The future of Apple: our biggest questions and hottest takes

The Verge's David Pierce, Nilay Patel, and Alex Cranz each discuss the big open questions they have about the future of Apple, and the hottest takes about the company. 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.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of planned obsolescence. I'm your friend David Pierce, and as you probably know, there's a big Apple event coming up really soon. We're expecting new iPhones, new Apple Watches, probably new AirPods, a bunch of new software, all kinds of stuff coming. And that means it is time for what I have come to consider my annual moral obligation, which is to go to the mall, go to the Apple Store, and tell everybody who's shopping for phones not to buy a phone because there's a new one just about to come out. We are also going to be spending this show talking about Apple, but not so much the event. We didn't want to make a bunch of predictions that turn out to be totally wrong, or have feelings about things we don't even necessarily know are coming yet, so we're going to save that all for the Friday show. It's going to be a big one. On this show, we're going to talk more about Apple in general. It's the most valuable company on Earth.

• 0:46David Pierce?

  It makes some of the most influential products that anyone uses, and we want to get into where the company is right now. What changes for Apple now that it's so big and so popular? What are the next big products for Apple? Why is Apple so obsessed with making TVs? Why is Neelai so obsessed with Apple being obsessed with making TVs? We're going to get into all of that. I gave Neelai and Alex some homework, which was to come with big questions and just spicy, spicy takes, and we're going to dig into all of the things we want to know about the future of Apple. But first, before we get to all of that, I need to go save this person who looks like they're about to buy an iPhone 12, which just honestly seems like a terrible idea. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 1:26Speaker 01

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

• 2:11Speaker 01

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

• 2:56David Pierce?

  Welcome back. Okay, Apple questions, Apple hot takes. Let's do this. Neelai, hello.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  Hey, buddy.

• 3:02David Pierce?

  Alex, hello.

• 3:03Alex Cranz?

  Hi.

• 3:04David Pierce?

  Both of you had homework, which was to come with five big or small, but like, open questions about Apple. Things you think are interesting going forward that we're paying attention to and we're going to talk about them and see if we have answers for any of them. And then two, I think I called them overheated takes. And I should just say right off the top, I'm just ruthlessly stealing this from The Ringer. On their fantasy football show, they have a thing called The Take Purge, which is just a whole episode where the hosts just say the things that they don't actually believe, but feel deep in their bones anyway. So we're just gonna, we're gonna steal that from them and do some overheated takes that you don't really believe, but you kind of believe. Alex, you started last. You did your homework while we were sitting here getting ready to record. So you get to go first.

• 3:46Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 3:47David Pierce?

  You get to present first because that's what the cool teacher does, is try to terrorize you in front of everybody.

• 3:52Alex Cranz?

  All right. I really want to know why everybody won't shut up about an Apple car that I have yet to see.

• 3:56David Pierce?

  This was one of mine too, which is, why am I supposed to care that the Apple car is a thing?

• 4:01Alex Cranz?

  Like, I can't care about it. It's hard.

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, at this point, Apple could just follow along with every other carmaker and just show us a 3D render of a car and be like, here's our car. They would just match what every other carmaker is doing. Give us $100 on a preorder. In two years from now, maybe we'll ship a car. And like, maybe that's actually a great business model for Apple. I think a lot of people would give him a hundred bucks for a render. I will answer your question with my first question. How's that?

• 4:27Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  I think this is the biggest open question for Apple.

• 4:30Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Can they find another market that's big enough to make a dent? And is that even the thing they should do? So the reason they are chasing cars and the reason they are chasing health and the reason what they're chasing everything else they're doing is because they need something that will generate enough money to be like 10% of the biggest company that has ever existed on earth. And the only way you can do that is if you eat a whole industry.

• 4:52Alex Cranz?

  I know the industry, though. It shouldn't be cars.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  It's the TVs.

• 4:55Alex Cranz?

  It should be federal government, like, systems. Like, you know, they got Cobalt and all that stuff that's that's basically dead. Nobody's running it. Apple could be that company. Apple could do that.

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  It's all gonna be Swift UI. The buttons won't make any sense.

• 5:10Alex Cranz?

  It'll be great.

• 5:10Nilay Patel?

  Every couple of years, it'll change for no reason. Have you ever wanted to do an insurance claim in piles? Now you can. No, I mean, like, but that's that's their problem, right? Like, the answer to why are they doing a car is the car industry is big enough so that if you become a dominant player in cars, you can tell your investors, you can tell your employees, you can tell everybody who makes money on your stock. We have growth here that is meaningful.

• 5:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like, every question I'm asking, by the way, David, this is my warning to you. All of my questions are just, will they make a TV expressed in slightly different ways?

• 5:44David Pierce?

  That's good, because that's about half of mine, too. So it's gonna be fine. But no, I think it's funny reading that up because I've been rereading The New New Thing, which is Michael Lewis's book from like the late 90s about Jim Clark, who founded Netscape. And it is like precisely what you're describing. It's like guy starts a computer company, gets very big. Guy goes, okay, well, what do I do next? I have to top that somehow. So he starts an internet company, which feels very big, makes a lot of money, gets very excited. And then he's like, okay, well, what do I do next? I have to build something even bigger. And he goes, healthcare. And it's just like, that is the thing, right? It is like, it is this massive industry that seems like it's a mess. And everyone who is like, well, if I can just take a slice of that, I can make a lot of money. And I seem smart, so I bet I can convince somebody that this is plausible. It's like, there's only a handful of those.

• 6:27David Pierce?

  And I feel like cars is one of them and health is one of them. And so it makes sense that Apple just has to keep like pointing at those things. How serious it is, is hard to know. It seems very serious in a way that you can be very serious when you're the richest company on planet Earth. But I don't know how much I'm supposed to believe that there is ever going to be like a good car that people care about and drive that Apple makes. I have no idea.

• 6:52Alex Cranz?

  Couldn't it be like Sony and they just like pivot to party speakers?

• 6:56Nilay Patel?

  As always, I renew my call that if you are on the Sony party speaker team and you've been in the meeting in which the third generation of party speakers has been greenlit, I'll give you the whole show. You'll get a week long of that Vergecast episodes just to talk about that product. So Sony is like the classic example, though.

• 7:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  We don't perceive Sony this way in this country. But Sony, historically, its balance sheet is it's a big insurance company in Japan that happens to make TVs and party speakers.

• 7:24David Pierce?

  Right.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  And they pivoted that company to a much larger business because the consumer business was fading. And that's like, I don't think Apple should sell life insurance, which is something Sony sells in Japan. But you can see why they're moving in the same

• 7:39Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 7:39Nilay Patel?

  general direction, which are what are the next biggest industries? And we had Trip Mickel on the Vergecast several months ago. I was just flipping through his book again about Apple After Steve, which is excellent. And like, this is explicit in Apple's thought process and Tim Cook's thought process. What is the next biggest market I can go after?

• 7:57David Pierce?

  Right.

• 7:57Nilay Patel?

  Because we, in order to grow, we have to attack the big markets. That is what led to the car. It is what has led to a bunch of their health efforts, which by the way, Alex, everyone also keeps talking about.

• 8:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  And has generated virtually nothing. And to some extent, it's why they went to watches instead of TVs.

• 8:13Alex Cranz?

  Well, and it's also why they went to entertainment, right? Like, it's why they went into that space, too.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and it's why they went to services.

• 8:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Nilay Patel?

  They were just chasing revenue. And I don't mean, like, usually when we say that, we mean that as, like, cynically as possible. But in the case of Apple, like, they really had to go chase growth because they were already so big that trying to find another category as big as the iPhone was a less good option than selling iPhone customers more things.

• 8:39Alex Cranz?

  But like, I guess this is not one of my five questions. This is a brand new, fresh question.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy.

• 8:45Alex Cranz?

  Why are they pursuing these really known categories when they effectively invented some categories, right? Like, Apple figured those out and did them really well. And in these other cases, Apple is going to, like, places where there's a really established competitors. Like, what is the disruption to be had? And Apple's like, I know, we're gonna disrupt cars. There feels like there's lower hanging fruit to go disrupt.

• 9:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they're all smaller. I think that's, even the TV industry is, like, too small. That's why Apple won't do it.

• 9:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? And it's that it doesn't turn over enough, and people aren't shopping on their TVs enough. Like, they can't make the case that getting that screen in everyone's living room is more valuable than the screen they already have in everyone's living room, which is the phone.

• 9:28Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  So they might as well just put their software on other people's hardware and then do whatever they're gonna do there, right? There just aren't many industries that are bigger than the iPhone. And so, like, they are, you know, they are inventing, you know, AR glasses. We know they are. We've heard about them. They're gonna start with mixed reality. They're trying to invent a big new category. I just think, in the meantime, because that's gonna take a long time, in the meantime, right, they're trying to run some of the playbook that they've run, which is, everybody hates the software in their car. What if Apple did it? Everybody hates their mobile phone. When Apple, like, they want Apple to replace their Razr.

• 10:01David Pierce?

  Speaking of big industries that Apple should be playing more in, to my first question, which is, when is Apple going to get, like, actually serious about winning at video games? Video games is a gigantic industry. Apple Arcade is, like, kind of working. And to me, it's like, stop making fancy TV shows that win awards but nobody cares about, and like, go buy some video games. Like, make me a game console. Do a game streaming thing. Like, give one whole shit about gaming, and it seems like Apple has, like, real moves to make here.

• 10:29Alex Cranz?

  I think there's a lot of problems, though, right? Microsoft and other companies have consolidated that industry a lot. It's a lot smaller industry than it was. And we talk about indie games and everything, but... Indie games are a relatively small piece of that puzzle. Most people are like Call of Duty and all of that.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:44Alex Cranz?

  And Microsoft is up there being like, nope, we'll take that. We'll take that. And also, they're watching Google. They've seen like Google went and was like, yeah, we're going to get serious about video games. And for most people, serious equates with consoles and doing these big immersive, you know, 20 hour experiences, not what Apple's really good at, which is mobile gaming. And I think they're the biggest in mobile gaming. They're the most successful. So if that serious is console gaming, that would be so bad for them.

• 11:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, there's still a lot of transactions that take place in consoles, right?

• 11:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  The future of all this, though, it has to be streaming. So they're gonna do something. I don't think they're gonna ship AMD processors in a box.

• 11:25Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Nilay Patel?

  That runs an operating system that is largely irrelevant to them playing a game. Apple's version of Game Pass feels like where it would have to go.

• 11:35Alex Cranz?

  Isn't that Arcade?

• 11:36Nilay Patel?

  It is, but that's for mobile games. I think David's question is like, why is it that this huge industry that's growing primarily based on microtransactions, right?

• 11:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Nilay Patel?

  Fortnite is free and you buy stuff in Fortnite. Like, Apple and Epic are in a gigantic fight over the fees of buying things in Fortnite. Mm hmm. But Epic happily pays the fees to Sony and Epic happily pays the fees to Microsoft. Why won't Apple get to that next turn and be like, now, when you play games in your living room, aren't you paying us fees? And I think the answer is they just can't see it. Like, it's been three decades of this question, right? They deprecated OpenGL.

• 12:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  They went with Metal. No one went to Metal with them. They had their own wacky GPU ideas. The industry's, they hate Nvidia. They just hate Nvidia.

• 12:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  One time Nvidia made some GPUs that made MacBooks get hot and Apple is never, and there was a recall and Apple's never forgiven that company and they're like, Nvidia is dead to them.

• 12:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Nilay Patel?

  It's 100% what happened.

• 12:29Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Nilay Patel?

  And it's just like, their aversion to the, to doing the foundational work to be good at games in the current ecosystem of games has kept them away from it forever. I don't think they're averse to, let's build a data center and run games there and stream them to you. But even that data center, what do you need to fill it full of other people's GPUs? You need, that data center probably needs to run OpenGL, like it needs to run DirectX, like whatever it is the games run on, because none of Apple's foundational technologies can run the games.

• 12:58Alex Cranz?

  It comes down to that courting of those developers and those studios, right? And Apple has very little interest there. Like, they've worked with them, they got Capcom to do stuff, they've gotten these big studios that we all know to do some development, produce some games for Arcade. But they're a meme in the game development space. Everybody's like, oh, yeah, Apple. One day they'll do gaming. And I don't know how Apple could ever show that it's serious enough for them to believe it, especially after we saw like, Google be like, yeah, we're serious about gaming. And Stadia frequently becomes a punchline. Sorry, so when I say, oh, no one mentioned Stadia on this, a bunch of Stadia fans come into my Twitter to say that I clearly hate Stadia.

• 13:40David Pierce?

  All four of them that exist, yeah.

• 13:42Alex Cranz?

  All four of them are there saying I hate Stadia. But like, it's, you know, big tech has kind of shown that they want to be interested in this space because they know it's funny. Amazon's doing the same thing with Luna, right? And they're doing it really badly. Everybody isn't participating. The few who are, like Ubisoft, one of the biggest game development studios, yeah, they'll do it, they'll be on everything. Sure, you can play Assassin's Creed on every device that was ever made.

• 14:07Nilay Patel?

  And notably Ubisoft is an indie.

• 14:09Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 14:09Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they need that widespread support.

• 14:12Alex Cranz?

  And most, like, the consolidation of the industry means that it's just really hard for Apple, even if it did decide to be serious about it. And Microsoft is just this elephant in the room.

• 14:22David Pierce?

  Alex, I think to your point, like, the 30 years of not doing this is a really interesting point that I had not thought of. Because it seems to me, like, what we were talking about with streaming is like, this is the moment, right? Like, if you're ever going to say, we, Apple, are serious about like, turning the Apple TV into a game console, which they've like hinted at before and never done in any real way, game streaming would be the moment to be like, this technology all exists, we have an unusual ability to make it all work. And I, one of my like, throwaway, overly hot takes was that if Apple and Epic weren't being sued, Apple would have just bought Epic by now. Which I have no reason to believe that's true, but it's just like, that is a neat solution to a lot of like, things that Apple wants to be in the future. It is an interesting point. I wonder if anyone would take Apple seriously if they were like, we care about games now. Everybody'd be like, yeah, okay.

• 15:07Alex Cranz?

  They also did this big fight too, right? They did this fight with Microsoft and Stadia and all the other streamers where they were like,

• 15:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Alex Cranz?

  No, we don't want you on our service because we don't get a cut of it. And you bypass us entirely. We don't want that. And they were all like, yes, we are not going to give you a cut of a $60 game that somebody buys on our service. F off. We're just going to run out of the browser. And I think Apple has to make a really compelling case for why these companies don't need to run off the browser anymore. And Apple isn't going to do that because Apple wants a cut of the money. And what is the cut that Microsoft and Google are willing to say, yeah, I'll pay that to get my stuff on the Apple TV?

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I'll give you this example, though. Microsoft is going to ship Xbox Game Pass, the streaming version. There's like a lot of bad names in Microsoft world. So Xbox streaming, let's just call it that.

• 15:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Nilay Patel?

  They have been hinting, Phil Spencer said it on Decoder, like they're going to put it on smart TVs.

• 16:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  It's coming. And so that's a deal you got to make with a smart TV vendor. You got to go to a Samsung and LG and Sony, whoever, and say, okay, we're going to start transacting on your platform.

• 16:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  And, you know, there's some business relationship there for sure. You could make that deal with an Apple. Microsoft could make that deal with an Apple and say, okay, we want to be in your box too. And we want to stream games. And Apple could make that deal with Microsoft and say, okay, like, please don't take Office away. We'll like let you onto our thing. Like, there's a lot of leverage on both sides of that agreement, right? Or on both sides of that relationship. And what are the terms? Who knows? The hard part for Apple is Apple now runs effectively a nation state on its phone. Where, you know, it makes effectively legal decisions.

• 16:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  And there's a lot of government regulators and lawsuits that look at those decisions. And Epic will say, why does Microsoft get this preferred treatment? And we don't. And Google will say it. And Amazon will say it. And once you do that, now you've just like opened the door to game streaming on your platform. And you don't get to see inside of the transactions. And I think Apple is just like kind of hamstrung to make a, what should be a no brainer deal with Microsoft to say Xbox game streaming now available on the iPhone. And that's kind of a no brainer deal for Microsoft, right? Like, but I, I think the larger context is then people on a podcast like this will show up and say, what is game streaming? And why, like, why doesn't it, why, why can't I stream apps to the phone and transact inside of the apps? Like,

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  What is a game but a type of application?

• 17:32David Pierce?

  Right.

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  And you just end up, Apple in particular, right now, ends up having to defend these very fine gradations between the kinds of code that run on its platforms.

• 17:41David Pierce?

  Makes sense. Okay, we should keep moving. Neel, we like only halfway did your question, so give us another one. What else on your list?

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, this one just says, why won't you build a TV? Let's say on this thread, I think Apple overreacts to external competitors, the iPhone, a lot.

• 17:58David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  They toe into things and then they realize it's not a real threat, and then they back off and the product fails. And the thing I'm specifically thinking about is the HomePod, right? They were early with Siri and then Amazon showed up with Alexa and Google showed up with Assistant, and Apple completely overreacts to it, right? They think Siri should do all the same things those products should do. They rush out the HomePod, which had been brewing in the background forever, and they couldn't get it together.

• 18:24David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Nilay Patel?

  And they finally are like, all right, we're just gonna let this team do it, and they ship it. And then they're like, wait, these things are not actually eating the iPhone. It turns out an Amazon Alexa is not a viable replacement for the iPhone, even in your home. They're very useful and people like them, and Amazon has nowhere else to bet, so it's gonna bet on it. I don't know what Google is doing with Assistant, neglecting it, I think is the answer.

• 18:47David Pierce?

  It's a round.

• 18:48Nilay Patel?

  It's a round. But you just see Apple kind of like rushed itself into a corner and then forgot to iterate because there was no, the pressure didn't actually exist to compete. And I think this is just sort of a pattern with them. And so the one I would give you right now is we keep hearing about AR from literally Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan podcast, and Apple seems like they're gonna get to market with a super expensive mixed reality headset. Alexi has reported on it. And it just feels like, are they, is this also an overreaction?

• 19:16David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 19:16Nilay Patel?

  Is it they're so afraid of not being dominant in the end that they're gonna make a move and then recognize the pressure isn't there and then like let it wither away, which I think is more or less what happened to HomePod.

• 19:28David Pierce?

  I would also put the watch in that category as things that were kind of an overreaction to what Apple saw as the thing that might kill the iPhone. Like, there was, there was that moment where it was like, okay, the, the future of this all is wearables, right? It's like biometric sensing, more accessible computers on your body. And that was the thing that was going to kill the iPhone, as we've discussed many times.

• 19:48Nilay Patel?

  Tablets, I think they did that to the Mac in some way, right? They, they went all in on tablets because they thought it was going to eat the Mac. And then it turns out the Mac was surprisingly resilient.

• 19:56David Pierce?

  And then they made the Mac good again, and people liked it. Like, it turns out if you just make it good, people will like it. No, I mean, and I think the, the flip side of that is that the iPhone has been like astoundingly durable over time. Like, a lot of things have shown up and nothing has even been any kind of real threat. If anything else, everything else that has happened has like entrenched the smartphone because it is now like the center of all of these universes. That like, you manage Alexa on your phone. Like, that's how you do Alexa. You talk to it on the thing, but you do all the Alexa work on your phone. And Apple has always talked about this, right? That like, if you don't cannibalize your own stuff, somebody else will. But it does kind of feel like Apple is, is like chasing its own demise even when it's not there. It like sees boogeymen everywhere.

• 20:39Nilay Patel?

  If you don't cannibalize your own thing, somebody else will as a, as a statement of confidence.

• 20:43David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  We know what's next. We're going to make the thing that's so good that people won't buy the old thing anymore. And usually, the times they have said that were Steve Jobs introducing a slightly smaller iPod.

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  Just like historically, when Apple says that thing, it's, right? They made a big thing, and now they've made a small thing that's like 85% as good as the big thing. Like, that's the iPod to the iPod mini, that's the mini to the nano, you know, MacBook to MacBook Air, right? Like, there's a pattern to when they say that, but it's usually within the same category. They've rarely done it outside the category. Even the iPhone to the MacBook wasn't that thing in that moment, right? They were like, here's a phone, you have to plug it into your computer to set it up. It took a decade to get there. And I, so I just think lately, Apple has been, it's been reactive to perceived threats instead of creating its own. I mean, this is my other big question, is who will take, take over after Tim Cook?

• 21:38David Pierce?

  Ooh. Okay, wait, let's come back to that one. First, we're going to take a break. We'll be right back.

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• 22:53David Pierce?

  We're back. Okay, so who takes over after Tim Cook? Do you have a theory on this or is this just a genuinely open question?

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  My theory is that it's Jeff Williams.

• 23:01Speaker 06

  We just focus on making products that we're excited about and let the chips fall where they may.

• 23:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's he seems to be like the leader in the clubhouse. Yeah.

• 23:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Nilay Patel?

  He seems like the leader in the clubhouse. Everyone really likes him. He's been becoming more and more prominent, which is a very... Only Apple gets that kind of attention, right? You like to measure the amount of minutes people get on stage. Right? That guy will be the new CEO. Like, no other company does that, or very few. But Jeff Williams is almost as old as Tim Cook.

• 23:26Alex Cranz?

  That seems to be like the big reasoning, right? That everybody says he's not gonna be the person is because we'd be just having the conversation in two years.

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  Or five or whatever. I mean, they're not like elderly. There's no like 65-year-old Apple. It's not like a 1960s iron plant or whatever.

• 23:42Alex Cranz?

  Take your watch and leave.

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. Tim Cook, keep going. He's told Kara Swisher in the past he doesn't expect to be doing it for another 10 years. So there is some sort of looming event. Jeff Williams is the natural choice, but again, it's are you getting five years? Are you getting 15 years? Will he be as successful, right? Like, every leader changes the culture of the organization. That's just true. Again, Trip's book is basically a book about how Tim Cook changed the culture of Apple to focus more on growing. Products are still good, but like, that's the whole book. Yeah, I think it is a remarkable open question because Tim Cook inherited the company from Steve Jobs. But whoever takes over the company next will inherit it from Tim Cook.

• 24:21David Pierce?

  What is the like overall sense of of sort of what Jeff Williams thing is? Because right like Steve Jobs was like the visionary and then Tim Cook was like the ruthless executor. Right. That was like when he came in, that was like what everybody understood was like it is now Tim Cook's job. He is the the operations king of the universe.

• 24:39Alex Cranz?

  He's a supply chains guy.

• 24:41David Pierce?

  Yeah, he's just going to come and make this the tightest, most efficient company in the world, which like by all accounts he has basically done. Is there a thing floating around about Jeff Williams in that sense? Like, does he have a vibe?

• 24:52Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 24:53David Pierce?

  Right?

• 24:53Nilay Patel?

  I think that's by design.

• 24:55David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  I don't think there's any way you could describe the CEO of Apple as just a guy. That's not right, but I think Apple is a very secretive company. They show you who they want to show you. Even Tim Cook, he does not get on stage and be like, this next iPhone, I squeezed three cents of margin out of a tiny supplier in Asia you've never heard of. And to Apple at our scale, that represents $5 billion, right? Like, that's his thing. I think there's a real sense that Jeff Williams is that person. He still does that thing there. They're apparently by all accounts like similar in that way. And I think that it is true that Apple is not Apple without that operational excellence.

• 25:34Nilay Patel?

  Like you cannot be the company that ships a billion iPhones every minute and then a new one every year. Unless actually the core of the company is operations.

• 25:44David Pierce?

  Right.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  And yeah, supply chain management and logistics management. Like they operated a scale that is incomprehensible to anyone else. So I think maybe you need, you just need a leader who respects that. And by all accounts, Jobs respected that element of Cook, but Jobs never ran a company as big as Apple. So now Tim Cook runs a company that's as big as Tim Cook made the company. Who are you going to find to do that? There might only be one natural choice, which is somebody who existed in that company already.

• 26:08David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  Because again, what are the other companies at this scale? And it's like, oh, you really do have to go find a defense contractor executive. To manage something this complicated. And manage, by the way, your geopolitical relationship with China and sit down on Trump's right hand when Trump is like, I'm going to ban every import from China and get him to back. Like that, these are all things Tim Cook had to do.

• 26:32David Pierce?

  Right.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  That have almost nothing to do with are the icons on the iPhone any good?

• 26:36David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  And partially, I think his skill is like letting that be maybe his detriment because I don't know if you have seen some of Apple's software design recently.

• 26:44David Pierce?

  The icons are bad.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's a little all over the place.

• 26:47David Pierce?

  I love a pile.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  Right, but like, they are still doing it at that scale, which is, I think, is the victory.

• 26:52David Pierce?

  Okay, so Alex, now it's your turn. What's next? What do you got?

• 26:55Alex Cranz?

  Ooh, this one's kind of adjacent to some of the stuff we've been talking about, but can Apple like do the whole, we love privacy, we care about privacy, we are your privacy warriors protecting you from everybody infiltrating you and also do the ad business they're quietly growing? Maybe not quietly growing, but they're definitely growing in ad business.

• 27:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's like increasingly not quiet.

• 27:14Alex Cranz?

  It kind of reminds me of the whole Google do no evil, but also be the biggest ad business in the world. And eventually they had to decide and they said, money.

• 27:21David Pierce?

  Yeah, they said, oh, we're, don't be evil is not a thing anymore for us. It's like, cool, Google, that's a good look. I kind of think no. And I think even just on like a public perception level, like I think we've seen that it's possible to do good advertising in a more privacy preserving way, right? Like how well you can do that remains to be seen, but like there are ways to do ads that are not as sketchy feeling as the way that like Facebook and Google have done ads over time. But from a public perception standpoint, I think it's very hard to be simultaneously the privacy company and shove more personalized ads into people's apps. I think people are just like awake to what that is now and what it feels like. And I think it's really hard, even if you're doing both of those things genuinely, I don't think people will believe you anymore.

• 28:07Nilay Patel?

  Right. The evidence of your privacy being violated is you talk to someone and then an app shows you an ad.

• 28:14David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 28:14Nilay Patel?

  For something that you just talked about, right? And then it's like, oh, Instagram's listening to me. And whether or not Instagram is listening to you or not, whether it actually just happens to be your two people in your twenties in the same place at the same time. And of course you're talking about spring break, like.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, maybe the answer is like, everyone's a little bit more predictable than they think, right? Or maybe the answer is that Mark Zuckerberg has a microphone embedded in your body. Like, no one really knows.

• 28:35David Pierce?

  Right.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  But the answer is usually, like, you showed up on your friend's Wi-Fi network. We assume the thing that your friend is searching for is the thing that you are searching for. And what a coincidence, they happen to talk to you about the thing that they were searching for, right? Like, that's usually the, how that goes. I think Apple, right, they're gonna claim, they've defined tracking is taking data from the user and then using it somewhere else. There's no somewhere else for Apple. They, they, like, the definition of tracking does not apply to data that remains in the Apple ecosystem.

• 29:05David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  So they're like, we're not tracking you. We're just keeping it all in-house, and it never leaves here. But then the outcome is gonna be personalized advertising, which the other process is, the data goes everywhere.

• 29:16David Pierce?

  Right.

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  I don't think they can do it unless they, and this is just, I think this will be hard for Apple. You can't, if you're like, we're the privacy company, your promise is, we never use your data.

• 29:24David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Nilay Patel?

  And you can keep that promise because the evidence of your data not being used is easy to see. It's proving a negative in some way, but like, there's no personalized advertising. Like, once you start using the data, now you have to like, let an, you have to let some independent auditor in to prove it out. Like, here's where the data goes. Here's how Apple uses the data. Here's how the ads are generated. Like, we understand the system and it's as private as they say. Apple can make that claim, but unless you have a, a third party of some kind validating that it's true, you just end up back with personalized advertising that feels creepy.

• 29:55David Pierce?

  Yeah. I was thinking about this with all, in the context of all these, like, privacy companies who are now starting to say, like, we don't collect your data, we don't want your data, we don't want to do anything with your data, like, we are taking all the steps we possibly can to avoid getting it in the first place. And that was like a thing that Apple could have started to pretty credibly say for a long time, where they're like, we have no use for your data, except to like, help you with these small things in Siri, right? So like, if you want to opt into that, great. If not, no problem. The rest of it, we don't even want to know. Like, we have no upside to allowing our stuff to listen to you 24/7 because we wouldn't want to know. And now, there is an upside. Like, there's a reason Apple would do that. And even if it doesn't, it's still, it just becomes much harder to prove that you're not doing it when you have a reason to be doing it.

• 30:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they were gonna hire Antonio Garcia Martinez from Facebook to build an ads business. Like, it is not quiet what they're doing. I think they just have to prove that they don't need the giant weird third-party data brokers to do it. And maybe they, you know, maybe they don't. But that's not a claim you should just trust. That's a claim you should trust when someone else goes in and investigates and tells you it's true.

• 31:00David Pierce?

  My next one, because I think it's my turn, is do we want a new idea for an iPhone? It's iPhone season. You know, everybody's like, this is the year. It's a, this is a tick year. We're gonna get a redesign, new ideas, everything's gonna be great. And part of me is like, maybe we need to start treating smartphones as like a fundamentally solved problem, that like, this is what they look like. It's fine. Changing it would actually be more hassle than it's worth. Stop having new ideas. Just make my battery last longer and keep making everything slightly better and I'll be happy forever.

• 31:26Alex Cranz?

  No, I think there's a lot to be done to the phone, right? I still have to put a case on mine, lest I drop it and shatter a $1,000 device and have to go get the glass on it replaced. Like, that's a problem. I shouldn't have to worry about that. I think it's like, battery is obviously the biggest thing, but, but the destructibility of these things is really, really bad. And given that people are holding onto phones longer because they are no longer being as heavily subsidized, and they're just like, more useful and do all the stuff we need, I want it to be able to like, last all three years or four years that I use it.

• 32:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the big challenge for phones is that they actually kind of do last a long time. So I might disagree with you, right? Like, people hold on to phones for an awful long time. And the idea that that only happens because you need a case is like, not the worst thing. I think people like putting cases on their phones. Like, if the big next turn in phones is you don't need a case and it'll still last three years, like, I don't know that we've accomplished. I think people will still put cases on those phones.

• 32:23Alex Cranz?

  It'll just be me. I'll just be like, in the crowd cheering very loudly. Tim's like, calm down.

• 32:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think there's a bunch of stuff around how we use phones that could change and be meaningfully better.

• 32:34David Pierce?

  Like what?

• 32:34Nilay Patel?

  I still think typing on a phone kind of sucks.

• 32:37David Pierce?

  That's a good one.

• 32:38Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, it's, it's no fun. I don't want to do it. Whenever I have to type anything wrong, I start hunting for a real keyboard. It's, it's just like that. We haven't innovated there in a long Long time. And maybe that's not flashy enough for Apple to be like, we've invented a way that makes typing on this phone superior or better.

• 32:55David Pierce?

  It's a revolutionary input device.

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. But it's just like, I think there's a lot of the basics that we take for granted now, where actually a little bit of improvement would go a long way. And maybe that's, it all just comes back to what you're saying, right? Maybe that's on the order of the camera's a little bit better and the battery lasts a little bit longer, but I think we have settled into, most people know how to use a phone. Any radical change in how you use a phone will irritate more people than will be excited about it. So no more radical changes are coming. And that always just feels like, ugh, it's like, that's when things are boring.

• 33:27David Pierce?

  I don't know, though. I like, I've been thinking about this in the context of MacBooks and like laptops in general. Cause if you rewind, I don't know, eight or nine years, there was this moment where everybody was like, okay, laptops have basically looked and worked the same way for 40 years. Let's blow it all up. Let's change some things. It's time for new ideas about laptops. And we tried, I mean, everything. What if your laptop detached? What if it looked different? What if it did a spinny thing? What if it had three screens? Like, we tried all these ideas and then what it turned out everybody wanted was just a better laptop. And so we've come back around to like, this is just what a laptop does. This is how it's supposed to work. It doesn't solve all of your problems, but it solves a lot of them. And we should just keep making this thing better in ways that are not different. And I'm like, maybe that is just where we've arrived with smartphones.

• 34:11David Pierce?

  And maybe that says something about like the maturity of the market, but I feel like there's still this itch to like, have a new idea about smartphones. And part of me is like, maybe, maybe that's not where we should be going with smartphones. Like, maybe we've had the idea for smartphones and let's just like, keep making them better and then have different ideas about other stuff.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, very few cars get sold with three wheels instead of four. You know, no one's like seven wheels. Like, there's some basics that I think are locked.

• 34:35Alex Cranz?

  But what about like, we're seeing, you know, everybody's got, everybody loves OLED. A lot of OLED displays that allows for that flexibility. So we're seeing both in watches and in laptops. Let's play with things. Let's. Close it, flap it, shut. Is that a whole new thing or is that just an iteration?

• 34:51David Pierce?

  That's fair. And I will give you, I actually think that like, the more I talk to people about the Z Flip 4, the more I'm like, this is the future of phones and I want a flip phone forever and ever. And like, maybe that's, that's big enough. That might count as like, a genuine new idea about how phones should work. Except that the thing where Samsung is like, put it on an L shape and take selfie videos. That is bad and not interesting and not a new idea about smartphones. But I think, I guess you're right that like, on the display front, there is probably some interesting stuff left to do.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  You know, my like, general theory about the tech industry is that you can tell what's gonna happen if you just know where displays are going.

• 35:25Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, if we hadn't invented LCDs, there wouldn't be phones. If you invent folding OLEDs, someone will come along and like, put them to good use. And maybe that is a phone that turns into a tablet, or maybe it's a phone that gets smaller. Or maybe it's something else entirely and we just haven't seen it yet. That's probably the next order of real change. Like, obviously Samsung is four generations deep into it.

• 35:45David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Nilay Patel?

  But it's still kind of iterative.

• 35:47Alex Cranz?

  We're all gonna have that like, sick fallout cuff.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  Dude, this is my dream. What's my brand? Cuffs. Let's do it.

• 35:54Alex Cranz?

  Get some little spikes on it.

• 35:56Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I'm so down for this. Make me a spiky cuff with a, a rolling OLED around it.

• 36:02David Pierce?

  You guys can't see this. Neel I just started throwing money at the screen as he's talking. All right, let's keep going. So let's do, let's, we're not gonna get to all five, but let's do one more each. Alex, you went first, so you get to go first. What's, what's next on your list?

• 36:14Alex Cranz?

  So my final question, totally real. Apple TV, it's this big deal that Apple wants to bake. They want it to be a TV like, service, streaming service. They want it to be a box. They want it to be an app on the box and the phone, sometimes the MacBook. And it's all the same thing, like, is it gonna work? Is it successful? I think it's like, I watch the shows.

• 36:37David Pierce?

  Your question is just, why Apple TV? Question mark.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and my question is, why won't you just make me a TV? Right? Like, the game that Apple is playing is one where they kind of don't have leverage. If they put the screen in your house and then Netflix wants to be on the screen, then Apple can be like, you have to be in our recommendation system. And it's just weird that they haven't made the connection to owning the hardware gives us control over the software.

• 37:04David Pierce?

  Or the other way to do that, which is a thing Alex and I have talked a ton about, is building the best interface, which is like, people are desperate for an app that it just has all the stuff I want to watch and shows me the things I had like to watch.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Right, but Netflix has an out there, right? You make that app and you ship it to Android TVs and Netflix is like, we're not going to participate in your app. You want Netflix. Drive to Survive is in this other app that we control. If Apple has the hardware, they get to say, no, like, to be on TVOS on our TV, you have to participate in universal search. And enough people will buy those TVs that Netflix will have to feel the pain and do it.

• 37:40Alex Cranz?

  Ooh, do you think that's true, though? Because we've seen Netflix play really hardball in this situation in the past.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  Netflix is not so much in a position to pay hard for right now.

• 37:50Alex Cranz?

  That's true.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  Disclosure, we have made a Netflix show, Disclosure Podcast. That's right. The disclosure block is here. We make a lot of TV, our company makes a lot of TV shows, a lot of companies. I'm just saying Netflix isn't a, you know, this is the time to say, if you want to be on our hardware, which people will buy. Unlike the car, right? If Apple makes a TV, it is a guarantee that people will run out and buy that TV. They make a, like, what would it, well, I just beg people, send us renders of what you think an Apple midsize crossover, the most popular kind of car in America. How does Apple make anything that doesn't look like every other bubble on the road today, right?

• 38:27Alex Cranz?

  It's the Homer Simpson car. Just that with an Apple logo? I'm like, done, sold.

• 38:32Nilay Patel?

  Right, but you can see how Apple would make a great TV that looks cool. Studio display notwithstanding.

• 38:38David Pierce?

  Can you?

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:39David Pierce?

  It would just, how do you make a TV that doesn't just look like a TV?

• 38:43Alex Cranz?

  I got it, I got it. So, Apple historically has really, really good calibration on their TVs. I'm not saying this will be a selling point for 90% of people, but the other 10%, everybody listening to this podcast, will absolutely go out and buy this. If you were like, this is like, home theater technician dude, $500 an hour grade calibration out of the box.

• 39:06David Pierce?

  So, okay, a thing we have been talking about a bunch on this episode is that Apple is only interested in large markets and people who want to buy the TV you just described is like 11 people.

• 39:17Alex Cranz?

  That's just a selling point. That's just a selling point. I think you just say, we're doing an Apple TV. They got that with the backlight. You get the micro LEDs.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  No, they would do an OLED.

• 39:28Alex Cranz?

  They would do an OLED and you would probably be able to replace the Apple TV in the back. Like it would come with the Apple TV in. You just pull it out and put a new one in when it's time to upgrade. That's the killer feature. Apple, send me my money.

• 39:41Nilay Patel?

  I just want to point out that people have been making this prediction for like 20 years straight. I have probably done it. Gene Munster built a career on this prediction. This is like a real thing. My point is unlike the car, which again, I just challenge you to be like, what Apple has to compete with is midsize crossovers. That is the mark. They have to make a Tesla Model Y. That is the market for cars. People like their midsize crossovers. They sell lots of them every day. That's hard. And software differentiation in cars is not the thing that sells cars.

• 40:11Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Nilay Patel?

  TVs are different, right? If you, Apple said, we're making a TV. People would give their money to Apple tomorrow. Like they just would. The same way that when Apple says it's making AirPods, people just like buy the AirPods and they assume it'll be good and the software will work and all this stuff. They have the ability to ship a thing that is not at the top of the technology curve, but still be good. And like a 65 inch OLED display is now squarely in that sweet spot, right? Where you had the standard LG OLED display with Apple's software, Apple's calibration runs the thing. And then you can say, a lot of people bought these. Peacock, you want to like participate? We want a cut of all your ads. You want to do video on demand? We want a piece of every transaction. Like that's what Roku does. That's Roku's business. So the argument against the TV right now

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  is people don't buy them often enough, but the actual business for Roku, for the Fire TV, for everybody, is a cut of the transactions, a service business. And that's what Apple's really good at now. And so that's, again, is it a question? Is it a take? Is it just a bald-faced demand, Tim Cook?

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Build me a TV.

• 41:16David Pierce?

  I have never hoped more that you're right because I so violently disagree with the idea that Apple can make a differentiated television that like now I hope we get to prove it out. Like, all the things you just described, like Bluetooth headphones mostly suck. Most cell phones are a pain in the ass. Most things are bad when Apple solves them, right? Like, Apple comes in and says, "We have made a thing that works better." There is none of that with television that Apple has any track record or potential to solve. Like, my TV is too large for me to carry around is like not a real problem that exists. My TV is ugly is like not a real problem that exists. My TV software sucks is real and Apple has precisely no track record of doing any better.

• 41:58Alex Cranz?

  There's a thing that sucks on TVs that everybody complains about the moment they buy, they upgrade their TV. Apple does suck at it, though, but really good audio.

• 42:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, granted.

• 42:08Alex Cranz?

  Like, a thin TV that you can put on the wall and don't need a soundbar can't be done. Hasn't been done. If Apple was like, "We solved that," one, I'd be like, "Okay, sure." And two, that would actually be like a compelling thing for a broad, like, that's a problem that people want solved with their TVs.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  Five HomePods, the Apple TV strategy.

• 42:27Alex Cranz?

  We'll ship you five HomePods for free.

• 42:32Nilay Patel?

  But you could see, like, that's a, that's a hardware design challenge that Apple is up to the task of doing, right? Integrate speakers around the TV that do all the bouncy stuff. Like, they love spatial audio. Apple wants nothing more than for the cast of Bridgerton to be sneaking up behind you. It's true. They could do it. They have to actually do it. And I think, I think they get trapped in, "We need a market that's big enough to be worth it, so we're gonna chase healthcare and cars," instead of, "What is a thing people have in their house that could be substantially better that then turns into transactions over time that turn into a big market?" Like, Apple, of all companies right now, Apple could do the thing where they rescue theatrical, right? By saying, "You're actually gonna go to a movie theater.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna buy the movie on iTunes for $100 and it's gonna stream once on your, on your beautiful TV." Apple has a cloud to do it, right? They're a studio. Like, you have to invent this stuff that is risky and say it will turn into a market. Instead of saying, here's a market you understand with a big number that has a T at the end of it. And we're going to go take that one with no track record.

• 43:35David Pierce?

  All right, Neel, what's your next one? And this can't be about the TV.

• 43:38Nilay Patel?

  This actually relates to a kind of our privacy conversation. It's more of what will they build, right? They're in this privacy conversation. We know they take a lot of money from Google every year to be the default search engine in the iPhone. We know their privacy stance puts them in conflict with that moment. We know there's an advertising business. Are they just going to build a search engine? It's the thing that they can take the most easily by saying goodbye to Google's money and making their own search engine the default on the iPhone. They will instantly have massive share in search, which they can do all kinds of things with.

• 44:06Alex Cranz?

  Don't they kind of suck at algorithms? Like, I never think of Apple as a really powerful player in the algorithm space, given how often they who will not be named activates on my wrist every day and answers my questions poorly.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, Apple can be good at whatever it wants. It's the richest company in the world. They can, they can be good at whatever they want.

• 44:26David Pierce?

  I think yes and no, I think, is the answer to your question. Because I think like Spotlight is pretty clearly what Apple perceives to be a search engine, right? Like, it, it searches the stuff on your computer, but also like it does, it does web image search going forward. And that's like, you can search for images in Spotlight. Is that, it's like not quite a search engine, but it's like kind of a search engine. And I think what Apple seems like it's going to do is start to try to like abstract more stuff away. Like, I don't know that building the sort of general informational Google search thing is all that interesting to Apple. But in the sense of like, can Apple build an all in one travel product? And like, can Apple take shopping share away and start to like pull some of that stuff into its other products? I think absolutely. And it's like pretty clear that that's what Apple's going to do.

• 45:11David Pierce?

  So I think like, is Apple going to buy, I don't know, some small search engine? Or like try to roll its own from scratch? Maybe, it certainly could. But I, my guess would be it tries to just like pull a search engine into like its component parts and then just like eat them one at a time.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  But at some point, you have to build web search.

• 45:27David Pierce?

  Maybe, but also like, that's fairly commoditized, right? You just like buy the Bing search index, put your stuff on top of it. And like, people searching like, who was this sixteenth president of the United States? It's like, that's a solved problem, right? Like, you don't need to go reinvent the wheel to do that.

• 45:41Alex Cranz?

  Oh, I disagree. I think you have to.

• 45:43David Pierce?

  Really?

• 45:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. The reason everybody makes fun of Bing is because it doesn't always serve what you actually want. And Google has obviously gotten really far afield. It's a lot harder to find what you want on Google nowadays. It takes more work if you're not just looking for the most obvious questions on the planet. And even sometimes then, it takes a while. That's the problem that that's happened is like, Google is so invested in selling you stuff. Bing is so invested in like, not doing what I need it to do and giving me points and all sorts of other junk. Like, I need the thing that just takes me where I want to go. And I don't know if Apple's necessarily capable of doing it. Like, nobody's really good at it. DuckDuckGo is pretty close, obviously.

• 46:25Alex Cranz?

  Google, if you like, add a bunch of like, little negative signs and say, don't include Pinterest, don't include weird forums from the 1990s, like, very helpful. But I don't know if Apple can do that. I just, yeah, I would love it. I would love a really strong search engine. But I don't, search engines can't be like, hand-coded. You can't just like, have somebody pick it all and make that a super strong, powerful search engine. That's why Google is successful.

• 46:53David Pierce?

  They try to do it like Apple Music, like, hand-curate the internet for you every day.

• 46:57Nilay Patel?

  Jimmy Iovine will personally return your search results to you.

• 47:00Alex Cranz?

  And like, that was like, a thing, but we can't do that. Like, that's effectively what a lot of websites do, right? Like, that's what The Verge does. Like, a lot of us are about that curation, but that curation at scale, have we seen it done successfully? No.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but can Apple keep its privacy branding when they accept a ton of money from Google to give your search data to them? That's literally what, like- Next to your physical location, all the things you search for is a pretty enormous corpus of information about you. And they basically sell it to Google for iPhone users, right? Even if you switch it to Bing, they're still selling it to Microsoft. Like, they're giving it away in some massive, meaningful way. And you kind of know that you're searching Google. So like, it's not as shady as, you know, making out to be here, but it's still like, you're the privacy company, and you're not protecting this thing as hard as you could by building your own product that actually expects it more than Google does. I don't

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  know. Like, I think there's, there's a point at which that decision around Spotlight gets fraught, because you have to, Apple has to give up the money. And the money is important for a lot of reasons. One, it's money. But two, it like, you know, Google wants that position. So they want to be in a place where Apple's good to them, for all kinds of reasons. They want the YouTube app on your phone. But it also just like cuts both ways. Like, it's the, to me, whenever we talk about Apple and privacy and the complexity of it, you take a bunch of money from Google, and then slap Google around. It's like weird.

• 48:24David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's like the first counter argument.

• 48:26David Pierce?

  No, I agree. I think, I think that's right. And I think Apple has spent a long time hiding behind like, people like Google search, so we're gonna, it's fine. And I don't know how much longer that works. All right, we're gonna take a break. And then we're gonna come back and talk about all of our overheated, most spicy, not even sure we totally believe them, takes about Apple. We'll be right back.

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• 50:14David Pierce?

  Okay, we're back. I'm just bursting with hot takes here, so let's, let's move on and run through some of those quick before we go. I'm gonna go first because it's my turn. This actually, I think, jives with a lot of the stuff we've been talking about, but the first one I wrote down is "Apple is too popular and it's killing Apple."

• 50:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:29David Pierce?

  Back in the day when Apple was like this high-end thing for people who appreciated beautiful hardware, Apple could sort of do whatever it wanted because it had this like built-in group of people who cared about this stuff and were interested and played along. And now, when you're in a world where everybody uses an iPhone and everybody uses an iPad and Macs are massively popular, you end up in this world where Apple can't get rid of one of its multitasking options on a Mac because there's a small but statistically relevant people, number of people who use it. And so, they have a million ways to do everything and like macOS is turning into Windows because as long as some people use something, Apple can't kill it. And Apple is, is too big and it's making Apple not able to do anything.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  It's not even Windows. The correct comparison is Microsoft Word. Like, the Microsoft Word team will tell you this every day if you ask them, that the reason the menu bar is cluttered is because every button is 10 million people that use it.

• 51:23David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  You can't clean it up because some massive amount of the population that isn't you cares about it and you don't. And I think that is true. I would actually put "The Apple is too popular and it's killing them" in a different way, which is- They're so popular that they often don't feel real competition. So they just can do everything. And like their hardware teams still need the things to be more beautiful than the next thing on the shelf. And they care a lot. And you can see the hardware has gotten better. They've added the ports back, right? Like very simple things that everyone can see and I can feel the pressure. Their software teams are more insulated than ever. And I think you can see it in the software design. It doesn't matter if Apple's software is 10% easier to use anymore. Like, what are you gonna do, switch?

• 52:05Nilay Patel?

  And I think that attitude has permeated a lot of what they do.

• 52:07David Pierce?

  What are you gonna do, switch? It's like definitely written in large letters on a wall somewhere in Apple. And they all just like tap it as they walk in every morning. Okay, Neel, what's your, what's your first hottest take?

• 52:19Nilay Patel?

  My overheated take?

• 52:20David Pierce?

  We should say again, these, these are not things that we definitely for sure believe. They're just things that exist inside of our souls that we need to get out on microphones.

• 52:28Nilay Patel?

  I think actually Apple's, this is overheated. I don't know if I believe this at all. Apple's complacency in like software will be the thing that, that hurts them and leads to the end of Apple. It's maybe true and maybe not, but I think a lot of developers are angry at Apple. I think Apple to recruit people, they have to buy into Apple's way of doing things. Which means if you're young and you want to job at Apple, like maybe you're not allowed to invent as much stuff as you would be somewhere else. Maybe the iPhone interface isn't up for grabs. And I think fundamentally, like unless they get more aggressive, like, like all giant companies, like all monopoly. Like what's the best argument against antitrust action? It's that large companies inevitably fall apart on their own.

• 53:08David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  Right? And I think Apple, like I see the software. It's not just me, it's like John Gruber will tell you, Apple's software is like pretty messy lately. The hardware is beautiful. It's some of the best they've ever done. The software is like weirdly messy. My overheated take is it's the software that brings them down more than any, any government regulator, anything else. It's not having the focus there.

• 53:30David Pierce?

  I buy that honestly. And I think I was talking to the folks at Dashlane, the password manager about pass keys and this like passwordless future that we're all heading into. And I asked them about mobile and they said in this very diplomatic way that, you know, desktop is one thing because. The standards are much more open and on mobile. Apple and Google really control their ecosystems. And Apple in particular is on very much this like annual cadence of software releases. And because of that, we're probably not going to get any of the tools we need to do some of this interesting stuff on mobile for at least a year. Because that's just what Apple does. They just don't release the new stuff for 12 months. And like, it just got me thinking that it's like, it, this is the new equivalent of like Microsoft shipping Windows in a box every five years. That it's like, the world just moves faster than this now.

• 54:15David Pierce?

  And not only is Apple not, you know, necessarily known for its thrilling software anymore. It's just behind. And it's like a running joke that Android is way ahead. And eventually, it doesn't seem crazy to me that that would catch up to Apple in a bigger way.

• 54:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that take is really overheated, right? That eventually Android will become so superior to Apple that people will have, what are you going to do, Switch? But like, over the long term, does Apple's lack of discipline in its software design catch up to it? I think, I think absolutely yes.

• 54:45David Pierce?

  I like it. Alex, what do you got?

• 54:46Alex Cranz?

  My hot take is wireless is bad. Like, Apple's kind of obsession with wireless is bad.

• 54:52David Pierce?

  More wires.

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  No, actually, I can back this up, Alex. I have a stat for you.

• 54:56Alex Cranz?

  Okay, hit me with it.

• 54:57Nilay Patel?

  You know how Apple's, like, they showed CarPlay, WWDC, and that was a big hint they were doing a car?

• 55:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Nilay Patel?

  And they're, basically their response to every carmaker being like, no. Right? Apple's response is people will buy a car with a CarPlay.

• 55:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's what they're banking on. Turns out that since CarPlay went wireless, consumer happiness, consumer satisfaction with CarPlay has plummeted. Because it's not as consistent as plugging your phone in.

• 55:21Alex Cranz?

  Indication!

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  It's as direct as it gets. It's a little slower, a little flakier. Sometimes it doesn't connect. Sometimes, I don't know, it's, it's a wireless CarPlay is a weird combo platter of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, right? Like, it pairs their phone over Bluetooth. It says, I can do wireless CarPlay. It switches the connection over to Wi-Fi because it's got a mirror, the screen, all this stuff, right? Turns out that there's just a lot of wireless radios in the mix. And your phone acts weird when you do it. And people are like, I don't like this as much as plugging my phone in.

• 55:47Alex Cranz?

  Exactly. Yeah, I think that's the point is like, you, you see it with that, you see it with Bluetooth headphones. Like, Apple has the best ones. They still suck. At least a fifth of the time. I wear them every day and at least once a week, something happens. So it's at least a seventh of the time. Sorry. I was getting wrong with my, my stats there. But there's that lack of consistency. And at this point, we have like, wires are consistent in a lot of spaces. Wires will power your phone faster still. Wires will connect your phone to your car more consistently and your headphones. And it's just like, people care about that consistency. So maybe care about like that.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  Yes. The most overheated take at The Verge is that wired connections are faster and more reliable than wireless ones.

• 56:31Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  If there's a hill we're gonna die on, it's that fact.

• 56:33David Pierce?

  Yeah, I don't know that that's an overheated take. That's just true.

• 56:36Nilay Patel?

  No, people get mad at me all the time. Like, when I did a Starlink review, and I was like, "A cable to your house is better." People were like, "You're in the pocket of Comcast." I was like, "No, I'm just saying wired connections are fast and reliable."

• 56:46Alex Cranz?

  They're just good.

• 56:48David Pierce?

  We just forget the part where it's, you know, wired connections are faster and more reliable, parentheses, and it turns out nobody really cares.

• 56:57David Pierce?

  It's like, which is, it's just, this is where we live now. Okay, my second overheated take, and I like, every day this becomes less overheated and more just how I feel, but I can't believe I'm starting to feel this way, which is that I think the Apple TV might be the best set-top box on the market.

• 57:11Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 57:12David Pierce?

  I have spent a long time, like a long time, talking shit about the Apple TV, because it was bad and expensive, and Apple should feel bad about itself. And then I bought two Roku TVs that, over the course of the roughly 12 months that I have owned them, seemed to get slower and worse every single day. And then I turn on like my Fire TVs, which seemed to get slower and worse every single day. And then I open up the Apple TV, which is like, too big and too expensive, and the Siri remote is still stupid, but like, boy, it's fast. And it just like, it opens the apps when it's supposed to open the apps. And I'm like, I, huh, I just, I feel like a bad person that I'm like, I'm gonna use the Apple TV now.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you feel like a bad person?

• 57:54David Pierce?

  I have talked so much shit about the Apple TV. Like, I cannot tell you.

• 57:58Alex Cranz?

  No, it's, it's like home theater makers, or not home theater makers, but home theater like designers and the guys who set them up and everything. They actually prefer the Apple TV like that's the set top box that they go to because it does have like it's really good at doing most of the outputs and it's fast and it pairs with a bunch of their super expensive crap that none of us will be able to afford but it's really neat you know fireplaces that come on and I'm sure like coordinate with whatever you're watching on House of Dragons that week. Yeah, it's a good box. I have got two. I've got one in my bedroom. I never turn the TV on in my bedroom, but if I do, six months down the line, I don't have to be like, okay, I have to find all my logins again. Okay, I have to update the app so I can watch Netflix. Like, it just does it. The things are there. It works. And like, the worst thing in the world is if you're

• 58:43Alex Cranz?

  like, ooh, nobody's here at the house tonight. I'm gonna like, sit down in front of the TV and eat this dinner and watch a show. And then you sit down and you turn on the TV and the set top box sucks. Like, the things aren't loading and I don't have that issue with Apple as often.

• 58:57Nilay Patel?

  We very much tried to be a Chromecast with a Google TV family, like, for a variety of reasons, like, most of which is letting the kid just yell at the Google Home to turn on the show is like, really good. And the thing is just, they just promised to update to make it fast. And it's like, there's a part of me that believes that the reason the Apple TV is successful is because it just gets to draft on the operating system work that Apple does for its real computers and no one else has to do that work. So like, yeah, Roku runs an OS. Are the world's best operating system engineers working at Roku to do memory management?

• 59:30David Pierce?

  Right. Well, and also, all those companies are now on this like, crazy downward spiral. Like, Roku's job is to basically figure out how to sell you a set top box for $1. Like, that seems to be Roku's job. They either want to put it in your television, or just make it like, a free thing that they hand out at fairs, right? Like, that's what Roku wants to be. And I'm just like, what if you made a good one? Like, that's, that's an idea. Like, what if, what if you made a set top box that was good?

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  Amazon makes really high-powered boxes, right? I mean, at every, at every price point from nothing to a couple, like, 150 bucks, maybe?

• 1:00:01Alex Cranz?

  But have you ever used, like, it's ugly? Like, Amazon does not put, it's really, I don't think there, there's one UI designer in all of Amazon, and they have to work on every single project. That's the only explanation for how bad across the board, Amazon UIs are.

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  They just redid it all. It's not like great, you know, it's not, it looks like everything else, but I do think fundamentally, Apple's scale gives them a huge advantage with the hardware of the TV box. Again, I think the software is pretty messy, but yeah, the thing's a little iPad. It gets all of the benefits of the iPad, like engineering team. It gets all the benefits of the, the M1 engineering team. It gets all the benefits of the iPhone engineering team to just operate as a computer. So it's a really good computer and it doesn't kill its own memory and require a restart every two days. Like, that's weird. That's just a weird thing my Google TV requires. Yep. Alex, what do you got?

• 1:00:56Alex Cranz?

  I think it is the most important product, hardware product at Apple is the MacBook, or like the, the computer, not the phone.

• 1:01:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's really overheated.

• 1:01:06Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, coming in hot. No, because we saw during the pandemic that people actually do care about their computers, that we all have like, were very quietly caring about our computers, and then we all had to go buy them. And I think like, computers are still the core, the heart of things. Everybody's using phones, but Quibi thought that phones were going to be a great deal. How'd that go for you, watching entertainment? People don't actually like watching movies on their phones if they don't have to. They, they would prefer a computer. They don't like having to type out their school book reports. I'm thinking of the kids here. Like, computers still do a good task and they do it really, really well. And phones are really, really important. They're critical. We all use them every day.

• 1:01:49Alex Cranz?

  But you go to your computer a lot, and that's their core business and from which everything else springs.

• 1:01:55David Pierce?

  I would quibble with the idea that it's their core business at this point.

• 1:01:59Alex Cranz?

  It should be their core business. There we go.

• 1:02:02David Pierce?

  I do think, I mean, one of my alternate overheated takes was going to be that Apple's silicon investment is actually going to be the legacy of Apple and might turn out to be the most important thing it ever spent its money on. And I think that sort of drives at this point too, right? Is that like, at least for a while longer, our computers are like a central device in our lives. And this doesn't apply to everybody and doesn't apply everywhere in the world, but like, the centrality of the PC is as obvious as it ever was to a lot of people right now, I think. And I think in that sense, Apple like, seems to have fashioned itself as a computer company again for the first time in a while, which I think is kind of exciting.

• 1:02:36Alex Cranz?

  And they're changing everybody else. Like, everybody's now chasing them to some degree. Intel, like, went from fi- it's wild to me that five years ago, Intel was so big, it could not fail. It, like, had this huge monopoly, like, what was it, 95, 99% of, of, like, computers and servers were, were them? And it's just collapsed because Apple and AMD came along. And Apple in particular is forcing everybody to rethink how they design these things and rethink how operating systems work. And that's awesome. And it's because of the MacBook. I'm bringing it all back.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  I, here's how, it's definitely overheated. Like, Apple could shut down the Mac line and still be as big as Apple.

• 1:03:17David Pierce?

  Listen, Eli, we're not here for reality. We're here for things we feel.

• 1:03:21Nilay Patel?

  No, but I, I agree that the feeling is important. Like, a reason that I will not buy a Windows computer is because I can't text from it as reliably as I can from my MacBook. And it's, that's a really important feature to me. Cause I spend actually more time now on my laptop than I do on my phone. I don't even know if that's true. It just feels that way, right? Like, while we've been doing this, I'm literally using my laptop. I've picked up my phone three times. That's ridiculous.

• 1:03:49David Pierce?

  Glad to know we're keeping your attention, Eli. Thank you for being present.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  I was like, I don't know what this TV take is. David's mad at himself again. What's going on on Twitter? But I think fundamentally, like, it's where you're productive. And I think Apple's argument for a long time is you will soon be productive on your iPad. You'll soon be as productive on your phone. And certainly people are productive on iPads and phones. But like, most businesses are run on Excel, and Excel happens on your laptop. And that's like, that reality is not going anywhere for anyone.

• 1:04:15David Pierce?

  I like it. All right, Neil, you get to go last, then we're gonna get out of here. What's your last overheated take?

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  Apple will not reach its final form until it builds a TV.

• 1:04:24David Pierce?

  I feel like I should have seen that coming. Cause I, I regret everything.

• 1:04:27Nilay Patel?

  Apple is not a successful company. It cannot be counted as a success until it builds a TV. Until it takes over the single device in our lives that is responsible for America's cultural hegemony.

• 1:04:41David Pierce?

  All right, well, we're done. We had a good run.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  You're saying it's true.

• 1:04:44David Pierce?

  We made it this far. This may be the last episode ever of The Vergecast. This is, this turns into the Neel I spends an hour begging Apple to make a TV every week.

• 1:04:52Nilay Patel?

  They gotta do it. What are we doing here, man? There's millions of people out there running Tyson in their living rooms. What are you doing?

• 1:05:00David Pierce?

  So you're saying Apple has like a moral obligation to do this? It's not just a business thing. It's like, like what Tim Cook says about like saving lives.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  You want to be the privacy company? Do you know what the single most like intrusive, wackadoo privacy, like destructing device in your, your home is? Your television. You're not wrong.

• 1:05:19Alex Cranz?

  An Apple TV with built in ad blockers.

• 1:05:22Nilay Patel?

  I think that might kill my model, my services model. But like, it knows everything you're watching. Most of the TVs have automated content detection that can tell what games you're playing on your consoles. Like the amount of data that your TVs collect and send out to data brokers is out of control. So if they do have a moral obligation, it's sitting right there.

• 1:05:45David Pierce?

  There you go. You heard it here first.

• 1:05:47Nilay Patel?

  Apple will not be successful until they make a TV.

• 1:05:49David Pierce?

  I feel like Apple's just gonna ship you one, they're gonna make one TV just to shut you up and then just.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, it's an LG OLED with an Apple TV glued to the back. It's like, is this what you wanted? We turned the wifi off on this TV and put our existing product on it and solved your problem.

• 1:06:08David Pierce?

  All right, we need to go, but there's an Apple event coming really soon. By the time you listen to this, it's possible it already happened. So we're gonna get a lot more information on all this. We're gonna have a lot more to talk about on Friday with all of the announcements. Thank you both. This was really fun.

• 1:06:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:06:21David Pierce?

  All right, that's it for The Vergecast today. Thank you so much for listening. There is tons more coverage of everything that Apple is up to and the Apple event and so much more frankly, at theverge.com. And you can also follow all of us on Twitter. Alex is Alex H. Krantz, Neel I is Reckless, and I'm Pierce. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Nori Donovan is our executive producer and Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings... Apple hot takes, or you just want to make me feel better about liking the Apple TV again. You can always email [email protected] or call us on the Vergecast hotline at 866 VERGE11. We're going to be doing some Apple stuff on the hotline soon, so

• 1:07:03David Pierce?

  get your calls in now. Alex, Neelai and I will be back on Friday to talk about everything that happened at the event, all of our feelings, all of our reactions, everything. It's going to be a big one. See you then. Rock and roll.

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