the car.

• 38:36Alex Cranz?

  Instead, it's a beautiful processor intensive rendering of your car, like...

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  What are you complaining about processor resources in a car? It's got a battery the size of a city. It's going to be fine.

• 38:49Alex Cranz?

  It's breaking my brain because it's...

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  You're so mad at cars.

• 38:53Alex Cranz?

  It's the exact same. They're facing the exact same issue that TV makers have faced, right? Like, TV makers, the exact same position of, we don't know software. What do we do? And TV makers eventually are like, oh, we outsource it to people that know software. And these guys are like, yeah, we're gonna do that, but we're not gonna outsource it to the people who know how to make user interfaces, with the exceptions like GAS. They're saying, we're gonna outsource it to the guys who know how to make really cool looking cars in video games, to make really cool looking cars on the screen, that presumably, like, how do you change the air, how do you do the air conditioning? How do you, like, I feel like they're putting the cart ahead of the horse here, a lot. I feel like they're like, okay, we know we gotta have flash. And like, they're just misunderstanding the actual-

• 39:37Nilay Patel?

  Did you just compare Unreal Engine to Flash?

• 39:40David Pierce?

  Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic, is going to find you. The next time your doorbell rings, it's gonna be Tim Sweeney.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  I guarantee you, there was like, a moment in that weird time when Flash was ascendant, when like, some car company was like, and we're gonna run the car on Flash.

• 39:55Alex Cranz?

  It was probably Subaru.

• 39:58David Pierce?

  That's Alex's car. That's the problem.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  So Andy, this is a trend, you've been covering it. We've got a piece, like, a big piece coming, right?

• 40:04Speaker 08

  Yeah, we have a freelancer who's working on a story about, sort of, the convergence of the gaming industry and automotive, and sort of what it's gonna mean for the future of, you know, UI, for the future of autonomous vehicle technology. It seems like there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for more companies to come in, not just Epic, but possibly some of the other major competitors out there, because there's just such a mad rush into the EV and AV space. And, you know, if you get an EV, you have to, there's the expectation that there's gonna be, you know, a lot of gorgeous graphics on the inside, and a lot of high-tech features. So it just seems like this is a space that's gonna be worth watching. So we're gonna definitely be looking into that a little bit deeper.

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  And every time something swoops on the screen, Alex will be there to be like, what a waste of processor resources.

• 40:53David Pierce?

  Well, I was just gonna say, there's a bunch of like screenshots and what look like, you know, cool futuristic renderings in the, in the story you wrote, Andy, and it just looks like Google Maps. It's like, we got Unreal Engine to make us slightly prettier Google Maps.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  But for the average car company, that is such a leap.

• 41:11David Pierce?

  I mean, fair.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  I'm so proud of them, right? They didn't fall down.

• 41:15Speaker 08

  I mean, this is why, if you look at any vehicle on the road today, in any, any city, anywhere, it's got, it's most likely has a phone mount somewhere, because people would just rather look at their phones, because the, you know, the state of what is offered on the screen of their car is just not, is not acceptable for most people. They'd rather just deal with their phones.

• 41:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I think that the, the thing I call out in every car review that I watch, and poor Andy has heard this from me so many times, like, every car, like Doug Demiro, like, our friend, one of the best car reviewers on YouTube, he will just like wave at the center screen, after doing like 40 minutes of every intricate feature of the car, and he's like, "NS CarPlay Android Auto." And that's like, whatever software design that they did, he's like, "NS CarPlay Android Auto." And like, that's a disaster for car companies, right? They're doing all of this work, and none of it rises above, and you can mirror your phone screen to it. So I can see why they're doing the effort. I think one of the questions I have is, when you get to, like, actual autonomy, they've got

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  to take the maps back from Google, and build a UI that like, you tell the car where you're going, and you're using the car's navigation, not your, like, I don't think that they've reckoned with that yet, except for, in many cases, they're just like, "Yeah, we're just gonna let Google do it." But there's no, there's no alternative path that I've seen yet. All right, that is, that's, that's the screens in cars. Let's quickly talk about some real car news. We've talked about how expensive cars are among, in the middle of the chip shortage on stuff lately. Your RAV4 Prime is going for $100,000. Great, great success for everyone. Meantime, Andy and Shannon slashing prices on the Bolt, which seems crazy to me, like-

• 42:57Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's it's really weird. The Chevy Bolt is now suddenly the cheapest electric vehicle on the market, or at least it will be, you know, later this year, once the 2023 models start hitting the road. They reduced the price around an average of 17% for both the Bolt EV, which is the hatchback, and the EUV, which is the slightly larger crossover hatchback thingy. It's not really an SUV, but it wants to be. I think it started about $26,595 for the Bolt EV and $28,195 for the EUV. That includes destination fees. So yeah, that's a pretty remarkable price.

• 43:38Speaker 08

  It undercuts the latest version of the Nissan Leaf, which was the cheapest EV on the market. It certainly undercuts the Tesla Model 3, which even though had the aspiration of being a $35,000 EV, never really hit that and has basically hovered around the mid 40s for most of its time. So yeah, suddenly a pretty good deal out there if you can sort of get over the massive recall that they had due to all the battery fires.

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  So one hurdle, the other hurdle I would say is one of the most strikingly ugly cars I've ever seen.

• 44:10Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, it does not. It's not easy on the eyes, for sure. So I had a Bolt EUV a couple of weeks ago for about a week. And yeah, while it was, it's kind of clunky to look at and it's just not that great design-wise, and there's just a lot of hard plastic all around. It gets the job done. It was, you know, it's surprisingly roomy on the inside. It's got a lot of really great pick-me-up. And, you know, I found myself having more fun driving it than I originally anticipated. I thought it wasn't going to like, I didn't like driving the original EV, Bolt EV, but the EUV I found to be hitting a lot of sweet spots. And I'm actually in the middle of writing up a review of it right now.

• 44:50David Pierce?

  Yeah, reading this story, I found myself vacillating between like, is this, is this GM coming from a position of strength? Like, you know, we've hit economies of scale. This thing is kind of working. We can lower the prices because we're in good position to do this. Or is this GM saying, oh, my God, we made so many of these and two people have bought them. Please take our cars. And by the end of it, and especially once I saw the picture, I just sort of assumed the answer was the second thing.

• 45:15Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think it's a mixture of both. I think they're also, they're trying to sort of come out with a statement that this is an affordable EV, which is the market has very much lacked for a long time, especially with a lot of the new ones that have been coming out recently. They're more in the premium space. And I think GM's saying, you know, there needs to be a mass market EV. It was supposed to be the Tesla Model 3. It didn't quite get there, but obviously Tesla has been selling them. Model 3 and the Model Y are the biggest selling EVs in the country. And I think GM's trying to say, we're still very much committed to the idea of a mass market EV, and this is one of the ways that we're going to do that. And I think it's also not a coincidence that, you know, that Ford just started delivering the F-150 Lightning to customers, too. So I think GM's trying to

• 46:00Speaker 08

  steal a little bit of the spotlight by coming out with this.

• 46:03Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, if you're listening to this and you haven't seen the Chevy Bolt, just look at a picture and then imagine trying to steal the spotlight from the F-150 Lightning with this thing. Like, it's good luck. I just, the Lightning is super marked up, right? Like $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 on Lightnings right now. You can find dealers that have them, and most dealers don't because they're all allocated. The Kia EV6, Dan Seaver really wants to buy one. I keep sending him listings where the MSRP is listed. He's like, no, no, the dealers actually mark them up once you inquire. Like, down the line, cars are marked up over MSRP everywhere. And it just seems like so few people want, and the battery fires and help. But it just seems remarkable that they're dropping the price on this. Do

• 46:48Nilay Patel?

  you think it's going to work?

• 46:49Speaker 08

  Well, I think you also have to look sort of at the broader picture, which is that GM is not eligible for the federal tax credit anymore either. So while they might have been able to lean on the tax credit, which is $7,500 per vehicle, to shave off a little bit of that price and help make it a more attractive vehicle for people who may not, you know, necessarily want this car exactly, but they want something that is electric and they're tired of paying high gas prices, and they're just ready to make that switch. They haven't been able to do that. So I think they had to make some sort of dramatic change to the pricing structure in order to sweeten the pot for folks. And you know, they're they're coming out with the, you know, the Silverado EV is coming

• 47:31Speaker 08

  out next year, so they will have a truck to compete with the F-150 Lightning. But in the meantime, you know, the what GM actually has on the market today is this and the Hummer EV, which is like, just like, I think it's like $120,000.

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's talk about another little piece of real car news. Ford just keeps making investment announcements. So now they're they're going to build EVs in Michigan?

• 47:57Speaker 08

  Yeah, what a shock, right? Michigan. Who'd have thought Ford, of all companies, would establish a manufacturing footprint in Michigan? No, they announced $3.7 billion in a manufacturing expansion in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. And they're going to be creating 6,200 new unionized jobs as part of this. And they sort of hinted at plans for an updated Mustang and Ranger, gas powered. And then also, they teased a an electric commercial vehicle, which they didn't offer any specifics on, just that there's going to be a new electric commercial vehicle to come out to complement the e-transit van that they are in production with right now.

• 48:36Nilay Patel?

  At this point, it seems like Ford is way ahead of they're like investing in a lot of forward capacity. They're obviously assuming people are going to buy new Mustangs and commercial EVs. Where are they at with delivery of Mach-Es and Lightnings, right? Like, it's great that they're building more factories that will deliver cars five years from now. Are they catching up to where they need to be to compete or even get people their cars?

• 48:59Speaker 08

  Slowly but surely. So they they actually just recorded their their May delivery numbers at the same time as they made this announcement, and their EV sales are up 220% compared to May 2021, which shouldn't be shocking, because the only EV they had on the market in May 2021 was the the Ford Mustang Mach-E, and that was that had just came out. So they were just ramping up production on that at that time. So things are getting better. They've they said that they've delivered around 200 of the Ford of the F-150 Lightnings to dealers with many more in transit. And They say the number that they're really excited about is that 75% of the people who have

• 49:40Speaker 08

  reserved an F-150 Lightning are new to Ford completely. So they're winning new customers, which for a company like Ford is a big deal because obviously they pay, they play second fiddle to GM and to, you know, a lot of the, you know, German and Japanese automakers. So that's a big deal for them is the converting of new customers to them.

• 49:59Alex Cranz?

  What about their old customers like converting to these, like all the truck drivers who are doing it for their construction businesses and stuff?

• 50:07Speaker 08

  Yeah, that's gonna be, that's gonna be a big, a big thing to watch, watch for them as well as, because that's, they're, they're confident that they're gonna be able to flip those, those folk because truck drivers are very loyal to their brands, you know, so, you know, someone who owns an F-150 will buy a new one, you know, every five years or so, for example. And the same goes for, you know, Ram 1500s and Chevy Silverados, like just people are just very loyal to those brands and those trucks. So I think if Ford can make a convincing argument to flip those loyal customers while also, you know, making a big deal about the fact that it's winning new customers, you know, that they will have a pretty, I think, winning marketing message there at the, at the very least.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I would say that the Ford versus Chevy, iOS versus Android, Mac versus Windows, Ford versus Chevy might be a even hotter war than iOS v Android.

• 50:55Alex Cranz?

  Where's Dodge in all this?

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Well, they don't make them anymore. It's Ram.

• 50:59Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's Ram. They spun out Ram, you know, like what, 10 years ago or so, or 15 years ago? And now, you know, Dodge is, they're coming out with a bunch of muscle cars, electric muscle cars in the next few years.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  They are coming out with drawings.

• 51:11Alex Cranz?

  The way your eyes rolled, Neelai.

• 51:13Speaker 08

  Yes, I forgot.

• 51:14Alex Cranz?

  I think everybody heard it.

• 51:16Nilay Patel?

  No, like they announced, Ram announced a battery Ram 1500 truck, straight up a drawing, like they announced a drawing and they're going on a series of, this is your question about like existing owners, they're gonna convene panels of Ram owners around the country to find out what they really want in an electric truck.

• 51:36Alex Cranz?

  The one that exists.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Do you not know? Is it unclear?

• 51:41Speaker 08

  The truck is going to be humongous and gas powered. That's gonna be their electric truck.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  What I want is a diesel engine. You want it to last a long time and be really fast. Like it's very, very simple. But they announced a drawing and then their, their e-muscle cars, straight up drawings.

• 51:58Speaker 08

  Mm hmm. They put out a, like a concept and they forgot to like erase the underlying sketch that, that they had applied the graphic on top of. So people could just sort of isolate out the, the sketch that was underneath it and be like, oh yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna look like a, like a, like a, like a truck.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  Surprise. Guess what? A bunch of pre-existing truck owners want out of a truck for it to look like a truck.

• 52:21Speaker 08

  Look at the other hand of the equation. Look what happens when you get something that you don't want to look like a truck and you get the Cybertruck, right? That's, that's, that's the opposite end of, of all of this.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. A, a, a triangle, which they cannot figure out where to mount the windshield wiper on. Like the vaporware problem in the EV industry is out of control, which leads me to the vaporware section of this car. And then we got to wrap this up. So Buick rebranded itself as an EV-only automaker.

• 52:46Speaker 08

  Buick.

• 52:47Nilay Patel?

  They were, it was just hilarious. They're promising a car by 2024, which is never.

• 52:53Alex Cranz?

  I mean, it looks cool though.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  They didn't change the logo. I think the new logo is very nice.

• 52:57Speaker 08

  I agree. The three flags. Love it.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  It's good. It's very good.

• 53:00Speaker 08

  It's good.

• 53:01Nilay Patel?

  And then they released this concept car called the Wildcat, which I don't know if you've noticed, most carmakers don't sell sedans anymore. So selling like a, a 1940s Buick EV sedan is a very bold move.

• 53:16Alex Cranz?

  I would buy this in a heartbeat.

• 53:18Speaker 08

  It's kind of hot looking.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  It's hot.

• 53:20Speaker 08

  It's like a shark. It's pretty sweet.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  And, and you can definitely murder Roger Rabbit.

• 53:26Alex Cranz?

  When, when Cadillac did that big redesign, you know, remember a couple of years ago or a couple, it was like 20 years ago, they redesigned and tried to make them more like sports cars. This is the same energy where we're like, we're a big luxury brand. What if we did sports cars?

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So this is a, you know, the vaporware car of the week segment. So that Buick is doing that. This isn't a real car yet. And then DeLorean. I mean, talk about announcing a drawing. They have fully announced a drawing called the Alpha 5 EV. And I don't think they have thought through these doors at all. So it has the classic door in going doors, but you know how the Tesla Falcon doors kind of like fold?

• 54:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  So that they're useful. These are just like, there's a 90 degree angle and they open.

• 54:08David Pierce?

  Three parking spots at all times.

• 54:10Speaker 08

  That is gonna scream the hell out of whatever's parked next to it in the parking lot.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  It just seems like, oh, you didn't think this through.

• 54:16David Pierce?

  This car is so weird to me. I just, I had the weirdest experience just reading this story about this car. Like the, there's this image at the top of the story, which is from the back, the wings are open and it's just like, that's hot. That's a DeLorean. And then you get two paragraphs down and they show the front of the car and it looks to me like, one of those things I like whittled in Boy Scouts for like the thing, do you know what I mean? The stock car derby or whatever it was called.

• 54:39Nilay Patel?

  The Pinewood Derby.

• 54:40David Pierce?

  Yes, that's what it was. It just looks like you just sort of shaved it down for 20 minutes and that was your car. And then I look at it from the back and it's got cool lights across the back and it looks like a Tron thing. And I'm like, okay, I'm kind of into this. And then.

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  They definitely designed the back of the car and not the front of the car.

• 54:56David Pierce?

  Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent.

• 54:57Alex Cranz?

  Did they make it an unreal engine?

• 54:59Speaker 08

  Insofar as that it's unreal. Yes.

• 55:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So they are promising on showing this off on August 21st.

• 55:07Speaker 08

  Pebble Beach.

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  We will see.

• 55:09Speaker 08

  2030, what? It will 100% be a static concept car, much like the, the first Faraday future car that came out. I don't anticipate it being something that can move on its own accord.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then they're promising that this will come out in the next few years. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this card, I, between Buick and DeLorean, two names that come up on the Vergecast all the time. I'm going to say that we will not see a shipping Buick until the second half of the decade. So way beyond 20 and the DeLorean will never come out. Those are my, those are my vapor car predictions.

• 55:43Alex Cranz?

  What if it ends up being just like a, a body kit for other cars? You just start putting this on like a Chevy Bolt.

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, you gotta, you gotta put the doors on it. The doors look so insanely unworkable. Like they're right up there with the Cybertruck and the windshield wiper situation. Like you can't ship the Cybertruck unless it has windshield wipers and they have not yet figured it out. There's no evidence that there's a solution to the Cybertruck windshield wiper problem. Like Elon tweeted, like, our best solution is one giant wiper. That's not gonna fly.

• 56:17Speaker 08

  Keep in mind, this is not the real DeLorean Motor Company. I mean, that company went bankrupt, you know, like Ford.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  Cause the car sucked, because people care about time machines, not DeLorean. Anyway, continue.

• 56:28Speaker 08

  And the founder was caught in a sting operation, you know, trafficking drugs and cocaine. You know, which is, you know, that's cool. Very eighties and very much, you know, the vein of what DeLorean, you know, stood for. But this is a company that's now just owns the branding rights. So it's not even a car company. It's just a, it's sort of like a holding company that owns the branding rights. So.

• 56:50Nilay Patel?

  Can I just read you this? Cause you can sign, you can sign up to reserve a DeLorean Alpha 5. Can I just read you this copy from the website? "DeLorean is as eager as you are to enable a path to ownership of the iconic Alpha 5. Bridging the physical universe with the metaverse will be our path forward. We will advise all newsletter registered subscribers in late summer 2022 on how to join the journey to ownership."

• 57:19Alex Cranz?

  Is this gonna be an NFT?

• 57:21Nilay Patel?

  Wait, are they saying that signing up for a newsletter is the metaverse?

• 57:25Alex Cranz?

  I think so.

• 57:26Nilay Patel?

  Cause that's what I'm getting. It's good.

• 57:29Speaker 08

  This thing is gonna show up in Fortnite and you're gonna be able to drive so fast in Fortnite. And the doors can open however you want in Fortnite. That's the beauty of it. It's yours.

• 57:37Nilay Patel?

  We have, we've, we've yelled about cars too much. If the DeLorean people are mad at me, you can prove that I'm right by sending me a DeLorean. Send to your car. It's very simple. Andy, thank you so much. We gotta take a break. We'll be back to wrap up WWDC.

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• 59:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, we are back. Next week is Apple's WWDC, the World Wide Developers Conference. It's, I would say it's like the Apple kickoff of the year, you know? And then you kind of get the two fall events usually. So first thing I say is David and I are going to be there. We are going to California and then we're going to go to Apple's camp. We're not just going to wander around California. We're going to go to Apple and we're going to be at WWDC in person, which is very exciting. I'm unclear if we're going to see them do it on stage in person or if we're all just going to be like. Issued a DVD of the keynote to watch quietly by ourselves.

• 59:55David Pierce?

  I can answer this one for you. It is a viewing party is, is the thing that has been. They wanted to bring some people back. Like, obviously, it's, it's WWDC is as much like a chance for developers to like hang out with each other and talk about how cool Apple is as it is anything else. And so they wanted to bring some of that vibe back. And so they're bringing some developers in, some staff in. I don't know the exact numbers and breakdown, but as far as I can tell, what it amounts to is we're all gonna sit in a theater and watch a pre-produced event on a screen together. And I have a lot of questions about how that's gonna go down and whether people will clap and whether there will be a musical guest at the end. But that it just, it seems like they, they just wanted to bring people back,

• 1:00:35David Pierce?

  but not at the risk of like, putting executives in a room full of us unwashed masses in which they might get sick.

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  So we can be together.

• 1:00:43David Pierce?

  So we can be together, but not with Craig Federighi. Yeah.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, that will be fascinating. It'll be fun to see everybody. I miss going to these events very much. Different vibe. We'll obviously be live logging. I would say there's a lot of noise in the air about whether Apple will show us some AR VR stuff. And my sense of that is no. Like, maybe there'll be some developer focused, like, here's the stuff you can, because that's what the show is for, you know?

• 1:01:10Alex Cranz?

  I feel like we're not gonna get the hardware, but I also remember so many times on this very podcast, you saying, when they finally show it off, it's gonna be at an in-person event.

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  That, I'll stick to that. I just don't think it's this in-person event.

• 1:01:25David Pierce?

  I don't think so either.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  When they show it off, they're gonna make David go into like a hermetically sealed capsule for two weeks. So that he can like, go, like, I'm not going in that capsule, but you are, buddy.

• 1:01:35David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's, no, that's basically right.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  Right. Like, I think they have to do like a big in-person like walkthrough thing.

• 1:01:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Nilay Patel?

  But I, I just, we've heard a lot of noise about it with this one in particular. And I would just say that the rumbles in the air are very much like, not yet, but maybe there'll be some like framework stuff.

• 1:01:52Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:01:53Nilay Patel?

  Because it's the reason that there's so many rumors is there's like snippets of code in the betas and stuff that's already starting to come out.

• 1:02:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think what we're gonna see now is Apple's been doing, I went back and watched a bunch of Apple keynotes recently because it's what I do in my spare time. In particular, looking for the AR stuff and it's like, Apple's been talking about AR for a long time, but all it's ever shown is basically like different variations of the same demo, which is like you hold up your device, look into the camera and something appears on the other end. Like, that's the only thing Apple has ever taught us about how AR is supposed to work. And my guess is if the headset is coming soon, which I think it, it, there's enough smoke there that like it is, it's not five years away, I don't think. And the thing Apple kinda needs to do, and I suspect is going to start to do is like, start to give hints about how all that stuff is gonna work. Like, little

• 1:02:45David Pierce?

  UI things and new things you can do with the camera and like, to me, like live text, which Apple, which Apple announced at WWDC last year, which is like you can hold up your camera and scan text and it'll actually pull that text into your phone and you can do stuff with it. That's, that's AR. Like, that is an AR feature, right? And I think we're gonna start to see many more of those, to the extent that it's gonna be like, then when they reveal the headset, it'll be the sort of backing into it thing that Jobs did with the iPhone, where it's like, these things that already exist, we're pulling them all together and showing you a new way to use them. And I think we're gonna start to see like those first pieces at dub dub. That's my big theory for the year. I'd be shocked if we see hardware, though.

• 1:03:21Alex Cranz?

  A bunch of highlights as they're going through like iOS and watch OS and everything. A bunch of highlights of like, oh, look at this thing that could also be useful for AR.

• 1:03:30David Pierce?

  Exactly.

• 1:03:30Alex Cranz?

  Probably without the pointed look at the camera.

• 1:03:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's correct. Straight into the camera. You picking up when I'm laying down? But like, I think you're also gonna see like developers who have AR apps being like, here's some new features that would be great if they were on all the time.

• 1:03:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:47David Pierce?

  Totally.

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  Right. Cause right now, cause you're right. Like, the number of AR demos where it's like, four people walking around in a circle looking at iPads.

• 1:03:54David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Alex Cranz?

  It's amazing.

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  It's always been one of the least compelling things Apple has done. It's like, it's a, it's a race between that and like someone playing an iPad game.

• 1:04:05Alex Cranz?

  It's, it's hard to watch it when you, when you're in the room too, because on, on, on the stream, they'll like cut to like the person's view and you can be like, oh, that kind of looks cool. In the room, you're just like watching a guy up on stage, looking at his iPad.

• 1:04:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Right. Well, I bet those chess pieces do look alive.

• 1:04:21Alex Cranz?

  That's probably really cool.

• 1:04:23David Pierce?

  You can touch them on the screen.

• 1:04:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God, you're looking at fake Legos? I'm looking at nothing.

• 1:04:29David Pierce?

  And I think just the one last thing on this before we move on, the, the other thing that's happening in at this moment is like Google and Snap and Meta and all these companies are like really starting to push hard on their ideas about what AR interfaces are supposed to look like. Like it's not an accident that Google showed that wacky Google Translate demo. Like they are trying to get out and say, here is how we think this works. And Apple is usually pretty happy to be like the fast follower here to not be the one to like, make big giant bets. But I think if you're ever gonna take a big swing and like we've been talking about on this show, like launch your revolutionary new input device. This feels like a time to start at least giving people hints about what that's gonna look like.

• 1:05:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. That seems out of character for Apple, right? Like they're gonna show it when it's done. They're gonna show it when at least their first conception of the interface is complete. The comparison you're making, I think it's the Apple Watch where the first version of the interface was wrong.

• 1:05:26David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 1:05:27Nilay Patel?

  And that they did a total reboot with a third generation, but it was still complete. Right? Like they had a thing to say about the digital crown, revolutionizing all of computing, whether or not that happened, but like.

• 1:05:38Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I don't think they're gonna do a sizzle reel because they don't really do those. But at the same time, we did get the HomePod where everybody was like sat in the audience and they're like, now you're gonna listen to what a HomePod could sound like in a giant audience with very expensive speakers. And we're like, cool. Like I kind of worry, but also kind of want that to happen.

• 1:05:59Nilay Patel?

  Now, my prediction for this is they're gonna, this W W C, they're gonna announce a bunch of new AR features for the, for iOS and potentially iPadOS, because the pros have the LiDAR sensor. Those will very clearly, if you read the tea leaves, be connected to how developers can make apps for a headset, but they will say nothing. And then there will be, when they announce it, they will have a standalone event with probably way tighter in-person protocols because they're gonna want to demo the thing on your face.

• 1:06:30David Pierce?

  Yep. And they'll say a lot of things about how, and it already works, right? Like it's

• 1:06:34Nilay Patel?

  Yep. And the app, here's the app ecosystem is ready to go. Yep. So I think, I think we're gonna get some like hints, nothing more. And the hints are gonna come in the form of, look at these new capabilities for the phone. The thing I think we're actually expecting is new MacBook Air.

• 1:06:48Alex Cranz?

  MacBook Air, and we're still waiting on the Mac.

• 1:06:50Nilay Patel?

  Or maybe a Mac Pro.

• 1:06:51Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, we're still waiting on the Mac Pro with the M1, presumably the M1 Ultra or whatever, and then the MacBook Air with the M2. Those are kind of like the two outstanding.

• 1:07:03David Pierce?

  Would that be weird? It's like the most powerful one, but already we're like jumping a generation with the Air. I feel like, I don't know. I don't know how to match those two things in my head.

• 1:07:11Alex Cranz?

  Or they could skip M1 entirely for, for the Mac Pro, right?

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  So they said very pointedly that they, they were gonna transition the Mac Pro to Apple Silicon. They didn't say M1 or M2. So maybe the M2 starts with like the low end of the MacBook Air and they're like, also the high end.

• 1:07:28David Pierce?

  It would be super funny if they were like, we made the M1 Ultra, the Mac Studio is amazing. And then what amounts to like 15 minutes later, they're like, just kidding, we already have the next generation, M2 Ultra Mac Pro, let's go.

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  I don't think they're gonna do that.

• 1:07:39David Pierce?

  I don't think so either.

• 1:07:40Nilay Patel?

  There's more noise about the M2 MacBook Air out in the world coming at WWDC.

• 1:07:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. But then the Mac Pro is stuck back in that place of like limbo, where we're just wondering what the hell is going on with the Mac Pro.

• 1:07:51David Pierce?

  Which is a very familiar place for the Mac Pro to be.

• 1:07:55Nilay Patel?

  And the Mac Studio is like filling the void. Like, people aren't mad about the Mac Studio. So maybe they're waiting. It does seem likely that there will be some hardware for us to look at there. Whether it's the, the M2 MacBook Air or the Mac Pro, I think, up for grabs. My guess is it's the M2 Air and then the Mac Pro later, much later, has like the Ultra version.

• 1:08:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? Cause the, the M1 Ultra is like, that's, that's as far as that can go. They can't staple any more of those chips together, as far as I understand.

• 1:08:22Alex Cranz?

  And they've said that like, the M1 Ultra, that's, that's it. There's no bigger chips coming.

• 1:08:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I would just guess that the Mac Pro maybe is an M2 situation.

• 1:08:31Alex Cranz?

  That'd be cool.

• 1:08:32David Pierce?

  Seems right to me.

• 1:08:33Nilay Patel?

  So you get the new air, but the cool thing, if there's any air, the cool thing will be that it will be a form factor redo.

• 1:08:38Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:08:39Nilay Patel?

  Cause they didn't change the form factor at all with the M1. And obviously that form factor was designed for Intel chips. So if you don't need, like, if you open an M1 MacBook Air in an Intel MacBook, you're like, oh, they needed a lot of like thermal shit in the Intel one. That's just not, it's just empty space in the M1. So I'm excited to see if they can make it smaller. If they can make it more compact, like, there's a lot you could do with a MacBook Air if you're not dealing with fans and Intel chips and.

• 1:09:09Alex Cranz?

  Although I wonder about the keyboard, because that's one of the reasons that they have to stay so thick, right? Is like to have the keyboard have actual travel to escape the horror.

• 1:09:18David Pierce?

  Apple should invent a new kind of keyboard that needs less travel. That's an idea that I had, call it a butterfly keyboard, just a teeny tiny little, barely even moves at all. Everybody will love it. It'll go really well.

• 1:09:29Alex Cranz?

  Just don't have any food with crumbs near it. Don't eat.

• 1:09:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, see, I, I, I think the idea of like redesign product like the MacBook Air is like, it's like one of the more, the thing is iconic.

• 1:09:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Nilay Patel?

  They literally could not stop selling it. They tried to stop selling it. People kept buying it when they did those original 13 inch MacBook Pros. So I, I'm curious to see if, if it is the air, I'm curious to see how they redesign it because it's a very important product. I'm also curious to see like the M1 MacBook Air is like pretty good.

• 1:09:56Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Nilay Patel?

  Putting an M2 in it and a redesign, like you've got to, you're gonna make the battery last longer? That would be great, but like.

• 1:10:03Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna go more fast.

• 1:10:05Nilay Patel?

  It's already a day. Like I, I went to our office yesterday, I traveled the entire day, worked the entire day in the office on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. And I didn't even bring the charger with me.

• 1:10:16Alex Cranz?

  I do not bring my charger to the office when I bring my M1 Air in. It just goes. Sometimes I'll forget to charge it overnight. And it'll still have plenty of battery this next day. Sometimes it won't.

• 1:10:27Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing.

• 1:10:27Alex Cranz?

  Don't zoom all of your meetings.

• 1:10:29Nilay Patel?

  Don't zoom. That's a bad thing. You know, that's what's obviously they're going to update all their operating systems. So there's this rumor that iPadOS is going to get better at multitasking, which means they have to completely revamp the multitasking. So we'll see if they talk about that.

• 1:10:42David Pierce?

  There's only the one move left, right? Like I was, I was writing about this earlier and it's like, you can already do the thing where you can, you know, have them side by side. You can sort of drag them around, but it's like clunky and messy. And it's like, the obvious answer is just something like free window multitasking. Like you have on a Mac. That just is the answer. And I don't know where else there is to like, if you have, they have a thing where you're like, yo, you can drag one in from the top and the side and the bottom now. So you can have six apps layered on top of like, that sucks. I don't want that. Give me regular multitasking.

• 1:11:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. But if they resize it, oh, well, I guess used to it would lead you back to then why does Mac OS exist? But the M1s are so good that you're like, okay, I get why it exists now.

• 1:11:21David Pierce?

  I, I think Apple is like increasingly comfortable with that answer not being obvious.

• 1:11:26Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26David Pierce?

  That like, why does, why does the MacBook Air exist is like, if you want a MacBook Air, buy a MacBook Air. If you want an iPad, buy an iPad. They do a lot of the same things and some slightly different things. And I think Apple is like, tried really hard to differentiate the two for like a decade. And is finally leaning into the idea that these are just variations on a theme and that's basically okay.

• 1:11:45Nilay Patel?

  At this point, when we asked that question in briefings, it's like talking to Alexa, right? Like they, they hear the key word and they're like, many people who buy Macintoshes also buy iPads. They do different things. And it's like, there's no further answer. They're like, we sell everything.

• 1:11:59David Pierce?

  They told me for years in those briefings that people didn't want a trackpad and cursor on the iPad. So they would just never do it. Like for years. And I was always like, you are wrong and you are lying to me and you will eventually do it. And I called several people at Apple after that happened. And it was like, I told you, like, I got you motherfuckers. And I think it's the same kind of thing like that. They did that and the Mac didn't instantly die, right? Like,

• 1:12:26Nilay Patel?

  I just want everyone to envision David in this theater during the cinematic experience where I was standing up and yelling, I got you motherfucker.

• 1:12:33David Pierce?

  And then I threw a magic keyboard at everybody. Yeah, it's amazing.

• 1:12:37Nilay Patel?

  So I think we're expecting to see some widget stuff on iOS, some notification stuff. This is the stuff they tinker with every year.

• 1:12:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Nilay Patel?

  Right? They still haven't quite figured out notifications. They still haven't quite figured out widgets. They still haven't quite figured out multitasking. Every year it's new and different. And honestly, I think that's fine.

• 1:12:52Alex Cranz?

  Just bring Growl back.

• 1:12:54David Pierce?

  I will say there's one piece of that that I think is actually bigger than you just described. If the rumors are true, what's coming is like more interactive widgets in which you can actually like do stuff rather than widgets just being basically big app icons that show you outdated information because they don't refresh very often. Having a thing that like even on the lock screen, you can actually do something without unlocking your phone or opening an app. That kind of stuff I think ends up potentially being pretty meaningful. The question is whether anybody will actually use it or adopt it. Like I had somebody the other day mention how cool app clips are to me. And I was like, oh my God, app clips. I forgot about app clips. And it's the same sort of thing where it's like good idea about sort of lighter way to use your device, but no one uses them. And so we all

• 1:13:38David Pierce?

  pretty much use smartphones the way that we always have. So I'm very curious to see if any of that actually takes. But I think this idea of like, how do we make interactions lighter is a really interesting one.

• 1:13:46Alex Cranz?

  It would be very weird for them this long after the widgets were introduced on Android to finally be like widgets. We figured it out.

• 1:13:54Nilay Patel?

  They don't care about Android.

• 1:13:55Alex Cranz?

  I know, but the

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  Whatever. They live from Android is at will at this point. Android lives from iOS at will at this point. And like, we are the people, like us and the people listening to this are the only people who compare the platforms like that.

• 1:14:06Alex Cranz?

  I just, the widget situation has existed for so long and Apple's been like, kind of dicking around with it for, for decades now, right? Like it was on,

• 1:14:16Nilay Patel?

  When they killed Dashboard on macOS, that was the saddest day in computing history.

• 1:14:20Alex Cranz?

  It was horrible. And like they did, there were the widgets. And now they're like, no, guess what we're gonna do now? Widgets. And it's like, y'all did it. And you didn't love it enough. Will you love it this time, Apple?

• 1:14:28Nilay Patel?

  I used to have the greatest dashboard widget of all time. It's called Chrono Slider. And it would, you just told it like four time zones, and then it had a slider, and you could slide back and forth in time. And it would tell you what time it was in all the time zones. So we would have people in London, we had people in Amsterdam, and we had people in Japan. And I wouldn't just screw with them all the time because I knew what time it was, because I had a dashboard widget. And now, all bets are off. Who knows what time it is?

• 1:14:55David Pierce?

  Just messaging everybody 24 hours a day. All Dashboard's fault.

• 1:14:59Nilay Patel?

  All right. So that's iOS, iPadOS. I hear what you're saying. Like, it seems like they're trying to create some new interaction models. They're maybe more lightweight, but they're gonna tinker with things they always tinker with. No rumors really about watch OS?

• 1:15:10Alex Cranz?

  Not a lot. Just, we'll focus on health more.

• 1:15:12David Pierce?

  Yeah, the rumor is just health, exclamation point. Like, that's it.

• 1:15:16Nilay Patel?

  No rumors about TVOS, even though they own a fairly successful TV streaming, like, it's weird. There's like a total lack of information about all of their other OSs.

• 1:15:25David Pierce?

  Here's a rumor about TVOS for you. There's gonna be a long commercial that prominently involves Ted Lasso. There's your rumor about TVOS.

• 1:15:34Alex Cranz?

  Like, I think the operating system's in a pretty solid place right now.

• 1:15:38Nilay Patel?

  The operating system is still in its like, completely split personality zone, right? Where they, actually, oh, here's the, here's a conspiracy theory I'll whine for you. They have never been able to make the TV app the home screen, which is what they've wanted to since the thing began. They weren't able to because they couldn't get everybody to participate in a recommendation system, most notably Netflix, which is now on its back feet a little bit, and needs, needs to show its value to subscribers. Maybe this is, maybe this is the moment that Eddie Q isn't waiting for. Dude's gonna wake up and be like, I got you. And get Netflix in the recommendation system, and they're finally gonna flip the interface to TV.

• 1:16:17Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that's what they want to do.

• 1:16:19Nilay Patel?

  That's what they want to do. Well, I don't know if Netflix is actually gonna participate in the recommendation system. But this is the moment for Apple to strike and say, you want to stop trading subscribers? Like, start, like, the reason Netflix doesn't want to be in the recommendation systems of Roku or whatever, Apple TV or Google, is, once you're in the Netflix app, they want to keep you there. And their problem is people are like, but I would like to leave the Netflix app. And watch whatever's in Atrium X or Apple TV plus.

• 1:16:46Alex Cranz?

  And we did notice that like right now, if you're in the Apple TV app, you can go and search like Netflix specific shows and it'll actually show you those shows. But it's really buggy and weird. Like we were kind of poking around at it to figure out. Chris Welch and I were like, is this like a working as it's supposed to? Is this like some secret test for for Netflix coming to it? And it seems like it's mainly just working like it's supposed to, which is buggy as hell and broken. So when you go in and you look up, I don't know, Stranger Things, it'll let you follow Stranger Things and it'll let you open the Netflix app and that's it. But it won't let you track the show like you do the other shows of the TV app.

• 1:17:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that just seems like, right, it's like broken. So it might be coming.

• 1:17:30Alex Cranz?

  It could be.

• 1:17:30David Pierce?

  Well, Netflix has traditionally been willing to be part of the like universal search systems. Like if you go on Roku and search Stranger Things, it'll show up in the universal search. They were weird about Apple for reasons I don't claim to understand. But Netflix has at least been willing to be part of that in other places. So I assume it's, it'll eventually come around there, too. What it hasn't wanted to do is like give up any part of the interface where it's like, here are the shows you're watching. Netflix does not want to be next to other services. And now I think, I think you might be right that this is probably the weakest negotiating position Netflix has been in in a long time. And that may tip some of this stuff.

• 1:18:06Alex Cranz?

  And Apple's keen for it, too. Like every time I've spoken with people at Apple about it, they're like, yeah, talk to Netflix.

• 1:18:12Nilay Patel?

  Well, right. I mean, the like, the thing you shouldn't say, which you could say is, well, people are quitting your service. They don't care if Netflix recommendations are on the screen anymore.

• 1:18:21David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:18:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Nilay Patel?

  But it's still big and you want to be nice. So the thing you would actually say is, if you let us recommend your service, we will show people shows on Netflix, even if they're not subscribers, and hopefully drive you some subs.

• 1:18:33Alex Cranz?

  Which is what they're doing with all the other platforms.

• 1:18:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, a little, little carrot, little stick. This is Eddie Q's time to shine, man. Warriors are in the finals, like. Eddie's in the, in his element.

• 1:18:43David Pierce?

  Yeah, he's, he's kicking it. He's calling Reed from the sidelines of the finals games. This is gonna be amazing. I should say, I, I, we were wrong about watch OS. There is one inkling that there might be something bigger going on about like, uh, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who is pretty much always right about these things, said something about it's like affecting day-to-day operating and navigation. So like, there might actually be some new UI shift. Maybe this is the first AR device. Maybe they've like solved holograms on watch OS and that's gonna be, that's gonna be AR. Uh, but I think.

• 1:19:15Alex Cranz?

  I love the optimism.

• 1:19:16David Pierce?

  Maybe this will be the, the death of that stupid app flower thing, uh, once and for all and, uh, would make my life much better.

• 1:19:24Nilay Patel?

  I use the app flower.

• 1:19:25David Pierce?

  Why?

• 1:19:26Alex Cranz?

  I killed it immediately. I did the lists.

• 1:19:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, cause I don't need, uh, the list shows you all of your apps. So like, I don't want to, like, the app flower is like, you've got the clock in the center and there's only three icons I ever click.

• 1:19:37Alex Cranz?

  It shows me all of them.

• 1:19:39Nilay Patel?

  It's the walkie-talkie. It's my two-factor app. And it, wait, it might just be two. So if you have the list, you gotta scroll with the, the flower. You're just like beep, bop, boop, boop.

• 1:19:53David Pierce?

  That's, that's the change to watch OS is it now makes those noises anytime you do anything. It's, it's celebrities saying.

• 1:19:59Nilay Patel?

  You don't make those sounds when you scroll. Okay. And then have we heard anything about macOS?

• 1:20:04David Pierce?

  The rumor is it's gonna be called Mammoth and there are apparently some new app designs coming. One of the things that keeps coming up is a redesign to system preferences, which if that is the, that, that is the main rumor tells you everything you need to know about. I think what's coming for Mac, system preferences.

• 1:20:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, we'll be there. We'll be there watching the video along with you, but together, which will be nice.

• 1:20:25David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:25Nilay Patel?

  Live login, the whole thing. We'll have tons of coverage on the site. That's happening on Monday. We have gone way over, just like wildly over. I just want to mention one thing. Google, and this is like maybe the biggest news of the week. We should have led the whole show with it. Google is combining Meet and Duo into a single app for voice calls and it has a new messaging strategy.

• 1:20:44Alex Cranz?

  I, I was looking at David's story, like checking it to make sure he didn't. Put weird typos in there. And that was me learning that they weren't already combined.

• 1:20:53Nilay Patel?

  The number of people who tweeted at me and said something along the lines of deer is already having impact was very high.

• 1:20:59David Pierce?

  Yeah, it was amazing. Unfortunately, we are already way over, so I should not give the full explanation for how this works because it takes several hours. But the very short version of the story, as I understand it, is that Google had these two apps. One Duo was like a FaceTime WhatsApp-y kind of messaging app. Meet was its Zoom competitor. Meet got basically all of Google's resources over the last couple of years because it became super important for her from home and all that stuff. So it became this very rich platform. But Duo works really well, both for like, you can actually call someone and it'll like ring their device, which is a thing Meet can't do. And also it works really well in places with bad network connectivity, which is very important for calls and video, especially globally. So Google's actually bundling it all into Meet. The idea is that it should

• 1:21:44David Pierce?

  have all the features of both apps because Google loves feature bloat more than any other company on planet Earth. And it's the mobile app is actually going to be based on Duo. And the part that's so insane to me is if you currently use Duo, at some time in the near future, your Duo app will be renamed Meet, and that will be the Meet app. But if you also have Meet on your phone, Meet will eventually be renamed to Meet Original.

• 1:22:04Nilay Patel?

  We're way over.

• 1:22:04David Pierce?

  It just keeps getting insane.

• 1:22:06Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what's happening.

• 1:22:07David Pierce?

  Someday, there will be Google Meet and only Google Meet, is the point.

• 1:22:11Nilay Patel?

  So what just happened?

• 1:22:12Alex Cranz?

  But not anytime soon.

• 1:22:14Nilay Patel?

  In related news, Google had to shut down RCS in India because of enormous spam problem that they didn't see coming, which, amazing. They're doing great over there. If you want to send a message to someone on a Google platform, God bless you. It's gonna, it's gonna be fine. Okay, that's it. Like I said, WWDC is next week. Lots of news. It's gonna be a good time. Some stuff to shout out here. Get a really great feature on climate change and birding from our features editor, Kevin Nguyen. It's called a once-in-a-lifetime bird. And the only reason I want to say this is because I think that's one of the funniest headlines we ever published.

• 1:22:45David Pierce?

  It's very good.

• 1:22:45Nilay Patel?

  Just a once-in-a-lifetime bird on the verge.com. Check it out. It's a great story. Really well done. Decoder this week was the president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine. Which is fascinating. My crypto journey continues, where I ask questions like, if you replace the government with a DAO, won't you have the problems of DAOs? And then people say things like, yeah, but we should try. It just keeps happening. It's very entertaining. I encourage you to listen to it. Next week, speaking of Apple, Zoe Schiffer is coming on to talk about the unionization effort at Apple Stores, how it's working and how it might change company. That's coming. We're going to do that on Monday instead of Tuesday, because on Tuesday, we'll be flooded with W C news after. That's it. You can tweet at us. Thanks to Andy for coming on. He's at Andy Jayhawk. Thanks also to Heath for coming on.

• 1:23:29Nilay Patel?

  He's at Alex E Heath, Alex Krans, Alex H. Krans. David is at Pierce. I am at Reckless. That's it. We did it. We went shockingly over. That's the Vergecast. Rock and roll.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to this week's show. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. And if you liked the show, share it with a friend. Vergecast is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's episode was produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. That's it. We'll see you next week.

• 1:24:09Speaker 09

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