Facebook debuts Ray-Ban smart glasses / Apple’s iPhone 13 event will take place on September 14th / Amazon announces its first-ever lineup of smart TVs

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Alex Heath discuss Facebook's newest endeavor into sunglasses with cameras on them, predictions for next week's Apple event, and of course some new gadgets announced this week. Further reading: Activists push to delay most high-profile climate summit since Paris agreement Microsoft gives up predicting when its US offices will fully reopen Facebook on your face Snapchat’s new AR features can identify the world around you Apple’s rumored AR/VR headset might rely on a nearby iPhone or Mac for processing Whoop’s new fitness tracker is better thanks to a battery breakthrough Apple’s iPhone 13 event will take place on September 14th New Apple MagSafe charger spotted in FCC alongside four new phones Apple’s car chief is heading to Ford Apple Watch exec takes over secretive car project Apple delays controversial child protection features after privacy outcry Amazon announces its first-ever lineup of smart TVs Amazon announces Fire TV Stick 4K Max — and yes that’s really the name Amazon Luna is expanding to Fire tablets and Chromebooks, and retro games are on the way Twitter takes on Facebook Groups with invite-only Communities How Twitter’s communities could bring context back The Gmail app takes calls now, too, because Google wants it to do everything The Series One Desk 27 is a $2,000 Google Meet machine that doubles as a laptop monitor Microsoft Start is a personalized news feed designed for Windows 11, mobile, and more Theranos’ greatest invention was Elizabeth Holmes 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, Alex Krantz and Verge senior reporter Alex Heath join the show. We talk about Facebook's new smart glasses, preview the Apple event next week, and get in to what Amazon, Google, Twitter, and more are doing. That's coming up on The Vergecast now.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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

• 0:58Speaker 01

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

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the world's largest triceratops skeleton. It's true, the world's largest triceratops skeleton is up for sale.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I see.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  It's 1.2 million euros, and I'm telling you, it is a better investment than any NFT that you can think of.

• 2:03Alex Cranz?

  100%.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  I'm Neelai, I'm your friend. That's Dieter Bohn.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  I'm the ringtone in your email app.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  Very good. We got two Alexes today. Alex Krantz is here.

• 2:12Alex Cranz?

  I'm the good Alex.

• 2:15Alex Cranz?

  Throwing down, sorry.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. And then new Verge senior reporter Alex Heath is here. Welcome, Alex Heath. I'm the other Alex.

• 2:24Alex Cranz?

  You could have said better.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  You could have said evil. No, you gotta leave it ambiguous. You got a good Alex, the other one. We'll find out. We have a lot to talk about today. There Alex Heath has a headline, Facebook on your face. We just got to talk about what that means. There's an Apple event next week we should preview. There's Amazon started making TV, all kinds of stuff going on. As always, I want to start with COVID just one little bit. Zoe and I talked about this on Decoder this week. Remember June when we all thought we were going back to offices and it was over and the vaxes were rolling out?

• 2:55Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  All the companies are making their go back to the office plans.

• 2:59Alex Cranz?

  I went to a bar. It's great.

• 3:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I thought about going to a bar. I'm in the woods. I don't have a choice, but in my brain, I was in the bar. Anyway, that's over. Delta is here. It's still spiking. Microsoft has given up its return to office plan. Apple has given up its return to office plan. Work from home is here for a while to stay. And we were constantly talking about second order COVID effects. The longer we stick with work from home, I think the more, A, our digital tools like Slack and whatnot are going to get more important and more central to how knowledge workers do work. But second of all, we're going to see these companies radically rethink where their workforces are and how they're distributed. So that's the COVID bit today is Microsoft's giving up, Google's giving up, Apple's giving up. Lots of companies

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  are giving up. And my prediction is the longer we stick with work from home, the more it becomes the default, which I think is fascinating. We actually, Logitech had released a little doc today, like a speakerphone work from home doc. It's very expensive. Yeah, but it's sick. It's so cool. It's like $300. But it's like, you know, it's a USB C dock. It puts out enough power to run your laptop. It's got two monitor outputs at 4K 120, I think, which is like a big deal. I've got like a little Dell and speakerphone with a hardware mute button. Yeah. Like, the market is starting to recognize, like, work from home is here and we should make products for it that are dedicated. Anyway, that's the update. As always, it's the most important thing that's going on. It's still radically reshaping the world. If you can

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  get vaccinated, please just go do it so it can be over. We've got a party coming up in October. That's what my focus is on. So get vaccinated and come to the party, is what I'm saying.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  All right, let's talk about Facebook. Mr. Heath.

• 4:35Alex Cranz?

  It's on your face.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  On your face.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  I had to do it.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a good headline. A good, a strong, a strong headline. But Facebook released some glasses this week in partnership with Ray-Ban. They look like Ray-Ban Wayfarers. There's another design that's not quite Wayfarers, but I think most people are focused on the classic Wayfarer design. I have read so much overthinking of these glasses. But let's start with what they are. What are these glasses?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Sure. So Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg previewed these about a year ago, actually, on the dot, saying that these were going to be their first stab at smart glasses. Not AR glasses. They don't have displays in them. They're essentially Snap spectacles that look like Ray-Bans. They have two cameras that can record video, photos. And another gimmick, I would say, it kind of feels like a gimmick. I'm actually curious if people will use it. There's Bluetooth audio in the frames where it syncs from your phone and you can take calls, play podcasts, even play music and hear them without headphones in.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  I will, I will say, one, disclosure. My wife works for Oculus, division of Facebook. I have no idea if she has any involvement with this project whatsoever. Probably not. I'm guessing not. But the fact that I don't know is a useful piece of information for everybody here, I think. I am hyped for, I bought these. I bought these despite the Facebook thing. I don't, I wish that they had nothing to do with Facebook. I love that Luxottica, who owns Ray-Ban, like one monopolist shows another monopolist to partner with to release these, like just completely unnecessarily. But I bought them for the headphone thing specifically because I am an open ear headphone enthusiast and I wanted to see how they worked.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Well, I can tell you, they're loud. The sound is fairly full for what it is. It's not spatial in any sense, so you can definitely overhear something. So if you're taking like a private call, walking down the street and you're worried about people hearing you, you're not going to want to use that. But like the Luxottica exec I interviewed for our story today gave an example of like he was in his car, listening to Donda. He's wearing the glasses. He gets out of his car. Donda switches to his frames. Conde following you everywhere. It's kind of dystopian.

• 6:48Nilay Patel?

  Every time I hear one of those examples, because we hear them all the time, like you're listening to music in your car, you get out and it seamlessly switches to Alexa in your house. It's like, I rarely want that.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 6:59Nilay Patel?

  Why does it have two cameras?

• 7:01Speaker 04

  That is a good question that I should have probably asked more about. They're dual five megapixel cameras. They're not that fancy. They are doing a bit of stitching, I think, to get you kind of a wider field of view. But, you know, Spectacles have two cameras because they're doing some 3D effects in post-production, giving you kind of more of an AR type experience. And these Ray-Bans don't have that, at least in this initial version. I think there's probably some software updates they could do that could add some of that. But I thought it was actually interesting that there were no AR effects lenses to speak of, shown to me as something I should try with these. And the companion app for these, which is called the Facebook View app, is a very bare bones camera roll app with very basic photo editing and no lenses or anything like that, which are Snap's AR effects. So

• 7:46Speaker 04

  this really is just more of a kind of hands-free GoPro type situation on your face.

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  You say that, like, first of all, that makes sense. But the fact that you just like calmly said that is that that makes sense. It's a hands-free GoPro over your face. Like, that, to me, is where the overthinking comes from, right? It doesn't have a display. It's not doing any AR on the lenses of the glasses. It doesn't appear to have a lot of computing in it, right? Just taking pictures and sending them to your phone or playing music from your phone on little speakers in your ear. It doesn't appear like there's like some huge battery breakthrough. It doesn't need a lot of battery power. Like, all of the little bits and bobs of AR headset development that you would need for the AR glasses that we're all, like, this isn't any of that, from what I can tell.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  No. And, you know, the way this was described to me is it's more of like a stepping stone product. I think Facebook wants to just see how people receive these. Facebook's branding, by the way, is nowhere to be found on the glasses themselves. They're decidedly Ray-Bans, with Ray-Bans logo in like three different places. And I think the most interesting part of this whole thing that I found out while doing the story is that this was Ray-Bans idea. They actually approached- Facebook about this a little over two years ago. And these glasses were developed over about two years during COVID. So it gives you a sense of kind of why they're so bare bones, I think. This is a multi-year partnership. They're going to be doing multiple generations of these. Facebook has AR display glasses internally that they're prototyping.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  They're not ready for the Ray-Ban treatment, but they will be in pick your date. And so, yeah, I think these are a dry run. It's just to kind of see, you know, are people comfortable with these? They're going to be in Ray-Ban stores, you know, Luxottica owns LensCrafters. They own Sunglasses Hut. There's going to be a massive retail footprint for these things. You're just going to see them when you go in to get normal sunglasses or glasses. And they take prescription lenses. They take transitions. They work with your insurance. So it's definitely the most accessible pair of smart glasses that have hit the market so far.

• 9:48Alex Cranz?

  Were they inspired by, because you said they started working on this about two years ago. So were they were inspired by the Bose smart glasses?

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Or spectacles.

• 9:56Alex Cranz?

  Or spectacles, like, did they see those two or like, now smash them together?

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, spectacles, he who shall not be named. They wouldn't talk about spectacles directly.

• 10:05Nilay Patel?

  They named them Ray-Ban Stories.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  They named them after a product that Facebook copied from Snapchat.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Right. So this is one of the last things I think Snap has actually done that Facebook hasn't copied until now. So congrats, Evan Spiegel, head of product for Facebook. But what I was told happened is that, so in 2017, it was when Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of developers and for the first time and said, we want to make AR glasses. And he showed a graphic behind him that looked kind of like Ray-Bans. And so the chief wearable officer of Luxottica, Ray-Ban, is watching this.

• 10:39Alex Cranz?

  He's talking to me.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. And this guy has a wonder. His name's Rocco.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  I've got something to do.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  Put an Italian accent on it.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  And he's watching this and he literally cold emails Mark Zuckerberg, like finds his email online, cold emails him and say, hey, you know, we're really interested in smart glasses. You know, Luxottica talked to Google back in the day with glass. They were going to do a Ray-Ban version of glass that never happened. Um, he's like, you know, we really think smart glasses are going to be a big part of our business in the future. We should collaborate on this. We need the tech. You need the design. And Mark was into it. He flew to Milan. He met with the founder of Luxottica, a guy named Leonardo. Um, and that kicked it off. And then a year and a half to two years later, here we have it now.

• 11:24Alex Cranz?

  I'm really impressed Mark Zuckerberg had Luxottica whitelisted in like his email rolls. So he got that email. Like, great job.

• 11:33Nilay Patel?

  No, he, anybody that owns a monopoly, he'll, he'll take email from.

• 11:36Alex Cranz?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. He's like whitelist.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just, I'm, I'm stuck on chief wearable officer for a glass. By definition, everything they make is a wearable.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  This is true.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  Just carving out that lane for himself must have been very difficult.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it is kind of interesting. You've got like a social networking monopoly and in the eyewear monopoly, you know, Luxottica owns like over 80% of the market. They own basically every glasses brand you can think of. And now they're in a multi-year, kind of high stakes, very collaborative relationship. And it is actually like Ray-Ban's doing the design and Facebook is acting almost like an OEM. They're the tech supplier for these glasses. So Luxottica is paying Facebook as the supplier. So this isn't going to show up like Facebook's next earnings report is like other revenue. They're getting, they're, they're basically a service provider. So.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  They're HTC.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. Only some people will maybe get that, but actually probably a lot of people on the show will get that. We listen to the show.

• 12:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm, I'm curious. Like when you say they're a provider, are, who's doing the bring up of the hardware? Is it Facebook's hardware and camera team? Does Luxottica slash Ray-Ban have a team that's making the hardware and it's Facebook's software and they're just doing APIs?

• 12:48Speaker 04

  My understanding is the look and feel of the glasses is all Ray-Ban Luxottica. The cameras, the microphones, the actual tech is being done by Facebook and the retail and the go to market and the sales are all done through Ray-Ban. So it is a Ray-Ban product. I mean, the headline I had on the site was Facebook on your face because I like that. But, um, it's a little actually belying what's actually happening here. Like Facebook's actually kind of sit playing second fiddle in this relationship.

• 13:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So you've got the Ray-Ban glasses. You buy them, you're putting them on your face. You go to use them. What's the flow?

• 13:20Speaker 04

  You just tap it's if you've used spectacles or seen those, I think they came out like a long time ago now. It's a similar thing. You just press the top of the glasses and you can record or take video. There's a wake word. Hey, Facebook, take a photo and video, which is like, you know, you're not probably gonna get a second date if you say that.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  But that exists. If you have that on where it's listening for the wake word, it'll drain the battery a lot faster. So I don't really use it. And there's like a little shutter noise that happens when you do that. And then there's that tiny little white indicator light that I and actually a lot of the privacy experts Facebook consulted on for this device think is not that prominent and should be more prominent because the original spectacles light, if you all remember, it was a ring that like moved and it was super bright. It was unmistakable. You could be standing across the street and you could see, oh, that those are smart glasses. These really, you can't tell. I mean, I was standing in broad sunlight and our photographer, when we were shooting for this story was like, you know, six to eight feet away. She's like, I can't even see that

• 14:21Speaker 04

  light and you could easily Sharpie it over or whatever. So gonna be curious to see how that works in the real world.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Katie, not a policy BuzzFeed taped over it and then asked Facebook about that. And I believe Facebook said the taping over it was a violation of the terms of service.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  It's like, congrats to her for even thinking to ask. And then what a horrible answer.

• 14:42Alex Cranz?

  She's gonna get kicked off the Facebook. What's the name of the app that she's allowed to use for it?

• 14:47Speaker 04

  The view app. It's just view. Facebook view.

• 14:50Alex Cranz?

  Just Facebook view.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  And like, I can't overstate how basic this app is. It like, there's no native uploading to Facebook services. It's just like share sheet extension, any app on your phone, send it no watermark, nothing.

• 15:03Nilay Patel?

  So this thing just collects JPEGs over Bluetooth?

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Video and JPEGs. Correct. And you can like, save them and edit them and then send them wherever you want. And I think over time they'll bake the apps in more. I think they actually did that for speed and getting it out the door because collaborating with Facebook is kind of, you know, complicated still. So yeah, that's, that's the situation and they cost $2.99. They start at $2.99. So they're actually fairly affordable and they, they work with 299 is not that affordable. Like, I think regular Ray-Bans are about 200. So you're just basically paying. You're paying a lot for the brand is what I'm sort of. Oh, for sure. The margin on these, even regular Ray-Bans, the margin is insane. Yeah.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  How good are these? How good is this $100 camera that's inserted into a $200 pair of Ray-Bans?

• 15:52Speaker 04

  They're fine. I mean, that's the thing, like, we have such super powerful, amazing cameras in our phones. And, you know, I could only see this working for hands-free situations like sports or, you know, Zuck was on Facebook posting like wave foiling with them on, which they are not water resistant. So if he fell in the water, that would be a problem. So, yeah, I'm not really sure, actually. I think that's part of why they're releasing these is to see what people use them for. Because the quality is not that amazing. I guess when you have the audio element, maybe people will use it for that. Facebook has aspirations to do kind of more fancy things with audio where you can pick things out, single noises out, you know, assist with people who have hearing disabilities,

• 16:35Speaker 04

  or just kind of give you audio superpowers, which also is a whole nother, you know, societal can of worms, once that rolls out to the world.

• 16:42Alex Cranz?

  Bose killed theirs because nobody wanted to do audio with quote unquote smart head or smart glasses.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:49Alex Cranz?

  Like, I just keep being baffled by this whole rollout and everything about this, because smart glasses, the privacy concern is such a major part of like, what makes people reticent about these? What people hated about Google Glass, what people hated about the Snapchat ones, like, over and over again, they're like, hey, don't put things on your face that can just record me. That's, and that's like, not the killer feature for whatever smart glasses actually come and are successful. Like, that's, it wasn't the last two times. Why would it be this time?

• 17:20Speaker 04

  It's Ray-Ban? I don't know. That's a good question.

• 17:23Alex Cranz?

  And then like Ray-Ban's like, I know. Who will we go to to work on these, these glasses? All of these huge monopolies that we're, that we know, like, all are in this space. Let's go to the one that everybody has like the most privacy concerns about. And say, let's do a camera on your face together.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  I think we need to caveat everyone. I think if you're saying everyone and you're talking about the people who listen to this show and are on Twitter all day, then you're correct. I think the vast majority of, I think we in the media overplay the stigma that is associated with Facebook's brand. Facebook is incredibly data intensive. They do a ton of market research. I don't think they would waste their money putting their brand on something if they thought it was just gonna totally tank it. So I think normal people are gonna walk into a LensCrafters and they're gonna see Ray-Ban smart glasses without Facebook on them at all. And they're gonna go, oh, that's kinda cool. And then they go, oh, there's a Facebook app. I have to use a Facebook account. Okay, I have Facebook, whatever. There's no Facebook experience in the app. I mean, it's, Facebook could not be playing a more backseat role in like the

• 18:25Speaker 04

  just general consumer touchpoint.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  Facebook is good at hardware. I just like, I will give them credit. People like the Portal products. They won't tell us how many they've sold, that they were sold out in the pandemic. I don't know if that means they made five and sold all five.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  It's low six figures.

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  They sold a Bezos amount. Yeah. I think I've said on the show a thousand times, the Quest 2 is like, actually an incredible consumer product. It is

• 18:51Alex Cranz?

  It's fantastic.

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  It is complete.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Quickly approaching 10 million units, most likely will hit very soon. Yep.

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  So like, Facebook is not bad at hardware. The thing that surrounds them is, oh, I gotta use my Facebook account. Right? And that, like, I hear, I do hear that from audience. I do hear that from, I was like, we should get Portals to my family. And they're like, Facebook? No, thank you. Right? Like, there, there is some reticence out there that is, it's hard to measure and hard to understand. The privacy concern here, though, is not about you. It's weird. Like, this is a tool that helps you invade other people's privacy. Like, Facebook, like, almost has nothing to do with that interaction.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  I asked Facebook about this, and, you know, their point was, this is actually more obvious than just recording someone with your phone, because we have this, you either have to say, hey, Facebook, you have to physically do this, there's a shutter noise, and then a light comes on, whereas like, I can be kind of fake scrolling on my phone, you know, and potentially snag something. So their argument is that, you know, phones are already doing this. I don't know if I buy that.

• 19:55Nilay Patel?

  At least, you see a person with their phone. Like, you know, it's pointed at you. Maybe you might think that like we that's the ubiquitous situation now. Glasses, I we don't have the cultural understanding of whether glasses take a picture of you or not. Now there's light and a shutter noise. But I just keep coming back to, it is so easy to overthink this product. Like, the number of like metaverse takes I've read about this product today already. And I'm like, it doesn't even have a display. Like, it's a super cheap camera sensor and a pair of great like fundamentally, it's spy glasses from the the spy tech store that Facebook like, there's not a lot going on.

• 20:37Alex Cranz?

  Sharper Image was making these 20 years ago. And we were all wanting to get them while we flew on Delta. Like, yeah, they're such a simple, I always kind of hate how I think we started with Snapchat and we heard it also with Bose calling these these products smart.

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 20:54Alex Cranz?

  Because they feel super stupid, like, or dumb, excuse me. They just they don't feel like smart products. Like, when I hear smart glasses, I think of like, the sort of Damocles or something like that, like something that's really giving me lots of data. And this is mainly like, to have your phone, it's just like an output for your phone, to create data, to consume data, like, I don't know, I don't get it. I don't. Dieter, give us the appeal, as the only person here who's bought them.

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're surrounded by suckers. Why are you the biggest one of all?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Well, I bought them because they're they're Bluetooth headphones. I just I just I wanted I want having a pair of Bluetooth headphones in your glasses stems is actually dope. They're like, you just always got easy access to a little like music in your ears, having to put in headphones and take them out. That's it. Like, if they did not have cameras on them, I might still have bought them. Like, yeah, the fact that they have cameras was a reason to maybe not buy them. The fact that they're associated with Facebook was another reason to maybe not buy it. As far as the overthinking thing, yeah, I don't know, man, like, this happened with AirPods. Like, oh, the future is here. Computing is now in your ear hole, right? And it's like, also, they're just Bluetooth headphones. So, like, hold on just a minute before we get there.

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  Alex is wearing them now. Are you do you feel like you're in the future? Are you in the metaverse now?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  I'm in the metaverse.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  I definitely am in the metaverse. No, I mean, like, I just can't overstate how, yeah, normal these are. Like, they've, they're just the same weight as normal glasses. I think that's the point. The point is to just, like, slowly introduce people to cameras on their glasses. And maybe if you buy Ray-Bans, you'd be willing to pay an extra hundred dollars for the novelty of this. And yeah, they're gonna keep making them smarter over time. Whether that's a good thing or not, we're gonna find out no matter what, I think.

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the most important things about this to me are, one, you need to have your phone with you to use them. So.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  The audio, yes. They actually have a fairly good amount of onboard storage for video and photo-taking, way better than the first versions of spectacles. But yes, for the audio, you need to be within Bluetooth pairing distance.

• 23:02Nilay Patel?

  But you can't, even if you're out taking pictures, to get the pictures you need your phone.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  To get them off, yes, exactly.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  Heavily dependent on your phone.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:10Alex Cranz?

  That's gonna be a movie.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, somebody has their phone and they got the thing, and then you gotta get the glasses?

• 23:14Alex Cranz?

  They're like, oh, I gotta find a phone to pair these with. Critical information.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Finally.

• 23:19Alex Cranz?

  Gotta get it off.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Finally, a good idea for a movie.

• 23:21Alex Cranz?

  Yes, that's the one.

• 23:23Nilay Patel?

  I've been watching all this dumb stuff that's coming out of these streaming services.

• 23:26Alex Cranz?

  Hollywood, call us. We got it.

• 23:29Nilay Patel?

  But so there's that. But then there's like, when I think about what you need to actually make the AR glasses, or do the metaverse stuff, the cameras need to be able to recognize what you're looking at. I don't think you can do any of that. Spectacles can't do any of that. Snapchat did put out some AR features.

• 23:46Speaker 04

  Well, yes. So they released, I air quotes, released spectacles earlier this year to creators and developers in an invite-only program. They do have AR displays in them. They actually bought the AR display provider, we broke that story at The Verge, for half a billion dollars. So yeah, Snap is actually ahead here. Now, they're not like being sold to the level of Ray-Ban, right? But yes, those are out in the wild. Some people have them, and they do have very basic object detection. There's a scan button. I did a big story on scan in the Snapchat app, which basically just kind of recognizes the world around you and is kind of trying to make AR more of a utility. These spectacles actually have scan in them, and you can look at a tree, and it will, it will suggest tree lenses

• 24:28Speaker 04

  in your display. So Snap is actually pretty well ahead here in terms of where we're going with smart glasses.

• 24:35Nilay Patel?

  So that's the compute side of it, right? You need to be able to know what you're looking at. You need to do some computing to say something interesting about it, and then you need to display it somewhere. I haven't seen anybody make AR display technology that is good.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Well, define good.

• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's just all like the hollow lens or whatever. It's all just like LCDs in front of your face.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  You could also have lasers shot in your retina if you want to have, you know, like, like North and then, you know, the, the cancelled Intel glasses that I tried, they'd, it shot, it was like, it was black and white, red. Like, remember looking at like, I don't know, OG Palm Pilots are like very, very old monitors that were like, you know, green.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  You have that if you want in your eyeball, you know?

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, the spectacles are full color. They're very, very limited field of view though. And they're fairly grainy.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  But they are still one of the best displays on the market and that gives you a sense of how far away we are. I mean, these are like laws of physics problems that these companies are trying to solve for is my understanding. In terms of like not burning your face off with the compute needed to power displays that look good enough. So there's actually just like core physics problems that are still being worked through. Um, I don't think we're going to see like consumer AR glasses that most people think are compelling for at least three years, at least.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  So then this was the other rumor this week, Apple, actually you broke when you were back at the information, you broke a story about Apple's VR headset. You had some design renderings of it. So there's lots of rumors about this AR VR stuff that Apple's doing. But the rumor this week, which is kind of a funny rumor, because I think we all just assumed this, is that that headset, whatever that product is, will require an iPhone or a Mac to do the actual compute.

• 26:14Alex Cranz?

  Shocking.

• 26:14Nilay Patel?

  Which makes all of the sense in the world. Like, Apple making a product that does not rely on the iPhone would be more surprising to me. It's just the way we are. But that compute problem is enormous, right? And no one has come close to cracking it.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  No, and Apple has probably the best shot just because of how good their hardware is in the custom silicone they do. Facebook's way behind on silicone. Um, and so, yeah, I'm not surprised by this. I do know that this headset, and we should differentiate this, this mixed reality headset. It's a kind of like a ski mask type looking thing that's coming as early as next year. That's different from the AR glasses. Apple has aspirations to do Ray-Ban. Looking actual AR glasses, they actually are so like just not there. Like, who knows when they'll come out like Apple keeps telling people internally like three to five years, three to five years. That's kind of like all these companies tell their employees internally that it's always constantly moving dates.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  But this mixed reality headset, yeah, of course, it's going to need the iPhone for some things, but it is it's super powerful. I mean, it's going to be the most high end luxury like headset like this that the market has seen. There are some that exist that are like $10,000 that it's going to be kind of comparable to with like dual 8K displays, eye tracking, all these things, but I'm not surprised that they need some offloading for compute on a device like that because it would just burn your face off.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  So there's heat and then there's kind of the last piece of the puzzle. And this was actually very exciting news this week, literally embedded in very boring news. So we we've spent a lot of time talking on the show and on the site, battery technology, and we've kind of plateaued at lithium ion for a long time. So there's a new company called Seela Nanotechnologies. They've been at it since 2011 and they shipped their first new technology, new battery technology this week. It's a silicon anode instead of graphite and lithium ion, 20% boost in energy density in this battery. And it is shipping, it's actually shipping in a product called the Whoop Fitness Tracker.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Whoop, whoop.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  I mean, people, people like the Whoop.

• 28:21Alex Cranz?

  You know, the original, the last Whoop was like stupid name, the last Whoop.

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  There's a movie, by the way.

• 28:31Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, there's another movie right there. We're just cranking them out.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  God, Whoop Stories by Ray Ban.

• 28:39Alex Cranz?

  But that last one, like Fitbit immediately kind of took what what Whoop had made big deal in their last one, which was like a fitness score, like telling people, oh, you should work out today or not because you're you're not ready. It was a readiness score, I think. So like Whoop is, name aside, like it's always kind of like a little ahead of the curve and it's very niche area. And this is, yeah, I was kind of like, cool.

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  Whoop fans, rise up.

• 29:08Alex Cranz?

  Whoop. Yeah.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  If you're in the Whoop crew, tweet at Alex. You're a hardcore whoop stan. Alex is ready for you.

• 29:17Alex Cranz?

  You don't exist. I think I'll be fine.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Just like in terms of like, just the pieces of the puzzle, you need, it's a computer on your face. Like it's all the same bits and bobs as your phone. You need a bunch of cameras that are running all of the time to make an AR headset. You need a bunch of cameras that are running all the time. You need microphones that are running all the time. You need a display that is running all the time to make this thing valuable. And then you need a battery that can do stuff like last. So you need a better battery technology. You needed a display that won't burn your face off. You need cameras that won't burn your face off and you need a chip that is can do all this processing all like 24 hours a day while you're wearing these glasses.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Well, you also, you actually need things that it does, that it actually does, not dreams of what it'll do someday. How long did it take for the Apple Watch, which has similar problems, but easier solutions? Cause they don't have to make a display in front of your eye and they can, it's on your wrist and not burning your, your head off. How long did it take the Apple Watch to justify the effort that it takes to wear an Apple Watch with the, with what it gives back to you? It took like two years, right?

• 30:25Nilay Patel?

  Three, I would say three.

• 30:26Alex Cranz?

  It took years.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  For non health stuff, does it still justify it? I'm not sure it does. If you're not like super into health stuff, I have no reason to wear one.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're a nerd like me, you can justify it without the health stuff by like, you know, having easier access to notifications and not having to, I don't know, look at your phone for the weather. That's super important to me.

• 30:46Alex Cranz?

  It's a real power move in a meeting to be like, oh, hold on and look down at your watch just cause, and it's just like a slack from a coworker of a bad job.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:54Alex Cranz?

  Absolute power.

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  This is just like a fantasy of what working in an office is like, you've completely forgotten. No idea.

• 31:02Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna do it.

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  Alex all day is just like, hang on, tapping.

• 31:05Alex Cranz?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on. I just got a, I got a slack.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  The number one use case for us is, you know, we're parents, we work on two different floors. So we use the walkie talkie all the time. It's great.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  I can actually see that being useful. Yeah.

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's very funny to receive the code brown walkie talkie from.

• 31:23Nilay Patel?

  It's like still to this day, it's, we've been doing it for three and a half years. It's still hilarious every time. But like all those bits and pieces, I agree with you about the watch, like the watch had to justify itself and it got to a place where it feels justified. People like it. But more specifically, how long did it take before Apple could keep the display lit up all the time? Right? That was five generations of this watch.

• 31:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's just a lot. So when we, when I read the overthinking metaverse takes about these glasses, I'm like, well, they're just, it's just a camera and some glasses. All of the enabling technology is still years off and we haven't even seen glimpses of it.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  We will next year.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  You think next year?

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Next year with, with Apple's headset, if they stick to their plan, but it's going to be so high end. I mean, this thing's going to cost like probably $3,000 is the price they've been discussing internally. So it's definitely prosumer MacBook Pro. They're thinking of the glasses eventually as like the iPhone parallel, while the headset is like the MacBook Pro parallel. And yeah, I mean, they're going to be cheating a bit by doing mixed reality. So you're getting a video feed of the real world in front of you that they can then intersperse with graphics. So you're not actually doing that display with sunlight needing to come in and the display fight against that. That's a huge technical undertaking. So they're actually kind of cheating, but it's going to show what's possible just with what we have today. And I think everyone, when they see that, you know, I'm imagining like a dial

• 32:49Speaker 04

  on the side. They bought a VR headset company that had this dial that was doing mixed reality where you could literally like be looking at a computer screen and like turn it into a virtual one and back, you know, like that'll sell in a commercial, like, you know, easy. So I imagine they're going to be showing that in that way. And everybody's going to go, oh, oh, this is actual AR. This is like compelling AR. I just have to spend $3,000 and wear this like ski mask.

• 33:13Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. So it's going to be kind of like the, the Windows mixed reality when we had that a couple of years ago, and then everybody forgot it existed.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  See, I already forgot that. What is that?

• 33:22Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Yeah. You're like, what, what is that? I think Acer, was it Acer or Asus? Was really into that one and made lots of headsets.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  That's for the enterprise metaverse. My favorite Microsoft packaging of their technology. When do the glasses come out? Are they out? Can you, can we buy the Facebook glasses now?

• 33:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can buy them online. Dieter, did you buy them on Ray-Ban's website?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  I did, and they're shipping, I think a couple of days. And I'm going to go pick them up at the Ray-Ban store.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, if you're buying this, if you're buying these glasses, you know, tweet at Dieter. And if you're buying the Whoop, Alex awaits the Whoop, the Whoop crew.

• 33:56Alex Cranz?

  The Whoop crew.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we gotta take a break. Actually, there's lots more Apple to talk about. We'll take a break and come back and talk about that.

• 34:06Speaker 05

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• 34:34Speaker 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 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 slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 35:05Nilay Patel?

  We're back. There's an Apple event next week. We got to talk about iPhone 13 rumors, all that stuff. But we were just talking about the Apple Watch. Let's start with Kevin Lynch, who is the executive in charge of the Apple Watch, who is now rumored to be taking over the car project. This week Doug Field, who was the executive at Apple, who wasn't, we believe to be in charge of the car. He was a VP of Special Projects. Apple's obviously never confirmed any of this, but so many people have worked on this car project and left Apple that everyone knows there's a car project. I don't know, I also described that. Like it's, we can't see it, but we can see it's like gravitational pull. It's exhaust. The metaphor is exhaust.

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  We can see the garbage that comes out of it as it burns and burns.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  We can see where it should be. Anyway, Doug Field was in charge of it. That was a big poach from Tesla. He left Apple to go to Ford and hilariously, both companies were like, yep, that happened. Ford's stock went up, which is hilarious on the hiring of one executive. And Apple was like, yeah, Doug, wish him the best. And then now we are hearing from Mark Urban at Bloomberg that Kevin Lynch, who is the executive in charge of the Apple Watch, will now be in charge of the car. So Godspeed, Kevin Lynch.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:24Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that kind of makes sense because he has to like, with the Apple Watch, he had to convince people that this thing you really don't need ever in your life, as Alex mentioned, you need in your life. And now he's going to have to do that again, but like much more expensive.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  We've obviously been hearing about this car forever. And I make this joke all the time. Car executives love Decoder, especially because there's no New York Auto Show. So I keep talking to car executives. You know, they, the car industry is not confused about its challenges. Right? Like just this week, Mercedes announced like 35 luxury EV SUVs. And they're like, there's like an EV G-Wagon, it will be $150,000, all the way down to like an EV B-Class that will be a Mercedes, so expensive but more affordable. Like, they know they got to do it. Cadillac is doing the Lyric, which will be in the sort of like $60,000 range, which is affordable for the luxury segment. Like, they know that Tesla's

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  a threat. They're coming for Tesla. They're also better at building cars than Tesla. Like, I, to this day, I think Quinn Nelson, who, like, he just bought a Model Y.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  On Twitter.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  All the fit and finish problems on the Model Y, they're like, it's actually a lot. It just kept going and going.

• 37:39Alex Cranz?

  There's like gaps.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, huge panel gaps. The interiors are still really bare bones. I think Tesla today put out a note to its staff that they had to go super hardcore to meet their Q3, Q4 targets, which is like an incredible note for manager. Like, I just like, I can't imagine me like, Verge team, we must go super hardcore. Imagine sending this to you. But all of that is like, the car industry knows. They know they have this existential threat. New York State is going to pass a law that all cars by 2035 have to be electric. They're rising to the moment. Are they doing a great job? No. Every car that I just mentioned is announced, but not shipping. There's a chip shortage. So there's a lot of vaporware. Just be clear.

• 38:24Alex Cranz?

  Well, the F1, the F150 came out, didn't it?

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 38:26Alex Cranz?

  Nope.

• 38:29Alex Cranz?

  The hype.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  There's still time for them to make it the F150 USBC instead of the Lightning.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  That would be incredible. Call Jim Farley and let him know. But they know, like, you know, the Mustang Mach-E is sold out everywhere. Right. The Rivian, that's a new company. Their pre-orders are off the charts. People really believe in that company. So they know, like, the car industry knows. And they are good at making cars and they are trying. I cannot figure out what Apple will bring to that equation. Or how. And I think that is like, that's just why this car project just has been reset over and over and over again. At one point, they were going to build software and services and try to sell that to carmakers. That didn't work.

• 39:11Alex Cranz?

  Which makes sense.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  At another point, we'd heard that they were trying to get Hyundai or Honda or Toyota or somebody to build the car for them. And all of those companies were like, no, we make car, like, why would we not be the brand in charge of that? Like, why would we fox on ourselves? So that apparently hasn't gone anywhere. And now they're starting over yet again. Like, I just don't know what the, I don't know what the opportunity in the car industry is.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Well, in theory, the Mac, the opportunity was Apple was better at software design. Right. The iPhone was they had a, they had an insight of how a smartphone could work better and they were able to build it. And then Apple Watch and basically everything else since then is they're just like more efficient and making really good hardware, good consumer electronics than other companies. And software design, in theory, there that's an advantage, but I don't know. I'm looking at some of the stuff lately and I'm not so sure. But those are like, those are the things, like, they have like an interface insight. They have some sort of like software design and they're just very, very good at making

• 40:18Speaker 02

  decent or excellent, like, consumer electronics hardware. And so the question is, are they leveraging one, two, or all three of those things to a car? And do they have a fourth thing that we don't know about? And like, I haven't seen a hint of the fourth thing, which means that they're like, they're kind of doing it because they have to, because they're the biggest company on earth and they just like, everyone's like, well, what else are we going to do? We got to do something.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, they have to find a market to expand their market cap, right? It's like healthcare, automotive, what's out there that's big enough that they haven't hit? And also, I was thinking while Dieter was talking, like, isn't a self-driving car in about five years going to be the ultimate luxury consumer electronic?

• 41:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but they're not going to exist in five years. Like, self-driving cars, the kind that, like, everybody dreams of making, these level four, level five cars, like, Apple's not going to do that in the next five years.

• 41:10Speaker 04

  They're going to cost a lot of money, and they're only going to work in certain places, but they're going to be able to be redesigned because they're self-driving. There'll probably be some kind of AR thing in the dash, in the, you know, and like, Apple's already making that.

• 41:24Alex Cranz?

  I just keep thinking of the hubris of this company. Like, I remember when all this stuff came out about Johnny Ive, and like, his idea of the car was, let's do it, but not have a steering wheel at all. And like, that's what I think of every time I think of these, like, Apple going into the space.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  Fundamentally, every company is looking at that future without a steering wheel. And then you're commuting in a world of screens, and if you're going to be looking at a screen, it might as well run iOS, right? Like-

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  And only have Apple Music, yes.

• 41:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Alex Cranz?

  It's just like, because there's so many different, like, building a computer is a lot different than building a 30, 40, in Apple's case, probably $100,000 car. Like, that's not an easy thing to do. That's a whole infrastructure, like, Apple's success right now is all, yeah, we've talked about like, the hardware and stuff, but the real success nowadays, the reason it's the most profitable company in the world, is that supply chain. It's so good at supply chain, and it cannot leverage that to build a giant-ass car. Like, that's not where its supply chain talents are, right? Like-

• 42:33Speaker 04

  That's why there's all these leaks about them talking to Kia and Toyota, and I know for a fact, like, internally, at least before this job change at the top that literally just happened, they were set on working with a partner at least five years out. And, I mean, they have to outsource that, they've never made a car before. So like what Neil was saying, they're going to try to Foxconn some automotive maker.

• 42:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, and why would any autom-, I mean, it was the same thing with like, with Roku and TCL, right? Like, it sounds like that's what they want to be doing, they want to do- When Roku went and said, hey, we need to build TVs. We want to build them, do them in the United States. And they went and found TCL who had just built those big factories in Mexico and said, hey, let's work together. And it helped both of them.

• 43:12Nilay Patel?

  And now TCL is like, we're going to be doing some other software. Like, see you later, Roku. Like,

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, actually, they're also, they're, they're down low white labeling TVs for Amazon now.

• 43:21Nilay Patel?

  We should talk about that in a minute. But

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 43:23Nilay Patel?

  But here, but, but the structure of that, Alex, is like, very different. Like, TCL was a Chinese company that wanted an entry point into America. Roku gave them that entry point.

• 43:31Alex Cranz?

  Right. That's what I'm saying. It's like, there's no TCL in the car space right now.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  Right. Because there's only like, three car companies. Like, underneath this all, there's like, name a car company, and I will tell you what percentage of that car company is actually owned by a much bigger car company.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Aren't there some luxury, kind of small European carmakers that make just super, like, Magenta, Magenta?

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there, there's like, a tiny bit of like, hyper car companies. But if you think of any-

• 43:58Alex Cranz?

  Please find a supercar.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  Couldn't Apple just say, like, here's, like, what your entire revenue is, like, we'll just double it for a year, for like, the next five years, and just make the Apple car as well. And like, we'll pay for all your expansion. What they did with Foxconn, I mean, they, Foxconn was built, and, you know, scaled with Apple. Couldn't they just do that to one of these little luxury automotive makers?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  I have a better idea. They, they just need a factory. And there's one sitting near Racine, Wisconsin.

• 44:23Nilay Patel?

  Where they have threatened to build cars. This is true.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  It's a deep cut.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  It's not so deep.

• 44:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, like, Foxconn has this empty factory. They've talked about building cars with Fisker there.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:35Nilay Patel?

  They, it's either there in Mexico. They were supposed to say in July. You will notice it's September. The Foxconn in Wisconsin experiment continues. And now, what Fisker is saying is, they don't want to build their cars in a place where consumers cannot buy cars directly. So, Wisconsin has those weird dealer laws, where you have to buy a car from a dealer. Like, Tesla's always mad about this. So, Fisker wants Wisconsin to change its car dealership laws, in order to build the cars in a Foxconn factory there. And I think the Wisconsin government is rightfully like, maybe we don't want to do more for this empty box in Racine, Wisconsin. Maybe y'all should figure it out. So, there's like,

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  a lot of back and forth there. But ultimately, Foxconn has ambitions to be a carmaker, or a vendor of cars. They have not proven that they can do that. But they they know. We interviewed the CEO of Flex on Decoder. She was great. She's like, we've got to get good at cars. This is the next great consumer electronics business. They all know these are rolling computers. But the thing that I just don't see, like, to be successful in the car business in America, you have to make a crossover SUV. And you have to make a pickup truck. Is Apple going to make a pickup truck?

• 45:52Speaker 04

  But yeah, but before the iPhone, you had to have a physical keyboard. I mean, like, these are like, I'm just saying, like, Apple could come out and say, this is, yeah.

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  With a station wagon. Like, station wagons are back.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Right. But like, Apple could come out and say, this is the most amazing, luxury, self-driving, futuristic car you've ever seen. It only shows you Ted Lasso. You know, you can just sit in the back and like, airplay everything you want. And because people are going to be doing self-driving, which I guess we could agree will eventually happen, maybe not in five years, but all those, all that time driving is unlocked to be passively consuming things like Apple services. I mean, it makes sense if you're thinking like 10 years out, how we're all going to be in cars, that Apple would want to own that experience, right? Otherwise, they get boxed out.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's fair. I just.

• 46:37Alex Cranz?

  I just keep thinking of like, the 1990s on like, 60 Minutes. And watching all of those, every other week, there was a thing about like, you know, Ford is now doing a self-driving car, and Dodge is going to be doing a flying car. And I think like, the car space is much more complex. And it's like, Apple just kind of like, trying to dip in by saying, we're going to do this thing that like, the biggest car companies in the world can't do.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's very Apple. I buy that.

• 47:05Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it is very Apple. That's true. That's true. But they also can't do a TV. Like, how long have we been hearing about the Apple TV TV TV?

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's, we could do an hour on why I think they should make a TV. But well, we should take a break from the car. We'll see. I think the fact that they can't keep an executive or a plan in place indicates that they are struggling with all of the same problems that we have been talking about. And that their plan is not solidified. That said, I love the idea of an Apple-designed crossover SUV. I think that would be the, it will just be hilarious fundamentally, or a pickup truck.

• 47:39Alex Cranz?

  It cannot go over a single mountain.

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  Okay, there's an event. Speaking of actual Apple products.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  There's an event next week. Dieter, walk us through it.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  So they announced it. It is Tuesday, the 14th. You know, we're getting to what we're expecting. I'm just gonna say, you know that Apple wanted to do this in person. And the way that you know for sure is the teaser for this event was California Streamin'. And the song California Dreamin' is about how you're in New York and it's getting cold and it kinda sucks and you wish you were someplace better, like California. They just, they're mad that they can't have their event in person and so they named their event California Streamin'.

• 48:20Nilay Patel?

  This is true, by the way. They wanted to have that event in person.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  I get why they didn't, but I wanted to go. I was excited back in the heady days of June.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Ah, June.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Anyway, so iPhone 13s, the consensus seems to be that they're gonna be 13s. The rumors seem pretty clear that we're looking at the Pro is gonna have probably an LTPO OLED display, which means that it can have a variable refresh rate, which means that it can finally have a high refresh rate. Finally, that we're assuming is gonna happen. We assume there's gonna be better cameras. We assume there's gonna be an A15. And we're also hearing smaller notches at the top.

• 49:01Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Great. Good.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  I will buy it for no notch.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Well, no notch is coming out later.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, then I'm not buying it.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Well, YouTuber John Prosser is like, "Well, I got all the scoop on the Apple iPhone 14 for next year." And then everybody lost their minds for a day. We can worry about that later.

• 49:20Nilay Patel?

  One year from now.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  Tune back in a year from now. We'll talk about the iPhone 14.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  But Apple, there was an FCC leak of the MagSafe charger, which is amazing. When is the last time Apple slipped and let something out through the FCC?

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  I mean, 10 years.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  It's incredible how sloppy that is for them. But the thing mentioned that it's compatible with four new phones, which means that we might actually get a Mini. There was a worry that they might not do the Mini again. But there's four phones. You gotta have the Mini, the regular, the Pro, and the Pro Max. Like, that's how they do it.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  What about a Max Max?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  They could double the Max. It could be the Max Max.

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  Instead of an iPad Mini, you go double Max.

• 49:59Alex Cranz?

  Oh my God.

• 50:00Nilay Patel?

  There's only so much screen size slots.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Between those two things. Yeah, yeah. Well, iPad mini is another thing that we're waiting on. We're waiting on new AirPods. We're waiting on new MacBook Pros. I don't know. There's a bunch of stuff sort of floating out there that we're waiting on refreshes on. And of course, the Apple Watch, which looks like it's going to have square sides. So they're going to pick from that menu of stuff. And my money is on iPhones, obviously. Apple Watch tends to go with iPhones and then pick one more thing, I guess.

• 50:29Alex Cranz?

  AirPods.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Oh, AirPods. Yeah. So like, the question is like, are they going to throw an iPad in? Are they going to throw a MacBook in? I can't imagine they'd throw a MacBook in. They need to make a big to do about the M1X, right?

• 50:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm going to go iPad.

• 50:41Alex Cranz?

  And it's big redesign for the MacBook, too.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think they'll do Max October, maybe.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:47Alex Cranz?

  Week after next. As soon as we're out of the event, we're going to get another invite.

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Don't they just like drop new AirPods on a random Tuesday now? Isn't that like how the Apple rolls?

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  They've done it before. Remember they had that lead up last was two years ago now? Where like every day there was something and then they had the event. They haven't done that in a while because these like infomercial events just have a higher product density. Because they can just like clip along, whereas in person they're like, they talk very slowly. They repeat themselves.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Someone has to get on stage. They have to walk off stage and they can't just have a cool drone transition.

• 51:24Nilay Patel?

  So we'll see. My bet is it's like the iOS show.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:29Nilay Patel?

  I say that inclusive of iPadOS and the Apple Watch, like it's phones, maybe some AirPods and the new watch. Maybe an iPad, but that would be my call. The question for me is which stuff gets delayed because of various chip shortages or part shortages? Because we've heard the watch will be delayed.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Nilay Patel?

  But it's kind of a huge deal to Apple's business if their phones are delayed.

• 51:52Alex Cranz?

  Well, they've done it before.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  I mean, their stuff was a little late last year because of COVID, wasn't it?

• 51:56Speaker 04

  I think they're doing okay. I mean, last I checked.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Fair. And I think they own a bunch of like TSMCs output just outright. So.

• 52:08Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Nilay Patel?

  But, you know, these are like the looming questions, especially at Apple's scale. Like even a little dip is a lot of money for that company. I don't like, I'm excited for these new phones. I, did you do any deep reads of the, of the invite?

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Oh, so the invite, the AR effect is you can like push your camera through the glowing Apple logo that floats there. And then you get this like night scene of a lake. And so there's a rumor that there's good, that they're going to finally do like astrophotography in the way that Pixel does. So if it sees stars, it'll convert to an astrophotography mode. Whether or not that means there's other AR stuff specifically, that I don't know. Uh, that's been hard. They've done AR stuff for their invites for a minute now. And everyone was like, oh, that means AR stuff is coming and it really hasn't. Um, but it's also been a minute since they've like, I don't know, done a big splashy AR demo, right? I mean, they haven't had the stage to like, put the table on and show Lego battle or whatever they do. Um, I don't know how they get that to come across in a stream, but.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  There's nothing more compelling than watching other people.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  Look at an iPad.

• 53:08Alex Cranz?

  Alex, will they, will they wait on that one for like in, that feels like an in-person?

• 53:13Speaker 04

  That's what I was just about to say. I think they really want to do the headset in person. And I think they need to announce it at like WWDC and get developers on board before general release. So odds on WWDC being in person next year, 50 50? Like if it's not, I don't know what they do. Uh, it would be really hard to brief people and show people the product and, um.

• 53:37Alex Cranz?

  Would they just hold another year?

• 53:39Speaker 04

  They probably might need to anyway with like supply chain stuff.

• 53:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  They're definitely not in like mass manufacturing or anywhere close to that.

• 53:46Alex Cranz?

  There's like one guy at Apple now who's like, yes, hold it another year.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Oh, there's, there's several.

• 53:53Nilay Patel?

  Amazing. So that's the event. We're looking forward to it. We're going to cover this stuff. I think we're expecting mostly a high focus on phones. You know, the jump from 12 to 13 and maybe five years ago, you would have the S cycle and you weren't expecting a lot. And the jump to the new number was meaningful in some way. They're off that cycle.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  They don't do S. Like, what was the last S? I guess it was a 10S, right?

• 54:17Speaker 04

  They just call it iPhone. Just say iPhone. New iPhone. Hello, there's a new iPhone. iPhone.

• 54:22Alex Cranz?

  Because some of us have to write reviews and like all sorts of blogs about it. We need a number. We gotta have a number.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, back to the car industry, like the Honda Accord is not like the Honda Accord 25.

• 54:36Speaker 04

  Oh, is that the 24S?

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Oh, God. What if, what if instead of a number, they're just packages? Like there's packages for cars, like the iPhone GTI.

• 54:49Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, that would actually be great.

• 54:51Alex Cranz?

  The iPhone touring series.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, the touring iPhone.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone LX. There's one that's blacked out, one that's festooned in Chrome, and you're like, who are?

• 55:00Speaker 02

  You have to do a bunch of Google research to figure out what the different packages mean, and you can't actually tell which one is the high-end one and which one isn't.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  Dieter definitely just bought a car.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  That was just a pure frustration moment. Okay, so we're not expecting, I only say that to underline, we're expecting some incremental changes with the 13. Not the big number jump that you might otherwise think. Like, this feels like a pretty incremental. The iPhones 12 sold incredibly well.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:31Nilay Patel?

  There's not a reason to take some huge set of risks with the 13. Hopefully the new display and new camera is cool. But I feel like I say that every year about the iPhone.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Well, to me, the big question is, is the Max going to continue to have a better camera system than the regular Pro? There is a rumor that the answer to that question is yes, which for me personally is a bummer, because I've been using the Max because I want to have the best camera on to compare to other smartphones. And, man, I'm just tired of the surfboard. It's so frickin' big.

• 55:57Nilay Patel?

  I will say, we, you know, the test for me is we have a toddler. She does not sit still for photos. I have all but stopped using the RX 100 with the 12. That was not the case the year before. But even like portrait, like we use portrait mode in a way that it's like, two years ago, I was like, ah, no one's ever used this. Now we're just like using it all the time. So they're hitting a limit. We've heard these rumors about portrait mode video. There's some room left in the camera system, but they are, they are hitting the plateau of the curve.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Well, I just want to point out that all of the stuff we're discussing here, portrait mode video, higher refresh rate screen, always on display lock screen. I forgot to mention that. This is stuff Samsung did before and like Samsung didn't do it well, especially in portrait mode video. It's pretty garbage. So there's a, there's the story that, oh, Apple waits till they get it right. And then they do it and they show how everybody else did it badly. And like, sure, yes, I get that. But I don't buy that story, especially when it comes to the always on display. Like, come on. What, what, what was the problem? Android phones have been doing this for literally years. Many, many of them, and they've been fine. What's the deal? Why did it take so long? I don't know.

• 57:02Alex Cranz?

  They were waiting for the, the air power charger.

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  No, they've got a list of like, stuff they can do to make all the products different year after year.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  And they just like hold it and then they're like, eh, well.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Time to roll out the LS edition.

• 57:15Nilay Patel?

  List, list is getting pretty thin. Let's black out the wheels.

• 57:21Nilay Patel?

  Last little bit of Apple stuff. They had the huge controversy around the photo scanning and the child protection. All that stuff is indefinitely delayed, which it seems like the right call. And they said they're going to take the coming months to talk to people and get feedback. It doesn't mean they're not going to ship it.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  They announced they was going to ship this year in iOS 15.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 57:38Nilay Patel?

  So if you just think about what that means, iOS 15 will ship in September. That leaves October, November and December. So they were talking about Q4. So the thing had a deadline. Now it does not. So we'll see various groups fight for the future, et cetera. Or like, just never ship it. Just walk away from the city. I don't know that Apple's ever going to go that far, but that the pressure has worked in this case, which I think is interesting. And I think as Apple has these ambitions to take over things like healthcare, they're going to have to get way better at telling a lot of people what they're doing and getting buy in. Before they start mucking around.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a really interesting parallel to the way Google tried to do flock on Chrome. They said, here's a proposal of we got, we're gonna, we're gonna kill cookies. We gotta do it. Here's a proposal of how we think it'll work. And everyone was like, well, this is terrible. You suck. We hate you. We're not joining in. Apple's like, well, we gotta, we gotta somehow scan for, you know, CSAM. So this is what we're doing. And, and so where Google's like, what do you think of our idea? Apple was like, this is our idea. Now we defend it. And in both of those cases, it kind of didn't work. But there's some zone in the middle where you're like, we have to do this thing. Here's our idea for this thing. And there's like some kind of feedback loop that doesn't just make you a target.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  And I don't know that Apple or Google know what that feedback loop looks like yet.

• 59:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think in this case, if Apple had announced encrypted iCloud, they would have offered people a benefit, like a really meaningful benefit. And they, they didn't, but who knows? For now, it's delayed. When it comes back again, I'm sure there's gonna be another round of this coverage. Okay, we're gonna take a break. We gotta talk about the rest of hardware season that's coming and then a bunch of other stuff. We'll be right back.

• 59:29Speaker 05

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• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  We are back. Alex, you want to run us through these, these Amazon TVs? By the way, Apple should have made TVs years ago. And the fact that Amazon is making TVs now, like they are so far behind Amazon.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  Apple did make a TV. They did. I remember this from my Apple blogging days, like over a decade ago.

• 1:01:08Nilay Patel?

  They, we should have introduced you with this. You were like an OG Apple blog blogger.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing actually, but um, yeah, they had one. I think it actually, it went through like some kind of early FCC review. It was like almost getting out and would have been great, would have been great.

• 1:01:27Alex Cranz?

  Was it like the first version of the Apple TV back in those days? When it was like the Apple TV was just a straight computer or?

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  I don't even, I think we knew about the hardware at the time. I think this was when I was at Cold Mac. We knew about the hardware. We didn't know about the software, but we knew there was a TV.

• 1:01:44Nilay Patel?

  I've definitely heard from various other TV manufacturers that like Johnny Ive would like wander through gigantic LCD factories, which like making demands of LCD companies. And everyone thought they were going to do it. And then they

• 1:01:58Alex Cranz?

  Too many ports.

• 1:01:59Nilay Patel?

  They never did. What if this remote had no buttons?

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  They just never did it. And now you look at where Amazon has arrived. They've got a new Fire TV stick.

• 1:02:11Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they've got a new Fire TV stick. They they're doing a TV and they didn't say who they're partnering with with that TV, but I definitely was watching Chris Welch line up TVs.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  The most Chris Welch of Chris Welch moments.

• 1:02:25Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, he had like a TCL series six and and the new Fire TV. And he's like, well, it's the exact same layout on the side. And the images did seem to suggest that. But we don't know who they're actually working with. That one makes a lot of sense, just with everything that's been going on with TCL lately. So yeah, that's gonna have Amazon Fire built in. And it's a shockingly like, a lot of people use it. I never think of it. We always think of like Roku and Android and Apple. But a lot of people use the Fire TV OS.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bezos Bezos number use it. A Bezos number of people use this thing. Yeah, like a Google's Google is like technically a number. I think we should start Bezos should just start being a number of Bezos. But like, it's not a Bezos number. It's like, yeah, Bezos people use it.

• 1:03:14Alex Cranz?

  But they're they're cheap TVs. They're gonna sell on Amazon. They're gonna probably be out. I think they're out for for Black Friday season. They're going to just sell like hotcakes as people are like, I need a cheap TV. Oh, wow. This one is because I think like a 43 inch Fire TV for a series is starting at like $369.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Wow, that TV's gonna look horrible. What is the deal with TCL? So they they they partner with Roku and they had big success there. And then their Google rolls in is like, hey, what if you made Google TVs instead of Roku TVs? And TCL was like, well, that's an interesting checkbook you got there, Google. And then they're like, who else has a checkbook? And now they're making they're like white labeling TVs for Amazon. Roku's sort of, I don't know what's going on with them. But the the fight for all these smart TV platforms to just like, have someone make the TV for them is fascinating to me right now.

• 1:04:08Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because they can't like they they don't want to make their own TVs for the most part. They just they they just want to slap it on something else and they're tired of doing all these big deals with like Sony or or whoever and you know LG and Samsung I think are both very like, no, we're doing our Tyson and WebOS for life.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know what we need? Instead of everybody making sticks or like fighting to be on board, there should be like a port that you can put your smart TV card into, like a cable card and then it's standardized and then.

• 1:04:39Nilay Patel?

  So what I want, I just want to stop this right here. First of all, Alex, God bless you for treating this so sincerely. Dieter is just directly trolling me. Yes, there should be a horrible cable company middleware product that utterly fails to create competition. That'd be great. Also, Samsung did this. Remember they had the modular processing cards you could replace in the back of your TV?

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  They released one of those updates of the like the little computer thing.

• 1:05:04Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, oh, no one gives a shit. They bought a $30 Roku.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this is like, you mentioned Sony and LG, like, these are proud companies that want to own the customer relationship.

• 1:05:16Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:05:17Nilay Patel?

  Like, I have a Sony Android TV. It's a beautiful OLED panel. It runs Android, and I still have a Chromecast plugged into it. Because just by dint of having Sony involved, Android is crap on that TV. Like, there's just no getting around it. Like, I might as well just like have the better device. Whereas I think TCL is like, we want market share. We will happily run your operating system and let you own the customer relationship. But we are going to make the TVs and sell them to everyone. And they are just crushing it on that front.

• 1:05:49Alex Cranz?

  When did they roll out the Roku TV? That was like five or six years ago. And TCL had like existed before that. They'd had a very small presence in the United States. They'd had a much larger presence overseas. But they just made really, really kind of garbage TVs. And then Roku said, hey, we want to get into this business. We want to start building TVs and really demanded an improvement on on TCL's side. And TCL then took that and ran with it and was like, oh, wow, if we make better products, more people will buy them? This is crazy.

• 1:06:20Nilay Patel?

  Wild.

• 1:06:21Alex Cranz?

  Quality control works.

• 1:06:23Nilay Patel?

  What's interesting here is that maybe to this day, we have recommended the TCL six series that runs Roku is like, Connie, your go to dead ahead, buy this TV, you'll be happy. Dolby Vision, high refresh rate, the whole deal. The Roku software is good. TCL did not, there are no like preloaded TCL apps or whatever, right? Like, yeah, my Sony TV has horrible preloaded apps. Like, I don't know why there's an app on that TV that would let me stream MP4s from my like laptop, but Sony was like, we're gonna ship that app.

• 1:06:55Alex Cranz?

  It somehow got like a boxy.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  If we're gonna get into complaining about TV software, I have a Tizen TV and I have many feelings. Many of them.

• 1:07:03Nilay Patel?

  Uh, my LG WebOS TV has no fewer than three ways to stream shit from your phone to the TV.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Nilay Patel?

  If you were wondering where Miracast went.

• 1:07:12Alex Cranz?

  It's on the LG WebOS.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Uh, on, on, on Tizen currently, the setting is broken where if you turn on AirPlay, it thinks what you're trying to do is do two screens side by side. One screen AirPlay, one screen, you know, the broken input from cable that doesn't exist. So it just, it just goes to this two screen mode and you've got to like hit three extra buttons to get out of the two screen mode. One of which is like, do you want to save this two screen mode forever? So that it always does this?

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  And obviously you do.

• 1:07:39Alex Cranz?

  Why did the TV still default to like the coax input?

• 1:07:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this was like a big deal for, uh, for Vizio. They, they took out the coax input.

• 1:07:47Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Nilay Patel?

  Because they're like, no one uses it. Then they were not, yeah, they were not allowed to call their TVs TVs anymore. Like, that's just a sparkling monitor, sir. And then everyone got mad at them and they had to edit that.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  They're only TVs if they come from the TV region of France.

• 1:08:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so they added, the, the, the people want coax inputs. I don't know. So I gotta say one more thing with the Samsung TV expansion. So they're doing their, their like Amazon branded ones. They have a partnership with Toshiba, they're gonna do more of those. And then they've resurrected Pioneer's TV division for extremely cheap TVs that will be Pioneer branded. Like they're just gonna be the cheapest, like budget 43, 50 inch TVs you can buy. Which is extremely sad. Like, I'm probably, no one remembers this. Pioneer Kuro Plasma TVs were the best TVs on the market for like, five years. I still have one upstairs. It is so hot.

• 1:08:48Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's gigantic, like, the lights dim when you turn it on. But it's still like, the best TV.

• 1:08:53Alex Cranz?

  You just roast marshmallows next to it.

• 1:08:55Nilay Patel?

  I know people who are like, never gonna get rid of their Kuro.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Do you, do you leave it off and you only turn it on for like, special occasions?

• 1:09:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm like, what's the crispest 1080p content I can watch today? Time to boot up the Kuro. But anyway, the zombie Pioneer brand returning made me and Chris Welch very sad. Because we were, we were Kuro stans. Do you want to talk about Luna, Dieter?

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  I mean, Amazon's still trying to make its, uh, you know, streaming game platform happen. And their solution to increasing its popularity is offering you 14 different ways to subscribe to it, all of which have different names and prices. I think you, if you like, click, like, a white area on Amazon's website, you will be subscribed to Luna. I don't know. I mean, it's hard for me to work up a lot of emotion one way or the other about it. Simply because, like, you know, they're, they're doing better than Stadium, maybe?

• 1:09:47Alex Cranz?

  I feel like that's the whole plan here, right? Like, they just don't care if we, we work up emotion. They're like, look, if you've got a Fire TV and you really want to play an Ubisoft game and you haven't been like, able to get a PS5, sure, we could do it. It won't be a great experience, but you got it.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Amazon knows that if it can turn something into a commodity, it can make money off of it and it can keep other companies from making money off of it. So it's just like, what if we also made game streaming a commodity? That like, wasn't a differentiator for anybody, it was just like, a thing. Uh, and that's what I feel like the reason for Luna actually is.

• 1:10:21Alex Cranz?

  I do say, I watch the subreddits for those two, just because I'm fascinated. And the Luna subreddit has, I think, like, 6,000 people on it. And the Stadium one has like, 30,000. And it's the same four guys, 30,000 guys, excuse me, in the airport, with a beer on top of their laptop and their controller saying, wow, cloud gaming is here.

• 1:10:44Nilay Patel?

  It's interesting, the new Fire TV stack has a low latency latency mode for Luna. Like they're doing the things, they're integrating the things. But once you have that many prices and ways to sign up, it really is just like you're hoping you'd catch people. Like, no one's thinking like, I should sign up for Luna and they search for it and they look at all the choices and they make a decision. It's more like you're walking down the street and then you're acquired by the Amazon Luna team. It's like, no, you pay this much money. And they've like optimized it for that capture.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  It's it's literally the candy bars by the checkout. They're just like there. And you're like, oh, look at that. Sure, why not?

• 1:11:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Other stuff, Dieter, I know you're you're pressed about this. The Gmail app now takes phone calls, which honestly, I'm pressed about. I need fewer things to ring.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  The the thing about Gmail taking calls, everyone's like, but Meet's already built in, I don't understand. And it's like, no, no, no, it will ring, like, ring, ring, ring, ring, banana phone, ring.

• 1:11:42Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Which is, why? Because Gmail is no longer an email app is why. Gmail is now the Google Communication App app.

• 1:11:49Nilay Patel?

  No. Gmail is their messaging strategy.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Yes, it has chat, it has spaces, which is the new word for rooms, and it has Meet. And so all of those other standalone apps are going to continue to exist for a while, who knows how long? I would imagine not that long, because this ringing feature is coming to Gmail before it actually comes to Meet, which is amazing. Yeah, no, Gmail is now Outlook, where Microsoft made Outlook like email plus calendar plus like some contact stuff. And like that was, that's their paradigm for what that app means. It's more than just email. That's what Google has done on Gmail, but for their like enterprise communication stuff.

• 1:12:29Alex Cranz?

  When do they do circles?

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:12:31Alex Cranz?

  Bring it back. It's still existing, sort of.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're also redesigning the website in the coming months for Gmail. And so there'll be like tabs for all that stuff on the left and you'll have to go hunting for checkboxes if you want to turn them off again. And I mean, look, how long have we been like, gee, Google, what is your strategy for messaging apps? Are you actually, do you actually know what you're doing? Well, guess what they do? And this is it.

• 1:12:56Nilay Patel?

  Or they don't.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Be careful what you wish for. Gmail can ring now.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  That sounds like my worst nightmare is like trying to respond to a work email and someone calling me in my email.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:11Alex Cranz?

  I feel like somebody needs to just script it to just automatically call.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  I get like nuclear angry when people send me fake calendar spam. And I've like managed to avoid most of it. Like just the idea that like someone can call my, I'm gonna turn it off. What is?

• 1:13:26Alex Cranz?

  Will there be a phone number? It's not gonna be like Google voice.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  No, it's it's like, it's like, it's like a Google Meet thing. So you can, you can like ring somebody, just like you could like call somebody on Skype, you know? You know, it's like, think of it like a huddle, but more annoying, like a Slack huddle, but more annoying.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  Amazing. What is this monitor that they made?

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Oh, so in addition to that, they are letting third-party hardware companies to cosplay as Google and make hardware that looks like Google hardware, which sounds really mean. So the company that's making these, these two displays, one is like a giant Jamboard thing, and one is like a 27-inch monitor is called Avicor. They look very Googly. They got like the soft, you know, white speaker fabric and whatever. And they are Chrome OS devices that are just there to run Google Meet, but you can also use them as a monitor by plugging your laptop into it. So just like we were excited by this Logitech doc, this thing is like, oh, it's like the perfect work from home device. It like, it actually has like good microphones and a good webcam and good speakers and it serves as a monitor.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  And I can plug one cable into my laptop and all of a sudden it's like, my laptop is charging and working with this thing. And it sounds really great, except it's $2,000 because it's not meant for that. It's meant to like go sit in a meeting room or sit at like a, like a hotel desk, like, you know, the shared desks that are happening now in COVID land when people go back to the office. It's meant for that. But it looks cute.

• 1:14:51Speaker 04

  It does look cool.

• 1:14:51Alex Cranz?

  Couldn't they, they just made one? That was like $300?

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  I mean, you know.

• 1:14:57Alex Cranz?

  Like, take out the processor?

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  I don't know. It has a, it has a TPU, a Google tensor, tensor processor.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  They needed an entire custom AI chip to run Meet on Chrome.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Well, it's so you could say, you could say, hey, add it and to do stuff.

• 1:15:12Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's also got an Intel Core i5.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Well, that's because it has to run Chrome OS. It's not a full Chrome OS device, though. It's not an all-in-one. You can't like boot up Chrome and do stuff on it. It's just, they use Chrome OS to run their Meet stations.

• 1:15:23Speaker 04

  So it's the world's biggest Electron app. Well, uh, kinda, yeah. I mean, you know, you know what's gonna happen, though? These are like probably gonna get converted to fusia someday, and then that's gonna be a whole new cycle. It'll be very exciting.

• 1:15:36Nilay Patel?

  All I'm saying, Alex, is do you know what can routinely overwhelm an Intel Core i5? Google Meet. Have you ever wanted to see an Intel Core i5 get so hot you can see it from space? You should try Google Meet.

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:15:49Nilay Patel?

  I have one meet meeting a week, and it's just like my entire computer, like lights on fire.

• 1:15:54Alex Cranz?

  Well, like, put, put like a can of beans on top of it, and then you've got like, you've got lunch.

• 1:16:01Nilay Patel?

  Hang on.

• 1:16:01Alex Cranz?

  Chili? I don't know.

• 1:16:03Nilay Patel?

  I'm hungry. I gotta take this call.

• 1:16:05Alex Cranz?

  Oh, can of beans.

• 1:16:07Nilay Patel?

  Alex, what's going on with Twitter? What are they doing with these communities things?

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  Uh, Twitter is going to start looking a little more like Reddit, or I guess you could say Facebook Groups, depending on how people use these. But yeah, they rolled out this week, uh, a group messaging, tweeting, posting product called Communities. And it's invite only to start, but the idea is that you're not just gonna be tweeting to your followers, you're gonna be tweeting to people who are part of the same community. So they launched with a handful of communities. One was about dogs, the other is for sneaker heads, so you kind of get an idea for where they're going. But obviously, this has the potential to be used and abused in all kinds of horrific and also wonderful ways. So, um, yeah, an interesting evolution for Twitter. It's, you know, they,

• 1:16:56Speaker 04

  they've always had a problem where new people who come to Twitter, it's, it's very difficult to try to figure out how to get a lot out of Twitter. I mean, like, we're, we probably all take it all for granted because we curate our timelines, but, you know, Twitter's not easy to figure out if you're new to the service. So if they can, if you can follow some topics, and they can suggest some communities for you to join, and then you feel like you have a little more context to, to Twitter, then maybe that's gonna help them retain users, which they have historically not been very good at.

• 1:17:26Nilay Patel?

  The community thing is interesting. You tweet to like just a small group of people, like, I don't know, it's NFL season, and like every NFL season, I irritate lots of people with football tweets. I could see it, like, all right, I'm just gonna like organize it that way.

• 1:17:43Speaker 04

  But it's also still not your followers. It's like a different, it's a very different way of thinking about what Twitter is and how it should work and who you should reach there.

• 1:17:51Alex Cranz?

  It kind of feels very Tumblr.

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  Tumblr.

• 1:17:53Alex Cranz?

  I know we've all forgotten about Tumblr, but Tumblr was the same thing, whereas like you're just kind of like tumbling off into the sphere. But then you kind of found your little, the communities, right?

• 1:18:04Speaker 04

  God, I miss Tumblr. Yeah.

• 1:18:07Alex Cranz?

  It still exists.

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Alex Cranz?

  There's three of us on there.

• 1:18:10Speaker 04

  And there's going to be moderators, you know, that right now Twitter is approving moderators, but eventually, you know, you'll be able to become the moderator of your own. We could have a Verge cast community for some reason, you know.

• 1:18:22Nilay Patel?

  We should actually have a Verge cast community. How do you get approved?

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  You have to apply online right now and Twitter is reaching out to people they think are good fit. I think they're going to open it up over time, but if their history of opening up verification is any indication of that, then it's going to be in like five years.

• 1:18:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, they'll open it up. They'll realize it's broken. They'll close it again. They'll tell us they're going to fix it. They'll open it up again. They'll close it. That's, it'll, that's how it's going to work.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  But I mean, Twitter, they're doing interesting stuff with the product. I mean, for the, in the last like year or so, and I know we had Cave on the head of product on Decoder, talking about Spaces, their clubhouse competitor. I can kind of start to see all these pieces working together, right? Like I'm in a community. I have a space in there, right? That's, you know, specific to that community. Maybe, you know, the super follow, the paywall tweets, there's an element of that in there where you could pay to have access to a community. It's starting to get interesting. Twitter, you know, after kind of languishing and, you know, and what it has always been for a long time is finally starting to reinvent itself, which, which is a good thing.

• 1:19:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You know, it's actually the most interesting thing about this community's announcement, besides the actual product, is that Twitter is now putting out marketing material that is like trailers for features. So they've got this thing. It's like, here's how it works. And it's like, testing now in Twitter. And then like yesterday, they did what? Like edge to edge tweets or last week they did edge to edge tweets?

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Nilay Patel?

  And they, they rolled out the same kind of like marketing collateral where they're like, here's how it works. And it was like animated and they're like, now testing on Twitter, edge to edge photos in your tweets. And it's like, they never talked about this stuff that way. They, they weren't trying to hype cycle their own feature advancements. Now, like, that implies they have a plan. They know what's happening. They know what their roadmap is. They're telling it to other people. Like Twitter before, when they would like roll out features, like half of Twitter would be like, why did we do that?

• 1:20:15Nilay Patel?

  And now they're like, at least some people know.

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  I think it's part of them having a plan. It's also their feet are being held to the fire a little more. They had a big analyst day earlier this year, and they're projecting big, you know, growth numbers. The stock has been not doing well since the company went public. Jack almost got kicked out of the company, Jack Dorsey, by an activist investor recently. So I think they got a little shook by that, and they realized they need to actually like ship stuff and evolve the product. And I think communities is a good step. I think, yeah, like I said, it could be kind of horrific, but I think it could also give, as our friend Casey Newton wrote, you know, more context to Twitter for people who struggle to find that. And it is hard to find that.

• 1:20:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's a, we'll see, you know, one of the, when you say it's horrific, it's like, what are you thinking about? You're thinking about, are people gonna make white supremacy communities or anti-vax misinformation communities or like whatever? One thing we've noticed about those places is that those folks want to hit a big audience. They're not in love with talking to themselves. Like, this is the story of Parler and Gab and whatever else. Like, they're mad on Parler that they're not on Twitter, right? And like, well, I think that dynamic, as we've talked about social networks and how they're moderated and like where these communities like spring up, we haven't seen it play out on Twitter with this kind of gating.

• 1:21:40Nilay Patel?

  And I'm, I'm honestly curious if the incentives to gate that stuff are high versus trying to reach everyone the way that, on Twitter right now, the goal is to reach it. Like, if Donald Trump is allowed back on Twitter, is he gonna make the Trump community and only tweet to Trump people? Or does he want everyone? And I like, he wants everyone.

• 1:21:57Speaker 04

  Right. What if there's a check multiple boxes to your followers and to your community?

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. And when you're in a community, only, you know, members can like and reply to things, but they, that doesn't mean that they can't necessarily that people who aren't in a community can't see something that was posted in the community. So.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  This is, this is the dystopian future. Is there gonna, they're gonna make the hashtags that like, you know, get you your tweet into a community instead of all your followers, not counting against the character limit, and then we're gonna live in Instagram land where the bottom of every tweet is gonna have 50 hashtags on it?

• 1:22:31Alex Cranz?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:22:31Nilay Patel?

  Is it, it's not hashtag gated, right? It's, you actually select.

• 1:22:35Speaker 04

  You select. And you know, something, something Twitter called out that I think is actually probably, it's one of the more compelling aspects of this, is they're gonna go for location-based communities as well, which is like Hello Next Door, which just recently filed to go public, like Be Scared. So like, I'm, you know, my little pocket of LA could have a community. And I think that could be pretty compelling. And it also gives Twitter very valuable context to actually make money for once with ads that are, that are actually targeted. So.

• 1:23:04Nilay Patel?

  That's interesting.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:05Nilay Patel?

  Man, I do not want to know what my neighbors are tweeting about. Like, the, the experience of living in New York City and using Twitter is very different from the experience of living anywhere else and using Twitter. Like, the New York media, like, is Twitter in, like, a very real way. Like, there was entire Twitter drama the other day about the cops chasing down a graffiti artist in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And it's just like, very, and they like overdid, like, brought in a helicopter. And this guy had drawn like a Mario question mark box on the water tower, which is sick. The cops should have paid him, not arrested. But like, they overdid it. But like, my little slice of New York Twitter was all over this. And like, you leave anywhere else and you're like, oh, Twitter is still kind of run by, like, a New York mafia.

• 1:23:51Speaker 04

  Is it? Or is that our echo chamber? And when we have communities, we will know that for sure, that, oh, no, actually, this is just people that are in this one.

• 1:23:58Alex Cranz?

  I mean, there are definitely, like, other communities on Twitter. And like, I keep thinking back to the Tumblr stuff, but like, Tumblr died, and you've seen all of those fandoms and stuff, that, you know, the, the K-pop fandoms and everything else, moving to Twitter. And this is a big, like, this could be pretty big for them.

• 1:24:14Speaker 04

  Tumblr died so communities could live.

• 1:24:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:24:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Nilay Patel?

  They should just rename this product Filter Bubbles.

• 1:24:19Speaker 04

  Echo chambers, filter bubbles.

• 1:24:21Nilay Patel?

  Echo chambers would be good. All right, Dieter, end us with this week in lock-in.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  This Week in Lock In, if you remember Microsoft's MSN Portal network thing, it still exists. They're renaming it. It's now called Microsoft Start. Not the Start Menu, it's Microsoft Start, which could maybe appear in like different places in Windows 11. And also, just if you happen to accidentally go to MicrosoftStart.com, don't know why you would, but you could. But it's like, it's their product for like showing you like headlines and the weather and stock and whatever. That's what it's been boiled down to at this point. The reason that we're featuring Microsoft Start in This Week in Lock In is just a reminder

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  that in Windows 11, currently, they are not respecting your browser choices when you click on certain things and it's taking you to edge, even though you like might actually want to click that link about whatever, Justin Bieber, and read it in Firefox or Chrome or something else. And it's unclear what the plan is for them to actually make Windows 11 respect your browser choices and open up just a little bit more. And my hunch is that they're not gonna, especially for stuff like this, like Microsoft Start. This has been This Week in Lock In.

• 1:25:43Nilay Patel?

  That all sounds fine and horrible at times. You know what's really funny about MSN? Is that they've now rebranded it to Start.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Nilay Patel?

  But MSNBC exists.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Nilay Patel?

  Which was launched in partnership with Microsoft.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  The Microsoft News Network.

• 1:26:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And now they're just stuck with that branding. It means like Microsoft has nothing to do with it.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:07Nilay Patel?

  Just be careful what you wish for with your partnership with big tech companies.

• 1:26:10Alex Cranz?

  Be careful with your branding.

• 1:26:11Nilay Patel?

  The Start Network. How do we get a cable network?

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  I'd...

• 1:26:15Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, if you know...

• 1:26:16Speaker 04

  We wait long enough and they get cheaper.

• 1:26:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Very excited to buy the Motor Trend Network when it, when it comes for sale. Okay, that's it. We did all the things. Next week is an Apple event. That's on Tuesday. Decoder will be one day late because I don't want to drop a decoder on Apple event day. It seems like it makes sense. But that's gonna be a good one. It's an Olivia Rodrigo episode. Ooh. Well, it's a copyright episode, but I found a cool hook to finally do a copyright episode. So that's Decoder. And then obviously, we'll have a full-on Apple-focused Vergecast the next week. You can tweet at us. Alex is Alex E Heath. Alex is Alex H. Krantz. Dieter is Backlon. I'm at Reckless. We love hearing from you. Please, again, if you're a Whoop fan, Krantz is dying to hear from you.

• 1:27:01Alex Cranz?

  No, no, it's Alex E Heath. If you're a Whoop fan, send it to Alex E Heath, not Alex H. Krantz.

• 1:27:06Nilay Patel?

  Two other things I want to call out. In the background of all of this this week is the Theranos trial, Elizabeth Holmes, the blood testing device. Liz Lopato is there. You should, speaking of Twitter, you should be following her on Twitter because her trial tweets are amazing, as always, and she's covering that trial start to finish. So that is very exciting. Pay attention to that. And one more thing, last thing. Next week starts a special Vergecast mini-series on AI hosted by Ashley Carman, which I think will be very, very exciting. So that's all coming up next week. But this week is over. That's it. That's Vergecast. Rock and roll. Get a vaccine.

• 1:27:59Speaker 07

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