Delta's 10-year journey to the top of the App Store

Today on the flagship podcast of enterprise certificate hacks: 03:22 - The Verge’s David Pierce chats with Riley Testut, founder of AltStore and developer of the game emulator app Delta, about how his app finally made it into Apple’s App Store. The free Delta game emulator for iPhones is live on Apple’s App Store Third-party iPhone app store AltStore PAL is now live in Europe Delta is the game emulator your iPhone has been missing 46:17 - David walks us through his experimentation with the many software and hardware solutions for “AI voice notes.” Cleft Notes is an AI voice notes app that really works 1:02:02 - David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline about the Rabbit R1. Rabbit R1 review: nothing to see here 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 Enterprise Certificate hacks. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am having a project day. I feel like being an adult is just like a long, unending list of maintenance tasks. There's always things to hang up and things to take down and filters to change and sinks to clean and did you know you're supposed to clean your garbage disposal and your dishwasher? Apparently, there's all kinds of stuff like that and rather than let it hang over my head, I've discovered that what works for me is to just keep a long-running list and then once a month or so, whenever I'm feeling particularly energetic and have some time, I try to just knock out as many of those things as I can, right? It just feels better and most of those tasks take like one to five minutes anyway, so

• 0:46David Pierce?

  I can get up, do a whole bunch when I'm feeling energetic or have a show I want to watch or whatever, and then it's done. And then I don't have to think about it for a month. I'm sure there are a million things that are supposed to be on that list that I don't even know about, but I've made it this far, I don't want to know. I'm sure it'll cause me pain and I'll deal with it as it comes. That's what being an adult is, right? Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're going to do two things. We're going to talk a bunch about the Delta emulator, because that little retro game emulator has kind of taken over the App Store the last couple of weeks and it turns out its story is both longer and weirder and more interesting and maybe more reflective of kind of the whole evolution of the tech industry than you think.

• 1:29David Pierce?

  So we're going to talk to the person who made Delta about the whole journey to get here and what it says about where we might be going next. After that, we're going to talk about AI, because I've been testing AI gadgets, AI apps, AI platforms, AI everything for like a year and a half now and I've found one use case for me that is perfect and it's awesome and I want to tell you about it. And this probably won't surprise you, but it does involve talking into a microphone. We're also going to answer a Vergecast hotline question about the Rabbit R1. We got lots to do, super fun show. All that is coming up in just a second, but first, I just noticed this like pile of laundry and socks behind me and it's starting to stress me out. So I'm going to go deal with that. Project number one, off the list. This is The Vergecast, we'll be right back.

• 2:18Speaker 01

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• 2:49Speaker 02

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• 3:20David Pierce?

  Welcome back. For all of the last two weeks, the most popular app in the Apple App Store has been a game emulator called Delta. We've been talking a lot about Delta on this show over the last few weeks, both because it's a huge hit and because it seems like maybe the start of a new era for the App Store. Like, in the history books of smartphone apps, there might be a before Delta and an after Delta for lots of reasons. But there's actually nothing even remotely new about Delta. The story of this app is actually a full decade long, and it starts with this guy. I'm Riley Testa, and I'm the founder of Alt Store, developer of Delta. Riley has had, as you might expect, a pretty wild few weeks. In the middle of it all, I asked him to come on the show

• 4:05David Pierce?

  and just tell me the whole Delta story. Why he wanted to build an emulator in the first place, how the regulatory and technological world changed around him, and, in general, how Delta went from a big hack to a big hit. It starts with Riley in high school, just kind of looking for something to do. I was just back in high school. I think it was my junior year.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  And I just one day came across just like the open source repo for a jailbreak Game Boy Advance game that are GPS phone. And I was like, oh, this is cool. This is all the code. I can probably just download this and tweak it and then put it on my own phone without having to jailbreak. Because yeah, I've never been a fan of jailbreaking. It's just never really appealed to me. So I found this code base. I hacked out of way for a couple of months, put it on my phone. I put it on a few of my friends' phones. They liked it. And then I uploaded to GitHub and called it GBA FriOS. And then kind of left it there for a bit. And then people found it on GitHub and started talking about it. And so I was like, oh, there's interest in this kind of thing.

• 5:10David Pierce?

  So you just made it as as sort of a, it sounds like a mix of like a thing that you thought would be useful and just kind of a thing to do.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just want to poke them on my phone. That was literally I found this. I was like, oh, cool, I can poke them on my phone now. And that's awesome. And that's really all I was thinking at the time. And then I put it on my friends' phones. And then we were playing just Pokemon ourselves. And then just completely coincidentally, there was this service that came out around the same time that let you connect like get open source GitHub projects and sign it with Apple's enterprise certificate, basically. There's a company that had enterprise certificate. And you could just connect your GitHub account and then re-sign your apps like that. And so I was like, oh, cool, I'll connect this to GBA FriOS. And then people can install it outside the App Store. Maybe a few people will download it. And that's basically when I learned, oh, wait, there's a huge demand for this thing.

• 5:57David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  I did that. And then within like a week, people were like posting videos about how to install it. There were lots of Reddit posts. And I was like, honestly caught off guard. Because at this point, it was still just a project I made for me and my friends, like in high school. And so then I was like, okay, there's demand for this thing. Let's take this seriously. Let's like build like a real version of this app. That's not like thrown together, not hacky. And so that's when I got my friend Paul Thorson on board, my also still in high school. And we were like, we're gonna do a brand new version of GBA FriOS, GBA FriOS 2.0. We're gonna redesign it from the ground up, just build it and make a really polished experience. And so we basically spent Of senior year, working on that. And in like halfway through senior year, we released GBA for iOS 2.0.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  And that's the version that most people know. That was the version that you installed from my website. You set your date back like 24 hours. And you can install it because of the weird bug that allowed enterprise certificates to work that way, even if they're expired.

• 6:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, wait, so real quick, just pause for a second and explain the enterprise certificate thing to me. Cause I feel like part of the story here is like Riley's adventures in figuring out how to install apps on phones.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Yes, it's slowly getting more and more complicated. Yeah, so this was the easiest hack. It's just, yeah, as long as I found an enterprise certificate, I could just sign GBA for iOS with it. And literally anyone could just download it from a website on the phone. Super simple.

• 7:21David Pierce?

  And the idea is basically it's like, that's the certificate you would use if I'm like a company wanting my employees and no one else to have that app, right?

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, the exact same flow. And so it's just, you're not supposed to do it for this reason. And so what Apple normally would do is they would just like revoke the certificate. They'd make it, this is no longer valid and all apps that are signed with it can no longer be installed. And so the bug that I took advantage of was apparently at this time, like in iOS 7, if you just set your date back on your phone by more than an hour, the checks for whether a certificate is valid or not just don't work. They just don't do it.

• 7:55David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  You did try to install GBA and Apple would have revoked the certificate. But because you set your date back, iOS was fine installing it. And so it was just like a really weird bug that I could take advantage of. Because Apple couldn't do anything easily about it. They had to actually fix iOS to address it. They couldn't just be like, okay, nope, turn off the certificate. It was about nine months later that they finally addressed it. And then that was when I moved on basically from GBA for iOS is when they, it was like iOS 8.1. They killed the date trick. It was literally on my birthday when it actually happened. And I was like, oh, that's funny. But honestly, at that point, I'd just gone to college. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to move on from this whole thing. GBA for iOS is really cool. I wanted to go on to the next thing.

• 8:37David Pierce?

  Do you know how many people were using GBA for iOS? Like at that sort of peak moment before it got shut down?

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Um, a lot of people, like more than 10 million.

• 8:46David Pierce?

  Wow, whoa.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:48David Pierce?

  That's like a zero or two bigger than I thought you were gonna say.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was a stupid amount of people using GBA for iOS, which is why I was so motivated to do this for this whole time was I just knew that there was a market for this kind of thing, that everyone just kind of assumed there wasn't. I'm like, no, GBA got 10 million downloads outside the App Store. Like, it's just, people just really want to do this, like play old games.

• 9:10David Pierce?

  Yeah. Okay, so you kind of, you're sort of forced to shut down that project a little bit.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:16David Pierce?

  Was there a moment where you're like, okay, I'm ready to go to war with Apple. Let's fight this to the death and figure out how to get GBA for iOS back? Or when it, when the sort of exploit gets shut down, do you just kind of say, you know what? Like you said, I'm going to college anyway. This is just a moment. Let me focus on other things.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  It is basically that. Yeah, I was like, you know, this is just a sign that I should move on to something else. This was really cool. I'm glad I got to do this. Got a lot of experience, but maybe I'll try to make an app in the App Store next time. That was what I was thinking. I'm like, this is a lot of work to have an app outside the App Store.

• 9:45David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  So then that whole thought process lasted like a few months and then I got bored and I needed a new app to work on. And so, yeah, Swift had also just been announced like the previous year. And so I was like, oh, you know what? Let me just make another toy app for myself to learn Swift just for me. And you know what? I'll make another emulator. It'll have more systems, but it's just for me. Like, I'm again, like, it's just like a fun thing I wanted to work on to learn Swift. That was like my entire motivation.

• 10:09David Pierce?

  So you're just run the exact same playbook again without even realizing?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Exactly. I was like, you know, I'm just gonna make it for fun. Yeah, I know. You'd think I'd learn at some point.

• 10:18David Pierce?

  Okay, so, and that's where Delta starts.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Yes. And so that's the beginning of Delta was like, okay, I'll call it Delta and just build it for fun. And that is what I thought I was gonna work on. And then I went to WWDC that year. It was my first time ever at WWDC.

• 10:33David Pierce?

  What year is this at this point?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  2015.

• 10:35David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  So I go to WWDC and I talk to the app review team, like, because they have like a lab there. And I basically just say, hey, I'm working on this emulator app. Is there any world that it could be approved in the App Store? And then they were like, actually, yeah, we'll allow that. You just gotta like comply with some weird. Things basically, they said I had to like submit a list of approved games to them. Whenever I submitted a version of Deltas, that they could just make sure all the games that Delta supports were safe. Like they just didn't want to have like an open pipeline of like games and everything. And so like, okay, fine, that works for me. I'll submit a version of Delta to you and I'll have like a list of games that you can play. And then every app update, I'll expand it to include more games. And it seemed like that would be something I could do. And so I was really motivated.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  I'm like, cool, I'm going to get Delta in the App Store. And so then I spent the next year like actually building it for real. I was like, okay, this is now a real app, no longer just for me. I like really want it to be polished. I want it to be good. I took a lot of my time. I got on my college schedule to be working on it. And then I went to the W A C next year and I talked to the same person. And I said, hey, I'm ready to submit. Can I submit it now? And he was just like. So I talked to some people. We can't allow emulators. And that was just all I got. I didn't get a why. It was just like a, we can't allow that. I was just pissed off.

• 11:59David Pierce?

  Do you think this person was wrong the first time they told you it would happen? Or do you think something happened in that year and they changed their mind?

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Honestly, I don't know. It's either one's possible. My guess is though that they thought it was okay. And then they talked to someone in the year and then maybe they had discussions about it. And then they came away, they said, it's not worth the risk. Cause I think that's what it's been this whole time. Apple's just like, it's not worth the risk to allow these emulators. There's so, so much stuff that could open up. So I think they're just like, eh, it's one kid, whatever. We don't need to allow his app in the App Store and it'll be fine.

• 12:30David Pierce?

  And at that point, I mean, I, I, I confess, I was late to the iOS emulation universe, but it seems, it's a weird thing. Like GBA for iOS was huge and then it kind of went away. And so I would assume we're back to like lots of pent up demand. People are very excited about it. So it's not like you're the first person in history to ask Apple this question, I'm sure. But at that point, emulation was just kind of, it was sort of nowhere on the iPhone. So I guess for them to say, no, we're going to continue to not allow it is not totally out of character.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Exactly. Like, yeah, I wasn't surprised. I was just pissed off. Like, I was just like, I wasted a year of my life working on this. And because you told me I could release it, that was really just all I was feeling.

• 13:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So what do you, at that moment, you're faced again with this same decision of like, okay, do I just call this a successful project? I learned how to use Swift. Let me just move on with my life. Or do I go the other way? I know the answer. Historically speaking, but what is that? What do you? What is that moment like?

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this time I was just so pissed off. I was just like, you know, this is not okay. I am gonna get this out there somehow. It's just like really what I came to. And I didn't, at that time, I really didn't know what it would be. But I was like, I just wanted to show Apple that they can't treat developers kind of like this. It was really just like, I was like, you can't treat us like this. You can't tell us one thing and then change your mind the next year. Cause real people are spending real time doing this kind of thing. So I, yeah, I just motivated to kind of prove them wrong. This is the best I could say. And so, yeah, I was like, I'll figure out a way.

• 13:57David Pierce?

  So then next project is figure out a way. Like, how do you? How do you even start?

• 14:03Speaker 03

  I just got lucky, honestly. Apple had also just around that time made it so that you can install apps from Xcode for free with a free Apple ID. That like they just changed that rule of right around now so that students could start developing. And so I saw that and I was like, wait, you can install apps for free? If you just have an Apple ID? There's something there. Like, I was like, that's all the technical thing I needed. I could make something from that. And so that was just like the beginning of Alt Store. Like, okay, I gotta do something with this free Apple ID sideloading from Xcode thing that Apple has just announced. And then I was basically just like, took a few years to research that, build it up, find out what would be the most convenient flow. Cause yeah, there are a lot of obstacles with that.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  It was apps installed this way only could last seven days. You could only have three apps installed at a time, this method. So it was just a kind of trying to come up with creative ways to make a lot of these restrictions not as annoying. Like the fact that Alt Server is a thing was the number one, that Alt Server could just refresh your apps every week in the background. And when I thought of that, that's when I was like, okay, I think there's something here we can at least work with. That's good enough.

• 15:12David Pierce?

  So when did the first version of Alt Store like work? What was sort of the first version of it that you had that you were like, okay, this, this does the thing that I need it to do?

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Uh, I think that was 2019 is when I finally like had put together all the pieces into one flow. Whereas like I had a program on my computer that could install Alt Store onto my phone. And then Alt Store could send apps to that device or to my computer and then reinstall it. And then it was early 2019. I was like, okay, this can work. Like just seeing it actually work in practice. It was totally janky, like the UI was horrible, but just like the fact I could press a button on my phone and it would do everything, send it to Alt Server and install it was just honestly kind of magical.

• 15:53David Pierce?

  So explain to me why that worked in the sort of infrastructure of Apple's universe. Like, why did that system work?

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Because, so the way Apple allows students to test out their apps is they have to have a Mac and they have to be using Xcode and they have to plug their phone into Xcode. And then they have to install an app from Xcode onto the phone. Like you can't just download a file and do it. It's all through Xcode and all through a computer. And so Alt Server is basically replicating everything Xcode does. You can have an app file, but iOS can't install an app file on itself. You have to send it to a computer and then Alt Server does the same stuff Xcode does behind the scenes to install it back onto the phone, as if you're a developer testing out yourself.

• 16:36David Pierce?

  Got it. Okay. And you were able to basically build a thing that lets anyone kind of mimic that system for themselves. When I set it up, it was, I wouldn't say it was a lot of work, but it wasn't no work.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, it's a lot, it's a bit, yeah. Especially on the Mac, there is the Mail plugin for a long time. That was just really, it's, yeah, it was confusing to everyone. And I was like, oh, this is too nerdy to try to explain even to people why it matters. But just, yeah, people got through it.

• 17:04David Pierce?

  Well, so, and this is, this is, I feel like the, the sort of ongoing story here is you're, you're finding these increasingly complicated ways to do this and continuing discover that there is so much demand for something like Delta, that people will jump through basically any hoops that you ask them to jump through in order to do this.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, the biggest thing I was surprised at with Alt Stores, we need to get your Apple ID and password to like log in with your account. And I was like, wow, we really are just asking people to trust us and give us your Apple ID. ID password. And I mean, we do everything we can with it. We literally don't touch ourselves. We send it straight to Apple. But I was like, oh, that's a big scary thing that you really just aren't supposed to give your password around to people. And then nope, people are still giving us their passwords. They don't care. I'm like, this is cool, but also it makes me nervous for security as a whole that people are just doing this, not thinking about it.

• 17:52David Pierce?

  Oh, for sure. And it puts you in a really interesting position, I would think, as the, as the developer of this to say, okay, what is this thing? Like, am I just building this as sort of a fun side project for people who want to play Pokemon on their phones? Which comes with, I think, one set of like, security and privacy implications. Like, to some extent, honestly, if you send your Apple ID and password to just a dude, I don't think you have any reasonable expectation of privacy. Like, I think it's a good thing that you were taking care of people's privacy as best you could. But I think for me as the user, I deserve what I'm getting at that point. Right? But then if you're, if you're like a company that is, that has a terms of service and is set up to make money and you're like, we're in this for the long haul and we're serious about it.

• 18:33David Pierce?

  I think that changes both the way you have to treat stuff and the way that I can expect you to treat stuff. And it seems like as you were going through this, you were also trying to decide, like, how professionalized do I want this thing to be? Is that, is that fair?

• 18:47Speaker 03

  That's pretty fair, because when the first version of Alt Store that launched was literally just like a Delta installer. The only app in it was Delta. It could install Delta. And I just knew that was important. But even at that point, I knew I wanted Alt Store to be a bigger platform. That was like, kind of what motivated, is like, I didn't want to build a whole nother workaround just to install Delta. The fact that I could do it for Alt Store and for other apps too, made it more appealing to me. I was like, fine, I can do the work and then lots of other apps can take advantage of it. And so it was always the plan to expand beyond Delta, but I just didn't know really what that would look like until probably like a year or so after we launched and I started, we started actually having some third-party apps wanting to be on the store.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  And then I got a sense of, okay, this is the type of apps people wanted install. This is what I gotta be dealing with. And yeah, that's helped a lot.

• 19:35David Pierce?

  See, so what, what was that? Like, we're going to get into the kind of history moved towards you a little bit aspect. Of this in just a sec, but I am curious in that moment, the idea of like, I'm going to get my third party app store to be sort of, you know, legitimate in Apple's eyes was completely off the table. Like 2019, 2020, there was just no world in which that was going to happen. But you're like, you're talking about, you know, other apps that want to do this kind of stuff. What were you starting to see? What was kind of the, the like unifying thesis behind apps that wanted to be part of this thing you were doing?

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Uh, I mean, at first it was just any app that wasn't allowed in the app store. And honestly, it's still a big appeal day, which is like, for whatever reason that was rejected for whatever type of rule, they just couldn't be app store. And so then they'd see alt store and then they'd be like, oh, an alternative. There are a lot of emulators, like obviously, so there are plenty of those. There's stuff you can expect, like iTorrent had like an app and you can be like, yeah, I can see why Apple wouldn't approve it, but stuff like that. Uh, UTM, the virtual machine app, just running windows on your iPad, really cool, not allowed in the app store. So it was just like a bunch of different random project or another one I liked, but that I think is really cool. Old OS, if you've heard of that one.

• 20:43David Pierce?

  No.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  It's so, it's like a high schooler just recreated iOS four in Swift UI. And so it's just like the whole experience, you open the app and it's the home screen from iOS four. You can open all the apps and it looks exactly like it did back in the day.

• 20:56David Pierce?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Really cool. And so it's just like, oh, a fun little idea that not allowed in app store. So yeah, a bunch of stuff like that. So I launched alt store and the first year was really great, but the first year was also a lot. And it was just me working out at the time. And then I honestly was like, what am I doing here? Am I going to keep with alt store? Is this ever going to be a real thing? Should I just like move on to something else now? I was really going, trying to figure out what I want to do. And then it was really at that point I realized what I wanted was I saw basically that the US was investigating Apple and that the EU was investigating Apple around this time. And I was like, you know what? I feel like there is going to be something that happens in the next few years. I want to be ready for that, but I need help.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  And that's when I basically brought on my partner Shane Gill, who is my best friend and I've lived with for like 10 years. And I was like, hey, I need you with this with me. I need, just do it together. I need you to do all the business stuff and so I can just focus on the program. And then we can make that happen. And at that point, we started like making the plans for what Alt Store is today, or at least an Alt Store in the EU, Alt Store Pal.

• 22:00David Pierce?

  Okay, so you you actually really were betting on the theory that eventually this was going to be a real thing that you could do and not just sort of a series of ever more elaborate hacks.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, by that time I was convinced it would happen. Just I didn't know when, but just at some point in the future.

• 22:17David Pierce?

  That's fair. Okay, so and this was like peak COVID. If I'm if I'm doing my timing math here correctly, everything's weird at this time and you're like, well, let's let's just go for it.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Everything's weird. I'm everyone's reevaluating their lives. My original plan was I was like, hey, Shane, let's move to New Zealand together. Let's just escape everything. Let's build this in New Zealand because I'm a New Zealand citizen. So it'd be cool to go home for me, but that didn't work out. It was too hard to get New Zealand during COVID.

• 22:42David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Understandably. So we're in Dallas now, which is the same thing.

• 22:45David Pierce?

  It's this close.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:49David Pierce?

  Okay, so you start building this thing. And was the idea, we want to build sort of a full app store? Like, was that is it as simple as that? That was the pitch?

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, when Shane Karen board, that was the full pitch. Like, we're going to build a real app store and show people what life could be like if there are other apps. Just like, just be the example. And then whenever it was official, be the official, like be an official store.

• 23:10David Pierce?

  And what was what were developers saying? Were you like reaching out to folks being like, do you want to be part of this? And what were they telling you?

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Honestly, we didn't need to be reaching out to anyone. People were just reaching out to us. Like, there are a lot of people who just have app ideas that just aren't getting in the app store. And just and even I'm like, wow, there are just so many apps that like we're getting like reaching out to us. I'm like, oh, wow, that was rejected. That was rejected. So we just, yeah, people just reaching out for us.

• 23:33David Pierce?

  Yeah. And were you having any contact with Apple at this point? Other than, you know, those two conversations at WWDC, was there any inclination that Apple was even sort of aware of your existence throughout this process?

• 23:44Speaker 03

  We did at one point, when the EU started investigating stuff, me and Shane sent an email to the executives at Apple, basically saying, hey, y'all, I think the EU may be going too much. And do you like, we're just reaching out, hey, like, we're here and we don't want like a crazy world of sideloading. You want to like be on the same page here and they didn't respond at all. But we were at the time just thinking we don't want a crazy free for all. And that's what it seemed like maybe the EU was gonna be. We wanted a more restricted side loading world where the app store was still the main app store. Why? I really think that's what makes iOS so good for like the vast majority of people. Like it is just so simple that you can get any app that you trust through one store. I think that's really valuable.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  It's why like so many people I know personally use an iPhone that aren't techies. And so I just always knew that there needed to be a way for side loading to exist without taking over the app store or taking like so many apps away from it.

• 24:39David Pierce?

  Okay, so you then are watching the regulation stuff happening. Are you like barreling through all the, you know, DMA white papers and trying to get the deep sense of what's going like? How into this were you as that regulation was happening?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Once the DMA was like an actual thing and they were talking about it, oh yeah, we were very much deep in it. And then we were just like, we gotta be ready for anything. Cause literally until Apple announced what they were doing, we just were like, are we gonna be a side loading tool? Are we gonna be a full app store? Are we gonna exist at all? Like, we just had no idea what was gonna come next. We just knew that there'd be some way of installing apps.

• 25:13David Pierce?

  Okay, and so I guess with that idea, you can kind of keep building Delta and Alt Store the way you had been without making too many kind of unchangeable decisions at that point.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Yes, we basically were working on like stuff that we knew would be true no matter what. Like we were building up like the UI for browsing apps and like we were expanding like orbit, building the Patreon flows that people could connect their Patreons and install that. Cause we just knew no matter what, that would be good for this world. We just didn't go into like the really technical stuff about like the actual installing process. It was just basically making the app look as much like a store as it could be.

• 25:51David Pierce?

  Yeah, that makes sense. And at that point, how are you thinking about like the business of Delta? You've been working on this thing for an awfully long time without making any money on it. I'm assuming there were conversations about like, how do we, how do we all get rich from this thing that clearly lots of people want?

• 26:05Speaker 03

  I, people do keep asking me, but the thing that I've believed in and what Shane, like Shane, before he even joined. Alt Store. He was the one that convinced me to make a Patreon for all this in the first place. He was like, hey, when you're working on Delta and Alt Store, just have a Patreon on the side to support yourself. Because honestly, I thought my original plan was to release Alt Store and Delta and then move on to something else. And like, just let it exist and let people install it. But Shane was the one telling me, no, people want to support creators right now. You should just have a Patreon that people want to subscribe to and just support future development. And so I start, I launched Alt Store with that and it did really well. Like it has paid for everything ever since I launched, started Alt Store. We really believe that's a really important thing that should exist.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Because developers right now, you can't sell apps through Patreon in the App Store. And it's just such a really good way, I think, for creators to build like a relationship with their audience. And just, people also don't mind spending a few bucks to a person, but they do mind spending a few bucks on an app.

• 27:04David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  So it's just like very different relationship. And so we're basically just trying to really promote the Patreon idea. Our own income basically is just through the Patreon. We're still selling or having access to our betas for our patrons. And that's worked out pretty well as a way of monetizing Delta, honestly.

• 27:21David Pierce?

  Okay. Yeah. I mean, even just the idea of thinking of an app developer as a creator in the same way that you think about, like a content creator as a creator is really interesting and is totally not how most people perceive it, right? And I think, I think it's coming around a little bit, like personally, at least I've seen a lot more of this sort of bootstrapped one person app become a thing that people like in a way that I didn't. And they like associate the app with the person who makes it.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 27:48David Pierce?

  But I think for most people, it's all so faceless, right? Like you just, it's just an app that exists. I don't know if it's made by one person or 10,000 and I don't care. I'm just mad that they're charging me money. And, and it's interesting to think that like, maybe the business model is part of the problem there. That because it all just sits in the App Store and it is so divorced from personality and people, that maybe that's the problem. So actually connecting Patreon to that is a really interesting way of just changing the way people think about what like an app is and how it gets made.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And I'm sorry, I'm really excited for that. And another nice benefit is we can just Have our apps be free and then people just get the betas. And but so it means there's no features that are locked behind paywalls like forever. It's just a you can wait forever and get it for free. Or if you just want early access, you can donate. And I think that's more appealing to people to like when they're trying to support an app versus, oh, you've locked away a feature and now I can never use it unless I pay. It's like, yeah, that difference, I think, makes a huge deal.

• 28:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, no, I totally agree. So, OK, so right before the DMA drops and I guess, what was it like? March of this year when Apple put out its third-party app store plans?

• 28:58Speaker 03

  It was end of January, yeah.

• 29:00David Pierce?

  OK, so this year.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:01David Pierce?

  Apple, right before that, what was kind of the status of Delta and Alt Store? It sounds like it's it's growing, people are using it, like, how how were things?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Things were good. We had like, at that point, like, four million users on Alt Store, like, just existing. I was like, oh, wow, this is going great. Things are going right at Delta. We had been prioritizing basically a new version of Delta, 1.5, to release alongside whatever Apple announced. And so we just like, we're working on that. But then, basically, by January, we're just like, OK, everything is in a good spot. We're ready to go. We just need to know what the hell is happening. And so we were just basically just waiting around to see like, OK, we can do this. We had like, the store had been finished by then, like, all the UI was done. Delta was ready, Clip was ready, so.

• 29:52David Pierce?

  So you you have this thing and you're like, this exists, we made it, it's good. We have absolutely no idea what we're about to do with it.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Exactly, that is exactly where we were.

• 30:01David Pierce?

  What a strange place to be.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  It was very strange. It was, yeah, because we're just every day, we're like, what do we do? Like, we can't move forward in a lot of things, but so it was just a lot of planning and strategizing.

• 30:12David Pierce?

  Yeah, that makes sense. So then, end of January, Apple drops like a million press releases and technical documents about how all this is going to work. What what happens to you on that day? What do you do?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Wow, what it was an overwhelming day, like, for sure. And the first thing that we try to do is figure out, OK, can we exist at all in this new? World because yeah, there's all these like restrictions and we're trying to figure out what the hell like alternative marketplaces and like. And so, yes, we're we spend that whole day basically trying just to parse what Apple's announced. And then we basically are like, okay, we think we can do this. We think we can meet the criteria if we get very creative. Because yeah, the criteria was like a lot of things like you needed to have like the standby letter. We need to have a subsidiary in the EU. And just like a bunch of things that we just sat down like, okay, we got to make all this happen in a month.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Basically, because we're like, okay, we have until March 7th was like the DMA compliance day. Like, okay, let's set up a subsidiary. Let's get the standby figured out. Let's build everything. Because also they announced all the stuff we had to build. And it's like, okay, let's build everything we need to do. And then for the next month was like extreme crunch time, just like getting everything done. Shane honestly was incredible. He was calling so many countries to figure out where we could incorporate. He we finally incorporated in Ireland. So we have a nice subsidiary in Ireland, which is great. He was on talking to banks to get someone to believe in two people who are trying to do something crazy and they need this.

• 31:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, how hard was that process? You're like, so we build a game emulator and also other app stores. I'm imagining a bunch of banks are just like, this is a prank call and hang up.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  A lot did. Yeah, it so many people just like wouldn't listen to us. It was true pure luck that we found one person. His name's Logan. He is just like Morgan Stanley and he was just understood what we were doing and really wanted to go out of his way to help us. And I honestly think if we had not met Logan, I don't know if we would have got this all figured out. But he was like, okay, let's do this. I believe in y'all. I can work with my bosses. We can make it happen. That that was a big win, getting that one for sure.

• 32:20David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember when the news came out, thinking that there were, like you described, a bunch of technical challenges. But there were always going to be a bunch of technical challenges, right? I feel like that you you sort of know going in, there's going to be a bunch of weird work you have to do to get this thing to comply with what Apple wants. But the business challenges of just like the hoops you had to jump through as an organization seemed like they were designed. Science to keep almost everybody out, except for the the truest of true believers and maybe just the most stubborn people building this thing.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 32:52David Pierce?

  And and part of me wonders if if going back a few months, Apple just deeply underestimated your willing to your willingness to pick this fight after so many years of picking this fight. You're like, I've been through your nonsense before, Apple.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Oh, I, yeah, I know they were caught off guard. They they told us that they like when we when we end up going to the lab and everything, they just said straight up, oh, we did not expect anyone to be this prepared, especially as a two person team. They just did not expect us to be as prepared as we were, which

• 33:19David Pierce?

  That had to feel good.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Oh, it did feel good. I was like, cool. But at the same time, I was like, well, then let us launch. It was like, cool. Okay, that's amazing. Let us launch. We're ready.

• 33:28David Pierce?

  Was there any question for a team of two whether to invest all this time on something that at least for now and potentially forever is only going to exist in the EU? Like, there's a lot of people in the EU, but there's a lot of people not in the EU also.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, so two parts of like, one, I do think this is going to come outside the EU at some point. I think it's a question of time. So I, yeah, I expected to see within a few years, it'll expand out to like, I don't know, Japan, United States eventually. So so we view this as like the beginning of a much longer process was to expand. But then the other thing was like, we had nothing to lose. This is literally all we're doing. All our income is working on Alt Store Delta. We're like, well, we might as well just go all the way with it. Like, what else? Like, why not?

• 34:12David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the long bet, I think, is probably a safe one. Again, it's a question of how long it takes, but I do think you're probably right. It also seems like you were in a position where even if it didn't sort of immediately reach a ton of people, you were going to get so much notice just because this is such a big thing and such a big change that like, I all of a sudden Alt Store just appeared in so many headlines in like February and March of this year, which is like,

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Yes, that was very, very surreal seeing that all of a sudden. Yeah.

• 34:40David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, it's so funny because like explaining Alt Store to people is like, okay, it is this bizarre sort of convoluted experience where you have to set up a server. And I'm seeing this in like mainstream news articles.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  No, I'm like, oh my god.

• 34:53David Pierce?

  It's like, oh my god, if my mom asked me what Alt Store is, I'm not gonna know how to answer that question for her.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Same. Yeah, I explained to my friends, I'm like, eh, don't worry about it. It's just a tool to install apps. That's it.

• 35:04David Pierce?

  So, okay, so then we're almost to the present time, but I feel like we still have not gotten to the single wildest part of this whole timeline.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's accurate.

• 35:13David Pierce?

  So you're building the store, things are going well. You launch, I think on launch day, right? March 7th, was it ready to go?

• 35:19Speaker 03

  No, we, we were ready. We were all ready to go. And that was the beginning of like this frustration. So we were, yeah, we were invited to a lab in Cork for Apple to like help us implement our backend and everything. So like a week long lab for us just to work with Apple engineers to get everything working. So then we flew out to Cork. It was like the week before March 5th, so the end of it, the end of February, we flew out. Day one, I showed up. I said, okay, here's everything. We're ready to go. Can we launch? And then they were like, oh, uh, hold on.

• 35:53David Pierce?

  They expected you to show up and be like, I'd like to build an app store. And instead you show up and you're like, I have built an app store.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  They literally, I really think they expected everyone to show up with like no code base, like to just start from scratch and how to do this. And yeah, so we show up and we're like, here's the entire product. It has store pages, it has everything you could possibly need, downloading works. And then they were just like, oh, wow. Yeah, just very clearly, yeah, they were not expecting that. And so it basically was then, okay, so Monday I was like trying to pressure them, can we launch tomorrow? Can we launch tomorrow? iOS 17.14 is coming out tomorrow. Can we be there? And then it just became clear that this whole process was gonna be much longer than we expected for a lot of foreign reasons. Like basically just legal, like giving them documents, having them review documents, stuff like that.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  So iOS 17.14 came out and me and Shane were very bummed because we're like, we were ready to launch on launch day. We were all ready to go. And then uh, so that was frustrating.

• 36:47David Pierce?

  So how long did it take before you actually got the thing up and running?

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Then I think it was two months later, like, yeah, it was April 17th. Like, yeah, so, yeah, from from March 5th to April 17th was just Waiting so a month and a half. And so we did that. And then, yeah, the reception was immediately just phenomenal. People just so excited. And but then we also immediately saw, which we expected, that Delta was the main story.

• 37:14David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  That Delta in the App Store was the big deal. But we had to figure out what to do. And we knew that would be the outcome. If we release Delta in the App Store, that Delta would get like its big moment to be everywhere. And we just were like, you know, that's fine. It's free marketing for Alt Store. If everyone just knows about Delta and then they talk about it and then they get it through Alt Store in the EU.

• 37:31David Pierce?

  So you just you just glossed past part of it, though, like the the whole Apple suddenly allows emulators in the App Store.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:38David Pierce?

  You say that as if you expected that to happen. I don't think anybody expected that to happen.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  Not at all. It the most, yeah, unexpected thing that could have happened. And me and Shane had different reactions at first. Shane was more like, what? This changes everything. Now we gotta think through. And my just reaction was, wow, what validation that Apple had to change the rules to allow emulators? Because they were threatened by us about to launch with an emulator. Like that, to me, was like invigorating. I was like, this is, yes, it means we're doing something right. That Apple is literally like, doing something I never thought they'd do, because it was the only way they could try to make the story not. The EU now has the best apps. Outside the EU has doesn't have the coolest apps. And I just knew Apple, I get, yeah, they just couldn't have that story.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Which is also why emulators are allowed worldwide, is my guess, is the story just could not have been the EU has better apps than the rest of the world.

• 38:29David Pierce?

  Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. And it is very hard to argue that this wasn't specifically about Delta. Like, I just can't, the timing, it's too.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  It is all about Delta. It because we haven't had a direct confirmation from Apple, but our app, Delta, was being notarized for like five weeks. They changed this rule. It's approved the next day.

• 38:49David Pierce?

  Oh, wow.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. It's almost like they were holding it to figure out what they could do about it.

• 38:54David Pierce?

  Did you get any heads up that they were going to make this change?

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Nope, nothing at all.

• 38:58David Pierce?

  Well, and I would guess after that happened, you would have expected it to be big. It sounds like you did expect it to be big, but I feel like it's been, it's certainly been bigger than I expected.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  Like it is bigger than I expected.

• 39:11David Pierce?

  It's been nuts, man.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  It's so validating. Like, I really can't like, because yeah, we're doing this because we just really believe that people just want to play old Nintendo games or old, old games. We just, I think it's just a thing people want to do. And for so long, everyone just says, no, that's only for the nerds. It's only for like people who know what they're doing. And I've just been like, you just have to make it accessible. That's all it means. Like all you gotta do. If it's accessible, people will know how to do it and they will love it. We're seeing that that is exactly the case. And yes, so even more people than I thought are enjoying it. It is the most surreal thing, seeing it not only in the App Store, but being the top app in the App Store.

• 39:50David Pierce?

  For like a long time. Are you still the number one app in the App Store?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  I mean, I think last time I checked, but yeah, since we've launched, we've been number one. And yeah, so surreal. Like the most like any time in my life, I've never felt more like I actually am dreaming right now. Like I need like pinching myself like, because it was just too perfect. Like work on this app for 10 years. And then day one in the App Store, it's the top. It was just incredible.

• 40:15David Pierce?

  Has it changed what you think about how to do all of this? I mean, if you had charged $2.99 for Delta, you would have made a crap ton of money by now. Like have you, are you thinking about the business of all of this differently? After it's blown up the way that it has?

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Um, I think we want this to be bigger than just like Delta. And we want this to cause like actual change in like the emulation scene or in the gaming sphere. Just like, we want to make this more accessible for everyone. And we want people to start talking about it and have real conversations about it without just being like piracy, piracy. And so a lot of what we're doing is we thought Delta, to make that change happen, we had to like, it had to be free. Had to be, everyone had to have it. And that's, I think, just what we're focused on really is like, as long as we're, we're making, we're making enough to support ourselves. And so we're not in need of more money, but I just think for Delta to have the biggest impact is just make it as fully free and accessible. To as many people as possible and let them just start reliving games.

• 41:12David Pierce?

  Are you worried at all about legal ramifications? I mean, there was obviously the the Yuzu thing that happened kind of right before this. It's been a it's been a weird moment in the emulation community. Have has have you heard from any Nintendo lawyers?

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, that came out as we're also like in Europe trying to launch this. I'm like, oh, interesting. Very, very relevant to us, but I'm not going to say I'm not nervous about things, but I am confident in what we're doing. I've learned a lot of what not to do over the past 10 years. And I think that we are really trying to show how you can do something like this legally. Like, we're not Yuzu. We're not emulating a current generation console. We're not doing a lot of things that other emulators get in trouble. Like, there's no DRM we have to deal with to like for the the game. So just the game files ripped from cartridges. So we don't have to do anything like that. We're doing everything we can to do it right. And there was no world that I wouldn't have done this. I guess that's a better way. Like, I wouldn't have got this far and not released Delta. I just had to.

• 42:10David Pierce?

  No, I think that well, and I think that's part of why this moment of your story is so interesting, because we're at the beginning of this weird new era of apps in the App Store. And I think a lot of stuff is changing and a lot is going to continue to change. But we're also, in a funny way, kind of at the end of your 10 year journey. Like, the this you you finally finished the thing.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  That that is what it feels like. It's really weird, but I'm like, wow, it actually happened. Like, it got in the App Store. And yes, it does feel like the culmination of that whole journey, which is very weird.

• 42:44David Pierce?

  Yeah. Does that make it feel like I finally got to do it? And it worked and it was huge and it was awesome. And now I can go do something else.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  I honestly, the the fact that Delta's doing so well has just motivated me to just want to work on it so much for right now. Because I've just been working on it in isolation, assuming one day it could like be a big deal. That, I don't know, actually seeing everyone play it right now has made me really motivated to like really focus on it again. And also because so much of the past two years has been like a lot priority of working on Alt Store. And now that we launched Alt Store, we can just like have some time with Delta again. Like, there's just so many fun. Features I want to add, but I haven't had time to because we had to get Alt Store up and running for this deadline. But so I'm looking forward to a lot of that, but I don't know if this is a 10 year thing. I don't know if this is the beginning of like another 10 year adventure. To me, I think it's, I'll work on Delta for a bit and I think I got to finish up what Alt Store is. Like, we still have some to do to prove it out.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Like, we got to get the third party apps on there. We got to build up the platform. And I think that's, to me, the next step. It's just making sure that Alt Store is a real app store that people are using and happy with. And then maybe I'll be done.

• 43:50David Pierce?

  And then, then you will have resoundingly defeated Apple, which very few people can say.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 43:57David Pierce?

  All right, we got to take a break and then I have to tell you about this weird obsession I've developed in recent months. We'll be right back.

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• 45:36David Pierce?

  Welcome back. I've spent most of the last month, and really most of the last year, talking about and testing AI gadgets. It's been a long time, maybe since the early VR days, but maybe even as far back as the early smartphone era, since we've seen this many new things with this many new ideas. Most of those ideas, right now, are very bad. Well, not bad necessarily. It's just that they don't work, so they're bad. You know what I mean? The Humane AI pin has some interesting theories about how you might use a device without a screen and without getting sucked in and distracted. It's just that none of those things work very well. The Rabbit R1 just kind of puts an AI chatbot on a device that looks like a rearranged phone. And again, none of it works very well. So far, for me at least,

• 46:19David Pierce?

  there is only one thing about AI that really feels like it works and actually makes my life better. And that is voice notes. A good microphone, plus good transcription software, plus some useful models for summarizing and grabbing the most important bits of what I say. It works, and it's awesome. I kind of feel like a doctor now, running around talking nonsense into my tape recorder, like JD from season four of Scrubs. Mrs. McCalla, 40s, moderately attractive, condition improving.

• 46:47Speaker 06

  Did you just say I was moderately attractive?

• 46:49David Pierce?

  Excuse me, Mrs. McCalla? Patient's complaint of hearing loss was clearly just to get attention. Though, I also, to be fair, have this experience a lot doing that. I thought, I like toast. They aren't all winners. In actual reality, by the way, doctors have used voice recorders forever. Talking is a lot faster than typing, and a transcript of a conversation can often give you a lot more information quickly and with context than you'd get from just a written thing. And a lot of doctors are now using AI to help summarize those transcripts and help them find key information later, because the problem with recording everything on a voice recorder is that it's a lot of information, and it takes a lot of time to parse through it all. Listening to your own voice for hours at a time just to find that one thing you said? Not fun.

• 47:34David Pierce?

  The big thing that happened to make all of this stuff work recently is that OpenAI built a speech-to-text tool called Whisper. When OpenAI launched it in 2022, it said that the model, quote, "approaches human-level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition." In its blog post announcing it, it used this audio as an example.

• 47:53Speaker 07

  This is the Micro Machine Man presenting the most midget miniature motorcade of Micro Machines. Each one has dramatic details, terrific trim, precision.

• 47:58David Pierce?

  That's a guy named John Moschita Jr. doing a commercial. By the way, he's actually in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's fastest talker. I've now listened to that ad approximately a million times, and I do think Whisper gets one word wrong. It says "are" near the end, and I think Moschita says "and." But I can't even tell for sure, and that's all Whisper missed. That's how good this is. OpenAI reportedly developed Whisper as a way to transcribe millions of hours of YouTube videos in order to get training data for its GPT models, which is a strange and somewhat nefarious way to have gotten to this point, but let's just leave that aside. Now, we have this open source Whisper model that works incredibly well and is being used all over the voice notes world.

• 48:40David Pierce?

  The first gadget I got to try all this out is called the Plaud Note, P-L-A-U-D. It's a $160 recorder, about the size of a credit card, just a little thicker and a little heavier. It's just a microphone, basically, that connects to an app on your phone to store and process all of your recordings. You just press the one button on the Plaud to start recording, and a little red light turns on to let you know it's working. It has one mode for just recording your voice and another that's supposedly optimized for recording phone calls. It actually comes with a case you can attach to the back of your phone for recording those calls, and it's surprisingly good at it.

• 49:12Speaker 08

  ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

• 49:23David Pierce?

  As a reporter who has spent most of my career constantly trying to find ways to record phone calls, this is awesome. For years, I've used this weird rig where I have a headphone splitter that goes into a pair of AirPods and also into a voice recorder. This is just way better. But you can also use it to record sales calls and meetings and that sort of thing. Plaud definitely imagines the note as a business tool first and foremost. I have been using it mostly for things like to-do lists, or when I wake up in the middle of the night with a fun idea and want to get it down before I forget. And I love, love using it while I wander around my kitchen to see what needs to go on the grocery list. Okay, this is my grocery list for the week of May 1st.

• 50:04David Pierce?

  I need bagels, potatoes, almost out of bread flour, so I should get bread flour. I need more paprika, but the smoked paprika, not the other stuff. So I record that, and then a few seconds later, I open up the Plaid app, which is very bare bones, but works basically fine, and that recording shows up. I open it up and I get three options: transcription, summary, and mind map. Mind map is useless, let's not worry about mind map. I tap on transcription, and it asks what language the recording is in and what kind of note it is. Call, meeting, interview, task assignment, that kind of thing. I pick task assignment in English, and a few minutes later, I get a full and very accurate transcription of my grocery list. That's kind of useful, but really what I want is for this to just make me a grocery list.

• 50:49David Pierce?

  So I tap on summary. It tells me at the top, "The meeting outlined the necessary grocery items to be purchased for the upcoming week, ensuring a sufficient supply of food and essentials," which is true, I suppose, but totally unnecessary. And then it gives me the list, all as a single action item. This is not what I was hoping for, but all the stuff is here. And the coolest part is, when I said I was good on peanut butter and good on coffee, it actually kept those things off of the list, which means it actually in some way understood the difference between me saying something and me deliberately adding it to the list. That's the stuff, right? The Plaid note is very cool, but it's expensive for just a voice recorder, and you do also have to pay 80 bucks a year for the AI features.

• 51:33David Pierce?

  That is a lot for a grocery list tool. So instead, I turned to the Rabbit R1, a more full-featured AI device that in general is pretty bad. It can't do a lot of what it promises, but it can record, transcribe, and summarize audio. So I started carrying this thing around just to see how it would do with to-do lists and journal entries and all that stuff as well. This is me testing out the voice recorder. Let's see what I have to do today. Need to finish my Apple story. I sent edits back to Jake. He's gonna get edits back to me. I'd like to get that at least into Top Edit today. We have the Vergecast at two. Once you record something, Rabbit stores it all in an app called The Rabbit Hole, which is not a good app in general, but for these purposes, it's fine.

• 52:17David Pierce?

  It pulled out a very basic, plain text list of stuff from my note, in addition to just giving me access to the recording itself. And it got most of the stuff on that to-do list that I said, but it did just completely ignore a couple of things. And since Rabbit doesn't just make a transcript and let you see it, I don't actually like this one quite as much. At least, it is easy to download the audio and upload it somewhere else, which is something. And the mic is pretty good. I need to write the container post for tomorrow, but I can do that tonight while Anna's at class. That's my day. But in general, buying a whole device just to record audio is probably only for the most dedicated users of this stuff. The main advantage of a dedicated voice recorder is that the battery tends to last a lot longer, they tend to have better mics. And also, because they're not an app,

• 53:02David Pierce?

  you don't run the risk of weirdness with background apps shutting down or getting a phone call in the middle that screws everything up, or just loud pinging notifications constantly popping up in your recording. Not everyone needs a voice recorder all the time, but if you do, you'll probably appreciate it being a dedicated device. But if you want to get most of the functionality of those devices, but you'd rather just use your phone, oh, boy, do I have good news for you. There are suddenly a million apps out there that are making use of Whisper and other models, especially from OpenAI, to transcribe, summarize, and make use of all of your audio. You can basically Google and find 1,000 options, but let me just tell you about two. The first is called Cleft Notes, and it works on Mac and iOS. This one, I think, is the best voice notes app I've tried, period.

• 53:47David Pierce?

  You open it up and hit Record, and it shows this amorphous, meshy blob that moves as you record, which is kind of delightful to look at. Like most other apps, it gives you both a full transcription of your audio and tries to make some sense of it after you've finished. But Clef goes further, actually. It tries to format and structure everything you said, so that if you come out of a call and you want to write down some takeaways... Okay, I just got off the call where we were planning Steve's bachelor party. It sounds like the plan is to go to Myrtle Beach for three days. It then turns that into a document with bullet points and numbers and headings. It's not always right, but it's usually actually a pretty good start. Like that voice note I just played turned into a cleft note with an itinerary, golf plans, a transportation section, a food and drink section,

• 54:32David Pierce?

  and a note about renting golf clubs. It's written strangely formally, but it is really helpful. There are, like I said, tons of apps that do this. And since they basically all use OpenAI's models, they're all roughly equivalent in terms of the actual quality of the transcript and information. But I just want to quickly mention one other app I really like. It's called AudioPen, and it's a web app, which means it works everywhere, and it's super easy and fast. You just record some audio. My grocery list for today. I need eggs, I need nut butter, I'm good on coffee and good on tea. I need red wine for this weekend, I need coffee filters, I need three balls of mozzarella for pizza. Once you do, it gives you the same summaries and information as the rest. But what I really like about AudioPen in particular

• 55:17David Pierce?

  is that if you pay the $99 a year for AudioPen Prime, which gets you more transcriptions and storage and whatnot, you can also tell it how to format what it creates. So if you want everything in bullets or paragraphs or like iambic pentameter, you can do that. Here, for instance, is my grocery list in iambic pentameter, which I had a different AI from Eleven Labs read out loud.

• 55:38Speaker 09

  Eggs and nut butter I require. On coffee, tea, I'm satisfied. Red wine for weekend. Filters too. Three mozzarella balls will do. Pepperoni for pizza's taste. More bread flour, not to waste. Broccoli, mandarins combined, and peaches sweet. These fruits divine.

• 55:58David Pierce?

  You probably don't want your groceries in iambic pentameter. More likely you'll want to tell it to be formal for business stuff or write like an author you like or something. But it works pretty well, whatever you pick. And it even goes another step toward turning my rambling thoughts into something that feels finished and useful and not just like rambling thoughts. Another thing you can do in Audiopen is upload existing audio. So like if you have a meeting you already recorded and now need to get something from, or you want notes on a YouTube video you liked, you can just dump the audio in and get info out. I've heard a lot of people say recently that summarizing YouTube videos is one of their core uses for ChatGPT and other AI models. And this is another way to get the same kind of thing.

• 56:42David Pierce?

  You could put this podcast in and it would probably give you some information. Basically, all of these tools do cost money if you want to do stuff like that, at least if you want to use them heavily. Whisper is an open source model that anyone can use. You can actually download it to your computer and run it locally if you want to. But it is really computationally intensive. And for all the summarization stuff, these apps still are mostly using OpenAI APIs anyway. Oh, one exception I should mention, actually. If you have a Google Pixel phone, the built-in Pixel Recorder is a terrific voice recorder. And there's a new summarize button in there that also works really well. Apple's Voice Memos app doesn't do any of the transcription or summarization stuff, but I wouldn't be shocked if that's coming soon. In the last few months, I've been using AI audio for lots of things.

• 57:27David Pierce?

  Meeting notes, to-do lists, searchable transcripts of YouTube videos that I want to refer back to. But I actually like it best as a journal. I've never been good at keeping a journal over the years because it always involves taking the time and sitting down to do it. And it's an activity and it's a whole thing. But now I can just sit down in the morning and quickly brain dump everything I'm thinking about while I brush my teeth. Today is Wednesday, May 1st. The first thing I have to do is finish up the Apple Store and my Rabbit review. I also have to book train tickets to get to New York for tomorrow. Should be a relatively chill day. And then, at the end of the day, while I'm doing dishes or getting ready for bed or just walking around, I can just ramble about what happened that day for a few minutes.

• 58:11David Pierce?

  I was in Chicago today for the Chicago Humanities Festival. It was a really fun day. We did a good job of, I think, not having the whole thing be a bummer, but also having it not be too sort of Pollyanna-ish optimistic.

• 58:26David Pierce?

  When I do that, I now get, instead of just an audio file, a really good transcript that I can find again later, and a nice summary of the key points of everything I talk about. It's both incredibly low effort and surprisingly useful. Honestly, I hope Day1, which is the journaling app I've been trying to force myself to use for like a decade now, adopts some of this stuff. This feels like a good way to get things into a journal. Honestly, I think these apps and devices are kind of perfectly indicative of how AI works right now in general. For all the hype over image generation and AI's abilities to write emails for you or, you know, replace your job entirely, the thing these models do best is take a bunch of information and try to simplify and summarize it.

• 59:08David Pierce?

  That's handy if you're trying to get the gist of a long legal document or you want to know what a podcast was about before you devote 90 minutes of your life to it. That's why I'm so intrigued by Notion AI and all the other tools that aren't trying to understand all of the universe's information. They're just focused on the stuff that you care about and making sense of that. That is a really good use case of AI, if you ask me. And it's working pretty well for me because, as you guessed, I do love rambling into microphones. Actually, you know what? I should stop doing that for a minute. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and take a question from the Birchcast hotline. We'll be right back.

• 59:47Speaker 02

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• 1:01:16David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 VERGE11, and the email is [email protected]. We love your questions. Please keep sending them, keep calling, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. This week, we have a very timely question from Dax.

• 1:01:33Speaker 10

  Hey, guys. It's Dax from Virginia, and I can't go to sleep because I've just been thinking, why is the Rabbit R1 not just an app? At $200, it's like a very buggy with bad-looking plastic thing, and it doesn't do anything that I feel like my phone can't do. So why isn't it just a paid subscription service app that I can install on my phone? Love to know your thoughts. Bye.

• 1:01:58David Pierce?

  I've been thinking about this a lot. I have the Rabbit R1 in front of me. I have used it a ton. I just reviewed it. It's on the site. We have a video. You can watch me wandering Washington DC yelling questions at the Rabbit R1. And I've been thinking about this question a lot, ever since really using the Humane AI pin. What are these devices actually for? Why are they devices? And I think I have a cynical answer and I have a non-cynical answer. The non-cynical answer is that I think there is room for something that isn't a smartphone. In a funny way, we're actually going through the beginnings of an unbundling process in a lot of ways. I think there is a set of people who are realizing that they want multiple devices for multiple things. The idea that I should just have a smartphone that does everything

• 1:02:43David Pierce?

  was never really true. I mean, think about that brief moment where we tried to use our smartphones as TV remotes. It turns out that having buttons you can press without having to look down at is a good idea. Something like- The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, I think, is really interesting. Or the Snap Spectacles that they've been working on for years. The idea that actually, a camera that's not in my pocket but is on my face is actually a good idea. So I think there are some things that should have been shoved into the phone, right? Like my phone as a music player and not necessarily needing a dedicated music player makes a lot of sense. But I think there is room for some kind of AI device that isn't your phone.

• 1:03:25David Pierce?

  The idea that it could be a little more accessible, it could be closer to your face and mouth and eyes and the sort of biometric stuff that actually can make AI really useful. My guess is that's probably something that looks more like a smartwatch or a pair of glasses than it is a sort of dedicated handheld device. But the reason I was so intrigued by Humane is I think the idea of a wearable that's like on your lapel, kind of always within arm's reach, is really interesting. That's also how I felt years ago about things like Alexa and Google Assistant and the idea that, you know, I can talk to technology without having to pull my phone out, look at a screen, unlock a thing. This idea of ambient computing that's been floating around actually requires lots of different kinds of devices. I think the smartphone is going to keep being the main one for a long time.

• 1:04:10David Pierce?

  And I think any product that tries to subvert that and say ditch your phone and use this other device is just gonna fail because A, people don't want to ditch their phone, and B, you shouldn't. Phones are great and they're useful and they do lots of things. But we can attach stuff to phones that does more things in more ways. And I think that's gonna be very cool. The AI gadget remains to be seen, but there are ways it could work and there are ways it could happen and there are ways that it might be exciting. That's the non-cynical answer is I think there is something here. The cynical answer is that they're just desperately trying to find a way to sell you something. We have gotten into a place in the smartphone market where there are two companies, Apple and Google, that are total gatekeepers for the entire industry, right?

• 1:04:53David Pierce?

  If you want to do something on the iPhone, you have to play nice in the App Store. You have to play by Apple's rules, you have to give Apple a cut, that is just how it works. Same in the Play Store, there's like a little more openness in Android, but for all intents and purposes. If you want to be on Android, you have to play by Google's rules. That means there are certain kinds of things you just can't do. That means there are certain kinds of apps that you can't make a real business out of because of the way that Apple's rules work. And so what you're left with is saying, okay, there are two companies that are just going to tax us every time we want to do anything. And I think we've kind of spent a decade watching companies that didn't win in mobile try to win in the next thing.

• 1:05:35David Pierce?

  And I think in a huge way, that was why then Facebook, now Meta, bought Oculus all those years ago, because it was saying, okay, we think that there is going to be a huge new VR platform, and we cannot lose it again to Apple or Google because there's so much money in being Apple and Google. You get to do all kinds of things. You get to insert yourself in the middle. You get to take the tax. You get to become a huge ad business. You set the defaults. It's just a massively powerful thing to be. And so when there was the idea that, okay, VR is the next thing, you saw a bunch of companies chase VR. When everybody thought AR was going to become the thing, that was where Snap showed up and was like, we're a camera company and we're going to build spectacles and we're going to take over. And, you know, the HoloLens did it and Magic Leap did it.

• 1:06:18David Pierce?

  And there was this crazy rush to not just be the first great device, but be the first great platform. The same thing is happening right now in AI. As I talked to both Humane and Rabbit, and frankly, a lot of other companies in this space, the idea is to start with hardware, right? You build a product, you make people buy the product, you make people like the product, and then you build a platform out of it. Humane's big idea is this thing called Cosmos. That's their operating system. They're hoping basically to have an app store for Cosmos. You'll be able to use the APIs to plug in. It'll work on lots of different devices. Like, they are very much trying to build a software platform with the size and power of iOS or Android. Rabbit has been a little less ambitious about how it talks about that.

• 1:07:00David Pierce?

  But when it talks about the large action model, this thing that can actually go and use the apps you use for you, that's the same thing, right? Like, there's a version of this that is kind of hacky, that is, you teach the system how to do it. But there's a much easier version that is just partnering with companies that exist. And have existing products. And for Rabbit, if it can be that center point, the sort of place that you go to use the apps, that's very powerful. OpenAI is trying to do the same thing with the GPT store and custom GPTs. Google, I suspect, is going to start to push into that pretty hard. I think you're going to start to see Apple have AI APIs that you can plug into. The idea is just if you can be the sort of hub for all the different features of AI,

• 1:07:44David Pierce?

  that is going to be hugely powerful. We've seen in this first phase, a bunch of companies kind of try to do everything, right? You build the one huge, perfect model. That solves all your problems. Everybody uses it for everything. The end. I don't think that's the future. I think the future is actually sort of an interconnected galaxy of models and systems and tools that you use. And so the question then is who sits in the middle? What is the platform that you use that translates all of that stuff for you? And picks the right agent depending on what you need? And I suspect all of these companies think that if they can be that platform, they can make an awful lot of money off of being that platform. Hardware is part of the business. I think actually a lot of these companies genuinely would like to make money from their hardware.

• 1:08:27David Pierce?

  Rabbit is hard to tell, and frankly, so is Humane, if there's actually any money in it right now. But they do seem to both want to be hardware companies. But more than that, they want to be platforms. And you cannot build a platform on top of iOS or Android. They just won. And as they push into AI, they're going to entrench that even further, right? I think we're going to see a lot of AI stuff at WWDC. We're going to see a lot of AI stuff at Google I/O. Gemini is already all over Android. Those companies are not interested in letting other AI platforms in. And I think there's really interesting regulatory questions about whether they're going to be forced to. Like, what if you picked your AI model the same way you picked your default browser? Really interesting idea. These companies will not do that unless they are forced to do that. So we'll see.

• 1:09:12David Pierce?

  But the way that these companies are thinking is that the only way in is to build a new thing that doesn't require smartphone and start to slowly siphon you away from these two companies, Google and Apple. Essentially owned our internet experience and have been between any company that wants to build something and you for 15 years. That's a hard, hard, hard thing to upset. It's why a lot of the antitrust stuff going on right now, especially in the US is happening. And if I'm a new company, that's the only reason I would build hardware. Because building an app is too hard, there's too much stuff in the way. And you're probably just going to get eaten alive by Apple or Google. So that's the cynical answer.

• 1:09:56David Pierce?

  I hope for the non cynical answer. And in reality, I think it's a little bit of both. Like, we are in a phase where there are interesting new ideas about hardware, because there are interesting new ideas about how we interact with technology. We're going to spend, I think, less time tapping on our phones over time and less time looking at screens just to do basic things. So if that's the case, we are going to need new devices. But also, anyone trying to compete in those spaces knows that the only real way to build a company the size of Google or Apple is to do it outside of Google or Apple. And that's what everybody is desperately trying to figure out. That said, all the AI stuff we've seen so far should pretty much just be an app. I have yet to see the one that I am like, this is a new category of device. But I'm holding out hope.

• 1:10:41David Pierce?

  I haven't tried all the glasses yet. I'm excited to see. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about. My rabbit review, lots of our Delta coverage, all kinds of stuff on AI voice notes, lots more on theverge.com. I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read the website. It's a good website. We try hard to make it great. If you've thoughts, questions, feelings, or other AI gadgets you want me to try out, you can always email us at [email protected] or just call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. Send us all your thoughts and questions and ideas for what we should do on the show. Feelings about everything, it's my favorite thing. We have a Slack room, by the way, where every single one of the hotline questions comes in

• 1:11:24David Pierce?

  as they are received and I get to listen to them and it's just so fun. I listen to every single one, I promise. Whether or not it makes it on the show, please know our whole team hears all of your calls. We read all of your emails. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poor. 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 about earnings, iPads, and a whole bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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