Russia starts a star war / Ford splits itself in two / Apple “Peek Performance” event preview

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and Dan Seifert discuss what could possibly be announced by Apple next week. Senior reporter Loren Grush explains what's going on with Russia and space. And Andrew Hawkins talks about Ford splitting itself into two companies. Further reading: Elon Musk’s promised Starlink terminals have reached Ukraine Ukraine engineer talks testing SpaceX’s new Starlink service Russian space director’s wild threats could have real implications for the ISS European Space Agency claims joint Russian Mars rover probably won’t launch this year Russia holds OneWeb rocket launch hostage, issues conditional demands Russia says it will no longer sell rocket engines to the United StatesFord’s ‘radical’ move to split the company won’t come easy Elon Musk dares autoworkers union: hold a vote at Tesla’s California factory Rivian has altered the deal, and now its EVs will cost buyers up to $20K more Rivian apologizes for ‘broken trust’ and axes preorder price increases that hit as much as $20K The Arc One is an electric boat with a battery pack three times the size of Tesla’s Apple officially announces ‘Peek Performance’ March 8th event 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, Lauren Grush joins the show. We talk about all of the developments in space after Russia invaded Ukraine, including the future of the International Space Station. Then Andy Hawkins joins the show. We talk about Ford splitting into two divisions, one focused on EVs, whatever's going on with Rivian and an electric boat. Finally, Dan Seifert joins. We preview next week's Apple event. That's all coming up on The Vergecast now.

• 0:23Speaker 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.

• 1:08Speaker 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.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of mid-range Apple laptops.

• 2:03Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  It's a good one.

• 2:04Alex Cranz?

  I like that.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  They're the most, they're the biggest sellers. So, you know, you want to-

• 2:08Alex Cranz?

  They're the biggest sellers, yeah.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  You want, you want to be the flagship-

• 2:11Alex Cranz?

  It's a big audience. We're, we're reaching a big audience here.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  What, what do you think has more listeners? The flagship podcast of like Ferraris, the flagship podcast of Toyota Camrys? I'm gonna actually-

• 2:20Alex Cranz?

  Oh, the Ferrari. The Ferrari.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  It's gotta be Ferrari. If you're out there and you have a Toyota Camry podcast, please reach out to me. I would love to talk to you. Um-

• 2:29Alex Cranz?

  I mean, oh yeah, we could go talk about Camrys all day and how they are actually quite good. But we want-

• 2:35Speaker 03

  I always rent one.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  See? We're here.

• 2:37Alex Cranz?

  I don't own one, but they're fine.

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  Hold on. Hi, I'm Eli. I'm your friend. Alex Cranz is here.

• 2:43Alex Cranz?

  Hello.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Grush is joining us after quite some time. Hey, Lauren.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Hello. Happy to be back.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so we, we got a lot of stuff to talk about. There is, uh, Lauren is here. You might have guessed. That means there's space news in this world. Andy Hawkins is gonna join us later, talk about a bunch of car news. There's a lot of that going on. There's Apple event next week, so Andy T. Fort is gonna come and we're gonna preview the Apple event. But I need to say the thing.

• 3:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  The top of the show. This is an odd Vergecast. You will notice that your bone is not here. And you will notice that in your feed is a whole other Vergecast with Dieter and Walt Mossberg. Our friend, Dieter Bone, my brother, my co-founder, has left the Verge. By the time you're listening to this, he'll be gone. We have walked him out. Very excited about this. He's gonna load up all of his palm phones and we're gonna shove him out the door. Um, Dieter's going on to take a, a gig at Google. We're gonna miss him. It's a huge opportunity. We're gonna miss him terribly. I know all of you will miss him. I also will miss him. We have a whole other podcast with Walt, talking about that, reminiscing. Walt roasted him a little bit.

• 3:46Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  Some Verge friends, past and present, showed up and said some goodbyes. There's an Elvis impersonation. This is real. There's an Elvis impersonation.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  I want to be in that podcast.

• 3:59Nilay Patel?

  It was, you know, it had highs and lows. There were some tears. It was good. We're gonna miss Dieter terribly, but the goodbye podcast is over there because Dieter is now- Google executive. So I couldn't be like,

• 4:13Speaker 03

  We're gonna be talking about him.

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  Mr. Google, come preview the Apple event. You know us, disclosures are brand. That'd be super weird. He'd be disclosing every other sentence. So we just scooted that over there. And we'll do the rest of this news. Vergecast is still ongoing. We have big ideas for the future. The verge isn't over. And I know that will disappoint some of you, but we were gonna soldier on with our extremely popular website. And hopefully Dieter can make RCS good. So that's the news. Go listen to the podcast. All of it's there. Dieter's there. He says goodbye. But we've got it. We've got news.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  We got news.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  We got news. So let's do some news. Lauren. There is a war in Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine. We've got a lot of coverage on the site, actually, on a number of fronts. There's a big tech industry in Ukraine. The information space across social media is rapidly changing. But you know, it's interesting aspects to all of this is the United States and Russia collaborate in space. They collaborate in space, particularly with the ISS. And then there's a side story about Starlink, which I'm not really sure what it's come to. And it's super fascinating because obviously Starlink is satellite based internet. If Ukrainian infrastructure is under attack, this might be a way out of it. Let's start with Starlink and then we should talk about

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  the ISS and the space cooperation. Because I think that'll take longer. But let's start with Starlink. That story, we seem to have a handle on it, but we don't really know what's coming up. What's going on with Starlink?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Sure. Well, I mean, Starlink, for one thing, just to be very, you know, upfront about it, is SpaceX's mega constellation that is currently in development. And they're hoping to send tens of thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit to beam broadband internet coverage down to the earth. And what I think is so fascinating about covering the invasion in Ukraine right now is, I'm probably going to butcher his name, but Mikhailov Fedorov has been getting a lot of his way just by tweeting at people and asking for help. I believe he's in a bunker doing this. So he's getting help from.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  You know, underground, just by tweeting at people. And one of his requests was to Elon Musk to help use their SpaceX's Starlink system in Ukraine. And prior to that tweet, the service was not available in Ukraine. And then Elon said, okay, it's available. We'll send new terminals on route. I don't know if he actually said that part, but they asked for new terminals. And, uh, yeah, he did say more terminals on route. And then, um, they came. And there's a whole truckload of them, as Fedorov tweeted. And

• 6:59Nilay Patel?

  Can I say my best part of that? Then the actual, like, Ukraine account just quote tweeted Elon and all it said was "thanks" with an X.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Aww.

• 7:11Nilay Patel?

  Which is just like, like, an all-time brand tweet, but it's from, like, the nation of Ukraine. Thanks.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  It was very good.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Um, yeah. And so I think what was great about this is, I mean, there was a really clear-cut ask. And then Elon provided and answered. And then also to prove that the service is actually up and running in Ukraine, I spoke with an engineer who tweeted out his download speeds and upload speeds with his own Starlink dish. He actually didn't get one of the ones that they shipped. He actually bought his on eBay a couple of months ago. And I love him because he's an engineer and he actually tinkered with his, he calls it his dishy, which I love.

• 7:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, because the official name is dishy.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Dishy McFlatface.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  So he just put his dishy outside his window after he received word from SpaceX support that the, that his account should be working. And he said, within 10 seconds, he got a signal and, you know, recorded his speeds and put them on Twitter for us all to see. So Were they good speeds? He said he got over 200 megabits per second, uh, download speed, which, I don't know, I'm not an internet person, Neelai. That's pretty good or not?

• 8:30Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good. That's better than, like, most apartment buildings in New York City at this point.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  I was like, that's probably better than what Neelai gets right now.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  No, man, I My internet here in the woods, I went, I mean, I get what like 230. So it's only a little bit. But when I called for my internet plan here in the woods, um, was it just whatever the most expensive one is and the tiny little call up internet provider and the lady on the phone was like, oh, no one buys that one. It's such a bad deal.

• 8:56Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I need it. Just like, give it to me. Um, so what's really interesting about that story, uh, we saw the photo of the truck with a bunch of Starlink boxes in it. You know, it's like, hard to see how deep the truck is. And I kind of have a sense of how big the boxes are. It's the first gen dish. I can tell that much from the boxes. So they're pretty big boxes. Some counting like somewhere between like 30 and 50 dishes have arrived. Terminals.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  I mean, at least, I mean, I'm looking at this picture. Who knows how far that

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's hard to know.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  So even, okay, even if you say a hundred, right? Like just like three times as many as we can see in that photo. Um, we have no idea how they're going to distribute them.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's still quite a lot of unknowns with this story. Exactly how many dishes there are, how they're going to distribute them. Uh, one thing that I've seen speculation on and a few of my space reporting colleagues have talked about is security risks for people who end up using the dish. You know, there's been speculation that Russia will be able to target the signals of the Starlink dish and potentially use those people as targets for airstrikes or, you know, dropping bombs. And I think Elon actually tweeted something out cautioning people about that as well. I don't think I've actually seen anyone using

• 10:23Speaker 03

  the dishes beyond that engineer who I spoke to. And he said he's only going to, he was only using it just to test and show that it was actually working. He's actually planned on using it long-term just because his normal fiber optic internet is working just fine. And also I think if you look at the pictures of his reverse engineered disk, he like removed the, the swivel base on it. So I can't even scan this guy anymore. It's just, it literally is just the dish.

• 10:54Nilay Patel?

  That's what grabbed me. It's because the dish has to swivel a lot. Because it has to track the constellation as it moves across the sky. So I was like, will his stay up?

• 11:05Speaker 03

  I don't even think he's using it actively anymore. If you look at the picture, he literally just hung it outside in his window. So, you know, and so, so wait, I think I'm kind of confused. Like, I always thought this was just a total PR move. And then Elon actually delivered them. And I was like, oh, wow. It wasn't just a PR move. But it sounds like, no, it was kind of a big just PR move. But for

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  We don't know. No, I think, I think, Lauren, I'm curious what you think. I'm firmly in the camp of, I don't know.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think we should wait and see, right? I mean, he did as much as they asked. I mean, that can't criticize that, you know, essentially, they were like, can you please provide Ukraine Starlink service? And can you send more terminals? And he did both of those things. Whether or not that's actually going to be a critical piece of infrastructure that they need and rely on, that remains to be seen. But Elon did what they asked. And that's, you know,

• 12:05Alex Cranz?

  Did they go to him? Because it's Elon. And, and if you like, he just makes news by breathing?

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  No, this is, this is an iron law of the internet. If anything happens in the world, someone's like, Starlink will fix it.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:21Nilay Patel?

  It just, it doesn't matter.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  But there's also the Elon. I mean, people just think Elon can fix things too. I mean, we saw that with the, the Thai soccer team in the cave, you know?

• 12:31Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  People went to him for help. And I don't understand why they did that. He tried to help in his own way.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  And then, yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  I'm sure he regrets trying to help at this point. But, you know, I just, I think there is this idea that Elon is just this can fix everything. And so they'll appeal to him. And also because he does respond on Twitter, you know, that he, he, it feels like when you ask him for something, actionable things can happen, you know?

• 12:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Elon is like the most successful engineer most people know.

• 13:03Alex Cranz?

  Right. He's gonna start doing like IT runs for people fixing computers.

• 13:08Nilay Patel?

  Can you help me with my printer?

• 13:12Alex Cranz?

  I mean, he will. He'll build you an entire new printer. It'll cost $4 million. You'll be great.

• 13:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  And a robot to work it.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  No, that's just a guy in a suit.

• 13:22Alex Cranz?

  It'll be a man in a suit.

• 13:25Alex Cranz?

  Is Starlink the only one that was capable of doing this, like providing this level of saddle low, you know, LEO satellite service?

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Well, and yeah, in terms of low Earth orbit satellite service, yes. And that's what sets Starlink apart from other satellite communication services right now. Most of those satellites that are, that you do use for phones or satellite phones, they're in geosynchronous orbit and that's much, much farther away from Earth. So the lag time when you communicate via those services is much greater. The whole point and the whole, you know, impetus to pursue these mega constellations is to basically make the internet you get from them, you know, indistinguishable from internet that we receive here on Earth. The reason that they are so controversial is because in order to do that,

• 14:19Speaker 03

  you have to put significantly more satellites into low Earth orbit so that each satellite is overhead on every patch of the Earth at any given time. You could have way less satellites in geosynchronous orbit and cover the Earth. But like I said, the lag is going to be much more significant.

• 14:33Alex Cranz?

  But Starlink's not the only one. Starlink's like SpaceX isn't the only one doing this. There are other companies doing these LEO satellites.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  No, Alex, and what a perfect segue to our next story.

• 14:44Alex Cranz?

  I had no idea.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Wow, I couldn't have set that up better if I wanted to.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Yes, there are plenty of other companies pursuing this. One of them is called OneWeb, which is part, one of its primary shareholders is the British government. And they are currently building out a constellation of 648 satellites to do pretty much what Starlink does. However, they have been exclusively launching their satellites on Russia's Soyuz rocket. And Russia's not very happy with Europe these days. And so.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Just to sum up, Russia, Europe, icy.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Right. So on Wednesday.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Dmitry Yergozen, who is the head of Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation, he said that they will only launch the latest batch of OneWeb satellites, which are currently in Kazakhstan, on top of a Soyuz rocket at Baikonar Cosmodrome. And they will only launch those satellites if OneWeb promises that they will not be used for military purposes. Oh, and the British government has to divest its entire stake in the company.

• 16:02Alex Cranz?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  You know, it's completely doable. Yeah. And the British government essentially told them to go eat rocks and that they would figure this out without them. And so, as of now, OneWeb said it was suspending its launches on the Soyuz. And so, the current status of that launch is in limbo. It was supposed to happen early Saturday morning in Kazakhstan.

• 16:28Nilay Patel?

  Can they get the payload back?

• 16:31Speaker 03

  That is a great question. I talked, I talked with Chris McLaughlin at OneWeb, and he was, he expressed interest in getting his satellites back.

• 16:42Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, so, you know, there's a tweet from Yergozen about, you know, vaguely threatening the ISS, and then Elon responds, there's just a picture of the SpaceX logo.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:52Nilay Patel?

  All very dumb, but like, if you get the payload back, you could at least call SpaceX and be like, can you help us? But if you don't have the payload...

• 16:59Alex Cranz?

  You could call your competitor.

• 17:01Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 17:02Speaker 03

  It's slightly different. I mean, it will take a while, because you have to, you know, reintegrate the payload onto the new rocket. I mean, it's definitely doable, a hundred percent. Now, would SpaceX launch the satellites of a direct competitor? I don't know about that.

• 17:16Alex Cranz?

  I mean, they might, but it would also cost like, like, the queen just has to give her whole crown over or something.

• 17:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, we should all just make bizarre demands of OneWeb to get this thing into space. Like, I'm the queen now.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  That's what's so crazy about this whole situation is like the threats that Rigozin is making. Mary Beth and I were talking, he really does sound like a cartoon villain. One of the representatives from the UK was said, you know, we're going to figure this out. We're not going to, we're not going to divest in OneWeb. He goes, okay, I'll give you two days to think about it.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  Does he have like a little mustache?

• 17:56Nilay Patel?

  So let's talk, let's talk about this, this particular character and his various threats. So

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:03Nilay Patel?

  Coming from where I sit, which is reading a bunch of your coverage, the sort of Cold War, post Cold War, Russia, United States, politics of it all have been somewhat removed from space. And everyone is very proud that the two space agencies work really well together. This is like the big symbolic partnership that's going to carry us through all the bad times. And then if I, you know, eight year old me would be shocked to learn that some bad times came and our space agencies did not hold us together. And instead, it seems like the Russian space agency is fully aggro and making a lot of threats.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think a lot of speculation and analysis I've seen, and I think I said something similar in an article was that feels a lot like Dmitry Rigozin is doing his best to completely dismantle the progress that Roscosmos and Russia has made in their space partnerships. I mean, you have to understand, Russia has not had a great time moving forward with their space program in the ways that we have. You know, they've been losing a lot of money for a really long time. And perhaps the greatest achievement they can point to in space is the International Space Station. It's a big status symbol for them. And without it, they would really have no crown jewel.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Or anything really remotely as impressive for their space program. So it really does behoove them to work with us on the ISS. But yeah, the past few days, it does seem like Rigozn is doing his best to tear all of that apart. And what he's tearing apart is kind of decades of us building up this relationship together. I will say that another reporter I know made a really good point on this panel I was on. And he was saying that he actually thinks that Crimea was a big poison pill for us, which it was, and that since then, we have been distancing ourselves from Russia as best we can.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  And I mentioned this in one of the stories, but we were in a very different position when Crimea took place because we relied on Russia after the space shuttle retired in order to get our astronauts to and from the International Space Station. We had no other way to get people to space. And so we really had to work with them because otherwise we would have no human spaceflight program. Now that SpaceX's Crew Dragon is taking people regularly to and from the International Space Station, we don't have to rely on them as much anymore. That said, we cannot operate the International Space Station without them.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm sure it's possible if push comes to shove, but the way it is designed now, they are fully in control of all the propulsion on the space station. So if we have to boost the orbit of it or get out of the way of space debris, that all comes from the Russian side of things. Of course, we take care of other stuff. We do all of the electrical generation. We have our own life support systems, but it is a symbiotic relationship on the ISS. So they can't work without us, but we can't work without them. However, we are in a better position to distance ourselves from Russia than we were, say, back in 2014.

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  Let me ask you a deeply frustrating and very stupid question.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  When Elon tweets the SpaceX logo at the Russian guy who's threatening that they will just let the ISS de-orbit.

• 21:50Nilay Patel?

  Can SpaceX actually do, fix it? Can they go and do the propulsion work that is being threatened to take away?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  I will never say that they can't do something because they surprise me quite frequently with what they can do and pull together. And there has been a lot of online talk about this. For instance, and it's not just SpaceX that could help either. Another company, Northrop Grumman, launches their Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station, just like SpaceX launches its Crew Dragon. And actually, there's a Cygnus on the ISS right now, and it's going to test a new orbit boosting capability, just like the Russian Progress spacecraft does. That's not a long-term solution, though, so, but it is, it does show that it might be possible.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  And there has been a lot of talk, given all of Rigozin's threats and everything that's been going on, that NASA should put together a contingency plan in case the relationship deteriorates further. And that might look like SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules or Cygnus capsules, capsules boosting the space.

• 22:59Alex Cranz?

  What's happening on like, the ISS right now? Like, is it business as usual? Or are there cosmonauts up there, like awkwardly having dinner every night?

• 23:09Speaker 03

  There are two cosmonauts up there? That is like, the question I've always wanted to answer. You know, I bet they just don't talk about it, but I would love to be a fly on the wall.

• 23:21Nilay Patel?

  Hold on, what's the current staffing? It's two cosmonauts in the house?

• 23:24Speaker 03

  There's four NASA astronauts, two cosmonauts, and a German astronaut from the European Space Agency.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  And I'm sure they're all being very professional, but you gotta imagine, it's very awkward at the moment.

• 23:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, the most awkward mealtime situation.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Well, and I think things are going to be particularly interesting in the coming weeks, because one of those NASA astronauts, I believe it's at the end of the month, will be coming home with two, with the two cosmonauts on a Russian Soyuz rocket. And there are no plans to deviate from that flight profile at the moment.

• 24:03Alex Cranz?

  To Russia?

• 24:05Speaker 03

  To Kazakhstan. Yeah.

• 24:06Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  But.

• 24:07Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that's still, I gotta take one little step back and just think about like, Cold War, we wouldn't even like, look at them. The Apollo Soyuz mission was like a huge, huge deal because they actually like, work together. And even during this crisis, there's still like, that measure of peace. Which is like, I don't know, that's, for me, that's very like, nice. Like, that was the whole point of the space program was like, we can, we can rise above this stuff. And now we've got like, an astronaut who's like, yeah, all right.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  I need a ride.

• 24:42Alex Cranz?

  I'll hitch a ride with these guys. I'm like, that's weird.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  I think, honestly, Alex, I think you've highlighted one of the biggest strengths of space travel is, you know, a great tool for diplomacy. And that's actually what I was talking on that panel about. It was about space diplomacy, which I thought was really appropriately timed. But yeah, it's such a great tool for bringing countries together to work on a very lofty goal that you absolutely must put your politics aside in order to make it successful sometimes, because it, it just relies on logic and engineering and science and being very professional. That's what makes the International Space Station such a wonderful and great investment, is that it can kind of rise above these terrible,

• 25:30Speaker 03

  you know, earthly problems. I think what everyone's curious about, though, is this seems to be one of the worst clashes we've had in recent memory. And we're all kind of scared that the ISS might not survive. And I think what's sad about that, too, is we, the Biden administration announced its intention to extend the ISS to 2030. But that requires opting in from the Russian side of things. And right now, they're only committed through 2024. So it's very possible that we might see a, an early end to the space station. And that's really sad, because, because, 2024 has always sounded so far away.

• 26:10Nilay Patel?

  It's right here.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  And it's right around the corner, you know?

• 26:13Nilay Patel?

  Um, so that, the ISS at least exists, and, you know, the, the plan to extend it may or may not.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  Come into fruition, but it exists and there's people on it. We gotta take care of them. That seems like it can certainly continue to transcend, uh, politics and conflict. Stuff that isn't real yet seems like it's getting delayed and set aside, right? Like this new European rover is not happening. There's other stuff that's not happening now.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Yes, and I just want to iterate because I know a lot of people are very scared about the ISS right now, that NASA and Russia are continuing to operate just normally when it comes to ISS operations. Everything is fine. At least that's what both sides are saying. So even though Regozzo is making these really wild tweets, for now, everyone is safe. Everything's operating normally.

• 27:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you wanted another space guy to tweet like a maniac. You got one and here we are.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  I don't think I ever wanted that. One was enough. Um, well, actually, it's, it's been a lot. There are the, the space guys like to tweet.

• 27:23Nilay Patel?

  That's gonna be on your tombstone.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  They like to tweet.

• 27:28Nilay Patel?

  Here lies Lauren, killed by space guys on Twitter. Uh, no, we were talking about the rover and the rocket engines. That's what we're talking about.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So basically, and, and OneWeb is also a good, uh, thing about that. Basically, anything that hasn't gone up or is currently, you know, in space. And that, that isn't even true. Some scientific instruments are being turned off, you know, in space that are non-essential. But yes, anything that was going to launch or is on its way is definitely suffering right now. For instance, uh, Russia announced that it was suspending all launches of its rocket from Europe's primary spaceport in French Guiana, South America. They had a couple of upcoming launches scheduled there, but they, Roscosmos pulled out all of its personnel. From the area and those launches are indefinitely delayed.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Uh, they, Russia and the European Space Agency were working on a joint rover to Mars called the Rosalind Franklin Rover, part of the ExoMars mission that was supposed to launch this year. And that's definitely not happening, according to ESA. And the problem with that is we can only launch Mars rovers every two-ish years because that's when Earth and Mars are closest on their orbits. So not launching this year means we have to wait till 2024 at the earliest. And then, yes, the latest, see.

• 28:56Alex Cranz?

  And that was all because of, that was all because of what's happening in.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Because of sanctions. Yeah, they said because of the sanctions and the wider context, that's, this launch is unlikely to happen this year. Um, but yes.

• 29:09Alex Cranz?

  Then what was this latest stuff?

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Sorry, what?

• 29:12Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no, I was saying, what was this latest stuff, though?

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Well, that's what I was saying. Uh, you, this whole week, I have woken up at 6:00 AM every morning with the thought, what new tweet is going to dictate my life today? And the latest, like, right on dot, when I swined into my phone this morning, the newer goes in tweet was, all right, we're no longer selling Russian rocket engines to the United States anymore. And that one is a little nuanced in terms of how much it impacts us, but it does have some effect. So basically, two companies rely on Russian rocket engines still. It's United Launch Alliance and Northrop Grumman, who we mentioned earlier. But for, in terms of ULA, they kind of foresaw this would happen.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  So back, back when the Crimea invasion occurred, the Congress banned using rocket, Russian rocket engines for flying, uh, national security payloads. And since ULA primarily launches satellites for the Defense Department, that really affected them. So they started this new campaign to create a new rocket called Vulcan, which I love, uh, that will use American engines. So they've been developing this new rocket ever since. It's supposed to debut, uh, this year. We'll see. They picked, um, Blue Origin to make their engines. Their engines are a little late by about four years. Oops.

• 30:43Nilay Patel?

  Prime delivery has been getting slower.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  Right?

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  It's been a real problem.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  But foreseeing that tensions between Russia and the US would get complicated, ULA accelerated the, their purchase of the RD-180, which is the rocket engine that you, they are used for their workhorse rocket, the Atlas V. So they say they have a stockpile of those engines handy to support missions of the Atlas V through 2025. So they don't need, they don't need no more engines.

• 31:18Alex Cranz?

  They don't need, I mean, do they need like support for those engines? Like, do they have their own tech support apparatus? Are they gonna get Elon in there? Like,

• 31:28Alex Cranz?

  the only engineer, the only engineer I know, I'm sorry.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  You should ask him on Twitter. Um, so that was a good question that a lot of people brought up, and even Rigozin was tweeting, sent some villainous tweet that was like, you know, without our consultation, we pray for our American friends.

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh my.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Wow. I'm not joking. I'm not joking. He says this stuff.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  There's a series of booby traps and diabolical puzzles buried inside this rocket engine.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Um, but Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Great name. Want to say another great name.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Great, very earnest. When we talk about a space guy on Twitter, very great Twitter presence. Just want to put that out there. Uh, will always reply to my DMs. So, um,

• 32:20Speaker 03

  he noted that they have considerable expertise with RD-180. They've been launching it for the last decade, two decades or so. So they have a lot of expertise already. They like having consultation with Russia in case something strange happens, but they also, they, there was an Atlas V launch this week and it was fine. And there was no Russia involvement for that. So I'm pretty sure they'll be just fine.

• 32:48Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:50Alex Cranz?

  Okay. That's good.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  And so, and then hopefully the goal is that Vulcan will start flying soon. According to Tori, the flight-ready Blue Origin engines are at the Blue Origin factory. They're supposed to launch this year.

• 33:06Alex Cranz?

  Put them on that prime truck. Get them over there.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  But in the meantime, they say they have enough engines for the Atlas V through 2025. Now, where things get complicated. Sorry, Alex, I keep interrupting you.

• 33:22Alex Cranz?

  So what's going on with Northrop Grumman?

• 33:25Speaker 03

  So, Northrop Grumman's main rocket is the Antares. And as I, as we said before, it launches the Cygnus spacecraft that brings cargo to and from the International Space Station. And the Antares relies on the Russian RD-181 engine. However, since this new proclamation was made, it's unclear if they're going to be able to get any more engines. I don't know their stockpile situation. I reached out to Northrop Grumman, have not heard an official response back. I also reached out to NASA, they've been pretty silent. I completely get it, though. They're in a really tough spot. But the Antares is contracted

• 34:09Speaker 03

  by NASA to resupply the International Space Station. So I think what's crazy about this whole situation is that, you know, Rigozin seems like he's trying to tear apart all of these partnerships. But what really he's doing is just highlighting how critical SpaceX is to our entire launch ecosystem, you know? They're a fully American-made company. And, you know, with all these other people suffering, SpaceX is relatively immune from any Russian threats. And I think that's why, you know, Russia has been so hostile towards them is

• 34:50Speaker 03

  because they realize that, you know, SpaceX has this, this power that they don't have.

• 34:57Nilay Patel?

  So, we need to wrap this up. This has been great. But let me ask you one kind of big picture question, then. SpaceX came out of this idea that we would have a commercial crew program, and there'd be lots of private space companies in the United States. That has waxed and waned through various different administrations, but it's still the strategy, right? We're going to have lots of private spaceflight companies in the United States. Okay, well, here we are. It's SpaceX. And the other companies are kind of like intertwined with the existing like national champion space approach, or they need the Russian engines. Is, does that strategy working? Or is it just like, we're just waiting for Blue Origin to catch up? Or we're waiting for ULA to make its own?

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's the piece of this that seems really odd to me. Like, that was the strategy. Lots of American spaceflight companies. But it seems like in this moment, it turns out we got one.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  I think what it's highlighting is that it's still really hard to make money off of space. And I think you're seeing why SpaceX is going so hard on Starlink is because they're really hoping that that will be this big money-making endeavor for them. But otherwise, you know, that's why it's also required a lot of upstart capital from these billionaires to start these companies is because you just need a lot of upfront cash in order to get started. And then, once you're in business, it still remains to be seen if you're making this cash windfall from simply launching rockets.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  I don't know SpaceX's inner workings of their business, their private company. You know, they're hard to figure out, but I don't necessarily, reading the tea leaves, I don't necessarily think they're making a ginormous profit on what they're doing. But they're banking on, I mean, you've seen that with Elon, too. I don't know if we want to take his threats that seriously. But he sent out that, he sent out that email that was saying that, you know, if the Raptor engine production doesn't, you know, completely change, SpaceX has a serious risk of bankruptcy. And because they need Starlink in order to really be profitable. So, yeah, I think it just goes to show that making a profitable, successful

• 37:17Speaker 03

  commercial space company that's vertically integrated, like SpaceX, like Blue Origin, it's still really tough. And there is definitely incentive to want them to succeed because of times like this, right? There is a lot of. Desire to have full US companies because they are not touched by these issues. But at the same time, like I said earlier, I think collaboration and partnerships are very valuable to space. So I'm not trying to knock that, but as we are seeing, there is value to being a completely American company in a time like this.

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you just, I think this is one of the rare moments, hopefully extremely rare moments where that snaps into focus as opposed to the other thing, which is like collaboration, diplomacy in space will keep us all like, you rarely see the kind of like the big lens turn and like the next picture comes into focus. That's a bad metaphor. But I think you know what I meant. Okay. Lauren, you've got to go see more crazy tweets. I believe there was just another one.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  I hope not.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Openly threatening you now.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Right when we're recording.

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  But Lauren, thank you so much. You're going to be on it. This is, I think, a heart, the heart of some of our Ukraine coverage is what's going to happen in space. So thank you so much for being on the case.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're going to take a break. Andy Hawkins is going to come back. We're going to talk about Elon again because there's a lot of car news, just the way this is going. We'll be right back.

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• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. Andy Hawkins is here. Hey, man.

• 39:47Speaker 06

  Hello.

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  Andy, for those of you who don't know him, is our transportation editor. And like I promised before the break, we got some Elon news to talk about.

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  Welcome. One of my favorite fights at The Verge, which we haven't had in a while. But when we were first setting up the transportation desk, one of the arguments was, is this a desk? Or is this just science? Because Elon launches rockets, which are technically transportation. And so where does Elon belong? And then we were like, we're being stupid. Like, there's cars and there's... It was a very Verge conversation. It was fun. We'll get to Elon in a second. Let's start with Ford. Big news in Ford world. They are... You know how I feel about org charts. I do a whole podcast about org charts. They're beautiful. Ford CEO Jim Farley reorging the company. Andy, explain what's going on.

• 40:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're essentially splitting the company into two separate entities. One that is going to be called Ford Model E, and that's focused on electric vehicles and software. And sort of going to be like their startup-y innovation hub within the company. And then there's Ford Blue, which is the everything else, all the stuff that makes the company money, basically.

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  Can I stop you right there?

• 41:05Speaker 06

  Go ahead.

• 41:06Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot to talk about there. That naming scheme is the obvious result of like, two VPs each not getting their way. Right?

• 41:16Speaker 06

  I mean...

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  If you're like, the electric side is called Model E. The immediate, natural thing to call the gas side is Model T, the most famous car Ford has ever made. I know there's a lot of Ford Taurus stands out there. The Model T outright, like, one of the most... So you had the E and the T. But then I think you'd be insulting all the gas people, right?

• 41:38Alex Cranz?

  I was like, Model G.

• 41:39Speaker 06

  I don't think that Ford wanted to like, go that far back in time in its naming conventions.

• 41:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so then they're like, okay, this is called Ford Blue.

• 41:49Speaker 06

  Yes. You know, it sounds more like a streaming service than it does.

• 41:52Nilay Patel?

  It does sound like a streaming service. They're very proud of their blue, that like Bigfoot blue. They, they love it.

• 41:58Speaker 06

  The blue oval.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  They blue oval. If you're gonna call it Ford Blue, it makes sense to call the EV division Ford Green. Right? That's sitting right there for you.

• 42:08Alex Cranz?

  Very confusing. I don't like this.

• 42:09Speaker 06

  See, obviously, they should have, they should have consulted all of this with Unilele before.

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  I know, I'm saying they, they had a meeting.

• 42:17Speaker 06

  I assume they had more than one.

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  I, you're right, like, high-priced consultants are in the room, like, whatever, and then there's like, Michael Bloomberg famously once described his management style as a bag of cats. This is like one of my favorite. So you're like, you put all the cats in the bag, you just like wait.

• 42:33Alex Cranz?

  Just shake it and watch it go.

• 42:33Nilay Patel?

  Eventually, like, you kind of run out of cats, you gotta dump them out and get more cats.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  If you're, shout out to Sean O'Kane, by the way.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  He's definitely listening to this. No, they know, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. It makes, it makes very little sense. But I do think the move to split the company actually

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 42:55Speaker 06

  More sense.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  But it is true that there was a VP who was like, oh, we should obviously do E and T. And there was a VP who was like, we should do blue and green. And they were like, well, each of you gets one.

• 43:03Alex Cranz?

  We'll just agree to disagree and go our separate ways and make two total.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  Okay, but Andy, that's just me goofing. Tell me, tell me why you think the move makes sense.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  I think it makes sense. Well, this is what Ford said. Ford said that we want to innovate. We want to experiment. We're, we're, we're starting this new electric vehicle. Down this path of producing electric vehicles. We've got the Mustang Mach-E, the Ford F-150 Lightning is coming out pretty soon. We want to do it in a way that is maintain sort of a Silicon Valley startup innovation type ethos. And to do that, we need to sort of be separate from the traditional side of the traditional aspects of the business that are more focused on, you know, just producing millions of trucks and SUVs every year. So they made this split, they're still obviously part of the same company.

• 43:54Speaker 06

  There's not going to be separate financial books necessarily, but there are going to be sort of separate divisions within the company. And, you know, it's not going as far as like Wall Street and their investors really wanted them to, which was to actually spin it out, spin the EV section out as a separate business as a way to raise more capital, potentially even IPO. This keeps things sort of more centralized within the larger corporate structure, but it does provide a little bit of breathing room, I think, for the folks that Ford is hoping to attract because it's, this is really also about attracting talent, recruiting engineers

• 44:34Speaker 06

  and software people to come and work for a 118 year old company, which is not a traditional place that I think a lot of people that work in software and, and technology would, would, would think to want to go work. So this is Ford out there saying, look, you want to come work on, on the future of transportation? Here's a specific division that you can come work for that will keep you separate from the people that make, you know, the Ford Raptor. I don't know why I chose the Raptor. That was a weird choice.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  It's my, it's my, that's my, it's my division. They should have named it the Raptor division. Um, and Ford E, Ford Model E is run by Doug Field, right? The ex Apple guy?

• 45:11Speaker 06

  Right.

• 45:12Nilay Patel?

  He was Tesla for a minute.

• 45:13Speaker 06

  That's the big org chart thing is Doug Field, the guy that they, they poached from Tesla and also who worked at Apple. And he came to work at Ford a few months ago, and this is clearly a result of that hire. Doug wanted some some space to do the kind of stuff that he wants to do at the company. And the other side is going to be run by Kumar Ghahatra, who is the VP for America International Markets. He's gonna, you know, what I thought was interesting is that, you know, it's you're potentially setting up sort of competing interests that they're going to be sort of like cannibalizing themselves in some way. You know, and also sort of like, you know, I talked to some folks and they're like, is this like a good side of the company and a bad side of the company? And, you know, I think Ghahatra had a good point, which is that like, we're the profit.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they make all the money.

• 46:00Speaker 06

  We make all the money. And so if you want to have electric vehicles and you want to have, you know, a futuristic company, you're going to have to rely on our side of the company. And so there's a lot of pride that that will come along with that, was his argument.

• 46:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that part is really interesting, right? Cause the the Wall Street argument that you brought up before was spin out your EV division and raise capital and you're off to the races. And you might will have some ongoing relationship with Ford Old, like whatever you would call. Right, you have Ford new and Ford old. And that's pretty dangerous, right? Cause then you've got a dying company and a company everyone thinks is the future. So I don't know that you can do that. You can do it this way, but then you've got, right, the the Apple Tesla guy building his own little company. And then there's old Ford, Ford Blue, Ford Blue Plate Special.

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  But then you actually look at it and you're like, well, Ford actually right now has some of the hottest cars in the market. And they're mostly Ford Blue cars, like the new Bronco. You can't get one without a $30,000 markup. It's just the hottest SUV that's being made. The new F-150 is doing really well. The new F-150 Raptor, which came out right after I bought mine, no worries.

• 47:16Alex Cranz?

  The Maverick.

• 47:16Nilay Patel?

  The Maverick, yeah, people love the Maverick, which has a hybrid engine, can't get one of those hardly anywhere. Actually, even the little Bronco Sport, which.

• 47:25Alex Cranz?

  You can't get any cars anywhere, though.

• 47:27Nilay Patel?

  We can't get any cars anywhere, but like the ICE cars are like not vapor, you know what I mean?

• 47:31Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  So in the in the quantities, they can ship them, they're all flying off the lots at high premiums and people like them and they're popular. Yeah, so they've got like this kind of built in advantage over there. Which is, oh, they have like the Bronco, like Ford's halo car right now is probably the Bronco. Right. They're selling in huge numbers. Over here, they've got the F-150 Lightning, they've got the electric van. And they've got the Mach-E. Also halo cars. I don't think people are like that electric van is sick, but the Mach-E people seem to really like. But then they've also got all the software. And that's the part that, right, because when Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford was on Decoder, he's like, the whole point here is we make an electric F-150.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  I have the economy of scale of running the F-150 business. And like seat belts and seat motors and the wiper stock, like I just get those. We just like have them, they're in a box. We're not overthinking it and we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, which was a very pointed dig at Tesla, right?

• 48:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:33Nilay Patel?

  So that's the split I'm wondering is like, are they going to diverge on like user interface? Are they going to diverge on software? Will the gas cars get all the improvements over here? How divergent are the plans?

• 48:44Speaker 06

  The way that they talked about it, they had like, you know, a press conference and they had like an investor press conference. And so they've, they've actually, I think, spoken a lot about this. And some of the things that they're saying toward what you're, what you're asking is that, you know, there's going to be a lot of synergies. There's going to be a lot of shared technologies. For example, Ford's new advanced driver assist system, which is called Blue Cruise, there's that blue again, which is a hands-free system similar to GM's Super Cruise. Not an autonomous system, still need to pay attention to the road, all that kind of stuff. That's going to be under the direction of the Model E side. But will be integrated into all the products that come out of the Ford Blue side. So next gen versions of the Maverick, of the Bronco, of the Raptor.

• 49:27Speaker 06

  Once that software is complete, once that project is complete, those products will, will stand to benefit from the software development that goes on on the Model E side. So they're not going to be completely siloed off from each other. I don't think. There's going to be a lot of shared technologies. They still work for the same company. They're not being spun off as a separate thing. So I, I think it's sort of Ford's way of trying to have, you know, the best of all possible worlds here. They're trying to have this like incubator, tech incubator within the company that they have set up that. For the large part is in the in the business of making and selling internal combustion engine vehicles at the moment.

• 50:05Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but it sounds like they they didn't create an incubator. It sounds like they, I mean, they created fundamentally two different like companies and they're like, don't worry, this one's going to trickle down to this one. And this one is not at all committed. Yeah, this one's going to pay for the other one is also not committed to going electric. Like it's it's still gonna go do gas because the gas makes money. And it's like, it kind of sounds like they split the baby a little, rather than just being like, it feels like there there isn't like a big plan for the future of the company. Besides, we're going to do two different businesses. It'll work out.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  No, wait, no, there is a plan. You don't want to talk about a streaming service. There is. Oh, yeah. It's a big plan. It's called Ford plus.

• 50:46Speaker 06

  Ford plus, baby.

• 50:48Nilay Patel?

  1599 a month, or it's bundled with your Verizon service.

• 50:52Speaker 06

  If you want to watch Jim Farley and his and his buddies talk about, you know, no.

• 50:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, they're they're hype about it.

• 50:58Speaker 06

  Stream, stream, you know, watch, watch them play Elden Ring, you know, you can.

• 51:02Alex Cranz?

  They're built for.

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  Actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pitch that to them. I'm trying to get him on Decoder, explain this org chart to me, but maybe that's the actual pitch. Like you and I are just gonna play Among Us while you try to explain your org chart to me.

• 51:14Speaker 06

  I I think there's a lot of que. There's definitely a lot of questions. There's a lot of morale questions is like, is the Ford blue side? Like, is there like a ticking clock on the whole thing? Like, is the idea? Because Ford has not come out and said, unlike GM, that we were going to be completely electric by X target date. You know, if GM said, we're going to be carbon neutral, no more gas cars by 2040. Ford has not made that similar commitment there, you know, so they're giving themselves some wiggle room, it seems like. But there is a sense that like the Ford blue side, that like, that's the dinosaur side, you know, like literally running on like dinosaur sludge. And it there's a ticking clock associated with it. Eventually, that's going to be something that's get that gets phased out. And they talked about, you know, trying to reduce the costs even like by $3

• 51:58Speaker 06

  billion on that side of the business, and funneling those savings into the Model E side because, you know, surprise, surprise, that's not the side that's generating any, you know, any real revenue at this point. I mean, obviously, they're selling Mustangs, but not in, you know, the same, the same margins that they that they are with the F series.

• 52:17Alex Cranz?

  Like, half the team, half of Ford is going to go down into like, the blue mines, and be mining the money. And the other, the other half of this team is just gonna be like up in the, in the very green clouds, like enjoying themselves, probably having seltzer water and like, just having a great time.

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna have like the Silicon Valley experience, you know?

• 52:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they're gonna have like the, they're gonna have their ping pong tables and stuff.

• 52:38Speaker 06

  There's gonna be the flannel, the flannel wearing side and like the, the, you know, the puffy vest side.

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  That's the way I see it.

• 52:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 52:45Nilay Patel?

  They've got an F-150 on the, on the puffy vest side. Um, I feel that, Alex, I just think like, first you have to see how this actually plays out.

• 52:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  I think my-

• 52:55Alex Cranz?

  It could go great.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  My question for them is like, yeah, you've got, there is a clock on, and hopefully, I think we'd all be very happy if there was a clock on internal combustion engines and cars, right? Like, I'll miss them. I'm gonna walk around saying the last of the V8 interceptors for the rest of my life, even when they're gone.

• 53:16Alex Cranz?

  Just gunning the gas on your old car.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  You know it. Um, but, you know, there, there should be an expiration date on this, this particular technology. And so that could create the morale problem. I would just point out, that side has some of the hottest cars in the game right now. Right? They've done a good job of, like, make, the Maverick, the Bronco, et cetera, like, people want them, people love them. So hopefully they can like, manage through it. I am hopeful that we can get Farley on Decoder in one way or the other. I think we're trying to get Doug Field to come talk to us, so, we'll, we'll keep pushing on him, but, uh, that, that to me, I think it's a shift, right? It is a very old automaker, and it's saying EVs are our future, and we're gonna do it in this way. Whereas I think GM is kinda like, huh?

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  Sopranos?

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  And they're just like, mostly vapor.

• 54:12Nilay Patel?

  We'll see, like, the lyric is supposed to come out soon, right? They've shipped all, they've shipped one Hummer, that, they, they think that counts.

• 54:20Speaker 06

  One Hummer with a battery that weighs the same as a Honda Accord.

• 54:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's so funny.

• 54:25Speaker 06

  It's so big.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Ram, by the way, I pointed this out today. They released a teaser of their electric truck.

• 54:33Speaker 06

  Oh, God, this is so good.

• 54:35Nilay Patel?

  And they, so it's just, it's a teaser. It's a vaporware car. It's like literally a vaporware car. So the teaser is just like lights in a cloud of smoke.

• 54:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, classic teaser.

• 54:44Nilay Patel?

  But then they forgot to turn off the, like, the illustrator paths.

• 54:48Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 54:49Nilay Patel?

  So then you can see the design of the truck.

• 54:52Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  It's like, none of these cars are real. Like, that's the level of reality here. It's like, oh, I can, like, find another layer in your PSD.

• 55:01Speaker 06

  It's like when you crank up the brightness really, really, really high. You're like, oh, my God, it's a truck.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 06

  I had no idea.

• 55:08Alex Cranz?

  Did they change the logo for the Ram? Like, does it have little plugs on the end or anything? On the end of its?

• 55:15Speaker 06

  There's still time. There's still time.

• 55:16Alex Cranz?

  Like, I just, yeah, I feel like they go goofy with it.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Jeep announced a vaporware little SUV. It's a great time to announce fake cars. Like, anybody can raise, like, $100 million against a render of a fake car and a plan to build them in America right now.

• 55:31Alex Cranz?

  I'm actually gonna do that after this.

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  Were you gonna do that too?

• 55:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Let's collaborate.

• 55:37Speaker 06

  All the EV startups that went public by merging with SPACs in the last few years, all have been cutting their production targets. You know, Lucid, Rivian just had this thing today.

• 55:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, let's talk about the Rivian thing. It's like, yeah, I think it's very illustrative of what's going on.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  It is. Yes. They came out a few days ago. Well, they didn't really come out and say it. There, you could, those were, if you went to their website and tried to use their configure, configurator to set up a, one of their R1T trucks or one of their R1S SUVs, you may have noticed that the prices were. Way higher than they originally were listed as around $20,000 more, I think, for the truck. That naturally got all the people that were on the waiting list, the reservation holders, pretty upset. And there was a couple of days of people griping on various forums and talking about,

• 56:37Speaker 06

  should we cancel our reservations? This is, you know, this is getting to be a ridiculously expensive kind of thing.

• 56:43Alex Cranz?

  People were upset because Rivian employees had also gotten their cars, right? Like, they'd already received their cars.

• 56:49Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 56:49Alex Cranz?

  And it seemed like the price hike went up after that.

• 56:53Speaker 06

  Typically how it's done, you know, the first, the first units of a brand new assembly line typically go to the, to the executives and then the employees and, you know, sort of special, special folk. And then, you know, then the rest of us get our cars, you know, sort of further on down the line. But yeah, then today, which I was actually pretty legitimately shocked by this, the, the CEO of the company put out a statement that was, you know, like very apologetic about how this was all received and saying that they were essentially going to walk back this, this price increase, this huge price, price increase and honor the original prices that people were expecting to pay when they originally put in their, their reservations for, for these,

• 57:35Speaker 06

  which are, you know, that's Rivian, one of the biggest IPOs of last year, incredibly hotly anticipated EV company to, you know, with backing from Ford and from Amazon, expected to be a pretty huge player down the line. I think they definitely had to eat crow a little bit on this one.

• 57:55Alex Cranz?

  Well, it tanked their stock, right? Like, the stock is...

• 57:57Speaker 06

  Their stock took a, took a big hit on the news as well. So now there's like, you know, there's also rumors about, are they going to need to do another equity raise? You know, like, this is a company that has billions of dollars in the bank already.

• 58:09Alex Cranz?

  Are they looking for like a subscription model? Are they going to be like, make sure you subscribe to some part of it?

• 58:15Speaker 06

  Rivian Plus coming in 2024.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. See, that's that Ford investment coming through. So Rivian is like 12 years old. They've, they've shipped maybe 1,000 cars. The last I looked at was like 500. So I'm just...

• 58:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a couple hundred. Yeah.

• 58:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Maybe it's 2,000 now. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt. That's how many cars...

• 58:34Speaker 06

  They're, they're reporting their earnings next week. So we'll definitely get an updated figure on that.

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but...

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  The line from this letter, this apology letter, RJ Scranj, CEO of Rivian. I think this is the danger for all these cars right now, especially the V10 cars. You can put a deposit on like five cars right now. A hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, like it's nuts, right? You can just like wander the web for like play buying cars.

• 59:01Speaker 06

  And they're all refundable. For the most part, they're refundable.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's great. It's like.

• 59:05Speaker 06

  It's it's an EV casino.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  It would be great if it was more like a casino, right? Like if there was a secondary market, especially because those cars are so hard to get. Let's do it. There if you're a blockchain developer, make me car preorder NFT casino. I'm sorry, I said that. That is an idea that destroys.

• 59:22Speaker 06

  I have to hang up.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, but so this line is just really interesting. We his apologies and he says, we failed to appreciate how you viewed your configuration as price locked. And we wrongly assumed that the announced dual motor and standard battery pack would provide configurations at price points similar to your original configuration. So he's saying, you gave us a thousand dollars. We didn't know that you thought that was price locked. You just we just assumed we took a grand. And then when we rejiggered our pricing, we thought the fact that there would be a lesser configuration at the same price point would satisfy you.

• 1:00:04Alex Cranz?

  Yes, that always works.

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And he was like, this was logic and we broke your trust, Ruby. And then he apologizes and he's going to honor the pricing. That's the right thing to do. I think that that is just the kind of brain you have when you have no product, but tons of interest. Right? And you're like, people want this thing.

• 1:00:23Speaker 06

  They'll pay anything.

• 1:00:24Nilay Patel?

  Any any amount of money. And it's like, yo, like, especially when they've configured one and put the money down. You've promised them that one. And I just think if you had any distance from it, that is obviously what people think. And I just think after 12 years and, you know, 500 cars, you're still just like selling dreams. And I, I, I know this now, I've talked to a lot of CEOs. Everyone wants to be in the dream selling business. Like it's the best business you can be in. Like Coca-Cola is just a dream, right? It's some sugar water and a polar bear that's happy with you at Christmas time. The margins are great, you know?

• 1:01:03Nilay Patel?

  Once you're like, I've got to ship you Adams and the product has to run and the software has to crash. Yeah, as a way, you can see why they're kind of like crouched.

• 1:01:13Alex Cranz?

  They thought people would just be okay with paying for a truck and also a Honda Civic on top of it, but not actually get the Honda Civic.

• 1:01:23Alex Cranz?

  It's so much money and they're like, yeah, it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

• 1:01:26Speaker 06

  I think it's also like, they've been around for 12 years, but this is like, they only just went into production. You know, it's been 12 years of design work and fundraising and investor work and hiring. And now finally, after, you know, over a decade of all of that, they're finally in production. They're finally delivering these trucks to customers. But they're still the new kid on the block, even though they've been around for so long. And they haven't built up that, that level of trust, I think. Or even, you know, they haven't built up a fan base the size of, of Teslas.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Tesla should have a car with no roof and a door that doesn't work. And people are like, this car is amazing.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  They changed their prices literally like the, as the wind blows, you know? Like there's, there's a slight breeze in the air and the price of the Model S standard, standard range Model S has gone up $10,000 or, or the Model 3 has gone up another, another $5,000.

• 1:02:21Nilay Patel?

  But this is what I push you on, like, they can get away with that against demand. And Tesla has like infinite demand because they actually ship some cars and then people like the cars.

• 1:02:32Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 1:02:33Nilay Patel?

  So the loop is closed, right?

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  Exactly, exactly. And they, and they've been doing that for a number of years now. Rivian does not have that luxury. They've only just started this process. The real people haven't even really gotten their trucks yet. Maybe a few have, but it's begun to mostly employees. And so that's, that, that, that is sort of the misstep that they made was that there has not been. Uh, the similar level of trust in the company. They don't know that that that this is going to be, you know, something that they will eventually receive. They, they, it's a hope and a prayer at this point that, you know,

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  Favorite cars, man. I love them. Can't get enough of them. Um, one more thing I'll say about this. We had, uh, I think it was Polestar CEO, Thomas Inglis on Decoder, and we were talking about selling cars and this like dealer model and selling direct and all this stuff. And he was like, the scariest thing for a car company is meeting your customers. He's like, everybody else, the car industry for a hundred years or how you longer, right? They would make the car, they'd ship them to the dealer. You're done. And now we've got like screens, people are tweeting at us, we're selling direct. Like, he's like, wow, here you all are. Uh, much noisier than we thought.

• 1:03:47Speaker 06

  And the standard now is, is that they have to respond because Elon, Elon Musk is out there on Twitter, talking a blue streak to, to whoever lights, lights him up about, you know, hey, we want to play Cuphead on,

• 1:03:58Alex Cranz?

  I mean, he doesn't respond to it.

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  Sure. Yeah, that sounds cool. Uh, so that's like the standard now. Like, and everyone's like, why isn't the CEO of Polestar responding to my tweets? You know, like, it sets like a very unreasonable level of expectations, I think, for customer interaction, uh, and feedback. And yeah, obviously the dealers has served as like the middleman between the OEMs and the customer base for such a long time. But now you've got all these new brands that are DTC. They're, they're selling, you know, uh, directly to their, their customers. They have to come up with something somewhat similar. It doesn't have to be the exact same as being a shit poster on Twitter. Uh, but they do have

• 1:04:36Nilay Patel?

  For all of us, Andy, if you're not shitposting three times a day, I'm sorry, you're not going to make it in business. Uh, let's talk about this electric boat and then we should, uh, bring on Dan.

• 1:04:46Speaker 06

  The Arc One.

• 1:04:47Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Does it weigh more or less than the Hummer battery?

• 1:04:49Speaker 06

  Way, uh, well, that's a good question, but definitely the, the battery is three times the size of a Tesla Model Y battery. I was shocked by, I was like, wouldn't that sink the boat? And the guy's like, no, no, it's actually weight is good. Weight is good for a boat because it, um, it provides stability and you can like, for water sports, you can create a wake behind you that people can wakeboard on. And I was like, if you say so.

• 1:05:11Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, weight is good for a boat are some deeply famous last words.

• 1:05:18Nilay Patel?

  Was it the captain of the Titanic? Didn't he say something about that? Yeah, he was like, I love a heavy boat.

• 1:05:22Alex Cranz?

  You don't need, no safety features are necessary.

• 1:05:25Nilay Patel?

  Haven't you heard that old sea shanty? I love a heavy boat.

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  Sea shanty is so hot right now. So hot right now. Can I just read this investor list? The invest, this is a perfect investor list. Like, if I had, if I had this money, I'd be like, you know what I want is a sick boat. And then you like read the investor list, like, I know who vibes with me. It's Will Smith, Kevin Durant, and

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, Diddy. It's so good.

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  It's really good.

• 1:05:53Nilay Patel?

  Like, you know, they were just in Miami and they're like, why can't I get a Tesla boat?

• 1:05:57Speaker 06

  You know, like, Will I Am is somewhere out there kicking himself.

• 1:06:00Nilay Patel?

  He's the kiss of death. You keep him away. Diddy, you keep Will I Am away from you.

• 1:06:05Alex Cranz?

  He's making his own boat. It'll actually be four times as heavy.

• 1:06:09Speaker 06

  It's gonna be a sick boat.

• 1:06:10Alex Cranz?

  It's fine. It's coming.

• 1:06:11Speaker 06

  Kanye's, Kanye's collabing on it. It's gonna be sick.

• 1:06:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, they got, they have a very impressive investor list and they've poached some folks from SpaceX and from Tesla as, as, as you do these days to start a startup. You know, my question was that like electricity and water doesn't really mix very well, but they sure do. Everything's contained and protected and and it's really, they have a pre-production model. They plan on starting to go into production this spring with deliveries this summer. But yeah, again.

• 1:06:40Alex Cranz?

  All the photos of it are, are, are real. It's not like, these aren't

• 1:06:43Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:06:44Alex Cranz?

  renders.

• 1:06:44Speaker 06

  The one boat exists.

• 1:06:46Alex Cranz?

  Some layers. If I click on it, highlight it, it'll be fine.

• 1:06:50Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry. Every time I look at this, I'm like, just imagining, like, what, it, obviously in Miami, but, right? Will Smith and Kevin Durant and Diddy are like, why isn't there the Tesla of boats? And then that just got around like the VC world and the, the guy was like, I'm doing it. And they're like, $30 million, no questions asked.

• 1:07:10Alex Cranz?

  Done. Build me my boat.

• 1:07:13Nilay Patel?

  This is what you gotta, you gotta know what opportunity is right.

• 1:07:16Alex Cranz?

  Like, why are we trying to do a car company, Eli? We could be doing a boat company.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  You gotta get some rival rappers and basketball players.

• 1:07:23Speaker 06

  I was talking to the CEO. He had like a really, he was talking to me about like boat life and he was like, "Yeah, you gotta like, you either like, you fill up at the, at the dock, which is like, you know, incredibly marked up gas, or you have to like, you know, cart like all these like cans of gas, you know, from a gas station to, to the dock and fill up your boat like one can at a time." And I was just like, geez, that sounds like, that sounds rough for people who own boats.

• 1:07:46Nilay Patel?

  No, that's

• 1:07:46Speaker 06

  I have sympathy for boat owners.

• 1:07:48Nilay Patel?

  That's some real infomercial, how you fill your boat with gas.

• 1:07:53Alex Cranz?

  I hate that.

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  The guys who can buy this boat have solved that problem in various other ways.

• 1:07:58Speaker 06

  You're in black and white spilling gas all over yourself as you're trying to fill up your yacht.

• 1:08:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I gotta get a ride in the Sark one. One of my favorite Verge videos of all time is, um, a defense contractor once invited, I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea, they invited us on a boat, a car that turned into a boat.

• 1:08:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Nilay Patel?

  And they were trying to tell us that it was for, um, like, non-governmental organizations, like peacekeepers, like, you know, the Red Cross and like, obviously in some of these areas, you definitely need a car that turns into a boat. And I was like, are you sure this? Aren't you just trying, not trying to sell to the government? Cause it seems like there's a lot of defense contractors. Anyway, they let me drive the car that turns into a boat. I was like the happiest I've ever been, best video I've ever made.

• 1:08:41Speaker 06

  It's all been downhill from there.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  I was like, I got what I need out of this experience. I'm done. So let's see if we can get ourselves another boat. We're right, Andy. That's what I'm looking for.

• 1:08:50Speaker 06

  I'll sign up. I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll put in a reservation for us. I'm sure it'll, it'll eventually come.

• 1:08:56Nilay Patel?

  Or we gotta start like a rival boat company with like James Harden and like 50 Cent.

• 1:09:02Alex Cranz?

  Who said, like, yeah, we got this. Steph Curry, we got it.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  Drake, what are you doing, buddy? I know you're a listener. Give me that boat money. Uh, all right, Andy, thank you so much. We gotta take a break. We'll be back with Dan Seifer.

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• 1:10:41Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Dancy Fritis here.

• 1:10:42Speaker 07

  Hello.

• 1:10:43Nilay Patel?

  How's it going, sir?

• 1:10:44Speaker 07

  All right.

• 1:10:45Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, earlier this week, Apple once again graced us with a mysterious invite that made people think they were going to announce AR glasses. I, that's it. I was just going to say to you, it was called peak performance. Peak obviously relates to your eyes. And then the video.

• 1:11:02Speaker 07

  We have to, this is a radio show. We have to spell it out. It's P E E K, not P E A K and not P I Q U E.

• 1:11:11Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 1:11:11Speaker 07

  That is.

• 1:11:12Nilay Patel?

  So peak, peak at performance. And then the video tweeted by Greg Roswak is like walking around a stage and there's an Apple logo that like shimmers at you and people are like, oh, this is obviously our glasses. So that's the frame in which we are starting for next week's Apple event.

• 1:11:25Speaker 07

  What if it's an email device?

• 1:11:28Nilay Patel?

  That'd be great. Remember the Twitter peak?

• 1:11:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was. There was a Twitter peak and there was an email peak. And like, you carried this dedicated device around.

• 1:11:36Nilay Patel?

  There was a time in America where someone was like, you know, you need is a pager for Twitter and we made it.

• 1:11:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Nilay Patel?

  And I, and a lot of us were like, maybe that is what I need. And now I own a $1,500 smartphone. That's kind of like a pager for Twitter.

• 1:11:52Speaker 07

  You had a lovely keyboard, a scroll wheel on the side. Had a lot going for this.

• 1:11:58Alex Cranz?

  Do you think we're gonna get, but we're not gonna get glasses, right? There are no glasses coming next.

• 1:12:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's not. So there's an event on March 8th. They're obviously teasing some stuff. I, I don't think they're gonna, if they were gonna give away glasses, they would have leaked it ages ago, like.

• 1:12:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Nilay Patel?

  They would have done it differently. Uh, what do you think, Dan?

• 1:12:15Speaker 07

  Uh, you know, the interesting run up to this is that there's been a lot of reporting. I know Mark, Mark Ehrman has reported a bunch over at Bloomberg about a refresh on the iPhone SE. That is the oldest iPhone in the lineup. Totally makes sense for that to get a bump, new processor and stuff, uh, maybe with 5G. So that US carriers will actually put it on their shelves. So that's kind of a shoe in, I guess. And then I guess the, the question is, is it gonna have the same design as the current iPhone SE? Which is that basically the iPhone eight design from 2018, 17, 2017? Yes, that's when the iPhone eight came out. So, uh, is it gonna have that same design or is it gonna adopt something like the iPhone 10R's design? That was a little bit more modern, but I guess we'll see.

• 1:12:59Speaker 07

  I think the rumor mill is leaning toward it being the old design, new guts. Probably similar price. I don't know. Maybe 5G will push the price up. That'll be an interesting thing to see.

• 1:13:09Nilay Patel?

  I think they'll tweak the design. They've been, they have been more active in tweaking designs lately here and there, I would say, at least at the top of the line.

• 1:13:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, but the thing with the SE is like, the whole point of it is to come in at a specific price point. And so using old designs gives you that kind of

• 1:13:28Nilay Patel?

  You get the tooling.

• 1:13:30Speaker 07

  Economy of scale. Yeah, the tooling's already been paid for. The R and D's already been paid for like for years. So it's like very cheap for Apple to use that design. And then they can spend their money on the 5G modem, which is like, I think, the most expensive component in an iPhone at this point. It's, it's really pricey. So.

• 1:13:46Nilay Patel?

  I wonder if they're gonna use their own modem or Qualcomm modem.

• 1:13:48Speaker 07

  Oh, I can't imagine there's gonna be an Apple modem in there. We haven't seen like anything yet as far as like their own modems. That would be fascinating if they debuted their own modem in the iPhone.

• 1:13:57Nilay Patel?

  Well, they would never tell you.

• 1:13:59Speaker 07

  Well, somebody will tear it down and see if there's a Qualcomm chip or not, right?

• 1:14:04Alex Cranz?

  That's the performance we're peaking at this thing.

• 1:14:07Nilay Patel?

  We're peaking at a little modem.

• 1:14:09Alex Cranz?

  A little modem.

• 1:14:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, the Qualcomm CEO, he's been saying to investors, we are ready to lose our Apple business. So it feels like it's imminent. So here's the first phone. We'll see. So that's the SE. I think it'll be cool. We'll be happy with it. People will like it. iPad Air, like, you know, in classic iPad fashion. Well, it's an iPad.

• 1:14:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. So the reason that we are expecting maybe to see an iPad Air is if we look at the iPad lineup, the Air is now the oldest device in the lineup. Came out, it's currently on the fourth gen, came out October 2020, which was a year and a half ago already. Yeah, it feels great, doesn't it? And so now it's older than the iPad Mini, which was recently redesigned. It's older than the iPad Pro, which was revamped with the M1 last year. And then the ninth gen basic iPad was just came out in October. So if we're gonna see a new iPad, the odds are it's gonna be a new iPad Air. I think the expectation here, again, same design as the last iPad Air, which was the big redesign, brought in that iPad Pro design language to the Air lineup.

• 1:15:22Speaker 07

  Makes sense that they're going to hold on to that design. It's just going to have a new processor inside of it. Maybe there will be something else. That's what I'm kind of curious is about like, what could they bring to this other than like a new processor? Because when they released the iPad Pro last year and they put the M1 in it, A, it was the M1, which was a significant step up from the A series line of processors. But they also added like a Thunderbolt port. They added the the mini LED screen on the 12.9. So there was like quite a few things that were brought in with this. And I'm curious to see if the iPad Air gets that treatment. Doesn't really make a ton of sense to me to have like a, an M1 chip in it. Doesn't make a ton of sense to have a Thunderbolt. It certainly is not going to have a mini LED screen if the iPad, the smaller iPad Pro still doesn't have a mini LED screen. So

• 1:16:07Speaker 07

  it'll be curious to see what happens. 5G is also kind of expected there. The mini has 5G. So it makes sense for the iPad Air to move up from LTE to 5G.

• 1:16:18Nilay Patel?

  Once you get there though, the iPad Air is now effectively the original iPad Pro.

• 1:16:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's been like that for, you know, a couple of generations, right? Like it's, it's like a, it's like a year delayed iPad Pro or maybe a year and a half delayed iPad Pro. If you compare the

• 1:16:35Nilay Patel?

  Instead of Face ID.

• 1:16:37Speaker 07

  Right. Yeah. If you compare the 2020 iPad Pro 11 inch to the current Air or even maybe when this one comes out, the next Air, they're going to be very similar in terms of like features, performance, all that kind of stuff, save for probably Face ID. I would love for them to bring Face ID to the iPad Air. I recently got an iPad Mini and honestly, like Touch ID is kind of annoying.

• 1:16:59Nilay Patel?

  Oh, shut fired.

• 1:17:01Speaker 07

  Like, like when you're using an iPad, chances are you probably aren't wearing a mask because you're sitting at home. And so like, it's very easy. Once you're used to Face ID on an iPad to just like, look at it and expect it to like unlock. And like every single time I pick up my iPad Mini, I do that thing. And then I'm like, oh, I have to like lift my finger up to unlock it with the touch sensor.

• 1:17:23Alex Cranz?

  Last week I was so mad at you. Because I've been saying for months that I want to get an iPad mini and I refused to do it. And last week you were like, here's my iPad mini, even though I told you don't get one. And I was so mad at you. And I was like, I'm gonna go buy-

• 1:17:37Speaker 07

  Never take buying advice from me. I'm just the head of our product reviews program.

• 1:17:40Alex Cranz?

  I was immediately gonna go buy a new iPad mini. I was like, I'm just gonna like, I don't know how this is vengeance against Dan to go spend money at Micro Center on an iPad, but it is. And then you were like, but I really hate the Touch ID. And I was like, oh, right. No, but I don't want it if it doesn't have Face ID. So you did actually save me $500.

• 1:17:59Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, I love my mini otherwise. I would just wish I could swap Touch ID.

• 1:18:03Alex Cranz?

  I don't hate you as much as I did when I saw you pull out your iPad mini and be like, look at this thing I just got.

• 1:18:10Nilay Patel?

  That's a very, that's a classic Dan experience. I just bought another gadget for no reason. Here it is. You know, I just realized, I don't even know where my iPad Pro is. I was thinking, I have no idea where this thing is. It's somewhere in this house. We use one iPad 100 times a day. Max's low end entry level iPad plays Bluey at her three times a day. It's a great product. They could just sell that thing as an appliance. If you don't know Bluey is an Australian kid show about dogs who play pretend. It's excellent, actually very funny. The discourse around Bluey is insane. You should read that too.

• 1:18:51Alex Cranz?

  There's a lot of discourse.

• 1:18:53Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot of Bluey discourse in the world. There's a good housekeeping article that's like, I don't want my kids to think I'm gonna play pretend with them. It's like, we're over the-

• 1:19:01Alex Cranz?

  Bluey is ruined.

• 1:19:03Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, but like, that's what we use an iPad for. It just like plays video at our daughter.

• 1:19:08Speaker 07

  I use an iPad all the time. But like, I've gone on this journey over the past, I don't know, since 2018, I guess, four years. I started in 2018. I got the 12.9 inch iPad. I'm like, this is gonna replace my laptop. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna shoehorn this into my life. And that lasted for like, a year and a half. And then I stopped commuting and really had no reason for a cellular connected iPad anymore. Because we all know why. And then so I downsized that to an iPad Pro 11. And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna do more iPad things on this because it's not really replacing my laptop at all. And now this year I've downsized my 11 to a mini. So I figured next year, I'll downsize to- An iPhone 14 Pro Max.

• 1:19:49Alex Cranz?

  It'll be the, no, no, no.

• 1:19:50Speaker 07

  Like it'll just be gone.

• 1:19:51Alex Cranz?

  The folding phone will suddenly be here. It'll just be willed into existence by your need to like move to a new form factor.

• 1:19:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what we are. That's all we're searching for. We are at a moment in our lives together as a group, as a family, as a culture where we're like, okay, we did rectangles. What's next? Right? You want to talk about the vibe shift? The vibe shift is going to be when we go to squares. I'm putting it out.

• 1:20:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Alex Cranz?

  It's, it's coming.

• 1:20:17Speaker 07

  I'm, I'm here for it. There've been some square smartphones.

• 1:20:20Nilay Patel?

  The second, I'm just rectangles are done. I'm calling it Kanye West style. I'm just saying out loud, believe me.

• 1:20:27Alex Cranz?

  Never be done unless, as long as TikTok waves.

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  Square device with a keypad and a jog wheel and all it does is check your email.

• 1:20:36Nilay Patel?

  Bring the Twitter peak back. It'd be amazing if Tim Cook came out tomorrow and he's like, you know what? We've, um, still have time in the world. We really, uh, this device just tweets.

• 1:20:46Alex Cranz?

  Just tweets.

• 1:20:47Nilay Patel?

  Very good. Okay. So then we're also, that's the iPad Air, which I would say that qualifies this conversation about the future of the iPad Air. Why not?

• 1:20:58Nilay Patel?

  Then we're expecting maybe a bunch of Macs, right? And this is like, I think where it gets really wild.

• 1:21:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Nilay Patel?

  Cause we're expecting the bump to M2.

• 1:21:08Nilay Patel?

  We are, you know, if you just look at where they're at, if you, if you get an M1 chip, then all the things with an M1 chip should get an M2 chip, right? Like, so that's the original Mac mini M1. That's the Air M1. That's the 13 inch pro that has an M1. Are we expecting all to get an M2?

• 1:21:29Speaker 07

  Uh, my theory is that we are not going to see M2 devices next week. Partially because there's been so few supply chain leaks. Like there were some leaks months ago about a redesigned Air, but they've like really dried up and they have not come around much. So I think, I think if anything, next week, they might announce the M2 chip and not put it in any devices. And then devices will come out later in the year with the M2 chip. Or. We'll finally see the Mac Mini get the option for an M1 Pro slash M1 Pro uh M1 Max chip. Cause right now the Mac Mini you can only get with the standard M1 chip, but the Pro and the Max chips are available in the the newer MacBook Pros that came out last

• 1:22:12Speaker 07

  year. So maybe we'll see that like they'll be like, okay, we didn't have to redesign the Mini because there's so much space in here and we just jammed a faster chip in it if you want it. And I think people might want that. There's been, I think there's a few people on our staff that are eager.

• 1:22:25Alex Cranz?

  It's not me. It's not me. I am not that one person anxiously awaiting this single device so I can get rid of my 2016 MacBook Pro I had to have replaced three times by Apple.

• 1:22:38Nilay Patel?

  But you're just like running that headless with like a monitor.

• 1:22:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, just running it headless with the monitor. So I'm like, I'm ready. I'm ready for a new iPad Pro. I've got like my Apple. I'm gonna spend, sorry, I'm gonna spend so much money at Apple this year, hopefully.

• 1:22:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's better than my plan of spending money on fake cars.

• 1:22:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Well, look, we're gonna make so much money when we have our fake boat company. It's gonna be fine.

• 1:23:00Speaker 07

  The fun part about fake cars though, is that as you keep buying more fake cars, they get more expensive as you buy.

• 1:23:07Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, we just had Andy on. It was, we've already been down this rabbit hole. Dan, your prediction is no Max?

• 1:23:14Speaker 07

  I, I, I don't think we're gonna see new redesigned Max. Like, the Air design is due for a redesign, right? Like, it's the same Air that came out in 2018. They put the M1 chip in it and made it a much better computer, but they didn't redesign it for that. It is the same computer. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is way overdue for a redesign. Like, that thing is the same thing from 2016, and it's got a touchbar still, and it's got like, what is that, two or four? I can't even remember how many USB ports that has, but either way, it's really old. It only has two. So like, that's due for a redesign. Maybe they'll like redesign that with a notch. And like, the Air, I know the Air, we saw some design leaks a while ago, but again, we haven't seen anything recently. And usually...

• 1:23:58Speaker 07

  The the key to knowing when Apple's going to announce a new product is the supply chain leaks come fast and furious and we just have not seen them.

• 1:24:05Alex Cranz?

  What about the Mac Pro? Like, the Mac Pro still is supposed to move over to M1. Presumably, it'll move over to an M1 Pro slash M1 Max. Presumably, that would happen before they announce the M2 and just completely undercut everybody who wants a Mac Pro. Like, is that what we might see? I mean, peak performance. I know we should never, ever read a single thing into an Apple invite, but I always do a little because I can't help it.

• 1:24:31Speaker 07

  I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like the time to announce a new Mac Pro is WWDC. That is the audience for a new Mac Pro.

• 1:24:39Alex Cranz?

  But that's when they're announcing the glasses, presumably.

• 1:24:43Speaker 07

  Maybe they do both, right?

• 1:24:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:45Speaker 07

  Like, who buys a Mac Pro? It is the people who religiously tune into WWDC. Yeah, the same people that will deliver or develop for the Mac glasses. So like, I don't know, it just seems like a random, it's not random, they always have a spring event, but their spring event is usually lower, I don't want to say lower tier, but less popular products or, you know.

• 1:25:07Alex Cranz?

  Less hypey.

• 1:25:07Speaker 07

  It is your, yeah, it's your iPhone SEs, it's your iPad Airs, it's oftentimes it's been the the regular base model iPad. And and I don't know, I just, I just find it hard to believe that we'll see a Mac Pro here. But I just, it just just hit me, peak performance, maybe that is the clue that they're adding Face ID to the iPad Air.

• 1:25:26Alex Cranz?

  Oh, I like, I like you really good things in to the world.

• 1:25:30Nilay Patel?

  Or the iPad Air turns into a set of AR glasses.

• 1:25:33Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:25:34Nilay Patel?

  That's how they're doing it.

• 1:25:35Alex Cranz?

  Breaks in half.

• 1:25:37Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you. Yeah, I, so I can definitely see them doing this event to focus on the two things, you know, maybe a hint of another thing, like, a HomePod Mini in a new color. Like, that's the game they like to play.

• 1:25:50Speaker 07

  Which ironically, you like barely can buy the other colored HomePod Minis. They came out with the blue, the yellow and the orange last year, and the yellow and the orange have been basically impossible to get since they came out. Uh, like, third-party retailers don't have them, at least the last I checked. Apple delivery is like a month or two out for those.

• 1:26:08Alex Cranz?

  Do people just really love yellow and orange HomePod Minis?

• 1:26:12Speaker 07

  Or Apple made like four of them. I don't understand it. Like I I've been wanting, I had to settle for a blue one, which looks great, but like I wanted an orange one. I just was like, I'm not waiting two months for a HomePod Mini. That's just not happening.

• 1:26:22Nilay Patel?

  I think if they're gonna do a Mac event with all these chip changes and a new design for a laptop, right? That's its own little thing.

• 1:26:29Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:26:30Nilay Patel?

  Where they're like, here's the M2. We're gonna swoop in the basement. Johnny Strujie's here. Chips. That's my impression of Johnny Strujie.

• 1:26:39Alex Cranz?

  Watch some games run.

• 1:26:41Nilay Patel?

  Right. He swoops back up. Craig is there. Silver Fox looking, you know.

• 1:26:46Speaker 07

  Pe- peeking at the laptop?

• 1:26:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's like, I found it. Um.

• 1:26:51Alex Cranz?

  It's a whole nother spy move.

• 1:26:53Nilay Patel?

  I've seen so many of these videos right now.

• 1:26:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. So and then and then they gotta say, okay, we've got the M1 Pro and Mac's leading performance. We made a Mac Pro. It's teeny tiny. And then here's this other stuff from M2. Bring in the best of X, Y, and Z. Here's three or more developers that we coerced to the point of a gun to port their apps over. Like, that's what that looks like, right?

• 1:27:15Speaker 07

  Yeah. That's just, it's either, it's either standalone event or it's WWDC to me. Like, I don't know. Just it doesn't seem like the cards are lining up for that, for this event. And yeah, happy to be wrong. I'm happy to be surprised. I would love to be surprised at an Apple event.

• 1:27:28Alex Cranz?

  I'm not happy. I'm not happy because you know what that means? That means me saying, quick, someone, we have to write about a brand new AR glasses or something. That's the game, Alex. Go right now. Go, go, go.

• 1:27:40Nilay Patel?

  That's how they keep you on their toes. I, here's what I will say about the glasses. We have no inside info on this. I'm just thinking as practically as I can.

• 1:27:52Nilay Patel?

  They, all of these products, God bless them, are boring as hell. Right? It's another tablet, another tone, another MacBook. We seen the designs. We know about humonium. Like, they can do a video introduction to these products.

• 1:28:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Nilay Patel?

  And they will capture the attention they need to, and we will write about them, and they will ship us review units. And that is how we've been doing it for two years in this pandemic. When they do glasses, they cannot do this shit on video. They have to bring people together. They have to have members of the press put on the glasses.

• 1:28:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because otherwise you have to just like-

• 1:28:29Nilay Patel?

  Some poor app developer at the point of the gun has to be like, remember how I've been circling the stage with my Lego bricks and Ikea couches and iPad for two years? Now the Ikea couch is right in front of you. See, I really like, you have to have that moment to do glasses, which I think pushes it out way into the, towards the end of the year. Assuming all goes well with what I have started to call the panty.

• 1:28:50Speaker 07

  I mean, that's assuming they announce these this year, right? Like, again, there have been no hardware leaks. Like, like, there's been a lot of great reporting. We have just not seen any components.

• 1:29:01Nilay Patel?

  Mr. Al's teeth is certainly not on all this report.

• 1:29:03Alex Cranz?

  Well, they're building them in the basement, actually. No, like, they have probably a fourth.

• 1:29:07Nilay Patel?

  They've been down at Johnny's.

• 1:29:08Speaker 07

  This is the bringing, the bringing of manufacturing back to the US.

• 1:29:12Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:29:13Speaker 07

  They are hand building the AR glasses in the basement of-

• 1:29:16Alex Cranz?

  Because they will sell five of them because they will give $50,000 apiece.

• 1:29:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, I was just saying, that might be where they're at, but even when they announce them, like, they were able to keep, they are able to keep their newest of the new products secret because they don't have to spin up the supply chain. Right? They announce the things, they say it's coming a month, and then like, then they can do that. Like, this is much more, like, the glasses are new, they will be able to keep them mostly secret. They don't have to play, like, you can't keep an iPhone secret because Apple has to be like, so, we need 1 billion aluminum cases for the iPhone. Do you have them? You should start making them, right? And then, like, those companies are now public companies. So they're, like, full of employees, they have to, like, report their earnings, like, that's just the system of this because iPhone is so big.

• 1:30:01Nilay Patel?

  The glasses, they gotta make, like, 20 to announce them and show them to people, and then they can spin all that up and they can, you know, they got months to work it out.

• 1:30:09Alex Cranz?

  What, what are the accessories for the glasses? Are they just like, are they spec, like, the spec case, but you put them on your glasses to protect it when you run into people?

• 1:30:19Nilay Patel?

  No, that, so, um, uh, HE's latest reporting suggests, uh, that they're actually full-on VR glasses with inside-out tracking and cameras so you can do pass-through. Because no one has, no one has really solved the optics problem they are yet.

• 1:30:33Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:30:33Nilay Patel?

  So you're just gonna do a VR headset with low-latency video pass-through and overlays. This sounds insane.

• 1:30:40Alex Cranz?

  I was like, this sounds.

• 1:30:41Speaker 07

  This sounds so un-Apple. Like, I just, I'm just like fascinated by it.

• 1:30:45Alex Cranz?

  Well, there's like a very popular TikTok video right now of a woman driving her car wearing an Oculus Quest 2 with like the pass-through on and her son's being like, "She's doing it!" And then she immediately wrecks her car.

• 1:30:59Speaker 07

  That's not safe.

• 1:31:00Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:31:02Nilay Patel?

  Is there a way to set TikTok to only show me that video? Can I like, single-serve app?

• 1:31:09Alex Cranz?

  I've seen it.

• 1:31:10Speaker 07

  Imagine tuning your algorithm that tight that you only saw that video.

• 1:31:14Nilay Patel?

  Here's what you need today.

• 1:31:15Alex Cranz?

  I only want to see VR car crashes. But like, yeah, I, the pass-through is, if that happens, that's gonna be a bummer. Just because it's not real.

• 1:31:25Nilay Patel?

  That's where they're going. That's the less reporting.

• 1:31:28Alex Cranz?

  Physically impossible to make the optics.

• 1:31:30Nilay Patel?

  But I'm saying, whatever they announce, they have to have people there in person.

• 1:31:35Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:31:35Nilay Patel?

  Because they will get no magic if they're like, "It's a headset." Because everyone will know, if we're watching that on a video stream, everyone's like, "Mwah, mwah, mwah, what's the field of view?" Like, we'll just like, destroy the magic of the thing. Like instantly.

• 1:31:51Speaker 07

  That was a preview of our live vlog. When they know, "Mwah, mwah, mwah, what's the field of view?"

• 1:31:56Nilay Patel?

  It's already in my brain. It's like struggling to come out.

• 1:32:02Nilay Patel?

  Yes. That's my prediction. The glasses have to be in person.

• 1:32:04Speaker 07

  What is, what's the pupillary distance?

• 1:32:12Nilay Patel?

  I'm so sorry. This is who I am.

• 1:32:15Speaker 07

  I feel like if they do announce glasses at some point, they are going, well, are they going to do like a developer kit?

• 1:32:20Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:32:21Speaker 07

  Like to get developers on board and stuff like that? So that means that is a six-month lead time, right? They announce it, six months later, they'll ship it. In the meantime, we'll have this like really busted developer kit that's like an iPhone taped together with AirPods that you strap to your face.

• 1:32:34Nilay Patel?

  You think that's gonna be the developer kit?

• 1:32:36Speaker 07

  I mean, that was the Mac mini, uh, armed developer kit was literally, we shoved an iPad chip into an old Mac mini. Here you go. And yes, we have to take it back from you when we're done.

• 1:32:47Alex Cranz?

  I feel like the NDA you have to sign for the AR Apple development kit is gonna be so strict.

• 1:32:56Nilay Patel?

  No, I disagree. I think they're gonna go, they want people to be like, this is the future of it all.

• 1:33:01Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it'll be strict in the sense that there, if you drive the car, if you make your mom drive your car, like, Tim Cook will come and arrest you himself. I think there's gonna be some rules, but I think they're gonna want people to be like, this is so rad. Like, they are trying to initiate a new market that so far only has Meta in it.

• 1:33:20Nilay Patel?

  And like, we'll see. I just think, all I was getting at is however they do it, it's gotta be their first big in-person event.

• 1:33:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, that makes

• 1:33:28Nilay Patel?

  The stars of Apple TV Plus have to be wandering the spaceship with this headset on their face. Like, here's Reese Witherspoon. Oprah, have you ever looked at a building with the name of the building printed on the building? Now you can. It'll cost $5,000. Like,

• 1:33:43Speaker 07

  Oh, they could bring in like, all the Apple TV stars?

• 1:33:45Alex Cranz?

  Well, we're gonna see, we're gonna see Big Bird wearing the AR headset.

• 1:33:50Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, if rando companies can get Tom Brady to be like, Bitcoin, when Apple does its AR glasses and they run a TV service, like, that Jon Hamm ad is like, just the beginning.

• 1:34:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's gonna be everybody.

• 1:34:07Speaker 07

  Fraggle rock with VR glasses, AR glasses.

• 1:34:09Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:34:09Nilay Patel?

  You know, it is, and, you know, they have to concoct use cases and make it, like, that all has to happen.

• 1:34:15Alex Cranz?

  They're gonna appear on all the TV shows.

• 1:34:17Nilay Patel?

  Bono is gonna make everybody listen to a song. That's an Apple classic. That has to happen in person. And I feel like, the way things are going, they've gotta be betting, I mean, all these companies for the past two years have been like, we'd love to have you in person. If one person catches the virus at our event, the negative media is too high. So, if there's any risk at all, we're not doing this. And I just think we're coming to a place

• 1:34:45Nilay Patel?

  where like, maybe they will make different calculations, or maybe they think, they will think the risk is low enough if they do vaxing and testing and all the stuff that they can do.

• 1:34:51Speaker 07

  So they already announced WWDC this year is virtual, right? Or am I making that up in my head? I feel like they already

• 1:34:57Alex Cranz?

  I don't think they've announced it.

• 1:34:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't think so.

• 1:35:00Speaker 07

  Maybe I'm making it up in my head.

• 1:35:01Nilay Patel?

  That was, that was last year.

• 1:35:03Speaker 07

  That was last year.

• 1:35:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah. There's nothing been announced yet.

• 1:35:05Speaker 07

  I think, if we're gonna see an in-person event from Apple, it's gonna be in the fall. Like, that's like, the earliest that I could expect.

• 1:35:13Alex Cranz?

  I think, if we're gonna see an in-person event, like, Neelai is gonna have so much luggage with so many VR headsets for comparison. He's gonna have to bring with him. It's gonna be rad. He's like TSA is gonna be like, sir, what is in this bag?

• 1:35:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I'm interviewing the head of the TSA Innovation Division on Decoder very soon. They're very excited.

• 1:35:39Alex Cranz?

  They're very excited. Ask them if it's okay if you bring, how, ask them the limit of VR headsets you will be allowed to bring on the plane.

• 1:35:46Nilay Patel?

  I think we should just do it as a series of esoteric trivia questions.

• 1:35:53Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst Apple preview ever. I thank both of you for joining me. The event is next week on March 8th. We are expecting an iPhone SC and an iPad Air, potentially some Macs. I don't think we're really looking at anything else.

• 1:36:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's been this long rumor, again, from Mark Erman about a HomePod with a screen, which is something like, I desperately want.

• 1:36:16Alex Cranz?

  Same.

• 1:36:17Speaker 07

  But again, have not seen any hardware leaks on it. Uh, so I'm just skeptical. This could be a product that they announce and then don't ship for a while.

• 1:36:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Speaker 07

  That could be the way they do it. Uh, that would be a fun little nice surprise.

• 1:36:30Alex Cranz?

  Air power 2.0.

• 1:36:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, hopefully not.

• 1:36:34Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. I would, I would love for them to do that, too. I just.

• 1:36:39Nilay Patel?

  That wouldn't require them to have like new ideas.

• 1:36:44Nilay Patel?

  You know, and like, yeah, we'll see. Like new ideas for, new ideas about HomeKit from Apple, huh? That's what you're betting on?

• 1:36:53Speaker 07

  I, I would love to see it.

• 1:36:55Alex Cranz?

  The buttons are gonna be bigger.

• 1:36:56Speaker 07

  I, I'll tell you this, preview of a review, it's my section, I'm plugging it. Uh, I've been testing the first HomeKey smart lock. That was, HomeKey was announced at WWDC last year. CES Schleg, Schlag, however you pronounce their name, announced the first lock. And it's very cool. You just tap your phone or tap your watch against it and it unlocks your door. It's like using Apple Pay. It's very neat. So. That's a new HomeKit idea that I like.

• 1:37:22Nilay Patel?

  All right. I believe you. This has gone great. Thank you for coming on. I look forward to carrying a suitcase of VR headsets to wherever Apple makes me go. The event is March 8th. That's coming right up. The whole team is going to be on it. Alex Cranz running point, just firing commands.

• 1:37:41Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be great. I'm gonna yell a lot.

• 1:37:43Nilay Patel?

  It's a real situation. It'll be a good time. We'll be live vlogging at the whole thing. So tune into that and we'll have reviews and all that stuff coming out. Like I said, if you're missing Dieter, it's because he has left The Verge, which we're very sad about. There's a whole other podcast with Dieter and Walt Mossberg, Cast 1000, saying about a Dieter. He tries to explain what he's gonna do at Google. One question I'm curious about is how do you think we should disclose that Dieter works at Google? This is our brand. So we're down the Dieter's wife works at Meta disclosure, but are we up the once upon a time?

• 1:38:17Alex Cranz?

  Anytime, anytime Google's mentioned, the disclosure's gonna happen.

• 1:38:21Nilay Patel?

  We'll think about it. Let me know. Let me know, because it'll be funny. But if you want all that details and the emotional Dieter goodbye, it's all in the other podcast. Go listen to that. My thanks to Alex, who is at Alex H. Krantz, to Lauren Grush, who is at Lauren Grush, Andy, who is at Andy Jayhawk, and Dan, who is at D.C. Seifert. I'm at Reckless. You can tweet at us. We love hearing from you. Decoder this week was really fun. Speaking of Google, it was about how Sonos decided to sue Google. And then one. So there, that's fun. But that's like really like in the weeds. Really fun episode. That's it. Apple event next week. We'll see you there. Rock and roll.

• 1:39:19Speaker 08

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