Huawei’s HarmonyOS arrives / Microsoft's next gen Windows / Apple's WWDC preview

Co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk with Verge senior editor Tom Warren and managing editor Alex Cranz about operating systems — what's coming up at Apple's developer conference next week, where Microsoft will take Windows next, and the debut of some new systems like HarmonyOS and Fuchsia OS. Further reading: The pandemic showed that big tech isn’t a public health savior The future of COVID-19 immunity looks good We have bigger problems than COVID-19’s origins Apple TV 4K (2021) review: much better remote, slightly faster box Of course repairing the new Apple TV remote is harder than simply unscrewing it Apple TV app comes to Nvidia Shield For Apple TV Plus to succeed, it has to be everywhere — even Android TV Microsoft looks ready to launch Windows 11 Microsoft to reveal its next generation of Windows on June 24th Huawei announces HarmonyOS update for its smartphones Huawei teases its upcoming P50 flagship phone Huawei’s HarmonyOS arrives on tablets with the new MatePad Pro Huawei’s Watch 3 is its first HarmonyOS smartwatch Google’s new Fuchsia OS arrives first on old Nest Hub AMD announces the Radeon RX 6000M series with RDNA 2 architecture Nvidia announces new RTX 3080 Ti, priced at $1,199 and launching June 3rd Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti review: more 4K for more of your wallet Nvidia’s RTX 3080 Ti is available online right now Amazon buys MGM for $8.45 billion Why on Earth did Amazon spend $8 billion on a zombie studio? Discovery announces new name of WarnerMedia merger: Warner Bros. Discovery The Great Wings Rush Why Spotify’s Horacio Gutierrez thinks Apple behaves like a monopolist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, Alex Krantz and Tom Warren join the show. We go through everything that's coming up at WWDC next week. Tom walks us through the new version of Windows, and we go through what on earth is going on with AT&T and Warner Media. That's coming up on the Vergecast now.

• 0:15Speaker 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.

• 1:00Speaker 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 the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of alternative Android operating systems. Ooh. Where they spoon, we fork. The Vergecast. I'm your friend Eli. I'm in our studio, in the office, for the first time in over a year, and I'm giddy with excitement. So I apologize to everyone if I'm just over the top today, but it is super fun to be back in the studio. Dieter Bahn is here.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I am your resident Nvidia Shield enthusiast.

• 2:19Nilay Patel?

  The only one. That's not...

• 2:20Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:21Nilay Patel?

  Please don't even...

• 2:22Speaker 02

  We are legion.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  There are so many of you, and all of you know how to use email. Tom Warren is here.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Hello, I am your resident Windows 9 enthusiast.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  Fewer, and also the email client doesn't work very well, so feel free. And we have a, we have a new guest. This is very exciting. Alex Cranz, the new managing editor of The Verge is here. Hi, Alex.

• 2:44Alex Cranz?

  Hey, I am also a fan of the Shield. I'm sorry, Dieter, you're not alone. I'm here with you.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  Does a Shield have an email client? Yes.

• 2:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's Android. It's got everything.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  What can't it do?

• 2:57Alex Cranz?

  Nothing.

• 2:59Nilay Patel?

  No wonder Shield owners send so many emails. It has a built-in angry email. Very high-powered. Well, Alex, it's good to have you here, first of many Verge guests. I'm very excited to have you on the show. I want to start, we have a lot to talk about. WWDC is next week. Microsoft is threatening to release a new version of Windows. We've got to talk about that with Tom. E3 is coming up, although nobody knows anything about E3. And then we were off last week, so there's a bunch of news to talk about from last week. Most importantly of which is, of course, the AT&T Tom Warner deal has, it's come to its inevitable conclusion, which is that it's over now. So a lot to catch up on. I do want to start where I always start with COVID. Like I said, I'm in the office. It's, we're in the United States at least. Elsewhere in the world, it's still very bad.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  But the United States, it's still the biggest story going. We're still not out of it, but we are coming to what feels like an end of something. I think there's a lot of change to come. I think this summer is going to be nuts in the United States as everybody like emerges from seclusion. I think there's a lot of change to come. But we do have some stories on the site that I think point to, there's a time of reflection that's happening. So Nicole Wetsmann has a great story about all of the tech initiatives that we saw during the pandemic. We've talked about a lot of them on the show. There was the exposure notification system. There was a bunch of Facebook and Google location data that was made available to researchers. There was a promise of a website. Was there, was there a website, Neelai? How long, how long did it take them to make it?

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  It's not more than a year, and that website does not exist about where you can get tested. So Nicole has a rundown of what worked and what didn't. I think it is remarkable that exposure notifications just kind of didn't go anywhere. It's a really mixed result. She has a big breakdown of that. But the location data, location data that Google and Facebook made available as part of a program called Data for Good. They just released the data anonymously to researchers and that has become a huge success in the scientific and academic community. So just a real, what did we learn from all of the tech initiatives? And it's, I think, some surprising results in there. So that's a great story. There is, it continues to be controversy about the origins of COVID. Nicole, actually, it's a real three pack for Nicole this week. Nicole has a great story

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  about how that's important to suss out. Figuring out the beginnings isn't going to help us figure out the end. So she has a great story unpacking that. And then she has another great story about what we know of the vaccines so far, which is that immunity looks good for a long period of time to come. We obviously have to experience the time to come to make sure that works. But right now, the data suggests it's going well. So in end of one period, I can talk to you from our office again. But I'm so giddy about being in this office again. I was not expecting it. But I also had to drive two hours to get here. I think I was just excited about not being in a car anymore. We'll see how this goes as the show goes on. But we continue to cover COVID and the vaccines and what we have learned from this moment very carefully. Nicole's doing a great job. Okay. WWDC.

• 5:59Nilay Patel?

  Worldwide Developers Conference.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  It's Apple time.

• 6:03Nilay Patel?

  It's Apple time. There's a lot to talk about. Apple updates, all of its many OSs. There's like a whisper of a rumor they're going to announce yet another OS called Home OS, which makes, yeah, we'll see. They needed advice to run on it. Like putting in a custom OS in the HomePod makes no sense. Like, you only announce an OS if you have apps. If you have a reason to tell people, unless you're Google, in which case you just announce OSs all the time. Well, hang on. The iPhone OS didn't have apps, didn't have third party apps. Think about it. They actually didn't, it didn't even really have a name. It was iPhone OS. And then it was iPhone OS when they announced apps. And when they did the iPad for like a year, the iPad ran iPhone OS. That's right.

• 6:47Nilay Patel?

  Yep. And then they changed it to iOS to make it encompassing. And then they realized, like, oh, what, two years ago? Like, oh, this is constricting. And they renamed it. It's like, Apple's very, they don't like making new names. And when they do, they don't even, but Google's like, I don't know, here's another Linux based OS that we made. This one's the future.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Here's another messaging app.

• 7:07Nilay Patel?

  In any of this operating systems runs on RCS. Anyway, WWDC is where Apple goes through all of its existing operating systems, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, WatchOS, TVOS, and then now potentially, like, we'll see, but there's a rumble that they'll do that. I want to go through them in order, but Dieter and I were talking before the show, Apple's like under a cloud at this WWDC. Like, they just had this big trial with Epic. A little bit of one. Every, the developer community is extremely aware that Apple executives are like, huh, how can we make money off of this idea? Let's just turn the money fountain on and like,

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  take 30%. The rationale for that 30%, you might buy it. I think it is rational. Some of the things they say about why that 30% exists is rational. Some of it is like, they're just stubborn. And some of it is like, they're just greedy. And that is the first time I think Apple's like armor has been punctured in this way heading into a WWDC.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Heading into a WWDC, but you remember what was, when did Hay go after them? It was at like the morning or the day before?

• 8:15Speaker 03

  It was like a few days before.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that was like one email app from one popular developer who maybe it's not so popular anymore. And like, and they like resolved it. Like, they just like solved the problem. Yeah. Like reinterpreting a rule. This is like hundreds of emails, Tim Cook on the stand being like, this is how I monetize the phone. I think it is a qualitatively different situation.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Kind of, but they're Apple, so they'll announce something really cool for developers, and they'll soon forget those problems. Just like we forget everything that happens a week or two before these days. I feel like there, there's a lot of quietness around WWDC this year. And like, there hasn't been many big iOS rumors or iPad rumors, which makes me think that they've kept something secret that they're gonna do. And I have theories. It's like, why is there M1 chip in the iPad? You know, like?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 9:10Nilay Patel?

  It's so you can unlock your car with your iPad.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like, think about all of the, you know, the billionaires who use an iPad as a camera. They got to walk up to the roles and they're just gonna wait.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Straight away. But I think, I think they'll silence the, the stories that we've seen over the last few weeks, the epic trial and stuff with, you know, with what they do best, which is just deliver products and please developers in different ways. Cause they always seem to manage to do it.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think like, I think that this is not going to get quieted down quite so easy. There's gonna be, they're gonna flood the zone. There's gonna be a million stories. We're gonna write a million stories. Uh, but I think that when that dust settles, there's, uh, still a Congress that is still very interested in asking them questions and, um, you know, scoring points there and finding out if they could do something about it. Uh, I don't think it's gonna go away quite so easy. To me, the more interesting question is, will there be any kind of acknowledgement in this online keynote infomercial thing of all the drama? Will there be any gesture at all?

• 10:16Alex Cranz?

  I don't think they can. They can't say anything because like it's being, the judge is looking at it right now and deciding and they can't just go out and be like, we're gonna cut prices or whatever with the judge. We're gonna increase prices. Like nothing they say will help them.

• 10:31Nilay Patel?

  It would be amazing if they're like, we're going to 45%.

• 10:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Do it.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  That'd be great. I don't know, actually. Right there in this period of scrutiny, certainly the Congress in this country is, you know, making a lot of noise. Whether they can effectively pass anything remains to be seen. There's that court case. There's the EU complaint against the App Store. The EU likes to do stuff. Whether any of that is effective also remains to be seen, but like they're under this cloud. And the last time they were under this cloud, they announced the small business program.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:03Nilay Patel?

  Which the judge in the trial actually said, you didn't do this for competition. You did it because of regulators and pressure, like. So like they have, they have all their moves they could make. I think Dieter is right. This, the keynotes are now infomercials. They have been for over a year now from all the companies. These like tightly scripted, they're not gonna, no one's gonna boo them. Right. That's the, that's the danger you have like 10,000 people in Moscone West, right? Is you're gonna announce a thing and like Tim Cook is gonna expect the cheer and it's pin drop silence. Right? Or like worse, people are like boo, we hate you. They don't have any of that to worry about. But they could announce, we're lowering the cut on subscriptions to eight and a half percent for two years.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  They could announce in-app purchases for all categories except for games are going to 10%. And we're just gonna keep milking the whales in the games category forever. Like they have moves. I think one of the questions I have is they can't just like gesture at it. They have to do something. Will they do something after all of this noise?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  But I think they've already done that though, right? Cause they, they, they cut it to 15% for, so basically the vast majority of developers are 15%. If you, you know, if you take out whatever revenues they're generating. So they, they kind of did that in the wake of a lot of this drama last year. You know, the, the, the questions around it. So I'm not sure that they'll do anything at WWDC related to this. Um, until there's significant regulatory pressure, really. We don't really know what the EU are doing with, with their case and what they're gonna try and convince them to do. Like the, the, the thing that needs to happen is a regulator has to step in and say, you need to change your product or your, your business model in a certain, not business model, but you need to change your product.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  In a certain way. I just don't know if that's gonna happen anytime soon.

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And the EU likes to do, like do things. They're like, when you boot up an Android phone, you're gonna pick a, a search engine and then like everyone picks Google.

• 13:01Nilay Patel?

  But they love doing the stuff. So we'll see. I just think that's, to me, it is the biggest dark cloud that Apple has had before an event like this in quite some time. So we'll just have to see if they come out, because this is their developer event. If this was just another event to announce a MacBook or an iPhone event, I would expect nothing. But the audience for this, even though we're all gonna watch it and it's streamed and like lots of people, consumers are gonna watch it, Apple fans are gonna watch it, the audience is developers. That's who this is for. And it feels like they need to address that. Maybe they'll do it in State of the Union. Like, there's all these other events they have. They're a little bit more closed door. But to me, it's like, we're gonna talk about all the OSs. The point of developer events and announcing your OSs early is to get developers

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  excited about building to your new APIs and your new features and like, making new innovative stuff on top of the platforms. If they're already kind of mad at you, like, the second part of the equation is just, it's hard to get through. But we'll see.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  What if they just go back to charging for OS updates? And that, that's, they'll fund that, they'll fund software that way instead of App Store fees.

• 14:06Alex Cranz?

  They're not gonna do that.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  No, they won't. I'm just saying.

• 14:08Nilay Patel?

  That'd be great. They get a box in the mail, and it's just like, it's a tiny little lightning USB key.

• 14:17Alex Cranz?

  So it's flushing your phone. You can't even get it out without buying a tool.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it'd be incredible.

• 14:21Alex Cranz?

  What Tom said kind of made me go galaxy brain on this, though, which is, you know, he said, "They're gonna surprise us. They're gonna do something big." And what if the distraction isn't like, directly to the developers? But what if it is stuff like this Home OS? What if it's, you know, they've been, they've been flirting around AR and they've got to start getting people somewhat excited for that, for when they eventually release their AR glasses? What if they do a big tease, just kind of like, to distract people from the fact that everybody loses 30% of their income when they develop an app for the store? Like, you know, I think they're really good on putting on a big show and really getting us hyped about things. And what if it's kind of like, "Oh, ignore that, ignore that. Look at all this other cool stuff we're doing." You want to get excited about this. You want to be in people's homes in a different way. You want to be in their eyeballs in a different way.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Here's, here's what it's gonna be. I'm ready. You're, you're hearing it from me first exclusively.

• 15:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I could just see it.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Exclusive nonsense from Dieter Böhm.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Tim Cook gets in the middle of Apple Park and he's like, you know, the future of developing for the Mac is web apps. And we're going to talk about PWAs. And he's going to do PWA, it's just going to be web apps, nonstop for 45 minutes. He's going to call it a sweet solution.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  And Steve, the ghost of Steve Jobs sucks Tim Cook into a swirling vortex. It is like, that's not it.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  And then the IE logo just appears.

• 15:48Alex Cranz?

  We wouldn't be talking about the 30% then.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  That's true. That is definitely true.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  They would definitely have like, like macOS smoke and mirrors, you know, like there's going to be like some sort of, there's going to be something that's going to distract. They're going to be like, you know, we're going to give you this, this is going to be great for developers and like, because that's the way that Apple tackles these things. They never.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  Cash. They're just going to give developers cash. They're just going to mail you, it's a direct Apple pay.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  And everyone's going to spend it on Ethereum or Bitcoin or whatever.

• 16:17Nilay Patel?

  Every day that you don't tweet, Apple gives you $5. Actually, that would work. I would take that deal. Let's go through the OSs. We'll see what happens. I just wanted to put that in a context because the point of these events is to get people excited about building new products for the OSs. And that is a hurdle they have to get over this year, which is new. Let's talk about iOS, like very few rumors about iOS, as Tom was saying.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's weird. It's suspiciously quiet. That's, that's what I mean. It's like, I think Mark German had a story about how this is going to be some change to the notification stuff and some home screen stuff for iPadOS. But that seems like there's always a home screen thing on iPadOS every year now.

• 16:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, iPadOS did nothing last year. Let's talk about them separately. So the phone is like in a pretty good place. The notifications have long needed updates. So that makes sense. They're going to do.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Well, actually, we need to, we need to sit on this for just a second.

• 17:12Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  So the rumor is that German is reporting is that they're going to have different settings for different like situations you might be in, like driving, working or sleeping. And then you can customize how notification works for these different settings, like automatic applies and whatnot. This is literally just profiles.

• 17:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  This is the feature that was on every single feature phone. Like you'd hit like star two or whatever. And then you'd pick between like five different ring profiles for your ringtones or whatever. That we just forgot existed because here it is. It's the Vergecast because Palm invented the ringer switch. And then you don't want 50 profiles. You just want two. And then Apple is the only company that bothered to steal it. And then one plus a little bit later. And so, I don't know. Like, I am very happy to see lots of different notification, like, management options. I'm an Android user and I just love how Google changes their mind about how notifications are going to work every year. But that has gotten them to a good place. I don't know that the problem with notifications on the iPhone is that there aren't enough modes.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Like, that's not the problem.

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  So we have to figure out how this works. Like, it's just the rumor they're thinking about it. It's funny because we're sorry about Apple's dark cloud with developers. Apple can just exert pressure on developers and be like, part of app review is now we are going to set priority levels for your notifications for you. And if you abuse this system, we're just going to kick you out of the store. And that is the one time I'm like, yeah, you should do that. On Android, every app is like, yeah, we're the highest priority notification. Just like out of the box, they're all like, no one is humble enough. No Android app developer is humble enough to be like, you know what? You don't need these notifications.

• 18:53Nilay Patel?

  So like, I would accept that, like, a system where app developers are incentivized to be honest, that, yeah, okay. I probably want my messaging apps to be the highest priority notifications. But I really do not, at this point, the New York Times breaking news notifications are like, we've conducted a 5,000-word investigation into butterflies. And it's like, I don't know what this is. Like, I just need to shut this off. But I want them. I just don't need them at the level of everything else. Like, if I could do that on an iPhone, I would be very happy. I would also like notifications to be much more actionable, which they're stepping towards. But they're still not great, right? Like, if I could delete a text from the home screen, I would be the happiest person in the world.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  What you're describing there sounds like you want some serious machine learning chops in iOS, which is something that it's kind of lacking at the moment.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  Or, you know, features, capabilities.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  But you want you want it to adapt to you, right? You want it to be like, oh, look at this New York Times alert. It's not like the phone knows me and knows that I won't be interested in those butterflies.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, that's.

• 19:59Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's it's kind of weird, though, because like, Apple can't really get too in-depth in machine learning, because it's it's very much about like siloing your profiles and your user data and stuff. And that's always why it said Siri is kind of stupid. And I personally love that, like, let it be more stupid if it means I don't have to have like worry about them listening in on everything I do. But at the same time, if if they don't do the machine learning thing, if they do like exert influence on the app creators, that just kind of pushes them right back towards the judge who is currently deciding if they have too much power over creators. And it's just like they're in a really, it's like, I don't think there's an easy answer. Because like, what's the other one?

• 20:43Alex Cranz?

  Like, you get to go and create huge profiles for yourself, and you have to create like 12 different profiles. And that's like, the antithesis of Apple and just being able to open and use your phone. And so it's like, I'm just curious to see what they do, because every single route seems very not what I would expect from Apple.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think the thing that's true right now is that notification management on iPhones has been horrible since the day the first iPhone came out.

• 21:08Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  Like, right now, getting a phone call on an iPhone is just an incredible experience of like, you get the dropdown banner over whatever you're doing, you can answer it. But then if you put it to your ear, it's not in the app, so it doesn't shut off the screen. So your cheek is just touching a bunch of stuff. So that's like, it doesn't even make any sense. It's not in speakerphone, but then you go to push the speaker button, it doesn't just default to the phone's speaker, it'll bring up the speaker menu and be like, do you want to take this call on your MacBook Pro? And then the other person on the line is like, are you there? And you're like, hang on, I'm still answering the phone call.

• 21:47Alex Cranz?

  And they're probably hearing you being called on your Mac, on your iPad, on your watch, on every other product in your house that uses Apple.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  Yes. You definitely know if you called somebody using iOS, because you hear the ringers around them come to a close.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  When they answer.

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  And that's just like.

• 22:02Alex Cranz?

  It's so satisfying.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  That's the that's the primary notification of a phone.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  I just like, they need to make that system more powerful. Whether it's with machine learning, whether it's giving the users an endless series of controls, whether it's, I don't know, just shutting it off. Like, just do something, like, start it over and, like, rethink it. But it is, to me, this, it has always been and will continue to be the single biggest pain point of an iPhone. And so if that's the thing they announced with iOS, they do nothing else, like, that would be great.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  I like the way that, like, over the last year or so in iOS, they've, they have kind of been learning some of your behaviors to sort of make it a little bit smarter. So, like, every day I'll swipe down and it'll be like, oh, you watch this Twitch stream. It's like, why don't you watch this today? Or it'll be like, oh, you message this person a lot, why don't you message this person? You know, like, all these tiny little things that don't always quite work properly.

• 22:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  But when they do, they're kind of like those delighter things. There's, there's like, oh, that's saved me, like, you know, a couple of seconds or whatever, or it's just reminded me to do a task. Like, if they can really play on that with, like, not being too into the privacy stuff and the creepiness of it, because it can be creepy when this, this stuff pops up and, like, predicts your behavior.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Then I think that's a way of, like, layering iOS to be a bit more, you know, power user friendly or just a bit more usable. Especially for stuff like notifications, if they, if they apply that sort of ML to notifications.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, you've pushed the answer call button and now our advanced differential privacy ML system has determined that you wish to answer the phone call? I'll take it. Here's a, here's a question. Right now, who are they lifting more from? Are they lifting old Windows Phone ideas with app tiles and, like, deep links? Are they lifting more Android ideas? Because Android has a bunch of this stuff too, but it's, it's all just very different than how Windows Phone did it. And you can see Apple's kind of going in that, like, app clips, app tiles, deep links direction more than the, the Android. What if the app was just kind of running in this window all the time?

• 24:08Speaker 03

  I think they're lifting from everyone, even the jailbreak community as well, right? Like, we've seen a bunch of stuff from, from that community that's bubbled up into iOS. I think they just pick out whether, whether it's good and works, works well. But they take their time to refine it, which, you know, we know from the decades of watching Apple.

• 24:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, the other rumor is that they're going to lift from WhatsApp, because Germain says that they're working on, quote, "upgrades to iMessage with the eventual goal of acting more like a social network and better competing with Facebookings." WhatsApp.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Disclosure for your bingo card. My wife works for a division of Facebook Reality Labs.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  Amazing.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  A division of Facebook. I don't know what that means, but I do know that, you know, iMessage is nowhere near as popular in the rest of the world as it is in the US. And maybe Apple does feel like a desire to compete in some way. But I also know that Apple, the last thing that company would want to do right now is deal with yet another like moderation problem, right? They got enough going on with the App Store. If there's like, you know, WhatsApp has had all sorts of moderation issues and like, like having to disable automatic forwarding and a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't know what Apple's thinking with iMessage, but trying to make it into a social network. That's like, that's a thing that Apple has not successfully done.

• 25:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Didn't they really bomb the last one they tried?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Ping?

• 25:25Alex Cranz?

  Ping?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Mobile Me was, was pretty great.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on. These are, these are all different Apple failures. Ping was their social network for music that made no sense.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Oh, but there was, there wasn't Apple Music one since then, but I forget what it was called.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  Right. Then there was one in Apple Music where artists, like when they announced Apple Music, they're like, and then artists will just like not use Instagram.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  Like that quickly fizzled into nothing, hit the brick wall of reality. Mobile Me was their cloud services that turned into iCloud. Mobile Me famously, like Steve Jobs stood up in front of like the Mobile Me team and was like, Walt Mossberg hates this. How did he screw this up?

• 26:06Nilay Patel?

  Which is like amazing. Walt has very conflicted feelings about that. But like that was the, the level of failure was like Steve Jobs was like, look at this. Look at what Walt said. How'd you screw this up so bad? But not a social network. I do think the last thing they tried to do with iMessage was they tried to add apps to it. In that era when Apple's answer to everything was, what if this had an App Store? And so they tried to put apps into iMessage. And that has gone effectively nowhere, except that it is now much harder to add a photo to a text on an iPhone.

• 26:38Alex Cranz?

  I love my emojis.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  It's so funny that you guys like in the US, iMessage is such a huge thing because I literally only ever go into iMessage to look at like a scam SMS though.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  That's literally it.

• 26:52Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing. Okay, so that's iOS. We think there's some notification stuff. We think there's some iMessage stuff. Lots of mystery shrouding what else they will do. Apple's most important platform. That can't be it, but that's what we know so far. iPadOS, equally mysterious, but I will say after the last round of iPad Pro reviews, everyone is like, well, they gotta do something. Except for Dieter, who's like, I don't know, man. I've been hearing that for years. Dieter's just tired.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  No, I just, I, the rumors are gonna, they're gonna let you like place widgets wherever you want on the home screen because they did that for the iPhone, but they didn't do it for the iPad and nobody knew why. And just the hope that they're like, Apple's gonna do something wackadoo, like let you run Mac apps on the M1 powered iPad Pro. I just don't, they're not, no, I just, I, I no longer have hope.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  There's no way they're gonna let you do that because then you would have a touchscreen Mac.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  I think that it will, some form of it will happen, but like, it's gonna be years in the making. Like, these things don't, you know, they don't just put an M1 chip in the iPad and then six months later, go WWDC, Mac apps.

• 28:00Nilay Patel?

  So I hear that, that they put the chip in the, the iPad, the M1, and that feels like it's gonna lead to a logical conclusion. But I also think Apple is a master of its own supply chain and there's a chip shortage and the M1 is really just like the A13X or whatever. Like fundamentally, it is just the next evolution of the chip they were using. And they're like, whatever, we're just using it in all the computers. Like, I don't, there's no reason, like, the existence of the chip does not make them have to do anything. The existing of governments around the world doesn't mean Apple has to do anything.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  It doesn't, but like the fact that everything apart from the iPhone is on M1 now. Like, I mean, see, I say everything's just the iPad and Macs, basically. There's a reason behind that, other than chip shortage, I think.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  I just don't think we're gonna get to that this year. Like, I think it's a multi-year process.

• 28:50Alex Cranz?

  I think they can't do it this year. They were so emphatic about the Mac, macOS wouldn't become the iPad, right? Like, they can't take one and make it the other. They've been so emphatic about that for so, so long, that the minute they do it, we will, like, I will be delighted as I gleefully throw it back in their face in a blog form. But like, they can't do it. Like, they have, it's gonna have to be subtle and like, low-key. And, and so I think it is, I think Tom's right, it is gonna be years and years and years. But it's also like, this is the natural next step. And I think it's gonna be kinda like, when they finally blew the iPhone up and they, they had all these other different things to distract you from the fact that you could no longer fit it in your pocket.

• 29:36Alex Cranz?

  And, and, you know, Steve Jobs had always said, "Oh, I will never, never do a big phone, they're terrible." And it's the same thing, he was like, "I'll never do a touch Mac." And like, yeah, they just gotta go slow and then distract us with something else.

• 29:47Nilay Patel?

  I think Steve Jobs, actually, when he said, "I want to do a touch," didn't he have the alligator arms? He like, put up a slide, and he was like, "This'll give you alligator arms." Gorilla arms? It was an animal, it was a type of animal arm that he thought was very bad. And those animals are still, to this day, very angry at Apple. You'll never see a crocodile using a Mac. Just a fact.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Look, with the iPad, it's been 10 years of us saying, "Hey, this screen is pretty good, and this processor's pretty fast. You should, you should, you know, you could do a lot more with this." And Apple's like, "Nah." And then, a couple of years ago with iPadOS, they're like, "All right, here's the new system. Here's everything, the new windowing system." It's, and I was like, so excited, because Apple finally let the iPad get complicated, which is what needed to happen in order to turn it into a computer that didn't feel like it was like, limiting you. And, it's like, you're just, you're waiting for them to finally do the thing that you've pent up, you know, all your hopes and dreams for it have been pent up over a decade. They're just, I think that they are actually really content with where the iPad is and what the iPad is. Like, to wit...

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Multi-user support, like if if all they do is walk up on stage, I said this last year, if all they do is walk up on stage to say, here's the iPad, here's the login screen. Look, there's two icons on it, one for you and one for your kid. And then they walk off stage and that's the entire iPad OS section.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Done.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  A plus, five stars.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Slam dunk. They're going to announce like more HomeKit automation features instead.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  But but to your point about like, we've been waiting, you know, a decade for certain stuff. If you'd gone back five years and said that the iPad had mouse and keyboard support, I think most people would have been like, nah, it's never gonna happen. Or like, yeah, I want it, but like, it's never gonna happen. And even Apple was like, at the time, no. And they did it in their own unique way. So I think, I don't think the iPads are ever gonna run macOS or anything like that. But I feel like they will get to a point where they, the windowing is different. Like they've kind of gone that way. It's kind of very Windows eight sort of hybrid at the moment. But I think it'll get a bit more free flowing. It makes sense if they allow you to run Mac apps on there at some point.

• 31:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  When they, they just like to bridge gaps. That's what the iPad has been doing for like 10 years is just slowly being bridging those gaps.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  So. I don't know, I feel like, look, air travel's coming back. A lot of executives are gonna need to do email in first class. Apple's got a $2,000 computer that can solve that problem for you. And they're just gonna like sell a lot of them.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  That like, I think they might just be happy with that. And that to me is like, across all these product lines, we should talk about the watch next. Like, Apple faces so little competition. I go back to that question of like, who are they lifting from more? We're talking about one operating system, Android, that exists that they kind of live from all the time. But even the pace of that, back and forth, has slowed. And then we're talking about two dead operating systems. Like Apple's still like, I don't know, does WebOS have any ideas? Let's use some of those. Like, there's not a lot of, like, pressure to innovate in a lot of these spaces anymore. And then in particular, with the watch and with the iPad. Where are they feeling any heat at all? Right? It's just like only from within does Apple feel

• 32:58Nilay Patel?

  the pressure to make something better. It's good and lucky that Apple seems to feel a lot of that pressure all the time. Like, that's the company, that's their DNA. I think that should be commended for that. They're not lazy with the products, even though they have these monopoly positions. But like, there's a reason the iPad is moving a lot slower than it did. But Steve Jobs once, remember, like, years ago, he got on a quarterly results call and did like a 10-minute rant about seven-inch Android tablets. Like, he was like fired up about seven-inch Android tablets. He's like, this is the wrong size, they're broken. And it's because Google was gonna do like the Nexus 7 or whatever. Like, I guarantee you that no Apple executive has thought about an Android tablet in any capacity, except Amazon sells cheap one for kids, and Apple would prefer that you just

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  gave your old iPad to a kid.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  But I think all that speaks to the maturity of, particularly the iPhone, but obviously the iPad's pretty mature now as well. And I think if they're gonna, if the iPhone's gonna face any sort of competition other than, you know, whatever Google does and Android, it's gonna be foldable stuff. And like, we're, like, if we ever get to the point where you're folding these things out and using them as actual computers, then there has to be the flexibility of the operating system and whatever else. But again, we're probably years out from that ever being a reality. So until that's the case, yeah, they just have to slowly bridge the gaps.

• 34:19Alex Cranz?

  I'm still holding out for an Android e Ink tablet that can play a video. It's gonna happen, and then Apple's gonna be like, oh, my gosh! And just gonna be absolutely wrecked by that first beautiful tablet. You won't be able to read anything in it. It's gonna be great.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  It will play at like two frames a second.

• 34:39Nilay Patel?

  In your mind, this is a black and white, like, you're watching silent films.

• 34:42Alex Cranz?

  No, no, no, it's gonna be color. Like, we're gonna get a, like, give it two or three years, we're gonna have the perfect iPad replacement, and everybody's gonna be going and buying their e Ink tablets that are like 13 inches wide, last for four weeks on a charge, can't play video, but look fabulous.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  And they'll call it the Korea.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  I mean, that scenario is more likely than genuine competitive pressure on the Apple Watch. Like, they're gonna announce a new version of WatchOS. And I honestly, they're not gonna give us custom watch faces beyond what, you know, they'll add like 10 more watch faces to it. There'll be 13 different ways to like track your workouts that are new. And I don't know what else is left because there's nothing for them to like compete against, right?

• 35:30Nilay Patel?

  No, they're gonna merge it with Tizen. They're like, we are also merging our platform with Tizen.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  The only other thing happening in wearables is Amazon has a wrist strap that will tone police you, right? What are they worried about in the world?

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Alex Cranz?

  I think they are facing small, tiny bits of competition from companies like Oura Ring and a lot of these companies that are going that health route. And the further those companies go down that health route, like, the first time somebody gets glucose monitoring on your wrist, like, Apple's gonna be scrambling to buy all those patents so it can also get glucose monitoring on the wrist. Like, like, there's competition there, but it's less in like, the fun, kind of like, user experience and much more in like, the how much more of your medical data can we put in front of your eyeballs on a given day?

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then also, I mean, Oura Ring, cool product, people really like it. There's been studies about the data it produces and how it can be helpful. It's super interesting. To use one, you need to run an app on your phone.

• 36:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  That goes to the App Store. Like, if you, Apple could just be like, I don't know, what if the Oura Ring just didn't update its app for a couple of weeks, y'all? Like, that's a, it's a weird dynamic that they have where all these ancillary products also have to filter through the phone for, maybe not the primary user interface, because it's like a piece of hardware, but a very important secondary user interface that includes setting it up for the first time. And like, I think, I think that level of control across the broader ecosystem is interesting to think about. That said, I couldn't tell you what they should do at the watch at this point in time. Like, what do I need WatchOS to do? Maybe I think like maybe the walkie talkie feature could be slightly faster. I would take that. I use my wife and I use the walkie talkie feature like every day.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  I'd like different vibration settings for different notifications and stuff like that. Like, because there are, but like, there's not a way for developers to set that.

• 37:32Alex Cranz?

  I would like better access to using home automations and stuff like I would like to be able. You can do it from your watch, but it's miserable. It's just the worst experience in the world and I would like to just be able to look at it and be like, I'm gonna turn off the lights and tap my wrist and the lights are off.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  No, you're supposed to ask Siri.

• 37:53Alex Cranz?

  I do, and she does it, but sometimes I wanna, I just wanna touch it. I don't wanna have to shout through my house.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  See, see, what if it learned that it was 10:00 PM at night and that you did that? So when you swipe down from the top, that was just an option.

• 38:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Alex Cranz?

  I will allow it.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  By the way, it does, it should not have to learn that it's 10:00 PM at night. But that does not require AI.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  One, Control Center does that. It like shows up my night automations at night. Like, it's pretty good about that. But I was like, talking about home gadgets, like, the rumor is that they might introduce Home OS. Maybe they'll like convert both the HomePod and the Apple TV to run this renamed thing. It's flip on that Thread Radio later this year. Matter, which is the, used to be called Chip, which I used to call Choy, which is connected home over IP, a smart home thing, which is basically HomeKit, but everybody can use it, is like launching. So it's possible that we could see Apple like actually try really hard with HomeKit in a way that I feel like it hasn't and because it was really limiting

• 38:59Speaker 02

  and it was very hard to find HomeKit devices for a while. And they've slowly been opening that door. And so maybe, maybe we'll see like a big push there and that that'll be one of the big surprises is that Apple's. Actually going to try and take on Alexa when it comes to smart home stuff.

• 39:16Alex Cranz?

  I think they absolutely can, especially when you see stuff like Sidewalk happening and and there's more and more conversations about how intrusive Amazon and Google have gotten in the home. Apple has positioned itself for years as this big privacy protector. And now it can say like, yeah, we like, you can control your whole smart home and not have to sell all of your data to, to, you know, give it all away. Like, I think, I think that's something very doable and there's not a lot of competition. Like Samsung Smart Things was probably one of the biggest competitors and it still exists, but like.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  People love Smart Things.

• 39:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I loved it. I used it for years and I moved into a new house and I made the switch to HomeKit just to like, see how good, if HomeKit could work. And I will never go back. It's like, yes, I had to program all of my lights in HomeKit instead of the Hue app and all this other stuff, but it just like, it did exactly what I needed it to do. And I think if they actually give it some more, if you, if you have stronger automations and, and just people can program that stuff a little better than it currently is, like, yeah, there, there's no reason it couldn't just dominate in, in this kind of budget smart home area.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Can I tell you the nerdiest thing about Smart Things?

• 40:33Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 40:34Nilay Patel?

  Do you know what the sleeper Smart Things product is? The absolute sleeper? It's the Wi-Fi router.

• 40:39Alex Cranz?

  It's good.

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  The Samsung Smart Things Wi-Fi router. They didn't make it themselves. They licensed all the tech from Plume, which is like one of the, the new Wi-Fi companies. Plume sold itself to Comcast, disclosure. God. Comcast, whatever. They licensed the tech. And so what the Plume app lets you do is assign devices to VLANs so they can only see certain other devices.

• 41:07Alex Cranz?

  I love it.

• 41:08Nilay Patel?

  So you can bracket all of your smart home stuff on one virtual network. And then like only let certain people see it in your house or only let certain devices see one another. So if you, for example, desire to control your garage doors with a very dodgy smart home garage door opening system, you can hide it away from the rest of your network so that it can't send it out. And it's like, it's absolute the sleeper on, because you buy a plume, you gotta pay a monthly fee, a subscription fee, but Samsung just like covers it. It's just free. So there's an entire like underground community of smart things router people who are like, we're getting away with it, y'all.

• 41:49Nilay Patel?

  It's very good.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  You just, you just called them out. Neil, you're gonna ruin it.

• 41:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's over.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  I think that when people know that they sign this deal, it's just very funny. But like, that's like, come back to like, Apple and Hum Kit, and it's like, it is wild that Samsung makes that product. And they make an entire range of smart things things, not to mention washers and dryers and refrigerators, right? Like, Samsung has this huge product range that can't quite integrate, but you could see how it could work. Apple's like, I don't know, choip? Y'all want some choip?

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Well, maybe Home OS is a router. Remember when Apple used to do those?

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  And they were very good.

• 42:33Alex Cranz?

  My dad still uses his. He has not replaced it in 45 years.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we actually, we just moved and I was unpacking a random box and there was an airport, just like, I was like, what? Oh my God, I wanted to use it. Okay, macOS. What do you, what do you want from macOS?

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  I hope they de-ugly big sir. It's all that I want. Just, just try again. Just be like, we made this thing that looks like you should touch it. We keep insisting that you shouldn't touch it. And it instead looks like Disney World. And we're just gonna turn that down.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Maybe they're just bridging the gaps.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  I, Tom, you make it sound so evil. It's like Apple's playing Risk with Olive Computing, like slowly advancing.

• 43:23Alex Cranz?

  I would love them to take the little X in a notification and make it a big X.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  The notifications in in Mac OS.

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  This is why we don't run these.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Are so bad. The notifications in Mac OS are terrible.

• 43:38Nilay Patel?

  They are, and they they've gotten worse with everything they've done up in the corner.

• 43:41Alex Cranz?

  Just go find Growl, what's left of Growl.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:45Alex Cranz?

  Buy it and just put it on there and done and I'll be fine.

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  Growl is a deep cut. So for most of our listeners, in the early 2000s, Growl was an open source notification framework for Mac OS. It was actually called OS 10 back then. And like, all the Apple developers were like, that's great, we'll use it. They all just used it. And then Apple built its own notification system that is oddly used and and Growl faded away. Right? So you're saying, go find the remnants of Growl.

• 44:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like, give that guy $5.

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  His name is John Rowell.

• 44:24Nilay Patel?

  George, George Rowell.

• 44:27Alex Cranz?

  Like, he deserves, he like, just just buy it from him. I would love to be able to put my notifications on the one part of my screen I never go to, rather than the part where like, it always covers up all of my slacks with other slacks.

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think with the M1, with they're able to make new form factors for the Macs. I think Big Sur predated those form factors. Like now, looking at Big Sur, you can see it's big and colorful and bright. It was like, they knew, they knew the new M1 iMac's were coming and they've got an aesthetic, a hardware software aesthetic for those computers. There is a rumor of a new MacBook Pro. There's, it's obvious they're going to update all the other computers along the way. There's some leaks about the chips they're going to put in Mac Pros and how many cores they have. Like, they've got an entire cycle of Mac redesigns coming, and I think Mac OS has to go with it, like, go for that ride. But I couldn't tell you that, like, right now, what Mac OS, like, we're going to get an

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  interminable demo of, like, Safari cookie blocking or something, right? Like, that's where they're at with Mac OS. They need to add more features to it. And like, the big feature that everybody wants is a touchscreen, and they don't want to do it. Tom, say bridging the gap again.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Bridging the gap. Don't worry, don't worry, guys. We'll be sitting here in 10 years and be like, do you remember?

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Do we think we're gonna get new MacBook Pros?

• 45:48Alex Cranz?

  Oh, 100%.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Oh, God, I just don't, I don't want to set myself up for disappointment because I want it so bad. Here's, here's my thing. There's a bunch of rumors, there's some analysts saying that it'll happen. John Prosser says it'll happen. But if they're gonna introduce new MacBook Pros, they have to introduce new processors. And that entire experience of new MacBook Pros, justifying the return of ports, because that's the rumor, there's gonna be ports again, my God, and explaining how fast the processor is, Apple will never do that in less than 45 minutes, maybe half an hour, right? I mean, they do, they move faster in these, like, in this online world. But for them to cram new version of our hot shit processor that's faster

• 46:32Speaker 02

  than anything else, and we brought ports back, and there's an all new design, and this is a computer that everybody is truly waiting for, they're not gonna cram that in, it's like, you know, a 10 minute segment of WWDC.

• 46:45Alex Cranz?

  One, they absolutely should, because I do need this, this MacBook Pro, mine's the 2016 original touch bar monstrosity, and I'm on my third one. But, you know, I think the processor, so for the last couple of years, they've spent so much time talking about processors, and I think it was less about like, telling us about processors, and more about like, hyping their, their abilities in the space. And, and at this point, they've kind of like, shown they can do it, right? Like, if, if all they're doing is a little, you know, a talk for the, the tick that was the M1, and that, and this M1X or M2 is just a couple additional cores, and slightly less power efficiency, like, I think they can communicate that pretty quickly, and, and be

• 47:28Alex Cranz?

  like, like, all they have to do is be like, it's gonna be like the old MacBook Pro, but with two more cores, go!

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  I feel like glossing over the ports is a thing they will absolutely do. They'll be like,

• 47:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  Now applaud for this SD card reader.

• 47:42Alex Cranz?

  I will.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Literally, you will hear the applause around the world in a virtual, even on a virtual event. I know they bumped USB C to support more power recently, but I I'm sitting here with a 16 inch MacBook Pro and 100 watt USB C charger. And this thing often does not charge. Like it is often still drawing too much power for this gigantic 100 watt brick. And if I plug anything else in the brick, it's like game over. So I think one of the reasons to bring the ports back is they might as well just have a dedicated power adapter. Like USB C and I know that

• 48:14Alex Cranz?

  No, don't say it.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  But it's true. Like if they need, if they need to put 90 watts into some ultra powerful M series chip, then like you might as well have a dedicated power adapter.

• 48:26Alex Cranz?

  I think it's going to be a powerful chip. I think it's not going to be as powerful as like the big power users want it to be, right? Like, I don't think it's going to be the thing that like all the video programmers and audio producers and stuff just chuck out their 16 inch and go get. I think they're gonna like, I think it's, it's going to be less powerful than that. Because Apple's going to wait until that big Mac Pro to really show off like how good it is at processing. But I think, I think it's like, I think this is going to be kind of their half step between the MacBook Air like, right? This is just their little step up of like slightly more powerful, slightly more power hungry. And look, a nicer, bigger screen and ports.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  I think, no, I think that they already have that in the 13 inch MacBook Pro, which is like, what if this computer had a fan?

• 49:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? And then the 16 inch Pro, and if they do a 14 inch Pro, which I think is one of the whispers in the wind.

• 49:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, 14 and 16 are the rumors.

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  Like those are, that's their like bread and butter Pro machine. Those things have to be fast. So I don't know. We'll see. I just think that they ran into the, oh, USB C was a mistake. We might as well put a power port back on here because we need to pull that much power from a dedicated USB C brick.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Well, they can, they can be like what they did with the Mac Pro, which is like, you know, we heard you. This is what we've got, sort of thing.

• 49:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Like they can, they could do that. And I don't know. Yeah, I'm like with D there. I'm not sure whether they have enough time to cram it in.

• 49:53Alex Cranz?

  They need, I need it.

• 49:54Nilay Patel?

  I mean, based on our preview here, they could be like, watch OS, like whatever, nothing happened. Moving on to this MacBook. We are at an hour in. We need to take a break and talk about the next version of Windows. I will say I doubt anything of note is happening in tvOS because all of Apple's efforts on getting the Apple TV app on other platforms, including the Nvidia Shield. Huh? See? Yeah. Positive Shield mention. Think about that before you send your emails and the rest of Android TV. That seems where their efforts are. They just released the new box. Chris Welch reviewed the new box. Their new remote is great. You should buy it. And it's amazing Apple can get another $70 out of me.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  Like, an entire Google TV is 50 bucks. So it goes. Okay, we're gonna take a break. We'll be right back talking about Windows.

• 50:46Speaker 05

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• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Tom, are they gonna skip another number? That's what I want to know.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  So you want it to be Windows 12 or Windows 13? I think I can exclusively reveal the name.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  This is a Vergecast exclusive. It's gonna be Windows 9. It's gonna go back to the forgotten operating system. The one they missed.

• 52:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  The one they let get away. But yeah, like, it looks like it's gonna be Windows 11. I think that's, at least that's what Microsoft wants us to think.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so it's gonna be Windows 20.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  How are they gonna justify saying, "Just kidding, when we said we're never gonna have a new version of Windows, it's gonna be Windows 10 forever and ever, we promise."

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on, I have an idea. Windows 2000.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  See, I think it's gonna go one of two ways, right? It's gonna be, well, one of three ways. It's gonna be Windows, Windows 11, or Windows 365.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Or something, you know, like Windows Series 10. Take that back.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  Windows Series Xbox.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  But I'm confident that the name or branding around this is changing.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  Xbox Live colon Windows Edition.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Oh, it's gonna be Azure Intelligent Edge OS.

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so what do we know about Windows, uh, Windows 2000?

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Well, Windows 2000 came, uh, so Windows 11. So, so they've put out, they've been teasing this for months. So, Panel said the next generation back at Ignite. Satya Nadella, just a week ago, said like, this is gonna be the biggest change to Windows in like a decade, and the next generation of Windows. Um, and then they put out this invite, um, which is basically, it's just saying, we're talking about the next generation of, of Windows. But also alongside it, the invite has like, uh, sort of a shadow light pouring through the window, but it doesn't have the vertical bars, uh, the horizontal bars, sorry. So it just looks like it's, the shadows creeping in, it's an 11. And like, I was like, okay, yeah, maybe not, like, you know, everyone over analyzes Apple invites, so like, whatever.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  Um, the event starts at 11 a.m. Surface and Windows events never usually start at that time. It's usually like nine or 10 a.m. So it's kind of, it could be, you know, coincidental. And then one of the Microsoft executives on Twitter, I'm looking, can't wait for this new version of Windows. And I've not heard them say a new version of Windows. Like, that's different language than they've used. They've always said the next generation of Windows, whatever that means. So I think that combining those three things together is why I think there's going to be some sort of naming happening here, like a new, a new Windows name.

• 54:47Nilay Patel?

  What does a, what does a new Windows name mean? So as Dieter was saying, when they did Windows 10, they're like, we're just going to update Windows 10 forever. This is it. Here we are. What does it mean to have a new name? Is it signifying a strategy shift? Is it a new product, a new interface? What's?

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Yes, I think, I think the new name probably signifies a bit more of a reinvestment in Windows. So they, they split up Windows into two parts internally a few years ago. And then panels sort of came on board and then the pandemic hit. And like that, that combination of like panels sort of taking over Windows and the pandemic resurgence of like PC computing. Cause people obviously trying to work from home has made them think, oh, actually, you know, there are still like, whatever is 1.3 billion people using this operating system every day. So we should probably fix things and like make it a bit better. Make it like, look better and stuff. So I think it's the opportunity of doing all that fixing up work, a new UI.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  And all that sort of stuff is probably just led them to the point of like, we should just call this something different. You know, like they were trying this thing called Windows 10 X. It was going to be on dual screen devices before the pandemic hit. And then they were like, we're going to put it on single screen devices. And then they were like, you know what? We're just going to take all of the work that we did on that. Like the good UI work and the good bits of like reorganizing Windows essentially, making it a bit more lightweight. And we're going to put it into Windows. And I think that's what this is. So like a lot of that work. So it's, it's basically consists of like three things. It's like UI work. New store and there's some rumors about that. We can get into that. And then the final thing is basically I just completely lost my train of thought. But yeah, like new store,

• 56:28Speaker 03

  new UI and like a more of an opportunity for app developers, I think, and like opening up a little bit, I think, probably bringing some of the walls of the store down will help with that.

• 56:38Nilay Patel?

  Because they want to be in that app distribution game like.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, like they have realized, I think I've had like conversations with Pennos in the past, like when he when he took over Windows, like conversations with him in briefings about Windows and like expressing like the way that I see Windows and other people who use it frequently says that it's like a tool, right? It's a it is like, you know, a productivity tool or whatever. But I think a lot of the time they've been chasing like the wrong set of people for it. Like they did this creators update, they tried to create to go for that group of people. It didn't really work out. And they keep they kept they've constantly be trying to chase growth for Windows rather than just realize that it's valuable to a lot of people and that they can improve it and build upon it, fix things that will make

• 57:23Speaker 03

  it more valuable to those people, rather than having to, you know, add another hundred million people using it or whatever. So I think that they have finally come to realize that. And perhaps a lot of that's to do with the pandemic learnings and stuff.

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  And the absolute growth in PC sales, right? I mean, it's like explosive growth in PC sales.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like OEMs have obviously seen them experiment with these versions of Windows over the years, like 10S and 10X was another experiment. And like they've been waiting for like for OEMs having a different name, Windows, like a version that they can sell attached to hardware. It's like a goldmine for them. Because like it just immediately generates like hype and interest in products like, oh, there's a new Windows. Well, I should get a new laptop. Like it triggers, you know, consumer spending and all that sort of stuff. And and obviously on the enterprise as well.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  Do you think they just want to be able to reuse the letters? They're like, oh, we we want to do another S Windows. Eleven S it is. Because I mean, that that strategy was to to applianceify Windows.

• 58:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, so it was also to take on Chromebooks, right? And so if they're, if they, they've never succeeded at making, there's the S mode, you know, they've never really succeeded at making like a light version of Windows. Do you think they're giving up on that dream? Or is that somehow part of this?

• 58:42Speaker 03

  I think that's part of this. I think like some of it is obviously making it a bit more lightweight, the UX improvements. But I think the XS stuff was more than just competing with Chrome OS. It was also like control of the operating system. It was taking that control back. And there's, there's many legitimate reasons to do that, like ransomware that we're seeing across the world. Happens on Windows computers because they're open, blah, blah. But the way they went ahead, like they forced people down a route where they'd have to package their apps into the store. It's very much like the iOS debate, right? Like Apple has all the control over the App Store. That's the control that Microsoft ultimately wanted. Whether they wanted the same sort of control, who knows? But, but I think that was the primary driving driver there. And it's why like Tim Sweeney was dead against that sort of app model.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  And I think the realization with Windows now is that that stuff is just not, never really going to work for Windows. They're never going to truly make it lightweight unless they just blow it up and do something totally new. Which I guess 10X was like trying to go down that route. But I think it's the realization of like who uses Windows? And what this product is for. I think that's, that's, that's the main thing.

• 59:47Nilay Patel?

  So they did the Surface Neo and the Duo at the same time. The Duo runs Android and they'd, you know, we heard all the, the stories about how they work with Android and Hiroshi at Google and Panos at, at Microsoft are like tweeting hearts at each other. That product has like kind of gone nowhere. It was just deeply discounted. I seriously considered impulsifying one and then I didn't. Cause I was like, I don't.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's essentially a fire set right now.

• 1:00:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't go anywhere, so I don't need another phone, especially one that flips open to a slightly bigger phone. Maybe next year. That's over there. And then the Neo was 10x dual screen. And the entire story we heard was like dual screens are the future of productivity. You want to do two things at once. On a phone, you need to run two apps same time side by side. Over here, we're re-architecting Windows for dual screens. Once again, the future of productivity. That appears to be out the window.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's totally out the window. Like that, they don't talk about the Neo at all anymore. Like, it's basically a cancelled product right now because the operating system that powers it doesn't exist anymore. They're bringing that to Windows, so.

• 1:00:54Alex Cranz?

  What happens to all those like laptops from the OEMs? Because they were all kind of going all in on it too.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Yes, only only really Lenovo really went all in and actually launched their X1 Fold, ThinkPad X1 Fold, or whatever it was called. And that was supposed to come, you know, 10x was going to come to that. So I don't know what happens there, but I'm sure the two people that brought one were like, I'm not going to be disappointed.

• 1:01:19Alex Cranz?

  Well, I know because we saw like, we saw Asus did like their their two, their kind of dual monitor. And I think they're they're still doing it, right? Where they have like the little monitor down at the bottom and stuff. And I know Dell kept saying they were going to and then kind of stepped back and then said they're going to. And it just like, did they all just say, oh, the the display technology and everything else that needs to be there just isn't there? And Windows at the same time said, nah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, that sort of stuff is slightly different to the sort of Windows 10x stuff. So that was, that's just like pure Windows and like, they were doing like custom OEM like panels above the keyboard and stuff like that to power that. And like they've, those OEMs have experimented with that sort of stuff for years. So I think that stuff will still be there and we'll still see it. I just don't, I don't think much is going to support it in like a big effort.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just, to me that what like really drives the upgrade cycle is a form factor change. We just, we know this thing. We even know it inside of the iPhone. Like, they changed the way the iPhone looks. Everybody buys a new iPhone. This just happened with the iPhone 12. Even while lots of people were at home. Lots of people bought iPhone 12s because they looked different. To me, it's like. It is to me the silliest but most consistent thing I know about technology is if you want people to buy a new one, you just change the way it looks. It can, the iPod is like the example. Like, the iPod rarely got new functionality, but every year they made it look different. And I was like, I need a new iPod.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  And it's kind of the reverse at the moment, because it's like, what's driving PC growth is the reverse. Like, people are going from picking up their phones to being like, I need something to work on. Like, I can't, you know, I usually have something in the office or at school or whatever. And I don't have that now, so I need, I need something. So it's like, it's still a form factor thing that's driving it, but it's just the opposite way. Like, we're used to everyone buying mobile phones and just not really touching desktop PCs or laptops as frequently. And that's, that's driving this, this growth at the moment. Who knows once everything starts to go hybrid work, or whatever you want to call it, how that shakes out. Like, I'm sure the growth will go away somewhat. But then do they pick that dual screen setup?

• 1:03:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Microsoft was like gung ho on form factor change, because they thought they could crack back into the phone market, and they could do something to juice the PC market. And now they've dropped it, because they didn't, they kind of didn't need it. Like, Monica Chen and I just interviewed the CEO of Acer. Acer just had its best quarter, like, in years. And they're just, like, making everything. And we kept asking, like, what's your bet? Like, is it Chromebooks? Is it Windows on ARM? Is it whatever? And he was like, yeah, we're just gonna make whatever. Like, everyone's buying everything. We're good.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're in like, it's almost like the 2000 sort of era of PCs at the moment, just because there's such a demand for them, an unusual amount of demand. So Acer is definitely well positioned for that sort of stuff, because they can just experiment. And people, people will buy it. But yeah, like, the fact that Microsoft was, you know, it was basically putting its, its Surface brand on the line here, for like a dual screen device and stuff. And it has, obviously, on the Android side. It's surprising that they dropped it so quick during the pandemic. And they, and I feel like they kind of used it as like, I don't want to say an excuse, but like, it was definitely like, I don't think it was going the way that they thought it was gonna go, the development cycle on it. So it was like, it was a good point in

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  time for them to like, sort of, say, okay, let's not do this right now. Let's focus more on Windows. But yeah, like I'm curious to see where they go with that in the future. And there's like, there's rumors about like this Windows 11 stuff that they might bring back some of the touch stuff that they kind of did, widgets, seen some stuff floating around about that. I've got a feeling that they're doing quite a lot and a lot hasn't leaked because they've somehow managed to keep it very tight. So I feel like there's going to be a lot, a lot that we won't know until the event.

• 1:05:19Alex Cranz?

  How extensive is the user interface change going to be? Because like with Windows 10, they did like a surface change and then you'd go to menus N and you'd just be back in seven.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I think a lot of it is cleaning up like they've been sort of working on this over the last sort of couple of years. Like some of the icon stuff, the system icons, all that sort of stuff, like cleaning up. You know, when you like open up a driver installation and then suddenly you feel like you're back in Windows 95. That should not be happening.

• 1:05:51Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  So I think some of that will be going away and I'd hope that all of it goes away, but like I just can't see it all fully going away. And then it's like, there's a focus on like rounded corners, a new start menu. A lot of the stuff you saw in 10x where they simplified like the fly outs and the taskbar. And like basic stuff like controlling volume, all that sort of stuff. It looks a bit more like mobile friendly, almost like a bit more tablet touch friendly as well. Because I think they really stepped back from that stuff in Windows 10.

• 1:06:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, because it went so badly with eight, it's like the pendulum is just swinging, right? Like, and we just spent all our time talking about Apple. Microsoft has a giant installed base of touchscreen PCs now.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, they've got a lot of data on how people actually use them, right? And the things that they want to do with them, which is usually just like get that notification out of my face. Or like. But yeah, like I'm I'm curious to see where they go with that stuff. If they're bringing widgets back and like slide to bring in widgets and stuff like that. Like, I don't know, I feel like they're gonna add some stuff that a lot of people are just gonna turn off, right? Um, but I hope that they get to the point where they don't have to do stuff like force edge down your throat or force Bing down your throat. Um, and some of those sort of businessy decisions that they tried to do to obviously, you know, make Bing seem relevant.

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  And seem like it has users. Um, and also like generate some search and ad revenue and all that sort of stuff. Like, I hope they get away from that because I want to type into my start menu and have it search the web on the provider that I want it to do and to open up the browser that I have set as a default. So I'm hoping that they kind of do that sort of stuff as well.

• 1:07:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's it's one tap for Bing, two taps for Google. Is there that's they're just gonna hide it behind a series of inconferensible uh finger presses.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  But the the second thing, like the user interface things, I think it's gonna be, you know, it's it's gonna be just smarting Windows up. I don't think Windows is terrible, it's just like they haven't, whenever they've done stuff like dark mode, they've not really, they've done it seventy five percent of the way. And it's those little cracks that make like some signs you open stuff up and you're like, eh, why does it look like that?

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  And it's like, I think going to a hundred percent on that sort of stuff will will make a big difference. Um, it's it's very minor stuff, but ultimately all the little cuts add up, so.

• 1:08:09Alex Cranz?

  How much is that gonna go to like the app developers? Because I know with with like, when you look at macOS, it has all these really good and good looking apps and it's because like Apple kind of thinks about how things look. And Windows is just kind of like, it works, go. Like, are they gonna be trying to push that more with this new App Store?

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, yeah, not necessarily the App Store, but like they have been trying to push that with a lot of the API work over the years. Um, and there are some like better looking Windows apps because because of it. But I will say like, as a desktop operating system, I can't think of an app that's launched in the last five years that's important. Apart from browser updates, right? Like it's it's at that point where the iterative iterative versions of like Adobe Creative Suite are like big news, but like there's never usually a new app that comes along, you know?

• 1:09:02Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I don't know. They're all Electron apps. That's the problem.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  Electron apps. Yeah, they're web apps, the browser, basically.

• 1:09:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, WWDC, WWDC, three hours of web apps. Get ready.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  PWAs.

• 1:09:15Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. All right. Tom, when is this event?

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  June 24th. But the other thing, the other big thing is the store. So they're going to open that up and allow like Chrome and Firefox and stuff. You know, remember when they opened the store and they were like, Chrome can't be in there. Everyone was like, my browser that I use can't be in there.

• 1:09:32Nilay Patel?

  You can't sit with us.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And they're also going to allow third-party payment processes, processes through the store.

• 1:09:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, they're just going to come for Apple. I see what they're doing.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, yeah. So that's, that's another big part of this as well. And then it's just like fixing up stuff like multi-monitor support, some Bluetooth stack stuff that they should have fixed years ago.

• 1:09:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like the big fix. I think it justifies a new version, so.

• 1:09:57Nilay Patel?

  The 24th, 11 a.m., wherever you are, or wherever Microsoft is.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  In all time zones, 11 a.m.

• 1:10:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, we're gonna take a break. We got more operating systems to talk about. This is wild adventure on this show. We'll be right back.

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• 1:11:24Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. There's more operating systems to talk about. It's a real week of operating systems, including from Google. But really, the news here, Dieter, I'm gonna let you walk us through this. Huawei basically got banned from using Android by the Trump administration.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 1:11:40Nilay Patel?

  They were put on the Entity List, which is still a great name. And now they've created a new OS, which is not Android, but like it's like three Androids in a trench coat.

• 1:11:53Nilay Patel?

  It's called Harmony OS.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  They should have called it Entity OS.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's not, it's not three Androids in a trench coat. It's like three Androids in a very pretty trench coat with like flowers. It like flows in the wind. It looks fine. Yeah, but like Ars Technica actually did some really good deep dives in here. When you actually ask Huawei about it, they're like, yeah, it's different. And it's like, no, we all know it's based on Android, which is frustrating because they could just admit it, right? Like Android is open source. Google can't directly offer stuff to Huawei, but like it's out there. Google can't stop them. I'm sure there's some way they could get around it. I don't know. And it is also weird because like, how long we just spent talking about needing competition and more app stores and whatever.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  And we're all just sort of turning our nose up at Harmony OS before it's even out?

• 1:12:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean Huawei is the biggest player in phones in China still. And they're about, and Sam Byford years ago, we should actually have Sam update this piece. But he did a whole piece about how the Chinese smartphone market is ultra competitive. There are lots of different app stores, lots of different forks of Android. They all use complete rips of the iPhone camera app, which is amazing.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Harmony OS, actually, if you actually, a better way to describe it is three Androids in a iPhone looking trench coat.

• 1:13:09Nilay Patel?

  That's not bad. But that's like, that is always fascinating to me. Like, why does the camera app get ripped off the most? It's because it's the thing that everybody uses and lowering the switching cost of the camera app is good.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Nilay Patel?

  It's just as dead simple as that. Like, it is not worthwhile to innovate on how the camera app works because you want people to pick up a new phone and be able to do the thing they're gonna do the most without any cognitive load whatsoever. Then you can be like, we have ideas about notifications. Like just go down that road. But it's the, the market in China is just like booming with Android forks. And so Harmony OS is going to be a big player in that. And it is true because we don't get these phones. We're like, haha, you're not allowed to use Android. And then Huawei is like, but we are.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and it's also like, we, we won't bother. We think any, any Android phone that doesn't have the Google Play Store is a failure. But it's actually like, I wouldn't mind having alternative app stores. I wish that, I don't know, Amazon App Store was good, but what you need are Google's apps. And Google will never put its apps on anything that doesn't have Google's Play Store and all those exclusivity agreements. Anyway, Harmony OS coming. There's also Harmony OS on the Huawei Watch, but it seems like that's really just a rebrand of Lite OS, which was the version that they ran their watches on before, because nothing runs on Wear until the new version of Wear that's merging with Tizen comes out.

• 1:14:29Alex Cranz?

  I like the optimism that something will run on Wear then.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Look, they're trying. And then they teased, but did not really release the Huawei P50, which looks amazing. There are two giant like owl eye camera arrays on the back, just like big giant circles with cameras in them.

• 1:14:49Nilay Patel?

  Should go for it.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  It's just, they just went for it. It looks great. And then you're like, oh, when are you releasing it? And this is the quote from the company, quote, "We're trying to figure out how to make this great product available to you." It's just like, would you like to, would you like to read the chip shortage into that? Would you like to read the entity list into that? Would you, I think any number of things are keeping us from having this great product made available to us. But yeah, that's, I love, I love, it's not like coming weeks. It's like, we're actually, we're trying to figure out how to release this thing. We don't know if we can or if it's gonna happen. Yep, fair.

• 1:15:24Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing. Okay. And then there's Fuchsia, which we've been diligently tracking the status of Google's Fuchsia for years, and they finally did a thing.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's arriving on the original Nest Hub, formerly known as the Google Home.

• 1:15:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  It is just going to be the underlying, nothing's going to change about its functionality or features. It's just, it's going to run on top of Fuchsia now.

• 1:15:49Nilay Patel?

  If all they said was, it's gonna be faster, I would be so happy.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I guess we'll see whether or not this is a stepping stone towards Fuchsia doing more things is unclear. The thing that amuses me the most isn't the confusion about whether Fuchsia is going to be the future foundation of phones and tablets and laptops and whatever. It isn't if it's going to replace Android and Chrome OS. It's that Google's smart home gadgets now run on Cast Fuchsia. And I'm pretty sure there's some like Android home floating around in the world somewhere. So Google literally doesn't care what OS runs its gadgets. It's basically they'll just like, whatever. Yeah. If you show you about ready? Sure. They will throw it on the desk.

• 1:16:38Nilay Patel?

  It's just deeply confusing why they even announced this.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Nilay Patel?

  Because like it, they could have just done it. And then like the Fuchsia team would have been like, happy.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Nilay Patel?

  And they would have had a secret and they would have walked the streets of San Francisco with a glimmer in their eyes that they knew something that you didn't know.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  Well, no, the way this news broke is like somebody from the future team was like, it's not every day you ship a new OS. And everyone was like, wait, what?

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  They could have secretly installed a Linux micro kernel on all these devices and got away with it.

• 1:17:11Nilay Patel?

  But like, but you announce it and all of a sudden, and they're like, no, it's gonna be exactly the same.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Nilay Patel?

  And so we've take the glimmer in the eye is gone. Now everybody knows the secret. And the secret is nothing has changed.

• 1:17:23Alex Cranz?

  It's such a letdown, too. Like, like the early hype of Fuchsia was just gonna be, it was gonna be totally different.

• 1:17:30Nilay Patel?

  It was gonna replace Android.

• 1:17:31Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it was gonna replace Android. It was gonna be incredible. It was gonna be amazing. And now it's on like a Google device.

• 1:17:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that you're really not supposed to interact with.

• 1:17:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Nilay Patel?

  Like they've, you are not supposed to touch it so much that the new one encourages you to just wave at it instead of touching it. It's pretty good. I will say I've stopped a lot of timers, like very insistently. It's good.

• 1:17:56Alex Cranz?

  You slap it.

• 1:17:57Nilay Patel?

  I get why they did it. It's just like, stop. I know the rice is done. You shut up. I think that's it for operating systems. Tom, I, before we go, I want to, I want to end with a segment on, on the 3080 Ti, because you have one.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  I do.

• 1:18:12Nilay Patel?

  You're like one of five people in the world. Are you afraid for your safety?

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  I also managed to buy one today. I kind of did it as a half test, but now it's arriving.

• 1:18:22Nilay Patel?

  Now you're just showing off.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Nilay Patel?

  Start rendering some Bitcoins. I don't know.

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  I think that's how it works. Um, yes, the thirty eighty eight. So I reviewed it. It's, you know, better than the thirty eighty, as you'd expect, um, for four K and ten eight and fourteen forty P gaming. But I think it's a little bit pricey for for it, especially in this market like, and even today, we're seeing them like, I think. I looked at some UK price and it was like, supposed to be a thousand and forty nine pounds. And like, people are selling them on eBay for two and a half thousand pounds right now. So it's like, yeah. But it's it's a good card. It's pretty much as close as you can get to the thirty ninety, which is the fifteen hundred dollar card. But I think if you're spending twelve hundred, fifteen hundred dollars on a on a on a card, like it's it's a kind of a niche area of of of GPUs there, I think.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  And I think the thirty eighty is just like the bargain card, really, for for for the six nine nine. Like, I I don't know why you'd go for the thirty eighty eight. Really, unless you really wanted that extra like ten percent. So.

• 1:19:27Nilay Patel?

  Well, you can't you can't get either.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:19:30Alex Cranz?

  How many four K monitors do you need to justify the thirty eighty eight?

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah, like, you you really have to really want to play uh that little bit extra high frame rate at four K. Um, and I think for most people, they're making the move to to fourteen forty P. Uh, the vast majority is still on ten eighty P. So, yeah, I I would buy the thirty eighty, I think. That would be my recommendation over the thirty eighty eight. But you can't buy either of them. So who cares?

• 1:20:01Nilay Patel?

  It is a very odd. We were looking at pictures. There are lines in front of Best Buy here in the States.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's a very odd moment for these products.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  It is.

• 1:20:10Nilay Patel?

  They're just not available.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  It's unfortunate because they've so good, like compared to the previous generations, like it's come at like the worst possible time. A global ship, uh, chip shortage in the middle of like, you know, when everyone wants to buy a GPU. And everyone wants to buy a laptop and, you know, everyone wants to do everything. So it's really unfortunate and like, you can't really fault Nvidia for like competing with itself and launching another card. Um, and I know a lot of people are like, why are they launching this? But it's like, you know, this is what these companies do. You don't want to want them to sort of stand stand still, do you? So. But it is unfortunate because no one can really buy them. There is signs, though, like the fact that I could buy one today and also John and our team managed to get thirty eighty today.

• 1:20:53Nilay Patel?

  Hey.

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  Like that, that, that's like a sign of.

• 1:20:56Nilay Patel?

  And you're both in the UK.

• 1:20:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. So basically move to the UK.

• 1:21:00Nilay Patel?

  This sound, this sounds like a scam. This sounds like some sort of British Brexit scam.

• 1:21:04Speaker 03

  Need to boost our population now that, now that everyone's disappeared.

• 1:21:09Nilay Patel?

  You're like, come on, member nations of the EU, we need individual trade agreements. We have GPUs available.

• 1:21:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:21:15Nilay Patel?

  Let's get this done.

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  You can mine freely.

• 1:21:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So what's actually really interesting about the chip shortage thing is, um, uh, on several episodes of Decoder now, people have told me executives, um, CEO Flex told me this, CEO Ford told me this. The shortage is at old process nodes.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's at like 55 and 90 nanometers. These chips are Samsung eight nanometers. Like,

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Nilay Patel?

  the overall global chip shortage is, is elsewhere. The demand for these GPUs is there's not enough capacity. It's, it is incredible that there's this much demand for GPUs right now.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's because Nvidia did the 2080 series and like, they were good cards, but people were like, okay, I'll just hang on, hang on to my 1080 for a little bit longer. I'm gonna see what they do next. And like,

• 1:21:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59Speaker 03

  it took them a while to do the next bit. And now people are like, okay, I really need to upgrade now. Um, so they're, you know, people are even buying 2080s like off of eBay for like, you know, whatever the crazy prices they are, like well over a thousand dollars. So, which is just nuts. Like it's, it is, it is a crazy situation, really.

• 1:22:16Nilay Patel?

  And you can't discount the Bitcoin renderers.

• 1:22:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's. I refuse to know how that works.

• 1:22:23Speaker 03

  They're rendering those coins every day.

• 1:22:25Nilay Patel?

  No, but the, it is true that like the Ethereum market is still largely GPU based.

• 1:22:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:22:30Nilay Patel?

  I actually do know how this works. I'm sorry. Just to make it clear, I'm aware that Bitcoin is mostly in Asics and Ethereum is mostly in GPUs, but that market is still driving a ton of demand.

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  Oh, it is. Yeah. And that's, that's why they nerfed the mining, in particular Ethereum on these cards, because they know that that is, that people are still building farms with these GPUs. So.

• 1:22:49Nilay Patel?

  How is that nerfing easy to get around?

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  Well, Nvidia made it really easy to get around because they released a driver that basically undid the nerf. So.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  But yeah, like they are bringing out new thirty eighties and new thirty seventies that have the enough. Hopefully they're bringing out a driver that takes enough away. But like, I think people have been figuring out ways of getting around it. Like it's like anything, right? Nothing's ever fully uncrackable. So we'll see.

• 1:23:21Nilay Patel?

  We gotta use the deal. You gotta use one GPU to crack the other GPU, which means you gotta get two. And now I know what you did, Tom. Okay, that's ridiculous. Last note before we go. We didn't talk about this last week. A lot of streaming news last week. In addition to Alex Franz, our new managing editor, who's wonderful, we have a new streaming reporter stepping into the very big shoes of Julia Alexander is Katie Keck, who we need to have on the show soon. If we'd had a show last week, I would have demanded Katie walk us through all the craziness and streaming. We'll do that soon. But AT&T just decided to walk away from the Warner Brothers deal, which is incredible. They're spinning it off and merging it with Discovery. There is an excellent New York Times piece about how this deal

• 1:24:05Nilay Patel?

  came together by Ed Lee, who's used to work at Recode. We're very friendly with Ed, but he's like, go read it. It's incredible. The CEO of Discovery is a very rich man. He has a townhouse in New York, but that the townhouse that he owns, which is his second home in New York, was under renovation. So he rented another townhouse for this deal. Just like a perfect detail for me. And decorated with pictures of rock stars. And they all they made the did the deal under a giant photo of Steve McQueen. And all the executives are like, Steve McQueen is the hero of the deal. And you just read it. And you're like, none of this makes any sense. Like, none of this is related to what you are going to do by merging these companies and spinning them off at AT&T. But it is happening. They

• 1:24:46Nilay Patel?

  announced a tagline and a logo and a name. It took them one week. It is the worst name, logo, and tagline combination I have ever seen from any company ever. It's not that the name is bad. The name is just Warner Bros. Discovery.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Nilay Patel?

  Which is just the two names together. It makes sense.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Nilay Patel?

  But the fact that they've gone with Warner Bros. Instead of Warner Brothers is incredible with a period.

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Nilay Patel?

  The logo looks like it was made in 1995 on a Quadra 700. Like, it's like extruded gold 3D on a sky background.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:23Nilay Patel?

  And then the tagline, which I am told is from a, like a classic Warner Brothers movie, is the stuff dreams are made of. Which is ungrammatical and also no one alive today has seen that movie. Like, it's like from like Castleblazer or something. Like, it's some deeply famous movie that no young streaming customer is aware of.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  If you know the movie, please tweet at Reckless. Uh, just nonstop every day, remind him what the movie is.

• 1:25:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's, okay, here's what I, I just Googled it. I just Googled it. It's a song by Carly Simon. It's an episode of Law and Order: Organized Crime.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:25:59Nilay Patel?

  Uh, The Maltese Falcon. That's the movie. It's, so very, very famous movie. But I assure you, most people have not seen this movie or get this reference.

• 1:26:07Alex Cranz?

  I feel like that's also like a really bad movie to choose a quote from. Like, it's a big film noir. Like, why would you, why would you be like, you know what? This will inspire people. Murder. Black and white murder. I'm so inspired.

• 1:26:22Nilay Patel?

  It's a mood.

• 1:26:23Speaker 03

  It's the stuff that dreams are made of, right?

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  AT&T's dreams.

• 1:26:29Nilay Patel?

  Just look at this. Just go look at the picture. It is, I tweeted, it's on the website. The font that they printed the stuff dreams are made of is like, I mean, it's like Calibri. It's like a default font. Like, it's so bad.

• 1:26:41Alex Cranz?

  I want to find the, the, the designer.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  It's Paint Shop Pro.

• 1:26:47Nilay Patel?

  They got dunked on so hard that they released a statement to Variety being like, none of this is, no, no, this isn't final.

• 1:26:55Nilay Patel?

  So you're walking it back already. An inauspicious beginning for a complete unwinding of AT&T's massive investment in Warner Media. They're just selling it off again. That means AT&T, they bought DirecTV, destroyed its value and are spinning it off. They bought Warner Media, destroyed its value and are spinning it off. In the middle of all this is HBO Max and nobody knows what they're gonna do with HBO Max.

• 1:27:18Alex Cranz?

  Like, just if AT&T is buying you, run.

• 1:27:21Nilay Patel?

  You're doomed. I knew Katie was the streaming reporter for us because yesterday in Slack, as we were talking about all this, she's like, is there anything AT&T can't kill? And I was like, oh. Like, one, you're fresh faced and you're like, you believe that there's an answer to that question that isn't.

• 1:27:39Nilay Patel?

  And two, you've, you've already got it. Like, you've already figured it out. But it's like amazing that this deal, I mean, it was a huge deal. The Trump administration sued to block it because Trump was mad at CNN and he just wanted revenge on CNN. They failed. The entire impetus of this deal was they were gonna bundle HBO Max with AT&T services. That made no sense because there was a pandemic and people were not streaming HBO Max on their phones. So much, an AT&T's network, it's still just like, they will throw HBO Max at you if you're an AT&T subscriber for any reason whatsoever. You like sneeze at the AT&T website, like, would you like HBO Max? But none of that worked out and now they're spinning off. They filed a document with the SEC.

• 1:28:25Nilay Patel?

  It's like an FAQ for investors. And all the questions are like, why, why was this deal ever a good idea? And they're like, we still think it was a good idea. We just think we have a better idea now. It's very good. So that's that. We're, we're gonna unpack it. It is not closed, as we were talking about earlier in the show, there are a lot of antitrust action in the world. It's gotta get approved. I can't imagine the government being like. We sued to block this deal and now we're gonna, we're gonna sue you to unwind it. But it does have to pass muster.

• 1:28:54Alex Cranz?

  The merging with Discovery, though, is gonna really suck if you're like a cable provider. Because now like, there's just this huge packet of channels that can negotiate big pay, like, big rate increases. And that's not gonna be great. Like, I could, I could definitely see there's still some protest into this merger. Spinoff, whatever it is. I don't know.

• 1:29:18Nilay Patel?

  They're creating a new entity.

• 1:29:20Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Nilay Patel?

  Also, the revolving door of executives is wild. So, AT&T bought Time Warner. They installed a new set of executives. All the old Warner executives, including the head of HBO, left. Tons of creative left Warner. Then they installed a new CEO, Jason Kilar, who was the ex-CEO of Hulu. Kilar said, "All my movies are going to streaming day and date with theaters from now on." Pissed off everyone, including Christopher Nolan, who said, "I'm done working with Warner Brothers." Then they spun it off and they're like, "Kilar, you might be gone." And they've been, I think he's agreed to stay on for one year. But after that, he's out. So like, just the wreckage in the wake of this deal.

• 1:30:00Alex Cranz?

  And they killed two incredible streaming networks, too. Because they killed Film Struck with the merger, the original merger. And it was just like devastating if you were one of the four people who, who subscribe. It was me. It was just me in a trench coat. And then they killed, they killed the DC Universe. That was actually almost good if you were a giant, giant nerd and enjoyed comic books. Again, it was just me.

• 1:30:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Sorry, Alex, have you heard of HBO Max? Because we are happy to give you HBO Max for free if you're an AT&T subscriber.

• 1:30:32Alex Cranz?

  I, I've never paid for it. I think I have four subscriptions already.

• 1:30:35Nilay Patel?

  They did, however, launch the HBO Max ad tier this week.

• 1:30:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Nilay Patel?

  So you're gonna try to grab that market. But just, look, I know I have a lot of thoughts about antitrust all the time. I would be happy if the only antitrust law in this country was AT&T is not allowed to buy things.

• 1:30:48Alex Cranz?

  Just forbidden.

• 1:30:49Nilay Patel?

  I think it would work out.

• 1:30:50Speaker 03

  I'm just glad I live in the UK and things are a little less complicated over here. We just have to watch government programming.

• 1:30:58Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I'm just saying, Senator Klobuchar, if you're listening, I know, I'm just assuming that after she was on Decoder, she's a hardcore Vergecast listener now. That's a fair assumption, right? That's my idea for an antitrust bill. Just put that out there. And then lastly, speaking of other streaming news, Amazon entered a deal by MGM, which is super interesting because that one attracted way more antitrust interest, right? Your Josh Hollies, your Klobuchar, like, across the spectrum, we're mad at Amazon. We're not gonna let them buy this extremely defunct film studio. They're gonna, that's definitely, it's gonna be fine. I just can't imagine that they're not gonna clean house at MGM.

• 1:31:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, Amazon's gonna Amazon-ify that whole thing. And then, like, you know, the centerpiece of that studio is James Bond.

• 1:31:41Alex Cranz?

  And they don't even know the rights.

• 1:31:42Nilay Patel?

  Tom is a British person. I think you, you're legally allowed to know the ownership structure of James Bond, right? It's like-

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. He owns an Aston Martin, right?

• 1:31:53Nilay Patel?

  I think it was a BMW deal for a long time. But yeah, James Bond is creatively controlled by the broccoli family to this day. And so, Amazon can't even, like, make that into a TV show. Although, I'm confident Jeff Bezos is just gonna throw money at that problem until it's all, it's all. That's how, that's how you solve that problem, I think.

• 1:32:09Speaker 03

  Come on, put me in the Bond movie.

• 1:32:11Nilay Patel?

  I mean, he's so clearly the villain, though.

• 1:32:13Alex Cranz?

  Well, he doesn't know that.

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  Plot twist.

• 1:32:15Nilay Patel?

  Look, if you, you know, James Bond, from, from a different perspective, James Bond is the villain of all those movies. I'm just putting that out there. Oh, yeah, for sure. For some people in those movies, James Bond is, like, very much the bad guy.

• 1:32:28Alex Cranz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:29Nilay Patel?

  He's just in the way. He's blowing stuff up. He's sleeping with your girlfriend. Like, he just shows up and ruins all your plans.

• 1:32:35Speaker 03

  He just sounds like a typical British person, man.

• 1:32:37Alex Cranz?

  You finally get your giant pit with sharks installed, and you're happy. Everything looks perfect. And then James Bond just swans in, steals your girl, blows up your sharks, and murders you and takes your cat.

• 1:32:51Nilay Patel?

  That's the Vergecast, everybody. We're gonna end on that note. It was Alex's first show. She's just as mad as James Bond as I am. A lot going on this week, as you can tell, a lot going on next week. I want to call out a thing we were not able to talk about. There's also a chicken wing shortage in this country, in addition to a GPU shortage. Josh Dreszla looked into why. It's not an obvious thing for a tech reporter to do. It is because of SEO and delivery apps. This is a real thing. You just go read the story. It's very good. It is one of those, "Oh, computers led to an unexpected result" stories in just the wildest way. That's it. We went long. We actually went long this time. Alex, it was good to have you here. We're gonna have you on again.

• 1:33:31Alex Cranz?

  It was super fun. I loved it.

• 1:33:33Nilay Patel?

  Alex, what's your Twitter?

• 1:33:34Alex Cranz?

  My Twitter is very simple. It's Alex H. Cranz. It's absolutely terrible. Please subscribe.

• 1:33:41Nilay Patel?

  Tom is Tom Warren. Dieter is at Backlon. I'm at Reckless. You can tweet at us. We had Horacio Gutierrez from Spotify on Decoder this week. Next week, it's the Managing Director of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator that runs a lot of startups, including Coinbase, like Coinbase, Dropbox, Airbnb. He runs that accelerator, Michael Seibel. He's on Decoder next week. That's a really good one. I look forward to it. And we got W W C. Okay, that's it. Rock and roll. Snip, snip.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Bridging the gaps.

• 1:34:28Speaker 07

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• 1:35:04Speaker 08

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