Apple’s Unleashed event / Facebook is planning to rebrand the company / Google holds Pixel 6 event

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Alex Heath discuss Facebook's plan to rebrand the company with a new name, the products announced at Apple's Unleashed event, and what happened at Google's Pixel 6 event. On The Verge is happening October 22nd and 23rd, and you’re invited Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name The 8 biggest announcements from Apple’s Unleashed event Apple announces 16-inch MacBook Pro with new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors Apple announces new 14-inch MacBook Pro with a notch Apple’s new MacBook Pro has a notch Apple is ready to admit it was wrong about the future of laptops Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors take its in-house Arm-based chips to new heights The new MacBook Pros have one big question mark: battery life PSA: the MacBook Pro 14-inch’s $20 power brick upsell is probably worth it Apple brings MagSafe 3 to the new MacBook Pro Apple’s new 140W charger can fast charge a lot more than just your MacBook Pro macOS Monterey is officially launching on October 25th Apple’s HomePod Mini gets three new color options Apple announces third-generation AirPods for $179 Apple quietly added a MagSafe charging case to its AirPods Pro, too A piece of cloth to clean your Apple devices will cost you $19 Apple Music’s new voice-only plan costs $4.99 per month The biggest announcements from Google’s Pixel 6 event Sundar Pichai and Rick Osterloh think the Pixel 6 is Google’s breakout phone Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro have big screens, big ambitions, and small prices Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro finally bring new camera hardware in addition to software The Pixel 6’s Tensor processor promises to put Google’s machine learning smarts in your pocket Snapchat says the Pixel 6 is ‘the fastest phone to make a Snap’ The Google Store is open again, and Pixel 6 delivery dates are all over the place Samsung is adding new watchfaces to the Galaxy Watch 4 Samsung will now let you design your own Galaxy Z Flip 3 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 Heath and Alex Krantz join the show. We talk about Facebook's new name, what is going on in Trump's social network, the Apple event with new MacBook Pros. I'm very excited about those, the Pixel event, and a little bit more, all on The Vergecast, coming up 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 Alex Heath's typing noises.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  I'm so sorry. We're here. We're all together in person. It's weird. I'm Neil. I'm your friend. Dieter Bohn is here. I am, I don't know what I am. I'm here. You're here in person. It's a huge victory. That's true. I'll tell you why in a second. Alex Heath is here. In the metaverse. No, you're here in person. Alex Krantz is here. I'm also here in real life. Isn't real life, is that metaverse though, if you think about it? I need this to stop. I just, I want to tell the audience this piece of information, which is very important. As you can tell by the delighted giggles that we have already started the show with, this is the first Vergecast in almost two years. Yeah. Maybe more, in which we have all been together in the same room.

• 2:38Nilay Patel?

  We don't know how to do it. We're gonna talk over each other. We're very giddy. Andrew, our producer, just reminded us that he can't fix it when we talk over each other. Oh, no. Because all of our microphones are in the same room at the same time. We're gonna get through it, but we're very excited. We're all together because the Verge's 10 year birthday party is coming up. By the time you're listening to this, we will be at our venue. You will have just minutes to buy a ticket and show up. We hope you do. Hurry, do it. I'm not even gonna tell you the link. It's too late. It's too, just come. Just show up. Just come to New York City from wherever you are. Yeah. And be like, where's The Verge? And all of New York will be like, Spring Studios. They all know where it is. All the cab drivers are like, oh yeah, Spring Studio, The Verge.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  They're shutting down Broadway for The Verge. It's gonna be great. But we're all together. The Verge is turning 10. That's very exciting. And honestly, this is where I'd normally just sort of like look at Zoom and let the delay take us into the next. But no. Piece. But now I'm just like looking at a bunch of people. Yeah. It's weird. All right. There's actually quite a bit to talk about this week. We gotta start with Heath. Alex Heath. Alex has been doing nonstop media hits for publishing a story that I will tell everyone, we did not think was a big deal. Alex broke the news, the scoop that Facebook is strongly considering rebranding its company.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Not just consider, I mean, name TBD, but it's happening.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  I'm willing to say that.

• 4:05Nilay Patel?

  You know, I'm trying, I'm like, I'm trying to give you the, I'm trying to give you the app, but we feel pretty good about it. We don't know the name. Alex, tell us what's going on.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, Facebook, the company. So not Facebook, the app, and I think that's been lost in translation based on some of the news hits I've been doing. The Facebook company, which owns WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Oculus, is going to change its name for the first time in 17 years since it started in a humble Harvard dorm room and.

• 4:33Nilay Patel?

  It's a hot or not clone.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Yes, and it's happening next week.

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  No, you're putting the stake in the ground. It's happening next week.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. The thing is with Facebook, since Mark controls it unilaterally, you know, he could always change his mind. And actually, as our friend Casey Newton followed up the other day, or what is that, the day's blurry yesterday? He hasn't decided. So there's, there's a shortlist and, um, you know, maybe by the time this comes out, he will have decided. But the, the game, the guessing game lives on.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  So I'm going to do a little media inside baseball here.

• 5:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  So Alex calls me. He's like, he's got this story. Do you feel like, when you just like do the basics? Do we feel good about it? Yeah, we think, we think we got it, da, da, da. We don't have the name. So both of us are like, ah, like, is it a story? They're going to have the name, like they're thinking about it. We feel, we, Alex is right as confident then as he is now. I'm like, ah, well, let's do it. We got it. We're going to put it. This thing is like a media phenomenon.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  Not having the name for some reason has made it a bigger story than having the name.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  We could not have predicted that. I mean, it's been great. Colbert had some great names. She's been on Trevor Noah. Yeah.

• 5:42Nilay Patel?

  The best name I've heard, Buzzfeed published a quiz, you know, what name do you want? Many hilarious names on that list, many very dumb ones. The one that was, I think overlooked the most was BuzzFeed 2.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  Which is just great.

• 5:57Alex Cranz?

  Nothing to stop them.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  What a spectacular, like, yeah, it was just very good for BuzzFeed to be like, Facebook should name its own BuzzFeed.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  The thing that I've learned about reporting on Facebook is people have strong feelings about Facebook. And they also have strong feelings about names. I should have figured that people would have strong feelings about this, given the news that Facebook has found itself in recently. But no, I did not expect AOC to be quote tweeting, Klobuchar, Blackburn, you know, when you get congressional consensus on something, it's always magical.

• 6:26Nilay Patel?

  And the consensus is, that'll fix it.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  And I guess we should say, the focus of the name change is to reflect Mark's vision for the metaverse, which he talked on this very show about with Casey Newton earlier this year.

• 6:40Alex Cranz?

  Nothing about anything going on in the Facebook world?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:44Alex Cranz?

  Totally unrelated?

• 6:45Nilay Patel?

  The Facebook world is like, three apps that are in crisis and one hardware division that isn't.

• 6:52Alex Cranz?

  And Mark Zuckerberg.

• 6:53Nilay Patel?

  And Mark.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  And Hawaii Wave Flying.

• 6:56Nilay Patel?

  Being like, man, I wish I could spend more time in that hardware division that is in constant crisis, right?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you change the name of the company to whatever, Zuckerberg Productions. And then Facebook, the app, is like, has its crisis and Instagram has its teen crisis, like, whatever. But Oculus doesn't say Facebook under it, right? Like, that would be, that's like the rationale here, right?

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Disclosure.

• 7:19Nilay Patel?

  No, sorry.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Partner is an employee of Facebook Reality Labs, which is Oculus now renamed. And I don't know, I actually don't know, but Oculus may have Facebook under its name because you recall not very long ago, Facebook was like, hey, all the apps are by Facebook now.

• 7:35Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  On the splash screens.

• 7:36Nilay Patel?

  So this, years ago, was it years ago, two years ago?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  It was 2019.

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Is when they started putting the name under everything, yeah.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  If you will recall, under anti-touch pressure at that time, Facebook was like, we're merging all the messaging services and putting Facebook under the apps. And they're all going to be encrypted and share a thing. Everyone thought this was a very clever plan to make the company too hard to split up, which is not like...

• 8:00Speaker 02

  It's got the same name.

• 8:03Nilay Patel?

  Very strange. And now we're at the point where you want parts of the company to be so split apart, just in terms of brand recognition, that the problems of Facebook don't spill over to the thing. So I will ask you now, Alex, will it fix it?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  I'm staring off into the New York skyline. I'm gonna say no. But I do think it's a moment where they're trying to say, look, like, yes, we invented social media and all of the ills that that entails, but we are gonna be so much more, for better or worse, you know? And like, it's kind of, we talked in the, like, there's Google and Alphabet and what, we could talk about that if we want, but like, I do think this is a little different because it's not Mark hiding necessarily. It's kind of the opposite. He's actually saying, no, like, this is what I'm about. And like, he told Casey, and he's told me, and he's told others, like, I want to be known for this. I don't want to be known as like, traditional social media. Which is kind of a wild concept, you know, for the guy who invented social media, essentially. But that's how serious about this stuff he

• 9:04Speaker 02

  is. Which, you know, I don't, but the problem is, is like, nobody even knows what the metaverse is. No one. Like, that's all the questions I've been getting is like, you know, like, cable broadcasts, like, can you explain the metaverse? Like, well, originated in the 90s and it's novel about dystopia. Have you read Neil Stephenson? Yeah, you know, like, it was people escaping from a dystopia to immerse themselves in a virtual world, you know, it's a little bit analogous to the current situation we find ourselves in.

• 9:33Nilay Patel?

  Have you seen the movie Ready Player One? And you know how at the end of that movie, they win, and then their solution is to turn it off?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:39Nilay Patel?

  That, but you don't turn it off.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Right. Keep it on. And also, yeah, it's owned by Mark Zuckerberg.

• 9:44Nilay Patel?

  But like, maybe his ambition is to be known for the metaverse. Great, I buy it, right? Like, every big tech company right now, kind of wants to be

• 9:54Speaker 02

  There.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  focused on the next, not, maybe not the metaverse, like, Apple's like, great, we did the iPhone. Tim Cook cares about health.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  That's actually what Apple's about. That's what Apple's gonna be known for. Whether or not that is reflected in any of the products now. Right? They're like, we made a Peloton clone. This will be our greatest contribution to society. Facebook is all in on VR and the metaverse, away from their, like, they're all bored of their own products.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  Right? Google's like, AI, like, all AI, all the time. Here's a phone that we made. This phone is a small window into the future of AI. It's, it's a strange moment where almost every company Right. Jack Dorsey is like Bitcoin. That's what I do. And every company is-

• 10:36Alex Cranz?

  What's Microsoft doing, though?

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  They got-

• 10:39Speaker 02

  It's the enterprise metaverse.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  It's just weird. If you just look at every company, they're all like, well, this got boring.

• 10:47Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. I mean, they're not wrong. It's gotten boring. Like, I get like, we are in this kind of like weird, not inflection point. We're not to the inflection yet, but we're in this point right before it, where you're like, okay, something's coming. It's coming. We don't, we don't know what. And it's really interesting that Facebook is like, yeah, it's on the horizon, right?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is a name. It's a potential name. So they have this like Roblox meets Fortnite on Oculus thing that's been in private beta for way longer than they originally said. That's called Horizon. And they recently changed it to Horizon Worlds. Hasn't even come out yet. So like, my thinking is that could be an umbrella term because they have Horizon Work Rooms, which is the thing I tried. It was really weird with Zuck in like a virtual conference room a couple of months ago. And so Horizon's probably on the shortlist if I had to guess. Zuckerberg also owns Meta through his philanthropy arm. It wouldn't be the first time he's swapped assets that way with like his philanthropy arm. So it could be Meta, but the Meta ticker is owned. So that's, you know, they'd have to change the ticker,

• 11:50Speaker 02

  you know, the stock ticker, which is just like a fun little inside thing, but-

• 11:53Speaker 04

  I would just like all of these companies to just take a minute and go visit TCL or Sony or even Samsung and just be like, hey, you got bored with TVs. You needed some more of them. Tell me what your 3D TV experience is like. Were you able to create out of thin air a desire for a new thing based on a hazy idea? And just let them tell that story. And then go back and decide how much they want to bet on Bitcoin or the metaverse or whatever else.

• 12:23Alex Cranz?

  It's a real reinvent the wheel moment for a lot of them. They're just like, yeah, yeah, we figured this out. No, I mean-

• 12:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, they're just like out of people.

• 12:29Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. They're like, they're out of growth in the thing they're doing. So they gotta find new growth. And like, they've all picked something. I will point out Alphabet actually did not change its stock ticker.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  They added one, right? Didn't they add like a weird thing?

• 12:42Nilay Patel?

  No, their stock ticker is still G O O G L.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Okay. I mean, FB is pretty good.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, FB is pretty good.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:48Nilay Patel?

  So, you know, there's like a million ways to do it.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:52Nilay Patel?

  So Snap rebr- Snapchat rebranded itself to Snap because now they're a camera company.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:58Nilay Patel?

  Notably, they added no products.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Spectacles was that year? And a lot of people went to vending machines.

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Sure. That's Snapchat's distraction. It's like, we continue to make these glasses with camera in them. But they don't have an Instagram to Snap.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 13:15Nilay Patel?

  Snapchat. Alphabet did something much more dramatic where all these companies are like floating around inside of Google and they...

• 13:24Alex Cranz?

  You mean Alphabet?

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  No, they were inside of Google.

• 13:26Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 13:26Nilay Patel?

  The driverless car program was like a bunch of weirdos dragging down the Google bottom line.

• 13:32Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 13:33Nilay Patel?

  So they reorganized the entire company into a company called Alphabet and gave them all subsidiaries and said, you have to be real companies now.

• 13:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Except for you, Nest. No one knows what to do with you.

• 13:46Alex Cranz?

  You sit right next to me.

• 13:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you wait right here. And it's like Waymo is like a real company now.

• 13:51Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  And the rest of them?

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  What's it's a...

• 13:55Speaker 04

  I mean, the answer is the rest of them are like in kind of, yeah. And also, like, it did not take very long for Sundar Bhatia to just become CEO of Alphabet also.

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  What have you accomplished?

• 14:07Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, you got to hide Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Right? I mean, like, these moves are somewhat familiar.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:13Nilay Patel?

  But this move is very much just... They're not going to make Instagram its own company.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:19Nilay Patel?

  They can't do it because then Amy Klobuchar shows up and be like, well, you've already done half the work, Mark.

• 14:25Alex Cranz?

  With her comb.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like, you're gonna break up what? Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be dramatic, but like, I think Mark's been... And like, I don't want to pat the show's back too much, but like, we actually... Casey's interview with Zuck did start the whole metaverse news cycle in July. Like, that was not a word in the corporate vernacular.

• 14:46Nilay Patel?

  And now enterprise metaverse is a thing that I...

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, now Nadella's like enterprise metaverse.

• 14:51Alex Cranz?

  Good job. Thank you.

• 14:52Nilay Patel?

  They all need something. Okay, so there are many days upon which this could happen, right? In the next week or so.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  What are those days? What are weeks?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Well, it's gonna be an interesting week for Facebook. So Monday, Facebook let us all know on the Twitter that 30-ish news orgs are gonna dump a bunch of internal documents that Francis Haugen, the whistleblower, had previously leaked to the Wall Street Journal. So that's happening Monday, or next week-ish. And then earnings-

• 15:20Nilay Patel?

  Hey, look over here. We're called Horizon now.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Earnings is the same day. Snap just reported earnings. They got hurt by Apple's ad-tracking changes. Everyone expects Facebook to be hurt the most, because they rely on that data the most. It's probably gonna be a pretty nasty quarter for them. So that's Monday. All that's Monday. Earnings would be a good time to renounce a corporate rebrand that leaked prematurely. The plan was to talk about it Thursday at Oculus Connect, which is not even Oculus Connect anymore, it's just Connect. And it's basically Facebook's new conference. It used to be F8, and now this is the Zuckerberg Show every year. And I thinks we'll still be there. But maybe they'll talk about it Monday, or hint at it. But they've been denying it to everyone who's been asking that, you know, don't comment on rumors and speculation.

• 16:02Nilay Patel?

  But, just to underline again, Alex Scotty broke the news, and Casey followed up. And Platformer the next day said more sources had told him, and this is the thing that made me laugh the most, that Zuckerberg wanted the name to be a surprise.

• 16:16Alex Cranz?

  Aww.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  And it still is.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  It still is.

• 16:19Alex Cranz?

  The name itself.

• 16:19Nilay Patel?

  But he wanted it to be more surprising than what people were guessing, which I would just suggest is not a good thing to put on your list of reasons to rebrand your company. Like, did we surprise Katie Notapaulus at BuzzFeed? Enough. It's like, not high on the list of reasons to choose the name of a company.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Well, the problem is, everyone has guessed every possible name now. Like, Colbert had some good ones. Pinserectionist.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  That's good.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Best Fun Times America website.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Zuckerverse, the Washington Football Team. The Washington Football Team is my favorite, by far.

• 16:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm betting on Meta. I think it's like, very obvious that they've gotta pick something boring-

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:57Nilay Patel?

  -that signals what they want.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Meta seems obvious.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's- But Zuck's like, ah, not surprising enough.

• 17:02Alex Cranz?

  Horizon just seems very, like-

• 17:04Nilay Patel?

  Verizon.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Horizon Company.

• 17:06Alex Cranz?

  Horizon, yeah.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  ZTNT.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Well, Horizon Company is the fictional tech company that Jessica Chastain works for in Scenes from a Marriage Story, or whatever it's called, the new HBO show.

• 17:15Alex Cranz?

  Oh my god, was it like leaked in advance?

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 17:20Alex Cranz?

  Playing a really long game?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  It's wild. I'm getting daily emails from some random sports betting gambling website I've never heard of that is like, people are betting, I guess this is real money, I don't know if it's crypto or Doge or what, but like, people are betting on things and right now the lead is the Facebook, followed by Metanet, followed by Persystem, these are really bad.

• 17:41Alex Cranz?

  Who is betting on the Facebook?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, people who just watched the social network for the first time.

• 17:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't take that bet.

• 17:50Alex Cranz?

  That's a bad bet.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  There are some really bad names on the list that people are betting on. It's not actually a race, like, there's not a chance that any of these will surprise win, like, is it gonna change it to the Facebook? I promise you that's not gonna happen.

• 18:06Alex Cranz?

  He just stands out there and he's just like...

• 18:08Nilay Patel?

  We did it.

• 18:09Alex Cranz?

  T H E.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  Remember when Apple dropped the computer, we're adding the, you know when saw this coming?

• 18:13Speaker 04

  What if it's just called the?

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  That's on the list, I've seen that everywhere. Everyone has made the same joke on Twitter 5,000 times. So, but you're saying it's gonna happen, maybe next week.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  It could happen earlier, I mean, the thing with Mark, like, he does, when I'm, say he controls, I mean, he can do whatever he wants, so like, he could, he could post it on his page right now, like, we could be recording and it could, yeah, but it's...

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  That'd be incredible, I'm changing the name of the search right now.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so that is, that is that piece of news, I'd say, we have, it's been 10 years, we've assumed a lot of things about how a lot of stories would go, I've never been so wrong about the impact once, we've almost had like 10pm.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  We were like, should we just run it in the morning, I feel like no one's gonna read this.

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  It's very strange.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And then like Casey's like, get on Twitter Spaces and it's like 800 journalists, like, immediately.

• 19:09Nilay Patel?

  That was very funny. That's one story. The other story that broke late at night, which we need not spend as much time on, but which is very funny and also involves a social network, is that 9:00 PM last night.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  As we're recording this on Thursday.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're recording this on Thursday. 9:00 PM on Wednesday. President Trump.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  Former President Trump.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  Donnie, as they call him.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  Just, the former is important to me.

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  I understand. Announced a new social network called Truth.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Truth Social.

• 19:36Nilay Patel?

  Truth Social, on which Donald can post his truth. It is exactly as clever as that sounds, and it is going to be owned by a larger media company, TMTG. Which is way too close to teenage media journals, every time I say it.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  And that company is going to go public via SPAC.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Right, via the Digital World Acquisition Company.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Which is very good. So we have a full explainer on this. I just want to point out one thing for the Verchess audience. I've heard this man announce a website before.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  The website went up?

• 20:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was like, it existed.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Truth Social went up? People were registering like Mike Pence?

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  No, it didn't go up.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Oh, well, okay.

• 20:15Nilay Patel?

  People found a signup link.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:18Nilay Patel?

  For the website.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:20Nilay Patel?

  Which is not public, and then they started registering account names, including Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  The person who had Mike Pence, I think, his account was deactivated, which is very good. We found the terms of services at Pitch Deck. This media company is going to compete with Netflix, with Disney Plus, with Amazon Web Services.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  The TAM, the TAM slide is like all of tech.

• 20:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  It's like every FAANG company.

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  It's an uncancellable digital community, and it's literally a picture of the earth and the moon.

• 20:52Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're very forward-looking.

• 20:53Alex Cranz?

  The tiny moon.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Doesn't the Ula... The Ula says that part of agreeing is that you can't criticize the service.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 21:01Alex Cranz?

  So did everyone, except for people that don't like it.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  But it also, I think the terms of service also included something about how you can't use excessive caps, which is like, you know someone put it in there so that we would dunk on it. Like, that was intentional.

• 21:12Nilay Patel?

  You're not allowed to use too many capital letters in your posts on Truth Social.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  They know.

• 21:15Alex Cranz?

  They're trying to keep share out.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  Truth Social, you can go on the App Store right now and look at, you can preorder on the App Store, which is very funny. The screenshots that they've used are all fake posts from media brands that did not agree. In one of the posts, the at Chevy Trucks account announced a 2022 Tahoe EV.

• 21:33Alex Cranz?

  Oh.

• 21:33Nilay Patel?

  Like, the diligent reporters we are, we asked Chevy, Chevy was not aware of this project, and gently reminded us that there is no 2022 Tahoe EV. The most important clarification of all, they're like, we're not making this car. So it's like, just whatever, get it out there that there's no, we're not ready for yet.

• 21:51Alex Cranz?

  Don't get people excited.

• 21:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The New York Times, obviously, early partner with Truth Social.

• 21:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  They told us that they would be sending a letter.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 22:03Nilay Patel?

  Look, it's fine. There's Rumble, there's Parler, there's Getter, there's, these companies, the big tech companies, they all need competition. I'm happy for there to be more competition in the world. But I would just suggest that the SPAC, where they're gonna go public, there's already a public company, the stock is already up, it's gonna buy Trump's company in this sort of reverse public offering idea. Liz and Sean and Mitchell have a full explainer of how SPACs work and how this SPAC would work. A lot of this seems like a bunch of people are gonna give money to a Trump company, and the Trump company is not on the hook to ever ship an app.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Shocker. Isn't this company based in like the Cayman Islands?

• 22:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, there's a lot of sketch under all this. Maybe they'll launch, maybe they won't, we'll see. I just...

• 22:51Alex Cranz?

  Maybe you don't put your money in that SPAC?

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  One of the things that deeply frustrated me throughout the entire Trump presidency was that he would say or do something.

• 22:59Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  And everyone would just fully believe that it was going to happen.

• 23:04Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  And we would operate in the frame of, Trump is definitely gonna sell TikTok to Oracle. And we'd be like, no, he's not.

• 23:14Alex Cranz?

  But we have to act like he is.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  We don't have to pretend that anything happened here. He did not tell Google that they were making this website. We don't have to buy it in this way. And I'm already seeing that glimmer of this, maybe a little more jaded, because we've all seen the competitors to Twitter come and go. We all know what he wants to, he needs a platform if he's gonna run it. And I understand it all. This is a hard product to make.

• 23:39Alex Cranz?

  Couldn't he just like go buy Tumblr? Like, it's out there.

• 23:41Nilay Patel?

  No, Tumblr's done by Automattic. They like it, they're happy.

• 23:44Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're like, it's like the future of WordPress.

• 23:47Alex Cranz?

  There's like gotta be a distressed social media.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Tumblr's already gone through enough.

• 23:51Nilay Patel?

  I mean...

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Never mind.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Let's make a LiveJournal joke and that's too painful for me. I mean, the man is a LiveJournal. He's a walking, emotional... I will say there's one slide here where they're like, "What if tech monopolies didn't rule the world?" And they've chosen to illustrate it with the Twitter bird at the top, sort of shining a rectangle of blue light on like, the Apple, Google, Facebook logos.

• 24:16Alex Cranz?

  It's a real strong grasp.

• 24:18Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, why is Twitter at the top? Like, that doesn't make... Are you... In your... This is... Like, you just have to look at this pitch deck. It's very good. I love the idea that he's gonna launch a Twitter clone and then compete with Disney Plus in the same minute. Like, he's got the MCU unlock. He's got like, his own... The multiverse.

• 24:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Nilay Patel?

  The multiverse. I will say one more thing about this, and then we can move on.

• 24:42Alex Cranz?

  Is it about ADHS?

• 24:44Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not about ADHS. In the documents, in what we see, his... The argument is, "All media fragments on ideological lines." And all the tech companies are hopelessly liberal, so this is the time for a conservative network. On the next slide, it says a Big Ten approach, and then like, five slides after that, it's like, "But it's also conservative media." That's fine.

• 25:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Nilay Patel?

  You can do that. That's competent. Again, Trump, Josh Hawley, Ron De... Like, there's all these proposals to Reform 230. There's this crazy law in Florida. They're all based on the idea of the government mandating neutrality. So Josh Hawley, his proposal is like, nuts, right? "The FTC will create a new commission. They'll review everybody's moderation proposals and make sure they're neutral." DeSantis is like, "Unless you own a theme park." Right? "This is how you have to moderate your service." If you're doing that on one hand, and on the other hand, you're like, "I'm making a conservative social network." The thing the government is doing is making your business illegal. And I... That is just like... Do we think that's actually gonna happen?

• 25:50Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just... This is what I mean. Like, taking it seriously. You can take it seriously, but everything that they're doing on the other side of it is proposing things that would make an ideological split of social networks illegal. Have they thought that through? I don't think they've thought that. Is that really what this would mean? Is that you couldn't have like, a conservative social network? How would you have a conservative... What would you do on a conservative social network? You would amplify conservative things. Sure. Well, that's inherently not neutral. There is no such thing as neutrality. Well, welcome to the Vergecast.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Like, this is why, this is ridiculous. Like, if it's a liability thing, I understand that. If we're talking about like, platforms need to be, like, their algorithms need to be liable for what they do, that makes perfect sense to me. But, the idea of the government somehow mandating neutrality is like, absurd.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  But this, this is every 230 reform proposal. Yeah, that's

• 26:42Speaker 02

  I'm just saying like, that seems incredibly unconstitutional.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  Welcome to the Vergecast. Also, what is neutrality is like, a great Vergecast question. We'll do another hour on that, but, yeah, this is the, the dynamic of all of these is, you do something, because you're mad about 230, and you end up in a First Amendment problem. Which is why the Florida law with the theme park exception hit the courts and was immediately put on hold. And the judge was like, Have you heard of the First Amendment? It's the first one. It's not a complicated idea. So, I would just point out, this, besides getting a lawyer, besides getting the lawyers from Chevy Trucks mad at them, besides the SPAC complications, which, again, I'll just point you to our post, because Liz and Sean do a better job at that than I ever will,

• 27:26Nilay Patel?

  and besides the inherent conflict between what they would like to change the law to be, and the business case for the company, they're also not good at making websites. So just please, hold that.

• 27:38Alex Cranz?

  I mean, it's coming for AWS.

• 27:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God. Disney Plus. I would like to see the Trump Avengers movie. It would be pretty good. Okay, we're gonna take a break. We gotta talk about, Apple had an event this week. There's a lot has happened this week. We'll be right back.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  Real innovation is powered by real people. This is Amex Corporate. Trusted experts, smarter technology, 24/7 dedicated support from day one to answer questions, help set up policies and approvals, and consult on spend capacity as your business needs evolve. Plus, on-demand resources help level up operations at every stage. That's the trusted service you've come to expect. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is Amex Corporate.

• 28:29Speaker 01

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

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  We're back. It was only Monday.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Six years ago.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  When I declared victory. I'll tell you, we know, Dieter and I know with certainty.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  What do we know? I don't know.

• 29:17Nilay Patel?

  That many people at Apple read our live blog.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  And listen to the show. And there was a sense of satisfaction that we felt. They're like, we did it. Are you gonna shut up now?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Here's your ports. Leave us alone.

• 29:34Nilay Patel?

  We were kinda like, no, we gotta come up with more stuff. But we're happy to do it. Dieter, tell us about this, Apple.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  So it came out, announced some new AirPods, like the mid-range AirPods in between the pros and the regulars. They seem nice. I'm excited for them a little bit. A little shorter, right? Yep. Like the pros, but they don't have the pro ear things. They don't have ANC. They added MagSafe to AirPod cases, which like, has that ever been a problem for you? Once. That you wanted a magnet to connect it to the wireless charger.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  It already has Qi.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  But now you can just like throw it on.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  Now it has MagSafe.

• 30:14Nilay Patel?

  Is it the watch MagSafe, or is it the big puck?

• 30:17Speaker 04

  It's the puck.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  The watch isn't MagSafe. I don't think.

• 30:23Nilay Patel?

  It's magnetic. That's not branded MagSafe.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  I don't think so. Yeah, I could be wrong. Let me know. I'm sure you will. They also announced a thing like Apple Music Voice, which is deeply confusing. I think it's $4.99 a month and you can, it's, it lets you ask for like a genre of music instead of like downloading specific songs that you want to listen to.

• 30:42Alex Cranz?

  I have a question about it.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 30:44Alex Cranz?

  Because I was editing a story about it and I still didn't understand. Spoilers. Um, how does it like, can you use your phone?

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so.

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  No, just, no, no. When you open the music app on your phone.

• 30:55Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  It just shows you your previous searches and suggestions for what you can ask for.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  Who wants this? So.

• 31:03Alex Cranz?

  That's my next question.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  Dan, Dan's the one who figured this out. Like immediately he clocked it. He's like, there's a special deal the labels will provide that has this kind of access that Amazon did for Alexa and they just like gave it to Apple is our assumption.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, so importantly, Spotify does not work on the HomePod Mini.

• 31:20Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 31:21Nilay Patel?

  So Apple wants to sell lots of HomePod Minis. It is the tiny colorful cornerstone of a smart home strategy for Apple. Fine. But you can't use Spotify on it.

• 31:32Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  Then two things people do with their smart speakers. They set timers in the kitchen, a challenge for Apple.

• 31:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Just one of those mountains to climb and they ask for music. So if you can't use Spotify on it, the barrier is you gotta pay for a whole other music subscription move over, or you pay a small amount of money and a HomePod can play some music out of you.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 31:55Alex Cranz?

  I feel like, and maybe this is just because I am all in on the, the Apple ecosystem for the home, that you should just pay for, for full Apple Music.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  It is a weird product. I'm not gonna lie.

• 32:06Alex Cranz?

  Like, cause then you can use your phone.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:08Alex Cranz?

  Which I do often.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  But it's also like, just Pandora has not closed down.

• 32:13Alex Cranz?

  It's still there.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  Just saying. But anyway, Amazon has this deal, Apple like, here's this thing, you don't have to pay 15 bucks a month, you can pay five.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  All this was a preamble to the new MacBook Pros.

• 32:25Alex Cranz?

  The HomePods.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Oh, the new colors of the HomePods. One of them is an orange. Apple made an orange. It's very funny.

• 32:30Alex Cranz?

  I'm one of two people excited about that.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  They still make HomePods?

• 32:33Speaker 04

  HomePod Middies.

• 32:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's, we just call them HomePods now because they like.

• 32:38Nilay Patel?

  They canceled the big one.

• 32:39Alex Cranz?

  There are two types of Alexes.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. The more expensive Sonos without as many services, right?

• 32:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, cool.

• 32:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, in Siri.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:47Alex Cranz?

  It's cute.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is cute. And it can be a homekit hub. Instead of me having a headless Apple TV in your attic.

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  I feel like the.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  This is a thing that I do.

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  The real welcome to the Vergecast moment for Alex Heath here is, you thought we were gonna talk about the MacBook Pros? We have 40 minutes on Thread Border Routers for you.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  15 minutes on the cloth, right?

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  So the HomePod Mini supports this thing called Thread.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  Actually, there's a big Thread news today. There was big Thread news today, but we're not gonna get into it. We're gonna talk about the MacBooks.

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  The cloth. And the cloth. There's a $20 polishing cloth.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  It's backordered three months.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  16 inch. I'm gonna get there, I swear to god. 14 inch. They added back the ports. There's three Thunderbolt ports. There's a MagSafe port, which is basically just USB-C power, but it has a magnetic charger on the end of it. There's an HDMI port. My friends, there's a headphone jack. There's an SD card slot. It's very exciting.

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  It's everything I've ever wanted from a computer in 2015.

• 33:47Alex Cranz?

  And the worst named processor.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  Okay, so, they needed to have an updated version of the M1 that you have in the Mac Mini, in the MacBook Air, in the base level MacBook Pro, a computer which should no longer exist, but it still does. And we're all like, it'll be, they call it the M2, it'll be the M1X, what will it be? And they're like, haha, it's the M1 Pro. We're like, oh, cool, okay, sure, M1 Pro. And that means that there's more cores and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's also the M1 Max, which is the one with even more cores.

• 34:18Nilay Patel?

  Never been happier.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Not the Pro Max, which is another thing. They put those words on the iPhone. But in this case, the Pro and the Max are distinct things.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  We were very confidently told when we asked after the name. That Apple believes people knows what the words Pro and Max mean.

• 34:34Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 34:34Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, no. Oh, my God.

• 34:36Alex Cranz?

  Have they ever tried to Google?

• 34:36Nilay Patel?

  You've all been walking around this circle a little too much, my friend.

• 34:40Alex Cranz?

  Google Apple TV and tell me your results and tell me if they actually were what you were searching for.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  But we should get into the processors, but just to round out the rest of the laptop. ProMotion display, so it has a high refresh rate. There is a notch at the top of the display, which I'm sure we'll have many discussions about. Heath is shaking his head no. Why? Why not? Ban all notches. We're not going to talk about the processors. We're not going to talk about the display and mini LED and all of that stuff. We're not going to talk about it's a throwback to the original MacBook design, and I love it. We're going to talk about the notch for the next 45 minutes. The notch is fine. It's a stain. The notch is a stain. They're giving you more screen and you're saying, no, thank you. Yeah, I am.

• 35:24Alex Cranz?

  Wait, did you say you liked the original Titanium PowerBook?

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was the best.

• 35:29Nilay Patel?

  I think it was great.

• 35:30Alex Cranz?

  Oh.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  It was a real status symbol when I was in.

• 35:32Alex Cranz?

  The G3 Pismo. Oh, my God. The pinnacle of laptops.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Look, here's the deal with the notch. There's already.

• 35:39Alex Cranz?

  Nothing will ever compare.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  With the interchangeable bays.

• 35:43Alex Cranz?

  Yes, that was the, oh, my God. I'd be like, hold on, my zip drive? No, no, CD. Yeah.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  I think Apple was like, they made it and they chased, I had one of those.

• 35:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, making most of this laptop hollow is a little problematic.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  If you're in your car and you're under 45 years old, I want you to pull over and Google Apple Pismo Power G3.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  The keyboard deck was hollow. There's nothing in there. That's where the batteries went.

• 36:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  But you could also just run one battery and also like a CD drive or a zip drive. And I'm just telling you, it's like.

• 36:25Alex Cranz?

  I had one too. I loved, oh, my God.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  We're so off the rails here.

• 36:28Alex Cranz?

  And you could put the, you could switch out the processor and maybe spray painted mine in a college dorm room.

• 36:35Nilay Patel?

  This is also the era where you could unclip the keyboard and just remove the keyboard to put a Wi-Fi card in. And again, I'm just reminding you, Apple quickly realized that making, making a portable product that had only moving but fully removable parts did not do a lot for durability.

• 36:54Alex Cranz?

  I'll miss it forever.

• 36:55Nilay Patel?

  This one is all sealed up.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, no, actually, the bottom comes off pretty easily, it looks like, and that's another thing reminds me of the tie book. It has pentalopes, of course, but so the notch, swear to God, so it's there, they should have given us Face ID, but they didn't. It's there because they have a couple extra sensors and it's a 1080p camera, finally. Although, yeah, anyway, they just gave you more screen and they had to cut out a notch in the middle of it. Everybody, the vast majority of people, leave a menu bar at the top. The vast majority of apps, when they're open, don't put anything in the space where the notch is because like they don't have that many menu items. I get that you don't like the way it looks, but I see you holding an iPhone that has a notch on it now.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  I hate it.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  Do you even notice it anymore?

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Yes. You get more screen.

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  In what circumstances do you notice that notch? Except for now, when you're angrily looking at it and angrily looking at me.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  widescreen, like when you flip things over and you're like, oh, there's that.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  Would you rather, would you rather it was just more bezel at the top?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 37:55Alex Cranz?

  Okay, you said most people.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  On the Mac, you can have a utility that does that for you.

• 37:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I will say, I do think it's very funny that this was the year they made the iPhone 13 notch smaller.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  It has a Face ID sensor in it, a very good camera.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:07Nilay Patel?

  And all the other sensors it needs, a speaker for your ears.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  And then they're like, here's a gigantic notch.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  With no Face ID.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 38:18Nilay Patel?

  A 1080p camera. Like, I don't know, man. There's just a lot.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  It's like a, it's like a pixel, what was the, what was the pixel to doofy notch? Was it the pixel four?

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, woof.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  Giant notch on that thing.

• 38:28Alex Cranz?

  Do the MacBook guys talk to the iPhone people?

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Like, no, they're not, they don't have a lot to talk to each other.

• 38:34Alex Cranz?

  So that's, that's, that's why the notch is, they had no idea.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  We are gonna review the thing. We will see the notch, we will experience the notch. I understand the notch was controversial. I am sort of confident, like. This is a computer that they're gonna ship in dark mode. They're gonna hide that thing as much as they're already hiding it in pictures. Whatever, it has a notch.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  So we should talk about the processors.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  So they have added more fast cores. So I think they swapped out two of the like mid-range cores, added two more fast cores. So they have more power there. They, you know, the GPU cores, they went with their own GPU. They didn't, there was no weird shenanigans there. They are all in on their own GPU and their shared memory architecture stuff, which is very interesting. And honestly, like from Pro to Max, you're just like picking GPU cores. And like, there's some CPU cores, but you're just like, how many GPU cores do I want? And number one, how do you know?

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Like, how does, like, we don't know what these core numbers mean yet. Because like, the architecture is so new, there's no way to judge. You just start like, well, I'm gonna throw some money at this and see what happens.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  And boy, did I.

• 39:45Alex Cranz?

  Even in like, the discrete GPU space, they don't talk about the cores. They don't talk about that stuff a lot. Like, for years, they kind of would discourage you if you even wanted to like, report on it. They'd be like, no, no, no.

• 39:58Nilay Patel?

  The core numbers on like Nvidia and AMD GPUs are like absurd. It's like 4,000 CUDA cores.

• 40:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah, they're all like made up things. And so it's like the same here, but they want us to talk about it?

• 40:11Nilay Patel?

  Also, just to be, let's be specific about the chips. So the regular M1, it's four efficiency cores.

• 40:18Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  And then they're binning it in weird ways.

• 40:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  And then there's a bunch of high-performance cores. The M1 Pro, up to a 10-core CPU, two efficiency cores, and then some numbers.

• 40:28Alex Cranz?

  So less efficiency.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  Less efficiency cores. And then up to a 16-core GPU.

• 40:33Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 40:33Nilay Patel?

  Whatever that means.

• 40:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Nilay Patel?

  The Max, 10-core CPU, up to a 32-core GPU. So you really are just sort of like adding... From M1 to M1 Max, you're just like trading at the first level, trading efficiency cores for performance cores. Right. And then just stapling more GPUs onto the thing. Give me some more GPU.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  And you can get the ultra maxed out processor on the 14 inch, not just the 16 inch.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  That's great. And importantly, the Max also supports more memory. Yeah. Unified memory up to 64 gigs and then twice the memory bandwidth.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  The bandwidth is incredible. And so their demos are like, we're running seven, eight K videos at once. And you're like. Yeah, me too.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  This is what I do.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Do I have to spend $10,000 for more RAM?

• 41:19Speaker 04

  No, no, you can't get.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  $6,000. You can't. The RAM is built right onto the chip. You're done.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  You get what you get when you buy it. But it is, you know, it's expensive. The whole thing is expensive. Actually, the price of this thing, what bothers me about this is if I get the MacBook Air, I get an amazing computer, 9.5 out of 10.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  With no ports, two, two thunderbolt ports, that's it. And then if I want ports, I have to buy everything else that comes along with the Pro.

• 41:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  If I just want an HDMI port, I have to get the notch and, you know, the insanely powerful processor.

• 41:54Nilay Patel?

  And the chunky.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  They're a little bit chunky, but I'm fine with that. The thing that's exciting about it being chunky, even with like the feet.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Is they might be adding batteries, so that's exciting, but they also might just be adding thermal headroom, which is a very new thing for MacBooks.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  So they showed us some charts.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  Oh, charts.

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  So last year at the M1, they showed us charts. Yeah. The charts had no labels on the axes. Right. And they were like, here's our power performance. We're so good. For what curve? And like, here's somewhere else, the other one wasn't labeled at all. This year, to their credit, they added labels to the axes. They specified what computers they were comparing themselves to.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  Finally.

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  Well done. This event moved so fast and the name of the computer was in the bottom right that we didn't quite realize it was happening until later, but they did it. Yeah. Okay. The X axis, power, that's a unit. I get it. Watts. Totally. The Y axis was labeled a relative performance.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  And the M1 Mac topped out at 100. So just by sort of process of elimination here, you just like finish the equation. The unit is a units of M1 performance.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  Performance doing what, Neelai?

• 43:06Nilay Patel?

  No one knows. And then they're like, see, the other computers use a lot more power at the units of M1 performance. And you can see our new computer is like, three times as fast, because it's curving up and over 100 to 300.

• 43:21Alex Cranz?

  It's a big line.

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  And we're like, 300 watts. And they're like, we labeled the graphs for you. That's what you wanted. And I'm like, but...

• 43:28Speaker 04

  And then they were like, Metaverse.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  So, I get what they're trying to say.

• 43:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  In good faith, I understand what they're trying to say. No matter where you look on this graph, compared to Intel and AMD and Nvidia, we're way down here. We're using way less power at the same amount of performance.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:47Alex Cranz?

  Our relative performance is way better.

• 43:50Nilay Patel?

  Units of M1 performance. And then, you know, their claim is that they are more, they're faster than a 3080 in an Intel laptop, or whatever. We have yet to find out. There are some benchmarks hitting Geekbench and stuff that are like, eh, but we'll see. We don't know the specs of those. But I'm just, next year, what I'm looking for is like, a unit.

• 44:12Alex Cranz?

  I think they do it specifically to irritate people like us, so that we're all like, man, I bet it's not going to be that good. Because they would just tell us if it was that good. They would just show us real world benchmarks. And then we're going to go out and we're going to review it. And it'll be like the M1 last year where we were like, this is going to be stupid. There are no, there are no labels. We don't know what this is. It can't be that fast. And it was that fast.

• 44:34Nilay Patel?

  It was fast and the battery life was long.

• 44:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it like, it lived up...

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  But I cannot...

• 44:38Alex Cranz?

  To the vague promise.

• 44:39Nilay Patel?

  I cannot recreate that graph. I have no idea how to recreate that graph. And so when they're like, well, it was proven out. I'm like, I feel that. It was emotionally, the graph is emotionally true. But I actually do not know if the graph is true, to this day.

• 44:56Alex Cranz?

  And I think they do that on purpose, just to have us have these feelings right now. It's all about the feelings.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's why you're here for the Vergecast. What is a graph?

• 45:03Speaker 04

  One last thing about performance. Apple says that it will perform the same, whether you're on battery power or not. So unlike a lot of laptops, when you unplug, that doesn't, it doesn't immediately throttle everything down.

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Alex Cranz?

  That's really nice.

• 45:15Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. They also, they, you know, they did a sizzle of developers. The M1's been out for a year. Lots of developers are... For example, the Chrome team has made an M1 version of Chrome. Very excited to run Google Meet in Chrome on this thing and see if the fan turns on, or if the computer explodes, which is what my current laptop does. They showed a demo of Adobe Premiere.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  Which is like, phew.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  Launching.

• 45:39Nilay Patel?

  Launching, yeah. They... This is so real. They're like, "Look at all these streams of 8K video and final cut." And then they're like, "The Adobe Premiere Product Manager is here." And she was like, "It loads so snappily."

• 45:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:50Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, "You got 400 megabytes per second of memory band with like..." Okay. But Adobe's on the case. Yeah. So they're very proud of this laptop. I am very excited about it. Well, there are questions to be answered. Battery life is one.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  Micro LED, mini LED screen. Mini LED screen, is it gonna bloom the way the iPad does?

• 46:11Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  Meh.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  We'll see.

• 46:13Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. The iPad isn't bad, but it does it.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:16Nilay Patel?

  How is it gonna charge?

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 46:18Nilay Patel?

  The charging situation of these computers. USB-C is a mess. And so, from what we understand, the 14-inch, in its stock configuration, does not fast charge. You can pay $20 for a 96-watt-powered adapter that will fast charge the 14-inch.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  So technically, the laptop fast charges. It's just the adapter that comes in the box does not provide enough power to fast charge it.

• 46:40Nilay Patel?

  But why?

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Because it's more expensive to buy the good ones. They've got, it's like a GaN charger now, like, they're like, doing the stuff.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  That's the cost of a whole cleaning cloth.

• 46:51Nilay Patel?

  Just throw in cleaning cloth, I'll be away. Here's what I'll tell you, having purchased a number of GaN 100-watt USB-C chargers, just buy apples. Like, that $20 is so worth it.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  Is your time worth $20? The answer's yes. Just take the upsell.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  I am saying that Alex Heath has to review the cloth.

• 47:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we're gonna review the cloth.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  Like, I must.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  I wanna, I wanna read it. Show Zuck the cloth in the Metaverse. Like, can I NFT this?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  I volunteer. I'm only gonna, I'm gonna get it in like, six months. It's off the coast of Long Beach.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  With everything else.

• 47:28Nilay Patel?

  Containership full of cloth.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Luxurious white boxes of cloth.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook is in his supply chain meetings, be like, "Get that boat in the dock."

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  Send someone to China right now.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  In two years, it's, cloth is a Fortune 500 company.

• 47:45Nilay Patel?

  Like services is out, cloth is in. Cloth subscriptions, part of Apple One now, we love it. We think you're gonna be really delighted with this year's cloth. Okay, then the 16 inch.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  The 16 inch comes with 140 watt USB-C adapter and a MagSafe cable.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  And the only way it will fast charge is if you use the MagSafe cable.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  Only way. The other ones won't do it. Okay.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  They will support up to 100, but they won't support the new 240.

• 48:14Nilay Patel?

  Also, here's my theory. USB-C is so confusing. Yeah. That Apple is like, "We're just gonna make a power connector." And you will know by looking at the end of the cable, whether it supports fast charging.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  That's such a weird idea.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  And we will just not discuss the fact that this was our idea. They invented USB-C and it's now this crazy disaster and they're going back to differentiating the ports and the way they look. Actually, power cable's good. I just, there's no other reason I have MagSafe on this thing. Yeah. Except for that you don't trip over your laptop. But it has been five years of people tripping over their laptops, so like, we're all in on it. But I think that, I swear to God, they added, because the other end of the MagSafe cable is USB.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  Yep. So I swear they added it back in, just so you would know, this cable will fast charge this machine.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Because the thing about USB PD, especially when you're getting into 100 watt and especially the new 240 watt standard, is the cable needs support it, the cable itself.

• 49:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  And I don't know if you've looked at a drawer full of Apple cables, but they all look the same.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  I've never been more embarrassed to work for like a tech news site than when I was trying to set up a dual monitor display. Set up with this laptop and figure out the cables and the ports. And I was like, "Should I mind the right industry? I don't understand any of this."

• 49:35Speaker 04

  Like, they all look the same.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  I'm imagining someone who doesn't work at a tech site trying to chain together two monitors.

• 49:43Nilay Patel?

  It's not great, but that's my theory. We'll get a more review and we'll see. We're gonna do the thing that we do and plug a bunch of stuff in.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:51Nilay Patel?

  And then disappointedly write down what it doesn't work.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  What else from this event? They didn't really get into Monterey much at this event because like most of the good, the good feature isn't launching with the OS apparently.

• 50:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  Continuity, but it's, it's launching October 25th. I think Nilay is really excited for Monterey.

• 50:06Nilay Patel?

  It is one of the ugliest operating systems. You're offended by the notch. I'm offended by almost every visual decision in Monterey.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I don't blame you.

• 50:13Nilay Patel?

  Just the, the thing where you click on the menu bar.

• 50:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  And it's the menu, the word looks like a button and the menu drops below it. Like, what are we doing here?

• 50:20Alex Cranz?

  I'm avoiding it as long as possible.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  I gotta say, when they did the Safari tat, like browser redesign and stuff.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  They walked it back and then this and like they're not shipping. I don't, that's kind of, Apple's, it's not how it used to be, man.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think they're still figuring out what they want it to look like.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:40Nilay Patel?

  But the problem is that it's shipping very soon.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  So. I skip, I skip every.

• 50:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  OS update at this point.

• 50:47Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. You, you can't do it immediately because you'll just not have a working computer.

• 50:50Nilay Patel?

  Unless, like me, you're like, I would really like these ports. Oh, and there's no touch bar.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  Oh God, we didn't even bring this up.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  In the event, they, I mean, this event was the fastest event Apple's ever had. Like even Tim Cook was at the end.

• 51:03Alex Cranz?

  He was breathless.

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  In a field, just standing on, like, in the long grass.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Someone, someone tweeted the picture of him in the fields, like, oh, that's where the AirPod was.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  But even at the end, he was like, uh, you know, he's a, he's got his drawl, but even, he was just like, that was great. We love it. We have gotten so many things. The HomePod is here.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  I was like, watch, like, everybody take a beat.

• 51:26Alex Cranz?

  Take a breath.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  But they, they raced through it all very fast and the touch bar, they raced through it in like particular speed.

• 51:32Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  They're like, now we've got full height function keys that replaced the touch bar. That's great. See, I'm the next thing.

• 51:37Alex Cranz?

  Full height.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Full height. They also claim that the keys feel like a mechanical keyboard.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  Which is just like, I don't know, man.

• 51:45Alex Cranz?

  We'll see.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  A million nerds suddenly sat up in their chairs. Oh, really?

• 51:50Nilay Patel?

  I was like, I don't.

• 51:51Alex Cranz?

  I feel like you just got away from everyone hating you.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  Which kind of switch though? I mean, there's lots of different.

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  What dark energy are you summoning to this computer? Just don't say it.

• 52:05Alex Cranz?

  Keep it to yourself, Apple.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  This is like when Jobs announced OS 10. I remember this. When he first announced OS 10, he had like announced the kernel they was using.

• 52:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  He was using the mock kernel. And he kept saying, "It's very Linux-like." And it was like, "You just think that the press is stupid and they know that keyword?" And you're like, "Just glue that idea on..." And it's like, "None of this is the same." Man. Anyway, we're gonna get the computers. We're gonna test them out. I'm very excited. Apple, there was so much demand for this. Apple's website slowed down.

• 52:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

  People were posting up their receipts for their new MacBook Pros. I'm, I'm confident that there was more interest in this than the iPhones this year.

• 52:45Alex Cranz?

  Hundred percent.

• 52:45Nilay Patel?

  People were more excited. They were more amped. They were happier about it. The iPhone is like, "Ah, spending the money again. I hope I can see these camera improvements." But the cloth. I mean...

• 52:56Alex Cranz?

  That's what actually everybody called me about. Like, do you get that thing after an Apple event? And sometimes Google, Samsung too, mainly Apple, family and friends will call you and be like, "What should I get?"

• 53:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Alex Cranz?

  They asked about the cloth. They didn't actually, though. Nobody asked about the cloth. But they were like, "Should I wear 14 or 16?"

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  And you were like, "Cloth."

• 53:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Actually, cloth. All in on the cloth.

• 53:17Nilay Patel?

  A thousand cloths. What are you calling it?

• 53:19Alex Cranz?

  One, one charger.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  What'd you tell them?

• 53:22Alex Cranz?

  I, I was, I guess 14 for me, just because I like smaller. I like, I like to carry things and I have tiny, tiny shoulders. So it's, it's helpful for me. But it seems, yeah. I mean, I haven't bought it yet. I'm gonna wait. Because I bought the 2016.

• 53:38Nilay Patel?

  Ship hits, already slipped.

• 53:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. I'm gonna wait until next generation. Because I bought the 2016 touch bar. I was, I was ready because I've been on like the first, the 2012.

• 53:47Nilay Patel?

  That was the scissor key.

• 53:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. I did the Retina 2012. It was great, but it's bad. And it died. Then I did the 2016 touch bar and I was like, "Yeah, this is gonna be it." I went through three of them in a year.

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  It's good to skip the first, first major.

• 54:01Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. And so I always, I've even blogged, like, "Don't buy the first generation." And I was like, "I'm gonna do it." And I was like, "You have blogged this."

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Alex Cranz?

  You have told yourself not to.

• 54:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm the one who's like, "Wait for the reviews." And I'm like, "I'm, I'm the review..." "Shit, I bought it."

• 54:18Speaker 02

  That said, Jim Bankoff, if you would like to start issuing Sisunish MacBook Pros to employees of Vox Media,

• 54:23Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Gladly take the L.

• 54:25Nilay Patel?

  You gotta start, you gotta lie. You gotta tell you're a video editor. You're gonna get that air unless you're like, I edit videos all day.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  I'm in the metaverse.

• 54:36Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're gonna get them. We're, I'm, I'm pumped to get them. If you have questions about it, let me know. We're gonna figure it all out. We're gonna take a break. We gotta talk about these pixels.

• 54:48Speaker 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.

• 55:19Speaker 05

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

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  We're back. This week, a lot happened this week.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  Also, I'm, we're doing this in person, right? Yeah. Usually, I've got my little recorder with a clock that tells me how long we've been talking.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:15Nilay Patel?

  This could have been six hours.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  No, no, we, we've.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  Were we over?

• 56:18Speaker 04

  We're, we're a little over.

• 56:19Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Let's keep going.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  Let's keep, okay. Hi. How long have we been here? It's just so nice to see everyone.

• 56:26Alex Cranz?

  The sun's slowly setting.

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  So, Google had already announced the Pixel.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  They had announced it, and they put up ads for it, and they had commercials for it.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  And then they had an event.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  They launched it.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 04

  They actually launched it. You may have heard in this Vergecast feed that I interviewed Rick Osterloh and Sundar Pichai. If you haven't, in the feed, just listen to it next, or, you know, later.

• 56:48Alex Cranz?

  Pause. Go back, listen.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  Listen to that. We got the prices. They are lower than I think a lot of people are expecting. $599 and $899 for 128 gigs, which is like, good value, I think. They claimed to have done the thing they needed to do with the camera, both in terms of photo and video. We shall see.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 04

  And they also showed off a bunch of AI demos that take advantage of Tensor, their new custom processor. There was like, super fast translation. They had Marie Kondo come on their stream, and they had her translate with the Pixel.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  It's cheating. She's just like, throw away your stuff.

• 57:22Speaker 04

  I mean...

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  I know what she said.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  They... It was a very strange moment. I was like, what is happening?

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  She's like, have less stuff. And I was like, no, buy this phone. It was like, ah!

• 57:38Speaker 04

  They spent a remarkably long time talking about how their camera is more equitable, and how it does a better job with darker skin tones. That they brought in panels of photographic experts to help them tune their ML models so that the camera would do a better job with darker skin tones. So that's very interesting. They maybe spent more time on that than talking about, you know, the telephoto lens, or, you know, the precise specs of the camera itself.

• 58:03Alex Cranz?

  Or even the custom processor.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Well, they spent quite a lot on custom processor, but, yeah, yeah. So, that's interesting. And then, I mean, I don't know. It was an hour long. It felt like the opposite of the MacBook event in terms of pacing. It was very, very slow. I wasn't really sure who they were talking to. Because on the one hand, it's like, if you're trying to go mass market here, you shouldn't be leading with like... Super chip stuff, but if you're trying to get the nerds, you need to have gone a little bit deeper on speeds and feeds than you did.

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  So I thought the camera stuff was good in that going all in on telephoto lenses and whatever, like everyone does that now.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 58:42Nilay Patel?

  Saying we care a lot about the quality of pictures we take and making people look good and the people being divert like.

• 58:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  That's, that was where Google wanted the pixel to begin with.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  Right? They, they had a look. They were thinking about artists and paintings. They're good at achieving that look programmatically if they can pull it off.

• 59:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. And to be clear, it seemed very sincere. I'm not saying that, oh, they, they say this, do this thing and you know, it's just, you know, lip service or whatever. It seems like they, they actually put a ton of effort into it.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  And we are constantly, we joke, like, what is a photo? These like existential questions that we ask on the show, all started with Google's photo technology.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 59:20Nilay Patel?

  In their very opinionated decisions about what a photo is and how it should look.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:27Nilay Patel?

  So if they can do that again and pull that off with this camera, that is, that will be a step forward.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. One interesting thing about the main sensor, it's huge. That's why the camera bar is huge. It is a 50 megapixel sensor, but they're binning it, I think the phrase that the guy uses like analog, so they're binning it at the sensor. They're not binning it in software later.

• 59:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  So the, you can only get a 12 mega, 12.5 megapixel photo out of this 50 megapixel sensor. And so I was like, well, why'd you, why didn't you just use a 12 megapixel sensor? And like, oh, you know, we wanted to find the best sensor we could, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it like, it came pretty clear that like, there wasn't a good 12 megapixel sensor they could get. The best they could get was probably this 50 and then, you know, they're bidding it.

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  Which is interesting.

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  Is it because Apple bought all the 12?

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  I mean, that's historically what happens. Yeah. And then the last thing, well, there's a bunch of other things, but the last thing I think we really ought to talk about is they brought on Evan Spiegel from Snap. Yeah. Your boy.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tap to snap.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  Tap to snap.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  All the young'uns tapping to snapping.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  I mean, the story, you can double tap pixels to do something, to launch something. And they've given Snap special access to when you double tap, even if your phone is still locked, it can bring up the Snap camera even with your phone locked.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  And then you can still, you know, snap your Snap. You can tap to snap your Snap. And then you can unlock it and go in and do whatever. So that seems cool. It's also cool that they are doing a better job giving Snap access to like the good parts of the Google camera and its system because quite often on Android, third-party camera apps are not getting access to the good stuff and they're often crap.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  This was a very deep, you could tell it was a deep deal because like Evan was the one announcing it.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  And Snap has done these camera integrations. Like, I don't know if you guys have looked at like the Samsung phones, but Snap's just like in there, like the lenses are like in the native camera.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  And like the Bitmojis are in the keyboard, like the pre-installed keyboard. And so they're doing this platform play that is honestly pretty unique, like no one else is doing this right now. And like Evan Spiegel gave a stat that they have about 300-ish million daily users, but they reach 500 million people. And that's like, that difference is all these integrations that they're doing with like all these different OEMs and like, so it's, it's an interesting strategy because they're not getting any money from this. Like, it's not like they're making money by people using their lenses in the Pixel, but it does kind of.

• 1:01:46Alex Cranz?

  Are they like branded? Like, are you always gonna know that that's the Snap?

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and it kicks you into the app quickly and all that. So like, they get that, but I think it's more just they're a camera, like we were saying earlier, they're a camera company and so they're taking opportunities with everyone except Apple, obviously, because Apple won't let them do that.

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  But, well, never say never, but like, you know, they're taking these opportunities to integrate at the phone level, which is, you know, Facebook wanted to do that for a while. They even did that HTC phone, you know, like every social company has thought about this or wanted to do it. And I think Snap's finding a really unique way in. And Google needs their AR software stuff, I think, to differentiate because Google's AR stuff is kind of a mess.

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, and doing it at the camera level is really interesting because like trying to, like Facebook tried to do like the whole thing.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  Right? And there's, that's just. Even then, it was-

• 1:02:34Nilay Patel?

  I love that phone.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  I'm just putting it out there. HTC first.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  It was a good phone.

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  It had its charm.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Nilay Patel?

  With the chat bubbles and all that? Yeah, that was spelled Chat Heads.

• 1:02:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  Which I always read it as Shetheds. That's the new name.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  Oh my god, yes!

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Wait, don't they own Cha Cha? Because that was the phone with the keyboard.

• 1:02:53Alex Cranz?

  Yes!

• 1:02:53Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, I forgot about that.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh god.

• 1:02:57Alex Cranz?

  The Cha Cha.

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  The problem with celebrating your 10 year anniversary is that you keep thinking about things that have happened the past 10 years. Like, I have been useless. Like, we've hired so many people. Like, "How are you?" I'm like, "Five years ago." You're like, "Sound did not exist until..."

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  So, what's gonna happen at the 10 year party is Neelai's gonna get on stage. He's about to be introducing the whole thing. He's gonna start talking and he'll hear me from the, you know, the back of the stage. And I'm gonna whisper, just so he can hear me and nobody else. I'm just gonna say, "Cyborg." And he's gonna die. He'll just fall over.

• 1:03:28Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be a real problem.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  Uh, so that's a Pixel. We're gonna review it.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  So, we talked about this. We have them.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:36Nilay Patel?

  We are not allowed to talk about the software yet.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  Or the camera that results.

• 1:03:39Nilay Patel?

  But we can, we have held them. I said this, we did a little pickup after the Rick and Sundar interview. That interview was great. Enjoyed hearing from them. They're all in on "This is it."

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Nilay Patel?

  They did that story with us, with you. They did that story with the Wall Street Journal.

• 1:03:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Nilay Patel?

  Right? Where they're telling their investor audience, "This is it. Our hardware division is gonna do it for real. We're competitive with Samsung."

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  This is every year.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  No, but this is a meaningful step.

• 1:04:06Speaker 04

  They definitely were sandbagging the last couple of years.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  Really? I feel like I've heard this narrative before. They spent however many billion dollars on HTC.

• 1:04:13Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  This is the first flagship phone from that team. That's what they told us last year, right? The cheaper ones were the HTC team, but they hadn't made the, "This is it." I'm just telling you, go and hold the Pro, especially the white ones.

• 1:04:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Nilay Patel?

  And you will be like, "Ugh." The black one, not so much.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  You wanna talk about notches? I mean-

• 1:04:33Alex Cranz?

  The feel? Like, why, why, why?

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  It's just, it feels like a first gen flagship product. It feels like, uh, it feels like a 1 plus like 6. You know what I mean? Like, it's nice.

• 1:04:41Nilay Patel?

  Like an early Samsung phone with a touchscreen.

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  The bump on the back.

• 1:04:44Speaker 04

  And it does have the ledge.

• 1:04:46Alex Cranz?

  Big old bump.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  The bar, the-

• 1:04:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I get, they need it to look different. It's like a kickback bar. The regular one? Yep, it's

• 1:04:53Alex Cranz?

  Are they doing any deals like with Verizon and AT&T and stuff?

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  They do have some deals. They're better than I expected. They also have some shenanigan type deals on their own websites when they ran.

• 1:05:06Alex Cranz?

  See, they really are getting into it.

• 1:05:07Speaker 04

  The website's super crashed right after the event.

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  Right, because the Pixel Store team was like, well, eight people are coming.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I will tell you that I

• 1:05:13Nilay Patel?

  You knew I was one of them.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  I've waffled between the Pro and the regular, and this is not any of the review stuff. It's just like size wise and just feel wise. And so I plugged in both like buying the Pixel 6 Pro from Google Store and buying the regular Pixel 6. I was like, yeah, I'll trade in my Pixel 5. If you go to buy a Pixel 6 Pro with a perfectly good Pixel 5, they'll give you $405 for a Pixel 5. It was wild. If you go to buy the regular Pixel 6, they'll give you $366. They'll give you different amounts of money. So there's definitely shenanigans happening with trade-ins everywhere. It's just the way that phones work now.

• 1:05:46Nilay Patel?

  I don't mean, I'm not judging too harshly. I'm just saying my first reaction and has remained my reaction to the Pro in particular, especially the white ones.

• 1:05:54Alex Cranz?

  Is, ugh. That's a review headline.

• 1:05:56Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, but we, there's, now we're here all together.

• 1:05:59Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Nilay Patel?

  Yep. We have a bunch of units. I've seen a black Pro, much nicer.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Alex Cranz?

  I haven't seen any of them.

• 1:06:05Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 1:06:06Alex Cranz?

  I gotta go, after this, I'm so excited.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  We'll set up the gauntlet.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Did you all see Lauren Good's tweet that the only thing keeping her from switching from iPhone is iMessage?

• 1:06:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, Lauren, Lauren has been on many episodes of this show where she's like, so iMessage got me again.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. She wrote a whole article about it that I believe was cited in one of the internal Apple emails.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  I'm trying to get Dieter to talk about RCS. That's

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Not, that's a goal.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Not good.

• 1:06:31Nilay Patel?

  This show's not long enough.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  Anything else you want to talk about with the Pixel?

• 1:06:39Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, we're at the point now where we have a lot of reviews to do.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Nilay Patel?

  We would like to hear from you. We're also the point now where we have to go prepare for this party that we're throwing.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. There was a third tech event, by the way. Samsung announced

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  There was not a third tech event.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  It was not a real event.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  There was Google loudly saying, we are going to attempt to take phone market share. And there was Samsung saying, hold up, the only place to take it from is us. Because Apple has everyone in the prison of iMessage. And they announced what, colors?

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Nilay Patel?

  For the flips?

• 1:07:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  And customize the top and the bottom and the hinge.

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  It was the most remember us event that has ever occurred.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:07:20Alex Cranz?

  I wish they'd just like said that.

• 1:07:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Alex Cranz?

  Just been like, hey, we're just gonna go over all of our stuff again.

• 1:07:25Nilay Patel?

  We're making your chips for you, Google. Watch your back.

• 1:07:30Alex Cranz?

  Slow zoom in.

• 1:07:32Nilay Patel?

  No, Samsung also had an event.

• 1:07:35Alex Cranz?

  They did, technically.

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  I think our event is gonna produce more news than this.

• 1:07:41Nilay Patel?

  I'm like actually pretty confident about that.

• 1:07:43Alex Cranz?

  Same, same.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of our event, it is happening. By the way, if you've been listening to this show for 10 years, like, thank you. That's remarkable. I'm not gonna do the whole thing. We're actually turning 10 in November. That's what I'm gonna tear up on the show.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:56Nilay Patel?

  That's my plan.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Nilay Patel?

  And this is just like a preview.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  But we're having our event. We have, there will be news. Nick Weaver from Iroh will be there. Razor has promised to show off some products. If you look at our website, you'll be able to guess what products they are, because they actually announce them. You're interviewing some folks from Snap.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're SVP of Content and Partnerships, so that's everything that's not the chat part of Snap. So we're gonna talk about creator economy, maybe some crypto, maybe a lot of fun stuff.

• 1:08:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Liz is doing a Metaverse panel.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:08:27Nilay Patel?

  It's true. MetaCogan will be there. It's like a real, it's a real thing.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:08:31Alex Cranz?

  I'll be at the bar.

• 1:08:35Nilay Patel?

  That's where the news is gonna get made. Alex will be like, I heard the, here's the original NFT. It's got gin in it.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's premiering his Handspring documentary. It's true, I am.

• 1:08:47Alex Cranz?

  Very excited.

• 1:08:48Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great. And then the first thing that we're doing, kickoff, true, like pure fan service, Joanna Stern and David Pierce. Verge OGs are gonna do a Vergecast with us and we, we have some ideas. It's gonna be good. And then, I don't know if this will get out, our other executive editor, TC Sodik, has brought in a memory expert.

• 1:09:09Alex Cranz?

  Oh.

• 1:09:10Nilay Patel?

  She's like a memory world champion. She has memorized a list of 100 tech products from the past 10 years. And Dieter and I have to compete with her in like a flash card game. We're gonna lose.

• 1:09:23Alex Cranz?

  We're definitely gonna lose. It's gonna be great.

• 1:09:28Nilay Patel?

  So we'll see. Yeah. So a lot happening at our event. It's gonna be really fun. If you can make it, we're very excited to see you there. If not, we'll make some news. We'll share some stuff from the event. The virtual cast will definitely go out. But for now, we have gone far over, like way over. Yeah. So it's time.

• 1:09:42Alex Cranz?

  It's keeping you company as you drive to New York City to come to the party.

• 1:09:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Also, we're definitely just gonna like miss some deadlines over the next few days. So just bear with us. Oh, Lord. It's gonna be, it's gonna be complicated. Anyway, we have gone way over. It was delightful to see all of you in person and do this in person again. I've missed it very much. You can tweet at us. I'm recklessdeters, at backlon. Couple of Alex is here. Alex E. Heath, Alex H. Krantz.

• 1:10:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, high five.

• 1:10:10Nilay Patel?

  Knew it. Pulled it off.

• 1:10:11Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:10:12Nilay Patel?

  Got it. That's it. Rock and roll.

• 1:10:33Speaker 07

  As a pioneer in the organic and natural food industry, the Whole Foods Market philosophy is rooted in a shared connection to people and to the planet. From farmland to stores, its products have always been a symphony of colors, textures, and flavors. In addition to its national brands, Whole Foods Market's team of local foragers continually scours the country to bring over 60,000 emerging and local products to its shelves each year. And they work with credentialed experts and top of the line makers to offer customers the best possible variety. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online.

• 1:11:14Speaker 08

  There are sales teams out there who never seem to stop moving. Always a step ahead, always working with a level of precision that doesn't seem normal. It's no secret they're on Attio, the Agentic CRM. Attio runs the work behind every win. It's built for humans and agents, with the guardrails of human software and the scale of Agentic infrastructure. This is the frontier of go-to-market. Teams like Parallel, TurboPuffer, and Wordsmith are already using Attio to set the pace. Now it's your turn. Try Attio for free by going to attio.com/fox. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash fox.