How the iPhone 15 could still surprise us

The Verge's David Pierce, Alex Cranz, Richard Lawler, and Dan Seifert discuss what to expect at Apple's iPhone 15 event, the drama behind the scenes with Disney's CEOs, and some more gadget news. Further reading: iPhone and iPad apps will be available in the Vision Pro App Store by default Sonos announces Move 2 speaker with stereo sound and 24-hour battery life Google leaks Pixel 8 Pro again with a 360-degree preview GoPro’s new Hero 12 Black will let you film continuously for longer A GoPro Max successor is coming What goes into designing a solar-powered Bluetooth speaker Bob Iger and Bob Chapek's CEO battle made Disney the pettiest place on Earth YouTube is experimenting with longer but less frequent ad breaks on TV Roku turns to layoffs (again) and removes streaming content to cut costs Chrome is about to look a bit different Google’s cookie-replacing Privacy Sandbox reaches major milestone How to disable Chrome’s new targeted ad tracking Clubhouse reinvents itself as an audio messaging app MrBeast just dropped a new YouTube face Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. It's Neelai. I am missing the show again this week. I'm so sorry. We just moved. I would describe this move as a real crash landing, but we made it. Max made it to her first day of kindergarten, which is a real victory for us. Anyhow, I wanted to give you my two quick predictions for the Apple event. One is vibes based. I think the vibe of this iPhone event will be the most different of any we've had in a long time because Apple has to keep the focus on the Vision Pro somehow. iPhone sales are slowing down. And the only real big change is USB-C, which obviously Apple does not want to talk about too much. So I think the vibes at this event are just going to be different. And I'm excited to go there. I'm excited to see what it's like.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  I'm always excited to go see new tech, but I think the vibes of this event are going to be different. So that's prediction one. Prediction two is that they're going to completely gloss over USB-C on the iPhone 15 and spend a long time talking about USB-C on the iPhone 15 Pro because that will reportedly be a Thunderbolt port, which is kind of a big deal for all the camera stuff. So that's my big prediction. Gloss over USB-C on the 15. Spend time on it on the 15 Pro because I think pro photographers are going to be super stoked by using this camera over Thunderbolt. Not the world's biggest prediction, but you know me, I'm excited about it. All right. I'm sorry I'm not here. I got to go back to unpacking, but I will be at the iPhone event with everybody next week and I'll be on the show next week. I promise, come hell or high water.

• 2:41David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Action Button. I'm your friend David Pierce. We have a whole crew here. We have a lot to talk about. Alex Cranz is here. Hi, Alex.

• 2:51Alex Cranz?

  Hi. I'm your friend wondering how often you think about the Roman Empire.

• 2:56David Pierce?

  Not enough, now that I think about it.

• 2:58Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 2:59David Pierce?

  You know, every once in a while, like, what would Caesar do? I had a bracelet that says that, but, you know, not enough. Richard Lawler's here. Hi, Richard.

• 3:07Speaker 05

  Hi. I saw a viral tweet about the Roman Empire not existing, and I'm choosing to believe that conspiracy theory.

• 3:13Alex Cranz?

  Oh, I like that one.

• 3:14David Pierce?

  Have you guys seen the one where it's the picture of the pyramids? And it says, like, this is why they couldn't move the pyramids to a museum. And underneath it, it's just underground. The pyramids are like several hundred feet deep also.

• 3:26Alex Cranz?

  They're like the Titanic iceberg.

• 3:27David Pierce?

  It's the best thing on the internet. Dan Seifert's here. Hi, Dan.

• 3:30Speaker 06

  Hello. I have no interesting quips about the Roman Empire.

• 3:33David Pierce?

  Dan, what's your favorite conspiracy theory?

• 3:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's not even go there.

• 3:40David Pierce?

  There's no upside to you answering that question, Dan. We're just gonna, I'm gonna save you from me, and we're gonna move on here. We have a lot to talk about this week. Neelai is still moving and still not here, and please shame him publicly for continuing not to be here. We have a lot to talk about. There's an Apple event coming up next week. We're gonna spend a bunch of time talking about that. There's a bunch of gadgets this week. We are, like, firmly in gadget season. We have new stuff from Sonos, new stuff from GoPro, new stuff from Sony, all kinds of stuff. There's some crazy streaming news. The Bobs are fighting at Disney, and we all have a lot of feelings about this.

• 4:13Alex Cranz?

  I'm so excited.

• 4:14David Pierce?

  It's possible that that segment of the show is going to be nine and a half hours long, so apologies. And then we have a lightning round full of fun stuff at the end. But let's start with Apple. So, we're recording this on Thursday, the 7th. The event is on Tuesday, the 12th. It's gonna be the iPhone 15. Dan, you're going. Rate me your level of enthusiasm for the iPhone event this year.

• 4:35Speaker 06

  So, I hear there's gonna be a new iPhone, probably a new Apple Watch. You know, I'm excited to see if they can surprise us because at this point with any of these tech events, whether it's Apple or Google or Samsung or whoever it is, the leaks have kind of tell all the story. Everything basically comes out and we don't really have a ton of surprises going into these events. And then also, this is the 15th iPhone by generation. Like, it's not even the 15th iPhone. It's like the 70 or something. But like, it's like the number 15 in this line. And so like, really, what are they going to do? That's interesting. And like, there's a lot of rumors of like, I'm sure we'll talk through like, the action button and titanium and stuff like

• 5:17Speaker 06

  that. But like, ultimately, the iPhone and the Apple Watch, for that matter, are like, known products. So.

• 5:24Alex Cranz?

  You're not hyped for Apple finally, finally, finally, truly embracing USB-C?

• 5:31Speaker 06

  Uh, I think it's good. Yeah, I can't remember the last time I plugged a cable into my phone, but it's good.

• 5:38Alex Cranz?

  You went all in on a MagSafe.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  I went all in on wireless charging like 10 years ago.

• 5:42Alex Cranz?

  Even for your AirPods?

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Every service in Dan's house is a cheap hat.

• 5:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's just like, I'm just surrounded by cheap hats. Like, I'm looking at my desk and there's like four right in front of me. But I mean, like, I think for a lot of our audience, it'll be a nice convenience thing when they need to like, share a cable and stuff like that. But ultimately, like, there have been other ways to charge your phone. And nobody is syncing their phone with their computer anymore, which is like, the other reason you plugged a phone into a cable. So.

• 6:08Alex Cranz?

  I always forget about that. And then I'll plug my phone in and it'll be like, you ready to sync? And I'm like, who are you? How did you get here? Get out. I don't want you.

• 6:17David Pierce?

  So I wrote a piece this week about Lightning. And it was basically the assignment from Jake, our tech editor, was like, write about the death of the Lightning port. Like, was it good? Was it bad? How was it? And the like, overwhelming feeling that I got going back and watching the old announcements, talking to folks who've used it, is that like, Lightning was very good. And if wireless charging had existed back then, or been any good at all, it never would have existed because Apple is like desperate to make wireless charging the answer, which I think is so interesting. And like, there was this great. Interview that Phil Schiller gave in 2012, right after they announced Lightning. It was with All Things D and Ina Fried, I believe it was, asked like, why no wireless charging?

• 7:01David Pierce?

  And Schiller was basically like, oh, we think that's just another thing you have to plug into the wall. No one wants that. And then, of course, fast forward five years and it's 2017 and they're announcing wireless charging. And Phil Schiller is up there being like, pretty soon, every cafe you go to is going to have a Qi charger in every single table. Do you guys remember this? When they were like,

• 7:22Alex Cranz?

  Where's my cafe table?

• 7:24David Pierce?

  Every surface in the world is going to be a Qi charger. And you're going to be able to just put your phone down and charge it as if by magic. And I bet my ongoing theory about this Apple event is they're going to spend like six seconds on USB C. They're going to be like, look, a port, USB C, Europe. And then like three hours telling you how great BackSafe is.

• 7:45Speaker 06

  I don't think they're going to talk about Europe at all.

• 7:48David Pierce?

  No, they're not going to say Europe.

• 7:49Speaker 06

  They're not going to say Europe at all. They're not going to, they're not going to make it seem like they were forced into this. They are going to say how you now can use the same charger for your iPad and your iPhone with the same cable. And we made it such convenience.

• 8:01Alex Cranz?

  And your AirPods.

• 8:02Speaker 06

  And your AirPods, right. But yeah, I don't think it's going to be a lot of discussion because there isn't a lot to say about it. It's a different port to charge your phone.

• 8:09David Pierce?

  Well, I've been talking to a bunch of people who are like, so the, the thing that happened when the iPad went from Lightning to USB C was that all of a sudden there were, you know, new, new accessories that could be supported. You could plug new things into it. You could get a, a bunch of ports in a dock, like all new computery things were suddenly possible. Some of those turned out to be very cool. Most of them never really came to fruition. And so I've talked to a bunch of people who are like, oh, I'm going to be able to like plug my external storage into my iPhone now. And I keep being like, you're not, you just super aren't like, I would be so shocked if Apple did that.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  Apple Dex is happening.

• 8:45Alex Cranz?

  I was about to say, Apple Dex, Apple Dex, like this is the moment.

• 8:47Speaker 06

  I mean, that is, that is never going to happen. We could, we could spend a whole podcast on why that'll never happen. But it's worth like dissecting what the rumors are saying about the USB port. And so what they're saying is USB C port across the iPhones announced, which would be in fact be the iPhone 15. The iPhone 15 plus, the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, unless they change the name to Ultra or something like that. Uh, so they'll all share the same port, but they won't all share the same capabilities. The lesser models will still be USB 2.0, which means that you're not attaching a bunch of accessories to it because it doesn't have the bandwidth. And then the Pro models will have maybe Thunderbolt capabilities or USB 4 capability. So that it is a faster data transfer speed. What is missing from that is will it support like proper video out?

• 9:32Speaker 06

  You can do that with an iPad, but will it do that on the iPhone? And it'll probably will in the way that like you can plug it in and watch a video on a bigger screen. But a desktop software environment is never going to happen.

• 9:43Alex Cranz?

  I feel like they're kind of going to be obligated to do it, not just because everybody, if you've got this port, you should be able to do all this stuff that you can do with other devices. That use the exact same processor, but also because of accessibility reasons. Like if I have a phone, I should be able to use it however I want, however I need to be able to.

• 10:03Speaker 06

  Sure. And to be fair, the Lightning iPhone supports that already. Like you can plug an iPhone into a TV to play. You can use the, um, the Lightning to HDMI adapter and stuff like that.

• 10:14Alex Cranz?

  How many people have that adapter and have done that? Like I've got a USB C to HDMI cable.

• 10:19David Pierce?

  How often do you use it?

• 10:21Alex Cranz?

  Not since I got rid of the Sony Imaging Webcam.

• 10:23David Pierce?

  Yeah. So what are we talking about?

• 10:25Speaker 06

  It's a, it's a pretty niche use case for sure.

• 10:28David Pierce?

  Alex, the thing you just described is like a true and lovely idea about a company that believes that people should be able to choose how their devices work. And has just nothing to do with Apple as it exists in the real world.

• 10:38Alex Cranz?

  No, no, no. I, I think like, I think Apple has a moral obligation to make it accessible if they have the port that accessible.

• 10:47Speaker 06

  Apple would say use AirPlay.

• 10:49David Pierce?

  I think Apple doesn't give one solitary shit about your moral obligations. I think Apple is going to lock this port down in every single imaginable way. And they're going to tell the same security story that they tell about the App Store and everything else. They're going to say, if we just let you plug in anything, all kinds of things could go wrong. All your important data is on your iPhone. We can't just let you plug in a random thing. Bad things could happen. And that's just true enough that Apple's going to get away with it. And honestly, I don't care because I, I, I think the number of people who are out there wanting desperately to like, plug a USB keyboard and three terabyte hard drive into their iPhone to do things is like basically non-existent.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  I think there's like MKBHD and six other YouTubers who are like, oh my God, I can finally get these high-res files off my iPhone in extra fast time. So there's someone's going to be happy tomorrow with their Pro.

• 11:37Speaker 06

  That customer is buying an iPhone Pro, Ultra, whatever. They're not buying the base model iPhone for sure.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:44David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's fine. Okay, so that's, let's just run through some of the big rumors here. So obviously USB-C is the big one. And I would say like, on a scale of one to 10, how likely do we think that is? That's at least at like a nine, right? Like, I'd be shocked if that doesn't happen at this point.

• 11:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a pretty safe, safe bet, I think.

• 12:00David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, if they don't do it, that'll be the whole story.

• 12:03David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's really true. That's really true. They're like, here's just an action button. And like, someone will raise their hand and be like, what about the USB-C port?

• 12:10Speaker 06

  Have we, have you heard about Lightning?

• 12:11David Pierce?

  The second one is the action button, which has been the rumored thing. Again, I think potentially just on the Pro and Pro Max models, but kind of like the Apple Watch Ultra, there will be a customizable button you can use to do things. Personally, I'm very excited about this as someone who does the same set of things over and over constantly all day on my phone.

• 12:32Speaker 06

  Can I pour cold water all over your excitement?

• 12:34David Pierce?

  Please.

• 12:35Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no.

• 12:36Speaker 06

  The action button on the Ultra, the Watch Ultra, does nothing.

• 12:40David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 06

  It is like the most disappointing thing ever. And it would not surprise me if this action button on the iPhone is similarly annoyingly limited.

• 12:48David Pierce?

  It like only opens Control Center.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  And it replaces a switch, right? Like, the switch that was already there?

• 12:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's getting rid of the mute button.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  They're taking away a button and adding a slightly different button.

• 13:00Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 13:01Speaker 06

  Adding something that could, for a lot of people or the right person, be a better experience. Because like, personally, I can't remember the last time, just like I can't remember the last time I plugged in my phone to a cable to charge. I can't remember the last time I flicked the mute switch on my, the side of my phone. It's always on mute.

• 13:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, we talked about this last week. It's because you're not 100 years old, like everyone who lets their phone ring loudly at the end. Congratulations, you did it.

• 13:23Speaker 06

  But they're not switching it either. That's why it's always ringing.

• 13:26David Pierce?

  No, no, no.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  Because they're not switching the mute.

• 13:27Alex Cranz?

  So here's the deal. Last week, I ranted about this button because I still think it's stupid because all I'm gonna do is turn it into a mute button because that's what I need it for. And somebody wrote back and was like, you are stupid, Krantz. And I always stop and pay attention when someone says that. Um, see if they're right, right? They might be. And this person was like, every, it feels like every week I have to go and tell my dad that he just has the mute button on, and that's why he's not getting calls. And I was like, oh. Oh, there I forget that there are other people that use technology that way. It was a nice, thank you. It was a nice reminder. I still think I'm right, but like, I still think he's wrong.

• 14:02Speaker 06

  In a perfect world, I could set this button to launch the camera or launch a third-party camera app or switch focus modes or whatever. Like, I could customize it to my heart's content. I'm a little reticent to get that excited that I'll be able to do all the things I want to do with it just because of the evidence with the Apple Watch Ultra, even though the Apple Watch software is admittedly much more limited in lockdown than the iPhones is even.

• 14:26Alex Cranz?

  You're gonna be able to open Control Center, mute things, open the fitness app. So you can see all the new fitness opportunities.

• 14:35Speaker 06

  Start a workout.

• 14:36David Pierce?

  I don't know. The thing that gives me hope is the, you know, the, the triple tap gesture on the back of the iPhone? That you can do. That's actually pretty customizable. You can use it to do a bunch of different actions. You can use it to open stuff like, just take that and put it on the action button. The triple tap thing for people who don't know is actually really useful and I turned it on expecting to get like a million false positives. It would be really annoying, but it's not. It's great. You should turn it on. But I think if even just like that level of customizability where it's like, let me open an app or do like a shortcut. I'm good. I'd be happy. And I think we might get it. Okay. So that's the other one. There are a bunch of spec upgrades possible. A17 chips, Wi-Fi 6E, potentially eight gigs of RAM in the high-end phones or even potentially in all of them.

• 15:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. The, the thing about all the spec upgrades is they're all expected for the Pro models, right? So like the regular 15 is basically expected to be a microwaved iPhone 14 Pro with the same level of specs there. Dynamic Island will, is rumored to come to the 15 model. So the whole line will, will support the Dynamic Island. Maybe they'll all support always on display, which was something that was limited to the Pros last year, which would mean that with iOS 17, you could use the standby mode to its full extent, regardless of which iPhone you buy this year. But in terms of like, performance increases, those are really going to be limited to the 15 Pro by all accounts.

• 15:56David Pierce?

  Which seems like Apple's kind of move now. And I think it really seems like Apple has just embraced this idea that there's no chance you're upgrading from last year's phone to this year's phone. So what they need is like, every three years, the upgrade should feel meaningful, right? So if you start with the Pro and trickle it down, and then start with next year's Pro and trickle it down, that accrues over, you know, the three or four year lifespan of your phone into something fairly meaningful. But it does make every one of these upgrades, like we used to be on that sort of TikTok schedule of like, big upgrade, small improvements. It's just talks every year now.

• 16:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. So I guess one thing, one note with this year's iPhones, this is the iPhone 15. We're not really anticipating huge design changes from the rumors, maybe some rounding of corners, maybe some rounded glass a little bit, but it's effectively going to visually look very similar to the 14, the 13, and the 12. So this would be like, the fourth year in a row of this design language, if this pans out. Which, to your point, David, is like, kind of like these small iterative updates. And if you've held on to an iPhone 11, or an iPhone XS for five years, you'll get a big upgrade with the iPhone 15. But even coming from a 13 to the 15, you might not get a huge upgrade, based on what we know so far, at least.

• 17:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, I do wonder what amount of time Apple has in its brain for how long they think the upgrade cycle is going to be. Because to your point, if you're coming from like, an 11, let's say, this is going to feel like a big upgrade, even if it's sort of the smallest version of what we need. But like you said, if you have a 13, which not that long ago would be a perfectly normal sort of upgrade cycle, like every, every two years, nothing in what we've heard so far makes me think this is going to be like, a meaningfully different phone experience. I guess the one thing could possibly be, there's been this rumor of the periscoping telephoto lens that might get you a bunch more zoom. That could be cool and exciting, but in terms of like, actual new things I can do on my phone, not that much.

• 17:54Alex Cranz?

  I know this is coming from the person who just said that Apple has a moral obligation. Who suggested that? But how much of this is actually on Apple? Like, like the tick, tick, tick? Because I feel like it's it's not entirely on Apple. I feel like just the whole technology, like all mobile phone technology is kind of slowed down, right?

• 18:15Speaker 06

  Are there features that we're looking at that the iPhone doesn't have? That we wish it had, that other phones are using right now?

• 18:21Alex Cranz?

  Right, like, and it's like, OK, what was the last big feature? Folding phones, which that'll be cool when Apple eventually does it 12 years from now. And then the telescoping lens, which might happen this year, like the Samsung Super Zoom. That's about it, right? Like, I'm trying to think of other things where I'm like, oh, man, I want that on an iPhone.

• 18:40Speaker 06

  I, you know, I think that actually gives Apple kind of a pass. And and the reason I feel that way is Apple is such a trendsetter.

• 18:48Alex Cranz?

  You think they have a moral obligation to?

• 18:50Speaker 06

  I think they have a moral obligation to push the envelope and break us out of this boring smartphone malaise. But realistically, they are such a trendsetter in this industry because they are such a tastemaker in the industry. And so like, the fact that like, Apple doesn't really seem to be, and like, they argued this endlessly that they are innovating out their eyeballs. But the real impact is like, the smartphone as we know it has been the same for a long time, to David's point. And so like, if anyone's going to push this forward to move us out of it, Apple's in a really great position to do that. And it's just like, they're such a conservative company.

• 19:26Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that's not Tim Cook's Apple, right? Like, he's busy with with some other stuff, all the VR AR stuff. He doesn't have time to be pushing the envelope on the thing that just prints him money every year.

• 19:38Speaker 06

  I will say the one thing that is kind of maybe, maybe a little bit exciting to me is this rumor that the 15 Pro, Pro Max will use titanium. And the reason that I think that is kind of cool and exciting is because I think that the Pro models have been way too heavy for like, five years. And they've stuck with this stainless steel and it weighs a ton. And they feel like bricks and titanium would be slightly lighter. And I would like a lighter phone.

• 20:02Alex Cranz?

  I'm down for that.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  I think Dan's right, but I think that what we're seeing here, they admitted that they don't have any new ideas for the phone. That's why they brought out the Vision Pro, because they can't guarantee that you will buy a new phone every year and they need to sell you a different thing. They need to get more money from you somehow. And that's why the Vision Pro is happening, because. What are we going to put in the phone to make you buy one?

• 20:22Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, I mean, we've had these conversations for years. What is the next iPhone for Apple? Right? The iPhone is the bread and butter of the company. It's 75% of its revenue, et cetera, et cetera. And this year, the Vision Pro is it. A few years ago, it was the Apple Watch. And a few years before that, it was the iPad. And neither of them really were able to dethrone the iPhone as Apple's main business. And so now we're on to VR. But at the end of the day, the iPhone is still Apple's bread and butter.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  You didn't even mention Apple TV or HomePod?

• 20:52Speaker 06

  I'm sorry.

• 20:53David Pierce?

  How could you? No, I just think, in a funny way, I think a lot of what we're doing in the tech industry in general right now is realizing that nothing is probably ever going to be as big as smartphones. That like, this idea that someone was going to basically come up with one kind of gadget that every single person on earth was going to dedicate their lives to was like, A, maybe a bad idea, and B, probably irreplicable, right? Like, I just don't see a world in which that happens again anytime soon.

• 21:25Alex Cranz?

  That's because you're not in Tim Cook's world, looking at the VR headsets.

• 21:29David Pierce?

  Yeah, but he's selling them for $3,500, right? He's perfectly happy to not have everybody buy one, at least for a very long time.

• 21:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think you're right, though. I definitely agree with you. Like, we've hit this point where we all experienced one of the biggest shifts in technology in like, the history of the world. And in some ways, bigger even than the personal computer, right? Like, way more people have phones than personal computers forever. And way more people now have access to the internet. Like, this was truly that window into the internet. And now it's like, oh, you can't, you just can't replicate that. Yeah, you're gonna try with AR/VR and new weird laptops and folding phones and stuff. But like, we did it. It's like refrigerators. We had the big, huge moment. Now everyone's got one. And now I update it every 10 years, or when it makes a weird, loud noise in the middle of the night.

• 22:17David Pierce?

  It's a life, and when you do, it will start sending you push notifications. So congratulations. No, I, I, yeah, I think, I think it's possible. And I sort of expect to have this thrown in my face. But I think it's possible that Apple has something coming here that it has not leaked yet. It just, this doesn't seem like a whole story for Apple. Uh, and it's the iPhone 15 and Apple likes round numbers. It has, to Dan's point, been a while since we got like a meaningful, big change. Maybe USB C is that thing, but I also feel like if I'm Apple and I'm looking at that thing and it's like, okay, we're being forced to change our port. We have to like play along with this new rules.

• 23:00David Pierce?

  Like, let's take this as a moment to do something unusual. What would that be? I don't know. This is the thing.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  They already put satellite connectivity in the phone, which has admittedly like saved a couple of people's lives. Not a small thing.

• 23:14David Pierce?

  No, yeah, the satellite stuff is real. I totally agree.

• 23:17Speaker 06

  I, I will say, you know, when we had this discussion last year ahead of the iPhone 14 Pro launch, the rumor mill was saying it was trying to decipher what these cutouts on the screen would look like. And nobody really predicted what the dynamic island would be. And that is the one area that Apple doesn't really leak is the software side of things. And so if there are new hardware features on the device, we don't know how Apple will use it or integrate it into its software. And we'll, we can, we can talk about how effective dynamic island is. But it wasn't what anybody predicted. And so, uh, maybe that, like you're saying, maybe there's something that like, we just can't see

• 23:58Speaker 06

  because we are only seeing based on the supply chain, which can only see hardware components.

• 24:04David Pierce?

  Do you think it's something around the button? You know, it'd be awesome is if, if with the titanium, we've been trying to do this shatterproof glass thing for forever. If Apple has like finally cracked the like, we have made you a phone that is like the old like Nokia 3310. Like you can't break it even if you try. And Tim Cook just like gets on stage and just like hucks his phone into the ground and then picks up. That would be the coolest iPhone launch of all time instantly. That's not what I'm rooting for. I don't think it's happening, but that's what I want.

• 24:31Alex Cranz?

  I don't think it's happening, but I want this so bad. I want like the reverse Cybertruck reveal.

• 24:36David Pierce?

  Because that's really what it is, right? Like if we're in, if we're in phones or appliance mode, it's durability and its battery life are the two things that everybody should continue to press against. Because that makes my existing phone life, which most people are fine with, meaningfully better immediately. I still see an alarming number of people with broken phone screens just out in the world. It's crazy.

• 24:59Alex Cranz?

  I just had to look to make sure mine was working right now. It is.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  Apple could make things more repairable. It did that with iPhone 14, not the 14 Pro, but the 14 was designed to be more repairable. So maybe that extends across the line. That would be a step forward. It'd be a small step, but.

• 25:13Alex Cranz?

  Well, they just, they just really kind of embraced California's repairability law a couple of weeks ago, right? So like.

• 25:20Speaker 06

  Begrudgingly.

• 25:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  They are embracing USB-C, Alex.

• 25:24David Pierce?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:25Alex Cranz?

  Where they like kick you when you use it, like you're just gonna get kicked in the pants every time you plug USB-C into this thing. And every time you order one of those, those, like the repair kits, somebody's gonna come to your door and kick you in the pants and be like, "You shouldn't be using this."

• 25:38David Pierce?

  And then charge you $600.

• 25:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  But it's one of those things where Apple, being Apple, they could make a huge gap between them and the Samsungs and the Googles and the whoever else is up the world, because they just can't control phone design and components the way that they can to potentially make something more repairable. As one last thing to note, what do you guys think of the rumors about the price? That, you know, the most expensive models would be maybe $100 more expensive than they used to be?

• 26:02Alex Cranz?

  It's stupid. It makes sense, but I hate it, so therefore it is stupid. I'm just talking you through my, my, my mind, my processing here. Like, does it really need to be more expensive? I feel like, no. Is titanium really adding $100 to it? Especially because the phone, like the difference between how much it costs to manufacture it and sell it is fairly large. It just feels like price creep.

• 26:29Speaker 06

  Well, it certainly is. I mean, if Apple is nothing if not very good at preserving profit margins and providing or convincing people in perceived value. And when you say it's titanium and new materials and different, I don't think it's hard for them to jump $100 in perceived value. We've seen across the board, technology getting more expensive over the past few years as inflation has gone up and as the supply chain issues and things like that. Samsung's tablet S9 tablet line this summer is $100 more across the board. And that is like, kind of backwards from how we want to experience technology in that it like gets cheaper over time. But it's just kind of like the world we're in. I will not be surprised for a second if they start at 1099 now. And I also don't think it's going to impact their sales much

• 27:14Speaker 06

  because most people are buying these on payment plans over 24, 36 months, whatever it might be. It's a buck or two a month. They're not even going to notice it. So I don't think it's going to make much of it. It'll just make Apple more money.

• 27:26Alex Cranz?

  Well, and the Pro isn't their best selling model, right? Like it's the regular iPhones.

• 27:30Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, I mean, like the, the best selling model, I believe of last year's round was iPhone 14, but the 14 Pro was close behind it and nobody bought the 14 plus.

• 27:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, the big cheap screens theory really took a hit last year.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  It wasn't cheap. That was the problem. It was $900. Like, I mean, you're, you're like looking at an iPhone 14 Pro Max at that price. Like, if they did it for less than that, then yeah, I could have seen that argument, but it wasn't cheap. That was the problem.

• 27:55Alex Cranz?

  I guess that's, that's one of the things they could change here, right? Like the pricing schemes, because last year they did get really weird and it was a lot of confusion. And we immediately saw that reflected in what got purchased and what didn't. And this year, maybe if they raise those prices on the most expensive ones, maybe they drop the prices on the cheaper ones to make that delta significant.

• 28:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, it makes, if they could keep the 15 plus at that $900 price, but now it's $300 to go to the 15 Pro Max. And so that's like a much more significant gap. And so that, that might be the move there. And maybe people would more gravitate towards the 15 plus if they want a big screen.

• 28:30Alex Cranz?

  But no, we should demand they be cheaper. Rise up. They have a moral obligation.

• 28:34Speaker 06

  Have you considered the perspective of the Apple shareholder, Alex?

• 28:38Alex Cranz?

  They have a moral obligation.

• 28:39Speaker 06

  Won't somebody think about the profit margins?

• 28:41David Pierce?

  It really, it's such a cynical idea to think that instead of making one thing cheaper in order to make the price differences more obvious, they're just going to make the other thing more expensive. But that's also 100% what's gonna happen. That's rough. All right, let's see. So what else are we expecting? There's going to be, we think, a new Apple Watch, which by all accounts is going to be thoroughly unexciting. Teeny tiny upgrades on the old Apple Watch.

• 29:06Speaker 06

  So I think what we're expecting of the new Apple Watch lineup is a similar design, whether that's a Series model, Series 9, or the Ultra, but they are rumored to have a, finally, a faster processor. Basically, the Apple Watch has used the same performing processor since I think the S6 or Series 6, and there's just been some small health sensors added to it. With this model, the rumors are saying that we'll actually get a faster performing processor, which will be the first time in a while that we've had that.

• 29:35Alex Cranz?

  Will that translate to better battery life?

• 29:37David Pierce?

  I have never once been like, my watch is slow. I think my watch is stupid and doesn't do much, and I wish Siri would talk to me less. But it does not feel slow. Maybe the widgets thing, as this stuff gets more useful, will make it feel slower as you use it more.

• 29:53Speaker 06

  I think if you have a recent model Apple Watch, yes. But if you had one of the, say, Series 4 earlier.

• 29:59David Pierce?

  Oh, for sure. Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 06

  They got slow. The Series 3 got to be a dog.

• 30:03David Pierce?

  The Series 3 did get very slow. I agree with that. Yeah, and then I guess, what is it, next year, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg was reporting that there's potentially a much bigger Apple Watch redesign coming.

• 30:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, with new manufacturing, using 3D printing techniques and stuff like that. But it doesn't seem like that is slated for this year's model, if I read it correctly.

• 30:20Alex Cranz?

  But nothing on battery life. We haven't heard one way or the other improvements.

• 30:24Speaker 06

  I mean, Apple's claimed the same 18 hours of battery life on the Series models for, since like Series 1.

• 30:31David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 06

  Series 2. So I mean, if you want more battery life, they have the Ultra. That is, that is their pitch for battery life.

• 30:39Alex Cranz?

  That will never fit on this hand.

• 30:41David Pierce?

  And then we think probably, we think probably new AirPods too, right? Potentially like just to put a USB-C port on them?

• 30:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, it'll be interesting to how this is handled. Like, do we get all new AirPods or just a new case that they sell with basically the same AirPods with a new port, and then you can buy the case separately? They did that with the wireless charging way back when. I think it was the, the AirPods 2. They first launched without wireless charging, and then you could buy the case with wireless charging, or you could buy it bundled together. So it'll be interesting to see if that happens. This is one area where like the supply chain leaks have not shown anything. And so like, there's been no new designs of AirPods released or leaked or anything like that. So the idea being... If they put USB C on it, it is there solely to match the fact that the iPhone has USB C. Uh, and so you use the same charging cable for both.

• 31:29Alex Cranz?

  Is that going to be the last of the Lightning stuff if they, if they switch both of those over? Still some iPads, right?

• 31:34Speaker 06

  So, uh, the base model ninth gen iPad, which is the like cheapest iPad you could buy is still being sold new by Apple. That's got a Lightning, the uh, Magic Keyboard uh, for the Mac and the Magic Truck Pad for the Mac are still Lightning.

• 31:47David Pierce?

  Wait, the, did we, did we fix the flip upside down mouse? Is that finally out of commission?

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Oh yeah. The Magic Mouse is still Lightning.

• 31:53David Pierce?

  Still Lightning?

• 31:55Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 31:55David Pierce?

  Well, here's hoping they fix all that all at once.

• 31:58Alex Cranz?

  That's going to be the big surprise. That's going to be the big splash.

• 32:01Speaker 06

  There's also rumors for the October event of that Apple usually holds that we will see M3 Macs and a new iMac with an M3 processor. And I think that's when we'll see USB C ports on the peripherals.

• 32:12David Pierce?

  The truly pettiest thing Apple could do, if it really wants to get everybody into wireless charging is put USB C ports on everything, but put them always in the most inconvenient place, like in the same way that on the Magic Mouse, it's on the bottom.

• 32:26Speaker 06

  The middle of the track.

• 32:27David Pierce?

  Yeah. Put it on like the top left corner of the iPhone. They're like, oh, you want to plug it in? Knock yourself out. Great. Good, good luck. Congratulations.

• 32:34Speaker 06

  It's in, it's in the dynamic island.

• 32:40David Pierce?

  Yeah. It, yeah. I love this. This is, this is my new favorite idea. Tim Cook, if you're listening.

• 32:45Alex Cranz?

  Please.

• 32:45David Pierce?

  Charge the dynamic island. I love it. Oh, one more Apple thing actually, that I'm curious what y'all think about. So there was this announcement this week from Apple that the Vision Pro App Store for the headset, presumably coming next year, will include by default, all iPhone and iPad apps that are compatible, which obviously has some, you know, what compatibility means is difficult, but it means by default, if developers don't turn it off, a huge number of iPhone and iPad apps are just going to be available for the Vision Pro on day one. Is this a good idea or a terrible idea?

• 33:19Alex Cranz?

  Great idea. Can you, because you're going to be able to go find that one fart app that has just survived this whole time and immediately be like. In the virtual space. That's incredible. Like $3,500 spent. Absolutely. I want to fart at just.

• 33:37Speaker 06

  I, I think it's a necessary move to give the people that are actually buying these for $3,500, something to do on their headsets other than the five to 10 apps that are ready to go at launch. I don't think it's going to be a great experience for the vast majority of apps. Everything that I've seen from developers playing with them and things like that, I have said like, if you have an iPad app, it'll run, but you really should be redesigning it for this spatial interface.

• 34:03Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's, I mean, this is the same thing that happened with iPhone to iPad. And every time you accidentally open an iPhone app on your iPad, you're like, oh, Jesus.

• 34:11Speaker 06

  Instagram threads in the 2023 year of our Lord.

• 34:15Alex Cranz?

  You're just really upset. And so that's what's going to happen for VR, for, for this headset. Only it's going to be for like the next three or four years.

• 34:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, yeah, it's going to take some time and then like it'll taper off. And, you know, if the platform is a success and it gets the developer interest and the customer interest and all that, there will be more, more native, just like the iPad took a couple of years to get really great native iPad apps.

• 34:37Alex Cranz?

  Do you think the visual design, so like, you know, when you, when you open those iPad apps, oftentimes they feel like they're from 2008, they're from like the, the dawn of the iPhone. It's like nothing's changed, that skeuomorphic design and everything. Do you think like the same thing's going to happen with this new headset where you'll still be like, like not only stuck because it's this giant blown up app, but because like the design is so different, the UI design is so different from whatever's coming.

• 35:06Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that is a part of it, right? And that's part of the reason that like all developers that I see posting on social about it are saying they need to redesign it. Because the design language of, and David, maybe you can speak to this more because you've got firsthand experience with it. But the design language of vision OS is very different than iOS and iPad OS. It's got a lot of transparency and layers and depth and things like that. And like iOS is notoriously flat.

• 35:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, if you if you just like, think about the structure of a normal iOS app. It's like, there's a bar at the bottom with some stuff. There's all your stuff in the middle. Up at the top, there's probably a menu button that opens things. And then like, the settings live off to one side. Right? That's kind of the like, standard structure of an iOS app. If that's the best we can do in augmented reality, like, boy, did we blow it in the future. You know, the way you use it is by using your fingers and you you look at the menu item that you want to click on, and then you click your fingers together, and that's how you do it. And if I have to sit there and be like, okay, look up, click on the thing that goes to settings, then move my head all the way over here, look at the thing with my name on it, click that, look down a list, click that.

• 36:12David Pierce?

  Like, no, that's bad. We have blown it.

• 36:14Alex Cranz?

  And then periodically having to make make it big so you could actually find the button and hit it just right.

• 36:19David Pierce?

  Exactly. Yeah, no, this is this is a mess. And I feel like this thing that Apple is trying to do, where it basically seems increasingly like the iPad app is kind of the like atomic unit of it. And then iPad apps can move to Mac where they more or less work. iPad apps are increasingly in have everything in common with iPhone apps, where things mostly work in both places, even though the screen sizes are different. And now they want to put iPad apps in particular on to the Vision Pro. And I just don't think that's going to keep working forever. Like, you have this one rectangular screen, and you should be able to put that on all of your rectangular screens.

• 37:00David Pierce?

  I'm just not sure that holds forever, as much as Apple seems to want it to. But I do agree, it's a decent stopgap. And like, a bunch of half-functional apps are probably better than no apps at all at first.

• 37:13Speaker 06

  Like, if you want to watch Netflix, like, the iPad Netflix app will be more than sufficient to play Netflix in front of your face in in the on the vision.

• 37:21Alex Cranz?

  It just won't be as cool. Because you won't be in a little weird virtual theater that's always empty and a little scary.

• 37:28David Pierce?

  That's actually a really good example, right? Because there is the version of it that it's just like it'll play in a window in front of you. But the cooler version of that is something much more ambitious and has weird theaters. Or you can like have it be the like Oculus Quest thing where it's like you're in your home and it's playing on a TV in front of you and there's a crackling fire. Like there are big ideas to be had there, but like I'd rather have a thing that plays Netflix than nothing that plays Netflix. So I guess I have seen a bunch of developers who are not excited about this idea of it. Like even some who are like, I'll, I'll eventually turn this on. But the idea of it being on by default and people like discovering their apps for the first time through this thing that is thoroughly unoptimized and untested for their app, they're not fans.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  The same thing happened with the Apple Silicon Max, right? Like Apple had initially pitched, if I'm, I could be misremembering it, but I believe the plan was to have all of the iPhone and iPad apps just kind of work by default. And then they rolled it back because, and many, many developers have opted not to make their apps available on M1 Max or Apple Silicon Max, uh, because the experience really isn't great and they didn't design it for that. And there's a handful that do, but it's very few and far between.

• 38:39Speaker 05

  And I wouldn't be surprised if that same thing happens. That, that between the time of when we have this $3,500 Vision Pro and whenever we get a Vision Pro that people actually can buy or want to buy, that policy changes. And also hopefully by then they'll have enough apps to kind of satisfy the people. But for the first initial buyers, having a huge app store full of apps that kind of don't work, but you have everything to choose from is fine before you get to the general public actually using this thing.

• 39:06David Pierce?

  It's a hell of a sales pitch for a $3,500.

• 39:10Speaker 06

  All right, just to bring this full circle. Do we think we're going to hear anything about the Vision Pro next week?

• 39:16Alex Cranz?

  Yes, 100%. I, I like, I think David's right that they've got something coming, but I think it's probably less about the phone itself and more about the grand new vision for the next, the future of how we window our ways into the internet. And it's going to be some stuff.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  When Tim Cook tells us that we can hold up the iPhone to our face like heads up style and have a Vision Pro right now for $1,099, you're all going to buy one ever since.

• 39:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, Google Cardboard was a very successful.

• 39:45David Pierce?

  And it too costs $1,000.

• 39:48Alex Cranz?

  That's how much the Belkin headset will be.

• 39:49David Pierce?

  The thing I've been surprised by is how forthcoming Apple has been in like letting developers talk about their experiences so far. Like, there have been people out there talking about how they've been using it, and they haven't said a ton, but they're able to at least like-

• 40:03Speaker 06

  I think those are very gated experience.

• 40:06David Pierce?

  Oh, for sure.

• 40:07Speaker 06

  Like, what, like, Apple produced a PR blast a few weeks ago, right, that had some developers providing quotes and things like that? And like, that's all those developers can say about it. And those like, Apple PR proof-

• 40:18David Pierce?

  That is true. That's definitely true. But like, it just makes me think of like, when the iPad came out, Apple literally chained it to people's tables. And we'll probably get something like that. But I would bet we're gonna get like, a really fun montage-y video of the developers playing with the Vision Pro, and that's about all we're gonna get. All right, we need to take a break. Dan, can you stick around for a little while longer and talk about some more gadgets?

• 40:39Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 40:40David Pierce?

  Or do you have to go?

• 40:41Speaker 06

  Happy to join.

• 40:41David Pierce?

  Okay, good. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, then we're gonna come back, talk about some other stuff. We'll be right back.

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• 41:53David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Before we get to the bobs, which I have promised we are going to get to very soon, let's just run through some of the other gadgets that came out this week before we mercifully let Dan go. Does anybody have feelings about GoPro? Like, I mean this sincerely as a question. GoPro launched a new camera and promised other new cameras. And I find myself so just cold thinking about the existence of a new GoPro camera. It'll let you film for longer. It has a new vertical video thing. That's all fine. But I just like,

• 42:26David Pierce?

  does anyone care about GoPros?

• 42:27Speaker 05

  David, is this, is this GoPro's problem, or is this your problem? You're a few years older than you were the last time they brought out a a brand new phone.

• 42:35David Pierce?

  Oh, no, it's GoPro's problem.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  You maybe are a little less, okay, maybe I am a little less sure that I'm going to be doing anything worth filming with a GoPro. Like, like if you just made the list of things that you can do that are worth filming with a GoPro, like maybe six years ago, I had some of those things on the list. Now it's none, zero. It's never gonna happen.

• 42:54Speaker 06

  I think that is the lesson of action cameras in general. When they first came out and first were being popular, everybody thought, oh, I could be life logging or filming all these crazy adventures and things like that. And then they realized that, like, I don't really do anything all that interesting. And I don't really want to deal with all this footage and I'm not a video filmmaker or whatever. And so what are we up to? Hero 12, the 12th GoPro? At this point, like, they are products for a specific type of filmmaker who is using them to either capture interesting angles or interesting activities or whatever. They're just not general consumer products. Like, they might have thought they would have been five to 10 years ago.

• 43:33Alex Cranz?

  Well, I think that I, like, the phone made it hard for them to be a general consumer product because the phone camera got, because for a while there, you'd be like, okay, well, I don't want to use my phone to film this because my phone's got a crummy camera on it, but the GoPro's got a much nicer camera, so it makes sense. And maybe one day I really will go skiing and be able to show everybody my videos. You won't, but like, you could, you could rationalize that, right? And I think it was, it was like 2018, 2019, where suddenly their sales just fell off a cliff because everybody was like, I have a GoPro and I'm not as active as you wish I was, GoPro. And like they really struggled. They had a lot of issues. It was around the same time they released their drone that just like flopped because it was busted.

• 44:17Speaker 05

  Well, they'd gotten huge. You would go to the grocery store and they'd have an end cap for GoPro at every Walmart and Meyer and whatever. And I'm like, are there that many people living these action camera lifestyles? And it turned out there weren't.

• 44:29David Pierce?

  I think, I really think GoPro thought it was like the point and shoot camera of the future. And what it seems to me is that like every year, the total addressable market of GoPro just gets a little tiny bit smaller because it doesn't have new ideas about how you can take photos and video. Like, one of the things this time is it's easier to sync time codes if you're shooting with a bunch of GoPros simultaneously. And it's like, that's for 12 people. That's that. That's the number of people who care about that. But then, I guess, I don't know, there's a guy in my neighborhood who rides a like old Schwinn bike to the train station every morning. And he like has on, he's like wearing

• 45:11David Pierce?

  business casual clothes, and he has his messenger bag, and he clips a GoPro to his messenger bag and just films his ride to the train station every morning. And every time I see this man, I just want to stop him and be like, why? Have you ever watched any of these videos?

• 45:24Speaker 05

  Is he using it as a dash cam? It's a dash cam, in case he gets hit by a car.

• 45:28Alex Cranz?

  Oh, that's for security.

• 45:29David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 45:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's a dash cam. Basically, GoPros are for people who don't want to buy a dash cam because the dash cam market is super confusing and scary. I definitely don't know that from experience. Or cyclists who need it so in case the cop like gives them a ticket for riding in the bike lane, which happens far too often here in New York City. And then Veron, like one of our people on our video team, who actually does use it for like cool stuff. He's always like, yeah, I'm snowboarding this weekend. And I'm like, Do you have the energy?

• 46:01Speaker 05

  The Thomas Ricker experience, as we call it.

• 46:03David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 46:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, the Thomas Ricker experience. There's like, it's those two. And then, and then the folks who need it for a dash cam. And that's the market.

• 46:12Speaker 06

  I mean, I think it is smart. If I was GoPro and I didn't really have an idea to reinvent this camera, or the ideas I tried in the past failed, 360 video or drones, whatever. I think it's smart to lean into building these higher end features for the niche that is still using the cameras and is still going to go out and buy them. And we'll sync five GoPro angles together.

• 46:32Alex Cranz?

  I mean, it's worked for like Sony, it's worked for kind of Red. Like going, going more niche does work for cameras in particular. Go, makes sense because camera nerds be nerding.

• 46:45David Pierce?

  I think my real issue with GoPro is that we treat it kind of like a mainstream brand. And it very much is a mainstream brand, like their brand recognition, I'm sure is ridiculous. When in reality, like you said, Cranz, it is basically, it's Red. It is a specific device for a specific use case. And that's fine. And that's all well and good, but it is so not how GoPro wants you to think about it. That the dissonance of that, I think, has just always kind of annoyed me.

• 47:13Alex Cranz?

  I think they've also struggled with that, right? They had a lot of leadership changes and stuff after, after the drone, because they were also realizing, oh, wait, we're, we're having this turn in our, in our company. And we're not going to be able to survive it if we don't fix everything. And so it feels like they have kind of leaned into, we're here for the niche market. And I think a lot of us are just like, like the, the news from us was, was written by Veron, who is part of that market, right? Like, like, I think while our friends and family might still recognize GoPro, none of them have owned them in years, have any desire to own them in years. And GoPro is probably okay with that.

• 47:49David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that's probably right. All right, well, that's enough about GoPro. That's, that's all I want to talk about GoPro in the year 2023. Couple more things here. So Google did what we talked about last week and assumed was going to happen. Just full leak to the Pixel 8 Pro. Richard, what did we learn? What do we know about the Pixel 8 Pro?

• 48:07Speaker 05

  It continues to be a phone. They actually today posted, you know, you've probably seen this by the time you're hearing this. They posted a couple of videos of it, of the Pixel 8 Pro and the Pixel 8, which notably the Pixel 8 should be quite a bit smaller than the Pixel 7 and Pixel 6. So if you like small phones. You have a good option, so you can actually see it now. We've got some comparisons there. They showed off the second watch, which looks a lot like the first watch. But it seems like that's what we're going to kind of get at the event. Google always leaking its stuff. We have, we have had the hardware specs. We've heard stuff about the software. They haven't said too much really about what these things do, but we can see them. We can see the camera bar. It's still there. They've, they've got lenses. It's not folding.

• 48:48Speaker 06

  It's nice to see Google making progress on the, the length of time between when it leaks its own product and its own event. Like, we're at one month to the event. That's pretty good. You know, a couple of years ago, it was like they would announce their phone in May and not, not launch it till October. And they're like, yeah, we got that Pixel 5 coming. We showed it to you.

• 49:10Alex Cranz?

  Got to get ahead of that iPhone hype train. Like Pixel fans, don't forget, it's coming. Here it is, the whole thing. Just wait a little longer.

• 49:19David Pierce?

  Richard, I'm just seeing this video you're talking about now for the first time. The Pixel 8 looks small.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like 6.1 ish inches is what we're talking about. So yeah, small phones are back and we're calling 6.1 inches small now.

• 49:32David Pierce?

  Which we have agreed on this show, that is the perfect size for a smartphone, as Allison Johnson will say to anyone who asks, that is the correct size of smartphone. So good job, Google. Yeah, that's coming October 4th. I assume we will get six or 700 more leaks. Before we let you go, Dan, run me through the two Bluetooth speakers that came out this week. The Sonos Move 2 and the Huawei Epic Boom.

• 49:57Speaker 06

  Technically, one of them's not really a Bluetooth speaker, but sure.

• 50:00David Pierce?

  That's true. Fair enough. Two needlessly expensive wireless speakers, both of which I want to buy anyway. So here we are.

• 50:08Speaker 06

  So I'll, I'll roll that back a little bit. The, the Sonos Move 2 does support Bluetooth, but it's primarily a Wi-Fi speaker. It's an update to Sonos' first portable speaker. It's got a battery built into it. It's basically if you took the Sonos Era 100 and stuck a battery on the bottom of it. The improvements over the Move 1 are stereo sound now because it's got multiple tweeters and double the battery life. It's also got a slightly different design on top with the way you adjust volume or skip tracks and it comes in green. And if you read the site, you knew all of this a month ago because Chris Welch leaked all of it and had gotten a huge scoop on it. So but now it's official. Now you can order it. It's 450 bucks, which means it's 50 bucks more expensive than last time.

• 50:50Speaker 06

  Ah, so how it goes. The one weird quirk is it does not support Google Assistant for voice commands because Sonos and Google, as we know and have discussed probably many times, don't get along anymore. So, voice control is only through Amazon's assistant and Sonos' own assistant, but you cannot use Google Assistant on it. I believe that's coming out later this month, so that's coming real soon. We'll have a review, all that fun stuff. And then, the other thing is a solar-powered Bluetooth speaker that you, in theory, never have to charge from the company that brought us solar-powered over-ear headphones. It's the same kind of concept. John Porter reported on it from IFA out in Berlin. It's pretty neat, because if I know anything about any Bluetooth speaker

• 51:33Speaker 06

  I've ever owned, they end in a drawer most of the time, and then they're always dead when I want to use it.

• 51:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that's the best part of them.

• 51:39David Pierce?

  This thing is not attractive.

• 51:41Alex Cranz?

  It looks like a coaster.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be a banger speaker. It's small.

• 51:46David Pierce?

  But I will say, a solar-powered Bluetooth speaker is actually like, kind of a perfect idea, because it's the sort of thing you use outside all the time. And so, in the way that most solar gadgets are like, you have to like, go out of your way to put them in the sun, this one actually kind of tracks. I'm very into this. The one other speaker, I would add, and this is just because I am permanently obsessed with this company, is UE Ultimate Ears just came out with a new speaker called the Epic Boom. It's like 350 bucks, it's too expensive, it's big, UE has kind of like, lost its mind with how large a Bluetooth speaker should be, but I continue to think they are the best series of speakers on the market for just like, regular-ass Bluetooth speakers. I have, I

• 52:29David Pierce?

  have a Wonder Boom, I have a Boom, I have a Mega Boom. They're wonderful, and so I am sure I will end up buying this.

• 52:35Speaker 06

  I just love how they, each one has to like, one-up the name. Like, they started with Boom, which is already like, a big, like, powerful name, and then they're like, whoa, where do we go from here? Ah, Mega Boom, now we're at Epic Boom. I assume the next step is Ultra Boom.

• 52:50David Pierce?

  And then Apple sues them out of existence for using the Ultra name. Yeah, no, I, just, everyone should buy UE speakers. This is, that's how I feel about, that's how I feel about all this. Alright, we should move on. It's time to talk about streaming. Dan, you can stay, or you can leave, and we will understand if it's time to go before Bob.

• 53:07Speaker 06

  I'm gonna let you guys have fun. Thank you for having me.

• 53:12David Pierce?

  Thanks, buddy.

• 53:14David Pierce?

  All right, Dan is gone. It's time for Bob talk.

• 53:18David Pierce?

  Alex, just set the scene here a little bit. We have a banger of a CNBC story this week. We have a lot of Bobs to talk about. Catch us up here.

• 53:28Alex Cranz?

  So a couple of years ago, Bob Iger, then CEO of Disney, said, I'm gonna leave. I'm retiring. I'm gonna stay on as executive chairman, but otherwise I'm gonna go. And I'm gonna name this new guy Bob Chapek, who's been running our parks and run like home video and seems to really know the company. He's gonna be running things. Bob Chapek came in. Immediately got like COVID happened. They had to shut down the parks, got into a huge fight with Ron DeSantis over whether or not people could say gay in Florida, like got in a fight with Scarlett Johansson about being paid appropriately for Black Widow because they moved that to have it release on Disney Plus at the same time as theaters.

• 54:11Alex Cranz?

  All of this stuff happened. Everybody's like, Chapek seems like kind of a clown. Why is he in charge? And then Bob Iger returned and said, hey, I'm here. Don't worry. I'm gonna fix everything. And it seems like he really had. And it was like, wow, what was this huge error in judgment? Who made the decision to put Chapek in charge? And aren't we all glad Iger is back? And it feels like this, what we found out from this CNBC story was it was the same person that did both of those things. Bob Iger. Good job, Bob.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just want to focus on like when he left. That was right at the time that we were all kind of reckoning with the idea that, oh, COVID's a thing. This is, this is happening. And like just at the very beginning of that, Bob Iger was like, I'm out.

• 54:54Alex Cranz?

  It's just like, was that that meme of the kid just like turning into ghost? Just peace. And he was gone.

• 55:03David Pierce?

  Well, and I remember even at the time, the story was basically Bob Iger is this like legendarily successful CEO. His run at Disney is up there with anyone's run at any company ever. He bought Pixar. He bought Marvel. He bought Lucasfilm. Disney was booming. Everything was going really great. And he basically saw the writing on the wall that was COVID and just, just peace out. But, but then what seems like happened is our man never actually left and just continued to be like sneaky shadow CEO.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, he sold the house and kept living in the attic.

• 55:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. He didn't even keep living in the attic. He kept living in the master bedroom. He was like, this is not your, your private bathroom. This is mine. But don't worry, you can have the run of the house. You've got everything, but you need to talk to me every day. And if you don't continue to kiss my ring, then I'm going to be really upset. And then eventually you're going to get kicked out. Like the, the story from, from Alex Sherman at CNBC is just incredible because it is full of like Emma, Emma for, for us, rounded up all the petty moments in it because there are so many petty moments. And what it all boils down to is if you are ever in a position where the CEO of the company comes to you and says, I'm going to promote you to be CEO, but I am going to be sticking around as executive chairman.

• 56:24Alex Cranz?

  And I'm not giving you my office, but it's totally okay. You are in charge. Do not believe them.

• 56:28David Pierce?

  Run. Yeah.

• 56:30Alex Cranz?

  Run. Don't take that as a bad job to take. And, and that's what happened. Like he took this job. Iger was micromanaging. He was in things. Chapek was by no means like a saint in all of this. He, he definitely screwed up quite frequently. He didn't know how to handle talent. But we found out like the Scarlett Johansson thing, we all thought it was Chapek just blundering through because he doesn't know how to handle talent. And it turns out he thought Iger was going to do it. And Iger was like, no, no, no, I'm not going to tell him I'm not going to do it, but I'm also not going to do anything. And, and then be like, why did you fail, Bob? What, what happened? It was just a lot of moments like that where he'd be like, I got you, I got you. And then leave Chapek out to dry. And you're like, oh, buddy, rough.

• 57:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, he really just kept showing up at every moment. There was like, anytime somebody was to sort of collect an award or like shake hands for doing a great job. Like there's Bob Iger on a pressed white shirt doing so. And anytime there was like actual running of the company to do, Iger was just nowhere to be found.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  No, I'm only here for the fun stuff.

• 57:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  He said, I'm, I'm the fun dad.

• 57:40Speaker 05

  Chapik is the dad who tells you that you can't go to spring break this year because of COVID. Sorry.

• 57:46David Pierce?

  I mean, and truly, some of this stuff is like, straight out of Succession. Like, the metaphor about not leaving the house is like, barely a metaphor, because one of the things in the story was that Iger kept his office with a private bathroom and made Chapik have a worse office. So like, this CEO's office was just Iger so that he could like, shower in the mornings.

• 58:09Alex Cranz?

  And he was like, you don't want this. You don't like, like, the story, they're like, yeah, and then he was like, you know, you don't need this office. This, don't worry, but this is for handling talent. You don't do that. Don't worry.

• 58:18David Pierce?

  Yeah. And then Iger is like, running around behind the scenes, like undermining Chapik to other executives. He didn't say his name at his goodbye party. It's like, all this stuff would be so, like, petty and ridiculous if it wasn't like, two of the most powerful people in entertainment just publicly beefing with each other inside of their own company. It's all so ridiculous.

• 58:39Alex Cranz?

  The part where he finally says, I'm leaving, as I'm gone. I've given you the reins, Chapik. I'm gonna go sit over here next to my friend Steven Spielberg. You're gonna sit at the opposite end of the table, and I am not gonna mention you once. When, like, just the, that's mean, man. That's like, cold. I absolutely respect it. Bob Iger now terrifies me completely, but like, oh, that was good. Poor Bob. I feel, poor Bob. You don't even know which Bob I'm talking about.

• 59:11David Pierce?

  No Bob looks good in this story. All the Bobs lose.

• 59:14Alex Cranz?

  What's funny is the same thing kind of happened. So when Michael Eisner, who was the CEO before Iger, and he originally came on and everybody was like, oh, wow, he's gonna change the whole thing. He was brought in by these guys, these investors in the 80s, and everybody was like, wow, he's gonna change Disney. And he did not change Disney. And then he was like, I'm gonna name my own successor, who's gonna happen to have the exact same first name as me, and I'm gonna do exactly what Bob Iger would end up doing. And everybody at the time was like, you cannot do that. You're dumb, and we all hate you. Please leave Michael Eisner as quickly as possible. And Bob got away with it, because Bob Iger is so much more charming. And everybody's like, he got us Marvel, he got us LucasArts.

• 59:59Alex Cranz?

  Do whatever you want, Bob. You want three more offices? We'll build them. That didn't happen in the story, but I assume that's happening somewhere right now.

• 1:00:06David Pierce?

  But now, he's back. He just signed another contract to be Disney's CEO through 2026. He has claimed he will have his actual successor, you know, solved by then. But I kind of feel like Bob Iger is like in the middle of just ruining his own reputation. Like, he truly went out like A-plus CEO, like Mount Rushmore of good entertainment business CEOs, Bob Iger. And I feel like now is just like speedrunning his own demise in a lot of ways.

• 1:00:39Alex Cranz?

  He's pulling, um, what was, there's the football player who just keeps going.

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  Well, I think the, the comparison is Jordan on the Wizards. And, and I think in a very, in a very specific way is that Jordan on the Wizards is not Jordan on the Bulls, for a lot of reasons. But Jordan on the Wizards is still like 25 and eight and like still an all-star level player. And Bob Iger is still Bob Iger doing his, his things. But it's just not like it was before. He, you, you, you're never going to go out on top with three-pointer at the end of the game to win the championship. It just does not happen again. Now you're the guy who's going to have to try and figure out a way to launch standalone ESPN and probably sell Disney's cable channels and dismantle the whole thing that you built. Congratulations.

• 1:01:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like retire, Bob. But just, just let it go. Let somebody else pick your successor. Because that, that was the other wild part of this is that he didn't actually know Bob Chapek very well. He, he, there was other people that they thought were, were going to be the next CEO, including the guy who was running Disney Plus. And everybody's like, oh yeah, it's going to be him. And so when he was announced, Bob Chapek, everybody's like, wait, the guy who runs parks? Like, that's who you're going with? And then even he was realizing, wait, who am I going with? Cause he like had Bob, he was like, okay, we're going to fly down to this big meeting, shareholder meeting. You're going to talk to a bunch of execs and stuff. It's going to be great. You've never done it before. The only time you've ever attended this event was at the invitation of someone else and you sat in the audience.

• 1:02:04Alex Cranz?

  You're now going to run the entire thing. Why do you want to go to the back and study and read everything when you can just sit here and talk to me and I will explain to you how to do it all? And he got really upset because Chapek was like, I'm gonna go study because Chapek is that kind of guy. And I think a lot of people would be in that situation. And Iger was like, but I am a font of wisdom. Why do you not listen to me? And then he, like, after Chapek went back to study, it was like walking around the plane being like, who is this guy? Like, doesn't he get it? And it's like, oh, you shouldn't be asking that question at this point in the game.

• 1:02:39Speaker 05

  He hired a nerd and then he was surprised that the nerd trusted the book instead of the person.

• 1:02:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 05

  Could have told you that was gonna happen, buddy.

• 1:02:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it was one of those things where it just feels like Iger's ego caught up.

• 1:02:55David Pierce?

  What's interesting about this is this is a really consistent story in the world. Like, the number of CEOs who have tried in various ways to detach and then have found themselves unable to go away. I mean, like, this is the story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who, like, want to go away and just, like, be weird billionaires, but then every time anything happens, they're like, we have to start coming to the office again. And like, Mark Zuckerberg was starting to detach from a lot of day to day running of Meta and then came way back in. It's really given me, like, great respect for Jeff Bezos, who just was like, Andy Jassy's in charge, I'm gonna go to music festivals. And it's just like, now he just goes to music festivals and has a yacht. Like, he's doing it right, and everybody else should probably learn from Bezos.

• 1:03:40Alex Cranz?

  I hope Tim Cook, like, because Tim Cook is coming up, we're increasingly talking about who's gonna be the next CEO of Apple. He's, he's starting to, like, make those noises. It's gonna happen in the next few years. And he just needs to read this story, like, four times in a row to make sure this doesn't happen to him. Because it's a similar situation of, this is one of the first CEOs coming into a company that has largely been, like, managed by people who came up with the company.

• 1:04:09Alex Cranz?

  That makes it really, really difficult. And so I'm just really, really curious to see how we see some of these tech CEO successions that are coming, that are on the horizon, happen after this just disastrous Disney one.

• 1:04:23David Pierce?

  Totally. So is there a, do we have a leader in the clubhouse for who would be insane enough to be the next Disney CEO? Like, part of me wants to say, no one in their right mind would be Bob Iger's next successor. Like, it's just a suicide mission. But then, like, whatever, Lindy Acarino took the job as CEO of Twitter. Like, people will take jobs.

• 1:04:43Alex Cranz?

  There's always someone hungry enough. Like, call me up. If somebody called me today and was like, do you want to be the next CEO of Disney? I'd be like, yeah, all right, let's go.

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  You get to go to the parks for free, right? I'm in.

• 1:04:52Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was like, I get to go to the parks for free. And do I get screeners? Done. Cheapest CEO they ever hired.

• 1:04:58David Pierce?

  That's how you know you're qualified. Screeners and park passes. That's the, that's the corporate perks Krantz is here for.

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  But that seems like that's how he picked Bob Chapek. He looked around and he, and he found a guy. He was like, you know what? I think you're desperate enough that you will not be independent. You will just do what I want to do. And he was wrong.

• 1:05:15Alex Cranz?

  Yep.

• 1:05:16Speaker 05

  And that was what made him unhappy.

• 1:05:17Alex Cranz?

  That was the best part of it. It's like, he really thought he was going to just get a yes man and not somebody who would actually go run the company and their image. And then the guy immediately went and was like, I'm going to turn, we're a tech company. We have an enormous streaming service. I'm turning us into a tech company. And everybody screamed and cried. Chapek, to his discredit, did also put his old friend in charge of all film and TV at the company, and the guy had zero experience in that space. So like, he was by no means a saint. He, he was definitely screwing up his fair share of things without Iger's intervention one way or the other.

• 1:05:53David Pierce?

  Yeah. But he was also just being, like, subtly knifed every time he did anything.

• 1:05:58Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like, every time he, like, that was probably why he put that guy in charge, is he felt he had no one to trust. He had no authority. He was like, I need some control. And so it just became this big power struggle.

• 1:06:09David Pierce?

  I need someone to sit with in the executive dining room.

• 1:06:12Alex Cranz?

  He needed friends at the Iger going away party who would talk to him, okay?

• 1:06:15David Pierce?

  Exactly.

• 1:06:16Alex Cranz?

  Because ScarJo wasn't going to.

• 1:06:19David Pierce?

  This is true. All right, we should just, we should blow through some more streaming news here real fast. Can we just pour one out really fast for Quibi again, which appears to be yet again dead? Roku did some layoffs and is getting rid of a bunch of its streaming content, which in all likelihood means Quibi shows.

• 1:06:39Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna miss the Gold Arms show.

• 1:06:40Speaker 05

  Maybe some of them, and not all of them. The Golden Arm probably headed for the chopping block. But there was a story by Variety today where they said that they had some sources or whatever, who said that the shows that are getting chopped are the ones that weren't bringing in, that like new subscribers weren't watching. So, stuff like the Kevin Hart Show might stick around, or other stuff that actually brought in, that brought in some new viewers, is the long tail stuff that's definitely going. So yeah, Quibi dies a thousand deaths.

• 1:07:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, you can't, you can't fully kill Quibi because Quibi was never fully alive. You know what I mean?

• 1:07:13Alex Cranz?

  But you can kill it repeatedly.

• 1:07:15David Pierce?

  You can, you can stab it over and over and over again. YouTube is doing some interesting stuff.

• 1:07:21Alex Cranz?

  The advertising stuff that YouTube is doing right now is interesting, because it sounds like they just rediscovered TV.

• 1:07:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, wait, walk us through this, because that was my read too. It's like, oh, YouTube is just going to be a television channel. But like, explain what's going on.

• 1:07:35Alex Cranz?

  YouTube is now experimenting with a longer block of advertising in the middle of the video you watch, rather than like, you know, 15 second ads half cutting up the video, or one big ad at the beginning. And if you will recall, if you are a person who still watches TV, or have seen TV on TikTok, that ads happen in the middle. And we have ad breaks, and that's when you go to the bathroom and get more water, and see how fast you can run. And YouTube, I guess, is doing that. I love it. It just cracks me up that YouTube was like, we did a whole bunch of research, and, and we like, we looked

• 1:08:15Alex Cranz?

  at the data, and apparently people like regular scheduled breaks for advertisements, rather than chaotic random moments for advertisements.

• 1:08:25David Pierce?

  Who would have thought?

• 1:08:27Alex Cranz?

  Who would have thought?

• 1:08:28Speaker 05

  Except for everyone who has ever watched TV. The other thing that they announced basically on the same day was that they are simplifying ad controls for creators, AKA they're taking away a bunch of the options that creators had for like placing where the ads would go in their videos, which does not seem to be the same thing as this, but seems very closely linked because it came at the exact same time and enables them to put the ads at regular intervals wherever they want and not let you, the person making the video, choose. So you're just gonna have to get used to it. You're gonna have to get used to that like 18 minute, uh, T, you know, TV show. Oh, I know when the ad is coming up. I know when the plot point in my, uh, three camera drama is coming up because the advert, the ad is about to come in.

• 1:09:05Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be right now, it's gonna be like in a Mr. Beast video, right before the big reveal. It's gonna be, hold up.

• 1:09:12Alex Cranz?

  Do you take nutria? Or whatever? Like, just right there, just, what? And it's gonna be, and I think, honestly, I think that's great. Like, it's super annoying when you're watching a show on YouTube or on a lot of the streaming services who are doing the exact same ad presentation that YouTube does, where it's just like suddenly in the middle, like somebody would be like, I don't love, hey, guys, do you need this? And you're like, what the hell are you, like, pick your moments. And TV was really good at picking those moments, even for stuff that wasn't built for TV. They were still good at being like, okay, we're gonna cut it, we're gonna take it at the right ad break, right moment. And it's like, yeah, every, you should all be doing that. Like, just tell me where I need to put the ad break in my YouTube video when I upload it. I'll tell you where I want it.

• 1:09:56Alex Cranz?

  You put 40 minutes of ads in there, you make money, I make money, and the audience gets a nice bathroom break.

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  When, when I press play, I know when I'm going to be able to get up and, and do something else for a second.

• 1:10:08Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I, I think that's like, for, for users, it's really good. You know, you still have to watch ads, that sucks. But like, for the users, it's, I think it's a much nicer experience. And I hope that the other streamers who are all experimenting, like Netflix, come on, man, you gotta, you gotta get on this ad train and not just deliver them at the most random moments possible because it's miserable. But it's gonna require work. And I think it's like, that's something that they typically shy away from, right? Like, they wanna avoid that labor. That's, that's why they're there and not on TV and film. And so... That additional work, it's gonna be interesting to see who does that and how they do it and how expensive it actually is.

• 1:10:46David Pierce?

  Yeah, I do wonder, like, we talk a lot about how these sort of platform incentives change the way that content gets made. I suspect this is gonna do that, too. Like, I think, Richard, what you were saying earlier is like absolutely going to be correct. That now if there's one big mid-roll ad or one set of mid-roll ads, what you as the creator have to do now is set it up so spectacularly well that I have no choice but to stick around through five minutes of ads in order to get to the second half of the video. Because that's how you get paid, that's how YouTube gets paid, that's how you juice the algorithm. Like, the cliffhanger stuff we're gonna start to see from people just to get you through the ad break

• 1:11:29David Pierce?

  is gonna be so, so, so intense. And it really is, it's very like 1990s sitcom and Action Network TV show. Like, there's just gonna be something bonkers that happens after eight minutes. And then like, somebody's gonna be like, "You're his father?" And then it's gonna be like, breaks.

• 1:11:51Alex Cranz?

  Oh, with that like soap opera, duh, duh, duh.

• 1:11:52David Pierce?

  Like, literally, like, that's, I think that's coming.

• 1:11:55Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:11:55David Pierce?

  Because it's, it's gonna be so hard to get people through that. But that's where all the money is gonna be, is in that middle ad break. Whereas now, there's the, you know, the, the pre-roll stuff gets you some of the way and the mid-roll stuff happens at these dynamic places. And so you can, 15 seconds at a time, it's a little easier to get people through. But it's like a five-minute ad break or a two-minute ad break or even like a 90-second ad break in the middle of a YouTube video is just an invitation to stop watching that YouTube video. And so I think what folks try to do to get you through that is just gonna be weird and fascinating.

• 1:12:28Alex Cranz?

  I think it's gonna be also interesting for those of us who like, you sit in bed and you're watching YouTube, wind it down at night, even though you should not be doing that, that's a terrible way to wind down. But you're still doing it and you're like, "Oh, I gotta go to like, go grab some more water or something. I gotta go to, like, I need to go do a, a little errand right before I go to sleep." And now you'll be like, "Oh, ad break?" Fling your iPad across the, the bed, rush up and get your water, do your, like, brush your teeth. Get it all done. And then you're back and you can finish watching your video. That sounds great. And you find out who is the father, hopefully.

• 1:12:58David Pierce?

  Every YouTube channel just becomes about who is the father.

• 1:13:02Alex Cranz?

  It's just Maury Povich. It's just Maury Povich.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  And I think that's the other part of it is not only do they need to have kind of the cliffhanger, but they also have to have the part leading up. Like they have to have a video that you don't want to just skip through. Like you have to watch the first, you have to want to watch the first five minutes or however many until the break. And then, and then stick around. And that's just going to be kind of a very different construction.

• 1:13:23Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I wonder if that like, that kind of style of YouTube videos now where it's constantly going, constantly pushing, because it has to get you through all those tiny little 15 second ad breaks. If that's gonna soften, because that pace is so frenetic. And you're seeing like a whole generation of people coming up. And that's the pacing they're used to, to the point where they're like, people talk too slow and stuff like that. And I wonder if we're gonna, if that's gonna stop. If instead like 40 years from now, we're gonna be like, man, generation alpha talks so fast. What's up with that? Well, back in the day, they had 15 second ad breaks every two minutes.

• 1:13:57David Pierce?

  Yeah, and they're all watching videos at like 1.5x speed. So they just learn that that's how people talk.

• 1:14:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, and everybody else is gonna be like normal. And these guys are gonna be like, this is normal, right? We're fine. That's my generation alpha voice.

• 1:14:08David Pierce?

  That was really good. And they're all holding a screen, apparently, which I liked.

• 1:14:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, apparently. Well, because the headsets didn't take off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Tim.

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  Another part of what's changing is the way that these controls happen. And when you have these dynamically inserted ads, like the people who direct these videos, who are used to laying out the different pacing and where the things go. Now they don't necessarily have as much control over where the ads pop up. So they're handing over control over to YouTube. Maybe depending on the length, maybe depending on what ads YouTube has sold. And they're gonna have to edit and direct these videos and then hope that YouTube picks the right points, that everything works out properly.

• 1:14:45Alex Cranz?

  So they're gonna do like the cliffhanger. And then they might get the cliffhanger spoiled and then cut to ad break. Because it was like two seconds too long. And the algorithm was like, no, no, no, no, it's gotta go here. Ooh, that's brutal. That's brutal. Never, that's, that's gonna make it rough. That's, that's bad. YouTube, don't do that. Yeah, I feel like that's a big tweak. Like, just tell people where their ad breaks are gonna go. Let them insert them.

• 1:15:11David Pierce?

  Or let people choose, right? You can, you can build your own structure if you have three or four ads and you can choose where they go, as opposed to just saying, right in the middle, there's going to be a large ad break, build your whole thing around that. So it's like, you only have sort of one shape of thing you're allowed to make at that point. I do wonder if this is gonna make people come up with lots of different new ways of making money. I think a lot of these folks have, I mean, everybody still does the branded videos and they'll have the one chapter in their video that's just where they talk about how cool their sponsor is. It's particularly big on tech YouTube, has been my experience at least, where they're like, this video is brought to you by Skillshare, because it's always Skillshare. And then they go back to telling you about, you know, whatever weird stuff they brought on Timu this week.

• 1:15:53David Pierce?

  But maybe like, this is how product placement comes in, in an even bigger way. Maybe there are other kinds of like, built-in ad formats that people are gonna start to use. It's gonna be really interesting to see how this goes. Also, this continues to make me glad that I pay for YouTube Premium, because ads are a nightmare, and YouTube ads are a particularly pernicious nightmare.

• 1:16:15Alex Cranz?

  I didn't know I paid for YouTube Premium for years, because I paid through it through the weirdest of things, Google Music. Like, I was a Google Music subscriber.

• 1:16:25Speaker 05

  There are dozens of us.

• 1:16:26Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, there was, it's just me and Richard. Just hanging out, sharing the same two songs over and over again.

• 1:16:32Speaker 05

  We have comments now.

• 1:16:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. I thought they closed Google Music.

• 1:16:35Speaker 05

  Oh, well, on YouTube Music.

• 1:16:37Alex Cranz?

  Okay. Yeah, I didn't, I couldn't stand the switch. So when it switched over to YouTube Music, I was like, I'm done, it's Google Music or nothing. And I canceled it. And then I was like, where did all these ads come from on YouTube? For like, a full week. I was like, something's going on with the algorithm. I'm seeing a lot more ads. No, I'm just dumb.

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  Every time I open a YouTube video in the wrong window, I'm like, what advertisements? When did they put these on YouTube? It's crazy.

• 1:17:00David Pierce?

  I swear YouTube Premium gets like, a dollar more expensive every two weeks, and I, I don't know what the number is when I'll stop paying it, but I'm still paying it now.

• 1:17:08Alex Cranz?

  I don't want you to find that number.

• 1:17:10David Pierce?

  I don't either. Yeah, YouTube, please stop. I don't, I'm good. I pay you enough money. We're, we're cool. All right, we gotta take one more break, and then we're getting back. We're gonna do a lightning round. We're already long. We're gonna come back, we're gonna do lightning rounds, and then we'll get out of here. We'll be right back.

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• 1:18:32David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. You guys, we have to do this lightning round really fast because I have to go do daycare pickup. That's just a real thing. And if I'm late, they charge me money. It's very intense.

• 1:18:41Alex Cranz?

  We don't want that.

• 1:18:42David Pierce?

  No, so we're just going to blast through this and get out of here. Kranz, your lightning round choice happens to be a perfect transition from what we were just talking about. So you go first.

• 1:18:49Alex Cranz?

  Yes, favorite thing. I'm talking about Mr. Beast all the time now because my godsons are both really, really into him and I have very strong conflicted feelings about that. And spend a lot of time telling his mom, sending her like hit pieces about Mr. Beast saying, don't do it. But anyway, Mr. Beast has a new YouTube face because he started doing A B testing for the thumbnails and found that more people finished the video when he closed his mouth in the thumbnail. And I guess that's how statistics work. That's how he is.

• 1:19:18David Pierce?

  Yeah, like I was just going to say, is this science?

• 1:19:20Alex Cranz?

  This is one of those things where normally you would be like, that sounds like a bad reason to do that. That is probably not the actual factor. But notable here is Mr. Beast is really, really, really, really, really good at juicing the YouTube algorithm. That is why he is like the most popular YouTuber. He knows how to bake that thing tick. So he is probably like, he probably is on to something and we're probably going to see a lot less. Just wide mouth open on YouTube and I for one am thrilled.

• 1:19:49David Pierce?

  So wait.

• 1:19:49Alex Cranz?

  So Mr. Beast, whatever you think about him, great job.

• 1:19:52Speaker 05

  I have definitely seen the inside of enough people's mouths in YouTube thumbnails.

• 1:19:55Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you don't need the tonsils, like, just no, I don't need it.

• 1:19:58David Pierce?

  Yeah, because there is, I mean, everybody knows what you mean by YouTube face, right? Like, I can close my eyes and see it. It's the person in that sort of like half smile, half scream face all the time.

• 1:20:09Alex Cranz?

  You'll see us on the Vergecast sometimes, like when they do our thumbnails, you'll even see, I'm doing it right now, you're gonna see it if you watch it on YouTube.

• 1:20:15David Pierce?

  It's either that or the furrowed brow where you're kind of like, hmm, what is this? That's the other YouTube face.

• 1:20:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they're great, so I hope we move slowly away from that. Maybe we don't need extreme distorted faces to sell a YouTube video. That's my, that's my hope.

• 1:20:31David Pierce?

  I am forever fascinated by the like art and science of YouTube thumbnails. Like, in terms of things that directly correlate to how much money you make, YouTube thumbnails are about as direct as it gets on the internet. And the things people do to build good thumbnails and make them work is just bananas.

• 1:20:50Alex Cranz?

  And they're so horrifying.

• 1:20:51David Pierce?

  And you are right that like no one is better at solving this system than Mr. Beast. So I'm more inclined to believe him than most, I guess.

• 1:20:58Alex Cranz?

  And he seems very happy about it. He's, he's so happy that like he's gonna have to brush his teeth more, but he's not gonna have to show you his tonsils.

• 1:21:06David Pierce?

  Right, he's happy in like a closed mouth way, not an open mouthed way, yeah.

• 1:21:10Alex Cranz?

  It's like back row smile.

• 1:21:11David Pierce?

  Exactly, I'll go next, and then Richard, you can go. My lightning round thing, do you guys remember the app Clubhouse?

• 1:21:17Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:21:18David Pierce?

  Did you know before this week that Clubhouse was still in business? Be honest.

• 1:21:22Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because periodically I check on it just to be like, you still around? Because I just want to know, I have like, it can't still be around. And so periodically, like three weeks ago, I was like, Clubhouse, oh yeah, it's still there.

• 1:21:34David Pierce?

  Just like, what are the crypto bros talking about today?

• 1:21:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm on Clubhouse every day selling my NFTs, never stopped, never, never left, never gave up on Clubhouse.

• 1:21:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, Richard's Clubhouse room is bumpy, y'all.

• 1:21:46David Pierce?

  It's just, oh god, I have, I have a whole music design for your Clubhouse room. Richard, we got big plans. It's gonna be amazing. So anyway, so Clubhouse just did a huge pivot and redesign. Completely changed the app instead of being the kind of public streaming audio room, I guess is how I would describe it. It was like, what if Twitch but audio, sort of?

• 1:22:08Alex Cranz?

  That feels right. And no games, nothing to watch.

• 1:22:11David Pierce?

  And all it was is people yelling about their NFTs. And that was the best case scenario. Anyway, now Clubhouse is all in on voice messaging. And so they've like built a bunch of tools where you can one to one or in groups, just send voice messages to your friends. And I happen to think like in the abstract, this is a very good idea. Uh, I've been like banging the drum that voice messaging is a good idea for a long time and history is proving me right and I feel very vindicated about it. But I kind of think it's too late for Clubhouse. I sort of hope I'm wrong because I think like the arc of that company would be fascinating if it figured it out and came back. But I just think like kudos to Clubhouse for being like, okay, we, we built an audio app that everybody was into for

• 1:22:54David Pierce?

  three days when they had to be inside and then instantly forgot about when they were allowed to go outdoors again. And we're gonna find a new thing to do with it that actually feels kind of honest and on brand with what we want to be about. And the app is actually really nice. Again, I don't know anyone who uses it. None of my friends are there to listen to my voice messages.

• 1:23:11Alex Cranz?

  Is it?

• 1:23:12David Pierce?

  But it's like as, just as a pure piece of like product design, it's really nice. They did a good job.

• 1:23:17Alex Cranz?

  It looks nice.

• 1:23:18David Pierce?

  I will say, I don't like that you hit the record button and then as soon as you stop, it sends the message. No, no.

• 1:23:24Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 1:23:24David Pierce?

  No, no. Anyone who's ever edited this podcast can tell you that that's not how I roll.

• 1:23:30Speaker 05

  The redesigned app, I think, is perfect for a post-apocalyptic video game where you're experiencing the story through audio logs that people left. And they were all chatting in Clubhouse, leaving messages for each other. Otherwise, I don't think, uh, I'm gonna use a specific app for this. It's gonna be a feature that Facebook or whoever is gonna steal. And it's gonna be built into their apps, just like they steal everything else. Uh, so congratulations, Clubhouse, but I don't think it's gonna do it.

• 1:23:53David Pierce?

  Have you ever heard of the app Run Zombies?

• 1:23:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:23:55Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:23:56David Pierce?

  So.

• 1:23:57Alex Cranz?

  I tried it once.

• 1:23:57David Pierce?

  Run Zombies was the most committed I have ever been to a fitness app because basically the idea is you're a runner who is trying to keep people alive and they're zombies. And when you run it, it just like tells you an audio story and you hear messages from other people. And you're running and then it says zombies and then you run faster. It sounds ridiculous, but like it actually kind of works. And Richard, it is precisely what you just described. Like Clubhouse is just what's happening in your brain in Run Zombies.

• 1:24:25Alex Cranz?

  Only hopefully less depressing. Run Zombies was too depressing for me. I was like, I don't want to run anymore.

• 1:24:29David Pierce?

  Well, if you're not running from zombies, what's the? So you were just like, just let the zombies take me. I don't care anymore.

• 1:24:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was like, it's okay. It's there's what's left in the world. Why should I jog? Jogging is horrible.

• 1:24:41David Pierce?

  Death first.

• 1:24:42Alex Cranz?

  Death first.

• 1:24:43David Pierce?

  I actually, I feel that. All right, Richard, what's yours?

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  Bunch of Chrome news this week. Uh, like we're at like 15 years of Chrome. So, so really good timing for them to change some things. They said they're going to be changing up the look a little bit. So pretty soon, as always with Google, you never really know when things are going to hit. They're going to roll out to some people and sooner some people later. But we'll see some.

• 1:25:02David Pierce?

  They're rounding the corners. Google's rounding all the corners now.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  The corners are getting bumped. They're going to be rounder. The color palettes will be kind of more like you've seen on Android. Like if you have seen Android in the last couple of years, you've seen what Chrome will look like.

• 1:25:16David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 1:25:16Speaker 05

  With this material.

• 1:25:17David Pierce?

  It looks nice. The Material U stuff is nice. I'm into it.

• 1:25:20Speaker 05

  I, I like it. I think it'll be good across different devices. They also have, uh, said the privacy sandbox that's supposed to replace third party cookies has reached a milestone. It is now generally available. You've probably gotten the pop up that says, hey, we're doing some privacy stuff. And then you clicked the button to make it go away and didn't think about it. If that creeps you out, some people have said that they feel like it's spyware in the browser. Is it more private? Is it more control? Depends on who you ask, but we have some instructions on how to disable it if you want to opt out of it, the new targeted ad tracking. Barbara Krasnoff has the instructions for you to go ahead and turn that off.

• 1:25:52David Pierce?

  That pop-up made a lot of people feel a lot of feelings. And it's a weird one, right? I'm genuinely torn on this because like I've reached a point with all kind of browser data of just total nihilism, that it's like, I'm in Chrome, Google already knows what I'm doing in Chrome. That's not complicated. And you know, who else knows what I'm doing in my browser is the millions of data brokers who are just collecting and buying and selling data about everything I do in the browser anyway. And in a lot of ways, what Chrome is doing and what Google is doing with this privacy sandbox stuff is designed to combat some of that. And it combats it by saying, no one is allowed to have this data except for Google, which is like, not great. That's not the solution you would hope for.

• 1:26:36David Pierce?

  But is that better than other solutions? Like instead of everybody and Google, it's just Google? Like, yeah, it kind of is better.

• 1:26:42Alex Cranz?

  It is a solution.

• 1:26:43David Pierce?

  Yeah. So, I don't know, I'm so torn, but it is very funny watching Google be like, this is a privacy preserving thing. And everybody's like, no, it's not. This is just letting you have data that you can give to advertisers, just like all the other data you have to give to advertisers.

• 1:26:57Alex Cranz?

  Just trust them. It's Google. They're not supposed to be evil.

• 1:26:59Speaker 05

  This won't come up in an antitrust lawsuit in five years about how they lied to you.

• 1:27:04Alex Cranz?

  Ten, ten years.

• 1:27:05David Pierce?

  Or next week. Definitely not gonna happen. None of that. But yeah, the new Chrome looks nice. Happy about that. That's enough Vergecast for one day. Go turn off all your privacy settings. Just let chaos rain. Let everybody have all your data. Don't even worry about it.

• 1:27:22Speaker 05

  What if there was a targeted ad that you really needed to see? Think about it.

• 1:27:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah.

• 1:27:27Alex Cranz?

  That's why I have this little like fun key S. I got this little Game Boy, because from a targeted ad. I was like, it was on TikTok. I was like, yeah, that looks stupid.

• 1:27:36David Pierce?

  That is somebody who successfully understands Alex Krantz.

• 1:27:38Alex Cranz?

  They understood me and I went and I spent $50 and now I have a Game Boy SP that is the size of a thumbnail. And I don't know what I'm gonna play on it, but I can play siphon filter if I really wanted to.

• 1:27:49David Pierce?

  It's amazing. All right. We are very long. We should get out of here. This is the beginning of lots of stuff. We have Apple next week. We're going to have a special Apple show with all the folks who are going to be there live next week. US versus Google starts next week. That's going to be fascinating. We have a bunch of DMA stuff in Europe that we didn't really talk about. We're going to get back to that in much deeper ways over the next couple of weeks. Microsoft is coming. Amazon is coming. Google is coming. Code Conference is coming. We have all kinds of stuff going on.

• 1:28:17Alex Cranz?

  Meta Connect is coming.

• 1:28:18David Pierce?

  Meta Connect is coming. We're going to learn about the Quest 3. There's an OpenAI developer event, ChatGPT? Yeah. That's not till November, Richard. I can't think about November yet. That's

• 1:28:28Alex Cranz?

  Richard, Richard!

• 1:28:30David Pierce?

  It's football season is starting. Sunday Ticket is here, which I get to talk about now because it's on YouTube. So technology, that's great news. Tons going on. We're starting an AI series on Monday on The Vergecast. We're doing a bunch of really fun stuff about AI music and AI voices and virtual assistants. We got all kinds of really fun stuff coming up. It's going to be a very busy next few months on The Vergecast. It's all going to be awesome. Our whole crew, I think, including Neelai, will be back next Friday. We will shame Neelai ruthlessly for not being here. We hope you help us do that. Until then, thank you both. Thank you all. This is The Vergecast. Rock and roll.

• 1:29:12Speaker 07

  And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Moreno. Our editorial director is Brooke Minter. That's it. We'll see you next week.

• 1:29:44Speaker 08

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• 1:30:15Speaker 09

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