Apple announces new iMacs, AirTags, and iPad Pro / Congress is diving into the App Store fight

Vergecast hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss all the product announcements from Apple's Spring Loaded event this week with Verge news editor Chaim Gartenberg. Verge politics reporter Makena Kelly details what happened at Wednesday's congressional hearing focusing on competition in Apple's App Store. Further reading: What we’re learning from the rare cases of COVID-19 in vaccinated people Alexa can now tell you where to find a COVID-19 vaccine Doctors are testing a prescription video game for COVID-19 ‘brain fog’ Wisconsin amends Foxconn’s contract to reflect radically smaller project Apple’s Spring Loaded event: the 8 biggest announcements Apple Podcasts launches in-app subscriptions Can Apple get you to pay for podcasts? Apple AirTag hands-on Apple’s AirTags don’t have a built-in keychain loop, and we have some thoughts Apple announces new Apple TV 4K Apple unveils an improved remote for its Apple TV Yes, older Apple TVs can also be calibrated with your iPhone Apple announces thinner iMac with M1 chip and bright colors New Touch ID Magic Keyboards work with all M1 Macs, not just the iMac Apple launches new iPad Pro with M1 processor How the M1-powered iPad Pro compares to other iPad models Any video conferencing app can use the iPad Pro’s fancy zoom and pan camera Big iPad, Mini LED: why Apple’s new iPad Pro display is better and brighter Put macOS on the iPad, you cowards Congress is diving into the App Store fight Lina Kahn on Amazon’s antitrust paradox Apple’s $64 billion-a-year app store isn’t catching the most egregious scams Sen. Tammy Duckworth on hate crimes, racism, and environmental justice Asian Activists are tracking the surge in hate crimes as police reporting falls short Inside the glass fibers connecting our wireless world Subscribe to The Hill Report newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, Heim Gartenberg joins us to talk about Apple's big event, including M1 IMAX and M1 iPad Pro. Kelly McKenna joins us to talk about Apple's hearing in Congress about App Store issues, and of course, we talk about USBC. Coming up on the Vergecast now.

• 0:16Speaker 01

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

• 1:01Speaker 01

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

• 1:49Nilay Patel?

  Hello, and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship. Podcast of the M1 processor, which is actually a system ownership. Please don't tweet at me. I'm Neelai. I'm your friend. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  I have no jokes because I'm just thinking about the fact that the M1 processor could just go in anything now.

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  Literally anything.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Including the search cast.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  It's in my, uh, my little Zoom handy recorder. It's a very powerful, uh, recorder. We have a packed show. There was an Apple event this week. Heim Gartenberg is going to join us and go through all of the things Apple announced. Apple was in front of Congress this week talking about the App Store. Makena Kelly is going to join us, talk about what would happen at a hearing, what we learned, what happens next. Just a lot going on, a lot of it focused on Apple. But I want to start where we always start, which is COVID, still the biggest story in the world. I looked it up this week. It's in six weeks since President Joe Biden promised a website where people could find a vaccine.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  And when's the deadline?

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  The deadline is May 1. Also, the website is already up. It's just a vaccine finder.org. You can just like go to it today. So it's technically here, but it's supposed to launch in some spectacular fashion on May 1, which is deadline we're still holding them to. That said, every adult in America is now eligible for the vaccine. That was a big goal of the administration. That is true. If you haven't scheduled up your shots and you're eligible, go do it. There's not, there shouldn't be a question here. Just go do it. Get it done. I'm tired of this. Vaccine news from our science desk, which has been doing a great job of covering this. There are some now rare cases of people with, who have gotten the shots, getting COVID-19. Those are called breakthrough infections. We are learning a lot about vaccine efficacy and COVID from those. That's a great story.

• 3:24Nilay Patel?

  People who have COVID have, they feel foggy. As I've heard this from people who've had it. There's now a prescription video game in testing to work on that issue, which I think is, prescription video games are one of those things that we've covered for a long time. And like many things with COVID, they're, it's this thing that's been simmering on the back burner that is like finding a use in the pandemic, which is interesting. And Alexa can now tell you where to find a vaccine, which is, of course, I mean, of course. Yeah. You know, we haven't heard about in a long time is uh, iOS and Android exposure tracking.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's just kind of went nowhere, didn't it?

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  It just kind of went nowhere. But if you can get a shot, please go get one on May 1. I'm sure, I'm sure there'll be some spectacular, the entire web will explode in the celebration of a new website. Remember that used to happen? We'll see, but if you can get a shot, please go get one. I want to call it one thing before we dive into Apple, which is personally important to me. Oh, I know what you're gonna do. Wisconsin officially amended Foxconn's contract because Foxconn officially admitted that it's not building an LCD factory. It's not doing anything. It went from, it went from like $2 billion to like 85 million, right? Yeah. So the, no, the total, it depends on how you count. So, okay. So the $4 billion was like the state incentives and the like the Village of Mount Pleasant incentives.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  Right. Where the factory is. So the state incentives went from 2.85 billion to 80 million. The number of employees went from 14,000 or 13,000 to 1,400. And they still haven't announced what they're gonna build. I will say there's a new piece of Foxconn jargon for us to know. Okay. So if you remember, it went from AI 8K plus 5G. Yes. Which we still don't know what that, that is. But now it's a three plus three corporate matrix strategy that will allow them to, yup. When Josh is writing the story, he's like, they just threw this out there. Like, we still don't know. It's just like another, the three plus three corporate, corporate vision.

• 5:26Nilay Patel?

  Apple only needed four quadrants for its product strategy. Why does Foxconn need nine? Or is it six? Is it three plus three or three times three? It's three plus three. Okay, got it. Which, by the way, most people would write six. I don't know, man. I think we might be done with it. Like, it has come to its logical conclusion, which is everyone admitted they're not building an LCD factory. I'm going home next week. I'm going to visit my parents, which is like in striking distance of this dome. I am so excited to go take a picture of this dome. Please go to the dome. I can't wait. Honestly, my parents are great, but the dome is like really why I'm flying back to Wisconsin. All right, let's take a quick break and then we're gonna talk about all things Apple.

• 6:10Speaker 03

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• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  We're back. I'm Gartenberg is here. Hey, I'm.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 6:38Nilay Patel?

  So, big Apple event. I'm, you made your debut on a Verge Apple Live blog.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  How was it for you?

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Very fun. Definitely, definitely the best way to, to watch an Apple event is by.

• 6:48Nilay Patel?

  Did you remember anything about the event after you were done live blogging?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  It was mostly just like a blackout experience, just like words, words, and then, oh, there were, there were things.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  I was told that I mentioned the bit about, uh, Apple finally talking about how much RAM is in the iPad, like two or three times. Cause I was just so flabbergasted. I just kept putting in the live blog.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  A shocked fugue state.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  It has 16 gigabytes of RAM.

• 7:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. If you're listening and you haven't heard of Cybys before, if you, very few people ever had the experience of live blogging at Apple event. If you do it, you realize when you're done, even though you have transcribed and reacted to virtually the entire event, at the end of it, you have no idea what happened and you have to go back and watch again, which is, uh, it's time. It's good, it's good to see that Dieter and I aren't just getting older.

• 7:35Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, lots, lots of stuff at this event. Surprises. They did a lot more than we anticipated. Did you, you wanna, wanna walk us through some of this, some of the stuff?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  So it kicked off with stuff that I think only one of, one of these three things had, uh, leaked. So one surprise was, uh, Tim Cook said that for the Apple card, they're gonna do a thing where partners that are on the card will get equal, you know, benefits to their credit rating, which is different from the way the rest of the credit card industry does it. And it's different from the way that the Apple card originally did it. And Apple kinda got like in trouble with that. And there's also some family stuff with the Apple card. There's like a better family option for it. If you wanna give cards to your teenagers. So we didn't see that coming. And then it was a new version of Apple podcasts with in-app podcast subscriptions, which I think we wanna talk about quite a bit, but just to get it out of the way before we do that,

• 8:27Speaker 02

  they also announced a purple iPhone. Uh, you can get the iPhone 12 or the iPhone 12 mini in purple. It's purple.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I don't know what else to tell you.

• 8:35Nilay Patel?

  They announced a lot of things in like seven minutes.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was all, that's all like just Tim Cook walking around Apple Park. Through like the, the beautiful gardens that they've got there, just like in his, I think it was black. Maybe it was a very dark blue T-shirt, not, not a, you know, untucked button down, very casual showing his guns.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're just like, yeah, here's some stuff and we're like, what?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Here's a new iPhone, just like casually.

• 9:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  It was the fastest iPhone announcement in the history of iPhones. It was like 45 seconds and there was a new iPhone, new color, but yeah.

• 9:08Nilay Patel?

  And Dieter, you have it. It appears to be beautiful.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  It is, it is beautiful. Yep. It's a very nice purple. Like it really is.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  The Apple card thing is interesting because, you know, the, there was a lot of controversy around, uh, credit ratings and married people. David Handmeyer Hansen like kicked off an entire wave of controversy, uh, because I believe his wife couldn't get a card and they're like married. And so Apple made it seem like this was their idea, but like very clearly they like rolled into this controversy from the, from the initial launch of the card.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  I mean, this was always inevitable as soon as Apple started running a credit card company. Like what did they expect?

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's just so funny. Apple makes a credit card with Goldman Sachs.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  When I think about improving my credit rating, I, I think of Apple.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Honestly.

• 9:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Purple iPhones in my credit rating. One thing that is unclear and we are investigating is, uh, Apple doesn't actually publish a credit rating. Credit agencies do.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  So the credit agencies have to be part of the scheme. And as far as I can tell, they have so far said nothing. So we are not a financial services website.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yet.

• 10:11Nilay Patel?

  We, we, it's like, I'm actually working on a deal with Goldman Sachs right now.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Apple got into credit cards. Now we have to, that's just how it works.

• 10:19Nilay Patel?

  Card is coming. Uh, it's going to be very heavy, uh, because that is what people want. Anyway, that's credit card thing. But I would just say there's, there's a little bit of a question mark on the back end of the credit card thing.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  The podcast thing is a big, big deal. Ashley Carmen wrote a great piece about that today with a lot of quotes from podcast industry executives, podcasters who have paid podcasts already.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  This is one, later on in the show, we're going to talk to McKenna about. The hearing around the App Store and fees, Spotify was part of the hearing. This is one where the problem is so evident on its face with paid podcasts. Right? So you, they redesigned the podcast app. And now, indeed, if you are a podcaster and you want people to pay you for your podcast, you can just sign up for that service now. It's 20 bucks a year or something.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  20 bucks a year and then the Apple takes the 30% cut the first year. And then they'll drop it to 15 the second year, just like all of their other subscription things, unless you have a secret cable backroom deal like sometimes happens.

• 11:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So the Amazon podcasts will get the backroom deal. But, okay, so 20 bucks a year, you got to upload into Apple. It's not based on RSS or anything.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  That's the thing. It only works in Apple Podcasts. There's no like secret RSS feed that you can like have a password for to use it in your preferred RSS app. And actually, it was really great that Ashley talked about this a bunch. It doesn't work on Android because it only works on Apple Podcasts. And that's fascinating because while Apple's got plenty of good market share here in the US, it has got like worldwide, it's still Bupkis. It's still in the, you know, mid 80s or mid 15s compared to Android's mid 80s. Right?

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's fascinating. It's one of the few Apple content services that is not cross-platform. Apple Music, cross-platform, Apple TV everywhere. Like if a TV exists in the world, there's a team trying to get the Apple TV app on it. AirPlay 2 is on all those TVs. So you can see there will be pressure there. But when I say it's the problem is on its face, okay, you can pay Apple to be a part of the service. You can put the thing there. You get the easy button, already connected to your Apple account, credit card, all that stuff. You have 30% to Apple. What if you want to target Spotify customers, right? And there are people are already paying Spotify for Spotify Premium and that you want your paid podcasts you marketed.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:27Nilay Patel?

  And you want to push the button in Spotify.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Instead of Apple.

• 12:30Nilay Patel?

  Instead of Apple.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Guess who definitely still gets a 30% cut on your iPhone? Is Apple, because Spotify has to pay Apple an in-app purchase fee on everything that happens in its app.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Oh, inside its app, right. Yeah, there's no way to sign up for it.

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  So if Spotify wants to do paid podcasts like this, it still has to pay Apple.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:48Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you've got, and that's like, what is Apple providing anyone in that scenario? Nothing, right? It's just, it's literally a tax for just being on the phone.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  My big question is, will Spotify be allowed to tell customers that if they want to sign up for the paid podcast, they can go to the website and do it? Because right now, they are not allowed to say, if you want to sign up for the service, go to our website in the app. Apple doesn't allow you to admit that there's other ways to pay for things outside of the iPhone. That's part of the App Store rules. So will people be allowed to admit that there's other ways to pay for podcasts outside of Apple Podcasts?

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Well, it might be like a Kindle situation. Does that count as content or a subscription? Because there's different rules for content and subscriptions and deals. Like, you can buy a Kindle book and on like Amazon's website and read it on your phone, and Apple doesn't take a cut of that.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  I think the way that it's going to work is when you, when you click to buy a Kindle book, it like cycles to the Amazon app and then it cycles to the web browser. I think with podcasts, it's just going to cycle between Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web browser, then to Pocket Casts, and then back to Apple Podcasts, just over and over and over again until your phone explodes. That's what happens.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  The other part of this, and again, this is all in Ashley's speech, which I highly recommend you read if you're interested in this. If you pay a podcaster an Apple Podcasts, they don't get your email address, they don't get your data, they don't like, so all the things that like podcasters do with Patreon, where they set up Discord servers, or they have events or mailing lists, like, Apple isn't enabling any of that stuff that makes at least the current version of the paid podcast market go.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  And we'll just see how it goes. On the other hand, there's a lot of iPhones in the world.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Nearly a billion iOS Find My Devices, turns out.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All I'm saying is, we're going to launch a paid podcast and you can pay for it with your Verge card, which is very heavy.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  It's just a solid chunk of steel. We're not, we're not going to do that. Um, well, maybe we'll. You let me know if you want to see that. Anyway, it's just like the problem, the, the, the fact of Apple launching AirTags and paid podcasts.

• 14:46Nilay Patel?

  In a way that none of its competitors can do on their phone, literally the day before a hearing about Apple being anti-competitive was nuts. The podcast thing is going to play out. We'll see how it goes. It's not launched yet, but go read Ashley's piece because it's really interesting. That inevitably then leads to AirTags.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, by the way, we were only seven minutes into the keynote at this point.

• 15:03Nilay Patel?

  And we're 30 minutes into the show, yeah.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  But AirTags is kind of the same deal, right?

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the big first announcement was AirTags, and it's not quite a review because only that I didn't want to say I reviewed it when I had it for less than 24 hours, but I could have it for another week and I won't learn anything more than I think I already know, honestly. So if you want to think of it as a review, I welcome you to. It works the way, exactly the way you'd expect it to. It works very, very well. The little thing where you can use the U1 chip to locate it in space is cool. It can tell if it's above or below you in your house, if you've got a multi-story house. We played a game of hide and seek where Veron went off into the city and with no phone, no, and so the only way that it would get detected is if an iPhone went by him, and then I had to go find him. And he went to a place where there was no pedestrian traffic. It was just cars going

• 15:50Speaker 02

  by. And so I found him in about 15, 20 minutes because like two cars with iPhones happened to go by him at like 25 miles an hour.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Which is pretty nice. It's like, pretty good. So they're good. They're good little pucks.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  So as I was watching your video, you called that the thing that I was wondering, which is, right, well, the thing that this really leverages is that there's 1 billion iPhones in the world. Those billion iPhones are not running iOS 14.5, but you live in San Francisco where it is very likely that some people are running 14.5.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:17Nilay Patel?

  So is the AirTags discovery Find My Network code already in

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:22Nilay Patel?

  versions of iOS 14?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  It's the exact same Find My code as the devices have been using. It's, it's literally no different than, than the Find My in the iPhone. If you took an iPhone 12 and just took out all the screen and stuff, you'd have an AirTag.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  I had to upgrade to 14.5 to like make the pairing work, but it showed up to like any iPhone that was on the Find My Network. So that was fine. The thing that's not in the video that is in the written piece, because you know, when we shoot the video, we like, we take the thing out of the box. We got to take pictures of it. We want to have it stay nice if we can, because you know, whatever. The thing gets scratched up, just bang, just scratched and scuffed instantly. And everyone's like, who cares? Whatever. And it's like, sure, I agree. I don't, I don't care. But also, Apple spent three years making this thing, and they made a choice to make a thing that has really soft plastic. They made a choice to make a thing that if you squeeze it, it can't like beep, because the, the plastic is the speaker.

• 17:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, this is like every first gen Apple product like scratches a little too easily.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  I think they really believe that like, products look better when they're worn. And then everyone's like, no, they don't. The second gen one scratches less easily.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  I mean, Neil, they also sell $30 AirTag cases, so.

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  It is incredible that this thing does not have a, like a keychain hole in it or anything like that.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm pleased, please hold forth on, on the hole.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  I am just still so furious about this. It is just the most basic entry level feature. Like, the commercial showing it off was a guy finding his keys. And there's just like, no way to attach it to a key. Like, everyone has done, Tile has done this, Samsung has done, even like the random knockoff, like Tile competitors that you can just find on Amazon, all of them have it. Like, it doesn't need to be like a whole robust thing. Just let me like loop a, loop a string there or something. It's just baffling to me.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm sure we're gonna see the like, 12 pack, no name, Amazon brand, like holders for this thing very soon. Like, Apple's counting on it, right? You don't need an MFI license to make a, a thing with a circle.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  The one that Apple sells costs more than the AirTag. It costs $35 for the keychain, for the official Apple keychain loop for a $30 AirTag.

• 18:34Nilay Patel?

  Well, you gotta make up that, it's, see, Apple's all about services, and keychain loops are a service.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:40Nilay Patel?

  That's every, it's infrastructure, really. We're gonna have McKenna on to talk about Tile, but we can't talk about AirTags without noting that like, only Apple can make this product. Only Apple can leverage this network of phones in the world. Only Apple has access to the EWB chip. When you say it's like a very Apple product, like. They've built a very nice product that lives entirely inside of its universe.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  And it does things that nobody else can do. And it's like, it doesn't work with Android. The only thing that works with Android is NFC. So that's like one other thing is this is not an anti-theft device, because in order to disable it, you just like twist it and take the battery out. Because there's a replaceable battery in it, right? So you'd have to like hide it somewhere. Plus, the thing is designed where if it's separated from you and then it starts moving to beep, specifically for helping people who have Android phones and not iPhones, detect that someone's trying to track them by like hiding this thing in their backpack or whatever. And if you have an iPhone, it will pop an alert on your iPhone saying, hey, there's like a, there's like an air tag that is following you around. Does that, like, what's the story there?

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  Tell me how that works. So I, I like buying stuff. I was like, I just buy these. I don't go anywhere. So I was like, what would I even put them on? So like my keys are one answer. They're often with me. So I was like, I'll just like, I don't know. I'll put one in my car. Like, that'll be funny. I'll know where the car is. But like, if it gets too far away from me, it's just gonna start beeping?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yes, unless you mark it as like part of your family. And then if it's, if it's near a phone that's in your family, then it won't. Then it knows it's cool. And it, it doesn't need to like freak out and tell somebody that it's, that they're being tracked.

• 20:14Nilay Patel?

  But if you lose something, does it just start beeping?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  If it's separated from you, the owner, and it's just sitting somewhere, it just sits somewhere. But if it's separated from you from the owner for a while, and then it starts moving, it beeps. Or it tell, and if it's separated from you for a while, and it's in the same location as an iPhone for a while, it tells that iPhone owner, hey, there's an air tag on you. So this is designed very specifically to make itself known. And that's so that you can find stuff. It's not so that you can track thieves or whatever. They really do not want this to be tracking people. And I think this is like, when Apple does something, people pay more attention. Like Tile does a bunch of stuff. We did not make a video about Samsung Smart Tags. I'm just gonna tell you right now, we didn't even really consider it. They sent me one. I didn't even take a picture of it.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Now that there's one that has the UWB, like I actually do want to check that out a little bit. But Samsung making smart tags for Samsung's ecosystem, at least here in the US, like It's cool. It's a cool product, but it's not going to have a major impact on like tech and culture. I'm sorry. But these things from Apple that with Apple and its marketing and how many, how big a market share iPhone has in the US and how many people are just like, oh, I have an iPhone. I should buy these. What the heck? It matters more in some ways. And so Apple had to do more to make sure that people didn't feel creeped out by it because protecting your privacy is this thing where it, Apple genuinely believes it's important, but it's also genuinely a very important part of their brand. And if Apple lets that

• 21:44Speaker 02

  part of their brand get tarnished in any way, it's a huge problem for them.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  Samsung's tags, by the way, for the record, also have a similar feature where like, if there's an unknown tag on you and it doesn't recognize it, it'll also let you know.

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  I wonder if they're going to collaborate so that the Samsung tags can alert the Apple phone and the Apple tags can alert Android phones, right? I mean, like.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  That silence you hear is me holding my breath for that to happen.

• 22:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, please breathe.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  The product that does that, Neil, is called Tile.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And this is the thing, right? Like Tile doesn't have access to the harder the iPhone at this level. Now they're in a fight with Apple, so it seems very unlikely they will get access. So harder the phone at this level. If they do participate in the Find My Network, like the VanMooft bikes and the other things, the Chiplo, I think is the adorably named product that is Tile-like, they will just become a commodity. They won't be able to monetize the rest of the service the way they want to. A lot here with AirTags, but Apple is like really narrowly constraining what this product is and what it should do, right? They don't want you to use it. They don't want you to put one on your kid or your pet. They're like, it's to find things. That's all it's for. It is not to like, like my idea of using it for a car. Like, I don't think they want me to do that.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  No, I don't. Well, maybe. It's not really good at a lot of real time stuff, I think. I think that's part of it. Like, if you put it on a pet, like, an iPhone will pick it up here and then five minutes later it might pick it up over yonder. And so I don't, it's not like you can like turn on the, flip on the GPS and like go like track it down in real time. It's sort of a, oh, it popped up over here. Oh, it's over there.

• 23:13Nilay Patel?

  By the way, their answer to what, how you should track your kids, by the way, is you should buy them an Apple Watch.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yep. This is very, very clear. Okay. Speaking of things that are hard to find and find by mysteries, they released a new Apple TV with a new remote.

• 23:28Nilay Patel?

  Yay.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  They made a whole video about finding things in your couch and then they did not put a UWPU chip or Find My Support into this remote, which is deeply funny to me, but it is a new remote. Heim, you want to talk about it?

• 23:41Speaker 04

  It's not bad looking.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  I haven't used it yet, so I can't tell you if it's good per se. I can tell you that they got rid of the worst touchpad thing in the whole world. They have like a new iPod scrolling thing. There is still like sort of a little touchpad, but it's in the middle of like a physical D-pad now that you can use to just navigate around an operating system. It is high contrast, so you can actually tell which end is up. It just, it looks better in almost every way. Not that there was anything worse that they could have done. I will also say that the, that there is someone who is going to make a fortune making like a remote holder that has like a little U1 slot on the back for an AirPod, an AirTag.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Oh, God. Yes.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  Like, yep, that's a, that's a free business idea. I will buy one.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  So it also has a power button.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Power button.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Which is, thank God, and a mute button. And my very, very, very favorite part is the Apple remote currently has a menu button and the menu button serves as basically go back, right? It takes you back to like an earlier menu. I don't know, it's just called menu and it's now a back arrow. So we now have an iOS powered device with a physical back button, just like a classic Android phone.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  Look, all these ideas are just, they're floating around in the ether.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  This remote to me is, Apple's been the most stubborn about it for the longest time, right? They put out several models of the Apple TV. They've stuck with it and now they've just like caved to reality. I will, again, I haven't held it either, but like this is the most reasonable remote of any of the streamers. Like the Google Chromecast remote, they didn't try very hard. It's a good remote, but it's too small. It's, it's too light. Like that thing will just fly away. Like you're holding it. It's like, I'm tired of being held and it will just leave your hand and fly away into ether because it weighs nothing.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:32Nilay Patel?

  The Roku remotes are ugly as hell.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they have a headphone jack. And so I will love them even though they have stupid buttons for crackle.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  They look like Fisher Price toys.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Also, Apple's not going to put a headphone jack on its remote because Apple doesn't sell headphones with 3.5 millimeter headphone jacks anymore.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  I mean, fair.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  They want to use your AirPods.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  The Fire TV remotes are bonkers. Like, this has a chance of going from last to first in the rankings. That's all I'm saying.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  And it's like the most cave to reality. It's like the only one that would be a more cave to reality is when Apple moves the charging port off the mouse to the front of the mouse.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  And they haven't done it yet. They updated that mouse. They didn't do it yet. I will say that the addition of power and mute. I'm not gonna, I don't want you to over read it. I'm not overthinking it. This is like cord cutting one. And now you just have a game console and you have a streaming box connected to your TV and there's nothing else. And they're just assuming that this is your single remote. And I, that's like, it's a moment. Because for a long time, the streaming box vendors, when we demand them, like, what? Just put a volume button on this. Like, everyone has a cable box. Like, that remote is always sitting on your coffee table. We don't overcomplicate our remotes. And now this remote is very much, this should be your only remote for your TV.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  In Apple fashion, there's no way to change the input. So like, you can use HDMI CEC to turn it on and it will switch you an Apple TV. But if you're holding the Siri remote, there's no way to switch to a different thing.

• 26:52Nilay Patel?

  No, you just, you see it with your game console.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  Right. But like, the Apple remote can switch you to, to a thing. It can control all the other things on your TV, volume and power. But you cannot leave Apple using the Apple remote.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Well, the, the Google remote is even worse. It's the same limitation, but it actually has an input button.

• 27:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It had a put button. I would like, there's CEC and there's like, idealistic CEC. You know, that input button represents the hopes and dreams of a standard that does not meet those hopes and dreams in any way, shape or form. So that's the remote. We're gonna get our, you can buy it for 60 bucks, just on your own. It's not, it's coming, you can preorder on the 30th. That to me is hilarious, because the Apple TV 4K is 179. And the remote costs more than an entire Chromecast with another remote. It costs. More than almost any Roku you'd want to buy. And it's just the remote. So you end up $250 deep into the Apple TV ecosystem. Just to get like a usable control surface.

• 27:51Nilay Patel?

  I God bless them. I know so many people who have already like, they're gonna buy the remote. Like I got texts from friends who are like, I know you're ducking on this remote and how much it costs, but like, I'm gonna order three of them for my house.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  I will, I will say the, the 180, if you buy the new one, it does come with the remote. So.

• 28:09Nilay Patel?

  Indicating again that the remote on its own for $60 is massively overpriced. Anyhow, we should talk about the new TV.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  The big new feature is 60 is high frame rate HDR, right?

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it has an A12.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it does the, the calibration with your iPhone, which is very interesting. I'm very curious to see how that works.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  The old ones do it too. That's the, that was the whole like subtle thing hidden in the support page is this like very cool tech demo we did. Which is really smart, but you don't need the new one for it.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  So let's talk about that separately because that is a very complicated situation. The new Apple TV updated processor, A12, and it supports what Apple calls high frame rate HDR.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:51Nilay Patel?

  Which is really just 60 hertz HDR.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Higher.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Higher. Higher, like the Apple TV already to at this, like the one that you can buy today. Runs at 60 hertz Dolby Vision. Like that's its preferred place to run. But now it can playback video at that too. So it's higher. And then I point out every game console is like 120 hertz HDR.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  And some of them can change those hertz to a different number if they want to.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Like on the fly.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  So this does have HDMI 2.1, but does not support variable refresh. So what you would want, what you like, the dream is that you run the interface at 60. Or 120. So it's like super smooth. And then when you're watching a movie, which is shot at 24, you drop. The refresh rate. So you don't have to do any wonky frame mathematics to make it play right. This does not do that. It's just gonna run at 60. Correct. There is no answer to this question, except it's still like yay big. And I don't know if you've seen the size of a PS5 to run at 120 Hz. Demands a gravity well situation, physical size. So maybe that's it, but it's a very minor spec bump to the Apple TV. No functionality update, really. The major functionality update is its calibration, which is coming to the older one, too.

• 30:04Speaker 04

  It's a cool feature, though. Like, I'm almost surprised it took this long just because calibrating a TV is like such a nightmare for like most people. And this is just like, we won't calibrate the TV. We'll just calibrate the output on the device using these cameras that we know very well. Like, it's a smart move.

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  It's a smart, I'm dying to try it out because calibrating the input of a thing to compensate for the output of another thing is like, it's a hack. It's a hack that will probably work, right? I mean, like, Apple's not gonna get it totally wrong. Like, that's not their style, but it's very hacky. And things like motion smoothing, backlight, contrast, like, they can't adjust any of that. They can just do the colors. So they're gonna get your colors right, but like your motion smoothing might still be on. All this is to say they should just make a TV.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a stopgap, but it's for, this is for like the person who's not gonna go and buy like, you know, the 4K calibration disc and spend three hours in the menus, which I'm told they exist. I'm not one of them, but.

• 31:04Nilay Patel?

  Who are you? I mean, but it's for most people. And I think what the settings most people need to change are not the color balance of their TV. Right? It's the motion handling. It's the backlight stuff. It's the thing that, you know, helps you get the contrast ratio you want. So we'll see. Again, I'm dying to try it out. I think it'll be fun, but do I think Apple should just make a TV? I do think Apple should just make a TV. I'm sorry, I admit it. And then it is necessary to point out that Apple continues to make and sell an Apple TV HD, which maxes out at 1080p and costs $150. But at least it's cheap, Neelai. It's so expensive.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Those A7 chips are real pricey still these days.

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  From what I understand, they continue to make it because people just keep buying them.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Who are these people?

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  It's the MacBook era of Apple TVs. It's so confusing.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  I want to know, I want to meet the person who is looking at this product and going, I am ready to spend $150 on an Apple TV, but not $180 on the one that is five and a half years newer.

• 32:12Nilay Patel?

  You've got old TVs. You don't want all the tracking. I don't know. Maybe you just don't want to be in the Roku Ecos. I don't know. But from what I understand, it is still on the shelves because people keep buying them at a rate that supports continuing to make it. And Apple's just, they're not going to not take the free money. But like, Apple isn't bad business, right? They're like, oh, free money. We'll continue to collect some of it. Thank you very much. Well, I'm very excited to try this remote. I'm almost certainly going to buy one for my existing Apple TV 4K. The thing I should say about high, quote unquote, high frame rate HDR, not a lot of content. What you want, you want sports, it's 60 hertz in HDR. That's like the dream. And Apple is like, you know, they've got

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  a chicken and egg problem. So they're putting out the hardware that can stream 60 hertz HDR, small, compact. None of the other streamers can do that. Maybe the game consoles can, but they're game consoles. And then they've got to seed the broadcast side of it. So you will know the Super Bowl this year was not broadcast in 4K HDR. They just, like CBS was like, yeah, too much money. They just didn't do it. So we're like a long way away. In the previous year, I think Fox did. So we're still a long way away from there being the content to support this box. But I think Apple's saying, we're going to get the box in people's hands. So you, the content side of it can come along for the ride. We'll see. I'm just excited to play this remote. I cannot believe I'm going to buy this remote. Like I went to the order page. You can't order it yet. And I was like, why am I here? Anyhow, all right, we're going to take a break. We got to talk about the iMac. We

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  got to talk about the M1 revolution.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:42Nilay Patel?

  We'll be right back.

• 33:47Speaker 05

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• 34:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. So the Apple released two iPads. One is an iPad and the other one is a Mac.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  One comes in a case and one's on a stand.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, one has a touchscreen, one doesn't.

• 34:32Nilay Patel?

  All right, walk us through it, Dieter.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  So, okay, first came the iMac. We were expecting a redesigned, super-thin iMac, and Apple delivered, and they delivered it in a bunch of really nice, bright colors. They just threw the M1 chip in there, the System On Chip, the, you know, whole thing that is already in the MacBooks and the Mac Mini. So it's not any more powerful or different. So this, to me, is like, I don't want to call it entry level because it's very powerful and very good, and it actually is a revolution in laptops, but they didn't push it yet. That's not what this iMac is about. This iMac is about being relatively inexpensive, having very pretty colors, and looking very pretty, and being for, like, at a consumer

• 35:13Speaker 02

  level. They chose to make it 24 point something inches, so it's in between the 27 and the 21. You can get a Touch ID Magic Keyboard. The keyboard itself has a Touch ID, and it goes through a secure tunnel in the Bluetooth channel. Yet another Apple extension of a wireless standard that works just with Apple stuff, but cool, it's cool. And, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's gonna be very fast. I mean, the MacBook Air is very fast. It has a couple of fans if you need them. The question, honestly, is, is the design polarizing? Do will people love it, or will it get tired kind of fast? And I hate to tell you this because I know that there's an article on CNN from somebody saying this thing has got

• 35:55Speaker 02

  terrible design, and I hate it. I don't like it. I don't like the design of the new iMac.

• 35:59Nilay Patel?

  Woo, really?

• 36:00Speaker 02

  I don't like it. I love the colors, but I don't like the chin. I think they kept the chin. They kept it very thin, and so rather than make it a little bit thicker and put the components behind the screen, they chose to keep the chin. They chose to put a white bezel around the screen, which is fascinating. It's one of those choices where, like, a lot of people be like, "That sucks," and then after a while, it just, like, becomes the way everybody does things. And I'm actually thinking about maybe buying a Samsung Frame TV, and so, like, it's ironic that I'm... So I'm willing to give the white bezel the benefit of the doubt. I don't know the answer to this, but it looks like they kept the hinge really tight on there so that it, like, won't work with the Vasa amount. It's actually lower.

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  No, you can buy a Vasa one.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  There's a Vasa version. Okay. Thank God.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  And if you buy the Vasa version and change your mind, you call Apple Care and they'll ship you the foot.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Okay. So that's great. I don't like the little foot, the little heel on the foot, but that's, I'm not going to gripe about that.

• 36:49Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, what, where'd you go wrong, man?

• 36:52Speaker 04

  They look so fun.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  The chin is unnecessary. Why with, why with the chin? Why with the chin?

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  That's where the computer is.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Why not put the computer behind the screen?

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Cause the chin is, is what makes it an iMac at this point. If you look at this, if you looked at this and you didn't see the logo and you know what an iMac looks like, cause Apple hasn't changed the design in like, I don't know, 15 years. You look at this and it still says iMac. It doesn't say laptop screen. It doesn't say generic laptop screen. It doesn't say monitor. It doesn't say Dell or whatever. There's no Apple logo on it, but you see the chin on this thing and it says that that's an iMac to you.

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  Also, that's where the speakers are, right? Like all of this could have gone behind the screen. Here's my, here's my rebuttal to you, which is not so much of a rebuttal as a statement of facts. One, they're going to sell so many of these.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. No, I like, here's the thing. I'm not saying it's a bad computer. I just am not deeply in love with the design. But you're right. They're going to sell a billion of these.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  I think maybe if you buy a yellow one, you will come to regret that decision over time. Right? Like, yeah, colors come and go out of fashion. It happened with the very first iMacs. If you're the person who bought a blue Dalmatian iMac, like, let me know how that sat with you a couple of years later. Like the one printed with flowers, like that's, that, those were computers as fashion. And Apple got completely away from it and they went to very timeless, but very staid designs. And I think the way I am thinking about it is like the classic two by two Steve Jobs grid, which Apple is like far away from now. But right. You've got a desktop. You've got a portable. You've got a professional and you've got a consumer.

• 38:28Nilay Patel?

  And this thing is like consumer desktop, the most consumer desktop that maybe any computer company has made in a long time. Like there are lots of Windows on ones out there, but they're like cut down. They're cheap, right? They're not like these very focused consumer.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  Designed products. This one is like the most laser targeted consumer desktop that Apple or any company has made it in like a very long time.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  It is an iPad on a stand, right? Like it looks like that. Even their own like images in the keynote where they were comparing the design of the iMac to the new iPad Pro. It's like, oh, these are, you all talk.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  Turns out, but I think that like the chin and the colors like that stuff, people are gonna go to stores and they're gonna have spent a year working from home. And they might spend the rest of their lives working from home and they want a bigger display. And this thing is like 1200 bucks or whatever, 1299.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:23Nilay Patel?

  Like people are like, yeah, I do want a bright orange computer. Like that's so rad.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  And they're gonna be very happy with how fast and performant it is because the M1 again is great on the Mac.

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  And I will say this, that CNN article you're mentioning was very bad. I don't think you're quite like, it was like, like old school anti Apple blogging.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Like it reminded me of like when like an iPod would come out and people would be like, well, the creative jukebox is much better. Like you, you're just on another planet of weird weirdness. I just think that I take your point. So, okay, it's got a chin. It's weird and two-toneless. That stuff is gonna fade away from people and they're gonna be like, this is the first fun computer that anyone has sold in like quite a long time.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's totally true. It's too bad about the camera? Question mark? I don't know. It's 1080 at least. There's that. But I feel like they could have maybe they could have just tried a little bit harder there.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  Right. So here's, here's, we should talk about all these things at once. There are multiple models, by the way, the iMac. There's a space model, there's the step up model. There's like a whole, I'm glad you're here. There's a whole port situation with the iMac. There's just like unbelievably complicated.

• 40:34Nilay Patel?

  There's an ethernet adapter on the power brick.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  Is it cool?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  It's cool. The power thing is a MagSafe, just like clicks in.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  Right. So my, I'm looking at an iMac right now. I've got an ancient iMac. The power supply is integrated, right? So you just plug in the standard power cord to the back and you're off to the races. This thing does not have an integrated power supply. It's an outboard power supply. The color, the plug, that MagSafe plug is color coded to the iMac and hardwired into the brick. So they have to make like a million bricks.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  It's like crazy levels of complexity.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  I can't wait to trip over that cord and knock out my iMac at a crucial moment of my workday.

• 41:12Nilay Patel?

  No, it's made, it's from a magnet right out. You're like, oh my God, saving magnets again.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the computer's gonna shut off. It's the power supply. It's not a laptop. They should put a little battery in there. I mean, the thing is already a MacBook Air. They should just throw a battery, MacBook battery in the back of it. Why not?

• 41:26Nilay Patel?

  Only some of them, only the UP model has the Ethernet plug in the power supply, but you can buy that, you can buy that separately. And then the ports, so there are two, let's see if I can get this right. The base model has two ports. They're USB-C connectors, but they are Thunderbolt 3 ports that also support USB 4.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  That is correct.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  They sit there on their own. There's a headphone jack, which they moved it to the side, which is great. It's so much easier to hit. And I'm really excited to just have an SD card reader dongle hanging off the back of my iMac for all time, because that's what's going to happen.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  And then the UP model has four USB-C connectors, two of which are Thunderbolt 3 USB 4, and the other two are USB 3.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  This is the part where I try and convince you that USB-C is a technology that makes sense and is generally good.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  What?

• 42:17Speaker 04

  It's just increasingly harder to say that with a straight face on these, on these podcasts with each passing one.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  So it's four identical connectors, two of which have little lightning bolts above them, and those are the special ones. And then the Ethernet connector is on the power plug, if that's what you said is.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  But only if you buy the UP model.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  I would compare this, by the way, to the M1 Mac Mini, which also has two USB-C shaped Thunderbolt USB 4 ports. But then, just to spice it up, has two USB-A plugs.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Oh, and you can get it with a faster Ethernet now, too, if you want.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, I think this iMac is great. I don't think, again, targeted right in that consumer sweet spot, right? I don't think they think those customers want an SD card slot. I think it's the same as a MacBook Air. Like, there isn't one on a MacBook Air. We don't expect one to be there. When they make a Pro version of this, which I would expect to have like a 30-inch display. If there's no SD card slot, like then it's a mess.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and maybe there's hope because we are expecting SD card slot on the MacBook Pro when they, because we hear that that's kind of going to come with ports.

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  Yep. So I just think this thing is great. I cannot wait to get our hands on it. I cannot wait to like, be told we're getting sent the silver one and not like the bright blue one.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  That would suck.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  So we'll see, but I, I just think they're selling so many of these. I think it is also wild. So I keep talking about this as a consumer product. M1, all the consumer Macs have M1 chips, except for the one MacBook Pro.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  Which is like the most consumery MacBook Pro. iPad Pro, big surprise now as an M1 chip and a bunch of features that these things don't have.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if you had asked me before the event, will they put an M1 chip in the iPad Pro? I'd be like, no, Apple's whole thing is they make custom chips for the hardware and that they need the A series chip for iOS because it does special iOS graphical things that the M1 chip doesn't need, or vice versa. There are different chips. It turns out, nope, I'm dumb. That's wrong. They just, they just like, it's the same thing. And yeah, I'm sure it's great. I'm sure it's very fast. I'm sure they've got numbers about it being much, much faster in terms of graphics and CPU performance compared to the last iPad Pro. They're actually telling us how much RAM is inside these things for some reason. If you get the one and two terabyte model, that's when you get from eight to 16 gigs of RAM because you know, that's the same thing with Android phones. When

• 44:38Speaker 02

  there's more storage, you need more RAM. And we'll talk about the screen on the big one, but just like, I don't know, everything gets an M1. They're just, it's just like they, they, it's made a bunch of them and they're having an Oprah moment. And then they just, this, it's the thing that they can just put in all of their consumer devices now, right?

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  But the iPad Pro isn't a consumer device. That's what I'm saying. They make consumer level iPads with lightning ports and home buttons. And then they make the iPad Pro, which is supposed to be like the best thing they can make. And it tops out at the same process, like literally now the same processor is their like colorful consumer Macs.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  It's like a sliding scale. The best, the best iOS device has the entry level Mac processor. There's the regular iOS stuff and then the iPads used to get a better iOS chip. And instead of getting the better iOS chip, they now get the worst Mac processor.

• 45:27Nilay Patel?

  And worst is like too hardcore here. Like it's a

• 45:30Speaker 04

  The less good because there'll be a better one. Like that's the rumors is like, there's going to be an M2 or an M1X or something for like the beefy pro laptops and desktops. So. It's pro enough to be on the low end of the laptop scale, but it's not on the high end of the computer scale yet.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Okay, here's my question. Will people hear that it has an M1 processor, the same processor as the Mac, and then think that it can run Mac apps?

• 45:57Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  No.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  That won't happen?

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  No, maybe we would think that. And wander around in a fugue state of confusion. But we're the people who are like counting the ports.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:08Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I think most people are gonna be like, it's an iPad, and now it's like really fast. And the camera on the front can follow me around the room in any video conferencing app I use.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Which makes up for not putting it where it should be. It's still on the side, but they added a bunch of tech to it. Follow you around instead of just putting it where it should be.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think that's cool.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  They would have had to redesign the whole chassis. It's the same case. If you move the camera, you gotta redesign the whole thing.

• 46:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think they went with the camera can pan and scan automatically to like, so they can tell us that it's fine, that it's not on the top.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  But, you know, there's a question like, okay, you've got M1 Macs. And they've all got the same chip. They've all got cameras. You're talking about how all the cameras can use the image processing in the M1. And it's like, well, why can't the Macs do this camera thing?

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Why can't the Macs just have the good camera?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Why can't they have the good camera? Why can't they put Face ID on the Macs?

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I think that's like, less so can it run Mac apps and more why are there now these synthetic differences between products?

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  By all means, should just be enabled the same everywhere.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Like, at their core, these are the same device. Like, if you strip away the screen and the speakers and the cases, like, the new iPad Pro and the new iMac are the same computer. They just run different software and come in different shapes.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  But, Heim, what is a computer? Is it really the motherboard and the processor? Or is it whether or not the screen has a capacitive layer that accepts touch input?

• 47:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's iPad OS, it's not a computer. What do you want me to tell you?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  They're literally begging me to talk about the ship of Theseus again, where if you take the parts out and replace them, is it the same thing?

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Begging me to do it. I'm not gonna. I just did.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  You definitely just did. Well, here's what I would say, and I think this is starting to come into focus. You know, like what Apple will tell you is the whole computer market is growing and the iPad and the Mac are growing at the top of the growth, right? No one's confused. Everyone's just buying everything. And if you have a Mac, it's likely that you have another iOS device in your life, right? Like, that's their argument and they're like making money hand over fist. It's not a wrong argument. I think the thing that is really happening is the decision to not put touch on the Mac is like starting to mean that you've got two different rifts on the same OS that is converging, but the user interfaces are diverging, right? So like, so your M1 Mac can run an iPad app natively.

• 48:35Nilay Patel?

  Most developers are opting out of that. They don't like that idea. They are being pushed to use Catalyst, which like reuses your code with a different interface on it.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  And those are terrible, too.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, real bad.

• 48:47Nilay Patel?

  But like, that's where they're headed, right? They want the app developers to use the same basic set of frameworks and tools.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Oh, that's what Apple is headed, sure. Yeah, yeah. It's not where developers are eager to go. It's like, nobody likes Catalyst.

• 48:59Nilay Patel?

  But like, you know, Apple, when they, when they talked about the iMac and the M1, they like, did the laundry list of apps to have an updated for M1.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  And so now people are just on the train, including Slack, which famously is an electron app. So like, there's a whole category of apps that are gonna come along for the ride there. All that, all this to me is like, the only two screens left in my life that I can't touch are my TV and my Mac. And I think Apple's just like boxed in by that decision in a way that they're like, kinda happy to be, but what to everyone else, like with a little bit of distance is like, why don't you just, why don't you just let me run Mac OS? Like Monica wrote on The Verge today, like, just let me run Mac OS on this iPad. Like, then you'll have a Surface competitor and you're like, be off to the races.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, and like, there's a world where they could, you know, make like a button use switch and it turns it back into iOS mode and it goes to that home screen. Like, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. You want to make the argument that like, you know, users who don't want a computer can, can have this. Like, Apple has something similar. It has that Launchpad interface on the Mac where you do like the pinch and gesture and then you get the iPad iOS grid with your Mac apps. Like, these don't need to be exclusive ideas. They just don't want to do it.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  I think if you make one computer that does both, you don't get to sell two computers. And I think that is on Apple's mind.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Right now, iPad is a subset of the Mac because you can run iPad apps on the Mac. But what if that just got inverted? Like, you put a touchscreen on the Mac, and then I'm going to want to, like, you know what I mean? Like, just make them the same. There was always the argument, like, Android and Chrome OS should merge. And Google was always like, no, we're not doing that. And like, finally, that sort of fizzled out a little bit. That is still coming for Apple, and it still sounds like a dumb idea to Apple. And it sounds like a dumb idea to me when I really think about it. But you know what else is dumb? I can't touch my MacBook screen. And the UI is designed to ask me to do it. The buttons look like buttons you should touch.

• 50:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I just, we still have like an ongoing bet with Joanna, and I don't remember the terms, but I just know I'm going to lose. Because I think my was, my part of that bet was, the first time they radically redesigned one of the laptops on Touch. And like, here we are with a radically redesigned iMac, and they didn't do it. And I think I'm just going to end up paying the money. Last thing we got to talk about this iPad is, in fact, the display of the 12.9. So the, the smaller of the iPad Pros, same screen technology, M1 chip, a spec bump. Bigger iPad, much bigger spec bump, M1 chip, new mini LED LCD screen can get up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness when you're running HDR mode. It's cool. I can't wait to see it. So a traditional, I'm going to do it.

• 51:33Nilay Patel?

  A traditional LCD has LEDs and backlight. The iPad certainly does. iPad Pro displays, Chris Welch has gone through this many times, kind of uneven. He's, he's traded in a few iPad Pros to get a better screen. 10,000 mini LEDs or so, 22,000-ish dimming zones. This gets you, lets you cut all of the light output from those dimming zones. When you're watching a movie, you get like, really nice black blacks. We'll see, like, this has been hit or miss on televisions. Like, local dimming is like one of those technologies that sounds great and sometimes can go sideways. I'm confident Apple did a good job here, to be perfectly honest. But we haven't seen it yet, so we don't know. But here's another thing. M1 chip powering a very nice display technology.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Sounds like it'd be great on a laptop.

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  Not on the other M1 computer they just released. And the prices are pretty close. Sounds like it'd be great on a laptop. So, very cool, you know, I think, what are we suckers for if not erratic port schemes and connectivity issues and display technologies? But we haven't seen it yet. I do think it's interesting that only the bigger one got the mini LED screen.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  But I mean, the price on the, the big one went up a hundred bucks, too.

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  It did go up a hundred bucks. Apple doesn't ever, they don't ever break out sales. Like, we don't know which one is more popular, really. I would guess that the big one is like the halo one. It's the laptop replacement. I have a smaller one, so I'm just, this is the thing that would have been the upgrade, but I don't want the bigger one. So, alas. Anyhow, we, all this stuff is coming out. I will say, Apple will not say if it's affected by the broader tech industry chip shortages. But this event was a little late. All the pre-orders are opening at the end of April and the stuff is coming out in May. So we're a ways off from actually seeing any of it in person, which I'm dying to do. I will say that I got fooled by a tweet. John Morrison tweeted a picture of like AR and it like definitely fooled me for like five minutes. I was very jealous and I was like, ah, John.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  Well, well played, my friend. We'll see, but I'm excited to get our hands on all this and play with it. The last thing I want to call out before we take a break and get to McKenna is, uh, there was a big hack this week. Apple supplier Quanta ransomware attack. The hackers broke into Quanta, stole schematics, demanded $50 million or it would release the stuff. Quanta didn't pay. The schematics were leaked. Now they're demanding the money from Apple. I'm pretty confident Apple's not going to pay either. They're going to pay the money. I'm like a private security force to like drop out of the sky. Like the Avengers, Apple's going to pay the Avengers.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:02Nilay Patel?

  Um, to find the hackers. I don't want to get too much into like media history, but you don't want to, like, you don't want to be the muscle for the, like, their thing is we'll expose you unless you pay us. And then the people they would, like, if we run with it, we have done the exposing. So we become the muscle in the criminal enterprise and like, you don't want to do that. So we are reporting on the hack. We are going to do our best to avoid reporting on the leaks themselves because that's ethically fraught. Whereas with like a normal leak, like Mark Gurman reports this, we know he's a reporter and we know there's not like an extortion scheme under his work.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  We can talk about it for hours and hours, but I just, we know it's happening. That's our position. If you have questions, you can just tweet at me and I'll answer them. But just so you know, we are not unaware of the leaks. We've actually seen the documents. We're just being cautious. Like, the 2016 election was turned on a leak of hacked documents. Like, this is a long story in the media, and we're just trying to be very careful. Okay, we're gonna take a break. Hyam, thank you so much.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  Pleasure as always.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna be right back with McKenna Kelly to talk about the hearings in Congress this week.

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• 56:33Nilay Patel?

  All right, McKenna Kelly is here. Hey, McKenna.

• 56:35Speaker 06

  Hey, good to be back.

• 56:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, I feel like we only see you when there's hearings, but like, the real sine wave here is the last time we saw you, the hearing was bad. But this time, the hearing is good.

• 56:47Speaker 06

  Right. It was a really, it was a good time to do my take saying that they were bad. And now we get a cool Senate one with Klobuchar about the App Store, and it was really substantive and good.

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  It was like, very bipartisan, like, everyone showed up prepared.

• 57:02Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Okay, when, when these hearings come up next time, what is the thing I should look for to know whether it's going to be good or six hours of yes/no questions that nobody answers?

• 57:14Speaker 06

  If it's in the Senate.

• 57:15Nilay Patel?

  If it's in the Senate, great.

• 57:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, when it's, it's gotta be somebody who like knows their suffers, just got done running for president, you know, running the hearing, which is Klobuchar and takes it very seriously. Like the hearing yesterday was really good for the most part because there was like dramatically less members asking questions. There, there wasn't a lot of room for them to get a little too loopy with what they were asking, trying to force these crazy yes or no answers.

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I have a different answer, which is related to what you're saying. But here is a much more reductive answer. You know, it's going to be bad if Jack Dorsey is there.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  Not because Jack Dorsey is bad. He looks very tired, but like his very presence drives any, any average member of Congress completely batshit. And they were looking for the soundbite where they got Jack Dorsey to admit that big tech is censoring them. And then everything is like off the rails.

• 58:12Speaker 06

  Right, no, I, I totally agree.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  This one was very much like, it's a bunch of companies running a business and they're talking about who makes the money and like, the opportunity for a soundbite does not exist because the opportunity to yell it, honestly, I feel like any average person who uses the internet, given the opportunity to yell at Jack Dorsey, would not be able to resist. So like, I don't want to like overthink it, but like, that's very much like, you know, it's going to go off the rails when Dorsey's there. Anyhow, so this one was a little bit more sedate, like you're saying, run by Klobuchar and her committee. Everyone showed it prepared. It didn't have this weird format issue. What was the substance of it?

• 58:48Speaker 06

  Right, so basically what happened is Apple sent, you know, some counsel, Google sent some random counsel that isn't a CEO. And then we had representatives from Tile, Match Group, the company that, you know, owns Tinder, you know, all the dating apps, and then also Spotify. So three big companies that have a lot to complain about when it comes to the App Store piece. And it was really to get to the heart of what can Congress do to ensure that, you know, companies get, you know, a fair shake in the app stores. And throughout the hearing, there was a lot revealed. It was like kind of remarkable how much, you know, folks said. And the thing that was really interesting to me was that, that I think really put all

• 59:33Speaker 06

  of this into context was that for Match Group, you know, the Tinder company, they said that a fifth of like a lot of their spending is app store fees.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 06

  It was like $500 million or something. And I think that really put into context, like how much, you know, this affects, you know, businesses on the app store.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Like, like, it has to be like their, like, top three just expenses for the entire company, right? Like, salaries and then app store fees.

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, so there, one of the things that I caught during that entire exchange was, once you really drill down into where Apple will charge the money and where it won't, some of the boundaries get really fuzzy, right? So there was, there was a long exchange about Uber. And they're like, well, Uber is a physical product. And then Match Group was like, but we pay you a lot of money. And I'm like, that's a digital project, product. And then like Tinder is not a digital product. Like, right? You like push the button in Uber and the cab shows up at your house and you push the button in Tinder. And like theoretically, you're gonna go somewhere and like a date comes to you, like.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  I was just really watching how you were gonna finish that sentence, Neil. I could have gone sideways.

• 1:00:40Nilay Patel?

  The only time I've ever used Tinder is when our old video VP let me use his account for a day. And he was like, you can never touch this again. You've ruined my life. Because I've just, I've been out of that game for a long time. But I just think that is, there's an inherent fuzziness here where Apple just decides it's gonna make money. And if you really drill down into it, that fuzziness kind of like, you realize it's just Apple decided. And I think they did a pretty good job of pushing on that.

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  Right. I mean, it definitely got the Apple, you know, representative Kyle Andier to really, he was a little bit shaky on that kind of stuff, trying to, it seemed like he was starting to equate, well, Tinder isn't an escorting app, you know, there is no money exchanged and these kinds of things. And it made it really, really hard and for them to even give a clear answer. If anything, I think the hearing just showed just really how dramatic, you know, the effects are on businesses like that. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, what comes out of this going forward for sure.

• 1:01:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay, can you talk a little bit about what Tile was like in the hearing? Because we just spent all this time talking about AirTags, just got announced. I've been playing around with them. And Tile surely cannot be happy that Apple has released a product that can do more stuff than Tile's allowed to do on the iPhone.

• 1:01:55Speaker 06

  Right, yeah, it was a day after Apple announced AirTags. And Tile definitely put all of that in their opening statement. And the thing that really stuck out to me, it wasn't even just, it wasn't just like, oh, you know, it's a competing app, look at them copying us and all this stuff. But it was like, Apple has this technology that we do not have access to that makes this anti-competitive. For example, a big thing that popped up that I found really interesting from the Tile representative was ultra-wideband. Tile can't use that on the iPhone. That is proprietary to Apple right now. And it makes it impossible to compete on a level playing field between the two companies.

• 1:02:34Nilay Patel?

  And that's really, I think that is, it's smart of Tile to pursue it. It is true. They don't have access to the chip. It's also one of those places where be careful what you wish for.

• 1:02:45Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like demanding that every time Apple adds a hardware feature to the phone, everyone has to be able to use it, particularly for technology that allows apps to track you, is like, how do you craft that legislation so it's correct? And I don't, I didn't really hear like a great answer. I just heard a lot of complaints. The previous one, Dieter, I think that Apple ran into this was with the NFC chip in the iPhone.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  They brought it into it with NFC because that, you know, they had it tied to their secure enclave in such a way and they wouldn't let any other app do it. And that was really dumb because like you can also just use NFC for links. So there was something weird there. You could argue, and I think I would, that maybe there's some stuff with like the W1. That's like not fully a hardware thing, but it's like a, they have a tendency to take some wireless technology, some radio, and then extend it. But instead of extending and embracing extinguishing, they're extending and like putting in a tunnel that only Apple can use.

• 1:03:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  They make it better so for their own products. And the Tile question for me, coming the day after the AirTags, it was, I mean, it's just one of those where like the AirTags are going to end up being a superior product because they have access to your phone all of the time in a way that Tile cannot. Apple is putting the support for AirTags, and they're not shy about this, on a billion iPhones. There's just a billion iPhones that are going to run that network so you can find stuff.

• 1:04:04Nilay Patel?

  There's no way Tile could ever even get to a billion installations of its app, which is what it would need.

• 1:04:11Speaker 06

  The thing is that I found really, really interesting, and this is the way that the Tile brought up like pre 2019, pre iOS 13 Find My, and how the relationship with Apple was a lot, you know, more genial and friendly. How even on like Apple showcase days, they were showing Tile products. And then as soon as the Find My app was introduced, you know, the revamped in iOS 13, that friendly relationship completely diminished. And that was something that other folks at the, at the hearing also brought up with Spotify. They were like, oh, with the App Store, they want all of us, you know, to help Apple out and like do all this, you know, developing and get all these cool apps on the iPhone. But as soon as, you know, Apple gets into the market, that friendship and that, you know, relationship totally collapses.

• 1:04:56Speaker 06

  And that was another thing throughout the hearing as well.

• 1:04:58Nilay Patel?

  One of the, I think this is the, the executive from Match said that, you know, Apple stands toward them was you owe us all of your money. Like, all of your success is because of our phone. Maybe this is too reductive. Tell me what you think of this. But I really think that Apple thinks of it as their phone. Even when you buy it and it's in your pocket, Apple still thinks of it as their phone. And every dollar that passes through that phone is like because of them and their work and their effort. And they think they should get a piece of every dollar. I am inclined to say that it's my phone and I should be able to do whatever I want with it. And that means that if I want to install some crazy tracking service that will inevitably hack me or leak my information, like that's my risk. The right answer is somewhere in the middle. And I just, I don't know that Apple's

• 1:05:43Nilay Patel?

  ever going to change its mind about it being its phone. I think Congress is going to have to force Apple to change its mind. But in the hearing, I didn't, I didn't quite get a sense that Klobuchar or Mike Lee or anybody else had a sense of how to do it yet. Right? They're still kind of on this fact finding side of things.

• 1:05:58Speaker 06

  Right. I mean, so when it comes to these congressional hearings, they end up coming on the heels of some new legislation introduced. And it's to find, you know, broad support for that legislation to, you know, provide evidence and examples for why that new legislation is necessary. And this was the first hearing that Klobuchar led on antitrust after she introduced this like sweeping antitrust package in February, which in it includes, you know, things that would help the FTC, DOJ, you know, law enforcement officials bring big cases against companies like Apple for things like what we're talking about now, which could be defined as, you know, exclusionary conduct.

• 1:06:36Nilay Patel?

  How does this connect to the hearings that we saw in the House, right? We Representative Cicilline held a hearing and we also thought that hearing was very good. We've spoken to him and other people on that committee several times. How are these two tracks connected?

• 1:06:50Speaker 06

  Right. So, I mean, Klobuchar said it before. She is working with folks in the House. This really is a fact finding, evidence revealing situation to get other people on board. We focused on, in a lot of our reporting, the folks who are in these committee rooms, lawmakers who are there, but those aren't the only people on the floor voting to pass this legislation, right? It's other folks in other committees who aren't doing all this investigative work, who, you know, might be getting some money from the big tech companies, you know, vote a certain way or support different things. So really what this is and working alongside together, I don't, I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows what regulation is going to look like by the end of the year, if anything will get approved in the next couple of years or anything like that. But at this point, it really is fact finding and building broad coalitions to get, you know,

• 1:07:35Speaker 06

  to get to some consensus and pass something through.

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  Connect that to the other thing that happened in Congress yesterday, which is Lina Kahn faced her first confirmation hearing to become part of the FTC. Lina Kahn, for people who aren't familiar, I don't know, a very precocious lawyer who wrote a book called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, ended up on Cicilline's committee, doing a lot of that work in antitrust and is now nominated to the Federal Trade Commission. She is not shy about her view that the big tech companies have behaved irresponsibly. She is not shy that the Obama administration was lax in antitrust enforcement. That was happening concurrently with this antitrust hearing. Are those also connected or are they just sort of coincidentally all happening at the same time?

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  I think it's more of a coincidental thing. I think when it comes to looking at Lina Kahn's confirmation hearing, you need to keep in the back of your head that Biden has not appointed anyone to lead the FTC yet. We have an acting chair at the FTC and an unfilled seat still, right? So it's nice to see Lina Kahn appointed, and I think progressives and anti-tech, anti-monopolist folks are very excited to see her there. But it's really hard to see, you know, what direction the FTC is going to go when it comes to law enforcement until we see that final person. What I can say, though, is that Lina Kahn had a much easier time in her confirmation hearing with Republicans than I think a lot of people expected.

• 1:08:58Speaker 06

  Even though Republicans have come around, you know, to doing really big work on criticizing big tech and big tech's power. When it comes to getting down to the legislation and the authoring and the voting, it hasn't been that good. But at this hearing, they seemed eager to support her and ask good questions. And at this point, unless something pops up, it'd be hard to see her not be approved and get confirmed, you know, as soon as she can find time on the floor.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  She just needs to make sure she doesn't tweet anything between now and the vote.

• 1:09:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, she's she's on lockdown. I mean, we she's been on the Vergecast. You can go back and we'll put a link there and go listen to our conversation with her. It's a lot harder to get her on the Vergecast right now. So I think she's on lockdown until this until this is done. I mean, can I put all this into like broader perspective, right? We've seen the big hearings, you know, in both houses of Congress, like we've seen the ones that go crazy because the social media companies are there. We've seen the ones that are more focused on markets. We've seen ones that are very narrowly tailored to how are big tech companies affecting the news industry? But there's just a lot of action.

• 1:10:09Nilay Patel?

  A lot more of it is bipartisan than anyone really expects, even even when there is just like outrageous grandstanding. But it hasn't coalesced into here's what the government's going to do about the size and power of these tech companies. Even when it's like Apple, right? Even when you can kind of see it that there's something should be done here and no one is really disagreeing. I still don't know what it is. Is that ever going to come into focus or are we just in that stage?

• 1:10:34Speaker 06

  Right, so.

• 1:10:36Speaker 06

  Everyone, I think we had this moment last year too, while we were waiting for, as we were talking about the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee to release their big report on that 16-month investigation. I think that report, this is very wonky and silly, but they voted it out of committee like last week, and it's going to go to the floor and be approved as a real House report. Now, this sounds kind of silly and ridiculous, but that's like a real thing that needs to happen in order for it to get that stamp of approval. This is what the House has found. I think the next step really is to see what happens when that committee releases some form of legislation. They have the evidence to back it up. They have an argument to be made, but what does that look like legislatively? And we're still

• 1:11:17Speaker 06

  waiting to hear that from Sicilianian folks like that. And I think once that, we already have the Senate's perspective, that's Klobuchar's for the most part, we're looking to see where the House is going. And then we can probably find out the gives and takes in those areas and figure out what kind of legislation might be able to move in both the House and Senate. Still some time left. Hopefully, this comes sooner than later, but there's a lot of stuff happening now. There's still COVID, things happening, there's infrastructure coming up, but maybe, well, maybe we might hear more before the end of summer. I'm not sure.

• 1:11:50Nilay Patel?

  Well, you are keeping track of all of it in your new column and now newsletter called Hill Report, which people can find at theverge.com/hillreport. And I will tell you, I will tell the audience, I never want to say these things out loud until they have actually happened, but I am scheduled to talk to Senator Klobuchar tomorrow for next week's Decoder. You never, like, I hate saying it until it actually happens, but it's on the schedule. We think it's going to happen. And that's always just because of scheduling. But we have a lot more to come. McKenna is keeping track of it at the Hill Report, so go to theverge.com/hillreport. It's coming. It's not going to not happen, right? And I think there's a lot of tech executives I talk to are usually of the mind that Congress is like totally broken, totally dysfunctional,

• 1:12:32Nilay Patel?

  and they're going to make a lot of noise and nothing will happen. My bet, and McKenna, I'm curious for your thought here, my bet is that something is actually going to happen. Just given the amount of energy and the sort of bipartisan nature of these questions, that it's definitely happening.

• 1:12:48Speaker 06

  Well, everything comes down from the top, right? And we have Biden in office now. He has appointed Tim Wu, Verge person who's been on podcasts before.

• 1:12:58Nilay Patel?

  The funniest thing about this is like, these are just people we've been talking to for years, and now they're like in charge, and it's like, I don't know. Guys, we're all kind of, we're not.

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

  So Biden, Biden's appointed, I know Biden's appointed to move. The guy who literally coined that neutrality. Lena Khan, who wrote the Amazon paradox. This is not something you say very often, but a viral law article. About, you know, tech. And then we're also expecting to hear something about who's going to be leading the antitrust division at DOJ. And if that is someone who is a bit more progressive, is if that is someone who tracks alongside Wu and Khan, I think it's fair to say that there's going to be a lot of momentum to get something done, at least in the next four years under Biden, for sure.

• 1:13:40Nilay Patel?

  And on top of that, there is the epic lawsuit, which we're going to over cover. That is, that is going to trial very soon. There's like negotiations about what reporters are going to be allowed in the courtroom. Like, that's all happening, but that trial's scheduled to go off. And then there's like the state lawsuits against Google and Facebook. So there's just a lot of action here. It feels a little, a little like a perfect storm of it's definitely, something will change. I don't know if it will be the right change. I don't know if tile is going to get everything that it wants, right? Like, something's going to happen. And it feels like we need to track it very carefully. So again, I'm very happy you're here to help us do that.

• 1:14:15Speaker 06

  That's what I'm here to do.

• 1:14:16Nilay Patel?

  All right. Thanks to Heim Gartenberg. Thanks to McKenna Kelly. There was just a lot to cover this week. Great talk to them. I want to call out a few stories on The Verge that I thought were great this week. We interviewed Senator Tammy Duckworth on hate crimes, racism, environmental justice. It's a great interview, you should go read it. We are finding ways to cover the rise of violence against Asian Americans in America. We've run a few stories. We have a great story on how the statistics aren't quite doing the job well. So individuals are using digital tools to create new and better statistics. I think that's really important. And then there's a great Becca video, and I want to call out about just how fiber optics work. And she went to Bell Labs and actually got to play with some fiber. It's really cool. Check that out. It's on the YouTube channel.

• 1:14:58Nilay Patel?

  Once again, you can check out McKenna's Hill Report at theverge.com/hillreport. This is going to be a year of a lot of regulatory action. McKenna's covering it all right there. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, Theodore's at Backlon. Heim is C. Gartenberg. McKenna is at Kelly McKenna. Decoder this week was the CEO of Vimeo. Anjali sued next week. Again, I'm pretty confident. We'll see if the schedule's hold up tomorrow. But next week, it's Senator Amy Klobuchar. That's it. Rock and roll. Get a vaccine.

• 1:15:47Speaker 07

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