OnlyFans' back and forth on adult content ban / Tim Cook’s Apple, ten years later

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex, Cranz, and Adi Robertson discuss why OnlyFans planned to prohibit sexually explicit content on their platform and why it reversed its position days later. Second half of the show, the crew discuss Tim Cook's ten years as Apple CEO, iPhone 13 rumors, and the whole bunch of tech news you may have missed. Further reading: Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine gets full FDA approval US COVID-19 data has never been good enough VidCon cancels its 2021 event, says next one will be in June 2022 The Pfizer vaccine will be officially called Comirnaty, for some reason OnlyFans to prohibit sexually explicit content beginning Sex workers made OnlyFans valuable — then it sold them out OnlyFans pushes SFW app on iOS and Android as it tries OnlyFans' inexplicable ban on porn might be explained OnlyFans CEO on why it banned adult content OnlyFans says never mind, it actually won’t ban porn on October 1st Joe Biden reportedly hosting cybersecurity meeting with Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, and Andy Jassy attending Google and Microsoft promise billions to help bolster US cybersecurity Facebook is reportedly forming an election commission that it will announce in the fall Tim Cook’s Apple, ten years later Apple will take a smaller cut of publishers’ sales if they join Apple News S. Korea parliament committee votes to curb Google, Apple …, Higher-end Mac Mini reportedly landing ‘in the next several months’ 'iPhone 13' Name Emerges on Alleged Packaging Stickers Apple Watch Series 7: Leaked images show 41mm and 45mm bands TSMC is raising chip prices as supply shortages continue Apple to Release iOS 15 iCloud Private Relay as a Public Beta iCloud+'s New Custom Email Domain Feature Now Available in Beta Kanye West’s new Donda Stem Player will apparently let you ‘customize any song’ Snapchat’s new AR features can identify the world around you The manual for Facebook’s Project Aria AR glasses shows what it’s like to wear them Fitbit’s new Charge 5 has a rounded design and a color screen Microsoft’s Panos Panay now directly advises CEO Satya Nadella Microsoft announces $549 Halo-themed Xbox Series X console Xbox consoles are getting xCloud this holiday so you can stream before you download Elon Musk says Tesla is working on humanoid robots Don’t overthink it: Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a joke Alaska Airlines evacuated a plane after a phone burst into flame Samsung will let you unlock your Z Fold 3’s bootloader, but at the cost of your cameras Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence Making it work 2021 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, Addie Robertson and Alex Krantz join the show. We talk about what on earth happened with OnlyFans, lots of iPhone rumors and other Apple product rumors heating up as September comes closer, and a grab bag for the ages. That's coming up on the Vergecast now.

• 0:14Speaker 01

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

• 0:59Speaker 01

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

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, flagship podcast of the passion economy. Wow. That was the thing, the VCs were trying to call the creator economy the passion economy for like 48 hours. I'm Neil, I'm your friend, the proprietor of the passion economy, the Atlanta's newest nightclub experience. That's what that sounds like to me every time I hear it. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I'm your battery containment bag.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, is that an airplane thing?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a phone lighting on fire joke.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy. This is going all over the place already. Alex Krantz is here.

• 2:19Alex Cranz?

  I am the dongle I will one day buy to make my webcam work.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  I'm excited for you.

• 2:26Alex Cranz?

  I think everyone is.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  Great. And Addie Robertson is here.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  Hi, I am a quickly reversed policy position.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  That's good. Speaking of that, we got to talk about OnlyFans. There's a bunch of Apple rumors to talk about all this stuff. Uh, I want to start where we always start with COVID. Uh, big news, the Pfizer vaccine was given full FDA approval. I didn't actually know what FDA approval like really meant and Liz and Mary Beth explained it to me. It means that they're allowed to start marketing the drug.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  The fundamental thing that that means besides overcoming vaccine hesitancy with the, uh, the stamp of government approval is that they're allowed to start marketing, they're allowed to do ads. They're allowed to like start marketing because the thing is safe for the, the uses it's been approved for. And that means that we learned its name.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  It had the name for a long time, but they weren't allowed to market it. So they never said the name out loud. And then they got this approval that everyone was waiting for. And the Biden administration had been like teasing, the approval is coming, we can start doing the mandates. And then I'm like, and it's called Comirnaty.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  Comirnaty is the, is the official name of the vaccine.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Isn't it Comirnaty? It's supposed to sound like community and RNA.

• 3:39Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, is that it? Is it supposed to sound like immunity?

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Yes, it's supposed to sound community with mRNA in the middle.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Oh, no. I've been pronouncing it Comirnaty because I think they should market it as Natty Boost and like give it away at frat parties. I support that. I support that way more. Comirnaty.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  Can we just, actually, hang on. Comirnaty is an anagram for manic Tory, which makes me think it's, it's named after the Prime Minister of the UK.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 4:08Nilay Patel?

  It's also, uh, an anagram for tiny macro, which I personally love because if you think about the way, uh, uh, you know, vaccine works, it's like a little, little macro, you know, repeats the same thing over and over again. Uh, what else we got here? Oh, omit Carney. So if you think of, if you think of the

• 4:25Speaker 02

  That's racist.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  That's a carny.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  That's racist.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Roman City is the last one there, which is, um, pretty good.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Uh, it's actually good.

• 4:34Nilay Patel?

  An army tonic.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  So many.

• 4:35Nilay Patel?

  Americans love anything that's vaguely European.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  We have to mention that the Moderna vaccine is called Spike Vax, by the way, right?

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  Spike Vax is very amazing.

• 4:43Alex Cranz?

  Not as good as Natty Boost, though.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  Natty Boost isn't like, just go with it. It's just sitting there for you. All these names were, uh, come up. They were generated by a company called the Brand Institute.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 4:56Nilay Patel?

  Which like, they, like, all these companies paid the Brand Institute and you can tell that, like, Moderna just paid them more money.

• 5:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  Cause they got Spike Vax. Pfizer was like, come on. But they can't, they can't use the name Spike Vax in the United States yet, cause it's not approved.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  So I can't get my Spike Vax tattoo yet?

• 5:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you gotta wait and for the official approval.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, my Johnson Johnson vaccine is, I think, officially going to be named Womp Womp.

• 5:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the AstraZeneca vaccine is named Vaxavria, uh, which it sounds like a level in a Max Payne game. That's my full Vaxavria. Like, you have to go there?

• 5:33Speaker 04

  It's my favorite JRPG.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, this is all, the point of this is it, the Pfizer vaccine is approved in the United States by the FDA. It means they can start marketing it. It means that Pfizer's gonna run ads for it, which is interesting. And that's gonna happen next to a bunch of mandates, which will hopefully bring this thing to an end. In the meantime, though, Delta continues to rage. Many things are being canceled. VidCon was canceled. This week, they're saying the next one will be in June. Uh, right now, it's supposed to be the New York Auto Show that is canceled. I will tell you the car companies are all scrambling to figure out how they're gonna announce. Have you noticed there's a lot of car CEOs on Decoder lately? It's like, they just, like, there's this car CEO that's just wandering the streets looking for a home. And we just take him in. And then there's like, the, the general, okay, we want people to get vaccinated.

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  There's mandates. We have to store and have apps for that stuff. So Samsung Pay is, I'm gonna let you store a digital version of your COVID vaccine card. I was telling you, New York State has something called the Excelsior Pass.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  There's also something called the Excelsior Pass Plus. No.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  I couldn't get that one. Could you get?

• 6:41Nilay Patel?

  Do I have to? Is it a streaming service? It's very confusing, but all it's it's all like the response to Delta is a higher push for vaccines and what will eventually be a push towards boosters. But now that you see that the FDA approval coming and the marketing approval coming, I think we're going to enter another phase of conversation with these vaccines, because they will be marketed as products, which if you're a Vergecast listener, you know that once something becomes a product, all kinds of wacky things start happening. So we'll see, but if you haven't been vaccinated, please go do it. It will hopefully bring this thing to an end sooner rather than later. Okay, speaking of things that began and ended very quickly.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  That's a good segue.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  It did it. Addy, by the time people listen to this, your explainer about what on earth happened with OnlyFans will be up. There's a mystery at the heart of it, but try to explain what happened here.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  So technically, nothing happened here, but if something were to have happened here, it would have started last week when OnlyFans, which if you're not familiar with it, it's a sort of subscription based kind of crowdfunding creator economy app, except that it is also is overwhelmingly popular with and sort of synonymous with sex work. It announced that it was going to ban explicit sexual content. And it was not immediately clear why it was doing this, except that it was saying there was sort of general pressure from payment processors and banks, which could mean a lot of things, obviously. And eventually their CEO said, it's because banks wouldn't work with us. They named three banks. Then about 24 hours later, they said, okay, wait, actually, no, we're not banning this. We're cool. We signed agreements with people.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  We can support our entire class of creators. Nothing's happening. Never mind. This policy is not going into place October 1st, as it was before.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  Every step of that involved an enormous amount of confusion and chaos. And I would just, I'll just say it, guessing from everyone around, because OnlyFans has not said enough about why they made this decision, who pushed them into making it, and why they walked it back. Like, we just don't know a bunch of stuff. But the sort of like dot connecting that has happened all around us has been furious. And I would say that the actual creators on OnlyFans are rightfully pissed off. Like, this is their livelihood. And OnlyFans is like, we're shutting a lot of you off. And they were not clear about what they were actually banning.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Yes, so they were, yeah, they banned referring to or advertising or posting their, air quotes, explicit sexual content, which included like most of the things you would think of as pornography. It did not necessarily include nudity. Nudity was technically still allowed if it was consistent with the rest of the policy. But there was an email where they suggested that maybe anything that was like too salacious would still violate that policy, like if you were zooming in too much. I mean, these platforms are always, they're incredibly unclear often, and they're often really frustrating for creators, no matter what they do. And then you take that and you add on top of it the whole huge mess that is paying for porn online.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  So that's the, the shape of it and kind of the problem. Let's take it sort of beat by beat. So first, OnlyFans announced a regular app for iOS and Android that complies with Apple and Google's relatively prudish rules. And they're like, this is just an app to discover non-porn on these platforms. Everyone thought, that's pretty weird. But okay, like, they're not like, I think one of the big question, there are two giant categories of new tech things that are not expressed in the App Store. OnlyFans is one of them. I mean, it's legitimately a huge business. It cannot have an app because of Apple's rules and Google's rules. The other one is like crypto and NFTs.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  Like, OpenSea is the big NFT marketplace. They can't have an app because it's digital goods and they don't want to pay the fee to Apple. So we're always kind of paying attention under creators' desk, like, how are they going to get on the App Store? It's a big market for them to get into. So they announce this. Safe for work app on iOS and Android. Like, that's weird. And then there's a story in Axios, I think, that's like, they're having trouble getting investors. And the guy wants to cash out. And that was like, huh, that's weird. Like, it's a good business. Like, abstract away what they're they're selling. Like, it's a good business and you can see that people pay it. They take a cut, taking a cut of transactions, a very good business on the internet. They have a good business. Then like, minutes later, it feels like minutes later,

• 11:10Nilay Patel?

  there was, they're gonna ban explicit content, and all they've pointed to is the banks. They haven't messaged out to anyone. Their own support channel on Twitter was DMing people saying it was a lie.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  Not great. Not great. Then like, later that night, there was like, the BBC puts out a story that's like, this is because of us, because we have this investigation into their content moderation policies. Addie, what was going on there? That that one, to me, was the hardest one to unpack.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, so their content, the BBC report was basically saying that OnlyFans, which, by the way, is a UK-based company, it had this policy that doesn't sound incredibly unusual for a platform in general, which is that they were more lenient with big accounts, that they had this sort of three-strikes policy if you posted illegal content and you were a really big user on OnlyFans. Except that because OnlyFans is, in large part, a sex site, it that was illegal content that was, say, related to, like, prostitution or related to other, like, sort of, they had mentioned bestiality and incest, like, things that are just really much more distasteful than a lot of the illegal content you would find on other platforms.

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  So the BBC says, we've got that, we had this investigation, and it was gonna publish, and OnlyFans know about it, and their reaction to it was to shut down all sexually explicit content. When I say there's like, a lot of dot connecting here, like, the BBC was like, check out this dot connecting we've done, right? Like, they were like, taking credit for it, which is a strange look, but they, I get it. I get why they would think that. So, and then the last thing that happened at the end of last week, a bunch of people connected another dot, which was that Mastercard had announced in April, That there be new requirements for adult content providers that would start on October 15th. When I say there's a lot of doc, like Mastercard hadn't said this, OnlyFans hadn't said this, they'd said payment providers and there's like a mad rush to blame Mastercard.

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  Addie, have we learned anything about that relationship?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  So a lot of the next sort of big dot that you have to be getting to is that all of this kind of came to a head when OnlyFans CEO Tim Stokely did an interview with the Financial Times. And his answer is, no, it has nothing to do with Mastercard. No, it has nothing to do with us seeking outside investors. That's not an issue. It is because there were banks and those banks, they would reject transfers or they closed our accounts without warning, or they refused to work with us and they were threatening our business and we had no choice but to shut down our adult content service.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  So here is a very basic question. What is the difference between Mastercard and a bank?

• 13:43Speaker 04

  So I have been trying to brush this out. But basically, when you're starting a service like OnlyFans, really, really at a super broad high level, you have to work with a bank or a payment gateway, someone that's going to sort of handle the money that you make. And those companies have to work with Mastercard and Visa, which are the things that it's like the little hook that allows someone to put in their credit card and pay you and transfer that money over into whatever bank or through whatever portal you want to use. And Visa and Mastercard have roles that are technically for the banks, but are basically requirements for the services because a bank is not going to give up working with Visa

• 14:28Speaker 04

  and Mastercard to serve your site. And so a really key thing about this is that it's all really muddled, that there's this sort of reportedly this sort of feedback loop where if one party like Visa or Mastercard implement these rules, then a bank or a Payment, like another payment processing service, they have to sort of interpret these rules. There's a chance they're going to try to err on the side of caution and end up being more conservative than Visa and Mastercard. That there is this whole very tangled mess of payment services. But the really key point is, so Mastercard's new rules are these sort of specific, okay, you have to verify people's ages, you have to verify that these people consented to upload, to upload this content. They were, we haven't

• 15:13Speaker 04

  touched this really, but they were largely a response to a controversy over Pornhub. That OnlyFans said, look, we were already compliant with all of those. That's not an issue for us. The issue for us is that these banks felt like they were, like we were damaging their reputation. And it's not necessarily that they were worried about specific things we were doing. It's that they just thought we were a bad look.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  And this is like the heart of the whole matter, right? That we talk a lot about content moderation on the show and like, the layers of the internet and who gets to turn things on and off. And one that we rarely touch upon, and is even rarely discussed, is the power of the banking industry to say, your business can't exist anymore. Which is, and that gets reflected into a content policy, which is more or less what it appears happened to OnlyFans here.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  One really additionally weird, Frankel, is that there was also, there's one specific thing that might help explain a little bit why banks particularly were freaked out, which is that in March, there were some reports that I, like, I cannot comment on the accuracy of, that there were, banks were flagging transactions related to OnlyFans as being some kind of money laundering scheme. And that those things in particular, they singled out banks and they were like, hey, look, it's banks and they're working with this company that's terrible. And that that might have been a factor in it. But that's just another dot that it's really hard to connect up.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  I mean, with all these dots, it seems like the temptation, and I think it's the right one, is you connect them up where they end up closest, like the gatekeeping funnels that exist in every ecosystem. So, I mean, we've talked about the App Store already, that's one gatekeeper, and now there's banks. In a, I don't know, in another domain, I would assume, like, I don't know, business screws up, another business rises to compete with it and fix the problem, but there's really not. And part of me wants to, like, I don't know, say that if it weren't for Fossa Sesta, maybe there would be a viable competitor to OnlyFans. But it just seems like there's constantly just surprising bottlenecks of control that we're not paying attention to.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, so like, organizations like the EFF have been pointing out that payment processing is, it's this huge bottleneck that gets deployed, not necessarily just against sex work, it's also, it's cut off donations to WikiLeaks, that it's this really huge point of where somebody can just cut off money and make it really, really hard for someone to do business. The sort of weird complication to this is that there are lots of services that compete with OnlyFans. There are a ton of them. There are a lot of subscription services. One of the things, I've talked to a couple of them, one thing that they tend to point out is that, look, obviously, people were, people sell porn outside OnlyFans, there are services that will work with porn, but the issue is they tend to charge really, really

• 18:07Speaker 04

  high fees. That one of OnlyFans' secret sauce is sort of that it gets to say that it's a generic provider, and so it gets to enjoy much, much lower fees, if that's accurate, than a service like, say, Just for Fans, which is like an OnlyFans competitor that is explicitly sex work focused. And so, when a big part of the creator economy is based around what kind of commission splits you can offer the people on your service, being able to have, like, one estimate is, like, it costs them maybe half as much, being able to have all of that extra money is a really huge deal. So it's not necessarily, like, it's not necessarily as simple as there are these points of censorship, and they are

• 18:51Speaker 04

  like an on-off spigot that people turn, and they will completely ban porn from the internet, but there are these friction points, and OnlyFans ran into a friction point.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  So you mentioned Pornhub before. It's useful to talk about Pornhub. They will obviously take your money in a variety of ways. What was the controversy around Pornhub and how did it bleed into this?

• 19:11Speaker 04

  So the controversy around Pornhub is, first, we have to, there's lots of good reporting from other reporters on this, but that there are these anti-porn groups that have been fighting this battle to basically take down really big porn providers. And their justification is that this is an anti-trafficking battle. And they pointed out genuinely really bad stuff on Pornhub, that there are videos that were uploaded non-consensually. There are videos that involve children. I mean, a lot of these things, to be clear, they get taken down, but they found a lot of really terrible stuff. And there's lots of criticism of Pornhub within the adult industry. It facilitates piracy. Just like, I just want to be clear, there's a lot of bad stuff with Pornhub.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  Hilariously, it also is a monopoly.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Right, yeah, it's owned by MindGeek, which also owns, like, I think, basically any other porn tube site you can name. It's this huge company. And so there were the, there was this big report about Pornhub. And then that got Visa and Mastercard to cut off service to it, saying, look, you just, you have this giant sites like YouTube for porn, and you don't vet anything. And Pornhub ended up announcing changes because of this. They added this sort of vetting program. But it was this really big moment for changing how Visa and Mastercard, which again, are just absolutely massive bottlenecks, like, if they won't work with anyone you can work with, that is actually a massive issue for you. That it was this huge change that then has ended up bleeding into OnlyFans

• 20:41Speaker 04

  just because, like, it changed how the financial service worked, how financial services worked for porn. And OnlyFans, it works really differently from Pornhub in a lot of ways. But it's another really big service that's receiving a lot of scrutiny.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  Do you think that the banks decided to make this deal and back off because they are like, screw it, we'll, we'll take the hit here, but we don't want ongoing scrutiny of our control over content moderation schemes? Because if I was a cynic, which obviously I am not, I would say they took the L here because they do not want the additional attention of regulators and internet. Community focused on their power and how it's expressed.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Uh, for a cynic, you have a really strong faith in the idea that there was going to be any oversight of this. Uh, I, I feel like I have been in this field for a really long time and I've seen very, very little sustained scrutiny of Visa or Mastercard or banks. Like this stuff kind of glides off them. I'm really not convinced that banks would have been scared. Especially because we didn't like we, they named banks that had not worked with, like had refused to work with them. They did not name the banks they were working with. Um, so we don't even necessarily know who's involved here.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  It is very strange that we, after all this conversation, we have like the shape of something, but we actually have no details. Like it is fundamentally a mystery why they announced the change in such a hurry. Why they backed off and what they are, what terms were reached such that they could back off. Like we just don't know that information.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  If you want to go like opposite direction cynicism chess master, uh, only fans was preempting the possibility that banks were going to protest because it had banking partners that worked and they were negotiating. And then only fans was, okay, look, you are going to try to charge us higher rates or you're going to try to not work with us. We're going to go public and show you just how much support we can get. And then we're going to go and say, look at these banks, they suck. And then you are going to sign a deal with us. I don't know that that's necessarily particularly likely, but it's another story you could tell.

• 22:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I just feel like what, that when we've heard stories like that, there's a little more planning, right? They would have like put out a video like epic is like, we screwed over Apple and they like told people what they were doing and why.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  I'm just imagining the only fans version of the 1984 commercial.

• 23:07Nilay Patel?

  Please don't make one of those and send it to me. Um, just don't do that. Um, and then here's my last question, which is the wild card I've. I will tell you, I've asked this question in every editors meeting that we've had this week, and I think Russell, Brandon, our policy editor, he might jump through Zoom and kill me if I ask it again. Why didn't they just like, start taking Bitcoin? Like, isn't that the solution? Like, finally, something to buy with Bitcoin?

• 23:31Speaker 04

  They could also have had you attach your money to carrier pigeons, and they could send you a carrier pigeon, and you could send the carrier pigeon over to your favorite creator. No, I'm being serkey, and like, there are other, there are people who have gone into attempts to use cryptocurrency or NFTs around sex work. There are sites that take cryptocurrency. It's just, when we're talking about the volume that like, OnlyFans, just billions of dollars pass through it, it's just not a replacement for Visa and Mastercard at this point, if you want to have a mainstream service.

• 24:03Alex Cranz?

  How quickly would the world explode from like, the energy use if OnlyFans went exclusively to Bitcoin?

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you, there's an obvious reason I know this. Pornhub takes a cryptocurrency, and the reason I know it is because that cryptocurrency is called Verge, and there's just a lot of confused people around me all the time. I'm like, I don't run a Bitcoin, y'all. Like, it's not my thing.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  There's a crypto company called Polygon that's really been confusing me.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  Yes. It's like, they're coming for all the Vox Media sites. If you're running a crypto coin, just call it Eater. See what happens. New York Magazine, the coin, you can do it. Like, it's available to you. Okay, what, what happens next here? Is there a next turn, or is this thing done?

• 24:49Speaker 04

  I mean, OnlyFans has, like, very reasonably upset a bunch of people, and there is every reason to believe that some of those people will think, I should diversify, I should move off this platform, this platform. There's nothing stopping it from just going back on its word again. But then that's gonna just be fighting with the fact that big platforms have a lot of inertia, that it's really hard to move off of something if you are really any kind of creator, let alone one that faces the added challenges that folks who do sex work do often. And so, there's one world where there are a bunch of other sites that have been kind of advertising off of OnlyFans' decisions, and they've been saying they've seen a huge bump in signups, but it's obviously way too early to tell if those people stick

• 25:32Speaker 04

  around. And I feel like, online, it is very easy to bet on inertia in the current app economy. Especially with users, but this was also a really huge sudden change that they announced and they handled it not necessarily great. And there it would be entirely justifiable if there were people who felt like they couldn't trust the platform anymore.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  A bunch of creators not able to trust the platform that they build their careers on. No matter where you look, that is the overwhelming story of the the passion economy. Okay, last few policy bits before we let you go. There's been some cybersecurity meeting at the White House. Dieter, what came out of this?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Google promised to train a bunch of people and spend some money. Microsoft did. Apple said that it would like shore up the supply chain, which is

• 26:23Alex Cranz?

  That's shocking to me.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought they had that handled, I guess.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  I mean, my initial, we were talking right before we started. My initial reaction was, oh, look, like a bunch of companies met with a president and then like something tangible is happening as a result. But you all immediately told me I was wrong because like there's a bunch of promises happened. But we don't know precisely like what's actually going to net out of all of this.

• 26:48Alex Cranz?

  Amazon's gonna give us all two factor authentication.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'll take it.

• 26:52Nilay Patel?

  I just feel like that cynicism is born deeply out of covering the Trump administration's tech policy efforts for years. Like, yeah, maybe they mean it. I don't know. They told me they're gonna build a fucking website. They never did that.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  Remember when Microsoft was gonna buy TikTok? That never happened. Like, I've heard about your meetings, man. I don't care anymore.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess I'm excited for, you know, CEOs to meet with the, you know, the administration and have it be really boring. Like, that's, that's fun. That's, that's nice. Let's have more of that.

• 27:22Alex Cranz?

  I like that I didn't pay any attention at all to the meeting, except for like, I was like, oh, it's happening. In the last one, I remember like when everybody went to Trump and they went to the gold tower and we watched everybody come in. And this time I was just like, oh, yeah, it's happening. Okay, cool. And then they came out and they're like, oh, yeah, I thought Apple already did that. Okay, cool.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, so to be clear, the news you read on our site is they're all gonna push towards multi-factor auth, two-factor auth. Every AWS account holder is gonna get a two-factor device, which, by the way, if you're like, running your business on AWS and you haven't gotten yourself to two-factor yet, I don't know what you're doing. Like,

• 28:00Nilay Patel?

  What are you doing? Google said it would spend 10 billion. Microsoft said it would spend 20 billion over five years to lock things down in the supply chain.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Do you think any of Google's billions of dollars will be spent on making its tightened security keys actually available? They announced a new one. That's the one I've been waiting for for five years. That's USB-C and NFC. None of this janky Bluetooth stuff, no little lightning port, just NFC for stuff that won't take USB-C and USB-C for everything else, you know, the right, good plug. They announced it and I was like, cool. And then it was sold out and they won't even let me line up. It's just not there. Just spend some money on making those available.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  If there's one thing President Biden cares about, it's the tightened security key. And he was like, look, I need to be able to use both, guys.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  If we could, we could get him interested, just like make it the ignition key for a Corvette.

• 28:54Nilay Patel?

  That'd actually be great. Last two little bits. Facebook loves to form commissions to tell it what to do and then not listen to those commissions. So in addition to the Oversight Board, they are now forming an election commission. Is there any color there or is this just more academics that are allowed to yell at Facebook on Facebook's time?

• 29:14Speaker 04

  I mean, Facebook will not confirm it, so who knows? But I think that, yes, the attitude to everything should be sort of caution and skepticism for Facebook. The main thing, it just, it seems like it's a version of the Oversight Board that's just kind of going to start splitting into topics.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they've got like subreddits.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Theoretically, the Oversight Board could cover election content. It's going to be especially weird if they end up just coming to opposite decisions.

• 29:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, the Oversight Board, if you're going to grant them the benefit of the doubt, the Oversight Board is like inherently reactionary. It's like content goes on Facebook and then they take it down or leave it up. And then the Oversight Board says that was the right decision. Here's what your new rule should be. And then Facebook is like.

• 29:58Speaker 04

  Well, they're partially reactionary. They're also like, Facebook can just ask them for guidance on stuff that doesn't actually necessarily involve takedowns or leaveups at this point. It's just that Facebook doesn't have to actually follow their guidance if it's a suggestion.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we'll see. We'll see what this thing is. I just love that Facebook keeps forming external committees to be like, what should we do? And then they reserve the right to not listen. It's very good. And then lastly, we were tracking this pretty closely. We were already talking about crypto a bit. A lot of the big infrastructure bill is effectively paid for by various taxes on crypto. The crypto companies, that community are very unhappy about this. They've been lobbying furiously. McKenna had a great piece about how this lobbying activity just came together, like out of the blue, like it just like blinked into existence. And now it's like a furious and powerful lobby. However, the infrastructure bill passed the Senate with the crypto rules in it, passed a first vote in the House with the crypto rules in it.

• 30:54Nilay Patel?

  So as this thing marches towards being the law, we'll see if they actually knock out the rules that would impose some rules and regulation on cryptocurrencies.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  I should be clear when I made the carrier pigeon joke. I do, I like, I think we should take cryptocurrency seriously and like these regulations, they're a really interesting development. I am just saying that at this moment, you cannot run a gigantic platform on cryptocurrency transactions.

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't think you can run anything on cryptocurrency transactions. I'm much more cynical about it than everybody else.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  You can try to run a town, but it doesn't go well.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  We could solve the environmental problem. We can make the like, the proof of work, how quickly you can create a lobbyist. And it's just like, clearly they could do it so fast.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  There's like lobbyists with full sleeve tattoos.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  Like just giant crypto strings up and down their arms. Uh, yeah, I'll take it. What I mean is that I think most people who are buying cryptocurrencies, they're buying it because they go up in value and that value is expressed in dollars. And that means like, if you want to take it as payment, you have to convince people to like, give you their appreciating asset in exchange for whatever you have, which will not appreciate as fast as a crypto. In almost every case. So if you have a Bitcoin, spending that Bitcoin is a worse investment than just hanging on to it for a while. And I just, I just don't know how anyone breaks that cycle. I've thought about this a lot. There's an entire decoder episode where I argue with Bitcoin people about this, including one very curmudgeonly Bitcoin skeptic. It's just go listen to that. You'll, all my thoughts are in there.

• 32:27Nilay Patel?

  But that's why I'm like, they can't just take it. Cause like, why would you trade in? That's why they all buy Lambos. The end.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  You need something that's at least as crazy as just having the Bitcoin. Okay. Addy, thank you so much. We're going to take a break. We'll come back. We got a lot of Apple stuff to talk about. Thanks, Addy.

• 32:50Speaker 05

  When it comes to your business, you want cards and tools you can trust. Amex Corporate helps put you in control. Set custom spend parameters to help fit your business needs and quickly issue unlimited corporate cash back cards. All backed by best in class fraud protection and the powerful backing of American Express. Get started at go.amex slash Amex corporate. Terms apply.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  We're back. A lot of like little Apple news. That's a little rumor. It's like we're getting close to iPhone season.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  Like lots of dribs and drabs.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  I mean, we're theoretically less than a month away.

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Alex Cranz?

  I feel like we're less than a couple of weeks away.

• 34:18Nilay Patel?

  I feel like it's tomorrow.

• 34:20Alex Cranz?

  It's, yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 34:21Alex Cranz?

  Surprise.

• 34:21Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's right now. Hello and welcome to Apple Park. And just contextually, some big news. This week marks 10 years of Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. He had some runs as interim CEO.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:34Nilay Patel?

  But 10 years ago this week, Steve Jobs officially stepped down, handed over the title of full CEO to Tim Cook. And then six weeks later, obviously, Steve Jobs died. Very sad that he was too young, but this is a decade of Tim Cook. So Sean Alster wrote a great piece just looking over the course of that. One thing we noticed in that piece, which I think is really interesting, we kind of don't know anything about Tim Cook's personality.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  Like, I feel like I know a lot about Steve Jobs's personality.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  There's books, there's the fact that he was just like the least guarded personality in history, like.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  But like, you know, how much do you know about any tech CEO's personality outside of the, you know, the thing that's been crafted for you? He's just not interested in sharing his personality. I don't think he owes that to us at all.

• 35:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't think he owes that to us at all. I mean, and I think this is true of, to a certain extent, the entire new class of non-founder CEOs. Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, they're not the founders of the companies. The companies are imbued with their personalities. They are all ciphers. They are all media trained to the hilt.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  It's like very hard to break through. But I think Cook is still, it's just like when we were doing this piece, it just occurred to me that there are not that many stories about Tim Cook, the way there are endless stories about Steve Jobs as a person.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know how this, I would express this is, I don't know what Tim Cook deeply cares about beyond, I suppose, privacy and health and how it's expressed in some of their products. But, you know, we were, you know, looking through like, what is his, does he have a dent in the universe breakthrough product? And the answer is no. He has a dent in the universe that was caused by the amount of cash on hand that Apple has. Like that, that, that has a gravitational pull.

• 36:19Nilay Patel?

  Light bends around Apple's cash.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  You know, by by any reasonable metric, he is an unbelievably successful CEO already and has been for a while. But we tend to have a different metric of measurement for success at Apple. And that is what what products have been like, oh, my God, this changes things for me.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And the the reason I started with it's 10 years of Tim Cook. Really, the only way to tell that story is by talking about Apple's products and its financial performance. There is not some other through line that like, there's stuff we cut out, like, he turned over a bunch of executives. Johnny Ive doesn't work at Apple anymore. He brought in Angela Aronson to be what everyone assumed was his successor. And she left like that didn't work. Like, they're all just kind of like side notes to also, they continued making the iPhone. Like, the iPhone is a massively successful product, and the whole world organizes itself around it. So that's just like the context here. And

• 37:15Alex Cranz?

  How much of like, though, is us not knowing about him also because he's been the CEO the entire time and very successful the entire time? Whereas Steve, like, left for a while. So everybody trash talked it because he was running like, his his other sites, starting Pixar and all this stuff. And so they're like, oh, whatever, that guy. So we could like, talk about all the terrible things he's did, or the not terrible things he did. And then he came back into power and it kind of tightened up a little bit.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, maybe like, there's that long journey of Steve going like, leaving and coming back and starting his thing. And he worked with all these people like, there are books about his involvement in Pixar and like,

• 37:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Nilay Patel?

  Like, yes, he did all the things. All I meant is, there's this video of Steve Jobs that I think about all the time, where he describes like, why Apple failed the first time. And he's like, we hired a bunch of managers, and they're all bozos. And then the bozos hired more bozos, and we had a bozo explosion. And like, that is just unguarded. Like, you cannot imagine Tim Cook being like, so the problem is, there's a bozo explosion.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  Right. And like, you know, I like a total fanboy early, early on, I would watch Jobs onstage with Walton Cara at the conference. Like, I was invited. I was a young journalist. I was like, wild to be in those, in those spaces. And like, he was like utterly relaxed. He's like, here's, he kept calling, he kept calling cable companies orifices.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's just like, and the company is smaller and the stakes were lower, like fundamentally, he's like selling iPods. And now Apple's like, there's a child porn economy that goes through our devices. Like, the stakes are very different, right? So like, all that's different. But it was just striking to me as we did the story, there's only one way to do it. There's not another approach of what 10 years of Tim Cook looks like at Apple, because no one knows.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  It's telling that we're, we're, we're trying to talk about Tim Cook. We inevitably keep talking about Steve Jobs. I was, I was watching one of those early, it was, I think it might have been All Things D, maybe it was Code. It was Steve Jobs demoing podcasts in iTunes for the first time and explaining what a podcast is, which is amazing. And just, but just like a very casual explaining of a product and then doing a product demo, not on their own stage that they own, not surrounded, not made into an infomercial for the pandemic, just the CEO talking about a product, you know, on somebody else's stage for the first time. I don't know. It was remarkable. And just how far we've come from having that be a normal occurrence. Tim Cook, or any actually

• 39:43Speaker 02

  tech CEO, being that unguarded and like handing over, you know, a little bit of control of their product unveil to some other thing. Just, I don't, I don't see it happening. Like, it barely happens at CES anymore. And even there, companies control everything.

• 39:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just a very different environment. And doing this story kind of made me realize how different. And you are right, it's telling we're talking about Jobs. Like, even a full decade later, with unimaginable success, what is, what do we think of as this company? We think of the iPhone keynote. And that is just not the case anymore. Like, they are not doing that at that scale anymore. They've had two products that are important, category-defining, culture-defining, and they are fundamentally accessories to the iPhone, right? It's the Apple Watch and AirPods. And they are, you can talk about both of those things in all kinds of ways, but they are fundamentally accessories to the iPhone. And they haven't had the next thing. And sure, you can talk about Apple's ecosystem and how it all plays together,

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  but they haven't built the next paradigm of computing, really. And I think that's, whenever this era ends, like, that will be the knock on the Cook era, I think.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Unless the next thing is success, right? Maybe the AR glasses will do it.

• 40:56Alex Cranz?

  I mean, AR is like the next paradigm of computing.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Or maybe like they'll figure out something like a little bit more with the Apple Watch and Health that will like actually feel like an inflection point?

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, we don't, we should talk about the actual rumors, but like, go read this piece. Just like, keep that in the back of your mind. Like, Sean did a great job, but keep that in the back of your mind. Like, AR might be the next paradigm, but Apple spent the first year or so after Jobs died, like, Tim Cook would like walk around and be like, we're gonna do the TV thing. We're like, we're in it. Because Jobs had said we cracked it. And like, they did not do that. Cook has said many times, Apple's greatest contribution to society will be in the health. The timeline is ongoing, but like, right now, it's kind of not, you know? Like, right now, Apple's greatest contribution to society is they're gonna stream Donda from Soldier Field on Apple Music.

• 41:49Nilay Patel?

  There's just like a lot of stuff, like, AR, he talks about AR a lot, right? It's all gimmicks on the iPhone. And maybe that's all just laying the foundation. But I do, it's like, interesting to see what the company looks like. It's, they're getting more money out of the iPhone more than anything else. So, speaking of the iPhone.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  We're expecting one. They will, they will make another iPhone this year. Although, I mean, that wasn't necessarily a sure thing, given the chip shortage. But there's rumors it'll be called the iPhone 13. We've seen rumors that the notch will be smaller. I don't know. It'll be, it'll be an iPhone. Like, it's actually kind of surprising how sort of little hype there is around it this year. We think it'll be a little bit more expensive because of the chip shortage. Maybe it'll come a little bit later. And, um, yeah, I mean, honestly, it's weird, right? Like, a new iPhone, we should have a little bit more to say. And it seems like the rumors are kind of pointing at a sort of a shrugy year for it.

• 42:40Alex Cranz?

  This is kind of like a talk year too for them, right? Like if you do the TikTok.

• 42:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Alex Cranz?

  CPU kind of thing where last year they had a big redesign and then Sheer is just like perfecting that, tweaking it. So it's really, really good.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  I think they're over the S cadence.

• 42:56Alex Cranz?

  I mean, they have to be because nobody's buying phones on that cadence anymore.

• 43:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just think it matters to them and they, you know, this year they sold so many phones. Right? So like, one of the weird things about Apple is like, you know, if they sell all the phones now, like you, that's you just subtract that many people from the total number of people in the world. And that is your remaining market for phone sales because everybody has a phone. So like, they know, like they do, they, they've done all the sales now. There's only so many people left to convert. Into a thousand dollar premium iPhone owners, which I, you know, that forecasting is very, who's, who's the best at forecasting? Tim Cook, like they're good at it.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  But what we're hearing, what smaller notch, slightly better camera.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Maybe some sort of better way to deal with your mask, but it still doesn't look like we're going to get an under display fingerprint sensor.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, HDR and video potentially.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:50Alex Cranz?

  No folding.

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  No folding.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  No, sorry.

• 43:53Alex Cranz?

  Not this year.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  There's a lot of other stuff besides the iPhone that feels like it's stacking up. Like I, I don't know how many events Apple's going to do, but we've got new AirPods waiting for MacBook Pros desperately. There's apparently an M1X chip for the Mac Mini, Apple Watches. There's like, it looks like there's a new design for the Apple Watch finally. There's an iPad Mini floating around somewhere. There's a bunch of stuff.

• 44:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like I'm kind of excited about everything. I've seen so, so, so much about the watch. And, and how they're kind of making it flatter and taking that kind of curve we're used to possibly away. And I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that. Like, is it going to make the little green light that checks my blood brighter or, or less bright?

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  It's so time for them to change the fundamental design of the watch.

• 44:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Nilay Patel?

  Right. But this is the same thing. Like the total number of people who can buy an Apple Watch are the total number of iPhone owners.

• 44:51Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's just, it's just a fact. Like that's the only, if you don't have an Apple, if you don't have an iPhone, buying an Apple Watch is one of the silliest decisions you can make. I don't know what you're doing. It's like.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  You're just Lagerfelding it all day.

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  Alex, do you know, do you know about Lagerfelding?

• 45:08Alex Cranz?

  I don't know if I do.

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  So this is just the dumbest for chest inside joke. So when the Apple Watch first came out, they gave it to all these celebrities. They gave the edition.

• 45:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 45:17Nilay Patel?

  And there's this photo of Karl Lagerfeld and he's wearing, he's so happy and it's on the setup screen. Like it's the blue dot swirling. And I'm like, that dude never, he's never going to set up this watch. Like especially the first one took so long.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  And I'm like, that dude is going to wear this thing. He's just Lagerfeld in that watch. And then we kept seeing other pictures of celebrities wearing watches that hadn't been set up.

• 45:41Alex Cranz?

  Just that little green, the little blue.

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  They're just Lagerfeld in.

• 45:44Alex Cranz?

  Set it up for him. Just zoom in.

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  Just pair this thing like, go to your local private airfield and wait for Karl Lagerfeld to arrive. Anyhow, so you just know, like the math is there, right? Like total number of iPhone owners, total number of people who have bought the last X generations of this watch. What do we absolutely know? Making it look different prompts an upgrade cycle. So think about that. Like it's way beyond time for them to make it look different.

• 46:14Alex Cranz?

  And it's like a really well sold watch. Like it does better than I think Fitbit, Samsung, everybody else combined. It's selling all of the watches. And I personally, I'm on like a four and I'm ready to go. I'm ready to upgrade.

• 46:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So you bought it with the bigger screen. Right? Was the four the bigger screen? That was the thing that made me buy a new one.

• 46:33Alex Cranz?

  What was the battery life for me? It was like, okay, it's going to last a little longer.

• 46:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Alex Cranz?

  It's going to be nice. I hate that I have to go to 40 millimeter from 38 because I have tiny, tiny hands and I don't need like a giant watch reminding everyone. But so I'm a little terrified. Some of the rumors we've heard this time is they might go up in size again. And I'm like, please don't.

• 46:54Nilay Patel?

  I think the screens will go up in size, but the bezels might get smaller. I don't think they're going to make the cases significantly bigger. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the nice things about the Apple Watches. There's actually a relatively small one. Like you look at the, even the new, the new 40 millimeter Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.

• 47:08Alex Cranz?

  You're making a statement when you wear that.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, the big one is huge. The 44 classic, but like the small regular is still like, it's about the same size as a big Apple Watch. And like in terms of like volume and like feel on your wrist.

• 47:21Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I normally like, when I wear it. A dumb watch. I'm usually like in the mid 30 millimeter range. So these going like this creep has me going into these much more like statement watch territories, which I think is part of the point of it, right? Like Apple's always wanted to make this like a statement piece like kind of, and I like, I think this, this whole design thing is going to be really interesting for them because this is their other, their next foray, foray into like fashion and thinking about the fashion element of it. So are they going to do it? Well, but it looks kind of cool.

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  I think they're going to do just fine.

• 47:56Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they'll do fine. But like, will it have the same impact as, as that original watch?

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  But I would connect that, that idea exactly to what we were talking about before with, with Tim Cook, like the iPhone four had as much or more impact than the first iPhone. The iPhone six had that impact, right? Cause they, these are like industry defining devices.

• 48:18Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 48:18Nilay Patel?

  The new Apple watch were like, yeah, they like created a category of one that Google and Samsung are like, screw it. We got a Voltron this thing to even get in the game, right? Like they are the winners, but that the winning has not done much.

• 48:33Alex Cranz?

  It's increased prices.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  It's increased prices.

• 48:36Alex Cranz?

  Like everything's, everything's gotten more expensive. If you want to wear it on your wrist and that's about it.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  But I know, I mean, it's a great product. I don't mean to denigrate. It's just funny that we're talking about a new Apple watch and like what it could do. And we're, we're definitely focused on what it looks like.

• 48:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Nilay Patel?

  Because I think the capabilities of the watch are like fully explored.

• 48:54Alex Cranz?

  Well, the, the big thing is like being able to test blood sugar. Like,

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Alex Cranz?

  that's the big thing. Can we use sweat? Can we use body fluids to, to figure this out? And I don't know if the sciences caught up to the desire to do that.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  Apple is like super invested in it, right? We, we've heard a lot of rumors that they want this.

• 49:14Alex Cranz?

  They desperately want to do it because that's like, boom, that's a game changer. You go from being like, we're kind of a health device, which is like they say it all the time. They're like, we're health and they kind of are. And that takes it to, no, you're a health device. Like I can find out if I'm prediabetic with one of these, like that's a huge deal, especially with, you know, diabetes in this country. So like massive, massive thing, but it's, the science is still lingering.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  We should also talk about software a little bit. iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, all that stuff is coming. They appear to have fully backtracked on Safari Tabs.

• 49:50Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  They're letting us make them normal on all the devices. Hooray. So I'm glad about that. And then they, their custom email domain features in beta, but it looks like the private cloud relay, which is they're not a VPN, but kind of a, sort of works like a VPN and not really thing.

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  Apple has so many features that are not quite the thing that they look like.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:13Nilay Patel?

  Like the photo scanning thing, they're like, it's not photo scanning, it just leads the exact same result as photo scanning. And then their iCloud private relay, they're like, it's not a VPN, but it leads to the exact same result as me.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  You think they're just bored?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Ah, it's too simple. Let's make it harder. But apparently that's not going to launch with, it's going to like, continue to be a beta for a while. So, I don't know. I'm, I'm excited to have Safari Tabs back to normal. Is like, for me, the main thing.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Alex Cranz?

  I was excited about the stupid bottom of the, the screen Safari Tabs. I don't know if I was going to use them. Yeah. Cause I, I refuse to put it on my phone right now. I've got it on like, another phone that I shattered.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:56Alex Cranz?

  And I'll mess with it sometimes, but I don't know. I might, I might tweet, like, cause you can do both now, right? Like, that's the idea with, with 15, if, with these fixes they put in place, that you'll be able to choose.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:07Alex Cranz?

  So that's fine.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a real Samsung move to like, give, give more settings in there, more options.

• 51:12Alex Cranz?

  I love it.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Just, just putting that out there. I guess the last Apple thing I wanted to talk about briefly, this happened just today, is that Apple treats all developers the same, unless you happen to know about their secret video program that lets you only get a 15% cut. Or if you apply to their small business program, and therefore you can not have a bigger cut. Or now, if you are a news publisher and you're willing to play ball and reformat your articles for Apple News and participate in the Apple News ecosystem, then your app can also only have a 15% cut.

• 51:46Alex Cranz?

  Sounds like doing my taxes.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, they'll list the requirements for the Apple. We need to disclose the Verge publishes to Apple News and so does the rest of Vox Media, but we don't, we're not in the programs. Like you can't subscribe to the Verge at all. If you can find a way to pay us in Apple News, I will happily pay the 30% cut to Apple. Like, that's free money. Like, go figure that out. That's great. But yes, our company is in Apple News. But it's interesting, right? Apple News does not appear to be a success. Right? What they wanted was like-

• 52:13Alex Cranz?

  Well, Apple News Plus, right? Like, the subscription side of it.

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But like, they're not running a free service because they think it's fun. You know, like, they're trying to get you to-

• 52:23Alex Cranz?

  They want your money.

• 52:24Nilay Patel?

  Which is the very reductive Netflix for magazine, right? Like, that's what they wanted to be. You pay Apple a subscription, you get access to all this stuff. Everybody's reformating their articles for Apple News, which, by the way, if you're like a web publisher, like we are, the fact that you have to publish to the web, Apple News and AMP is fully ridiculous, and I want them all to die of fire.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  For a brief period, we also had to publish separately to a Facebook special format. That went away. Disclosure, my wife works for Oculus, Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, no, the publishing in multiple formats, not fun.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, what if you want to make it cool and interactive? Guess what happens? Someone whispers the word AMP at your creative director and he just stares out the window crying. That's not, that's not an experience I've had ever. Anyhow, but what's interesting here is like, we don't perceive Apple News Plus to be a success. Right? It's not driving massive revenue to publishers that we've heard about. Apple doesn't break out. It's services revenue and any detail that would allow us to evaluate it.

• 53:19Alex Cranz?

  Nobody is pivoting to Apple News Plus.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Right? Like, people-

• 53:23Speaker 02

  That'd be horrible.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  Could you imagine? So publishers, in fact, are leaving the platform over time. Like, we've heard of other big publishers leaving this platform. It's not worth it to publish in multiple formats. They're not seeing the return, especially when there's a 30% cut on every subscriber. So, right, like, one of the things here is like, Apple sees that they're lowering the cut to try to get people to participate, to grow this business. Gosh, that feels like competition, right? That feels like a market that is operating in some rational way, as opposed to everything else where they're like, well, there's no other, like, if you're a publisher, New York Times, Conde Nast, whatever it is, you're like, well, people can just sign up on our website. We've got an app and you can just pay for it there.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  That's fine. Why do I have to go through your system and pay you a cut? Well, app developers don't have that out. And I think that's actually like, Apple's like, learning that lesson in different ways, and this is like, a pretty good example of it. Speaking of this- Two little bits of App Store policy news. One, there was a great Politico piece by Emily Bernbaum this week. She like dove deep into how Apple's lobbyists have descended on Georgia, the state of Georgia. There's an App Store bill there. They like immediately hired five lobbyists and they, the lobbyists, they don't work for Apple. There's a lot of, there's a lot of cover in your butt along the chain here. But the lobbyists basically said, Apple's going to spend all this money in Georgia, including funding for historically black colleges and universities for software development.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  They will take it back if you pass this bill allowing another payment provider in the App Store. That's gross. That's just gross.

• 54:54Alex Cranz?

  That's not good.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  And then there's another bill in South Korea that would do the same thing. Apple and Google are furiously lobbying in South Korea to the point where they've asked the Biden administration to intervene, which is hilarious because the Biden administration is like here to like, break them up. Like, it's like, what are you doing? But that vote has been delayed in the South Korean parliament. So we'll find out what happens there, but it's, it's happening all over the world.

• 55:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  By the way, you know, who is very powerful in South Korea?

• 55:21Alex Cranz?

  Oh, who?

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  Sam Sung.

• 55:23Alex Cranz?

  Sam Sung, oh.

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's a guy. But obviously it's like, you know, one of the dynamics here is that Samsung is very powerful in South Korea. And so if they can find ways to break the App Store restrictions from Apple and Google, there's like a benefit there.

• 55:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they would love that. They would make so much more money.

• 55:42Nilay Patel?

  So we'll see. All this stuff is just like in process. It's like, to be clear, one of the best compliments you can pay to Tim Cook about the Tim Cook era is that Apple has gotten so big and they are involved in so many very complex policy fights and everyone is still laser focused on the products.

• 56:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. Like to the customers, the company, the executives are still like, are the products good? And I, that, I think that is a fair compliment to pay to Cook, even if some of the policy stuff is frankly outrageous.

• 56:14Alex Cranz?

  He's just really good at business. He just, he's just. Yeah, you know, like the boring stuff, the boring parts of business that I don't ever care about. He's like nailed it. He's just perfected it. And he's like, and I can keep it. I can keep coming, bringing a phone out. That's just good enough. You're gonna love it. And I'm like, yeah, I am. Thanks.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna say, get that man a celebratory briefcase because he's so good at business. But I'm pretty sure he's getting a celebratory selling of billions of dollars and stuff.

• 56:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, he's got a super yacht.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  It's funny because I just watched the Lego movie with Max. It's like he's president of business. That's who he is.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  All right, on that extremely strange note, we're gonna take a break. We'll be right back. There's a bunch of other stuff to talk about.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/AF.

• 57:39Speaker 06

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com/AppleWatchSeries12.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter, this segment is, you've labeled it Misk. Misk, it really, it's a wild ride. Why don't you, why don't you take us on it?

• 58:19Speaker 02

  I mean, the most important gadget, I think, to talk about is you discovered a USB powered multimeter. And I would like you to discuss this smartphone looking thing that measures voltage and perhaps resistance.

• 58:32Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I've moved on from Instagram impulse purchases.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  Instagram's dead to me now.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  TikTok is my new best friend.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  And the number of dumb gadgets that are shown to me on TikTok, like it is an excellent marketing platform for dumb gadgets.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  Especially dumb gadgets that are of questionable legality in the United States.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  So our friend and co-founder Joanna Stern and I both have toddlers. We are both gadget reviewers and our toddlers like bubble machines. So we spend an inordinate amount of time buying and then reviewing for one another bubble machines. This is just a real thing that happens in the background of my life all the time. And so TikTok, by whatever algorithm showed me, I have a bubble gun that is outrageous. And it's, it came from China. Like it is not, I don't think it was like licensed or vetted by any authority in the United States. It is kind of just a giant computer fan and a thing that looks like a bazooka. And I bought one for me and I bought one for Joanna.

• 59:38Nilay Patel?

  And that like opened the door to TikTok, knowing it could sell me things.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:42Nilay Patel?

  So now the product flood is, is fully underway. So this one is, it's so dumb. It looks exactly like a smartphone. It has a curved glass screen. It's a multimeter and I have them, I have a nice one, but this one looks like a smartphone.

• 59:55Alex Cranz?

  It looks cool.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  And it tries a lithium ion battery that charges over USB C. And I bought it just so I could take a picture of it and send it to Heim. And he immediately bought one. And he slacked me and he was like, I've been needing a new multimeter. And then like 30 seconds later, he's like, that's what I'm telling myself.

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  But it appears to work. It hasn't blown anything up yet. I don't know. I've, I've measured the current coming out of many coin cell batteries.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. My takeaway here is you pronounce it multimeter and I've only ever heard it multimeter in my life. And I don't want to know if everybody that I've talked to is wrong or if you're wrong.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm almost certainly wrong. This is a word that I've only seen on a screen or in packaging. I don't like running out, not like at the bar being like, got any multimeter news? Like.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  It's fair. I mean, that's what I do. Maybe that explains why the bartender never pays attention to me.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Dude, I was a political science major. I'm sure like the, like the engineering students are all like, dude, multimeter stuff.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Speaking of. Dumb gadgets that don't have much use, but Neelai is weirdly obsessed with. Can we please talk about the Donda stem player?

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  I would love to talk about the Donda stem player. So first of all, there are Vergecast fans who are working on this product.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  I know it. Tell your bosses to send me one. By specifically, I mean Kanye West. This thing has been leaking in various forms all over the place. So Kanye West, with the release of his new album, Donda, which by the way, has been just like a multimedia experience. For a while, he took over the stadium, the Falcons play in.

• 1:01:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  And he was just live streaming himself in what looked like a jail cell, like finishing this album.

• 1:01:27Alex Cranz?

  Just like hanging out in it.

• 1:01:29Nilay Patel?

  He was like sleeping on the floor. It was super weird. So the whole thing is really stunt-y. But what this thing that we've seen, you can buy, and I've obviously ordered one already. It's $200. It's an MP3 player. It's beige, like flesh toned beige.

• 1:01:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  It looks really weird. And it's got a circle, like a circle in the middle, touch controls, a circle in the middle and then a cross. So the whole thing's a circle. And basically, Donda, the album, we loaded onto it in the form of stems. So just the individual tracks that make up every song. And then you can like turn them on and off like a mixer. And then it's got effects. It's basically like a little DJ controller. It looks really cool. I also think that making people mix your music for them, like it's like Blue Apron. Like I can't stop thinking of this as like the Blue Apron of music. Like, he's not going to ship you an album. He's going to ship you like a little canister of garlic. Like, that's what he's doing with this. It's really neat and it's being made by this company called Cano, which Cano makes like build your own PCs. We've covered them a lot, actually.

• 1:02:30Nilay Patel?

  So they make these modular kits where kids can learn how to build PCs and do hardware engineering. Some of them run Windows. The story, as far as we know, is that Kanye was walking around CS a couple of years ago. And he came upon the Cano booth and the CEO was there. And the Cano Windows tablet is clear, right? Because they want kids to put it together and put in the case. And Kanye was like, I like that dope clear tablet. And then they got to talk and they realized like they both love Jesus. And so the Cano CEO and Kanye have been partnered ever since. And so that's the Donda stem player is coming out because he has a hardware partnership with like a real company that makes real hardware.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Nilay Patel?

  So I'm very excited about this whole thing. We'll see. It looks ridiculous. It's wonderful.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  It has a headphone jack. That's the real reason.

• 1:03:15Nilay Patel?

  It has a headphone jack. There are some, if you look at our posts, there's some videos and leaks and like tests. Like, people have had them. It just seems really fun.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Alex, can you talk about this new AR lens and Snapchat that Alex Heath got a little exclusive on? I guess we should also talk about Facebook's glasses, too.

• 1:03:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I'm, you know, Alex Heath just got a really cool look at the new Snapchat. Is it called Snaps? I think it's, it's a program they've had around forever that lets you use the Snapchat camera to actually scan other stuff. And now it's just, they're, they're kind of making it more forefront. I think this is like, kind of their push as they go towards AR and glasses and everything like that. Like, everybody wants to have this, you know, the perfect scan app. It didn't really work with dogs. He, he kind of struggled with that. It didn't really work with clothes, but it worked really well with plants. And it's really dependent on the different databases that it ties into. And it ties into some ones like

• 1:04:17Alex Cranz?

  the one that Google has used for years with a very similar product. It's a Google Lens, I think, was like the product that's been around for ages. And so, yeah, I think it's interesting. I think it feels more like Snapchat continuing to plant that flag in the AR world than like something people are actually going to run out and be using.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  What's interesting to me about it is, you know, Google Lens has been around for a while. Bixby has done this for a while, just saying. But the idea that you point your camera at something and you like get information or you do something with the fact that this camera recognizes a thing has been a dream forever. But Snapchat is the app that has like the best claim to the app that you do something with, with the camera. That's, you know, more than just take a picture and put it somewhere. You do stuff with the, you know, all the filters and everything else. And so they, to me, it seems like this is, they've got the best shot at having AR where you actually like do engage with the thing that gets scanned in some way or do something with it or whatever,

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  compared to anybody else. Like, I am not opening up my iPhone camera or my, you know, Android camera to do something. I'm opening up to take a picture.

• 1:05:32Alex Cranz?

  Right? Yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  And you open up Snapchat to like, talk to your friends and do stuff. And so it's more interesting there than it is anywhere else.

• 1:05:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it's and it looks like it's actually from what he's done with it seems smart. Like, it seems close as close as we've gotten yet to this ability to just like look at stuff and then know what it is. But yeah, I think it's still just more like waiting for for something else and not your actual phone. Like, I know they're trying to make it like what you said, the phone doing the stuff, using the camera to do this thing. But it feels more to me like, dope, this is so you can tie it into your phone later or your your smart glasses later.

• 1:06:18Nilay Patel?

  Right. And they are working on those.

• 1:06:20Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that's something they're very focused on. And they're not the only ones. Facebook is also working on AR glasses. Apple probably is. Everybody is. And yeah, we're finally, we're finally getting a look at them. And I think Protocol was the first one that found the FCC filing for these guys, these new glasses. So you can go and we've got it also on The Verge, you can read it with us if you don't want to go to Protocol.

• 1:06:44Nilay Patel?

  Do both. What's great about these companies entering hardware is they're starting to make the mistakes that like old hardware companies learned.

• 1:06:50Alex Cranz?

  Like, Vuzix did this.

• 1:06:52Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just like funny, like, I like scouring FCC docs for hardware leaks is like, I was doing that stuff in 2009. But like Motorola learned not to do it. And now Facebook is doing it because they just don't know not to do it.

• 1:07:09Alex Cranz?

  Because they've never built a phone.

• 1:07:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. It's just funny.

• 1:07:11Alex Cranz?

  They're just like, yeah, we'll put it out there. And, and you know, these are really big, really, really chunky glasses. I'm really curious to see what they look like in real life. I'm just not sold on them yet. I don't know about you guys. Like, what's your take on AR glasses in general? Because for me, it's like, I think AR glasses, nobody's going to adopt them until you don't look like a dillweed when you put them on.

• 1:07:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, so there's, there's two parts. I think that the Snapchat piece, like, you can read it as they added some cool new features to their app. And they've got these partnerships and they're building ecosystem. The other thing that they need to do is they just need to quickly recognize things in the world.

• 1:07:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, there's a data collection and processing component to building AR glasses that you can start to do with an app on a phone. And why does Apple build all their hardware? Because they're leading up to it. But so it's smart for Snapchat to do it and build an ecosystem. Facebook has to do it, whoever wants to build AR glasses, like. The first thing you have to do is identify what is in reality so that you might further augment it.

• 1:08:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Nilay Patel?

  Right. And it's just, that's a very hard computing problem. Then you've got to like, put stuff on top of reality in real time and track it and make it look good. And I have not heard a whisper about the actual display technologies here.

• 1:08:23Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. So this thing might be big and clunky. It might have a big battery or, you know, whatever Qualcomm processor it appears to have, like, fine. But what is it going to look like? And even with HoloLens, with Magic Leap, we were promised like, pretty gigantic display technology. Like, Magic Leap.

• 1:08:41Alex Cranz?

  Magic Leap made a big, they made a big claim because they're like, we're going to beam it right into your eyeball. It's like it's there and it's a postage stamp.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  Addie thinks I'm too mean to Magic Leap. But like, they first started, it was hacking the GPU of the brain was the quote that they used, which was incredible. Like, just an incredible thing to say and all of us should say it more often. Because in many, like, optical illusions hack the GPU of your brain. You know, it's like, I don't know why we don't use this phrase more often all the time.

• 1:09:11Alex Cranz?

  That's how, I mean, that's how they secured Beyonce for, I'm gonna hack it.

• 1:09:16Nilay Patel?

  But like, the point of that, all that hype, and it all came to nothing, was that they had invented a new display technology that looked super real. Right? And it wasn't based on putting an LCD in front of your face.

• 1:09:27Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:09:28Nilay Patel?

  And we, I think we're still kind of, and the HoloLens is an LCD in front of your face. Like, we are still kind of at LCD in front of your face all the time. And it, I don't think any of this stuff is going to work unless there's that display technology innovation. And so like, I look at these glasses, I look at all the other stuff we've seen. Yeah, it's still kind of like LCD is in front of your face.

• 1:09:46Alex Cranz?

  That's why I tend to not believe any of the Apple glasses are right around the corner things, because we haven't actually seen, like, in the science, the technology leaps we need to make like, this stuff appear in your face, right? And Apple's not going to do it until it works. Because, like.

• 1:10:04Nilay Patel?

  Well, we've heard about their headset that's going to have inside out tracking and pass through.

• 1:10:08Alex Cranz?

  We've heard about it, but like, we haven't seen, like, for me, that's the two fundamental things of, you can't look like a dillweed, and it has to actually be like, good. It can't just feel like, you know, the, the really cool, admittedly Disney AR headset where you can play like, Star Wars. That costs $4.

• 1:10:24Nilay Patel?

  I think they'll look in like a dillweed. Let's call this the Vergecast dillweed ratio.

• 1:10:31Nilay Patel?

  So like on one side of the ledger is like, how much you look like a dillweed. It's very strange. Okay, that's one side of it.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And you you balance it out with how much functionality you get. Right. And our expectations, and the reason this comes to mind is, I wrote a story once where I went to the Indy 500 wearing Google Glass. It was just a strange opportunity I had. And I was like, I'm gonna wear the Google Glass. And so I'm wandering around the infield of Indy 500. And the number of people who just like jumped out of corners, right, like race cars like coming to a halt, and the drivers are coming to talk to me. And the only thing they said was, can you see through clothes with that thing? It was like this universal reaction, like NFL players I met were like, can you see naked people?

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  Like, yeah, because if you look that stupid, the expectation is that you're getting that much value.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:30Nilay Patel?

  Right? The dillweed ratio was negative for Google Glass at all times. Absolutely. But where the dillweed ratio is very positive for AirPods. Yeah. Where just abstractly, you you don't look good. Like, they look very stupid.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Now, is this a straight ratio? Or do we need to have like, like sizes of the numbers? Because like, a relatively like a one to one dillweed ratio where the Intel Vaunt glasses that I tried before they canceled, right? They looked fine. They looked so normal. That like, there are just like, random glasses shops all around the world that are using this picture that was taken of me wearing the glasses, because there's like a little laser that shines in your eye. Like, all I get pick, I get, I get emails like, once a month, like, I'm in India and I'm looking at you. What the hell is going on here?

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  That's right, because it showed up for some, you know, Google search anyway. But the functionality of, you know, the little laser beam that shines into your retina, it was just like a monochrome, like, you know, and it was like 200, 300 by 400 display, something very, very small. And it, you know, it didn't actually overlay anything. So like, the dilute to functionality ratio, both were very, like, you know, low. I looked relatively normal, but I got relatively little functionality of it. But there seems to be no interest in that. No one, no one is trying to do that, really. Like, everyone's trying to do the thing that has high functionality, and then can you actually get a low dilute value with high functionality? And I don't know that you can. So, it's like with smartphones. We had like, we had crappy smartphones before the iPhone, and then, like, they had the iPhone. Where everyone's trying to just make the iPhone.

• 1:13:04Nilay Patel?

  It's an equality.

• 1:13:06Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Nilay Patel?

  The Verge has dilute equality.

• 1:13:08Alex Cranz?

  There we go.

• 1:13:09Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  One to one.

• 1:13:10Nilay Patel?

  You need the functionality to far outweigh the dilute number.

• 1:13:14Alex Cranz?

  I think the hollow lens almost does that. Like, in a professional setting. I will never wear that.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Professional dilute setting.

• 1:13:20Alex Cranz?

  I will never walk outside of it. But like, if you're going like, professional versus private life dilute equality.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Alex Cranz?

  It's got nothing.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  But there's like a, there's a, like a professional factor.

• 1:13:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Nilay Patel?

  Right? So your dilute number is lowered.

• 1:13:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it lowers when you're like, in a professional setting, because everybody's doing it.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  We can apply this to other wearables. Like, what about the, like, the cargo vest? So you can like, store laptops and crap in, like the Scott e-vests, you know?

• 1:13:47Nilay Patel?

  Tactical cargo vest.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  The tactical vest?

• 1:13:50Nilay Patel?

  And so if you're, if you're a professional photographer.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:53Nilay Patel?

  You look cool, right? You're getting all the functionality, but you're at work. You're a professional. So the professional factor, like, evens out the ratio.

• 1:14:00Alex Cranz?

  Soon as you leave the football stadium.

• 1:14:04Nilay Patel?

  If you're walking around, yep, and you're like, I'm carrying all my lenses with me.

• 1:14:07Alex Cranz?

  You try to go to Whataburger after the game, it like, it shoots right out.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  No, you just, you just never put the camera down. And if someone tries to make fun of your jacket, you just yell, "I'm working here!"

• 1:14:17Alex Cranz?

  Immediately equalizes. Yeah, there you go.

• 1:14:19Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, there's something here. And the thing for me is the products can look really objectively dumb. I think AirPods are actually a good example of this.

• 1:14:31Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because we all made fun of Bluetooth headsets for years and now we all.

• 1:14:34Nilay Patel?

  We are wearing Bluetooth headsets all day long.

• 1:14:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Nilay Patel?

  They did it because they delivered the value. Now, I mean, they look better than your average Bluetooth headset. But I think AirPods are like the one example where the utility was so high that it overcame the dillweed factor.

• 1:14:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Right. No AR glasses are even close to delivering enough utility for whatever they look like. Like, they're all just like, this is an experiment. And if they don't start to look like regular glasses soon, the fact that, like, Google Glass poisoned this well.

• 1:15:09Nilay Patel?

  Is will just like be very difficult to overcome.

• 1:15:11Alex Cranz?

  I feel like it's, this is a real downer because I desperately want AR glasses. I want to be able to wear them and go to an event and not have to remember anybody's names and just have the glasses tell me. But that's also like privacy nightmare.

• 1:15:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, what you are describing is the greatest worldwide facial recognition system ever to exist.

• 1:15:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like horrifying. Don't want it, but also really want it because I hate having to remember everybody's name.

• 1:15:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, if I could remember anyone's name, I'd be the greatest politician in the history of the world.

• 1:15:37Alex Cranz?

  It'd be incredible.

• 1:15:38Nilay Patel?

  That's just what I know about myself.

• 1:15:41Nilay Patel?

  But instead, I'll just be like, I'm going to introduce you to someone else and hope you say your name. That's what I'm going to do. That's my strategy.

• 1:15:50Alex Cranz?

  It works. You know, you just, you're like, oh, yeah, you. Like, there are people who I don't, I haven't said their name in years.

• 1:15:56Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, it's so good to see you. Have you met this other person I know that I'm hoping you don't know? Everyone knows what you're doing.

• 1:16:03Alex Cranz?

  You're just quietly sipping your drink in the little plastic cup while staring and hoping a name is said.

• 1:16:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, the good news is in the modern environment, everyone has their name on Zoom.

• 1:16:13Alex Cranz?

  That's true.

• 1:16:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't need any of this. Okay, Teeter, what else is in this scrap pack?

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  There's a new Fitbit. It looks nice. They're, Google owns them. They're still doing Fitbit things. The end. I don't know. It looks nice.

• 1:16:28Alex Cranz?

  It's a nice look. It's more expensive, though.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  Can we talk about the fact that there's finally someone who's in charge of Windows on Microsoft's, like, senior leadership team? Panos Panay just got named to that, you know, that august group. And that hasn't, there hasn't been a person in charge of Windows in that room for a minute. That's very weird.

• 1:16:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but he's also in charge of devices, right? He runs all Surface. It's interesting. It's like, what is that signal? Like, obviously Nadella was just on Decoder. He, they made a big deal out of Windows this last time. I think they went through a moment, much like Apple went through with the Mac, where they're like, this isn't important anymore. And then they realized, like, oh, it's, you can't make stuff for any of our other stuff unless this is good.

• 1:17:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Nilay Patel?

  Right? Right? Like, Windows has to be good so people can write Azure apps or whatever. Like, so I think there is a recommitment there. And I think that, very opportunistically, with the Apple, Google App Store stuff, like, Microsoft is like, oh, our operating system is relevant again. So I think all that's good. I just, you can, you can, like, overread or chart moves sometimes, I think. And Panos has been there a long time. He is one of the faces of the company.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:17:34Nilay Patel?

  He is a very good executive. It just kind of makes sense. Do we need to talk about the Tesla bot?

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:17:43Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what were you gonna go to?

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  I was gonna say that the, that the new Halo-themed Xbox looks sick, but that's all I have to say about that.

• 1:17:50Alex Cranz?

  It looks sicker than the Tesla bot.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Well, they are gonna do X-Cloud on, on Xbox, which is amazing. And it's made me realize that I'm on board with the idea that cloud gaming is gonna happen, but only, like, for some people. Like, in the future, there's gonna be two classes of people. People that live in a beautiful dream where they don't need to buy a console and they can do cloud gaming, whatever screen is on nearest to them, and it just works and it's great. And then the real world, in America, where you don't have good broadband and you have to buy a refrigerator and put it under your TV.

• 1:18:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Those are the two worlds. Anyway, that's it. That's all I have to say about that. So yeah, let's talk about the amazing Tesla bot, which is also totally real.

• 1:18:30Nilay Patel?

  Alex, would you like to begin?

• 1:18:32Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you do.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Let's just keep trying to get someone else to do it.

• 1:18:38Alex Cranz?

  Tesla did a big AI day where they specifically said the whole point of this day, this event, and it wasn't a day technically, it was at night, at eight o'clock at night in the United States. We had poor Sean O'Kane and Andrew, Andy Hawkins on late at night, waiting to cover this event. And they talked a lot about like their, their full self-driving car, like all of their AI technology and what they're trying to do there. And then at the very end, they're like, and also we're going to make a robot. And then a person came out on stage.

• 1:19:08Nilay Patel?

  Like an actual person?

• 1:19:10Alex Cranz?

  An actual person came out on stage in like spandex and started dancing. My dog is upset. So they announced it. They showed off this guy just dancing.

• 1:19:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's no other way to describe it. I think James had an excellent headline, which is like, don't ever think it, this is a joke.

• 1:19:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Nilay Patel?

  When people think Elon seriously all the time. So like other publications like made very serious videos about like, here's what the Tesla bot will be able to do. And it's like, what are you talking about?

• 1:19:40Alex Cranz?

  Like, they're not going to be solving one of the greatest like challenges of engineering in the world, in the history of the world, in like a week.

• 1:19:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Alex Cranz?

  A month.

• 1:19:52Nilay Patel?

  I will say that I thought, actually, because I, again, car CEOs just need home. So we've been talking a lot of car CEOs lately. Car CEOs need home. Out of context, that makes no sense. They canceled the New York Auto Show. So there are car CEOs available to be talked to. But we just had the CEO of RGO AI on. He's like, this problem is really hard. Self-driving cars is really hard. It's a long way away. And you can listen to it. It's like in-depth. And then Elon is like, well, we already built all this self-driving stuff. So we figured we just like put it in a robot and the robot can walk around. It's like, those aren't the same problem. And you haven't even solved the first problem.

• 1:20:27Alex Cranz?

  Like, like the self-driving cars still think the moon is a yellow light, like.

• 1:20:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What I do recommend, if you're interested in robots, like, and James put it in our piece on it, we're really used to seeing those Boston Dynamics videos where the robots are all dancing. They look terrifying. They're doing parkour. Boston Dynamics doesn't show you the fact that the robots often fail. So they made another video where they're like, here's how we do this stuff. And that video is far more instructive than the parkour dancing videos, because you see the robots are totally beat up. They're constantly being repaired and they fall over all the time. And that's the company that's the best at it. So if you're, if the Tesla Bot piqued your interest, like, I recommend the other video where it's like a bunch of, like, they're very happy. Like, if your job is to make robots do parkour, like, you seem

• 1:21:18Nilay Patel?

  like a happy person, but they're also stressed out. Because they're like, uh, the robot's gonna fall down again.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Late breaking news, I just found this on a light reading, which is an industry publication. Neil, I need you to know that Dish had for years been supporting the multimedia over coax alliance protocol, but it has now thrown its support behind the home grid forum, g.hn. And so I want, we're gonna need to start paying attention to these home networking standards alongside O-RAM. So we have, we have a few more things, a few more pieces of the puzzle to put together.

• 1:21:53Nilay Patel?

  You know, I run a Mocha network in this house. I'm just letting you know.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Do you really?

• 1:21:56Nilay Patel?

  I do.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  That's old news. Dish is no longer supporting, I mean, Dish is still doing it, but they're throwing their weight behind g.hn, man. Just get on board with the future.

• 1:22:05Nilay Patel?

  g.hn. Dish is like, what, what obscure standards can we bet our company on? No, I turned all the cable wiring in my house into Ethernet. And you do it with Mocha.

• 1:22:17Alex Cranz?

  I was thinking about doing that. So tell me all about it at some point.

• 1:22:21Nilay Patel?

  Do I have Amazon links for you?

• 1:22:24Alex Cranz?

  I'm so excited.

• 1:22:26Nilay Patel?

  All right. Dieter, do you want to end on this phone that burst into flames? That's where that's where we should end this particular episode of The Verge.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. So a Samsung Galaxy A21, according to somebody from the Port Police in Seattle, a phone on a plane burst into flames. The plane had landed on Alaska Airlines flight in Seattle. The thing just started smoking, like crazy town. And so the flight attendants did what the right stuff. They ran over there with a battery containment bag, threw the phone, the like on fire phone into the bag to stop the toxic smoke from filling the cabin. And then they pulled out the slides and everyone in a relatively orderly fashion got out. And I think only two people had to go to the hospital.

• 1:23:13Speaker 02

  Like, no major injuries. Everything is fine. The question is, what phone was it? And according to the passenger who talked to the police, it was a Samsung Galaxy A21. And that's all we know. Will there be more? Will there be further Samsung phones that explode? There's a historical precedent for it.

• 1:23:35Alex Cranz?

  There's a little bit of precedent there.

• 1:23:36Nilay Patel?

  Does A21 have like an oversized battery?

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  You know, I don't actually know. I mean, it's the A, it's the A series, which is lower ended. It's a 21, so it's the lower end to the lower end. And it is like sold on T-Mobile, right? So you can, you could go buy one right now if you really want to. But I don't know, man. Part of me is like, phones are going to catch on fire. It's just gonna happen. And it's gonna happen on a plane every now and then. And so the real question here is, is this a Samsung problem? Or is this Samsung just got incredibly unlucky? And I don't know whether in my heart I want to give them the benefit of the doubt here. I kind of don't, but I also know it's unfair for me not to like, just keep the possibility

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  that they were just unlucky and their phone happened to be the one.

• 1:24:26Alex Cranz?

  I mean, when the Note 7 happened, we were all like, initially like, oh, it's just unlucky.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:32Alex Cranz?

  Oh, that's a lot of unluckiness on one phone.

• 1:24:37Alex Cranz?

  Like, like phones, you know, every, every device that has a lithium ion battery and it is a potential little, little firebomb, right? So there's always the possibility it's gonna happen. Maybe somebody dropped it right before they went on the plane and it got dented or something and was just waiting to explode. It's, it's possible, but because it's Samsung, I'm like, uh-oh.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Nilay Patel?

  I believe it's only a 4,000 milliamp battery.

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, the other thing, the unluckiness is like statistically related to how many A-series phones there are. Ah, true. Right, like, we talk about this a lot. We don't talk about these phones enough. They are the most popular phones. Yep. Like, these low-end Samsung phones are just like the most popular phones in Samsung lineup, they're the most popular Android phones. It's like mathematically certain they will be unlucky more often than any other phone, but, oh, poor Samsung. Yeah. Although, they deserve it because if you, this week in lock-in, if you unlock the bootloader on a Galaxy Z Fold 3, it disables the cameras. You gotta be kidding me. Yeah.

• 1:25:37Nilay Patel?

  Why does it disable the cameras?

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Because they need to be able to control the cameras via, I mean, benefit of the doubt, devil's advocate, blah, blah, blah. The cameras need to be controlled by Samsung Knox because they need to be able to, if a enterprise wants to shut the cameras down, it needs to be securely managed by Knox. And so if you, you know, unlock the bootloader on our phone, you've made it fundamentally insecure, and so the, it cuts off access to the camera because the camera needs to be fundamentally controlled by Knox, is the devil's advocate argument. It's just a huge throwback for me because we used to just get so angry at companies over locked bootloaders. We don't do it, get angry quite as often now. I think it's because basic Android is good and not crap. We don't feel the need to load, you know, Cyanogen on as much as we used to.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  But I feel like it's creeping back. I also feel like locked phones, carrier locks is kinda creeping back. If not officially, then like all but official. Lot of this lockdown stuff is getting real again, and I'm not sure what the, like, consumer pressure will be to, like, stop it, but I hope it comes. I think App Store stuff might be part of it, but I'm not sure what else.

• 1:26:46Alex Cranz?

  They're justifying it because of security, right? Like, that's, they kind of figured out, like, oh, we can actually lock things in again. We just have to say it's because of security reasons. I mean, cynically. It is because of security reasons.

• 1:26:57Nilay Patel?

  Phones have a lot of cameras and microphones.

• 1:26:59Alex Cranz?

  They need to be secure. Like you, you want that not unlocked. But it seems like, yeah, that like, how do you counter at that? How, what's, what's your complaint for that? Like, we don't want people to be able to get into your phone and use it to record you secretly.

• 1:27:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 1:27:14Nilay Patel?

  I would say that it's a pendulum that swings back and forth, but like, in reality, it's only ever swung a quarter of the way. And then it swings right back to like.

• 1:27:23Alex Cranz?

  Real hard the other way.

• 1:27:25Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it never really swings all the way to, to open stuff. But with the power of this week in lock-in, we will expose these egregious abuses. Yeah. We will change the industry by mentioning one story at the end of the chat.

• 1:27:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's it. We've, we've gone way over. We've actually got some great stories that you should read on the site this week. I want to call them out. Ashley Carmen did a big investigation into what it meant for Joe Rogan's influence when he went behind the paywall at Spotify. Ashley covers the whole of the podcast industry. One of the things she's been tracking very closely is as the big players start to do exclusives, what does it mean for the, the open ecosystem? And like, how it works? So that is a big story. Got a lot of attention this week. We've got a big package called Making It Work. I love when we do these. It's just about how businesses use creator platforms. So it's just a huge package, all this stuff. My favorite is always when we do small business TikTok. So now there are like TikTok tour guides. We have a guide to platform fees.

• 1:28:25Nilay Patel?

  Just a lot, lot of cool stories in that package. Go check that out. Okay. Thanks to Addie. And by the way, Addie's explainer on the OnlyFans thing will be up by the time this goes out. So go read that too. But thanks to Addie, you can tweet at her. She's at the dextrarchy. Alex is Alex H. Cranz. Dieter is at Backlon. I'm at Reckless. We love hearing from you. Please tweet at us. Decoder next week is Harvard Business School professor named Willie Shi. We're into the chip shortage. Fascinating. Like the chip shortage is not what you think. I'll just leave it at that. That's a good episode. What is it? Is it lizards? It's like a weird combo platter of things. I'll, I'll give you one. The Trump administration told Chinese companies they couldn't buy American products. And so they thought a deadline was coming and they bought a lot of chips and they used up all the capacity.

• 1:29:10Nilay Patel?

  Cause they were stock like, that's just like, not how we think about it. Car company, listen to Decoder. It's going to be a good one. We will all learn a lot about ourselves and capitalism.

• 1:29:24Nilay Patel?

  And we got a big party coming up on the verge. You come to it, get vaccinated and then come to our party in October. We're announcing more, but tickets are available, the post on the site, all the info is there if you need it. That's it. That's First Cast. Rock and roll. Get a vax.

• 1:29:59Speaker 07

  First Citizens Innovation Banking, formerly Silicon Valley Bank, is the bank of the innovation economy. The name may have changed, but for over 40 years, their commitment to bold ideas, relentless ambition, and delivering what's next is as strong as ever. So if you're wondering where the road to innovation starts, it's here. First Citizens Innovation Banking. Head to firstcitizens.com/innovation to learn more.

• 1:30:29Speaker 08

  Support for this show comes from Canva Enterprise. Design is the face of your brand. It's how you stand out in a noisy world. That's why Canva Enterprise is the all-in-one visual communication platform that lets your organization create, collaborate, and publish high-impact on-brand content at scale. Canva Enterprise was designed to clear up bottlenecks so your teams move faster, stay on brand, and create content that stands above the rest. Whether it's social, presentations, docs, or video, scale your content without scaling your team. Give your team the power to create their best work today with Canva Enterprise. Learn more at canva.com/enterprise.