The war for Reddit, new MacBook Air, and Meta's Twitter competitor

Today on the flagship podcast of suddenly private subreddits: 01:45 - David Pierce and Nilay Patel call up Christian Selig, who runs the popular Reddit app Apollo, to talk about the changes to the platform that have infuriated Redditors, and what it means for the future of Reddit. Reddit’s API updates: all the news about changes that have infuriated Redditors More than 6,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit’s API changes Apollo’s developer on Reddit’s new API changes, and why users revolted 46:15 - Then, David talks with deputy editor Alex Heath about Meta’s reaction to the new Apple Vision Pro headset, and that new Twitter competitor the company is launching. Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about Apple’s Vision Pro Instagram’s upcoming Twitter competitor shown in leaked screenshots 1:09:54 - After that, senior reviewer Monica Chin joins the show to discuss her review of Apple’s new 15-inch Macbook Air. Apple MacBook Air 15-inch review: exactly what was asked for 1:33:24 - Keep listening for this week’s Vergecast hotline question. www.babylist.com https://www.youtube.com/c/DadVerb Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. 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.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of suddenly private subreddits. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am coming to you from inside my MetaQuest 2, where I am playing Population 1, which is kind of like the VR version of Fortnite. And like Fortnite, you can't just pause the game because it's a live battle royale. But this is The Vergecast, the show must go on, you know what I mean? So here we go, and hopefully nobody finds me crouching on top of this windmill. Anyway, we have a super fun show today. We're going to talk about all of the chaos happening on Reddit right now with Christian Seelig, the developer in the middle of the whole fight. Then we're going to talk about Meta's reaction to the new Apple Vision Pro headset and that new Twitter competitor the company is launching.

• 0:47David Pierce?

  After that, we're going to talk about the new 15-inch MacBook Air with Monica Chin, who's been testing it and I think just got the other Macs in to test too. Lots going on this week, y'all. All that is coming in just a sec, but first I gotta figure out how to jump off this windmill without dying, and I think somebody just found me. Here we go. This is The Vergecast, we'll be right back.

• 1:09Speaker 01

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• 2:23David Pierce?

  Welcome back. Right now, you may have seen this already. On Reddit, there is an all-out war going on between the company and its users. Thousands of subreddits have gone dark. The whole platform even went down at one point, all as part of a huge protest against new changes Reddit is making to how it operates its platform. There's more to it than this, and we get into a lot of it in the segment you're about to hear. But basically, the thrust of it is that Reddit has always given away access to its API for free. That meant developers could build Reddit apps, or bots, or just tools that work on the platform, without paying Reddit, the company, to do so. Now Reddit is looking towards an IPO, and just trying to make sure it can exist in a world where being unprofitable

• 3:08David Pierce?

  for almost two decades is kind of a bad look. And the company wants those developers to pay up. How it spiraled from that into a fight for the future and soul of Reddit is the story we're about to get into. And it really, weirdly enough, centers around one guy. His name is Christian Selig, and he runs a popular Reddit app called Apollo. Neelai and I called up Christian to talk through everything that's been happening to him the last few months, and where all of this goes next. Christian, hello.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Hey, David. Hey, Neelai.

• 3:37David Pierce?

  Neelai, hello. Hello. Okay, so, Christian, this story is a mess. There's so much going on here. We should probably just start at the beginning. Like, let's do a little bit of like, history lesson here. And I think, for our purposes, this story starts, what was it, April 18th?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:52David Pierce?

  Which was the day that will live in infamy, to some extent. And that's when Reddit announces big new changes to how it thinks about its API. And you get a phone call that day, is that right?

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, my phone kind of lit up, and there was a lot of like, "Oh my god, your app's gone." "What are you talking about?" And then I kind of saw the announcement, and was like, "Okay." And then I saw there was a New York Times interview where they said, "Reddit apps won't be affected," or something like that. And it was an interesting choice of words that I've since found out was not correct. And then I got a call a few hours later, and then another call a few hours after that, and we talked it out. And yeah, it kind of became the conversation that started a few months.

• 4:30David Pierce?

  What was your read of the situation that day? Like, for you as an indie developer, Reddit's like, "We're making these big changes to how we think about our API, how other apps and services integrate with us." Like, what was your read of what this meant for you?

• 4:44Speaker 03

  My initial, the initial post is very light on details. It was kind of like, we're looking to charge, but we're not telling you how much, which kind of made it difficult to digest that. Because if I'm selling you a cheeseburger, but I don't know how much I'm going to charge you, that it's a completely different conversation kind of thing. So it was kind of light on detail. So I was like, I'm going to wait for the phone call kind of to set my expectations. And honestly, the phone call went super well. Like, the Reddit representative, nicest guy, explained everything, kind of was just laying it all out in a way that made sense to me that they can't keep indefinitely kind of financing these businesses with their data while they get nothing in return. And it was kind of just one of those conversations where you did not along, and you're like, that makes sense. I've kind of been wondering if there was an agreement we were going to come to at some point. And the way they kind of set it up sounded really great,

• 5:29Speaker 03

  like the pricing was in terms of kind of being equitable and making them whole. And there'd be an opportunity to kind of have a more concrete relationship going forward. That sounded really exciting. So it was kind of like, the developers I talked to as well as myself were kind of like, okay, this could go well. It sounds positive, depending what the price is, but everything sounds good so far.

• 5:46Nilay Patel?

  When you say these businesses, there's, there's a lot of nuance in there. Because Reddit is pretty unhappy about the AI companies scraping all of Reddit to train large language models. And I suspect if Reddit was to go to OpenAI and say, $20 million a year, like, the user community would not be in such open revolt. When they come to you and say that number, it's very different, right?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  So was the conversation with Reddit in the beginning, was there that nuance in there? That, hey, there are some businesses that we should charge a lot of money to. And there are some indie app developers that we need to charge some money to for a variety of reasons. And we're going to find a rate for you that's different? Or was it, we're doing this across the board from the beginning?

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, they didn't mention like, the big OpenAIs of the world. It was very much geared around, like, apps like yourselves have built these businesses over the years that rely on our data, and we're providing it to you for free. And we don't think that's kind of going into an IPO. We don't think that's like a tenable, long-term solution. There wasn't any breakdown by like, third-party apps would have a carve-out of a certain price, and then maybe everyone else or AI would have another price point. It was very much focused toward third-party apps, at least on the phone calls I was on.

• 6:56David Pierce?

  So and the the structure of that thing they described to you sounds totally reasonable, right? Like and it's interesting to me that you had even thought that this was kind of coming at some point, because it does seem like at some point, these businesses have to figure out how to make money. Reddit has never been very good at making money, and it would not be that hard to look at you and be like, well, he's built a profitable business and we give him all the data for free. Like, let's let's figure out a way to sort of even the scales back a bit. And I can imagine coming out of that phone call being like, yeah, this sounds relatively reasonable.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  It honestly did. And like, to the extent also that there's like APIs like Reddit Chat and voting and polls and whatnot, that they've historically not made part of the API for whatever reason. And kind of the idea that, oh, we're maybe engaging in this more formal relationship where we're closer to a partnership, where I'm paying you and you're giving goods in return. The possibility that, oh, we might even get more APIs available, we might have better contacts at Reddit, et cetera, et cetera. Like, this is a more mature, concrete relationship. Like, that honestly sounded exciting. Like, it almost provides a clear future forward where I'm paying you, you're giving me services in return. Like, our relationship here is much more clear. And the concept of that sounded really exciting. But it's one of those things where kind of the devil's in the details and how you get there kind of decides everything.

• 8:10David Pierce?

  What has it been like in the past? I know the sort of outside story is that Reddit has not particularly been interested in the past in like, serving and maintaining a really good API for developers to use. But it's been open to you and has been free for a very long time. Like, is it a good API? Like, what has the experience been like over the years?

• 8:29Speaker 03

  To me, I thought it's been a great API. Personally, like, I admittedly, like, I came into university and started building Apollo, so my breadth of experience with APIs isn't enormous. So I don't have the ability to say like, oh, the Twitter API was so much better. But to me, it was honestly very straightforward. It was well documented. The only issue, I guess, is the years went on, like newer features on Reddit were suddenly not getting added to the API. But outside of that, yeah, it was well documented. It was easy to use. If I had questions, Reddit was responsive. And if they were changing something in the API, they give a good amount of foresight and say like, we're changing this to this. This might break X. You should make a change by this date. We're happy to help you with that. And it was honestly like a great relationship.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  That turn that's like, we're not, we're gonna stop adding new features to the API. If you just look back historically, that's the first red flag, right? That's the, that's the warning sign that maybe they don't love the third-party apps. So do you ever take that as a sign or a warning of any kind?

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Maybe I'm a very naive person, but in my head, like, I was kind of looking through like, oh, there's a new voting and polls endpoint, for instance, in the API. And I was like, okay, what's that look like? And so you can kind of like sniff the network traffic for the Reddit app. And I was like, oh, they're hitting this like GraphQL endpoint that is kind of like an internal endpoint. It's not the same API dot Reddit dot com or whatever that historically all of us have been hitting. So it's like, okay, maybe they're moving to a model where they're going to test these APIs internally, make sure they've got all the kind of wrinkles ironed out, and then they'll make it available. And then, then of course, three years goes by and you're like, yeah, maybe not. So yeah, I think there was a naive optimism at the beginning there. And then I kind of justified it as they're moving to this internal stuff, but maybe they just don't have any engineer staff to kind of port them back.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  It's more of a negligence rather than a maliciousness. But it's honestly tricky at this point to say kind of what the intent was there.

• 10:14David Pierce?

  That's fair. So then the, the second part of the story and where things get really wild and where we should start talking about the last two weeks was the very end of May. You, I guess, had a series of phone calls that ended in posting like the Reddit posts heard around the world. I'm assuming that was like one of the biggest days ever in the Apollo subreddit.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:31David Pierce?

  So you're like, you really like juiced the engagement that day. Congrats on that.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it was, it was honestly like one of those things where like, everyone was like messaging me and being like prior to that announcement saying like, you've been saying pricing's coming out for weeks. And I was like, yeah, I know Reddit's been telling me it's coming for weeks. Like, I want to know as much as you do. And they're like, hey, well, tell us. So I was like, okay, I've got the pricing, like, here's the details. And there's just a lot of people, I guess, interested in knowing the details. And then kind of once they found out what those details were, it kind of just snowballed from there. And yeah, it blew up a lot more than I thought it would.

• 11:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, I would say. So walk us through that a little bit because the, the high points of it basically, as I understand, are you get on the phone with Reddit and they're like, okay, we have a, we have pricing for you. It is essentially at the end of the day going to cost you $20 million a year just to pay for the Reddit API to keep using Apollo, which I'm assuming to you immediately felt disastrous. Like, I, I don't know, maybe you have $20 million lying around, in which case like, that's cool. But like, walk me through how that conversation goes when Reddit calls you.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  First off, I don't, but if either of you do, we can talk after the show, maybe. Help a guy out. But no, so like the conversation wasn't like, I don't think they knew the cost it would cost me. Like insofar as I kind of knowing that the call will be quick and they normally only block it like 30 minutes. I built like a little app that you could put in like the the cost per API call and it would spit out like a bunch of facts. Like kind of like an Excel spreadsheet of being like, oh, here's, and here is what it would cost a month, a year for the free users, like the subscription users. Here's how it kind of compares to Reddit's, the financial figures they posted historically. Just so like, as soon as I was delivered the figure, I could kind of jump into action mode and say like, this is what it's going to look for me. So they, the figure they said was 24 cents for 1,000 API calls. So I kind of plugged that in and it was like,

• 12:14Speaker 03

  saw the zeros start like increasing and it was like, okay, so like I make, you know, seven billion requests a month, which sounds like a ton, but there's, I almost have two million monthly active users. So there's a fair bit there. And I kind of just said like, look, this is going to cost me like $20 million a year. And I think there was kind of like, there's a few awkward silences where there was kind of the conversation like, our intent isn't to kill third-party apps of this decision. Like, that's not what we're hoping to do. And it was kind of like, but do you see how charging me $20 million as a guy in our apartment would effectively have that? Like that, that would be the result. And I think there was kind of like an understanding there, but at the same time, like finishing the call, I was saying like, I legitimately don't want to be antagonistic here. Like, if this is something you feel like, given the figures I've told you and how untenable it is for me as a business,

• 12:56Speaker 03

  like if this is something that you want to take back and maybe we can talk about this more and maybe hear my concerns and maybe meet at a figure that would be a little better. Like, I'm happy to do that. I won't post anything until like you've kind of landed on something concrete. And the answer was kind of like, no, this is the pricing. Like, post it if you want. So in like the half hour between that call and when they called me again, because they wanted to go over a few more things, I made the post and it kind of went from there.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  Do you get the sense that Reddit knows that Apollo users are power users of Reddit? This is something I think about with social networks all the time is that their data blinds them to the reality of the platform. So you might say, okay, there's only 2 million Apollo users. You just don't know that they happen to be 2 million of the most important users on the platform, or the most vocal, or the most invested, and you piss them off with a decision like this. Do you ever get the sense they knew that Apollo was important to that class of users? Or that you were in the middle of the relationship that Reddit had with that group of users?

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Honestly, like, and I say this with a lot of respect for Reddit, but I feel like this was a decision that like, kind of got rushed out the door a bit, and they didn't kind of do that due diligence on like, understanding that stuff. Because yeah, there's a lot of stuff where like, like even just making a really big pricing announcement, but not having any pricing to like, taking, like, there was a lot of discussions where they were like, we'll have it in two to four weeks. And I was like, great. And then kind of six weeks passed and they were like, okay, now we have it. Like, there was a lot of it felt like it was kind of being decided on the fly. And even insofar as, at the end of January, I want to say January 26th, I had another call with Reddit, like prior to all this, where they were saying like, we have no plans to change the API, at least in 2023, maybe for years to come after that. And if we do, it'll be like improvements.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  So then kind of like two months, three months later, for them to, for them to say, um, look, actually, scratch that, we're planning to completely charge for the API, and it's going to be very expensive. Kind of made me think like, what happened in those three months? Like, this clearly wasn't something that was, um, like, cooking for a long time. And I don't think they kind of understood how much this would affect people and the kind of response that they would get. Because they're honestly, they're smart people, and I don't think if they kind of understood everything that they do now, they would have made the same steps, at least I would hope not. Because yeah, and even there's like, there's quotes where they'll say like, the average Reddit user in other apps uses like, 100 API requests a day, or whatever it is. And it's like, in Apollo, like, you can almost see like, depending on how much more of a power user, how much more API requests they use.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Like, like my free users use around 200, which is relatively close to the 100, but then like my subscription users use closer to like 500, because they're passionate Reddit users, like they're paying for something, they're probably going to use it more. And it's kind of like, yeah, Apollo does use a lot of requests, because these people are really passionate about Reddit, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you're trying to monetize on a user level. I don't know why the user engaging with the platform more would be inherently a negative thing. So it's, yeah, I think I've been more confused than not at some of the calls they've made.

• 15:51David Pierce?

  Well, so Reddit said, "We don't want to kill third-party apps." But we just went through this with the Twitter API, which pretty explicitly wanted to kill third-party apps. Do you buy that either at that moment or now with kind of two weeks of more conversations in hindsight? Like, do you think Reddit actually doesn't want to kill third-party apps? Because it sure looks like it does.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  I think at the outset, they were under the impression, I will be charitable and say, at the outset, I honestly don't think they did. Or maybe I'm very naive. Like, maybe they didn't care about us at all, but they were like, "We know you're important to a subset of users, and we know there'll be a big blowback if we get rid of you. So we want to make some arrangement where we can keep you, but you're not a pain in the ass." But I think as time went on and they kind of understood where we were coming from and things like only giving us 30 days to make these like monstrous changes. I think it started to muddy the waters where it's like, "Well, if you don't want us to die, why are you giving us such aggressive timelines? And why can't you bump things out or listen to us? Or like, why are you acting in this way?" And I think to a certain extent, like some of the blowback from like initial posts from developers being like, "This is going to cost us a lot of money." I think they almost went on the defensive internally and said like,

• 16:56Speaker 03

  "You know, these developers are entitled and they just want a free lunch or something." And I feel like it got very personal when it didn't really need to, when it was just kind of like, "This is going to kill my business. Like, can we have us tap forward?" And it just kind of got ugly when I don't think it needed to.

• 17:10David Pierce?

  Well, that's the other part of that question is like, even if Reddit doesn't want to get rid of third-party apps, it sure seems at this moment like it wants to get rid of you.

• 17:20David Pierce?

  I mean, it does. Like, it's gotten so bizarrely personal. And like Steve Huffman in the AMA he did about this stuff, either explicitly or implicitly referenced you a bunch of times. There's been this weird accusation about you blackmailing Reddit for $10 million. And I listened to the audio that you posted. And that's a very weird interaction. And I kind of think everybody was weird in that interaction, but we can come back to that. But like, this became about you in a very real way. Both the sort of community rallying around you, and then you've become like enemy number one to Reddit in this fight. How did that happen?

• 17:55Nilay Patel?

  Is it just because you're the one posting the numbers about what this costs?

• 17:58Speaker 03

  I think it's a combination of that. And from one of the mod calls, from what I understand, they said Apollo is the biggest API user at least. So I think there's Apollo, I've been fortunate enough. It's pretty popular. So I think there's a lot of eyes on it. But yeah, I don't know how it got so personal in terms of like my initial post, like I tried to very much thread the line of like, here are my numbers, like this is how much I use multiplied by the number they gave me, which gives me this number. Like, I'm not saying screw Reddit, like, let's go, you know, Huffman is the worst person imaginable. I was just saying like, these are the figures, and I don't think they agree with the the statement that they made about being like equitable and based in reality, based on the public revenue figures that they've given me. And I think that kind of blew up from there. And I think they took a lot of offense to that when

• 18:43Speaker 03

  it was kind of like, they themselves said they weren't interested in talking about the price anymore. So I was kind of, my only option was kind of say like, users, this is the price I was given. Like, I almost don't know what to do here. And it's one of those situations where like, at every step of the way where they seem to have gotten progressively more offended, I feel like if the roles were reversed, they would have made the same decision. Anybody would have. It was just kind of like a straightforward, trying to be communicative. Like, at no point have I tried to be like, these guys are the worst. Like, it's always tried to be like, here are the numbers, and I don't think this is reasonable, because these numbers are so high.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  If they'd offered to buy the app from you, would you have sold it to them?

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Um, I guess it depends on the stage. If, I mean, I'm just some guy. So like, if the number was high enough, sure, absolutely. Like, I, I, like, yeah, I'm not gonna lie.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  Everyone's got a number. I feel you.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. At like, the stage where it was clear that they weren't interested in having third-party apps sent around anymore, just because of the pricing and some of the like, the API changes around like explicit content and whatnot. At that point where it was kind of clear, like, we don't really see you as part of our long-term future. If that was a point where they said, like, that being said, we would like to maybe work with your user base, or take your user base and figure out a way to like, make them happy in the context of the official app and like, work with you and your app through an acquisition or something to make that happen. Like, I honestly would have listened to that. Prior to that, it would have had to have been a pretty good number, just because I love building Apollo and like, having it and like, being so in touch with so many people through the community. Like, it would have to be a big number just from like, losing such a big part of your life and what you do every day. Like,

• 20:13Speaker 03

  there's, there's an emotional penalty to losing that, that is like, hard to quantify with money as superficial as that sounds.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  What did it feel like when you saw, I think it was Craig Federighi put Apollo on stage at WWDC?

• 20:26David Pierce?

  A couple of times.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It has been a real moment for this app. How was that felt?

• 20:30Speaker 03

  That blew my mind. I was, I was sitting with like a friend who works at Apple and I was like, I think I was tweeting something and he was like, kind of nudged me. He's like, you're going to want to watch this. And I, and I looked up and was like, oh my God, like that was so cool. It came from absolutely nowhere. Like I had no idea that was coming and it was just the nicest thing. Like Apollo's been mentioned, like it's, it's been in a slide and a few keynotes or like the state of the union or something, but to have like Craig Federighi say like the Apollo name, I was like, it's like looking around like a crazy person. I think like there was like Ashton Kutcher was going to run out or something. And, but yeah, it was, it was really cool.

• 20:58David Pierce?

  And meanwhile, this is happening like right as you're publicly announcing plans to shut down the app at the end of G.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  At that stage.

• 21:04David Pierce?

  The cognitive dissonance of that has got to just be insane.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Well, like I, I felt really bad because I was like talking to my Apple rep and I was saying like, in the event that Apollo is like a part of stuff, like I just want to be clear that like, at this stage, I don't think I have to shut down. Like things with Reddit are still like, we're, we're talking and things seem civil and like, I'm happy. So like, and then it just very quickly degraded from there that I, I felt like, oh crap. Like I hope they didn't, I hope I didn't rub anyone the wrong way by like misleading them that Apollo is like going to last forever. When in reality, like when I was at that keynote at that time, it felt great because it was, yeah, Apollo has legs here. Like things are going to get better. It's in the keynote. Everything's great. And then it kind of just fell apart from there.

• 21:42David Pierce?

  Which brings us to my favorite segment of every Vergecast. Let's do some math together.

• 21:48Nilay Patel?

  There's nothing like math on the radio to really bring an audience together.

• 21:51David Pierce?

  Because I think there's been a lot of questions and a lot of debate about what it would look like to continue to run Apollo. And I think one of the things Reddit has said is that the way that the API works, it should cost less than $1 per user per month. Your math said it would cost about $2.50 per user per month. Correct me if I'm wrong in any of these numbers.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  On average.

• 22:12David Pierce?

  Okay. Yeah. And so there are a bunch of folks out there who are like, okay, we'll just charge us $5 a month, give some of that money to Apple. We'll keep the rest, give some to Reddit. Everybody wins. There are other people out there who are like, okay, just make it subscription only. So only people paying for the app can use the app. And it does seem like you went to, I can't afford this. I have to shut down the app fairly quickly. I'm assuming you went through some of these other scenarios before you got there, but like, walk, walk me through how you get from, I owe $20 million a year. I have a very popular app to, I definitely can't afford this. My only option is to close.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Sure. So I talked to like a lot of, uh, the iOS developer community is pretty tight knit and there's like a lot of group chats swirling around and I talked to a lot of smart people and, and like, I guess it's, it's a two faceted answer, I guess, like at, at a high level. So say, yeah, just charge $5. Bob's your uncle kind of thing, right? The issue there is that, yeah, I'm averaging for your average user uses about 345 requests per day, per user. And then if you extrapolate that over the month, it would cost about $2.50 to support them. The issue is there, that's the average user. So a free user uses like 200 something requests. An existing paid user uses closer to 500. So for that existing paid user who naturally uses more, that's closer to 360.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  I think is, is the math like that I would get for a bill for each of them every month in its current state. And if I just charged $5 to them, you take off Apple's 30% or whatever, and you're down to 350, you're already 10 cents in the red per user per month. Um, so that's kind of, the calculus there is already pretty tricky. That being said, if I had more than the 30 days, there, there's a possibility that I could go in and like some of the stuff where I check your inbox every so often. Um, or I preload a page for you that I think you might scroll to, I could kind of cut down on all those and maybe cut that 400 down to, I don't know, 300, 200, like, um, if I had more than 30 days. But even beyond that, there's, there's even a subset of users where like approximately 5% of my users use between 1 and 2,000 API requests a day.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Where at the low end, those would cost $7.50 a month. Um, and you can imagine the users who use the, they have the most are kind of the most likely to pay for things. Um, so they'd be kind of like the, the, the most obvious ones that would want to pay for the app. And when you're looking at them costing like $7.50 a month each. It's kind of like, do I have like a $5 tier that hopefully covers most people? And then once you expire that, is it like a phone plan where I call you up and say like, do you want to top off for the month? And it's like, and that's not fun. So, but that's like, that's one facet of it. Like, say I, that's a big if, but say I solve all that. The other issue is that like with the very short notice of 30 days from when the pricing was announced to when we start incurring charges. I've got about like, say like 50,000 yearly subscribers who have already paid for a year of service. So say like before this announcement,

• 24:50Speaker 03

  based on the fact that back in January Reddit told me they wouldn't be changing the API at all this year, I sold David a A year of Apollo Ultra for, say, back in April. You've got still like nine months left on that subscription that you're owed because you already paid for it, as you should be. And that was based on operating costs that I had for like design services, server fees. Like I have a part-time server engineer. Like I was like for a dollar a month, a month or whatever it was like that, I can make a profit on that. But suddenly I've got like a dollar or two extra, like a dollar minimum if I can get those API requests really far down for those 50,000 people who have already prepaid. I can't monetize them anymore. They've already paid. So, starting July 1st, those people will start incurring a bill of $50,000 a month for me that I have no way to monetize because they've already prepaid.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  And, and that's where the calculus got really difficult where it was like, okay, I have a bill of, yeah, 50. And then like maybe the next month, some of the people would, uh, who are close to expiring would expire and it would go down to 11 months. And maybe it would only be 45,000 and then the next month it would be 40. But you're potentially looking at like hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills I would get for Reddit from people that I can't make a single more dollar off of because they already paid my old operating costs. And that's where it got really tricky where when Reddit only gives you 30 days to like try to transition those users or have them age out and there's no like grandfathering in place or anything. That's where it gets really difficult and you almost do the math and you say like, it would be cheaper just to like close up and refund all these people than it would be to just pay Reddit like hundreds of thousands of dollars for these users. And, and that's where it got really tricky.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it's like you combine those two things and it was just like everyone I talked to was kind of just like, I don't see how I would make this work. And then when you add on the extra fact that like Reddit's kind of like saying these like bizarre things around like threats and blackmail and like they, they won't answer your emails anymore. It kind of becomes a thing like, I can't pay for this. How to make a profit out of it is very difficult and Reddit seems like they have no intention of wanting to work with me or third-party apps anymore. It kind of becomes like, what's the future here? If that makes sense. And that was kind of where I landed on it. I was staying at an Airbnb with like seven other people for Dub Dub and was just kind of like talking with them over and it was just kind of like that Wednesday night. I was just like, I don't see any other route out of this. Like it's just kind of, it's gotten dire. And that was kind of when I started typing up my post and being like, yeah, this is kind of.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  There's an alternate universe in there where the next thing you do is like leave Cupertino, go to Sand Hill Road and like convince Marc Andreessen to give you a bunch of money to get you through this. Is that, is that ever a thing that occurred to you?

• 27:18Speaker 03

  Honestly, no, not so much because like I still don't see how like the path forward would be, would be working. Like if I said like Reddit, I can pay your 20 million or $50,000 a month or whatever it is. I still feel like there's this like target on my back where almost they're going to say like, we don't want to work with you anymore. Or like the APIs that you do have, they're suddenly going to start to break down or something. Or it just suddenly felt like the relationship was a lot more sour all of a sudden. And I've kind of always loved that Apollo was self-sustaining that I didn't need venture capitalist money, that I could just say like this simple concept of like, if you want something, pay me for it and I'll give it to you. And that's the whole business. Like I kind of like the simplicity there. It felt like something from 500 years ago where you just, it's an exchange of services and, and I really liked that. And I kind of didn't want to muddy the waters with VC money at any point. So yeah, I mean, it's a great question, but it just wasn't really anything I was looking to do.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  There's the other piece of that, right? That, that direct relationship. I pay you for software, you give me software, we're done. Reddit can barely monetize its own users, right? Like they're not making money and the way they've chosen to monetize is mostly advertising, which is not exposed in your app. If Reddit had come to you and said, all right, you can use our API, we'll lower the cost, but you've got to start serving our ads. I like, I don't know how I would have felt about that as somebody who has used Apollo. Like I would have been like, oh, it's pretty icky. Now I'm paying you for software, but I'm getting their ads.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Like, but that's one of those things that I felt like if they did, it would have shown like a little bit more effort to include third-party apps insofar as they'd have to build kind of that integration in. And yeah, it's tricky because like if that was a path to survive, like I wouldn't like it either. I prefer not to have apps and I don't, or ads, and I don't mind paying for an ad-free experience. But if that was the only way to survive going forward, like that's something I also would have entertained, like, like a revenue share where like you make X amount of money. We want half of it off the top. Like that's something that would have been fine. Like there was a lot of arrangements I think they could have gone with that just weren't quite as killer, for lack of a better term.

• 29:11David Pierce?

  Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about that a little, actually, because I think one of the questions I've had following all of this is what do you want from Reddit? Like, if you could sort of rewind back to the beginning of this, I'm sure the less animosity in all directions and also less money. But like, what could have happened in that phone call on May 31st that you would have just hung up and been like, great, cool, perfect, sounds good, win-win, everybody, let's move forward?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  I think it would have been a matter, like, in an absolutely perfect world, it would have said like, okay, we're also going to maybe like half the price.

• 29:42David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Because that would have taken like my $2.50 a user down to like the about $1.25, which I charge to new users $1.50. So it would have been something that like, hey, my existing users, I can at least afford to keep like them around, like those, they won't put me in the red. That would have been great.

• 29:56David Pierce?

  And that's when $5 a month becomes a reasonable thing.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 30:00David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  And the existing users who have already paid would suddenly like, the calculus there would be a lot easier to keep them around. But like, they sound like they're very adamant on the price, which I think is unfortunate. But like, I don't think they're going to budge there. So at this point, it would just kind of be a factor of like, A, we're going to give you more time to transition this. Like, if you have existing users, we'll give you a few months to kind of make sure that you can transition them to new plans or figure out an arrangement where they're, they feel like they're made whole. And you have sufficient time to kind of adopt the new payment model, try out these new APIs, test everything, and have the proper time to do that. I think time is almost like the biggest thing that they could have committed to that they didn't seem like they wanted to. And then beyond that, kind of just like, I'd love for both parties to come together and

• 30:43Speaker 03

  say like, man, things kind of got worse than they were here. Like, is there a path forward where we can just say like, can we make this amicable going forward? Like, there was some things that Reddit said that I think were proven to be incorrect that I think it would be great if they said like, even if it was just a matter of saying like, we were incorrect, we were under false understanding of what happened. It happens, yada, yada, yada, let's talk. But yeah, just kind of like, like an olive branch to try to have both parties come to the table and just feel listened to again, because just like, kind of the stone wall they've put up over the last few weeks has kind of just soured things to an extent that I think, like, even if they were to say like, we're cutting the price by 10, we're giving you a year, it would make it hard to say like, yeah, but are you just giving it to the community or do you actually like want us around in any capacity soon?

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  So it it kind of feels like that bridge is burned now?

• 31:30Speaker 03

  I honestly don't if if I got an email today where they were like, hey, we'd love to hop on a call and like, give you a little bit more time to make this transition. And we'd like to say like, we could have handled this better. I'd honestly be open to talking like I'm Canadian. I don't hold a lot of grudges, I don't think like I think it would have been like, I'd honestly still be fine talking. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's burned at all, but at this stage, I'm not sure they want to reconstruct from the little bit of charring that maybe did occur.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  So you're now the symbol of a much larger thing that's happening on Reddit, right? Like there was a post about Apollo shutting down and that spiraled into an ongoing series of subreddit blackouts. There are other asks in the mix now, and they're important to note, most of them around accessibility.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  Which I think even Steve Hoffman has said, yep, Reddit's got to do a better job of this. And then there's a set of asks around not safe for work content, which it feels like they don't know that Apple has rules. And like Reddit can't just like put porn in the app in the way that maybe they're being asked for. But you're now like one part of a series of asks from a pretty disparate group of especially moderators on Reddit. Do you think that if they fix the API pricing situation and Apollo got back on track? That that would soothe the community at large?

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Um, I think it would go a long way, honestly, to at least making them feel heard because like in in this whole saga, I don't think I've seen Reddit kind of offer to give an inch on like any of the things.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  I would say Reddit's political skills at operating their community are negative, in fact.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Well, and it's weird because like prior to this, like I almost always understood that Reddit as a company understood that they're like a very community focused. And they kind of didn't do the bullshit corporate speak. And it was weird to kind of see this week where like they engage in a lot more of that than I have historically ever seen them do. And and it just it went over about as well as I thought it would. It's tricky. Yeah, like I think giving like a gesture of goodwill that, hey, we're listening. We understand that there's some things we could have done better. I think honestly would go a long way because I think kind of just the Well, there's specific demands. The almost general thing I hear is that Reddit has plugged its ears and refusing to listen to anybody but themselves. And I think there's some very minor concessions that they can make to make people a lot happier.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Like, even if you take the not safe for work stuff, which I've almost committed to them saying like, that's never gonna happen. But it's so strange insofar as like, there is, like, A, it's still available through the API. It's just not available through third-party app API access. And beyond that, they already have things like quarantine subreddits for some of the more gruesome, shall we say, subreddits, where you have to kind of like go in through the official app or the official website and like kind of like rubber stamp it and say, I'm willing to see this. And only then is it available through the API. And they've already got mechanisms in place like that, where like, I kind of understand why users are frustrated and saying like, you've already got these mechanisms where users can like explicitly opt in to this content through first-party tools and then access it through third-party tools. Why don't you employ such a system for explicit content, for instance? And they, to my knowledge, haven't really given a clear answer there.

• 34:35Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I can give the clear answer to that.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, please.

• 34:38Nilay Patel?

  It's because they found a number of loopholes that let the app slide through app review, and they're terrified of changing anything such that they might not get through app review anymore. I mean, that's the answer from every social network that I've ever heard is like, once you have ticked enough boxes and said enough secret words or magic incantations, you just never mess with it again.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  That's fair. And that's kind of been my experience with Apollo, where like, there was, I think, a while back, like, a bunch of Reddit apps were pulled for not safe for work stuff. And like, the app store rules are pretty clear in that, like, if there is content accessible in that way, to my knowledge, like, you can't expose it by default. The users have to explicitly opt in, and they have to be able to opt out. And insofar as like, that's the system I've had in Apollo, and I've never touched it since either. But it's just one of those things where if they have that system working in their Reddit app and in some capacity, they have a system for that, I don't see why that same system couldn't apply to the API at large. You know what I mean? Like, I'm totally for a system that guardrails all that content and makes sure that it's like incredibly difficult to get to and Apple doesn't get angry.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  But just extend that system that you've already built to the API, I guess.

• 35:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is what this is what I mean about the politics of it, right? Like, you can send that message like, hey, we we don't even want to talk about this too much in case Phil Schiller is listening. But you just have to trust us. We're doing everything we can. And that's kind of the vibe from a lot of social networks. But you don't, you need the chips to cash to say, you got, you just have to trust me on this. And it feels like you have more of those chips with the Reddit community. You have more trust from the Reddit community than Reddit itself. And I'm wondering if you see that playing out in this dynamic between you and the company right now.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Maybe, and I think if I do have those chips, it's just because I've been communicative through this whole process.

• 36:24Nilay Patel?

  Right, it's very simple.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  And that's, that's all I mean, like, there were so many talks on the phone with Reddit where I was just saying, like, can you make this pricing make sense to me, like, how you arrived at it? And they just never would. And like, it's the same thing with the not safer work stuff where they kept saying, like, we're gonna ask some people and see if we can get back to you on that. And I, and I still have not got back to on that. And I, I think if they just communicated to the community that, like, we think not safer work content is like an ongoing, like, really sensitive thing with, with app stores in general. And we want to make sure that, like, we have absolute control over how that's accessed. And we feel that third-party apps, we don't trust them not accidentally mess up and get us in trouble. And like, like, that would be an unfortunate answer, but I think it would, like, it would almost go over as being appreciated for the honesty.

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Rather than kind of just not saying anything at all and just saying it's gone, like, stop whining. But it's like, the not safer work thing for me personally, like, while I get, there's a lot of moderators of, like, not safer work communities who are gonna, like, be affected by this, that I get why it's a big deal for them. But like, for me, building an app, like, if I lose that, it, it's not the end of the world. It's kind of, it's kind of everything else. Like, that's one of those ones where I'm willing to drop if, if need be.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  All right, so I think that we are in an absolute moment of change for what you might call the web 2.0 era. We are seeing these social web companies, most of them, say for Facebook, never figured out how to reliably make money and grow. That's Twitter, that's Reddit, that's all these companies. They're shutting down their APIs, they are pissing off their users. Everything else is turning into a TikTok clone. There's something happening here, right? And it seems like the open social networks could potentially have a moment. I don't know if they're going to or not, but you see the activity around Blue Sky, around Mastodon. We have pictures of the new one from Instagram that's coming out called P92

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  that should interoperate with Mastodon, we think. Have you thought about, I'm just gonna take my users and go build a Reddit that works with Activity Pub?

• 38:23David Pierce?

  Well, even more specifically now, this week, one of the things a lot of users have been saying is we're leaving Reddit. We're gonna go to like Lemmy and Kabin are the two that I keep hearing about.

• 38:32Nilay Patel?

  Lemmy's been around forever, right?

• 38:34David Pierce?

  Yeah, is there a move that way that you think is real that you might want to be part of?

• 38:38Speaker 03

  It's tricky because like I, to a certain extent, yeah, like that does sound really interesting. But it's like with Mastodon, for instance, I love it. But I've seen so many people, even in the tech community, who totally have the means to make that move if they want to, who have just been too intimidated or just can't get off Twitter for some reason that like in the back of my head that I'm like, if these people who are much smarter than me can't make that change, is that something that like, is this just like a short term thing where we all had our time in the sun and it's gonna go back to centralized services? Or like, it's hard for me to like, insofar as like build another thing that like, if it just evaporated again, it would be like a double breakup. Especially where it's like, this has been so exhausting for the last few months

• 39:22Speaker 03

  that like the amount of work it would take to like port all the API endpoints over to like Lemmy or Kabin or something like that would be a gargantuan amount of work that like, I'm not sure like at the moment I have like the capacity for. And then for like, just the complexity of making it work long term is just like, it's a big question mark for me that like, I'm at this stage, I'm not sure I'm totally interested in pursuing. But like, I, it's also one of those things where I completely wish it the best. And if something that was decentralized kind of became the norm, I think that would definitely be a win for everybody.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  You're just saying you don't have the energy to do it yourself. I get it. I feel that too.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a long way.

• 39:57David Pierce?

  That's real.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

• 39:59David Pierce?

  So as it stands right now, you're set to turn off the API token and basically shut down Apollo June 30th. What, what percentage of you? Believes you will actually shut down on June 30th at this moment in time?

• 40:12Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh, like 90%, 95%?

• 40:16David Pierce?

  Really? So you're you're fully prepared for this to happen?

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Oh, I would like I've talked to like my reps at Apple to like get the process started like I like as much as I would love to say like this has been a big bluff and I'm hoping Reddit will like it was literally a matter of like Reddit hasn't answered my emails like in a while like every public statement I've seen seems like the CEO is quite angry over this like they don't seem to want to budge on the timeline at all like I don't see how I can make this work and there's certain like things like when Tweetot and Twitterific shut down like there is there's processes you can do with Apple where you can say like a you can opt out of your refund or something like that and that's kind of something you want to get started before the apps actually shut down and everyone deletes it so they can never see that kind of offer so like there's certain things I need to kind of get into motion that I can't just sit around forever hoping that Reddit will email me back or Reddit will listen to the community and it's tricky because like I I've loved building Apollo and like even even at the $3,500 that headset costs like I was kind of excited for the opportunity like what could Reddit on that thing look like and I was really excited for that so it's kind of like hard for me to to say that but at this stage like it's just hard for me to like see a path forward where they are like reasonably willing to like meet me even a quarter of the way here it just seems like they're they're so angry for lack of a better term that I kind of just feel like it's better for me to be honest with myself rather than hold on to the hope to the last minute and then just completely fall apart but I but I really do that 10% of me really hopes that like I'll be able to say like I hopped on a call with Steve like we talked it out like there was some pleasantries exchanged about like misunderstandings we're all good now like they're giving us more time to adopt the API and we're sticking around like I would love that but it's it's one of those things where it's like it's totally in Reddit's court and I'm happy to like talk whenever but I just haven't been able to reach them I guess.

• 42:05David Pierce?

  How much is that 10% of you hanging on sort of the size and scope of this revolt that has taken over Reddit the last couple of days? I mean, because it really it went from like a small thing that a few people were mad about to like effectively the size of Reddit like everyone is aware that this is a thing now and you I keep thinking of like Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games with like everybody holding up the mockingjay except now it's like the Apollo logo do you have some hope that that that might make change?

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  Do you have hope that they'll kill all the other third-party apps except for?

• 42:37Nilay Patel?

  Just to take that to its natural conclusion.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Well, it's funny. We've like, a lot of us, like, to my knowledge, pretty much all of the third-party devs, like, when this started going down on April 18th, like, I reached out to them and was like, "Why don't we put a group chat together and kind of just like talk and figure this out?" And like, to my knowledge, like, the vast majority of them won't be able to survive this. And for the ones that are kind of like testing the waters to see, it's very much like, "This might be possible. I don't think it's gonna work very well, but I'll maybe give it a shot, especially like with the timeline stuff being as it is, like, it's gonna be tricky." So it's kind of like, I think at this point, it's not like, "Is everything gonna die?" It's like, "Is there a way to un-kill everything?" And honestly, a big part of me is because like, honestly, I think Steve has historically been like a great CEO.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Like, he's not, like, he founded the company, so he's not coming in here as like a Wall Street business guy, like, trying to, you know, finagle the numbers. Like, he deeply understands Reddit. And I think he's in tune with that community aspect where you can't just bullshit them and they'll eat it all up. Like, he knows Reddit. And I'm hoping that like, over the weekend and seeing kind of the feedback here, that he sees that and says like, "The community feels very passionately about this, and there's a way to kind of heal this, where I can come up the good guy, and just make everyone happy just by giving like a few concessions, rather than having this kind of like explode further and get out of control." Like, it's, to me, it feels like there's a very clear, easy win for him and Reddit that they can make, that a small part of me is like, it would almost be silly not to,

• 44:04Speaker 03

  just because it would be so easy. But I'm also going into this blackout like, no expectations. Like, if it happens, it happens, but I kind of don't want to set myself up for like, hyping this up, being like, "Yeah, I'm gonna have a job again," when that might not be the reality.

• 44:16David Pierce?

  Have you thought about what happens next if Apollo goes away? You're gonna go build a Twitter app, and just because you're a masochist.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  No, I was thinking if The Verge had any junior journalist positions open or anything, like, I might be able to get into that. I have a unique aspect on Apple, maybe.

• 44:33David Pierce?

  There you go.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  But no, I think like last year, when the dynamic island stuff came out on the iPhone, I built like a little almost like digital virtual pet app thing that I caked into Apollo. And then I ended up spinning off into a different app. And that actually makes like a little bit of money on the side. That's actually really nice. So I think I'm gonna kind of take the summer and see now that I've got full time to spend on that, if I can kind of give that any legs and see where that would be like in September or October. But yeah, other than that, I think it's kind of just relax a little bit. I kind of haven't like had any like long term time to relax in like nine years. So it would be, I guess there's some upsides to losing your job.

• 45:07Nilay Patel?

  My greatest regret in life is that I never took a year to be a bartender. I'm just putting it out there. Everyone else can live my dream. I don't think I'm allowed to go be a bartender for a year anymore. Kids got to graduate college before I can do that. And then we'll both be bartenders together. But that's my advice.

• 45:20David Pierce?

  As a long time Apollo user, I beg you not to follow that advice.

• 45:25Nilay Patel?

  What is Reddit but a bar without poos?

• 45:28David Pierce?

  There you go. All right. We should let Christian go here. Christian, anything we should have asked you about? Any other rude things you want to say about Reddit, please?

• 45:34Speaker 03

  No, no, I honestly think like very highly Reddit. And I just really hope they listen.

• 45:40David Pierce?

  All right. Well, Christian, Neelai, thank you both. We got to take a quick break and then we will be back to talk Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, the Vision Pro, Twitter, and whether anyone is really scared of Apple's new headset. We'll be right back.

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• 47:23David Pierce?

  We're back. So as I'm sure you know, Apple launched its Vision Pro mixed reality headset last week. And when it did, everybody immediately started comparing it to one very specific competitor, the Meta Quest, which is kind of the default headset in the market right now. Meta even tried to beat the Vision Pro to the punch. It pre-announced the Quest 3 a few days before we got the Vision Pro. It's not coming out till this fall, but we heard about it way in advance. Then, not long after Apple's announcement, Meta held a huge all hands meeting to talk about a lot of things, as it turns out, including the Vision Pro and a new Twitter competitor that the company is building. The Verge's Alex Heath heard that meeting and is here to talk about it. Alex Heath, hello.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 48:08David Pierce?

  So I want to talk about Meta. Two different things going on here in one meeting, but just to set the scene a little bit here, Apple's about to launch the Vision Pro. Meta launches the Quest 3 in an effort to like front run what Apple is about to launch. And then, Apple launches the Vision Pro. And then Meta, coincidentally, maybe not coincidentally, has an all hands meeting basically right after the launch in which they talked about it. Was this a coincidence, do we think?

• 48:35Speaker 05

  It was a coincidence, actually. It was a wonderful coincidence for me as a Meta reporter who also was on hand to try the Vision Pro, but a coincidence nonetheless.

• 48:45David Pierce?

  Okay. And so I would imagine there were a lot of people at Meta who had been very, very, very curious to see what Apple was going to launch. And as far as I can tell, or at least as far as you reported Mark Zuckerberg saying, "Not afraid. This does not feel like it's going to run them out of business. They're not out here." Like, all the journaling apps are out here being like, "Oh, this is, we're probably screwed now because Apple launched a journaling app." I don't get the sense Meta feels that way about the Quest.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think the context of when and how he was making these comments is important here because this was the first big company-wide meeting that Meta had done since before the pandemic started. They used to do these in the area of the campus in Menlo Park called Hacker Square. It's kind of the original famous Facebook campus. And this was the chance for thousands of leaders across the company to come together in person for the first time in almost three years. And it was Zuckerberg's moment to really address everyone after all the layoffs that Meta's done, the really rough couple of years it's had. And so you got to think, in his mind, this is a rallying cry moment. This is a moment to get the troops excited about the company's vision and also, of course, talk about competition.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  And yeah, I would say you could hear it even in his voice as he starts to talk about the Quest 3, which was the headset that they pre-announced right before Apple. And as he's talking about the price, he starts to really get into the Apple comparison.

• 50:12Speaker 06

  You know, we made some major advances here. And a lot of those advances, you know what they do? They go towards making the device $500.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  And you can hear in his voice that there's definitely a view inside Meta that their ability to price this thing at $500 is going to be a real competitive advantage, at least for the next couple of years. And I think they're right. You know, Zuckerberg talked about, you know, "We've already sold tens of millions of Quests. We're going to probably sell millions of the Quest 3." And meanwhile, Apple is rumored, and I've heard, to sell maybe only a million of the Vision Pros in its lifetime as a device. So for the next couple of years, the headset market is still Meta's. Now, we know that Apple has a history of coming in at the high end with new product categories and then iterating, bringing down the cost curve.

• 51:03Speaker 05

  Of releasing cheaper devices. They're already working on a cheaper vision device that I've heard about that probably won't come out for at least a couple of years, but they're going to be coming down in price over time. So, you know, ask Zuckerberg again in a few years how he feels.

• 51:17David Pierce?

  Well, that's the thing I'm kind of wondering is the other thing that Apple has a habit of doing is launching a product. And then its primary competitor says something to the effect of, we're not scared. This is nothing. BlackBerry said it. Nokia said it. Bill Gates said it. Like, this is a thing that Apple keeps doing.

• 51:34Speaker 05

  I mean, Steve Ballmer, David, that's the most classic, like,

• 51:36David Pierce?

  Absolutely.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  After I reported on these comments that Zuckerberg made about the Vision Pro saying basically, you know, we're going to be okay. Everyone was sharing those clips of Steve Ballmer laughing at the introduction of the iPhone all those years ago and the price of the thing.

• 51:50David Pierce?

  That's exactly right. So I, and I think there, there's kind of two genres of that, right? There's the one that's the kind of, we're not scared, rally the troops thing, even though you are scared. And then there's the other thing where you genuinely aren't scared. And historically speaking, those have a tendency of not working out super well for the people who don't think they need to be scared. Which do you think is true of Mark Zuckerberg right now? Was that a thing to kind of, you know, be good for morale within Meta? Or is he actually not worried about what the Vision Pro is at this moment?

• 52:18Speaker 05

  I think it's too early for them to tell. No one at Meta has tried the thing. You and I are only one of the lucky few that have actually. And Zuckerberg made a note about that, you know, he hasn't obviously tried it. I think where he felt some solace, and I'm not quite sure I agree with this interpretation, but where he felt, you know, okay, was that Apple is really positioning this device as a general purpose computing, personal device. It's not really something that they're seeing, at least initially as a gaming platform or a social platform. If you noticed in their keynote that you and I were there for at Apple Park or in their promotional materials for the Vision Pro,

• 52:59Speaker 05

  pretty much everyone is by themselves wearing the thing, right? Staring into space with their eyes peering through, which I think was actually a little bit bizarre on Apple's part, but that's a whole nother tangent. And Meta, meanwhile, is the social media company and whether they're doing it right or not. I would say that Horizon, their 3D social world experiment for the Quest has been a utter disaster. And they know this so far, but they're trying to position it as a social. You know, Zuckerberg has talked to me and others about really the magic of this technology is the feeling of presence. Feeling like you're with someone physically, even when you're not. And, you know, I will say like on past Quest demos I've done with him and other execs. Like even as the legless, you know, early Sims looking avatars that they have.

• 53:43Speaker 05

  It's true that like this medium does give you that sense of presence. And Apple's going at that as well. They're just, they're doing it in a slightly different way, in a way that's a little more broad. And I think Apple's going to do its classic thing where it's going to let developers come up with the killer use cases here. And Meta is way farther ahead on that track. They've already got dozens of premium game titles for the Quest. They've got a whole fitness category with supernatural and social experiences as well. So, and beyond all that, I think if Apple had come out with, say, a thousand dollar Vision device. That wasn't a Pro device, that was a mass market, direct Quest competitor, that was maybe just like double the price. I think you would have a very, very different tone from Zuckerberg and Meta.

• 54:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's when we would have gotten Mark promising everyone that he's not scared for sure. Like not, I'm definitely not scared, not at all, nothing to be scared about, everything's totally fine. It's not a problem. That would have been the tone if this thing had been a thousand dollars. But I do think like to your point, there were two things that he said that you reported on that really jumped out to me. One was that the thing he took away from the Vision Pro announcement was that Apple hasn't come up with magical solutions to the things that make this really hard, which I thought was really interesting and really true. Because the thing that Apple did was say, we're going to make all of this really good and it is going to cost $3,500. And the sort of vibe coming from Zuckerberg in that moment is like, yeah, sure, we can make a good one of these too. It would also cost $3,500.

• 55:09David Pierce?

  And so for him to say, you know, they have not found a magical solution to the problems that we're all trying to solve in this space. I thought was really interesting. And then the other piece of it is exactly what you're saying and it's the social thing. And I think there's a whole other podcast we should probably do at some point. About how Apple talked about this, but it is so bizarre to me that Apple came out and was like, we don't want to sell you a device that goes into the metaverse, where you put on a headset and disappear from the real world and it's totally antisocial thing. And then they just showed people sitting on couches alone. And then Meta comes out and it's like, we don't want you sitting on couches alone. We just want to strap you into a headset through which you totally disappear from the real world and go somewhere else. And it's like, both of these companies are sort of saying the same dig at each other from completely opposite directions.

• 55:52David Pierce?

  And I kind of think they're both right and I just cannot wrap my head around this. And this goes back to, I guess, like you were saying this all last week when we were in Cupertino. It was like, these companies are trying to do the same thing. They're just coming at it from totally different directions.

• 56:04Speaker 05

  They are. And like, you know, as, you know, we've gotten to experience the Vision Pro, you and I, and most people haven't. And yeah, you're right. Apple's marketing materials position it as this thing. And they talk about the spatial awareness and letting people come in and out of the frame. And that's a really cool experience. You know, we both saw that and experienced it, the pass through. The Quest 3 is going to have full color pass through as well. And it's going to have a heavy emphasis on mixed reality, so not full immersion, more so than any device Meta has done to date. It's not going to have as high quality of pass through as Apple because it's not $3,500. You can see the contrast in how Apple approached the product. And that was what Zuckerberg was talking about, where they clearly were going, we want to achieve a level of visual fidelity, richness, latency,

• 56:48Speaker 05

  that feels as close to the real world as possible. And, you know, in my demo of the Pro, I got that, right? There were no pixelations on text on Safari, whether it was way up close to my face or way on the corner of the room, right? The Quest is different, right? You're not going to be like reading a long article in the Quest. It's not a good experience because the graphics aren't that good. So Apple guided towards this experience. And it turns out that in the year 2023, if you want to have that experience, it's costs $3,500 with Apple margins. So Meta, on the other hand, is going, how much technology can we pack into a lightweight? You know, the Quest 3 is going to be 40% slimmer than the Quest 2. How much technology can we pack into a headset that we can sell for as cheap as possible? And this is

• 57:33Speaker 05

  Ultimately, where all this goes is Apple is a hardware company where they make money by selling devices primarily. At least for now, that's going to change over time. Meta is an advertising company and they see seeding the world with these devices. As part of that long term strategy to eventually just make money the way they always do through software, through services, through advertising. You know, can you imagine like the Facebook ad system, but over your reality, right? Which is like as dystopian as you want to think of it as, right? But that's, that's where they're going. So that's where they ultimately are approaching this differently. And what I think was giving Zuckerberg a little bit of that confidence that you hear from the meeting that I listened to.

• 58:13Speaker 05

  But again, like talk to me and him again in three years and it's going to be potentially a very different situation. I will say, and this is something I just noticed being at Cupertino and then listening and watching the, the meta meeting the week after. Is there's a real palpable difference in conviction from Zuckerberg about this technology? And about the importance of it to his company's future versus Apple. I think for Apple, it's going to be perfectly fine if the Vision Pro and that entire category just doesn't work out. I think Tim Cook wants it to be his legacy, but I'm not sure he's really sold on the device as it exists today. The rumors at Cupertino were that he just isn't a big fan of the device, frankly. And that he's waiting to just see what happens with the category.

• 58:56Speaker 05

  And he is really looking ahead to AR glasses, which is that lightweight, everyday pair of, you know, wearable computing you put on your face that you can take out with you. That's potentially a much bigger market and that's exactly what Mark Zuckerberg thinks as well. So they're both going at that direction, but like you said, in very different ways.

• 59:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's not nothing that we didn't see a single Apple executive wearing a Vision Pro. And you talked about this in command line, your newsletter, whichever they should go subscribe to. And when Meta announced the Quest 3, it was along with several pictures and video of Mark Zuckerberg wearing a Quest 3. Like, that's not nothing.

• 59:30Speaker 05

  It's not nothing, but also like that may be not a good marketing decision based on how you feel about Mark Zuckerberg. Like, I'm not going to say that they're making the right call there necessarily.

• 59:40David Pierce?

  I mean, he's wearing like a tactical vest and a Quest 3, like it's not the greatest look of all time.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Greatest look, but.

• 59:44David Pierce?

  But at least he believes in his product.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, you've got the CEO being very excited and it's just a very rich tech business rivalry story because the reason he's so passionate about this is really because of Apple and because of how Apple has had its thumb over Facebook during the mobile era with things like app tracking transparency, all these App Store sagas that they've had with Facebook. You know, it's well-known at this point that Apple and Facebook are kind of ideological opposites. And that's been a real point of pain, I would say, for Zuckerberg and Facebook over the last decade plus. And what really drove a lot of this work he's doing on headsets and the metaverse and wanting to shift to, you know, mixed reality computing is let's

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  try to come up with the next computing paradigm that may eventually supplant mobile and be a leader in that category and have our own platform so that we're not beholden to Apple this time again. You know, I think back to when I interviewed Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth probably in 2018, 2019, and he told me something that has stuck with me about all this Apple stuff where he said, "We don't know that if whenever Apple eventually comes out with a headset, if they would even let us on it. So we have to create the hardware to give us space for this next medium." So they were already looking ahead to this moment all those years ago and thinking about this. And I really do think that animates a lot of the tension between the two companies today.

• 1:01:12David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's super interesting. And speaking of companies with whom Meta has a lot of tension, let's talk about Twitter and Threads, which is the other thing that you learned from this meeting where Chris Cox, who runs product at Meta, told the audience a lot more about this Twitter competitor that we've been hearing about for a while. Walk me through it. What did we learn?

• 1:01:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, so there's been reporting on this from our friend Casey Newton and others kind of leading up to this, that Meta has been quietly building some kind of social media app that's going to directly compete with Twitter. It's going to be text-based, interestingly, be based off of Instagram. So you'll be able to bring your Instagram network with you to the new app on day one. And I would say probably Most interestingly, it's going to integrate with Activity Pub, which, as we've talked about on The Vergecast and on The Verge a bunch, and you wrote that great feature about David, is this decentralized social media protocol that Powers Mastodon and a bunch of other apps. Think of it like email for social media, where you can take your data with you between different email apps. And so during this big Meta All Hands,

• 1:02:17Speaker 05

  it was the first time that leadership had acknowledged that this new product was coming to employees and really gave the high-level pitch for it. Chris Cox, the head of product for all of the social media apps at Meta, framed it directly as the company's answer to Twitter, is what he called it, and had this little line kind of throwing shade at Elon Musk and how he's handled Twitter that got a pretty good reaction from the audience.

• 1:02:41Speaker 06

  Based on a lot of research we've been doing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is safely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon distribution, safety, ease of use, reliability, and a way of paying attention to what they care about and making sure they have a stable place to build and grow their audience.

• 1:03:03David Pierce?

  So here's my question about this. Why on earth would Meta do this? Because there have been people saying Meta should just eat Twitter alive for forever. And Twitter has been a mess for forever. Twitter has never made any money, ever. And we're still in this position where Twitter is a disaster of a platform and has been for a very long time. Everything Meta makes is more popular than Twitter. Twitter is ju-- it's just a hellhole. Like, why on earth would Meta decide this is the moment when Twitter is collapsing and the world is looking for something else, this is the time they want to get into this? And not only that, they want to integrate with Activity Pub, which is this new thing that everybody thinks is going to replace it, but is also presumably going to be much harder to really scale and really monetize because it is decentralized.

• 1:03:48David Pierce?

  I just don't understand, if I'm Chris Cox, why this is worth spending time on right now.

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  It's a good question. Before I answer it, did you all see Zuckerberg talk about this on Lex Friedman last week?

• 1:03:58David Pierce?

  No.

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  Zuckerberg was interviewed by Lex Friedman recently and was asked about this. And I thought his answer is pretty illuminating.

• 1:04:06Speaker 07

  You know, I've always thought that sort of a text-based kind of information utility is just a really important thing to society. I always thought that Twitter should have a billion people using it.

• 1:04:18David Pierce?

  And that is something Instagram and Facebook have never really competed with. It brings up its own challenges, as we've seen from Twitter over the years. But that is something, like the thing where cable news is basically just anchors reading tweets. I can see why, if I'm Mark Zuckerberg, I would have been jealous of that for a long time.

• 1:04:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, Facebook has had this really long, interesting, I don't know what the right word is, fascination with trying to copy Twitter. And it's never worked, so I'm not sure it's going to work this time. Meta also has a pretty disastrous track record of launching standalone apps on its own. The app name that there is the current working name for this new Twitter competitor is called Threads, which was another standalone Instagram app that was launched, I don't even know when, semi-recently, at least within the last five years, and was shut down because no one used it. So it's kind of poetic in that way.

• 1:05:09David Pierce?

  Next thing, it'll be IGTV again, competing with YouTube. Like, we're just going to recycle all of these old ideas.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I've been covering Facebook long enough to remember when they changed the news feed, gosh, probably in 2012 era, around then, to focus more on real-time updates and public figures instead of your friends and family. And that was because Mark Zuckerberg was seeing the rise of Twitter. Twitter was in the process of going public and people thought, wow, maybe this is the next billion-plus-user platform to rival Facebook. And so Facebook changed the feed to focus more on news. Fast forward to today, and Facebook is actively trying to downrank and de-emphasize news and public content in the feed. So it is an interesting time to be doing this. And I would say that everyone in the social media industry is just looking at Elon's handling

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  of Twitter and going, can we somehow slide in here? Is there an opening? And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, if nothing, is very competitive and wants to take opportunistic shots. And I think that's really all they see this as. This, they're calling it Project 92 internally, which is the year that the first text message was sent. And it's kind of bold, I think, for them to even try this right now, just because, you know, I don't know if, like, people want the Twitter experience anymore. It seems like there's a lot... A lot of companies trying, none have really taken off. And then on the decentralized side, Activity Pub is growing, but it's still not mainstream. Blue Sky, which I'm also interested in, which is a rival to Activity Pub, is even smaller.

• 1:06:40Speaker 05

  So on day one, Meta coming in here will make Activity Pub at least 10x bigger. They'll be the biggest server on Activity Pub immediately. What that does for the rest of the ecosystem is interesting. I think it's important to explain maybe why they're even thinking about this app working with Activity Pub. If you look at what happened with Twitter, all of a sudden, I think a bunch of power users of Twitter, myself included, went, oh, wow, like, this can just be taken away. Like, the company can just be bought and either shut down, or Elon can start banning people, or banning links, banning your ability to monetize. It started to feel really fragile. And the promise of Activity Pub is that even if one server on the network goes down,

• 1:07:23Speaker 05

  you can take your entire following graph, your account information with you to another server. So if you're a public figure, if you're, you know, I reported and they said in the meeting, they're talking to Oprah, big celebrities like that to come on to this app on day one. I would imagine that part of a good pitch is, look, even if we decide, you know, Meta, the company, that we're not going to support this app, you know, five years from now, for whatever reason, you're at least going to still have all that, you know, account and follower information and posting that you've done, built on Activity Pub, and you could take it to Mastodon, you could take it to another app. It's not locked into our ecosystem.

• 1:07:56David Pierce?

  Right. In a sense, it's actually like a really confident swing from Instagram. Because they're saying, the bet then is that just by virtue of having a big network, lots of people already use it, and they have really good monetization tools, that they can be like, yeah, we're an open platform. We're still going to win because we have all of these other tools around it that we can offer. And even as I'm saying this, that's a kind of a really compelling pitch. It might work.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, you know, even outside of Activity Pub, I've always found it fascinating that like the largest social media company in the world still needs to go to Twitter to like announce things, right? You know, Zuckerberg famously doesn't tweet from his at Fink account anymore, though I know he lurks on there. But you've got other top Meta executives posting there all the time. Sharing product announcements, the kinds of things that we come to expect on Twitter. I think that kind of annoys them, and it has for a long time, that people don't come to their properties for those kinds of updates. And this is, again, the largest social media company in the world by a wide margin. So I have to imagine internally, there's also just this feeling of, man, it's probably going to feel great to finally just have a bit of this energy that

• 1:09:01Speaker 05

  we've never been able to capture with Twitter. They're definitely going to try, you know, whether it works, I don't know. I think using Instagram is actually really smart, because if you think about the kinds of celebrities and social graphs on Instagram, and when I say social graph, I just mean relationships between who is following who, it actually probably mirrors Twitter more than you would think. And it's definitely Metas closest Twitter-like social graph. So I think it's smart for them to use that instead of WhatsApp or a whole new account system for this. So they're going to have a lot of advantages going into this, and it's really just going to be on them to execute and build something that, like Cox said in the meeting, is quote, "sanely run."

• 1:09:42David Pierce?

  Totally. Well, it seems like this is happening fast, so we're going to have to keep talking about this, because I also, there's a whole Fediverse response to this that's been really interesting. We're going to have to come back to all of that. For now, we need to take a break, and then we're going to talk about Apple's new computers, and whether a 15-inch MacBook Air is the magical laptop we've been hoping for. Thank you, Alex. Appreciate it, as always.

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  Thank you.

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• 1:11:25David Pierce?

  Welcome back. Last week, in addition to the Vision Pro and all that new software at WWDC, Apple also announced a couple of new Macs: a 15-inch MacBook Air, a new Mac Studio, and a new Mac Pro. The Verge's Monica Chin spent the past few days reviewing the MacBook Air and I think just got the Studio and the Pro in office to test them out. So, we should get into all of them. Let's get around here and talk about it. Hey, Monica.

• 1:11:49Speaker 10

  Hello, hello.

• 1:11:50David Pierce?

  How is it? I feel like every once in a while, a few times a year, you're thrust into what I like to call like pure MacBook hell. Are you deep in it now? How does it feel?

• 1:11:59Speaker 10

  Yeah, this is one of those things where like, in the morning in our Slack, everyone posts like a long list of what they're working on, and I just write "Apple" for two weeks straight, and no one questions me. It's kind of wonderful.

• 1:12:10David Pierce?

  That's about right. So, there are three computers coming out: one you've tested, two you're about to test. I want to talk about all of that. But let's start with the 15-inch Air, which is the one you've had a chance to review so far. The rap on this when it came out was, "It is a MacBook Air, it is all the things you think about a MacBook Air, it's just bigger now." Is that true? Like, is that kind of how it came out in the review also?

• 1:12:31Speaker 10

  That is entirely correct. It is a... 13-inch MacBook Air, but it is now 15 inches.

• 1:12:36David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:12:37Speaker 10

  It is really remarkably similar. The experience using it is very, very similar, but the screen is a lot bigger.

• 1:12:43David Pierce?

  Okay, so we've been debating on this show now for, what, like 10 days? Why Apple took so long to launch this thing? But I haven't asked you, and I'm curious. As someone who pays a lot of attention to this space, this is the kind of thing Apple could have done many years ago. It's not like there is some earth-shattering new idea about 15-inch laptops in here. Where has this thing been?

• 1:13:02Speaker 10

  Wait a minute, guys.

• 1:13:03David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 10

  So I think there are kind of two things, and of course, I can only really speculate. One is that in the past several quarters, PC shipments have been very slow. It's been a much better story for Apple than it has for pretty much every other PC manufacturer that we cover here. But Apple has still seen a large decline in its sales and its shipments since like the golden age, and I hate to call it that. But for these companies, it kind of was in 2020 and early 2021 when everyone was buying this stuff. So a lot of companies, companies in the PC space writ large have sort of been tasked with, how do we convince people to keep buying stuff when the stuff they bought in 2020

• 1:13:46Speaker 10

  is still like not particularly old, like it's not falling apart yet? How do we keep this market exciting? And companies have tried various different things. Like, we've had companies that are trying to do fancy AI stuff. We've had like HPs doing this whole customer service thing and calling itself a solutions provider now. And I would not be surprised if this was like, you know, Apple's trying to figure out, how is it going to reach new audiences? And how is it going to release something that is going to create a news cycle around the products that it's putting out right now?

• 1:14:18David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's, it's an interesting thing because I think one of the things you did in your review was basically make a list of all the weird things PC manufacturers are doing to try to get people to buy laptops.

• 1:14:27Speaker 10

  Some pretty weird stuff out there.

• 1:14:29David Pierce?

  Oh, my God, it's insane. And like seeing it all listed in a row is pretty wild. Like, all the new screens they're trying, and they're like, what if we put the keyboard in a new place? And it's like, don't do that. Like, it's fine. We figured this out a long time ago.

• 1:14:39Speaker 10

  Yeah, we got invisible touchpads out there. We got dual screens. We got all this. So that's, um, I sort of made this clear in the review, but I personally, I'm glad that, you know, they released their VR headset that was, you know, big and flashy and, you know, no one's gonna buy, you guys have talked about that to death. I'm glad they released this as well because this is a thing that people actually want and have been asking for and that they, a need that they weren't meeting before. So I hope that this was partially response to, to that need. The other thing, and in terms of like why it took so long, I do think this is a more niche product than the 13 inch MacBook Air. Um, I think there are probably at the moment in the current market, fewer people who want something like this than who want something like a 13 inch MacBook Air.

• 1:15:21Speaker 10

  And so I think it, you know, it kind of makes sense that they did this one last. I think it's probably a smaller market, but I, that doesn't mean there aren't tons of people who want it. I think there very well might be.

• 1:15:31David Pierce?

  Okay. Yeah. So let's, let's talk about kind of the pros and cons of 15 versus 13. Cause I, if I'm just thinking about it off the top of my head, it would seem to me that the two best reasons to buy a 15 inch laptop over a 13 inch laptop, if in fact they are essentially identical otherwise, is just more screen size, right? Like I can just do more stuff on the screen and battery life, that because the thing is bigger, there's more space to put battery. Those strike me as like the two most obvious things. Did those both pan out in your review? Like how much difference is two inches of screen in actual life?

• 1:16:07Speaker 10

  So the screen is definitely, is the major reason.

• 1:16:09David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:16:09Speaker 10

  The screen is huge. I've been sort of going back and forth between this and like the 13 inch M1 MacBook Pro that Work gave me for the past couple of days. And like, after having used this 15 incher over the past weekend or so, writing the review, I really did get used to it, you know, being able to just have two tabs open and like zoom out maybe once or like not at all. And just be able to see everything and like not have to scroll that much and like really have, when I, when I write reviews, I tend to have like a ton of things open. Cause I have like my spec sheet, I have the, the product purchase page, I have like our hands on, I have like my draft, and then I have like my other draft where the stuff I cut goes. Like I have a ton of stuff. I'd really like to be able to see as much of it as I

• 1:16:53Speaker 10

  I can and get between it all really fast. And a lot of the stuff I'm reading is like really long and requires a lot of scrolling to get to where I'm going. Um, it was just a lot less work to do that kind of thing on this like gigantic screen. And I really got used to being able to have two, even three things over time that I could just really quickly reference. And to sort of being able to see like my entire draft without having to scroll. And then when I went back to the 13 inch Pro like yesterday morning, um, I was like, oh, this sucks. I had to, I was like, oh my goodness, I have to zoom out like seven times to be able to see like the whole verge homepage. Oh, when it's, when it's in snap layout, oh, this is the worst.

• 1:17:31David Pierce?

  Yeah, two full sized windows or very close to it sounds pretty nice. Like I, I always think about, I've been using a 13 inch laptop basically exclusively for many years. I've kind of forgotten what it's like to have a 15 inch. But then I sit down next to an Eli who has like a 16 inch Pro. And it is like the biggest roomiest looking thing. And I don't have to put Google Docs down to 70% just to see the whole text column. Like two inches does, I think, make a big difference. Yeah.

• 1:17:56Speaker 10

  It's massive. And for multimedia as well, you really get, it feels more immersive to me. And that might not be the case for everyone, but like when I'm watching like my YouTube videos or whatever I watch at night, like, I'm just like, oh, I can really see like details that I wouldn't necessarily see watching on a 13.

• 1:18:12David Pierce?

  Totally.

• 1:18:12Speaker 10

  So it, it does, I think it significantly, it's a lot more room. It feels like a lot more room. Um, if you're someone who wants like as large of a screen as possible on a MacBook, but you don't want to pay for the 16, like this will level up your experience. Uh, in terms of battery life, I do get more out of this than I get out of the 13 inch Air. It was not like a massive difference. And I would say the testing I have right now is kind of in the margin of error. So it does have a bigger battery. It has a bigger screen that it's powering as well. I would not buy the larger one just for the battery life over the 13 inch Air, the 13 inch Pro at this point. But I, I did get like a little bit more. Uh, they, what I would say to that though, also is they all just have such long battery life.

• 1:18:54Speaker 10

  I don't know that, I think for a lot of people, it's probably going to be a diminishing returns situation.

• 1:19:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's, that's very fair. So, and actually we were debating this on the show. I'm curious what your, your take is. Would you make trades in other ways? Like if it made the laptop a little heavier or a smidge slower or whatever in exchange for like six more hours of battery life? Would that, would that mean something to you? Or have we kind of hit that plateau where it's like, it lasts all day? You really don't have to think about it. That's good enough.

• 1:19:20Speaker 10

  So at a certain point, I think that, you know, that's totally subjective and it's like what you like.

• 1:19:25David Pierce?

  I'm firmly in the good enough category, but like Neil, I felt very strongly that like, give that man three days of battery life and he's a happy man.

• 1:19:31Speaker 10

  Yeah, like I, I mean, if you look at, if you're asking about like my personal preferences, like you look at what I use, I use 13s in my personal life. And that's because for me, there's a point at which the battery life is fine. It's probably around like 12, 13 hours. And after that, like portability is super, super important. So like, I don't own a 16 inch MacBook Pro, even though that is like some of the longest battery life that I get, um, because that's just, it's too expensive. And also it's just, it's really, really heavy. Um, and I, I like to carry things around with one hand and I liked, also I have to carry like seven laptops around at any given time. So I need the lighter, the lighter, the better for me and my back. But you know, I think if you, you know, some people want a

• 1:20:11Speaker 10

  a super, super light thing. That's like a Windows laptop that has only like six hours of battery life and more power to you, but that's, that's not enough for me. I need to not have to think about my outlets that much.

• 1:20:22David Pierce?

  Yeah, I buy that. Okay. So were there any other sneaky upsides to upgrading from 13 to 15?

• 1:20:28Speaker 10

  Yeah, the speakers are fantastic.

• 1:20:30David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:20:31Speaker 10

  They're really, really good. The bass is like very, like, you know, I listen to the audio on this stuff all the time. The bass is usually like inaudible or super tinny. This bass is really good. Um, when I, I mentioned this in the review, but when I first started playing like my Apple music on this, I like, thought it was coming out of a speaker. I was like, where, where is connected to? It's really good. It has a nice surround quality. I think in terms of multimedia consumption, this is like probably one of the best devices you can get.

• 1:21:01David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:21:02Speaker 10

  Like the combination of the giant screen and like the really immersive speakers. Like I can't think of a better TV watching experience that I've had on a device, if that's what you're looking for.

• 1:21:11David Pierce?

  Nice. So, and the interesting thing about that is it seems like what Apple did is instead of just shoving all the battery possible into the bigger chassis, which is what a lot of manufacturers would do. They actually use some of that space to stick more speakers in. And I think to your point about diminishing returns, I think like good audio is worth that space to me more than like another couple of hours of battery life. So that, that makes me very happy.

• 1:21:34Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35David Pierce?

  And also like everyone else needs to figure this out. I feel like the fact that no PC manufacturers are out here pushing as hard as Apple on making the thing sound good. So I don't have to plug in headphones all the time is like, please, everybody else get on board.

• 1:21:48Speaker 10

  Yeah, it is definitely the best speaker experience I've had from this category this year. It's really, I, that was a treat. I was not even really setting out to test that functionality, but that is, that is worth mentioning.

• 1:22:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's awesome. So, all right, so downsides. The downside, I would assume, is just that it's bigger. Like, like both physically bigger and heavier and presumably thicker. And like, how much bigger are we really talking about here in like day-to-day use?

• 1:22:15Speaker 10

  So it's very thin. So I wouldn't worry about like, you're suddenly not gonna be able to fit it in your briefcase when you can fit a 13 in your briefcase. It is like, it is very noticeably heavier. And I know, like, people have been coming at me for this. I understand. I invite you to come to me. I deserve it to an extent. I just, I, I, this is, I want to be clear, this is not me complaining like, oh, it's too heavy for me. This is me making sure, I want people to be aware, if they've never used a 15 incher before, that they are heavier than 13 inchers. And if you are buying this expecting that because it has the word "AIR" in its title, that it's gonna be like 2 pounds, it is not nearly as, it is more than half a pound lighter than 13 incher. I meant, I made this comparison

• 1:22:58Speaker 10

  in the review, but it is much closer to the weight of the Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop than it is to the 13 inch MacBook Air.

• 1:23:05David Pierce?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:23:06Speaker 10

  And again, in the 15 inch category, it is very light, though it is not the lightest 15 inch laptop you can buy. But it is, it is light for the category. But I want to make sure people know that if you're, if this is sort of your first venture into 15 inch, into 15 inch laptops, like, these things, these are heavier, heavier devices than you will be used to.

• 1:23:24David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Speaker 10

  And I, the reason I think that's worth, you know, noting is that the AIR, like a big part of the AIR's value in the past has been, it's really, really light. And that's what I, one of my favorite things about the 13 inch AIR is that, 13, 16 inch AIR, is that carrying it around really feels like you're carrying nothing. And that is not the case with 15 inch AIR. It's heavier, you feel it. Like, I had to walk around with it in a tote bag for a while. That was not my favorite thing to, thing to carry in a tote bag. It is not quite the same experience. Again, if you've used 15 inchers all the time, this might feel light to you. But if, if this is your first 15 incher, just be prepared, it's heavier. It's over 3 pounds.

• 1:24:01David Pierce?

  The thing that's very exciting to me about this is that trade-off feels like something that is going to be very obvious and people are going to kind of be able to self-select into, right? In the way that like if I want to decide which iPad to buy, it is immensely complicated and I have, we have to ask a thousand follow-up questions before we can figure out what iPad you should have. If you want to buy a MacBook Air, it's like, okay, do you want the lighter, slightly smaller one? Or do you want the one with more screen that's slightly bigger and slightly heavier? Like, that's it. That's the trade. That's exactly how this should work, right?

• 1:24:30Speaker 10

  There's like a little more, you know, the 15-inch Air like performed a little bit better in our benchmark testing than the 13-inch Air did. There's more cooling. It did not perform quite as well in most cases, in most synthetic cases at least, as the 13-inch Pro, which has a fan, did. So it kind of sat squarely in the middle between those two. I also think like, people who are shopping for the Air, like, probably the synthetic benchmark performance, like, is not as relevant to you all.

• 1:24:58David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 1:24:59Speaker 10

  Like, I, you know, having used all these for like, as I mentioned before, like, lots of internet things and like, typing in my draft while referencing a spec sheet, like, there is not a noticeable difference between any of these when doing that. They are all fast. It is all fine.

• 1:25:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, I like to think of myself as like, the upper tier of the average user. Like, I don't have any apps I use day-to-day that are like, outside of the realm of being a regular person. I just tend to have more tabs open than most. And for me, still, the M1 Air is like, above what I need performance-wise.

• 1:25:31Speaker 10

  Yeah, like, I have an M1 Pro at my desk that has like, 100, like, YouTube videos minimized right now, because like, I'm just the kind of person, when I want to watch a YouTube video, I minimize it, because I'm organized like that, and it, it works totally fine. I do not need an M2 for that. But if you're someone who thinks you might want to do, like, Lightroom on this or something, but not enough that you want to go up to the Pro, like, that's a difference that's worth potentially looking into.

• 1:25:56David Pierce?

  Right. So, and this is what I was getting to with the comparison thing, actually, because I think the, the Air comparison is mostly pretty straightforward for people. But the question of, do I want a 15-inch Air, or, let's say, a 16-inch Pro?

• 1:26:11David Pierce?

  sorts itself just because it's still a gigantic price difference and you either want to pay for more or you don't. But it seems to me now that the biggest single difference in terms of like what most people will actually experience between these two laptops is the ports, right? And the Air still has the like woefully tiny number of ports that you get on the 13 inch Air and the Pro has at this point a pretty good complement of ports, right? Like is that kind of the main difference between the two at this point?

• 1:26:38Speaker 10

  I mean, the Pro performs, it has significantly better processors in it. So that's what I would say is the main difference. In addition to the many hundreds of dollar price increase.

• 1:26:47David Pierce?

  But again, I think for most people looking to buy these things, they're both still going to be more performant than most people need. So again, like if you know you need what the Pro is, great.

• 1:26:55Speaker 10

  It does matter when you're, if you're someone who's thinking about the Pro versus the Air, I'm assuming that you are doing some kind of photo stuff or your coding or you're doing premiere. And in that case, generally, we would not recommend the Air if you're doing that kind of stuff like regularly. Like we have people in our office who, who like use Lightroom and do a lot of raw photo stuff and they generally have gone for the Pro and have said that the, the Air is not really adequate for what they're doing. So that, that is the main differentiator is the M1 Pro. And if you look at the benchmark comparisons of like our M2 chip, like I'm talking about like I'm comparing all these M2 machines to each other. If you look at this M2 Air model and you compare those benchmarks

• 1:27:38Speaker 10

  to the benchmark scores, especially on graphics stuff that the M2 Pro and M2 Max are getting, it's not even close. Like they are so far apart from each other. So that is the main differentiator. But I do think that similarly to how I, the experience I had on this, the positives of it are similar to the positives of 13 inch Air. I think many of my complaints are still there. The biggest one is the port selection. I know lots of people are totally fine with having two USB C. I think having two USB C, especially on the same side is not my favorite thing. And I think I had hoped that maybe this bigger chassis would allow for at least some on the right side too, because that does offer you a lot of flex. I mean, the headphone jacks over there, but in terms of like where you can charge it or where you can plug peripherals in, I think it offers a lot more flexibility

• 1:28:22Speaker 10

  when you have ports on both sides. For example, my desk, because of the way it's positioned relative to the power outlet, it's going to be very difficult to plug my monitor in on the left side and that is going to, I'm going to have to do some reconfiguring. I don't love that. That is like my own personal thing to work through, but I would love. You know, that is a downside for me when I think about would I buy this? I don't think this port selection would be adequate for me, at least in terms of having them all on the left side. And I think they're fine for some people, but I think it limits the audience somewhat and continues to. On the other hand, this is the port selection Apple put on the previous air. It seems like they have determined based on the sales that that did, that it attracted enough people as is.

• 1:29:03Speaker 10

  So I kind of, you know, I admire that they seem to have figured out what they want the air to be. And they aren't, you know, trying to throw stuff at the wall to make it reach more and more people. And that's something you do see lots of companies do. So.

• 1:29:15David Pierce?

  True. Yeah.

• 1:29:16Speaker 10

  Thumbs up for that, I guess.

• 1:29:17David Pierce?

  Just like, just maybe one more port, Apple. Just, just one.

• 1:29:20Speaker 10

  One on the right side.

• 1:29:21David Pierce?

  One on the right side. That's all I, like, my, my wife has a Galaxy Chromebook. And just the fact that you can plug a power cable into either side of that thing is such a, it's such a lovely little, like, quality of life improvement.

• 1:29:33Speaker 10

  People make fun of me for this all the time. Like, there are always people in my comment section like, oh, like, why? You really need ports on both sides of the wall. It's like, I, I don't think you understand, like, the freedom that you suddenly feel. The weight that is lifted off your shoulders when you can plug a charger into either, or a martyr into either side. It really, it opens up your world in a way that is difficult to describe if you've been using MacBooks your whole life.

• 1:29:56David Pierce?

  You don't have to do that thing where you like, turn it 20 degrees just to be able to get the thing to connect from the wall. It's, yeah, no, it, it is.

• 1:30:03Speaker 10

  Exactly.

• 1:30:03David Pierce?

  Literally life-changing in, in like, the stupidest way.

• 1:30:06Speaker 10

  When I got my new M1 MacBook Pro, I have to say this now. Um, I had, like, I had to get another cord from IT because the one that I had wasn't long enough to reach all the way around the left side. Like, it's, you know, that kind of thing does matter. It's difficult to explain if you're really used to having all your ports on one side or the other. But I think it makes a difference in, in your experience.

• 1:30:26David Pierce?

  Yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm totally with you. So compare this 15-inch air to the Windows stuff that's out there right now. And I feel like we've hit a place where, to, you know, use a pun that I hate as a pun, it's all kind of apples and oranges, right? Like, Apple seems to have just started playing its own game in laptops. But there are a lot of 15-inch Windows laptops out there that are kind of right around in this price range. Is there anything in the Windows world that stands up to what Apple's trying to do here?

• 1:30:53Speaker 10

  In terms of the combination of performance and battery life that this offers, I have not seen anything. The 15-inch lightweight space is already somewhat niche. You know, there are some big, there are some big models, and there are some that are lighter than this. But generally, I think there's sort of a stereotype right now that the 15-incher is the big, powerful one, and the 13-incher is like, the weaker one for

• 1:31:15David Pierce?

  Interesting, sure.

• 1:31:16Speaker 10

  Netflix-ing. And if you look at, obviously, the 15-inch category itself is a huge category, but if you look at where a lot of that revenue is coming from for PC manufacturers, a lot of it is gaming laptops. And the lightweight, sort of ultra-portable quote-unquote 15-inch category is a little bit more of a, I think, seen as a little bit, a little bit more of a niche thing right now. You have models like the LG Gram 15, the Galaxy Book Pro has a couple 15-inch models here and there. And they're, you know, they're fun to use. I like using all of them. But in terms of the, the battery life that this gets, and compared with the, the performance that we've seen on these synthetic benchmarks, this M2 chip just like, offers you a lot more. And I think if you're, if you're someone who's just like,

• 1:32:00Speaker 10

  "Oh, I just want a lightweight 15-inch laptop and 3.3 pounds is my ideal weight point," like, this would be the one I would suggest to you for the moment.

• 1:32:10David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right, real quick before I let you go, the other two Macs are the new Studio and the new Pro. You haven't tested them yet, but I'm super curious, both of these, the Studio in particular, is just like a straight-up chip upgrade, right? Like, has anything else about that thing changed? And the Pro is basically just the Studio with some extra ports. So I'm curious, just like, walk me through the, the testing plan. People want to know, how are you going to actually evaluate these things?

• 1:32:35Speaker 10

  The first big question with the Studio is going to be how much has it improved from the last Studio that we tested? And so, for that, I'll just be doing a really close, like, everything we did on the last Studio, let's do on this Studio. How much of an improvement are we seeing? Then what does that say about these new chips, since this is our first time getting a look at those? Then we're going to look at that versus the Pro. Now, we expect the performance of the Studio and the Pro to be the same, because they're like, everything about them's the same. We'll sort of double-check that and make sure there's no, like, surprise, this one's cooling is terrible, or something. And then, there's another question of just like, why buy the Pro? Why buy the Mac Pro?

• 1:33:14David Pierce?

  I think a lot of people are asking that question right now.

• 1:33:16Speaker 10

  Yeah. Very, very good question. That's going to be a little less up to testing and more of like, you know, talking to people, seeing, you know, are you thinking about buying this? Would you buy this? How much does the PCIE stuff like impact your life? So those are going to be the, those are going to be the three big questions going into it.

• 1:33:34David Pierce?

  Okay. I suspect the Studio has reached a point where it is kind of the default choice for this kind of computer, right? And Apple seems to see it that way, too, that it's like, if you have a crazy system, you need a lot of powerful things for that plug into the ports that the Pro has. Terrific, buy a Pro, it's $7,000. But if you want Apple's most powerful desktop computer, like most people, that answer is the Studio now, right? Is that kind of the operating assumption?

• 1:34:01Speaker 10

  Yeah, I mean, insofar as these things have the same chips in them.

• 1:34:04David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:34:04Speaker 10

  Like, the Studio is nicer looking, in my opinion. It's easier to slot into places.

• 1:34:10David Pierce?

  You don't love the cheese grater? I love the cheese grater.

• 1:34:13Speaker 10

  I mean, maybe there are some people out there who are just like, big fans of, big fans of cheese graters and that's their thing.

• 1:34:18David Pierce?

  I'll pay $5,000 for a cheese grater right now.

• 1:34:19Speaker 10

  Yeah, then you'll be paying a lot more for it, but... So it seems to me like, given how much more expensive the Pro is, like, the burden should be on the Pro to prove why you should pay more money for it. And at the moment, I don't really see intuitively like, why it would be worth that much more. But we're gonna, we're gonna dig in and we're gonna, we're gonna try to find out.

• 1:34:41David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right. Well, thank you. Good luck. I hope you're not in Mac hell for too, too much longer.

• 1:34:47Speaker 10

  Thank you.

• 1:34:52David Pierce?

  All right. Before we go, let's head up the Vergecast hotline and see if we can help somebody out this week. Our question this week comes from Michael.

• 1:35:00Speaker 11

  Hello, this is Michael from Nashville, Tennessee. My wife and I are starting to plan on having children. And I have found that trying to find actual good sources of information on baby tech is a minefield of SEO and just horrible to find actual recommendations on security for tech related to babies. I'm curious if y'all have any recommendations on either specific tech, which would be great, but even more broadly, just how to find good sources of information about that and what to look for to be safe. Just any advice you have on that would be

• 1:35:45Speaker 11

  great. I appreciate it. Have a great day.

• 1:35:48David Pierce?

  I really like this question in part because as the parent of a six-month-old, I am deep in the middle of all of this right now. But I also like it because it's just a question about how do you trust things on the internet? I will say for me, two things have come in really handy. One is just finding a couple of sources you trust. This is just good advice for anything on the internet. For me, the website Babylist has been incredibly useful. I've just found myself going there and it's kind of like what the wire cutter is for gadgets. Like you can do a bunch of research or you can just buy the thing that I recommend and it works out fine. Babylist is great. There's also a YouTuber called DadVerb that I really like. There's a lot of stuff on Baby YouTube. But DadVerb for me has been somebody who I feel like I trust his taste and he has good ideas about things. And this is the weirdest advice I'm going to give you.

• 1:36:33David Pierce?

  I have found ChatGPT and other chatbots to be incredibly useful for finding baby stuff. Don't trust any of the information that it gives you. But what it's very good at is figuring out like which products a lot of folks talk about. So it kind of gives you a place to start. You can just say like, what are popular strollers? Or what's a bathtub toy that a lot of people like? And it'll just sort of throw options at you. And then you can at least narrow down your research to a handful of things instead of totally starting from scratch with everything. But Michael, mostly know that I feel your pain. It's awful and you do things like Google, why is my baby coughing? And it's a total disaster. Just don't panic and find a couple of places you trust and stick with that. So that's my advice.

• 1:37:13David Pierce?

  But for more advice, I called Jen Patterson-Tue, who is both a parent and our smart home reviewer. So is well-versed in all of the questions about tech in particular that you should bring into your house. Here's what she said.

• 1:37:26Speaker 12

  My sort of number one piece of advice, if you're going to use any kind of video monitoring, is only buy from trusted companies. Companies that you know the brand name, you know the security and privacy. You can read their policies online. Or abbreviated versions of them. You know how this company is going to manage your data. But if you're concerned, you can also do things locally. Apple HomeKit, for example, has a HomeKit Secure Video element that processes all video locally. And so that's a good option. There are a lot of great dedicated baby monitors that are smart, but there's no reason why you can't just use a standard smart home security camera

• 1:38:09Speaker 12

  and adapt it to your needs if you want to do something like monitoring your child. But honestly, I think it's worse as a parent to have a video feed. I think watching your baby all the time is a little, you know, from my personal experience, I think audio is absolutely fine. I don't, you know, I feel like audio is probably the best way. You're more likely to hear something than you are to see something. So audio baby monitors, you know, those work locally over local frequencies in your home, normally 2.4 gigahertz, which is, as we've discussed before, is a crowded band. But it's just as useful to alert you to problems. It's a bit of a minefield, parenting tech. There are lists that they tell you, you need all of this when you have a kid.

• 1:38:51Speaker 12

  And then six months later, there's this pile of boxes that you've never even opened, things. So yeah, wait for the, a use case and then look at specific devices and look into the privacy and security there, rather than like trying to kit everything out beforehand, which can be complicated.

• 1:39:09David Pierce?

  All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There is, as ever, lots more on all the stuff we talked about, especially the Reddit chaos. At theverge.com, we'll put some links in the show notes, but also, you know, read the website. We have a story stream on all the Reddit stuff. It's super helpful. It's a very confusing, weird story and it seems to change all the time. Check that out. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or favorite subreddits that are still alive that you want to talk about, you can always email us at [email protected] or keep calling the hotline. We're going to try and answer a question on here every week. I think we're going to do a whole hotline episode soon. So keep sending us all of your questions, 866-VERGE11. And as again, if you don't want to call, [email protected]. That works great too.

• 1:39:52David Pierce?

  This show is produced by Andrew Moreno and Liam James. Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk presumably more about Reddit, but also Instant Pots, smart homes and lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:40:18Speaker 13

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