Android 13 arrives, Galaxy Watch 5 review, and Instagram gets competitive

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss the Android 13 update, the battle between the vertical video apps, and a bunch of gadget news. Further reading: Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today How to get the Android 13 update on your Pixel right away Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 review: incremental innovation Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 review: if it only had a better battery All the YouTube Shorts you repost to TikTok will now tell on you Instagram gets mean about sending video clips to TikTok The auto industry lost its spectrum fight with the FCC because V2V was always a fantasy Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software Yes, the new electric vehicle tax credits are really confusing, but we can help The auto industry lost its spectrum fight with the FCC because V2V was always a fantasy The Dodge Charger EV’s fake exhaust sound is sure to divide muscle car fans Snap is giving up on its Pixy drone after just four months Timbaland and Swizz Beatz sold Verzuz to Triller — and now they say Triller didn’t pay Yes — monitors can in fact get weirder The Big Ten’s new deal makes sports streaming rights more confusing than ever 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.

• 0:01Nilay Patel?

  Today on The Vergecast, new Android phones, new Android software, the fight between social media apps, and of course, the gadget news from this week. That's coming up right after this.

• 0:13Speaker 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.

• 0:58Speaker 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.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast with incremental innovation and electron wrappers for web apps. Today, we're talking about JavaScript. We're not going to do that. I mean, most days, we do, in a roundabout way, discuss JavaScript, I think.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  This is not the show for you if you're a JavaScript enthusiast. I will tell you that right now. I make no bones about it. Anyway, I'm your friend Eli. Alex Karans is here.

• 2:20Alex Cranz?

  I'm your friend who just loves Pearl.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  Very good.

• 2:23Alex Cranz?

  It's my favorite.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  You're

• 2:24Alex Cranz?

  It's great.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  You're just doing, you're just doing the command line. You're in there.

• 2:26Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  David Pierce is here.

• 2:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, I'm definitely your friend who is gonna like, give you a long speech about low code and no code. And then try to convince you to optimize all of the apps in your life to the point where everything immediately breaks. That's my job.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  My first email client was in a, was in a terminal, like a Unix terminal. It was pretty good. I missed those days, so it's called Pine. I don't know if you remember this. I might be the one old. And every now and again,

• 2:50David Pierce?

  Do you feel like a hacker every time you check your email?

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, because it was, it was at school, like in college, and they, they just had a bunch of Mac classics at the entryway of the dorm. And everyone stood in a line to log into their, their like shell account to check their email in Pine.

• 3:07Alex Cranz?

  Just

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  Because we didn't have computers yet.

• 3:09Alex Cranz?

  Typing the iApp.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  Then I rode my Steam engine uphill both ways to college.

• 3:14David Pierce?

  When you describe that, it sounds like, like in, in movies when they show like the line of people in prison waiting to make phone calls. Like that's, that's basically what you just described.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was, it was a different time. And at no point did we think that democracy would be imperiled by our command line email clients. And things have changed. It's fine.

• 3:33David Pierce?

  Simpler times.

• 3:34Nilay Patel?

  Here we are now, coming to you live over the internet. See, it's a thing. Everything's are improved. Democracy imperil, the Vergecast. You gotta take the good with the bad. You know what I'm saying?

• 3:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Lots to talk about this week. Android 13 came out for Pixel phones. A lot of people refreshing eagerly. The brewing war between the vertical scrolling video apps is here. A bunch of EV news, got a little bit of lightning round. Let's start with Android. We had Samsung reviews this week too, the Z Fold 4, the Watch 5. Shout out to V for an incredible fake out on the Watch 5 video review. If you haven't seen, I'm not gonna ruin it for you, but

• 4:11Alex Cranz?

  I was like preparing, like I was writing a DM to her, being like, this head is wrong. Why are you saying all of this with this head? You can't do this.

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:21Alex Cranz?

  And then I kept watching. I was like, oh, that's why, that's why they got it. It's fine.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's good, go watch it. It's good. But let's start with it. David, Android 13. It feels like, it's like, like an Android snow leopard. Like they're just getting a lot of stuff right.

• 4:33David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that's basically right. I mean, A, the funny thing about Android updates is always that it, Android updates come out and Google's like, Android 13 is here, 12 of you can download it. Uh, cause it hardly, like, nobody owns Pixels. Most people own Android phones that are on somewhere between like last and six versions of Android ago. Uh, but Android 13 is out for people who want it. It's like, it is, it's a snow leopard thing. They're like, they're doing a bunch of little things. This is kind of where we are with smartphones, right? It's like, it's to give you some more control over like how it looks and what kind of access apps can have. And Android, I will say to its credit, is doing a really good job of starting to like piece things together. And they're like, you can tell your app what language you want it to run

• 5:18David Pierce?

  in, which photos it should have access to, how it should operate, all these like, they're just giving people a lot of knobs to fiddle with, which I actually think like at this moment in smartphones is a really good idea.

• 5:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we should describe what Snow Leopard means. Again, I'm an old head. Steam Engine uphill both ways. All of us were like, yeah, Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is the best version of what at the time was called macOS 10. Uh, and they just decided to not do new features for a year and just make it good. And then they immediately were like, and now we're back to weird features. And that, but it was, I didn't leave Snow Leopard for three years. I was like, I don't care what you're adding to this operating system. This one's perfect. Uh, and every day that I use this computer, I was like, I miss Snow Leopard. But that's like, we're in that moment for a lot of software. Um, hilariously, the developers of Madden described it this year as a Snow Leopard release. Uh, and it just feels like Android is in that same place

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  where they're adding things like spatial audio because they need to compete with Apple. They're adding things like, uh, more personalization, maybe because they need to compete with Apple, but maybe because there's nothing left to do.

• 6:24David Pierce?

  Yeah, I will say the one thing I find very exciting about Android 13 is like Google's big theme for the world right now is like putting all of its many pieces together, which we talked about a bunch on the show, and like they're trying to make all their apps and services make more sense together. And so there's this thing now where you can basically stream your messaging apps from your phone to your Chromebook, which I think A is an extremely good idea because like sitting here at my computer and typing on my phone all day to message people is a gigantic pain in the ass that I really am excited for it to go away. But also because it's like, it's just a good idea and that kind of thing where it's like, I should be able to type on my phone from my computer. And that is like, how all of this should work. And I like it very much. And it feels like that's like the start of something very cool. But otherwise, all this stuff is like, yeah,

• 7:07David Pierce?

  these are good things that are not gonna like blow your mind to pieces.

• 7:10Alex Cranz?

  Do you think it's like, they just really wanted to hunker down and improve on like the stuff they have? Or was it the pandemic and the development cycles usually take a while and the pandemic kind of screwed up those development cycles? Or both?

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  I think it's both. And like, in a serious way, I just, I remember Sundar saying to us on the show, it's kind of the beginning of pandemic. He was like, we're well set up to all work from home and complete our roadmaps. What I'm worried about is the next set of ideas.

• 7:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  Which I think a lot of companies have run into in one way or the other. But I think they're obviously disrupted and no company is really being loud about how much its plans were disrupted. But I just also think contextually, if you just look at the state of Android right now, at the same time that Android 13 is arriving, we have the Galaxy Z Fold 4 running Android 12. Right? Like, the new, most complicated, fanciest Android smartphone is being released at the same time running the old version. Because that's just where Android is. And then they're running this gigantic campaign about RCS, because they know that at least in the United States, getting people to leave iMessage and switch to Android is like too hard. So like, what is the value of firing dozens of new features

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  into Android at this moment, when switching is really hard and your flagship phone provider is just gonna run Bixby all day long? Like, I think they're just in a tough spot.

• 8:35David Pierce?

  Well, and I think that comparison is like, it just strikes me as it's behind all of this stuff right now, right? Like, on the one hand, the idea that like you can customize the app icons and stuff is like a thing people love on their iPhones that I think Google is very smart to pick up on and sort of keep moving forward. And they're like, we'll automatically change the color scheme of all your icons so that it'll work. But there's also like, when you ask somebody now, like, the difference between iOS and Android, they're functionally the same. Android actually like has more features most of the time, but iOS just feels better. Like, it just does. And I think now, like, Google is pushing really hard on this idea of like, what if we make Android feel better? And, and there's all this little stuff

• 9:16David Pierce?

  that that entails. Like, I think we were talking on this show about the magical thing where you can copy text from one device and paste it onto another with Apple. And like, now Android does that. Or I guess soon it will do that if you have two devices that are updated, which you won't. But like, you get the idea. But I think like, that kind of stuff is like, I think Google is absolutely right to say, let's not build insane new stuff that almost no one is going to use. Let's like, make Android feel better. And I think that is like, that's how you get to where Apple is. And then if you can solve RCS, then you might actually be able to convince people to switch.

• 9:48Nilay Patel?

  Do you feel like we've had this conversation every year for the past five years? Because I feel like we could just do a clip show about that and just rerun ourselves saying, Google is focused. Do you remember Project Butter? This is a company that once announced an entire initiative called Project Butter that was designed to make Android smoother.

• 10:09David Pierce?

  Oh, it kind of worked?

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  It worked for a number of reasons. One, I remembered that it was called Project Butter. Branding achieved. Two, like, yes, Android improved. But it just feels like that's the gap. And I don't know that Google has meaningfully closed it on these phones. And then you've just got, what is the reality of Android? In this country, at least, it's all of the Android phones are sold by Samsung. So then someone else comes in and like, does whatever they want with Android. Samsung phones are smooth in their way. It's not that they're not. They're just smooth in like Samsung's way, which is a lot of trying to redirect you into a Samsung lifestyle.

• 10:50David Pierce?

  Get that Bixby.

• 10:51Nilay Patel?

  Baby, you are not interested in any way, shape, or form. Or it's like, sure, carriers can put apps on this phone. Like, there's a different experience to that that is just more. The business is in your face more with a Samsung Android phone, especially if you buy it from one of the major carriers. Whereas Apple, to its credit, is just like, their business is in your face all the time, but like, they manage to hide it better.

• 11:15David Pierce?

  I don't know. Apple is like, and there was some news about this this week, that Apple is now preparing to put more ads in more of its apps and search results and stuff like that. And it's like, they're kind of creeping towards each other, right? Like, Google is getting a little cleaner and a little simple, simpler. Samsung even has really pulled back over the last couple of years to the point where like, like, I used to hate Samsung's UI choices. And my recommendation was always like, run away from Samsung software as fast as you can, buy its hardware and do some weird stuff and install launchers. And now, like Samsung software is good. And it's like, yeah, you're starting to see the business of Apple a little more as Android is starting to move, they're just moving towards each other in this really interesting, not necessarily great way all the time.

• 11:59Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's also interesting that Apple's like, hardware lineup is getting more fragmented. Whereas like, Google's been dealing with fragmentation for a decade now. They, they know how to deal with it. And Apple's like, I gotta figure this out. I guess we gotta like, slow down some.

• 12:14David Pierce?

  You want old software? We got old software.

• 12:18Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty generous on Google having figured it. I mean, they have in a sense of like, disaggregated, like, place services from Android and they are better at updates and they've signed more aggressive deals to force the updates to happen. But really, the solution to Android fragmentation is that Samsung won the market.

• 12:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  And so like, it's not that fragmented.

• 12:39Alex Cranz?

  Right. But like, they've, they've had to deal with the challenge and like, think about that challenge in a way that Apple really hasn't had to, like, ever in its phone market, right? Like, Apple's never had to think about fragmentation. And now it's got, what, six different screens or something?

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then they're, they're gonna delay iPadOS, or so we have heard. By the way, rumors that I, iPhone event or some event, we're assuming iPhones usually in September, or first part of September.

• 13:08Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be a HomePod event.

• 13:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, September 7th, I think, is the date Mark Gurman reported.

• 13:12Alex Cranz?

  It's all HomePods and Apple TVs. Get excited.

• 13:15Nilay Patel?

  If it's, I mean, I would go to that event with bells on. I would literally be like, I'm here. I'm the most, most plugged in person in this event. Let's talk Apple TV the whole time.

• 13:24Alex Cranz?

  No one else.

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  Hit me, Craig. And it would just be me, like, alone in the field, looking at the giant screen, being like, come on. Did you make a TV?

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  They'd be like, and then it's just Tim Cook coming on stage and be like, no.

• 13:38Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  And he leaves.

• 13:40Alex Cranz?

  Hi, Neelai.

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  I would go to that event. Like, it's time to change events. What if, instead of holding product launches, they just get one person who wants something really badly and then the CEO of the company just denies that person what they want.

• 13:53Alex Cranz?

  Gets really close to the mic.

• 13:54Nilay Patel?

  You get more coverage.

• 13:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Tech companies disappointing one person at a time. That's our new event strategy. I think it'll go really well.

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of Samsung phones, reviews are hitting. So Alison reviewed the Z Fold 4, V reviewed the Galaxy Watch 5. Let's start with the Z Fold 4. Alison's like pretty into this phone. It's very expensive, but she's like, this is the most gadgety gadget you can get and you won't be disappointed with it. The camera is improved. The Android tablet ecosystem is still whatever it is, but I think we were saying this last week, like they've just arrived at a, they've iterated their way to a workable folding phone.

• 14:33David Pierce?

  I think the camera thing is super exciting here, actually, because that has been, because like if you're going to buy a fold, you kind of get into the fold, knowing what you're getting into, right? Like, it's going to be a little more fragile. It's going to be a little bigger. So you're like, it's very hard to buy that phone and not sort of understand those trade offs. But the idea that you're spending all this money and getting a worse phone than Samsung's other, or worse cameras, rather, than Samsung's other high-end phones sucks. But now, like, you kind of get the feeling that like Samsung now has sort of done all that it can, right? And it's, it's still a little big. It's still a little fragile, but like, that just is where we are in like science and materials chemistry.

• 15:14David Pierce?

  Android app are still bad for big screens. You just can't get good tablet apps for most Android apps.

• 15:20Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 15:20David Pierce?

  But otherwise, Samsung's kind of putting its best feet forward here, which I find super exciting. It's still $1,800, but it's like, it's a very good phone that also turns into a tablet and that's like about all you can ask for right now.

• 15:30Alex Cranz?

  I like how thorough Alison was in this review. Like she tested the flex mode. She did it. She put it in the stupid.

• 15:37Nilay Patel?

  She did it. Well, she heard us talking about tent mode on the show. She was like, all right, the people demand.

• 15:41Alex Cranz?

  The people. My bosses demand that I test it in flex mode.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  That's what happened.

• 15:46Alex Cranz?

  That's not what happened. No.

• 15:49Nilay Patel?

  No, she's in it. I mean, again, the Samsung has done a number of things with this phone that are legitimately the future of phones, right?

• 15:57David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  Folding or not, right?

• 15:59David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 15:59Nilay Patel?

  The huge pixel bin sensor has been the future for a minute, but they've refined it to a place where it works really well. The under display camera is still a little weird, but it works really well. Like, you don't see it.

• 16:12David Pierce?

  Pretty well. Allison's description of it was very funny to me. She described it as the visual aura that you get right before you get a migraine headache, which is like, not what you want to hear from your selfie camera. But as an under screen camera is like it, she kind of landed on like, it does the job, right? Like, it's fine. And there are also 40,000 other cameras on this thing that you can turn towards you in various ways, so it'll be fine. But yeah, I agree. That's the kind of thing that like, give it a couple of years and that's what all front facing cameras are going to look like.

• 16:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And Samsung is just historically good at throwing things at the wall and then slowly iterating them until Apple steals them and pretends they invented them. And like, you know, it's true. And like, I just think this, this phone, four versions in, is, I keep saying this. I don't know. I don't even know if it's true anymore because the software and ecosystem lock ins are so hard. But if you just want like a new gadget, I can't think of a better gadget at this point in time. And I, I've been saying things like phones are the worst gadgets for like five years. Like go buy a new TV or upgrade your soundboard. Like that'll make you happy. And then we're looking at all of the sales from all those companies. And it's like, oh, everyone did that already. All right. It's time to find a new category of gadgets.

• 17:23Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's folding phones. Like they're here at the right time.

• 17:26Alex Cranz?

  You think it's, you think it's folding phones and not like the Steam Deck and those kind of like little game consoles?

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I know how you and Sean feel.

• 17:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. We're Sean. Get him on, get him on the line, Liam.

• 17:38David Pierce?

  Can you pair Nintendo's JoyCons to the Fold 4? Cause there, there it is. There's your magical gadget.

• 17:44Alex Cranz?

  And then like, just get a 3D print, a little case for it, slot it in, make your own switch.

• 17:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think the Steam Deck is a great gadget.

• 17:51Alex Cranz?

  I actually have something I need to go do. Sorry. Gotta go do this.

• 17:56Alex Cranz?

  Somebody get me a 3D printer.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think the Steam Deck is like a great category of gadget. I'm not disagreeing with that. I just think it's one of those gadgets where you can screw with it, but at some point you, the gadget, playing with the gadget element of it recedes because you just end up playing a video game.

• 18:11Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  Yep. Which is great and fine and fair, but if you're in gadgets for the messing with the gadget element of it, I think the fold is a superior gadget. Does that make any sense?

• 18:22Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 18:22David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that's probably right.

• 18:23Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I disagree.

• 18:24David Pierce?

  It also just gives you more to do, like.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  But, but like, at the end of the day, with any, any game console,

• 18:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  the point is to play video games.

• 18:32Alex Cranz?

  Right. That's true, but like.

• 18:34Nilay Patel?

  Sean, and the point is to like, buy Steam Deck accessories and then augment the Steam Deck into a full laptop and then run the version.

• 18:40Alex Cranz?

  I want, I want my Steam Deck to like, run PyHole, like, turn it into a little server. Just have it do all of the things, like everything, like, there's just so many weird things I can do with it and just mess around with it. And I think it's probably the Linux of it that makes it like, supreme gadget for me, because I'm like, it's got Linux. I can just get into Linux. I can just get into the command line and I can't do that with, with this phone. But also I appreciate that I can take this phone on a plane and like, mess with it as a gadget and I could not do that with a Steam Deck. I would just play video games with the Steam Deck, or I would accidentally break it. Those are my, those are my two.

• 19:17David Pierce?

  I would also point out that I think you could buy all three SKUs of the Steam Deck for less than the fold fold costs.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  Fair enough.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, what is a gadget?

• 19:29David Pierce?

  I agree. Like, I think, and I wrote about this when they announced the, the Z Fold 4. Like, I think the thing no one has done is make like, the case for why this thing needs to exist. And to some extent, this is like, the, the like, ongoing question about the iPad is like, why do you need an iPad? And it's like, once you have one, you like, kind of get why it's useful. But there's no, if you were like, I have a laptop and a phone, why should I buy an iPad? Like, it's kind of a hard question to answer. And I think the same is true for this. It's like, it's cool to have, big screens are good. You can watch videos. Dan Seifert won't shut up about watching all of the Halo TV show in bed on his fold. Like, that's all great. But, uh, there's no, there's no reason I would like, tell you to go out of your way and spend, you know,

• 20:14David Pierce?

  seven or 800 extra dollars to buy this phone. But if you do, and it's a thing you want, it does feel like infinitely fun to play with in a way that. Most phones are not fun to play with right now. And this goes back to the Android thing, right? They're just like, they're tuning and tweaking and touching. And Samsung is out here just being like, we have some new ideas. We don't really know what they are, but let's see what happens.

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:35David Pierce?

  Kudos.

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  I will say that after we talked about the Z Flip last week, the number of people who hit us up to say that they see flips in the wild.

• 20:42David Pierce?

  Oh, my God.

• 20:42Nilay Patel?

  Is very high. Our thesis is correct.

• 20:45David Pierce?

  I got on a train like three hours after we recorded, and the two people sitting closest to me both had Z flips. It blew my, it was like a sign from the universe that was like, David, people use these phones.

• 20:59David Pierce?

  Understood.

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  We're like, I've heard about this move called the scroll and flip. And I want you to take it very seriously.

• 21:04David Pierce?

  I taught everyone.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  Can I see your phone? Um, we got a Z Flip review yet to come. I think that is an important one. But let's have the watch for a quick second. So Watch Five is out. Like I said, you gotta just watch the video because it's an incredible fake out from V. But it seems like the grand Samsung, Google, Wear OS experiment is off to an extremely medium start.

• 21:28Alex Cranz?

  Yes. That seems accurate. But yeah. She, she didn't hate this watch. Like she didn't outright hate it, but it's still, all the promise is not there. They have not delivered on the big whiz bang promises of this collaboration. Instead, they've done like

• 21:44David Pierce?

  Well, and there's

• 21:45Alex Cranz?

  Nice things.

• 21:46David Pierce?

  There's just a bunch of like really basic stuff that it's like, like I, I, I have made the case for years and continue to believe strongly that truly the only thing that matters is battery life.

• 21:56Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 21:56David Pierce?

  Like you, you can, you can add all the stuff you want after you give me a battery that is going to last ideally days, but at least the whole day without ever having to worry about it. And like the fact that Samsung is still not there is a, is a real bummer and a big problem, I think.

• 22:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And also, I mean, the fact that they haven't really changed the design at all. Like I think she said, the only, only way you can tell the difference between these two is that the strap colors.

• 22:23Alex Cranz?

  That's not great.

• 22:24David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  The purple's nice. I like the purple. The purple's nice. It looks pretty. I saw it in the office the other day when we were there. It looks very pretty. I miss the physical bezel. What are you gonna do? But I, there's just this moment for the Android ecosystem where like, everything is a two thirds approach to where Apple is and is going. Like, we are expecting in September or October, or whatever these Apple events are, like, a huge next generation of, of smartwatches from Apple, right? The big outdoor watch, the competitor to Garmin. Yeah. The big update. Apple's chip lead is enabling better battery life now. This size, if they put out a bigger watch, they can shove a bigger battery in there. That lead just seems like it's getting bigger, not smaller.

• 23:07Alex Cranz?

  I think you're 100% right.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  I think that's right.

• 23:09Alex Cranz?

  And, but I do wonder, like, how much Google actually cares? Because they, they.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  I think they care a lot.

• 23:16Alex Cranz?

  Then why do they suck so much? Like, yeah, I struggle to think if they really care, they put better resources.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  That's such a good question to ask Google about so many things.

• 23:28Alex Cranz?

  Oh, you care? Why do you suck?

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  This is seriously when Max, like, throws a tantrum. We're like, Max, can you come down? And she's like, I'm trying. And it's very adorable. And I appreciate it. But it's like, you actually have to do.

• 23:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you gotta do it. That's the point. Oh, Google's like a child. But, you know, I.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  No, that's the big Google, no, that's the big Google trick.

• 23:51Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Nilay Patel?

  Google named itself Google and it put a bunch of colors in its logo and we think that it's a kindergarten. And it's actually like the most ruthless company that you can think of. But because it's called Google, everyone's like, ah, Google. And it's like, in the background, like, and we're knifing you. Like, like, I, they know what they're doing. They know how they make their money. They, right, like, search is a huge business for them. YouTube is a huge business for them. They are very good at running those businesses. It's here where they're not in control of their ecosystem, that they struggle to find a compelling narrative, or they struggle to do things like buy HTC and turn the Pixel into a competitor to Samsung. And I think. I know, I know they care. We know lots and lots of Google people.

• 24:33Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  We know one very well in particular. I know they care a lot, but it's, I don't think they have the moves. Like, I don't think they can directly produce the products. Like, maybe that, you know, they've got the Pixel, they have announced that there's a Pixel Watch coming. Maybe those things, when they actually take control of their ecosystem, will become these competitors. But here, where they sign this big deal with Samsung to do WearOS on this watch, like, their, their ability to execute, like, ends. And then Samsung has to take the ball and keep running. And Samsung is not a bad hardware company. We just talked about this phone, like, the fold is a good phone now.

• 25:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they know how to do this stuff. I mean, I think Samsung is part of the problem.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, for some reason, in this category, no one can.

• 25:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think, I think Samsung is part of the problem because they historically spent years thinking, like, very much gendering their wearables and being like, fitness bands are for ladies, and smartwatches are for boys, and isn't it quaint and cute? And so there's a lot of catch-up there that they have to figure out. And there's a lot of, like, just their, their design philosophy has to catch up and, and actually consider Apple and not just chase, like, the ghost of Fitbit from six years ago.

• 25:43David Pierce?

  Well, but it's also, the thing I would add to that is, Google keeps making the mistake of having an unbelievably short attention span on all of this stuff. Uh, and, and like, the thing, like, to your point about Apple silicon, Neel, I like, that is a long-term project that is, like, really only coming to fruition for Apple now. And they've been investing in that forever. Uh, and the idea that Google is just gonna decide every six months whether or not to care about making its own chips or smartwatches or to care, like, it just can't make up its mind long enough to get good at this stuff. And so we're basically back at, like, the first and second versions of these things, even though it feels like they've tried them a million times before. So, like, my expectations for the Pixel Watch are super low

• 26:27David Pierce?

  because this is functionally, like, the first ever Google smartwatch, even though it isn't. But it's like, you, you don't, at least from what I've seen in a lot of this product development, like, you, you can't start, stop, and then pick up where you left off. Like, it actually doesn't work like that. You end up effectively starting over every time. And so Google just keeps shooting itself in the foot here.

• 26:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's true, I think, most, most clearly in tablets, right? Whereas Apple spent however long just insisting that the iPad was the future of all computing.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  And then to slowly realize that people like their laptops and turn the iPad into an expensive laptop. Sure. But they kept at it, right? They were like, this is what we're doing. We've made this bet. We're going to keep going with it. It helps. Some people bought a lot of iPads along the way, but Google made the same bet, made the same noise. I was there at CES when they announced Android honeycomb on the Motorola Z board. It was called like I've, we lived through it all together as a family. And then they dropped it. They're like, no one's buying these. No one cares. Like goodbye. And they let Motorola and Lenovo and Samsung keep putting out $200 Android tablets, mostly for people to use as other content consumption devices or for people to give to their kids,

• 27:40Nilay Patel?

  right? Like that became that market. Like, here's a thing you can break. And then they realized that foldables were going to be big, literally. And like, we got to be good at tablets. Again, they've announced a new tablet project. And it's like, well, if you just kept your eye on the ball and made some incremental improvements, you'd be way farther ahead than where you are right now. And like, I don't know if that's quite as true with watches, but I do know that they keep, they've now bought big companies that are theoretically good at these products. They bought HTC to make Pixel phones. They bought Fitbit to make wearables. And we just haven't seen the results. And maybe that's because HTC was not competitive, that was not competitive.

• 28:17Alex Cranz?

  I mean, because they don't care. Like, it's a huge company. This isn't their primary space. Like, as we said, it's YouTube. It's, it's ads. This is a

• 28:28Nilay Patel?

  It's YouTube and search.

• 28:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, this is like, this is very much like a side project for them. And until it really shows returns and shows a reason for investment, it's never going to be an investment. But it ends up being that chicken and egg scenario. Because it's like, well, you never invested it. So it can never be really successful. Well, yeah, but if it was successful, we'd invested it. And it's like, oh, all right. So we're just going to argue with each other and fart out another like.

• 28:49Nilay Patel?

  Sometimes they get a real window into your previous career at a different media company. I can say which one.

• 28:58David Pierce?

  Who's to say? But no, I think that's right. And I think the other thing is, and we should stop talking about this here in a minute, but I think Google has also been a terrible steward of its ecosystem in this sense, right? Like, Google has never for one minute given any Android developer a reason to think, oh, I should really invest in my Wear OS app. Because Wear OS basically like ceases to exist once every two years and then comes back as if by magic three years later. And it's the same with large screens and like, Apple just relentlessly told developers for like a decade, tablet apps matter, tablet apps matter, tablet apps matter. And then they eventually got all got on board. And now, Apple has this amazing ecosystem of tablet apps that Google has just never given

• 29:40David Pierce?

  people a reason to care about. And so when it decides to care, it has to like scramble for six months to try and get everybody on board. And then a year later decides it doesn't care again. I don't know.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I would say that I'm not sure that Apple made the, I'm not sure that Apple finished the turn with the watch and apps, right? Like,

• 29:59David Pierce?

  That's fair. Yeah.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  In many ways, apps on the watch are still, it's better now. This is too reductive. I understand that I'm making a sort of unfair, reductive comment here. But in many ways, apps on the watch are still just remote controls of your phone.

• 30:16David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Or extensions of your phone in some other important way. There's, there's, there's a few that are great standalone watch experiences, but like very few, and they're very targeted. And on the iPad, it's, you know, some of them are great. Some of them are really, really great iPad apps. But then you look at the disparity in the iPad line between the, you know, $329 iPad and the Pro. And it's like,

• 30:38David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 30:38Nilay Patel?

  Some of those apps are designed for this market and a lot, and the iPad has a lot of content and some bottom. And it, just the fact that I can describe that and a lot of people listening to this understand what I'm talking about, is a victory for Apple, right? Even if what I'm describing is not. A victory in the context of its own application ecosystem, or where it got to with developers, or replacing the Mac, or all this other stuff. It's a victory that there's enough stuff that I can describe how it breaks down. Whereas I don't know that I can describe to you a single Wear OS app that is anything but a remote control of the phone, or even describe a single Wear OS app. And I think that's like the problem with Google's ecosystem. It's a problem, honestly, with the Watch 5. Beyond its battery life, it's that it's more of an imply,

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  it's like a feature phone, a feature watch, more than is like a smart watch. That's an old debate, right? Like, is this a true computing? What is a computer? Is this watch a computer? Or is it just a really, really fancy calculator watch? It's a feature phone on your wrist. There's someone out there right now freaking out at me that the first generation iPhone was just a feature phone because it couldn't run an app application ecosystem. And I want you to know that I love you.

• 31:43Alex Cranz?

  Aww.

• 31:44Nilay Patel?

  You're my people.

• 31:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we all agree with that sentiment.

• 31:48Alex Cranz?

  Sweet.

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  All right, we should take a break. We gotta come back and talk about the war brewing between vertical video editors. It's a real one. It's hot. We'll be right back.

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• 33:05Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. We've labeled this segment TikTokstagram.

• 33:10Alex Cranz?

  It's beautiful.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  David, what does that mean in your mind?

• 33:13David Pierce?

  So we've come to this beautiful place where all the apps are the same. There is just only, there is one app and it is, it is a, it is a full screen vertical video on your phone. And where it comes from and what you do there and what it is, is not important. It is, it's, your phone is just called app now and you open it and it plays video for you and you swipe vertically and that's all that happens. This is the world that we have somehow come to.

• 33:38Nilay Patel?

  App, I love app.

• 33:40David Pierce?

  It's just called app.

• 33:40Alex Cranz?

  Love app. Apps, huge fan.

• 33:42David Pierce?

  Would you like to look at app for five hours? And I'm like, yes, I would. Thank you.

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And the, and the app is like, uh, where does, where does, where do the videos come from? I don't know. It's just any, anything.

• 33:50David Pierce?

  What do you like dances? I mean, I'm like, yeah, sure.

• 33:52Alex Cranz?

  I feel like, I feel like all the sub apps really want you to know where the apps videos come from.

• 33:57David Pierce?

  Oh, it's so important to them.

• 33:59Alex Cranz?

  It's very important.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  So we should point out, uh, just a plug, land of the giants this week is Alexi talking about the future of Facebook and a discovery engine and the future of the news feed, which is basically Facebook turning Facebook into app.

• 34:14Nilay Patel?

  But they're calling it the discovery engine. It's a good plug. It's a good episode. You should listen to it. Um, so here's the thing about app.

• 34:25Nilay Patel?

  TikTok, specifically TikTok. If you just zoom back, what TikTok is, is not so much the experience of viewing TikToks. That's great. That's very important. It obviously is winning and everyone's scared of it and throwing their hands up and rebooting their apps as TikTok. Sure. That's the consumer side, right? That's the watching TikTok side. The part of TikTok that I think is undercovered, under discussed, under reported on is that it is a video editor that like large groups of college students have all learned to use like expert video editors. It like guides you into making kinds of content. That very few video editors have ever guided anyone into making.

• 35:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  And like that piece of TikTok's success is fascinating to me. Like the duets and responses, what are they called? The split screen one? The stitches. So duets and stitches, like they have developed a language of video communication on TikTok. And then there are TikTok editing challenges. Like you see that TikTok is expressed to its users is as much about creation as it is about consumption.

• 35:31Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  I think that is super cool.

• 35:33David Pierce?

  I totally agree. I just don't think TikTok invented that. Like, I think I would say if you want to go back and find like a house style of vertical video, like Snapchat is the answer. That it was like.

• 35:44Alex Cranz?

  I had to, I had to bring it up.

• 35:46David Pierce?

  Don't talk to me about Vine. All my favorite TikTok accounts are just old vines and I love it very much. But that's a whole separate story. But I think like, and this is part of what, and we should get into some of the news from this week. But I think the, the thing that you're getting at that's super interesting to me is that like, we are now in this place where it is just vertical video and everybody's fighting about where it comes from and who sees it and all that stuff. But like, the thing they're, I think, starting to realize is that like, if we can build the best creation tools, that's actually one big, huge way to win. And like Snapchat had the filters and Instagram is starting to build really advanced stuff. And TikTok, like, I think you're right that TikTok has like developed this.

• 36:23Nilay Patel?

  TikTok did it at scale.

• 36:24David Pierce?

  Language of cinema in a really cool way.

• 36:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:27David Pierce?

  And yeah, and did it in a huge way, for sure.

• 36:29Nilay Patel?

  But like, if you just step back, like, Apple had iMovie, they had clips. Dear sweet clips, which only Dieter Boll never loved.

• 36:37Alex Cranz?

  I forgot about that.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, they, what Apple had was a creation tool that a lot of people liked. I mean, I was an iMovie kid. Again, steam engine uphill both ways.

• 36:48Nilay Patel?

  That was me, just like.

• 36:49Alex Cranz?

  I did it too.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  8mm footage off a Sony camera on iLink. Remember when Sony tried to rebrand Firewire as iLink? Let's do an hour on that.

• 36:56Alex Cranz?

  I will do a whole hour with you, Neelai, on that.

• 37:00Alex Cranz?

  Very upsetting.

• 37:01Nilay Patel?

  Firewire 800, what happened? One hour of the Vergecast.

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  Can I just tell you my it and gadget years ago when Apple finally killed Firewire? I made an entire video montage of Firewire ports set to Boys to Men. And then this was before TikTok existed, because this would have been like a perfect TikTok. So I had to go get AOL's custom video player and be like, I need to upload a video. And they're like, what's the content? And I was like, I don't want to tell you.

• 37:29Alex Cranz?

  Did you edit it in iMovie?

• 37:31Nilay Patel?

  I don't want you to watch this. I did. It was great.

• 37:33Alex Cranz?

  On your iMovie?

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  That was the day AOL went out of business. They were like, you should leave and start your own website, Neil. Anyhow, but Apple had all these creation tools. It never had a distribution platform.

• 37:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  Right? There was not, it was just not their thought that connecting creation and distribution would be important. YouTube famously is still the best, most lucrative preferred video distribution platform for almost every internet creator. It's got the best revenue. It's got the biggest community. Shorts is outperforming the main thing. Shorts again is app as expressed by YouTube.

• 38:07Nilay Patel?

  But it dropped the ball on the creation side almost completely. Like to be a high-end YouTuber, you have to give in to Adobe Premiere or Final Cut or make videos about why Final Cut is actually good. And then you get a million views. Like it's, you just end up in a place where YouTube doesn't help you create anything. They're starting to do that in shorts because app, but it's weird that the biggest distribution platform never really cared about the creation element. I think what I'm saying TikTok is the winner is they married those two things in a gigantic way.

• 38:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, totally.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  Snap in Stories with Filters did that sort of, but there was no virality associated with Snap. TikTok is like virality for days, plus this huge creation tool. But now you're seeing-

• 38:48Alex Cranz?

  They put it on like the right device too, right? Like they, they put it on the right device. They didn't put it on your, your computer. They put it on your phone, which is what most younger people are using as a computer.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I think that's all right. It's just funny to me that there's been, there's been this historic split. TikTok collapses the split.

• 39:05Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  But now you've got Instagram, you've got YouTube Shorts, you've got TikTok. They've all got these powerful creation tools in them and they are trying to gatekeep the creation tools and lock them to their own distribution because that's where their money is. And historically, creation tools have not been wedded to or tied or limited to one distribution platform.

• 39:29David Pierce?

  Does it ever blow your mind to think about the fact that this is like the wireless carriers not wanting to be dumb pipes? And this is why all the streaming services don't want to play with universal search because they all want you to hang out inside of their apps? Like, every industry is the same. Some of the nouns change, but everybody is like, everybody makes the same stuff and then goes, oh, no, we're the same stuff. How do we make sure people don't think of us as the same as everybody else? And then does this. And this is where we are.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  And the answer is software restrictions. And it's like.

• 39:55David Pierce?

  And watermarks.

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  So, um, in watermarks, so just this week, uh, YouTube Shorts, the editor will now put a watermark if you export out of YouTube Shorts and repost and want to take it somewhere else.

• 40:08Alex Cranz?

  How could you?

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  Instagram, this is our own social team discovered this this week. Instagram has a really powerful green screen tool for reels. So they were just using it and then they would export the video and use it for ever other stuff. Uh, and now Instagram just mutes that video. When you export it, it has no audio.

• 40:26David Pierce?

  Unless, this is my favorite part is unless you share it first on reels.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:32David Pierce?

  Which is fantastic. They're like, do whatever you want, just put it on reels first.

• 40:36David Pierce?

  It's perfect.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I just think that there's something here where the idea of creation tools being locked or tied or limited to distribution is new in the culture. Right? It's meaningfully new because historically, again, the creation tools have never had distribution connected to them and the distribution platforms have never had creation tools connected to them. And now it's like, what if we software lock you into this garden?

• 41:04Alex Cranz?

  When do you think they start charging?

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  My suspicion is that people are going to react to this extremely negatively.

• 41:10Alex Cranz?

  You don't think they're going to just charge people? Be like, oh, you want to unlock it? You want to export it wherever? For $2 a month to Instagram, you can do whatever you want with the video you make for us.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I think it would have to be like $400 a month. Like the lifetime value of the Instagram library getting bigger.

• 41:27David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  Is bigger than any dollars that you could pay them as a consumer. But you just gotta do the math, right? Like Instagram is staring down the barrel of a $10 billion TikTok shaped gun.

• 41:37David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Nilay Patel?

  How are you gonna, how are you gonna make that up? You can't, it's not $2.

• 41:41David Pierce?

  And they all see each other as super zero sum, which I think is really interesting. Like the, the idea that these apps are not in a position of being able to like, just sort of let a thousand flowers bloom and be like, you know, there's enough attention for everybody. People are on our app. They are like directly threatened by each other now, which I find really interesting. And it is like, the only conclusion I can draw from that is that they have all begun to understand that these serve the same purpose for the same set of people. And that ultimately only one of them is probably going to win. And everybody kind of thinks it's going to be TikTok. So they are like desperately fighting against that pull away. Cause like if I'm YouTube, I don't know that I would necessarily feel like I'm existentially threatened by TikTok.

• 42:26David Pierce?

  If I wanted to go do a different thing, but now YouTube is like, no, we have to fight with TikTok. And they have to take every advantage they can away from TikTok, which I think is fascinating.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  So YouTube has the big advantage, which is it has the best revenue share program for all those platforms, for actual creators to make money at platforms. Yeah, no one makes money on TikTok as far as I can tell. Um, I won't say the dreaded D word here, but there's another very good podcast where.

• 42:52David Pierce?

  I was about to bring it up. Hank Green was so good on Decoder.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 42:56David Pierce?

  And he said a lot of stuff I thought was interesting.

• 42:58Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, Hank Green's like, no one makes money on TikTok, but that's where the audience is. It's also easier and cheaper for me to get there. And you know, his feeling is like, all of that adds up to his YouTube audience growing and his business doing well. But he also said YouTube Shorts is growing faster. And once YouTube flips on the money, which they already can do, they've already built the model. So they don't have to go and explain it to the board of directors or model. Like they already have it. I think they might win because people will obviously go where the money is. And that's great, but it's not going to solve the like long tail problem of TikTok, which is there are lots of people on TikTok who are not there to make money.

• 43:32Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. And they're just having a good time with a cool video editor that happens to be connected to a distribution platform that might make you go viral at any time and deliver you $100 from the creators fund. And that's like a good enough incentive program compared to YouTube, where everyone wants a career as a YouTuber. And that is a different game to play.

• 43:49Alex Cranz?

  I just kind of, I was gonna say, I wonder why people, there is this big existential like crisis for a lot of these app makers, because Facebook, Meta, and Google, they have like the ad game on lock. They know how to monetize this stuff and make money. And TikTok, does TikTok, is TikTok making money hand over fist? Like, to bring up Vine again, is it gonna be another Vine?

• 44:13Nilay Patel?

  They're not sharing it back to creators.

• 44:14Alex Cranz?

  Right. And so like,

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  No. So TikTok is a black box. It's owned by ByteDance. We don't know how ByteDance is doing as a company. But all the reporting suggests that TikTok advertising is effective. They're collecting those ad dollars. And like, the music industry loves TikTok. And TikTok loves the music industry. Because if you have, if you are Beyonce's record label and publicist, you're like, these songs are going to go viral this week and TikTok will all but certainly make that happen for you. And like, that's a, that's a revenue generation program.

• 44:48Alex Cranz?

  So like, that's why they're scared.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  Right. Because TikTok is the culture, like for better or worse. If you're listening to this, you know, TikTok, like TikTok drives a massive amount of the culture now.

• 44:58Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 44:59Nilay Patel?

  Because of its ability to generate virality, its ability to generate trends. And the trends come and go in the blink of an eye. Rebecca Jennings at Vox has written about this very compellingly. Like, you don't, it's impossible to be a trends reporter anymore, because all the trends are happening all the time. And then they go away. Like, sea shanties do not say anything about the state of America. Right. But like, for one week, sea shanties were very important to everyone, because it just happened. And then it went away. And that was a Rebecca piece. You should go read it. It's pretty good.

• 45:30Nilay Patel?

  But Instagram isn't that thing anymore, and it used to be, and I think they feel it going away. YouTube, I don't know if it was ever that thing because it was always everything.

• 45:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like when we were covering YouTube stars and that that period of YouTube, when we could cover YouTube stars like they were aliens and we were explaining them to the world. Like that felt like a thing we were actually doing. Like here's a whole culture you don't see over here on YouTube. Have you heard of Logan Paul? But now they're just like everywhere, you know, like they they've they've transitioned into the culture at large and YouTube is still manufacturing some of those moments, but not nearly at the rate of TikTok. And I just think fundamentally, yes, it is a zero sunski. You only have so many minutes in the day. And if you want app, TikTok right now is best app.

• 46:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that's it. Well, and I think what's what's going to be interesting for me to watch is like the the upside of shorts for YouTube is that it can then, like, I think the the company closest to sort of being able to wrap all of this together is probably YouTube, right? It has the giant audience. Shorts seems to be taking off. It has the monetization strategy. It's like YouTube is is sort of the endpoint, like even people on TikTok make their TikTok money on YouTube. Like that's that's where you go to make your money. So Tik, like YouTube has already solved the hard part of this. Uh, what TikTok has not figured out is how to like build home bases for people who do this for a living. And really no one other than YouTube has ever figured this out. And so I think

• 46:57Alex Cranz?

  I mean, Twitch has.

• 46:57David Pierce?

  We see all these rumors about TikTok.

• 46:59Alex Cranz?

  Twitch Twitch figured it out.

• 47:01David Pierce?

  Twitch figured it out. That's fair. Twitch is like a a specific niche of the world, but has definitely figured it out. That's totally fair. Uh, but I think other than those two, like Facebook never really figured it out. Snapchat hasn't figured it out. TikTok hasn't figured it out. And I think like you look at like TikTok music, which I think is is going to be a thing that exists and has been rumored forever, but is them trying to build an endpoint, right? Like you come to TikTok, you go to Lincoln bio and you leave eventually to go make some money for somebody and TikTok would like to pull more of that back in. And my sense is that's hard, but whether it's harder than getting people to spend three hours just scrolling through videos on your app is going to be like the big question for YouTube.

• 47:41Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I think it is hard because you're seeing like a lot of these these fandoms for these these followers and or these creators. And just fandoms in general, you're seeing that that huge decentralization. Like they they are, there aren't hubs for these people anymore. It is all just word of mouth and and sharing and and all these back channels. So I think that's really, really difficult for TikTok, which is why I keep coming back to like, is TikTok built to last? Like, yes, anybody can be really good at like creating the culture for a couple of years. We've seen that again and again and again. Anybody can do, Glee was the culture. Glee did not last. Sorry.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry. I I do not agree with you. The Glee was the culture.

• 48:18Alex Cranz?

  It was unfortunately very much the culture.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  I'm 1,000% on a podcast with two like musical theater kids. And I just need to tell you that you're wrong about this situation.

• 48:28Alex Cranz?

  But but there are these things that like

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  It's not true.

• 48:30Alex Cranz?

  Regardless of if you agree with Glee, there are these various things that are like, this is the center of culture. This is what we all care about. And and especially for younger people, which is what most of TikTok's audience is. My dad excluded. He like watches it every night. He calls it like his show, his TikToks. And he's like, I get in bed and I watch my TikToks.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  It's like his stories.

• 48:50Alex Cranz?

  It's his stories. It's great. But like, for the most part, it is younger people and and they they do move around very quickly. And this is like, it is hard to lock people in right now. Lock people to like a specific hub. And so I I I'm still not sold that TikTok is going to be this huge behemoth. I think it's doing very, very successful, very, very right now. But like, I don't see where that long term game is beyond music partnerships. And even then, we've heard like Lizzo doing great traction on TikTok isn't necessarily translating to sales for Lizzo. So like

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, nothing translates to sales anymore.

• 49:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. And that's the other part of it. It's like, we're, yeah, I just don't know how how long this lasts for them before people get fed up with TikTok. TikTok gets canceled by the teens and then they all move on to what Discord.

• 49:45Alex Cranz?

  YouTube.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  They all just.

• 49:46Alex Cranz?

  They just come back to YouTube and they're like, have you heard of this place?

• 49:48Nilay Patel?

  I disagree. I think TikTok, TikTok at its current rate is bound to succeed because it is, one, supported by the Chinese government, which really wants it to succeed. And actually, its biggest existential threat is that the United States government is aware that the Chinese government supports TikTok and might one day just turn it off. Which I will remind you that a previous president decided he was just going to do without a plan. And almost sold it to Microsoft.

• 50:15Alex Cranz?

  Oracle, go buy this. Hey, you got some money?

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 50:19Alex Cranz?

  Do it.

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  Oracle is taking over the TikTok data centers. Like, it's a weird deal over at TikTok land.

• 50:25David Pierce?

  That really is a wild, like, sliding doors moment. Like, just to totally derail this just for one quick second, like, imagining what this, like, August of 2022 would be like if Oracle or Microsoft owned TikTok and, like, the culture had changed around that for the last two years is like, like, we're gonna do a 10th anniversary, like, science fiction in reverse, like, what if Microsoft owned TikTok thing? And I'm already excited about it.

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  I will remind you that Sachin Adal, I think he was at the Code Conference, was like, that was some of the weirdest conversations I've ever had.

• 51:00Nilay Patel?

  He was like, we had to be in it because, like, how could we not try to buy TikTok? He was like, it was weird. And then it went away.

• 51:06Alex Cranz?

  For the best.

• 51:07Nilay Patel?

  Weird.

• 51:07David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Like, I don't know if it was for the best. Like, I'm not saying that the operation of that version of our government was ever stable or smooth. But sometimes, like, they, you know, broken clock twice a day, like, they're like, TikTok is owned by the Chinese. We should take a harder line about it. Yeah, that might have, that might have been the correct. I think that is coming for TikTok much more than Gen Z deciding that what they like is reading long blog posts on Tumblr again, which would be amazing.

• 51:38Alex Cranz?

  I would love that.

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  If that is the next move.

• 51:40Alex Cranz?

  It's.

• 51:40Nilay Patel?

  But I don't, I don't think that's likely.

• 51:43David Pierce?

  So here's what I wonder about this is like, does this mean that the next thing we're gonna get is like a really powerful cross-platform vertical video creation tool that does all these things? Like, part of me thinks somewhere Evan Spiegel and the Snap executive team are just like leaning back in their chairs, being like, come make stuff with us. We don't watermark. Let's, let's hang out. But then I also wonder, like, is, is the next phase of this just that everything silos really aggressively? Is it that we all get less confused seeing YouTube watermarks in TikTok and TikTok watermarks in YouTube and nobody actually cares and this isn't really a thing? Or is there a new thing that comes out?

• 52:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, the platforms are detecting the watermarks.

• 52:27David Pierce?

  Oh, that's true.

• 52:28Nilay Patel?

  That's the thing. Yeah. So YouTube will detect the TikTok watermark and then downrank that video.

• 52:32David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Nilay Patel?

  I love it. So there's just a, again, my thesis here is that creation and distribution have never been so tightly tied together and that imposing the business limits of the distribution platform on the creation tool is bad. And that eventually the people who use the creation tools will be frustrated enough to enact some sort of penalty on those platforms. We'll see. But I don't think that the answer is snapping like for four bucks a month, you can use the Snap video editor because they have to keep pace with the coolest tools in TikTok. And TikTok's greatest success is adding tools that people then use in like viral recursive conversant ways with one another. And that is,

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  they have been better at creating that loop than any of these other platforms.

• 53:21David Pierce?

  So really, the company that should be like licking its chops at this is like Vimeo and the other like active creation. I'm serious. Like, if, if we, if-

• 53:30Nilay Patel?

  Vimeo is like a B to B video white label hosting service now. I don't-

• 53:34David Pierce?

  Yeah, it is now. That's fair. But so, okay, so that's the thing. Like, who is it then? Then the thing that's gonna happen is somebody is going to like sit above this. And it's like, you remember the thing when they, everybody built like the Hoot Suites of the world where it's like you can publish to all your social channels in an automated way and it's not such a disaster to manage 100 different things? Like, that's gotta be coming for vertical video now.

• 53:54Nilay Patel?

  Maybe. Well, maybe. HootSuite for app-

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  If the Hootsuite people are listening, you can just take that idea. Please name it Hootsuite for app. We'll know what happened and we won't be mad. I don't know. It's not like there's great upload APIs for these platforms. Like, these are very restricted platforms in a way that, you know, Twitter, for all of its problems, has an API that other people, like, when we post stories from our CMS, they just get tweeted automatically because Twitter has built that kind of integration.

• 54:28David Pierce?

  So this next phase, this next phase just sucks for cross-platform creators then?

• 54:33Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think it's gonna get harder and harder. That's what I'm saying.

• 54:36Alex Cranz?

  Everybody's got their little-

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  I think eventually creators are going to say, "This is stupid. We don't want to live in your walls," because Adobe Premiere has never been gated like this. iMovie is not gated like this. Creation tools should not be gated to-

• 54:50Alex Cranz?

  I figured it out, guys. I figured it out. Synology is gonna create a really good widget, and everybody's just gonna buy a Synology and upload their videos, and you're gonna like type in the IP address for the person's house and get your vertical videos.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  Oh, direct.

• 55:07Alex Cranz?

  Direct. Just, instead of going fully into the cloud, totally siloed, everybody's gonna get fed up and be like, "We all have our little Synology TikToks."

• 55:17Nilay Patel?

  Plex for app.

• 55:19Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be great.

• 55:20David Pierce?

  All right. Do you think Plex can fix this, Alex?

• 55:22Alex Cranz?

  Yes. They got this.

• 55:24David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Have you installed Plex in your Steam Deck yet?

• 55:27Alex Cranz?

  If they did that, I would be so upset. No, I need to.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  I thought, all right, well, we're gonna take a break. Alex is gonna install Plex on her Steam Deck. We got some car stuff, we got a Lightning round coming up. We'll be right back.

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• 57:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. Bunch of car news, but I'm not going to start with dead ahead car news. I'm gonna start with extremely wonky FCC news because you know how I love some extremely wonky FCC news.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  The car industry lost a court case this week that is like one of my favorite just dumb conflicts in the world.

• 57:27David Pierce?

  Wait, like the whole car industry? Does the car industry have like a lawyer?

• 57:31Nilay Patel?

  Well, they have an industry group. Oh, they got wrecked. So, yes, they got wrecked. So in like the late 90s, like in 1999, the FCC set aside all the spectrum in a 5.9 gigahertz band for something called V2V, vehicle to vehicle communications. And then they added V2I, vehicle to infrastructure communications. And then to make it all sound cool, they started calling it V2X. Yes. Very funny. So the FCC is like, car industry, make the cars safer, make them all talk to each other, make them talk to stoplights, right? Solve traffic jams. You won't hit each other. Here's a big chunk of spectrum, like good spectrum for you to figure this out.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  I have been to like 5,000 CES demos of V2V and V2I stuff, right? And like car makers would be like, with this new technology, the cars can see through each other, we can predict traffic, we can slow you down, we can see what's happening up on the road, we can make sure you hit all the stoplights perfectly on time, it's here. And then none of it ever ships.

• 58:37David Pierce?

  But it's just, this is like the right idea, right? Like, is this just like, okay, because it always, I've, I've spent less time with car people at CES than you have, but even in the like, I spent a bunch of time with Qualcomm, like four or five years ago, and all they talked about was V2V stuff. And it's like, okay, the idea that I don't just have to rely on my phones or on my cars' cameras to see everything that's going on, I can actually let my car talk to the other car and to the stoplight and they can all understand what's going on that way. It seems like the right, like in a perfect world, that's how they should work, right?

• 59:06Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but David, have you considered that these are the same people that make like in-car HUDs and in-car compete, like it's the same people that are like, we need a skeuomorphic version of the car so you can turn your lights off and on? Like, of course.

• 59:24David Pierce?

  Yeah, you have to tap on the truck to change the climate in your truck.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so to be fair, like a tiny handful of extremely expensive luxury cars shipped with like VTV radios, the 2017 Mercedes Benz E-Class and S-Class Cadillac CTS in 2017. Okay.

• 59:44David Pierce?

  You're just talking to nothing?

• 59:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just, just rolling around, talking nothing.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  And then they started, I mean, all these names are great. And then, you know, 5G happened, everyone's like, 5G will do it. And they started calling it cellular V2X or CV2X.

• 1:00:00David Pierce?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:01Nilay Patel?

  Nothing resonates with the consumers like CV2X.

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so then 2017, Trump FCC, which was just a wrecking ball of ideas, got rid of a regulation that Obama's FCC had put in saying all the cars needed VTV stuff. Right? How do you get over the hump of no cars having it? You just write the law saying all the cars need to have it. We all need to do it. Cars are going to stop crashing into each other. Not the Trump FCC, which didn't do it. To be fair, it had been 17 years. They set us on this spectrum in 1999. In 2017, nothing is shipping. So our boy, a Jeep Pi, is like, screw it. I'm giving a bunch of this spectrum back to unlicensed usage, which is a big trend lately.

• 1:00:48Nilay Patel?

  So maybe we'll have 5.9 gigahertz Wi-Fi now. And you can still keep a little chunk of this for cellular V2X, CB2X. So the automakers and industry groups are like, don't do this. We need it. If we, if Wi-Fi will interfere with our radios that don't exist. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation promised 5 million cars would have VTV over the next five years, but they wouldn't do it if the FCC gave the spectrum away. Okay, so they filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit comes out and the judge is like, what are you talking about? No intelligent transportation systems have been developed. As of 2020, no commercially marketed vehicles used 5.9 gigahertz

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  to provide vehicle safety features. And then he's like, your argument that you need all this spectrum for new technologies is not great. Noting, the petitioners have directed us to no significant developments in the field of yet to arrive technologies. So good. This is a judge saying your shit's a vaporware. Yes, it makes me so happy.

• 1:01:56David Pierce?

  Yeah, the field of yet to arrive technologies is like the, the, the beginning of a book title about vaporware that I would very much read.

• 1:02:04Nilay Patel?

  It's so good. And it's like, this is such a good idea. You guys never shipped it. It was vapor for so long that eventually the United States government was like, we're going to dunk on you a little bit for a while.

• 1:02:14David Pierce?

  The vapor dissipated.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, hopefully our Wi-Fi routers get better. Uh, and hopefully 5G actually does. It's like they drive robot surgeons to your house and self-driving cars. That's what Verizon's ad said.

• 1:02:24David Pierce?

  Sure. So is V2V like dead now? Like what, what happened?

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  No, because they're, they're, they're supposed to put 5G radios in the cars.

• 1:02:31David Pierce?

  Oh, so 5G will fix it?

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  They still have a tiny little chunk of the spectrum reserved for that use, but they wanted it all and they, they just didn't use it for 20 years. So now it's coming back to unlicensed usage for Wi-Fi, which I think is probably the right decision.

• 1:02:47David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  But it's like, use it or lose it, bro.

• 1:02:50David Pierce?

  Yeah, 20 years seems like long enough to try to do something functional here.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  It is very good. Um, other car news, big study, EV owners don't like the broken chargers and bad charging software. Surprise. Uh, more importantly, uh, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed, big climate bill, lots of EV tax credit news in that bill. On the plus side, Tesla gets the credit again. They'd run out, there are only 200,000. So Tesla had run out ages ago. Uh, GM had run out, I think Ford was about to run out. They get it again. If the cars are made in North America, if the batteries are made in North America after, I think, 2024. Um, so that means like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 does not get the credit anymore. It's a hard, it's confusing. Lots of freakouts in like various car forums about when you assign your contract, because if you sign a contract, if you have a written contract

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  before the date of the thing, you still get the credit. If you don't, you don't. Andy Hawkins is a great explainer about it. We're just walking through it. Um, the really important piece of the puzzle though is it's going to push battery manufacturing to the United States because carmakers need the batteries made here to get the credits, which I think is important. Um, and the other important piece of the puzzle, because of this written contract requirement. All these like vaporware car pre-orders might go away.

• 1:04:03Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  Which I think is super fascinating. Like knock on, I don't think anybody was anticipating this would be the knock on effect. But if you need the contract before, like Lucid is shifting from preorder reservations to written contracts now. Because they got to lock in the order to get people the credit before the law passes.

• 1:04:22Alex Cranz?

  Oh, man, they're gonna get.

• 1:04:24Nilay Patel?

  Or before the law goes into effect, it's passed.

• 1:04:24Alex Cranz?

  So if these companies that are like shifting so they can make sure they get the money, don't ship the cars in a timely fashion, can they get the hell suit out of them by the customers?

• 1:04:35Nilay Patel?

  I, it depends on what these, these written contracts.

• 1:04:38Alex Cranz?

  Oh, my God, that's fine. I mean, not for the car makers, but like for me personally. I'm opposed to vaporware.

• 1:04:46Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. The, the, the game around the credits is like, it's in a real limbo space right now. Like, the law has passed. No one really knows what it means. There's lots of attempts to figure out what it means, how to get the credits. At the same time, Ford, right? $7,500 credit comes back for them because they're not going to hit the cap anymore. They just raised the price of the truck by $8,000. Cool.

• 1:05:08Alex Cranz?

  Cool. Never mind. I hate this. This is terrible.

• 1:05:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So go read that explainer. If you are in the market for a car like me and you can't find a car to buy like me, it's good. It's very helpful. Andy definitely wrote the explainer because I was like, I don't want to do it. Thank you, Andy. And then last, we have to call this one out. Dodge, dear sweet Dodge, part of the FCA, Salantis, worldwide conglomerate of car manufacturers.

• 1:05:35Nilay Patel?

  They put out their first EV concept. It's a Charger EV. It has a fake exhaust sound. Like they were like muscle car buyers want loud cars. So we just put speakers in this car that make it make loud sounds.

• 1:05:48Alex Cranz?

  And it's the best. It's the best loud sound.

• 1:05:54Nilay Patel?

  Andy Hawkins, when he wrote about it, said it sounds like a lion getting neutered. And I think that is exactly right.

• 1:05:59David Pierce?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:06:01Alex Cranz?

  It's very accurate.

• 1:06:02Nilay Patel?

  Something else.

• 1:06:05Nilay Patel?

  They're calling it a battery electric vehicle exhaust noise.

• 1:06:07Alex Cranz?

  Can you turn it off?

• 1:06:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 1:06:10Alex Cranz?

  I think somebody like is testing it at 2am outside my window lately. I think I'm hearing it a lot.

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  The name is called the Fratzonic chambered exhaust.

• 1:06:21Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  What, which can reach 126 decibels, making it as loud as a Hellcat powered Dodge.

• 1:06:29David Pierce?

  And am I, am I wrong for thinking that an exhaust is not a thing that needs to exist on an electric vehicle? Am I, am I crazy?

• 1:06:36Nilay Patel?

  It's just speakers.

• 1:06:38David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:06:38Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what to tell you. It is not an exhaust. It is just a button marked.

• 1:06:44Alex Cranz?

  Is it legit, just somebody going as they drive down the road?

• 1:06:47David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 1:06:48Alex Cranz?

  But with a really good speaker.

• 1:06:49David Pierce?

  So instead of flipping up and hitting Nas, you hit the speaker.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  And then also, if you've ever driven EV, you know, they don't have transmissions. Cause they, they're just electric motors. The cool part of driving EV is like the instant torque in every part of whatever. Dodge decided muscle car buyers need a transmission. So they've added a transmission. I'm not sure how it works. Cause it's like a confusing idea in an electric car. So we'll see how it works. But they've given it a name and the name is lowercase e. R lowercase e.

• 1:07:27Alex Cranz?

  I love it.

• 1:07:27Nilay Patel?

  And the name is lowercase e, capital letter R, UPT or erupt.

• 1:07:34David Pierce?

  No, it's erupt.

• 1:07:39Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no. What if it's just like a game?

• 1:07:41David Pierce?

  What do you think Vin Diesel thinks? That's all I find myself wondering right now. It's like, did Vin Diesel get in the driver's seat of one of those and go, this feels right? Like, is that, is that, I just want to know what Vin Diesel thinks.

• 1:07:51Alex Cranz?

  I hope it's in the next Fast and Furious movie. And he's like, it could be louder. And like, part of the movie is them just trying to make it as loud as possible. Well, he gets really good at the, the gear shifting game.

• 1:08:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm just going to read you this last paragraph from the CNBC piece. Caniscus, he's the CEO of Dodge, said, some of the design elements and technologies are expected to impact the range of the vehicle, but it's not something Dodge is worried about. And then quote, I don't care. It's badass. It's a muscle car.

• 1:08:21Alex Cranz?

  That's right. That's, that's what muscle car owners feel.

• 1:08:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You gotta, you gotta hit the mega base button to go five, five miles on a charge. It's good.

• 1:08:30David Pierce?

  I've been thinking that it's, it's a real bummer that with electric vehicles, the world is going to get quieter. So I'm really glad Dodge is out here trying to solve that problem for us.

• 1:08:39Nilay Patel?

  It's just a concept. No idea when it will ship.

• 1:08:42Alex Cranz?

  I do like the gear shifting thing. That's fun. Like I was just reading a story the other day from somebody about like how gear shifting is going away and it's not going to like, it's going to be a lost art. And these, these EV owners, you'll be able to hear them coming. You'd be like, that guy does.

• 1:08:59Nilay Patel?

  Straight up. Do you know how to ride a horse?

• 1:09:00Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:09:01Nilay Patel?

  You're from Texas. Are you, uh, are you an equestrian of any?

• 1:09:04Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I've ridden a horse. I, one time I rode it at.

• 1:09:08Nilay Patel?

  Ridden a horse too. Would you say you knew how to ride a horse?

• 1:09:12Alex Cranz?

  I feel like it's not hard. You just like get up there, but it's different.

• 1:09:15David Pierce?

  That's a no from.

• 1:09:16Nilay Patel?

  Once upon a time, someone was like, riding a horse is a lost art. That's just where we are. Like the, the American Unicycle Alliance was like, these cars gonna replace Unicycles.

• 1:09:29David Pierce?

  This also sounds like they're gonna just put a joystick in the middle of the car that does nothing.

• 1:09:33Alex Cranz?

  Yes. That's the best part.

• 1:09:34David Pierce?

  Make some rumbly noises every time you.

• 1:09:36Alex Cranz?

  I hope it changes the audio.

• 1:09:38David Pierce?

  It's gonna make a bunch of people really happy.

• 1:09:41Alex Cranz?

  They're gonna erupt.

• 1:09:43Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's wrap this up with the lighting round. Everyone's erupted.

• 1:09:49Nilay Patel?

  It's horrible. Lots of stuff in the light round. David, what you got?

• 1:09:52David Pierce?

  We're definitely getting an explicit tag on this podcast. Uh, I, the thing that jumped out to me the most was Snap giving up on the Pixie drone. Uh, after, after just four months, uh, this thing feels like it just shipped 15 minutes ago because it basically just did. And the, it's kind of a sign of the times. Like it's, it's a tough economy. Everybody is sort of pulling back and finding ways to cut down on spending and like, I don't think anyone thought this, the Pixie drone was going to be a huge revenue driver for Snap anytime soon. But if it's indicative of what this next phase is going to look like, where I think a lot of companies are going to pull back on anything that feels sort of. Extraneous. As a person who likes gadgets and technology and new things, it just kind of makes me sad.

• 1:10:36David Pierce?

  And I think we're going to get a lot of companies investing in like a very small number of relatively uninteresting things and trying to figure out how to monetize all the stuff you already use. And spending less time in the very near future, trying to invent new stuff. And I kind of think that's a bummer. I was never going to buy a Pixie drone, but it's the kind of thing that like, I like that it exists and I like that Snap is the kind of company that makes this stuff. So it's just a bummer to see it give up so fast.

• 1:11:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the flip side of that is when the big companies look inward in that way. It just creates a lot of opportunity for other companies to make interesting things and not worry that, you know, we're going to make a camera drone and then like Facebook will make one and kills. And so I'm hopeful that there's a little bit of that dynamic in the future where you see the smaller companies do interesting things. Cause it's easier to differentiate when you know the big companies are focused on monetizing app.

• 1:11:30David Pierce?

  That's fair. I think that's, I think that's right. And I hope that is true. But I do think there is a decent chance we're headed into a weird time for hardware. Like supply chain stuff continues to be wonky. Hardware is hard and expensive. There's like, people are buying less and less of that stuff. So I, I'm going to be curious to see what the next like 12 to 24 months looks like in terms of interesting new hardware.

• 1:11:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right. Here's my line around one. It's very good. This is a journalism story. At its core, like a perfect journalism story. So there's this platform called Triller, which you probably don't know about. It's a TikTok clone run in America. They're doing okay. They like raised a bunch of money. They caught some audience. The Demilios are involved in some way.

• 1:12:14David Pierce?

  Do you guys remember when all the TikTok Trump stuff was happening?

• 1:12:18Nilay Patel?

  And there was this like, we're

• 1:12:20David Pierce?

  Yeah, they were like TikTok's gonna die. We're the new TikTok. Let's go.

• 1:12:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And so they raised a bunch of money that time. They spent some of that money on Versus, which was a pandemic sensation run by Timbaland and Swisspeats, who are mega star hip hop.

• 1:12:34Alex Cranz?

  It's still good.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  I can't, if you don't, if I can't believe I

• 1:12:38Alex Cranz?

  You don't need to.

• 1:12:39Nilay Patel?

  If you're listening to this and you don't know Timbaland, like go educate yourselves.

• 1:12:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they like created the sound of like at least a decade and a half.

• 1:12:48David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Nilay Patel?

  So they paid and they had sold Versus, they had licensed it, like Apple Music was streaming Versus. It was just them calling their famous musician friends together and like they would play their songs to each other and talk shit. And it was great. It was like a It was great. It was like, it's really fun to watch. So they sold it to Versus. They sold it to Triller. They sold, they sold, yeah, they sold Versus to Triller and now they're suing Triller because they say Triller owes them $20 million and never paid. To, to date defendants Triller have failed and refused to make any payment to Timbaland and Swizz Beatz for the past two songs, blah, blah, blah. Right? Great. Triller, this is the journalism story part. So that's very funny because you know, upstart

• 1:13:30Nilay Patel?

  social platform with no real money forgot to pay the superstar producers. Funny as hell. So we report on this, we get the lawsuit, we ask Triller for a statement. So Mr. Roth is on the same, asked Triller for a statement. They reply from an account that's just like [email protected]. And it's like the statement is just on its face, like not like hilarious. We do not wish to air our dirty laundry in the press, but we have paid Swizz and Tim millions in cash and stock. No one has benefited much from Triller to date. Triller helped fuel Versus to new heights, which is just not true. It was already at the heights. Like Apple Music is streaming the thing. It's already, it was already a global cultural phenomenon before Triller showed up. And they said, and we made it whatever. We hope it's just a misunderstanding.

• 1:14:14Nilay Patel?

  So then we have this background policy where we don't now allow unnamed PR people to email back. This has to be in the record. She gets even longer statement, which is like, you can just read it. It's very long. For it's like randomly capitalized the whole thing. We think it's a legal shakedown. They have not delivered any episodes of Versus. We think their lawyers are overzealous. Whatever. It's just like, ah, it's the random capitals are really good. No, no sign though. They still haven't signed it. It came from a different email address from at outlook.com. And at the bottom, it just says Ryan.

• 1:14:54Nilay Patel?

  Triller cofactor is named Ryan Kavanaugh. So he's just like reply like, is this, is this you? And they just stopped responding. So we put up the story. We're like, here's what happened. Like, here's the sourcing, attribute to what you will. We're trying to transfer about this. So then they responded yesterday with another version of the second statement, elevating the amount paid to 55. So now they're claiming 55 billion. Now they're saying this statement can be attributed to our CEO and chairman, Mahi de Silva, which they misspelled.

• 1:15:30Nilay Patel?

  Which is just perfect.

• 1:15:33Alex Cranz?

  You know, when you're out having a good time and you see you need to respond to the email and you grab your phone, you have to push your drink aside and get it all spelled out. You don't have time to double check the name of your boss.

• 1:15:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's just, it's like, the whole time I was like, oh, this is why I have this policy. We made all this noise about like, having you on the record. It's like, because at the end of the day, it's, it's just someone foiling. And I don't know, it's good. Hopefully, Tim and Swizz get paid. They're more important to our culture than Triller. That's, that's my position. It's not a position of the verge.com, but I'm confident that if you pulled the staff of the verge.com and asked them, who is more important to the culture, Timbaland and Swizz Beats or Triller? They will agree with me. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. I encourage someone to do that.

• 1:16:18Alex Cranz?

  What if they misunderstand it as Triller?

• 1:16:20Nilay Patel?

  I think Triller is more important to the culture than Triller. Name a Michael Jackson song that is less important to the culture than, than Triller and you cannot do it.

• 1:16:29Alex Cranz?

  You can't. No, it's impossible.

• 1:16:31Nilay Patel?

  All right. Alex, what you got?

• 1:16:34Alex Cranz?

  So Jess Weatherbed, who's one of our new news writers, she's based out in the UK. She wrote about the absolute goofiest set of monitors that are just like two monitors stacked on top of each other and they just, just close up. And, and somebody's just like, yep, this, these two very cheap, crummy monitors, because they're, they're both like 1440p, 75 hertz refresh, 300 nits brightness. These are not super, super fancy, nice monitors. But I think like, the gimmick is that they're on a cool stand. So you can close them at the end of the day and then slowly open them up. And they just crack me up. I just keep looking at like, there's a GIF in, in this story she

• 1:17:18Alex Cranz?

  wrote, and it just keeps the guys just so happy to like, just quietly open those monitors and appreciate his monitors. But it's called Jiminose. There's two versions. There's Jiminose and then there's the Jiminose X.

• 1:17:30Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:17:31Alex Cranz?

  That gives you 1440p. The Jiminose is just 1080p at 60 hertz, 250 nits brightness. These are like the hundred dollar monitors that you get when you buy like a Dell desktop from 1998. It's those monitors and they've just like, I mean, I don't know if it's actually those monitors. Caveat. It may not be those specific monitors, but it's basically those monitors. Just like, you just open it up. And I just really appreciate Jess is out there writing about it.

• 1:18:00David Pierce?

  But like, they didn't even do anything to them.

• 1:18:02Alex Cranz?

  Yep.

• 1:18:02David Pierce?

  They just added a hinge to the back. Like they just put two of them together with like a with a door hinge and that's it.

• 1:18:08Nilay Patel?

  You gotta look, read the story and look at the GIF of this dude opening this monitor. It is incredible. Like, I don't know how to describe this to you.

• 1:18:17David Pierce?

  It's fantastic.

• 1:18:18Alex Cranz?

  It's stacked, as, as the, the, the video says.

• 1:18:21Nilay Patel?

  I mean, just that he's got a, he's got a big, you know, Top Gun mustache. He's got long hair and he's just grinning at unfolding this monitor. It's very good.

• 1:18:30Alex Cranz?

  Very good.

• 1:18:31David Pierce?

  Yeah. Nothing says it's time to go to work, like unfolding your monitor.

• 1:18:35Alex Cranz?

  It's crowdfunded.

• 1:18:36Nilay Patel?

  I don't care what she's saying.

• 1:18:38Alex Cranz?

  So you might be better off just go buy two.

• 1:18:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm crowdfunding the whole thing. What's the goal? Is it $10? I'll give it to them.

• 1:18:45Alex Cranz?

  But it's incredible. I love it.

• 1:18:47Nilay Patel?

  That's great. All right, David, last one. I need you to explain to me what's going on in sports streaming, because it sounds like we have to care about Peacock now. Disclosure, uh, NBC Universal's investor in Fox Media, but I feel like I just said we have to pay attention to Peacock now. You should understand the, the tenor of that relationship. Go ahead, David.

• 1:19:03David Pierce?

  We also made a show for Netflix, but that's not important to this particular discussion.

• 1:19:07Nilay Patel?

  Yes. My very good friend and co-founder works at Google. What more do you want from me?

• 1:19:14David Pierce?

  Most of you should stop listening now because this explanation takes four and a half hours. Basically, the Big Ten, which is a big

• 1:19:21Alex Cranz?

  Sports.

• 1:19:21David Pierce?

  College football. With many more than 10. Property mostly.

• 1:19:26David Pierce?

  Yeah, there's like 35 teams in the bit, like half of college teams in America are somehow in the Big Ten now. But basically, they signed this big new deal for their streaming rights, it was $8 billion of the next seven years. And these are the moments where basically all of these leagues and conferences and whoever get to decide like what we want the future to look like. So like, I personally care a lot about these because they decide a lot about what the near future of television is going to look like. And the Big Ten picked like a real sucky way to do it as far as I'm concerned for the future. They basically, they divvied games up between NBC, CBS and Fox. Some of them will stream, some of them won't. It's total chaos. What's going to be where? There's also the Big Ten Network, which will have some games.

• 1:20:09David Pierce?

  Peacock just randomly gets eight games that aren't going to be anywhere else. Like, this is just not.

• 1:20:14Alex Cranz?

  Are they gonna make an app?

• 1:20:15David Pierce?

  This is just not a good system. And it's like

• 1:20:18Alex Cranz?

  Like an app to just, no, the Big Ten.

• 1:20:20David Pierce?

  Who?

• 1:20:21Alex Cranz?

  The Big Ten do the app.

• 1:20:22David Pierce?

  Who's gonna make an app? There's

• 1:20:23Alex Cranz?

  You just need one app for the Big Ten.

• 1:20:24David Pierce?

  You'd need 12 apps. The Big Ten, so the Big Ten has the Big Ten Network and that will have some games. You would think that if you got the Big Ten Network and paid what it costs, that you would be able to watch all the Big Ten games on the Big Ten Network. You'd be wrong. Because this is the world that we live in. And then it's like, we're just, we're just in this place where sports dictate how all of this stuff works because that's where all the money is. And the Big Ten at least is still making this gigantic bet that cable TV is going to keep mattering for a long time. Which is very funny because the other thing that also happened today was there was a study released that said streaming, more people watched streaming TV than watched linear TV for the first time ever. So like, this is, this is a thing running against the actual trend of where the world is going.

• 1:21:09David Pierce?

  But there's still a lot of money in selling your stuff to NBC's broadcast channel.

• 1:21:13Alex Cranz?

  3.0, it's coming. It's gonna change everything. Streaming is streaming, you're looking down a barrel. It's almost over.

• 1:21:23Nilay Patel?

  I feel like the phrase you're looking down a barrel is less threatening than the actual cliche.

• 1:21:27Alex Cranz?

  What is the actual cliche? No, it's not. What is it?

• 1:21:30Nilay Patel?

  The barrel of a gun.

• 1:21:31Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you're looking.

• 1:21:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, just a, like.

• 1:21:33Alex Cranz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:34Nilay Patel?

  Someone looking at a barrel is not inherently threatening.

• 1:21:36Alex Cranz?

  I was thinking, I was thinking of the gun when I said it. I just didn't want to, you know, I'm an economy of words.

• 1:21:42David Pierce?

  Oh, look, a barrel.

• 1:21:44Nilay Patel?

  You're looking at a barrel.

• 1:21:48Alex Cranz?

  They're, well, they're not, they're not, they're not winning at broadcast television if they're looking at a barrel. They're too busy.

• 1:21:54Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 1:21:55Alex Cranz?

  They're very busy.

• 1:21:57Nilay Patel?

  If you don't get your shit together, you'll be looking at a barrel.

• 1:22:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, in a way, it works.

• 1:22:03Alex Cranz?

  That's how I start all my threats down.

• 1:22:05David Pierce?

  That's intense.

• 1:22:06Alex Cranz?

  I'm fine.

• 1:22:10Nilay Patel?

  All right, we'll come back next week. We'll do a full hour on FireWire 800. What happens next?

• 1:22:16Alex Cranz?

  It also looked at a barrel.

• 1:22:18Nilay Patel?

  And ATSC 3.0. It did look at a barrel. He got all the way in the barrel.

• 1:22:25Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's it. That's the Vergecast, the Wednesday show this week. Really fun earbuds test. I will say we got an email about the earbuds test, David. The email was titled J-Birds Erasure, which was not an email about the band Erasure on J-Bird headphones. So you got to take care of that.

• 1:22:45David Pierce?

  Neil, can I tell you there's a reason for that? It's because I forgot that J-Birds exists as a company. J-Birds has not made a pair of headphones in like three years, but I used to love my J-Birds and we will, we will bring J-Birds back.

• 1:22:58Nilay Patel?

  Right with FireWire.

• 1:22:59David Pierce?

  I'm ready.

• 1:23:00Nilay Patel?

  And in broadcast television. That was really fun. David and I talked about the F-150 Lightning. What was the third thing? I should probably just scroll up and read it.

• 1:23:08David Pierce?

  We answered a bunch of people's questions about.

• 1:23:10Alex Cranz?

  In green galaxy phones.

• 1:23:11David Pierce?

  It was good stuff.

• 1:23:13Nilay Patel?

  I love taking the calls. What's the number to call us?

• 1:23:14David Pierce?

  GreenBubbles, 866-VERGE-11. It is absolutely my favorite thing about the Vergecast. Like, I love both of you, but it's way more fun talking to the people who call the hotline. So 866-VERGE-11, call us, ask us, call your questions.

• 1:23:26Nilay Patel?

  A bunch of stories on the site. James Vincent has a big scoop about crypto.com laying off people and then quietly laying off hundreds of more people. Justine, actually, a bunch of crypto stuff. Justine has a story about carbon offsets for crypto. Then we got a big feature, we didn't talk about much, about how Archive of our Own turned into this, like, fan fiction mega site. It's great. I love it. So go check out the site. You can tweet at us. I'm at recklessdavids, at Pierce. Alex is Alex H. Krans. That's it. That's Vergecast. Bye, come on.

• 1:24:02Speaker 06

  And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minter. That's it. We'll see you next week.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

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