Can a redesign save Apple's software?

It's a slowish news week ahead of some very busy news weeks, so of course Nilay and David start the show with a long discussion about party speakers. Eventually, they get into the news, beginning with some of the huge Apple redesigns planned for WWDC in June. For the first time in a long time, the stakes for Apple's software teams feel really high. After that, the hosts talk about Nilay's recent interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and what the AI-ification of everything means for the future of the web. Finally, in the lightning round, it's time for another Brendan Carr is a Dummy, plus some talk about the Nintendo Switch 2, a bit of confusing tariff news, and more. Further reading: Graduation and prom season in full force, Alan sends a graduation procession with a party speaker on… her head? So so many softball and baseball games, Luis tips us to the Yankees Incredible at a dentist office from Oktawian Apple is reportedly going to rename all of its operating systems Apple is ready to replace Game Center with a more Xbox-like gaming app Get ready for Apple’s glassy operating systems overhaul. Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry The New York Times’ first generative AI deal is with Amazon The Browser Company explains why it stopped developing Arc The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink FCC Commissioner Labels Trump Push to Chill Speech an ‘Administration-Wide Effort’ Carr's attack on Ergen looks gross Shut Down the Federal Communications Commission With the Switch, technology finally caught up to Nintendo Nintendo’s bold new era is full of safe bets The Nintendo Switch was an indie game haven, until it was overrun with slop The Nintendo Switch 2 sure seems to work just fine with a USB mouse There’s a Switch 2 unboxing video already. Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 0:53Speaker 02

  A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty, crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, raving you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Rich Cast, the flagship podcast of the United States Party Speaker Industry.

• 1:15David Pierce?

  Only the US?

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't know that there is a US Party Speaker Industry.

• 1:21David Pierce?

  It's a global marketplace, Eli.

• 1:22Nilay Patel?

  It's happening everywhere. I don't know where they're manufactured. I don't know who designs them. I've been begging one of these companies to let me into their room with their designers where they plan the next year's party speaker lineup. Imagine that meeting. Someone's like, make it, put more lights on it. And another person's like, no, we can't afford it. You've gone too far.

• 1:42David Pierce?

  I like to think of it as like a, there's like a price to lights to size continuum. And they're just like sort of sliding the thing along the scale. And if you get too many lights, it's too expensive. But if you get too big, you can have more lights. And so it's, they're just, it's, it's a lot of triangulation. But this is what product work is.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying. There's a spreadsheet, there's a model, someone's got a slider. McKinsey's in there, you know? Hi, I'm your friend Neelai, that's David Pierce.

• 2:10David Pierce?

  Hello.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  It's just the two of us today. We're doing a concentrated dose of Neelai and David because, you know, eventually we're both gonna have children and leave.

• 2:18David Pierce?

  Right.

• 2:19Nilay Patel?

  So you gotta get it all while you can.

• 2:21David Pierce?

  Yeah, this is going to be 19 hours of just us yelling at each other about the internet.

• 2:26Nilay Patel?

  It's also a slow week, which actually usually means the show goes longer than ever.

• 2:29David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  I don't know why that is, but when we have nothing to talk about, it's like a three-hour show. So buckle up, it's gonna be wild. A little housekeeping before we start. We've got a survey going on. We just want feedback from the audience. It's foxmedia.com/survey. Go take that. Let us know what you think and how we're doing. And then I should remind you that no one can tell us what to do, which is important. We don't do the ad reads, we don't do brand sponsorships. I'm not out here trying to sell flavored water, although I have been thinking about selling a vodka for a number of years. That might be the one exception to the rule. It's a long story. Some people know, but the reason that we're able to have total editorial independence and we don't talk to our sales team and we don't do the brand sponsorships that everyone else has to do is because we get support from all of you.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  So right now, Verge subscriptions are on sale. They're 40% off. We're kind of running them through developer season, so through the end of WWC, basically. You can go to theverge.com/subscribe. They're 40% off. It's like $35 for the year. Cheap. And you get to support our whole newsroom. And most importantly, what you are buying is our editorial independence. No one gets to tell us what to do. It's very powerful. It's a very powerful tool in our arsenal. We've relied on it for a long time, and it's because you all have supported us. There's this thing we always say that like, anyone can get traffic, but it's really hard to have an audience. You're the audience. That's you. Thank you. We appreciate you. Now give us your money. I'm still learning how to be a salesperson.

• 3:57David Pierce?

  Step one, editorial independence. Step two, Neelai gets less awkward asking you for money. Step three, everybody gets boats. That's the move here. That's what we're doing.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  It's not a yachts industry. We're gonna come to what's going on on the web, intermediate, in the second segment. But I want to start, actually, because it's a slow week. I want to start with an actual party speaker update. We've been getting a lot of photos of party speakers from all of you. As you probably know, I believe party speakers are undercover. They're a massive market. They're many, many, many companies have made giant Bluetooth speaker, like giant speakers that have LED lights around the speakers, around the speaker drivers. Some of them have handles. We've covered them that have literal beer can holders. Sony made one with beer can holders.

• 4:46David Pierce?

  It's the rare industry, I think, that knows exactly what it is. It like, which I have come to really appreciate.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  These are a huge success story.

• 4:52David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  And they're undercover because everyone wants to talk about Sam Altman riding a pony or whatever he did today. But like, the consumer electronics industry is doing something right because they've been making these and iterating on them for decades and they are everywhere. Once you see them, you realize like, oh, this is as big as the iPhone. Okay, maybe not as big as the iPhone, but you understand what I'm saying. Like, everyone has them. They're all over the place.

• 5:15David Pierce?

  Physically much larger than the iPhone.

• 5:16Nilay Patel?

  Physically much larger. But it's a cultural phenomenon.

• 5:20David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Nilay Patel?

  They're just part of the fabric. They're just everywhere and no one talks about them.

• 5:25David Pierce?

  They're so entrenched that I think the, the great service that you in particular have done for people is you have opened their eyes to the party speakers that are everywhere.

• 5:34Nilay Patel?

  They're everywhere.

• 5:35David Pierce?

  Because like, this has been my experience is that I have started noticing in places that a party speaker has no business being, there's almost always a party speaker. Like, wherever you are, you are within 100 yards of a party speaker. I really have come to believe that.

• 5:49Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 5:50David Pierce?

  And, and they're just so, they're so ubiquitous that we just don't even notice them anymore.

• 5:55Nilay Patel?

  They're so big you can't see them.

• 5:57David Pierce?

  Exactly.

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  It's crazy. So people have sent us lots of pictures of party speakers. We had pictures of party speakers literally next to FAA teens being repaired, maybe the high point of the entire Birchcast to date. But we've got some new ones.

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  And I gotta say, there's some wild stuff going on in the world. So here's our first one. It's from Alan. It's it's graduation season out there. We're getting a lot of photos of party speakers at proms.

• 6:25David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 6:26Nilay Patel?

  Getting ready at proms. That prom. It makes sense. I understand. Teenagers want light up speakers while they're all dressed up.

• 6:32David Pierce?

  Anywhere there is like a school official and a stage, there is a party speaker somewhere.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  And tons, tons and tons and tons of commencement addresses being delivered through party speakers and little karaoke mics. But here's this picture from Alan, who sent it in. This is a graduation procession of some kind. And I replied and said, is that on her head? And the answer is it's on her head. And so she's leading a graduation procession and she's carrying the party speaker on her head.

• 7:01David Pierce?

  No, no, no. But if you're watching this on video, Neil had just put both hands up. This woman does not have both hands up.

• 7:07Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it's one. It's one huge bazooka party speaker.

• 7:10David Pierce?

  This woman is in like a light dress and a red hat and is carrying a party speaker on her head with one hand, which is so.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  It's a lot.

• 7:18David Pierce?

  Spectacularly physically impressive.

• 7:22David Pierce?

  There's so much about this I have questions about, like the the graduation parade is an incredible idea that every school should do.

• 7:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:28David Pierce?

  There's a surprisingly large like police and ambulance presence for this, which I have questions about. But it's it's this. It's this woman in a flowy dress, just like sauntering down the street, one armed party speaker on the head.

• 7:40Nilay Patel?

  Huge bazooka size party speaker. So this is incredible. This is. This is among the best graduation photos we've gotten. Keep them coming because if you notice them at graduations and proms, they're they're everywhere. I would. I would go so far as to say our nation's high schools are powered entirely by party speakers at this point.

• 7:58David Pierce?

  It seems like it.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  We've gotten an infinite number of photos of baseball and softball games. It's baseball and softball season for the kids. My daughter's playing softball. There's party speakers there.

• 8:07David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Lots and lots of that going on. Very cool market for party speakers. Very curious who gets playlist control.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Dying to know how that works in the politics of playlist control for walk-on music at softball games. Do each of the teams have different party speakers? Or the coaches coordinated? I don't know.

• 8:25David Pierce?

  Is it like a Spotify Jam situation?

• 8:27Nilay Patel?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 8:29David Pierce?

  Does Max have a walk-up song?

• 8:30Nilay Patel?

  Max does not yet have a walk-up song. And if she did, it would be one of the songs from Frozen. So I think, or Frozen 2, rather, that would be.

• 8:37David Pierce?

  Just like metals, you want to build a snowman and up comes Max to bat?

• 8:41Speaker 05

  It's a lot.

• 8:43Nilay Patel?

  It's, or Taylor Swift. And so, but it would be Wildest Dreams, which is her favorite Taylor Swift song. And I don't know that that's a great softball walk.

• 8:50David Pierce?

  I think the 10-minute All Too Well is, is the one. And just stand in the batter's box all 10 minutes. Really psych out the pitcher.

• 8:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay, lots and lots and lots of party speakers at kids softball. But Luis sent us a tip that the Yankees put up an Instagram post.

• 9:10Nilay Patel?

  You gotta see this picture. If you're in your car, just like stop and pull over and we'll put the, click on the link in the show notes, the Instagram post, or watch the video on YouTube. It's Jason Dominguez, it's Jason with two S's. And he is getting on a plane. This is very important. The caption of this carousel is airplane mode because they're obviously traveling to a game. And he is carrying a massive white JBL party speaker onto this plane. Like, it's the size of a carry-on suitcase. It looks hot as shit, by the way. Like, I was like, I should buy the speaker. It's the JBL Party Stage 320. It retails for $5.99. It's sometimes on sale for $5.49.

• 9:45David Pierce?

  Good lord.

• 9:46Nilay Patel?

  It has not one, but two handles. There's one hand on the back with Jason, in the photo, he's carrying it by the back handle. But he also has the pop-up handle that you can wheel it around with extended, which is a total flex.

• 9:58David Pierce?

  The true flex is that he has that and is still carrying it anyway.

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  And not, not just carrying it anyway, onto a plane.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  Like, other people are rolling their little away bags onto the plane. And he's like, I've got a full, a suitcase sized speaker. And the grin on his face is incredible. He knows what he's doing.

• 10:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, 100%. It's very good, because this, it's in a carousel of other players, like, carrying their clothes onto the plane. And he's just like, whatever, I'm wearing clothes. I'm gonna bring my speaker. It's so good.

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  I definitely thought about buying this one immediately.

• 10:31David Pierce?

  The white looks pretty great. I'm not gonna lie.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  Also, the politics of carrying a speaker of this size onto a plane. Does he give playlist access away?

• 10:42David Pierce?

  Can you use it on the plane?

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  Do other Yankees players have their own party speakers? Is there like, a hip hop section of the plane? A country music section of the, you know, you see what I'm saying? Because we've gotten a lot of notes from people who are like, I am in a workplace where we're not allowed to wear headphones. A lot of machine shops.

• 11:00David Pierce?

  Right.

• 11:00Nilay Patel?

  Airplane technicians, all kinds of places where safety requires that you need open ears, that you be able to hear. And so we've heard a lot of stories about competing party speakers.

• 11:10Nilay Patel?

  So I'm just, are the Yankees in a similar situation on their plane? But I'm telling you, party speakers have infected the sport of baseball. They're everywhere in baseball.

• 11:19David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 11:19Nilay Patel?

  They're part of the fabric now of baseball. So this picture's incredible. Jason, if you want to come on the show and talk about the JBL Stage 320, I don't know if you're sponsored.

• 11:27David Pierce?

  Well, I was gonna say, my great hope for this is that JBL sponsors, Jason, uh, and they were like, oh, do you want our, like, sick new overear headphones to wear when you get on the plane? So people take pictures of you. And he's like, no, no. I've got other ideas. Give me the party speaker.

• 11:41Nilay Patel?

  What's the biggest one you got? Okay. So then you were talking about, uh, how you see him in everywhere, in places you would not expect. And so, speaking of giant JBL party speakers. Octavian, I think that's how you pronounce it, it's with a W, Octavian, sent us a picture of a dentist office with a massive JBL party speaker in what appears to be like a reasonably small waiting room. But it's, it's, it's huge. Like, it's for, it's like the PA for a small concert.

• 12:10David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  Look at this thing. If you walked in here in a dentist's office, you'd be like, kick out the jams, brother, let's go. It's incredible. Love it. This is what I mean. They're everywhere. People like, there's not even etiquette around them anymore. The dentist was like, screw it. Light it up.

• 12:25David Pierce?

  What's weird about this one to me is like, there are smaller Bluetooth speakers out there that are very good. Like, I tell a lot of people to buy like the UE booms. There's a lot of those. And if all you're doing is pumping music into your waiting room, 99 bucks will get you as much speaker as you need to do the job here.

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 12:43David Pierce?

  And they're like, no, I need a speaker the size of a third grader.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna rattle your teeth loose, man. Let's get this done. This one is so big, it has feet, so it can go horizontally and serve as a bench. It's very good. Everywhere you look, man, they're everywhere. And I'm telling you, the etiquette is out the window. Right? That normal people would not have thought to put a speaker of the size in a dentist's office waiting room.

• 13:08David Pierce?

  It's true. This is innovation.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  All right. And then the last one, my favorite one, our old producer Creighton, he worked on The Verge Cast before. He worked on Decoder, part of The Verge story for years and years. Creighton sends in, he texted me actually, from Rome. He was in what appears to be like a soccer store, a football store. It's Rome. And he's like, there's a party speaker here. The owner told me he wanted one of the CD player because the audio quality is better. So it has a CD player on the top. The owner also told him Sony was the best branded party speaker, which is a hot take. I think Sony was a progenitor of this space, but in many cases, JBL is doing better brand integrations. You can see it. And then Ion is fast approaching from the rear. I don't know what Ion is.

• 13:52David Pierce?

  Ion, the company we still don't understand.

• 13:54Nilay Patel?

  If you work at Ion, let me know. I don't, I think you might be like a ghost company. Anyway, this is an ancient Sony party speaker, CD player on the top. It's kicking out the jams in a store in Rome. And I, the only reason I want to bring it up is because if you zoom in on the picture on the top here, and you look for the Mega Bass button, you can see that it has been pushed so many times that the letters are starting to wear off.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  None of the other buttons have this problem, right? W Party Chain has not been pushed so many times. The word Sound Field has not been pushed so many times. The letters. Mega Bass has been pushed so many times, the letters are wearing off, which implies to me...

• 14:38Nilay Patel?

  That whoever owns this party speaker has determined there is a time for mega bass and there is a time when you should not have mega bass.

• 14:44David Pierce?

  Well, right, because you have to turn it both on and off. This is not a permanent state.

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  You're turning it on and off all the time.

• 14:50David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Nilay Patel?

  And I would just like to know what times are mega bass times and what times are definitively not mega bass times?

• 14:57David Pierce?

  I think it's pretty easy.

• 14:58Nilay Patel?

  Because this button is not one you should push. You should push it once and be like, the mega bass is on.

• 15:03David Pierce?

  But if you go mega bass all the time, is it mega bass anymore? Do you know what I mean? Don't you like, you need to live without in order to appreciate what you have.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  Right, you can't have loud parts unless you have quiet parts. It's like a core conceit of Virg storytelling. I'm with you. I'm just saying, it's rare that you see a mega bass button that has been pushed this many times. I'm dying to know, as you know, we're no longer in the mega bass era. I think the mega bass era really, that was the height of American, like, soft power around the world, the 80s and 90s, the mega bass era. We were doing it. We, I mean, that's when people look back fondly. That's when America was great. Then Sony moved on to ultra bass and I think things really, really started falling down a cliff. And now we're in the ULT Power Sound era and fully just off the rails. I couldn't even tell you what's going on. Bring it back, Sony. Executive Order 1012, mega bass shall return to American soil.

• 15:52David Pierce?

  Mega bass told you the truth about what it was. We need more of that.

• 15:56Nilay Patel?

  ULT Power Sound. Get out of here. All right.

• 15:58David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Nilay Patel?

  That's the party speaker update. Thank you to everyone who sent them in. Let me know what you think the times for mega bass are and are not. I'm dying to know. Let me know what you think the etiquette of these speakers are. Because they're everywhere, man. And as always, I thank you all for thinking of me when you see a giant speaker in the wild. Like, you have, you have, I don't have, like, massive ambitions to fame, you know? It's not what motivates me.

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  But when people see a giant stupid speaker, there's a flicker of recognition that these should tell me, that's pretty good.

• 16:31David Pierce?

  It is good.

• 16:32Nilay Patel?

  I'll take it.

• 16:32David Pierce?

  You've accomplished something.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't need much more than that. It's pretty good. All right, we should get to some actual tech news. For the people who are mad that we spend so much time on party speakers every so often, I'm sorry, but that's what the, that's why you pay us the money.

• 16:43David Pierce?

  Get a party speaker and play it loudly next to whatever you're listening to the Virg cast on and you don't have to hear us talk about it.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  It's very good. Hit that mega base button, man. Let's live this life. All right. There's some actual techniques in the world. It feels like we're in the run up to the run up to WWDC. Lot of weird vibes around Apple in this WWDC, right? Google just came off I O, which we'll talk about in a little bit. There's some reactions to Google's confidence and the products it might be building. Obviously, OpenAI announced its deal with Johnny Ive and Love From. They're in a moment. And then Apple is, you know, they're gonna have WWDC. They will project confidence. They're good at it. Lot of question marks around what Apple might be doing, what its vibes are. I got a weird open letter from a group of Apple fans today demanding that the company do better at AI. And at the

• 17:35Nilay Patel?

  bottom of the open letter, it said this letter was generated by ChatGPT. And I was like, well, this is, I'm throwing this out the window. Don't do this to me.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  But like, that's the level of weirdness.

• 17:45David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, open letters to Apple to reclaim the mantle of innovation. That's some like, late 90s, early 2000s stuff. That's not, that's not been how anyone has felt about Apple for years now. And like, here we are.

• 17:59David Pierce?

  I do think you could argue this, Apple is sort of at its weakest position perception wise, in a very, very, very long time. Because right, there's all the AI stuff. There's all of the regulatory stuff, which it just continues to lose in increasingly spectacular ways, while continuing also to alienate developers. Like, everything that I'm hearing about Apple, and all these changes from developers, they understand that Apple is being like bullied into making these changes that are obviously good for developers and users. And it is not making anybody feel better about Apple. Then there's also this thing that has gone around where Tim Cook has lost his influence with the Trump administration. And so this idea that he was

• 18:42David Pierce?

  like, the, the all powerful whisperer of the government who could get everything done and save tariffs and everything was gonna be fine. That has waned. Like, there's, there's this real sense that the, the sort of overall bloom is off the rose at Apple. And whether that's deserved or not, or whether it ultimately matters or not, we'll see. But it is fascinating how much that perception has changed. Like, all of the things that Apple could sort of cling to for a long time seem to be degrading all at once, which I think means the stakes for this WWDC and then the iPhone launch in September are maybe as high or higher than any I can remember before. Like, right after Steve Jobs died, there was that big transition where it was like, okay, what is Apple now?

• 19:26David Pierce?

  And, and what is, what is going to be kind of, how is this company going to project itself going forward? That's the last time I can remember coming into something like this, being like, oh, it actually really matters what Apple does here and how it talks about itself.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  I have a slightly different view. I don't, I don't disagree about that moment. Right? Apple needed to change its conception of itself. I think Tim Cook made the company a financial juggernaut on the back of its basically distribution monopoly of applications. Right? Like, in the smartphone era, the only way you could get an app to someone was through Apple Store or Google Store.

• 20:04David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  And people are not going to like that I'm saying this, but the iOS Store had richer people using it and those people spent more money.

• 20:12David Pierce?

  Mm hmm. Well, and also, Google Store works the way it does in large part because of the way that Apple architected its store in the first place.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. But like, the Android App Store, the Play Store, yes, there's some Android apps, like lots and lots of Android apps, but all the new stuff, I mean, we got complaints about this for years, all the new apps would start on iOS first.

• 20:30David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  And it was because Apple had the wealthier customer base that spent more money and they were really good at pushing people into app subscriptions. And so like, Apple, I don't think that's diminished right now.

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, if people want to use ChatGPT, they're primarily doing it through an app on Apple's App Store on their platforms. And if you want to subscribe, the easiest way to do it is to push the button in the app and Apple gets its money. And that might be at risk. But we'll like see what happens. Like, Apple has ways to compete there that are within its controls. I think the big risk rattle is all the stuff that's out of its control. Can they solve the regulatory problems around the world? In Texas, they just passed an age verification law that says the smartphone makers have to verify the age of their users and keep kids out of certain apps like that are age gated.

• 21:20David Pierce?

  Which reportedly, Tim Cook personally tried to quash.

• 21:23Nilay Patel?

  Yep. And they have been like, all over this in every state around the country. Like, the top lobbyists in every state, in every like state capital, Apple has bought them all to try to crush these bills. And they they just lost one in Texas. That's, you know, is a flicker of diminishing, I don't know, but it's out of their control. Right? Now they just have to do it. The big one is whether or not AI is a new user interface that creates a new generation of hardware that ends the smartphone application distribution monopoly. Like, that's the thing. That's the thing. Everyone's like staring at saying, that's the weakness. And for years, Apple's strength has been like, well, we have the iPhone. We'll just like add these features. Yeah, we'll just Sherlock the hell out of OpenAI. And then

• 22:08Nilay Patel?

  they'll die. Like, that's what they do. And they haven't seemed to be able to do it, right? They announced Apple Intelligence, and it went away, and it's delayed. From every indication we have, if they talk about it at WWC, it will not be the point. Right? We should not expect the big Siri at WWC or whatever. So they've they've got some catching up to you there. And then it's, can Apple disrupt the iPhone with the next generation of device that has AI as a user interface, if that is indeed the user interface of the future?

• 22:36David Pierce?

  Right.

• 22:37Nilay Patel?

  I don't know the answers to these questions. Like, and that's weird. I think I think Apple has traditionally been like, we'll just wait for Apple to do it. It'll be great. And you know, that's been how it's playing out, because Apple has announced every feature that Android has had for years, years after Android has gotten credit for it. And I don't think they can do that this time.

• 22:55David Pierce?

  No. And that's, that's, yeah, I think I agree with that. And I think there's also, Apple has gotten away with so much over the years, because it makes the best stuff, and appears to be the company that cares the most about making the best stuff. And That's, once you lose that, it's really hard to get it back. And I think, again, all of that is so tied up in like, what are they going to show us at WWDC? And is it, is it going to look like? Apple is, you know, putting new coats of paint on old things while everybody is lapping it, building the next thing? Or is there a, like, is Apple going to be able to make a compelling case that actually, no, this is still the thing? And I think it's, it's like, no one thinks we're getting rid of smartphones, right?

• 23:39David Pierce?

  Like Johnny Ive and Sam Altman made their weird video in San Francisco. Even they are like, smartphones are going to continue to exist. But like,

• 23:48David Pierce?

  is it, we're on how many years now of the iPhone being basically the exact same thing? And everything else getting weirder and stranger? And like, I think you could make a pretty strong case that the device at Apple that has gotten the most improvement over the last several years is the MacBook? Which is a weird state of affairs for Apple. So it's just, we're at this moment of like, I think people are less impressed with Apple in every facet than they have been in a long time. And if you lose that, suddenly all the other, like, kind of gross shenanigans you used to get away with because you made great stuff, becomes a lot harder to get away with.

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  So, speaking of new coats of paint, the leaks we've gotten so far, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen.

• 24:29David Pierce?

  Well, Apple's going to announce some software.

• 24:31Nilay Patel?

  Apple's, we know what happens at WWDC broadly, right? Like, they rev all their operating systems every year at WWDC to get developers ready for the next turn. Sometimes they, you know, surprise announce a Mac Pro. So we don't know, maybe they'll, they'll surprise all of us. We don't know what's going to happen.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  But my sense is that this will be very software focused. And my sense is that they're going to announce a bunch of new coats of paint because we have a bunch of leaks already. One of which is that Apple's going to rename all of its operating systems and that will be part of the big news.

• 25:02David Pierce?

  Yeah, so the, the sort of stack of announcements here is that, A, Apple is going to rev basically every piece of software that it has in a meaningful way, which is not often the case. Most of the time, they're sort of like, some get huge changes, some get medium changes, and then they're just like, and tvOS exists, and then they move on. So, but this year, there is, and we should say, most of this reporting comes from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who is usually right about this stuff. Not always, but usually. And so, yeah, the the top line is basically huge changes to every single surface of operating system that Apple makes. Uh, thing number two is the thing that all of those are going to have in common.

• 25:46David Pierce?

  It appears is that they're going to be, uh, changed to look A more like each other and B more like the Vision Pro, that there is this like layered sort of spacey 3D interface thing that Apple is going deep on. I have feelings about that. Uh, but then thing number three is to do that, they're going to rename all of them to have numbering schemes that are the same. I was gonna say numbering schemes that make sense, but they don't. They're just the same now, and that's something.

• 26:17Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, they they're tied to years, right? Like cars.

• 26:20David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  So this year, they're going to announce iOS 26.

• 26:24David Pierce?

  This year, they're going, yeah, they're gonna announce, they're gonna announce presumably the iPhone 17 this year, right about as iOS 26 comes out. And if you can explain to me how that makes sense, I really, really, really look forward to hearing it.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  All right, give me a second. Cause the the OS is not tied to the phone.

• 26:43David Pierce?

  No, it's not.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  You you got the old phone running the new OS. That's what you want. And it's this year's OS, you know it, because it is named after the the year to come.

• 26:51David Pierce?

  What I don't understand.

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  But that makes sense. Wait, wait, I got it. I got it.

• 26:55David Pierce?

  Hit me.

• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  The wheels are turning over here. It's because everyone gets a new OS in like September and October. So you're already on to the next year.

• 27:04David Pierce?

  But September and October are this year.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  But you don't want to get iOS 25 in like September. Right? Because it'll come out in like mid to late September, usually. That's when the iPhone hits.

• 27:15David Pierce?

  Do you actually, I've always wondered this. Do you know the car logic for this? Like, is there an official reason that cars do?

• 27:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's just a straight, it's just a straight arms race.

• 27:26David Pierce?

  What do you mean?

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  So the cars did not initially have model years associated with them. This is like a big innovation in the 50s and 60s. And then it was an arms race. He wanted the newest model. So they started releasing the newer models earlier in the year. And then everyone kind of like standardized. And then a bunch of stuff like the insurance industry and car values got tied to model years and perceived age. So everyone kind of landed in the same spot. But even right now, there's an arms race, like the new, uh, the new Cadillac SUV, the Vistak is, it's out now. You can go buy one and it is a 2026.

• 28:00David Pierce?

  That's so stupid.

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  And that usually doesn't happen. It usually happens around the fall where they switch the model numbers over.

• 28:06David Pierce?

  It's May. It's closer to 2024 than 2026.

• 28:10Nilay Patel?

  But that's what they're, but so the arms race persists, but usually cars, they rev the model years towards the end of the year. Cause no one wants to buy last year's model in December. Right? So you in January and you save a 2024, like nobody wants this. So like they've landed in the sweet spot, but then every now and again, a company like GM will show up. You're like, screw it, 2026. And like, that's, we're just gonna have to deal with it.

• 28:32David Pierce?

  And that is just like pure psychology. Like all that is, is just a trick to make you think it's the future when you're buying your car.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  A hundred percent.

• 28:39David Pierce?

  And that's what we're doing here too. But okay, here's what I don't understand. So you for forever, I don't know how long this lasted, but you had a MacBook that ran Snow Leopard.

• 28:49Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:49David Pierce?

  And you were very proud of the fact that it ran Snow Leopard.

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't Snow Leopard. It was, um.

• 28:54David Pierce?

  Wasn't it Snow Leopard?

• 28:55Nilay Patel?

  No, Snow Leopard was 10 dot four. I ran Snow Leopard when I was in college.

• 28:59David Pierce?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  It was like El Capitan or something. It was like one of those.

• 29:03David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  Mountain Lion. That's what it was.

• 29:04David Pierce?

  Okay, fair enough. But you were very proud of this one particular version of, of OS 10, whatever it was. And what I don't understand is Apple has continued this sort of delightful, sort of weed infused, according to Craig Federighi naming scheme for macOS where they just named the operating system something. And what I don't understand is why they wouldn't just do that. Just name it all something. That's a, it's a much more Apple-y way to do it. Like TV OS 26 doesn't mean anything to anybody.

• 29:36Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think TV OS means anything to anyone.

• 29:38David Pierce?

  No.

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  WatchOS means nothing to anyone. The only ones that mean anything to anyone are macOS and iOS.

• 29:44David Pierce?

  So then why name it anything at all?

• 29:46Nilay Patel?

  Because they need version numbers. I think all they're doing is revving the version numbers. The fact that we are having this conversation, first of all, I'm confident is driving some people bananas because it is of no consequence to anyone. And there's probably other tech issues to talk about, but it is also the point.

• 29:58David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like they don't, what they're not announcing is natural language Siri.

• 30:05David Pierce?

  Right.

• 30:05Nilay Patel?

  What they're going to announce is it looks different now, which always gets a ton of attention. And we've revved all these operating system numbers and then it is. Certain that we will write something about how the operating system numbers work. And I will just write like 10,000 words on why they should have stopped at Snow Leopard. And that was the greatest time the computers ever had in history.

• 30:27David Pierce?

  That's what I was thinking of. You love Snow Leopard.

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  I love it. It was the greatest.

• 30:30David Pierce?

  You were running Mountain Lion, but you love Snow Leopard.

• 30:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And that was my attempt, just like, stop it. It didn't work. I got a new computer.

• 30:38David Pierce?

  But I do wonder, like, your, your point that these are just version numbers, I think, I, I wonder if that's telling. Like, we were talking about this last week with all the Android stuff that Google has sort of hit a point where Android version numbers don't really matter. It used to be sort of an event release that the new version of Android would come out and it would have a dessert name and it would have a bunch of new features and they would do a whole thing about it. And now your phone just kind of periodically updates and you don't think that much about it. And I wonder if this is Apple moving towards the same thing where actually this, this annual rev of all the operating systems, which you could argue for a long time has not made sense to, you know, hold features six months just to put them in a release every May.

• 31:21David Pierce?

  Maybe, maybe this is the end of that way of thinking that Apple is like, okay, well, actually expecting us to have a wholesale new thing every year is not what we're after. And instead we just call it the year it shipped and it's a version number and that's it.

• 31:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Again, I, I think this is like of little consequence outside of the one, we get to like make some news, we get to harmonize all the numbers across all the things.

• 31:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  But I, what people want out of Apple right now is to be able to talk to Siri and have Siri do things. Right? Like, and maybe you hate AI, you don't actually want this. But the broader ecosystem of like the market watchers and regular people who are using ChatGPT every day are like, why isn't Siri ChatGPT advanced voice mode? Why, why haven't these things just connected together in a real way? Like, I don't want to just use the action button. I think honestly, you could level the same criticism of Google, like Google Assistant is not Gemini.

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna get there on some timeline, but it's still weird that hasn't happened. It appears some people, including our friend Parker or Lani, have gotten Alexa Plus.

• 32:31Nilay Patel?

  He's the only one I know. If you have it, let us know. We'd love to talk to you about it because none of us have it yet. But I think like these assistant interfaces, that that's what a lot of people believe the next turn to be. And Apple doesn't have a move there. So the version numbers are just like, that's what I mean by it's a cut of paint.

• 32:50David Pierce?

  Well, and in that world, if that is in fact, the interface of the future, version numbers sort of cease to mean anything altogether. I mean, I think back to like when when Sam Altman said, and this is, I don't know, a year ago now, that he was like, we we set up the GPT numbers all wrong. That now every time we release a new model, people expect it to be like the leap from GPT three to GPT four and like blow their minds. And it's going to be a whole new thing. And actually, what it is, is all this stuff just sort of consistently incrementally gets better. And there's no point in having, so they just like made the numbers not make any sense anymore. And like, maybe if you're Apple, launching Siri two, Siri three and Siri four doesn't make any sense. And so you're just, they're just going to pull back on all of this.

• 33:34Nilay Patel?

  First, they have to launch Siri.

• 33:35David Pierce?

  Well, yeah, but it, but I mean, it makes me wonder like if all of that comes true, is this one of the last WWDCs that feels this big?

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I think they will always have to rev the, they have so many devices in the world. The, I don't think they can do the constant phased approach. Right? It's like, it would almost be too taxing. Too many things would like kind of always be going wrong.

• 33:58David Pierce?

  Right. Drop all the bugs at once instead of like one a week all year.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. Like, I, I think they can, they can be prepared for something and like, I think that cadence is really important to them. I think it's part of Apple's DNA to be like, we have a roadmap, we ship all the things on a roadmap, we move on to the next part of the roadmap. And they've gotten better at some Delta updates. Like they announced a bunch of features at WWDC and then they like, things come out months later. Almost till the next year. So they, they have started breaking things apart more. But I think they're, they're organized around one big drop and one big announcement cycle. And importantly, this is what developers are for, right? Like you need all your developers to support your new features. So when the operating system arrives in September with the new iPhone, the apps are ready for it. And that to me is the, like, the other big weakness in Apple's universe of weaknesses right now, that the developers are mad at the company.

• 34:48Nilay Patel?

  They're going to put out a new design language. This has been the rumor. It will look more like the Vision Pro interface. You know, sheets of glass, I keep calling it aeroglass, which is the name of the design language in Windows Vista.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  But like it's got, it's got a lot of those moves, right? Like transparent glass and layers. And what's fascinating about this is it

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  that design language is not where the rest of the industry is going right now. And Apple traditionally leads, right? They, they take the bolder steps. They push everyone forward. A lot of people just copy whatever Apple does. And I don't think that's happening right now.

• 35:22David Pierce?

  No.

• 35:23Nilay Patel?

  I, I think there's a generation of designers who came up independently of the iPhone. Like the iPhone was just the thing that existed and they have their own ideas. And you can kind of see it like, you know, the new Airbnb icons are like 3D dimensional. Johnny, I've helped with that.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  You see it like OpenAI's design language is different than Apple's. Google just did material U extreme or whatever it's called.

• 35:48David Pierce?

  I think expressive was the word, but it was basically extreme.

• 35:51Nilay Patel?

  There are a lot of ideas about software design in this new universe. And it's not a guarantee that Apple's ideas will win. And it's certainly not a guarantee that their developers will exert the effort to redesign their apps to match Apple's design right now.

• 36:03David Pierce?

  Right. Yeah. I mean, in fact, I think actually Airbnb is an interesting example because if you look at Airbnb's new design, it's, it's not quite skew morphic, but it's very physical, right? Like the, and, and that's a huge trend in design right now is, is making everything feel sort of earthy and tactile. And like, that's a lot of what is even happening in the new Android stuff is it's designed to like move and bounce and morph. And it's like, everything wants to sort of feel alive and three dimensional. And Apple is just like panes of glass. And it's like, I'm, I'm sure it will be lovely. And there are a lot of really smart things about the vision pro, right? Like the, the sort of big idea behind a lot of the design is that it's instead of being a bunch of different screens,

• 36:48David Pierce?

  like a menu lives inside the button. And when you tap the button, the menu sort of appears out of it over top of what you're doing. Instead of launching you into a whole new experience. There's a bunch of that, that actually like makes sense in terms of like helping people know where they are on their device. Sure. But it is a completely different way of thinking about what your technology means to you than this idea of like, we want the physical world and the digital world to look and feel more like each other. And as we're like, especially as everybody is doing augmented reality and thinking about smart glasses. Like it, it makes a lot of sense to me to start thinking about like, how do I make the digital world? Blend into the physical world a little more and Apple is like completely the other way. They're like spaceships. It's all spaceships.

• 37:31Nilay Patel?

  I, you know, I, the Vision Pro, who knows, they're going to talk about the Vision Pro. Also be very funny if they rev the Vision Pro operating system to 26, like two years in.

• 37:43David Pierce?

  From two to 26.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  Like Vision OS 26, like here we go. Um, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of spaces left on the, on the future chart between here and 26.

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  You know, if you view the Vision Pro as a simulator and you're like, this is how we will overlay digital information on the real world, pains of glass kind of makes sense. But like, we're not, we're nowhere close to this.

• 38:08David Pierce?

  Right.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Like nowhere close. And I think it'd be, it's going to be interesting to see how that maps to like an iPad, which is like not anywhere close to an augmented reality device, right? Like, it's like a big physical device you hold in your hand. Like, it is the most screen that can screen in your hand. And like, how is that going to play? So there's just like things here about Apple's design language right now where I'm curious to see what the rev looks like. I'm curious to see how it plays with their other ambitions. But all of these other, like, the digital world is getting more physical. It's like, it's a, it's an interesting trend you kind of see everywhere, but it, it's a reflection of the fact that that is still happening on screens.

• 38:47David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  And the, Apple's new design language, at least as a comparison of Vision Pro, is like, very much like it's happening in reality. And we're not there yet.

• 38:57David Pierce?

  Sort of, but it's kind of like, it's like, what if there was an iPad floating in the air? Not, what if this thing were in the world? Like, I kind of, I think Apple has pushed, like, halfway down that road, not all the way down that road. And then again, there's, to your point, there is the question of like, is that what I want when I'm aware that I'm looking at a screen? Right? Like, is that, does that construct make any sense on the screen that I'm holding in my hand?

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You know what's going to happen is they're going to play a video of like a button and Craig Federer is like, what is this button? And everyone, the crowd's going to go wild.

• 39:29David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  And the developers are going to make the button. Anyway, that's WWDC. Like, the leaks are coming. I think what Dave and I are both pointing out is like, Apple has stakes here in a way they have not really needed to address the stakes in a long time.

• 39:40David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 39:40Nilay Patel?

  And I don't think they can just paper over it and like muscle through it and be like, we're Apple, like, take it or leave it. I think a lot of people are aware that there is another kind of application model.

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

  Being developed and you might hate it. I know we have listeners who hate AI, but I'm watching people every day build new applications using tools like NAN and Cursor. We get the pitches. We see the investment. There's something meaningful happening there. And I, you can't just ignore it. So if Apple participates in that, that's one thing. If they don't, I think there's going to be a lot of pressure on the company to have an answer as to why. And right now, the answer is because we were late and I don't think that's great.

• 40:27David Pierce?

  Right. Well, and I think it is, it's Apple's move always to pretend that nothing else exists and just like live in its own universe where it doesn't acknowledge other companies or other products or other ideas. And I think this time, rather than projecting strength, that's going to look like weakness.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  We'll see.

• 40:46David Pierce?

  Because there is this perception that Apple is way behind and it's either going to have to acknowledge it or it's going to look like it's just got its head up its ass.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  I'm dying to know. I honestly.

• 40:56David Pierce?

  I have too.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  We got another week. There's another week of weeks to come. We'll find out. But that, it feels like this, that's the framework because they're the last of the developer conferences. And we kind of know what everyone else's moves are going to be. All right. We should take a break. We'll come back. I want to, I want to actually pick up the thread from Google and its confidence when we come back. Cause it's a really interesting contrast. We'll be right back.

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• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. So David, I want to, I want to talk about the Sundar interview that was on Decoder this week, and then the web, and what's going on the web.

• 43:16David Pierce?

  Okay, I'm in.

• 43:17Nilay Patel?

  So first, I just want to address some persistent criticisms we get of Decoder by admitting something that is true.

• 43:23David Pierce?

  That's good. What is the Vergecast for if not to talk about Decoder?

• 43:26Nilay Patel?

  It's true, that's all. I've tried, and I know this has disappointed a lot of people over the years. I have done my best, and I have consistently failed to arrest the CEOs of major tech companies when they appear on Decoder.

• 43:41Nilay Patel?

  There's some segment of people that is visibly frustrated with me when every Decoder interview does not end with an arrest and jail time. I'm doing my best. I have said you're under arrest at the end of many Decoders.

• 43:55David Pierce?

  I do like the idea that every episode ends with like, an animation of just bars coming down in front of their face.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  Decoder jail. You're in it. Some people have come close. Some CEOs have certainly self-immolated on that show in spectacular ways. And I'm saying this because I've interviewed Sundar a lot. He is very calm. He's very practiced. He is excellent at answering exactly the question he wants to answer, exactly when he wants to answer it, and not answering the question if he doesn't want to.

• 44:26David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 44:26Nilay Patel?

  And so Decoder for me is always a dance. It's always a race against the clock. And there's just a part of it where I know I've hit the wall. Like, it's just not gonna happen, and it's time to try a new wall. See if I can get through a different wall. And in particular in conversations with Sundar, I think you can see me do that faster than ever, just because I know him. And I know when I'm just wasting time. And I need to find a way to make that clear. I think there's, I don't think it comes through that the way I experience an interview like that is as a clock. Like, I'm just running out of time. Like, from the second the conversation starts, the thing that's happening in my head is that I'm running out of time.

• 45:02David Pierce?

  Yeah. It's a tricky balance. The balance between, uh, this is the question I want you to answer, and so I'm going to keep asking it, versus at some point, we have to make the rest of this podcast, is a, it's a hard balance to strike.

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And there was, there's always a lot of stuff to talk about. So like, sure. But I think the thing that people are really reacting to in that, and I felt it, I feel it this week, and there's a reason I want to talk about this, is I asked Sundar, as I've asked for many years, about Google's relationship to the web. And he keeps saying the same, he's said it now for many years, that Google's sending more traffic out to the web than ever, that they're committed to the web, they want the web to be healthy, they're the only company that cares about the web. You know, he always brings up competitors. Like, you know, Instagram doesn't allow links in captions. Like, I think this still bothers him, that Google gets all of this pressure to make sure the web ecosystem is. Is thriving and you know, many other platforms send no links out at all.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, Google runs Chrome, Google runs search like that is their ecosystem, their creator base. If you want to think about that way is the web and the same way that Instagram creators or Tik Tok creators are always mad at Instagram or Tik Tok or YouTube creators always mad at YouTube. Website owners are always mad at Google. Like that's just the nature of the relationship, but the economics are different because it's an open ecosystem, not a closed one. Right. So Tik Tok creators mad at Tik Tok. There's a natural connection there. Like Tik Tok can just make changes and change the life of Tik Tok creators. There's an out for Google, which is like, I don't know, do some other stuff.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  Why are you so addicted to Google search? So you hear sooner say, we're sending more traffic out to the web. And then within minutes, a site like Business Insider announces layoffs of 21% of its staff. They announced it just before we went on air and the memo says, we need to get out of businesses that have traffic dependencies. We cannot control that we need to, we need to avoid these steep traffic drops we're seeing. And what they are talking about is search traffic. Right. They're getting out of the commerce business where you know that you list the 10 best mattresses and collective affiliate revenue for clicks. Because that style of running a commerce business is search arbitrage. People search for best mattress. They land on the Business Insider page. They buy a mattress and Business Insider gets some pennies.

• 47:19Nilay Patel?

  And if you can worm your way up the rankings, you can make more pennies and then you can make pennies at scale. And now you've made money. And we know lots of competitors that basically just do search arbitrage in this way. And the bottom has fallen out of all of those businesses.

• 47:34David Pierce?

  I mean, we do some search arbitrage, like we can just call that what it is. Everybody does some search arbitrage. It's part of being a business on the internet. That is part of the job.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but we don't do it as ruthlessly as like the slop.

• 47:45David Pierce?

  No, much to the disagreement of some of the people at Vox Media.

• 47:48Nilay Patel?

  It's true. There are people who'd love for us to do ruthlessly. Also, we run like a formal reviews program. Like we do. It is true. We make some pages for search and we see the demand and we try to get that audience. But if you're. Running one of those verticals that is purely search arbitrage, right? The content farms that do it, their businesses are going away. And some of those content farms are attached to things like Business Insider, which does real journalism, right? And like, you see the bottom falling out there. And I, there's a real disconnect. And I, I think I felt it on this interview more than ever, where he's saying, we're, we're committed to the web, we're going to keep building on the web, we're going to keep sending traffic out on the web. And then all of the people building on the web are like, we're dying. And I, I don't think that disconnect is getting smaller.

• 48:33Nilay Patel?

  I think it is getting bigger and bigger and bigger by the day. And it, it, you know, I'm not going to like go all the way out there and say like, the web is dying. Like, I think the web is a place where apps are developed the best it's ever been. Every single day, there's like a hot new web app, basically, that is doing something that couldn't be done before. Or an app like Figma is getting capabilities it never had before. That's an incredible story of application development. Like, I keep saying this, like, as a giant, interlinked, interconnected, worldwide application platform, the web is a miracle. Like, it's just, you would never be able to predict that something like that could exist, and it does, it's scale. And everyone just sort of, like, takes it for granted.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  As a media platform, it, it's dying, and it's, one of the reasons it's dying is because there's no way to get, move traffic around it, and Google is the last way to move it. And they, I would just say, I don't think they care. Like, I, I really have come to the conclusion that they know this is happening, they can see, obviously see it happening, and they've just, they, it's just, they're over it. Like, I don't think they want the pressure, I don't think they care. There's also a bunch of lawsuits we should talk about. But we're just in a place where I, I think the web we knew is coming to a close. In another web that's primarily application-based or platform-based, or whatever it is, is on the rise. And it might be masking the fact that an old web is maybe over.

• 50:01David Pierce?

  I think that's true. I mean, and I think I put this next to the work Google has been doing on its ranking stuff over the last couple of years, including a couple of pretty big ranking changes that like all at once tanked a bunch of publishers. And this is the thing we've covered a lot, the, the, you know, small like home goods review site that got absolutely destroyed by some sort of unknowable change in the algorithm that just down ranked a bunch of new stuff. And Google's line, and I, at a very top level, I believe them that this is the goal, is the goal is to stop sending traffic to bad websites. Right? And so like, Google is actively trying to kill bad websites. Like, let's, let's not be unclear about that. Right?

• 50:43David Pierce?

  Like, all the stuff you're describing, all the content farming stuff, Google not only doesn't care if that goes away, it would like that to go away. Because, again, like, Google understands as well as anybody that if, if all of that stuff gets worse on the web, Google search becomes less useful and it all just like falls apart. Right? And this is, this is a thing we've seen happen. Search results get worse because websites are getting worse because they're trying to game Google. And it's this like horrible death spiral of search arbitrage. Google is very happy to kill all of that stuff. Like, I think all of the things where there's no more money in mattress reviews because they don't rank on Google anymore, I, I think inside of Google, they are going to call that a resounding success. Feel about that however you want, but I, I don't think Google's stance on that is at all unclear.

• 51:28David Pierce?

  I think, to me, the question is like, Google is in an unusually active position right now of trying to decide what a good and bad webpage is. And Google has always, always, always, always, always gone way out of its way to say that it doesn't do that. And to say that actually, we, we are not remotely interested in trying to decide what's good and bad on the internet. We're just, we're just sending traffic to where people want to go. And then there was this big SEO leak a year ago that made very clear that Google puts its thumbs on the scale in like innumerable ways to decide what it likes and what it doesn't. And now increasingly, it's like, okay. In order to take all the shitty stuff that has been created on the web to game the way the system worked, we're going to build a new system. Because it's better than that old system. And if all that stuff dies that was trying

• 52:13David Pierce?

  to game our old system, so be it. And then the question is, and no one will answer this, including Sundar, is what happens when you also kill the good websites? They won't, they won't say that. They will not answer that question. And there is this like, big structural belief, and I think it was Demis Hassabis that said this, that like, we're going to eventually have a web that is mostly for AI agents and may not even need like a front end for people to look at at all most of the time. But what about the good websites? It's like, it's just a question they won't answer. And, and we're in such a like baby being thrown out with the bathwater situation where like, in a sort of ruthless way, like, sure, let all the bad websites die. Let them all die, whatever. There are a lot of good websites out there that will die as you kill the bad

• 52:57David Pierce?

  websites in order to make it easier for people to find what mattress to buy. And like, Google, at least publicly, will not reckon with that.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  So I think one of the ways they are reckoning with it is by saying, well, the audience doesn't want this. And I don't know how to contend with that, right? Their, their point is like, people are getting media from YouTube and TikTok and whatever else and like podcasts. And that's all fine. And that's like where the audience is going. And like, if you want to run a website, great, get your own audience. Like, don't be relying on Google search to get your audience. And I, I mean, if anyone has listened to the Verchass for like the past five years, you know that I, I believe this in my bones. Like, the deepest level that being addicted to Google is like, bad for the media industry. But it's, the media industry is addicted to Google. And there's no like, transition plan. It's like, oh, you're, we're just going to kill you.

• 53:49David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  And they're fine with it. And I don't think the audience understands what's happening to the information environment that they're in. Like, that, that to me is like, the hardest part of this, that suddenly Google is full of summaries of things that might be garbage, or the AI itself is hallucinating, or the good sources of information are now at war with Google, and you're not even getting them because they're in a fight. So another piece of, this is all just a swirl of what is going to happen to the web. The New York Times today, this morning, before we started recording, announced they are, they've inked a generative AI deal with Amazon. And it broadly tracks the deals that like everyone has made with OpenAI. Vox Media has a deal with OpenAI. It's like this.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  Amazon's going to train on New York Times content. New York Times stuff will appear and Alexa and other Amazon services. It's a licensing deal. And a lot of media companies are setting these deals because they want to set a market for what the license looks like. So again, disclosure, Vox Media is one of these with OpenAI. I have no idea what the terms are. But, you know, Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic was on here, was on Decoder. And he was like, we need to set a market, like some payments need to be made. So there are some numbers for the inevitable court cases to come to some conclusion about.

• 55:05David Pierce?

  And Amazon is a very useful, rich company to sign one of those deals with, in that case.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  So the New York Times can't sign a deal with OpenAI because they're suing them and Microsoft for copyright infringement. It's in a fight with Google. The Times executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. Disclosure, our executives are on the board of the News Media Alliance. They're furious with Google about all the changes to search and these traffic traps. They're, you know, a part of the publisher ad tech lawsuits, all that stuff. So they're in a fight with Google. So who's left? Who has big pockets that can set you a rate for a fight? It's Amazon.

• 55:37David Pierce?

  Right. Which also, by the way, would like very much to make it more expensive for all the other companies to do this job, too.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Amazon wins if they just set enormous rates for Google and OpenAI. It's fine, but like, oh, this is a weird, because Amazon doesn't give a shit about the web. They want Alexa to summarize Times articles for you every morning proactively, or like whatever they think Alexa's going to do. They're not out here, like, what's their browser called? On Fire Device? Silk. They're not, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, their thing is like, they need the training data for their AI systems. They need to distribute it to their customers in new and interesting ways. Because they're not going to win as a web browser company. Which brings me to like the last little piece of the puzzle, which is the browser company. Which, David, you have talked about and profiled and covered at length. They stopped making their browser.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  Like they stopped making Arc because it's there's no win there for them.

• 56:32David Pierce?

  Right. They're in the middle of trying to figure out what the next bet is. They have this new browser called Dia, which is very much like, so far, I got into the beta. I was not supposed to get into the beta, but I got into the beta and like, holy God, is it just Chrome with a chatbot? And the thing that's happening is, do you know what's also becoming Chrome with the chatbot is Chrome? And also every other browser that exists. And so I think, like, for, for the browser company, the big bet was like, okay, if, if we can mix AI with browsing data with like, a, a device that you spend a lot of time on, that can be very powerful. Agreed. Great call browser company. It turns out everybody else had that idea too. And this is just what's coming. And then the flip side is like, that stuff is being,

• 57:17David Pierce?

  that stuff is being eaten up by the ChatGPT app and the Claude app and people using Siri badly and Gemini and all this stuff. And so there is this like, again, it's, it's just what, what is a webpage for anymore? And if, if I'm not in the business of showing you webpages, what am I building? And I don't think anybody knows the answer to that. And I think, it's certainly true that you can build a cool browser that a bunch of power users like me will like. I like Arc a lot. I use it all day, every day.

• 57:51David Pierce?

  That doesn't appear to be the next thing, but no one knows quite what that thing is yet because it's, it, it might not be showing you webpages.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't think it is. That Demis Hassabis comment at I O about what kind of web do you build for agents first? It's the whole game. It's the whole game.

• 58:07David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Nilay Patel?

  So whatever you think Google search did to the web as a media platform, and it did a lot of things. It first, it created an entire economy for the web as a media platform, right? People search for things. They went to webpages. Just like revolutionized the internet. Like it created the internet as we know it in like meaningful ways.

• 58:26David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Nilay Patel?

  Then it created SEO, which was less good. Then it created the SEO industry and SEO slop and all this stuff. And it made a whole ecosystem that worked and didn't work in whatever ways it worked. And then even before AI showed up, Google started displaying more and more of the content natively. Right? What time is the Super Bowl went from being a thing that people fought for to a thing that Google would just tell you? And zero click searches, which is what they were called, were an increasing part of Google's product for just a long time. And the only searches that they would definitely send people to websites for were commercial searches. Stuff where you bought stuff. And they were every, if you look at Google I O over the years, every demo has always ended with a transaction.

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  Because once you're doing commercial searches, you get to charge for advertising. And so you can buy yourself to the top of a commercial search, the top result. You're the winner. You, you bought the AdWords auction for shoes. You get the shoes click, you bought some shoes. Right. Everyone's happy in Google's ecosystem. And that has led to other weird outcomes, right? Where you, you search for the name of a product. You get the competitor first because they bought the ad for the name of the product. Weird outcome made Google really rich. That's the web we knew. And then you see what, what AI is doing to that web, right? It, we're just reading the entire web. Maybe that's copyright infringement. Maybe it's not, then we're just going to summarize it for you and give it to you and businesses will die.

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we are going to run that whole cycle, that 20 year cycle in two minutes with web apps and agents. Yeah. It's going to run so fast. Because the first wave of agents were not programmatic. Right? It was like, we're going to go click around on the website for you. And Google has these projects. What's it? Mariner? Projects Mariner is Google runs Chrome for you in its data center. And a robot clicks around on a website for you and does the work. And what Demis is saying is why are we doing this? Like this is stupid. We should use these new AI first protocols, which are basically just APIs, but made for AI agents.

• 1:00:37Nilay Patel?

  Like MCP, A2A, there's, there's a whole alphabet soup of these new protocols that are really interesting. And then the agents are going to go to a website, which will just appear like a text prompt database. They'll collect information out of the database and bring it back to you. And once you have that web, okay, now you really do have the giant worldwide interlinked application platform. But you don't have websites, right? You just have a bunch of smart databases talking to each other.

• 1:01:04David Pierce?

  Right. You're making me think of when I was talking to the Google search team ahead of I O, Liz Reed, who runs the search team, basically made the argument to me that the Google search ecosystem that we know now was just a construct of the technology that we had, that basically all we had the technology to do was look for words in a place. And it was something else had to put them in a place in an order that made sense. And all Google's technology was able to do was look for it, right? It was somebody else's job to make it something human, parseable. And now we have technology that can make this stuff human, parseable, that maybe we don't need the middleman of somebody building a thing around it that I can look at. And I think that is like, I don't think she meant it

• 1:01:49David Pierce?

  to seem like as huge a statement as she did. But to say like, and I think it reminds me of the thing you always say about Twitter, right? Which is that like, criticism of the current Twitter does not absolve past versions of the company from being terrible.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  Jack Dorsey was also bad, the Neelai Patel story.

• 1:02:08David Pierce?

  Right. Like, I think the argument I think Google is making, but doesn't quite want to say out loud, is that the way that we've done it for the last 25 years wasn't the right answer. It was just the one that Google came up with. And now they think they have a better one. And so they're like, well, we, we, we sort of reoriented around one thing. And now we have a better thing. Why wouldn't we reorient again? And I think in a, in a vacuum, that's like a reasonable thing to say, right? Like, we built a better thing. We're going to do the thing. But then they're doing the thing that every tech company does, which is just utterly fail to think about the downstream effects of their decisions.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I think they've thought about those effects.

• 1:02:46David Pierce?

  You think?

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  And I think they've come to the conclusion, after getting beat up for three years at I O, about AI and the downstream effects on the web and. Being in lawsuits, like, they're like, we don't care. Like, if we don't get here, someone else will get here first. And we better, it will be better to take the hits and survive than to try to play nice and lose.

• 1:03:08David Pierce?

  That's the Mark Zuckerberg Joker story. Like, that's what happens. You get beat up enough times that you, you turn into the Joker. And that is, that's what Mark Zuckerberg did.

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

  And I think they're also, not for nothing, they're looking at the information environment they operate in. I mean, like, well, YouTube is bigger than ever. The information is on YouTube.

• 1:03:24David Pierce?

  I mean, it is probably true that if all the websites went away, Google would be fine. And I think Google kind of knows that.

• 1:03:31Nilay Patel?

  I, I don't know. I, I, I think that is more of an open question than not. Cause all that's gonna be left is slop. Like, the last domino to fall here, like, really the last domino, is some scaled media company opting out of being ranked. Right? So, the New York Times says to Google, "Look, we've just had enough. Stop, stop crawling us, stop ranking us, stop serving our news." And that, no one has the leverage against Google yet. At some point, they will stop sending enough traffic that someone will make that call. And, and I don't think they've thought that through. Like, what happens if a web stops being universally available to Google?

• 1:04:10David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:04:10Nilay Patel?

  And who knows? Who knows the answer to that question?

• 1:04:12David Pierce?

  Even honestly, like, my, my immediate reaction to that was to say, that'll never happen because the New York Times needs Google a lot more than Google needs the New York Times. But like, the, the pure perception hit that Google would take as a place that no longer sees the whole internet, might change it. Like, there's, something would happen there.

• 1:04:33Nilay Patel?

  There's some fine-grained controls that are like very political here. So, like, you can opt into Google search, but not Google AI training. But there are documents from the various trials. It's, you can see Google executives working through those options. And even creating those options. And saying, "Well, maybe one day, we're gonna get to, if you wanna be searched, if you wanna be crawled for the search engine, you have to opt into AI training."

• 1:04:57Nilay Patel?

  Again, if things continue the way they're going, some big media company is going to say, we're out.

• 1:05:03David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Nilay Patel?

  Take us out of this. I don't know when that's going to be, but like, that's the trend line. And that's when I'm like, the web as a media platform is just under enormous amounts of pressure. It's hard to, it's hard to see the through line, but I, I know when things are changing. You know, like, I can't see the finish line. I can't see what it looks like at the end, but I know we're at the beginning of a new phase without any question at all.

• 1:05:26David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 1:05:26Nilay Patel?

  Something massive is happening here as, yeah, Google is adding agents to Chrome. Like, that's just a thing that they're trying to do.

• 1:05:34Nilay Patel?

  More and more people are talking about using the web as basically a series of databases. Like, Sundar had that interview. It was like, what is the web but a series of databases?

• 1:05:41David Pierce?

  I also think, like, you, you said to him a thing you, you say a lot, which is that if you, if we were starting The Verge again today, you wouldn't start a website, you'd start a TikTok channel. And he sort of pushed back, but what he said was, pretty much in, in as many words, he said, sure, you'd start a TikTok channel, but it's only like 2% more work to have a web presence, so you'd probably do that, too. And it's like, even if that's true, that is such a, I don't think he realized the extent to which he was telling on himself by saying that.

• 1:06:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11David Pierce?

  And I just, I have been thinking about that ever since.

• 1:06:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, when we started The Verge, 100% of our effort was the website.

• 1:06:17David Pierce?

  Right. That like, oh, but sure, you'll, you'll like, you know, do a WordPress template and put it on the internet. Just, why not?

• 1:06:25Nilay Patel?

  No, I think his answer is much more like, it's 2% more work because you will prompt Gemini to read your TikTok channel and stand up a website. Like, that's what he meant by 2% more work. And by the way, when I, when I keep saying, there's no way we would start a website today, what I mean is that we started The Verge in 2011, when cell phones still had three-inch screens. Like, we, we launched The Verge as basically a desktop app.

• 1:06:48David Pierce?

  Those are the days.

• 1:06:49Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's what the venture capital money was for. Which is a very different time. We would just never do that today. Like, you would go address an audience in a different way. And that's what every new media company is trying to do, essentially. I don't, I would just say, go listen to that conversation again. You will hear more pushback than you think. And a lot of it is... Kind of predicated around, well, it's, it's fine if these things die. Right? Because other things are growing, which makes sense like on the broadest scale that is true. That's just life. But you, you see, there's no longer a defense of like, the things are dying. It's look at all the stuff that's growing. The one thing that could complicate this, and by the time you're listening to this, it'll, it will have probably happened.

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  Is that it's closing arguments in the Google search antitrust remedy phase on Friday, tomorrow. As you're listening to this, it already happened. That's the case where the government is asking for Google to be forced to sell Chrome. And I asked Sunar about this, I said, can you do all the stuff you can, you want to do if you have to sell Chrome? And he just didn't answer and his final version of this, when I knew I'd hit the brick wall. He said, that's not even what we're looking at. And I was like, well, you should, because it might happen to you.

• 1:08:03David Pierce?

  I mean, to be clear, like two things, A, that's clearly a lie. And B, he can't tell you anything because it's like ongoing litigation, right? Like that's, that's a thing. A lawyer looks him in the eyes and says, hey, Sunar, you cannot say words about this or everyone goes to jail. But like, that's, you're right that that is, that is the question. And I think whether this ends up being good for the web, though, is hard to know. It's clearly bad for Google. Whatever is going to happen is going to be bad for Google. But does this just give OpenAI new distribution for ChatGPT to do the same kind of stuff? Or is there a version of this that actually accrues back to the idea

• 1:08:47David Pierce?

  that the web as a place full of webpages that people go to is a good and valuable idea?

• 1:08:54David Pierce?

  100% TBD, like genuinely unknown. And I think it's part of what everyone has tried to reckon with in this trial is like, what happens if we do this? There is a sense that like, we're going to make it possible for a bunch of other companies to build search engines. But if you believe Google, the whole premise of a search engine is going away. And all anyone will do is take that search index and build AI products. And if that's what's happening, then we've, we've solved one kind of Google problem. But we've just sped up the killing of the web.

• 1:09:24Nilay Patel?

  So believing Google there, you know, you have to believe them when they say like AI overviews are our most used product ever. And it's like, because you put them on all the pages.

• 1:09:33David Pierce?

  I know.

• 1:09:34Nilay Patel?

  No one's picking. Like, they're just doing what's in front of them.

• 1:09:37David Pierce?

  I punched you in the face. You've been punched. You loved it. I don't know.

• 1:09:42Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. There's a lot here. The reason I wanted to add all these things up together is you can see the change. Like, you know, a year from now, The New York Times will run a story about how the web changed. And I'd be like, yeah, I listened to the Verge Cast. I got that a year ago. Because this is the moment, right? Apple's weird weaknesses, Google's apparent strength, all kind of built around like, where do the apps come from? How do you use them? How is the user interface just going to be a bunch of natural language? Are the, you know, Google's vision is that you'll search for something, it will build you an app on the fly and make a new interface to data for you, which is pretty cool. Like,

• 1:10:26Nilay Patel?

  that's a cool way to think about interacting with the search engine.

• 1:10:29David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Nilay Patel?

  Many things have to die for that to happen. Like, the dinosaurs were cool, mammals were cooler. Like, sorry, bro. Like, it's over. Like, the asteroid's gonna hit you. That's where I perceive that as clearly as I can now. Like, that's the change that's coming.

• 1:10:45David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Nilay Patel?

  The application models are changing. And Apple's weakness is, are they ready for it? And Google's perceived strength is, they're ahead of it. But Google has big questions to answer, too. And the downstream effects are like, pretty huge this time.

• 1:10:58David Pierce?

  Yeah. And if you're wondering, by the way, what is the best possible outcome here? The answer is the Fediverse. Like, if you walk this back all the way to the beginning of you and I talking about all of this stuff, and like, how do we, how do we take the things that are good about this and make it the size of the web and part of the web? That's how you do it.

• 1:11:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16David Pierce?

  That's the stuff.

• 1:11:17Nilay Patel?

  Like, big interoperability, which we have to demand as consumers this time.

• 1:11:21David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  Like, I don't think the federal government is demanding interoperability. Although they are in court, you never know. Something's gonna make it happen. All right. We have to take a break. We're gonna come back with lightning round, which I have been told. I don't know, but I have been told is sponsored. We'll be right back.

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• 1:13:26Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Now, as you know, if you've been listening to this show, David and I and the rest of the Verge newsroom, we don't do the ads. We refuse to do the ads. We're precious about it. That's our editorial independence, coming through loud and clear. But the lightning round is sponsored this week.

• 1:13:45Nilay Patel?

  So someone has to say it. So Eric, our producer, Eric's gonna say it. Eric, go ahead.

• 1:13:51Speaker 09

  Hi. Uh, this week's lightning round is presented by Google Gemini.

• 1:13:57David Pierce?

  That's great, Eric. Really good job.

• 1:13:58Nilay Patel?

  Well done.

• 1:13:59David Pierce?

  I'm really proud of you.

• 1:14:00Nilay Patel?

  There are gonna be so many reactions to that.

• 1:14:03Nilay Patel?

  Very good. Don't worry, though. Still full flavor, because you can't tell us what to do.

• 1:14:08David Pierce?

  What's the flavor rating now? How do you feel?

• 1:14:10Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I'm gonna, I'm, I'll drink through this later. All right, it's fine. It's great. You, you two can sponsor the lightning round. The problem is when you cover for not getting the sponsors by insisting that sponsors are bad.

• 1:14:25Nilay Patel?

  I did this to myself. But anyway, it's still full flavor, because you can't tell us what to do. The Verge subscriptions are on sale.

• 1:14:31Nilay Patel?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 1:14:33Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna get better at this, David. All right, it's time.

• 1:14:35David Pierce?

  Speaking of people who would like to tell us what to do, uh, it's time, once again, for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. A thing I can just say, because you can just say things in America in 2025, Brendan Carr is a dummy. Neelai, uh, according to the links I'm seeing here, kind of a busy week for our man Brendan.

• 1:14:54Nilay Patel?

  Like, busy in, in inconsequential ways.

• 1:14:57David Pierce?

  Oh, Brendan's favorite.

• 1:14:58Nilay Patel?

  You know what I mean? Like, a lot of people had reactions to Brendan this week.

• 1:15:03David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:15:04Nilay Patel?

  And, you know, Brendan continued to just, like, break stuff in the way that Brendan breaks stuff. But the, the chair of our nation's Federal Communications Commission is, is sort of busy just breaking stuff. So we ran a big story this week about the BEED program. It's the Biden administration's broadband rollout. Lots of criticism of the BEED program, which is supposed to bring broadband to many, many more people, especially in rural areas across the country. We have long talked about how rural internet is like a disaster. And so Biden passes this big bill, the BEED money is supposed to go out, we're supposed to get internet connections. Everyone's like, where's the money? We didn't connect one person. Ezra Klein has sold millions of copies of his book, pointing out that BEED didn't sell, make one internet connection. That's, it's fine. It's, it's a meaningful criticism of this program.

• 1:15:47Nilay Patel?

  The Trump administration is basically shutting this program down on the cusp of it actually starting to do the things it wants to do. So Wes Davis, his last big piece for us as a reporter here at The Verge, is a deep look at BEED, where it stands and what's happening to it. And what is fundamentally happening to it is that the money was starting to go out to build fiber connections across the country. And everyone showed up, including our boy Brendan and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, looked at this and said, no, no, no, no, we want to give the money to Starlink, to satellite internet. Because when they say satellite internet, they only mean one thing. They don't mean HughesNet.

• 1:16:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, you're not giving it to Kuiper. Like, what are we doing here?

• 1:16:27Nilay Patel?

  They mean Starlink.

• 1:16:28David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:29Nilay Patel?

  So we have all this reporting, all these quotes. Wes did a great job with this story.

• 1:16:35Nilay Patel?

  You know, basically saying they were very close to rolling out like full fiber connections to every single person in West Virginia. Like, that's, that was the plan for the bead money. They were going to be able to do it with $150 million to spare and ahead of its deadline. And now it's going to shift a bunch of that investment to satellite. And that's fine. Maybe you love Starlink. But the reality is, and I will disclose Comcast or its NBC Universal arm is an investor and parent company of Vox Media, but they hate me, so that's fine. I'm not a friend of the ISPs here. But I'm just going to point out that wired connections are generally superior to wireless ones.

• 1:17:13David Pierce?

  Especially when they've already been built and exist.

• 1:17:16Nilay Patel?

  Especially when there's already the infrastructure, especially when the wired connections are so much faster than the satellite connections and do not require line of sight, which Starlink still requires line of sight. So we're just in this place where this program, which there are many, many realistic criticisms of it, is now running into political expediency. And in particular, Brendan loves to talk about Starlink and satellite because he loves Elon Musk and he's captured moron. So that's one for Brendan.

• 1:17:44David Pierce?

  $20 billion, by the way, is, is the, the number we've seen floating around that this is the bead is a 42.6, I think, billion dollar program. And the, the reporting is that as much as 20 billion of that could just get thrown directly at Starlink to do something.

• 1:18:03Nilay Patel?

  And it's fine. But Wes did a great job with this story. I encourage you to read it. It'll be in the show notes. The, there are lots of people in the story who say, look, fiber is not practical for 100% of the population. Of course, we were going to also do Starlink and satellite and other fixed wireless solutions for a lot of people. There's an administrator in the state of Nevada who says we, this is what we were going to do there. But the ratios are being flipped to favor Starlink. It's just like naked.

• 1:18:28David Pierce?

  We're just going to put little ultra wideband 5G things everywhere around America. It's going to solve all our problems.

• 1:18:35Nilay Patel?

  As 5G does. Speaking of 5G, you will recall, it was last week, a couple of weeks ago, we had basically a moral dilemma because of Brendan, where we couldn't tell who the villain was in a particular Brendan story.

• 1:18:46David Pierce?

  Didn't like that.

• 1:18:47Nilay Patel?

  Brendan sent a letter to Dish Network saying, hey, you were supposed to build a nationwide 5G network to compete with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. And you're supposed to do that because we allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint and to preserve competition in America. We gave you Boost Mobile and a bunch of spectrum and a bunch of money, and they're supposed to network, and there's no network. And I'm Brendan Carr, and I love being angry at stuff. And now I'm gonna yell at you, Charlie Ergen, CEO of Dish Network. And it's hard to tell who the villain in that story is. Truly hard. Like, you're making the right criticisms for the wrong, totally politically motivated reasons. That's Brendan Carr on a good day. But that's the best we can hope for him.

• 1:19:26David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 1:19:26Nilay Patel?

  So Dish Network has chosen to fight back. A bunch of partners of EchoStar, a bunch of its vendors, are saying that Dish is actually building a network. They say that they have 7 million customers, the majority of whom are still basically roaming on AT&T and T-Mobile. But their own network is serving 1.3 million people. I'll remind you that America has somewhere over 300 million people. So as a nationwide competitor to the bigs, not doing great.

• 1:20:00David Pierce?

  What's wild is that even that number still seems too high to me. Like, that 1.3 million...

• 1:20:05Nilay Patel?

  If you are one of the 1.3 million people in America who are getting native 5G service from Dish Network, call me.

• 1:20:13David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Nilay Patel?

  I don't believe you exist.

• 1:20:15David Pierce?

  Call me from your EchoStar phone.

• 1:20:18Nilay Patel?

  It's like a huge 90s satellite. And they're saying they gained 88,000 wireless subscribers in April. That means 88,000 people in April signed up for Dish Network's 5G service. You tell me who you are. I am guessing they mean Boost Mobile, which is their owned and operated prepaid service, right?

• 1:20:40David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 1:20:40Nilay Patel?

  Great. That's the state of play. Dish is fighting back by claiming it has 1.3 million 5G customers running on its network. And everyone else is effectively buying AT&T and T-Mobile service that Dish is reselling under its own name. All that sucks. Like, that is not what was supposed to happen. By the way, a deal that Ajit Pai made, that Brendan is, and Brendan, you know, was he's part of, he was part of that chain. And now he's trying to unwind it by yelling at Charlie Green. So I know what's going on there. I do know that Brendan, what does he want to do with the spectrum that he wants to reclaim from Dish? He wants to give it to Starlink.

• 1:21:12David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 1:21:13Nilay Patel?

  Other satellite companies have also started asking for the spectrum. This is just dumb naked corruption that started with a dumb naked corrupt deal that Ajit Pai made, that Brendan is carrying on. That's life. Last, last two little bits of Brendan, like I said, he's just like carrying on breaking stuff. Anna Gomez, who's the last Democratic Commissioner on the FCC, they're supposed to, you know, have five, and it's supposed to be 3-2, depending on who, whose party has the presidency. Right now, they're, it's 3-1. So, we're doing great. She's on tour. She's doing this like First Amendment tour, pointing out that Brendan is a threat to free speech. So she's like going to college campuses. We've talked about her before. I'm gonna, we're gonna try to get her on one of these shows.

• 1:21:58David Pierce?

  Do you think she's our competition in the Brendan Carr is a dummy podcast space? Like, I hear she's going on tour, and I'm like, maybe we need to go on our own tour.

• 1:22:06Nilay Patel?

  We should go on our own tour. We should combine forces. I mean, she's also a politician, and I have a number of questions for why the FCC is totally ineffective and weak that I could direct at her as well, as I've done to every FCC person that has ever appeared.

• 1:22:17David Pierce?

  Alright, so we're gonna go on a tour that exactly matches her tour, and we're just gonna be like, one building away.

• 1:22:24Nilay Patel?

  Yep. It's gonna be like, you know, they, they all suck. Anyhow, she's on tour.

• 1:22:29David Pierce?

  The party speaker and microphones, just yelling at Anna Gomez.

• 1:22:33Nilay Patel?

  We'll get a bigger party speaker. We'll get that JBL, man. That thing's hot. Anna is saying that it's an administration-wide effort to chill speech and stifle dissenting voices. And she says Brendan is leading a clear effort to quash dissent.

• 1:22:48Nilay Patel?

  She's basically picking a fight. She's like trying to get fired. She's even saying, I will probably get fired for doing this. And so far, Trump hasn't fired her. I don't think that he knows that she exists. But it's coming. This is the next turn. She's gonna make enough noise and get fired. And she's

• 1:23:03David Pierce?

  I mean, you don't do this unless that's the outcome you're assuming is happening.

• 1:23:06Nilay Patel?

  Her quote, she says, I don't know why I'm still in my job. And then she says, if I get fired, it isn't because I didn't do my job. It's because I insisted upon doing it, by what she means for protecting

• 1:23:17David Pierce?

  So I feel every time you and I record the Ferg

• 1:23:20Nilay Patel?

  That's very good. All of this has ended in maybe the most pretzel like logic of all in the pages of the Wall Street Journal opinion section, where they have attacked Brendan this week for being an authoritarian censorship machine. And their response, because of the Wall Street Journal, is that the entire FCC should be shut down and turned over to the private market.

• 1:23:46David Pierce?

  Give it to Starlink.

• 1:23:49Nilay Patel?

  Just like full horseshoe theory of politics. Like even the most libertarian opinion section that you can get in the Wall Street Journal is like, yeah, that dude sucks. Like, he's misusing government power. Shut it all down.

• 1:24:04David Pierce?

  I do like the idea of a privatized FCC. What could possibly go wrong?

• 1:24:08Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's not like the, there's not like this scarce wireless spectrum, and you want to protect things like the FAA from people's cellphone emissions. Like, whatever. Why would you ever want to do that?

• 1:24:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Nilay Patel?

  But it's great. I love it. I do love the fact that Brendan has united left and right in just pure hatred of his moronic censorship machine that he's building. He's a dummy. And it's rare that I'm like, you should read this Wall Street Journal opinion page. As always, I remind you, the only politics we consistently express on the show are that free markets are pretty good, competition makes better products, and you should be a little bit less racist than Brendan Carr. If you think that's wildly leftist, you are free to believe that. But that's what you get from us. And also, now, I'm telling you, I agree with the Wall Street Journal's opinion pages.

• 1:24:55David Pierce?

  Telling you, man, strange bedfellows these days.

• 1:24:58Nilay Patel?

  Weird times here in America, as ever. Brendan, you're welcome to come on the show and defend any of this stuff. You can appear via Starlink if you want. You too can be sponsored by your buddy Elon, but I don't think you will ever do it because I think you're a coward and a dummy. So if you want to premiere on all of our, all of our platforms are available to you. I will say that David and I are both having children soon, so the clock is ticking, my man. You gotta get, you gotta get on here.

• 1:25:21David Pierce?

  Brendan, if you want to host the Vergecast this summer, get at us. We can talk about it.

• 1:25:25Nilay Patel?

  That door is shockingly open.

• 1:25:31Nilay Patel?

  Dying to know what Brendan thinks.

• 1:25:32David Pierce?

  You do have to do Brendan Carr as a dummy every week.

• 1:25:36Nilay Patel?

  I love it. All right. We need a palate cleanser. What do you got?

• 1:25:38David Pierce?

  Uh, it's almost Switch time. Um, are you, are you, did you buy a Switch?

• 1:25:43Nilay Patel?

  I did not. I did not. I play one video game, Madden, and I'm at the point now where I've mastered last year's Madden, just in time for the new one to come out.

• 1:25:51David Pierce?

  Oh, that's, I mean, that's, that's the ideal Madden scenario.

• 1:25:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm also waiting for Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater, Delta Force, or whatever it's called to come out. Pins and needles for that one, but that's not Switch stuff.

• 1:26:02David Pierce?

  Okay. No, but the Switch 2 is coming next week, June 5th.

• 1:26:09David Pierce?

  Easily to me, the gadget of the year. Like not knowing everything we know about the rest of the year, I can't imagine what would have to happen for the Switch 2 to not be the most consequential piece of hardware that's coming out. We're learning a bunch of stuff about it already. Um, as far as I can tell, Nintendo seems to have been pretty tight with like who's getting, it's not like there's been like a, you know, Casey Neistat hands on or like a bunch of like lifestyle influencers getting to use the thing like, not that many people seem to have Switch 2s yet, but stuff is starting to trickle out. Somebody, there was an unboxing video that somebody did that got immediately yanked offline. We've been covering kind of the run-up to it a bunch. J Peter's really good story, basically being like, the Switch 2

• 1:26:52David Pierce?

  is the Wii U done correctly, which is both like a good point and kind of a sick burn on all of Nintendo's history. But I just think this is like, it's a really interesting gadget moment in that I think if the Switch 2 is everything we think it might be. I kind of think it's a big deal just as a piece of hardware. Like if we have this thing that really makes portable gaming that is high end and long lasting. And like the, the fact that the Mario Kart game is like an open world Mario Kart game that you can play anywhere. Demands a lot of the hardware, it demands a lot of the wireless. Like if this stuff works, I think we get to the point where like, there's just a lot of things that suddenly start to feel possible in gadget design that I'm very excited about.

• 1:27:37David Pierce?

  Which is a lot to say about a slightly bigger switch, but like, it's really how I feel.

• 1:27:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, you're all the way in on Gadget of the Year.

• 1:27:44David Pierce?

  Oh, hands down, like I, what else could it like? I, I have such a hard time imagining something be more important than the Switch 2. Like if this thing sucks, it's going to be devastating. But also again, like I think if, if Nintendo just takes all these ideas that it had about the sort of modularity and the portability and this idea that you can have a thing that connects to all of your screens and all of your devices all at once. And actually makes that like another tick better in every respect. It's just going to be amazing. And there's so many ideas that if you just broaden it out slightly starts to change like, oh, how do we think about our other gadgets? And like, what if Nintendo is doing all the like handoff stuff that Apple has never successfully done with its devices?

• 1:28:28David Pierce?

  Like, why can't I dock my iPhone into my television, Neelai? Why? Nintendo figured it out.

• 1:28:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's funny, uh, Apple, one of the other coats of paint rumors about Apple is they're going to redo Game Center to make it more like Xbox Live.

• 1:28:42David Pierce?

  Oh yeah, there's like a, it's, it's a whole app.

• 1:28:44Nilay Patel?

  You can see the conversions here.

• 1:28:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Nilay Patel?

  Look, I, I think it's possible the Switch 2 is the, the device of the year. I think certainly it will be the gaming device of the year. And it's the one that people are the most excited about. Certainly the games look great from the coverage we've done and that our reporters have gotten to try out, but Gadget of the Year is a big one.

• 1:29:01David Pierce?

  I I could I I mean, as somebody who covers gadgets, I hope I'm wrong. It's fun if I'm wrong. But I just think, I mean, this one's really interesting because the first switch when it came out was like cool and exciting, but it was a it was a Breath of the Wild machine, right? Like, that's fundamentally what it was. And this one is making much more of a hardware-first play. Like, there are lots of new games, but some of the new games are also going to play on the old Switch. Uh, and there's nothing as sort of immediately earth-shattering as there was with Breath of the Wild. And so I think the idea that this thing is going to have to sell itself as hardware, A, seems to be a thing Nintendo knows, and B is going to be super fascinating. And they're trying to do all this interesting ecosystem stuff where they're like, what if we,

• 1:29:46David Pierce?

  you know, sell you a third-party camera that connects to the thing? I'm telling you, like, I have been wanting modular gadgets for as long as I have known you. And this is the closest thing to properly pulling that off, if it pulls it off, that I think we've ever seen.

• 1:30:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, maybe I'll buy one.

• 1:30:03David Pierce?

  I so here's my question for you is, should I go stand in line at a GameStop at midnight to try and buy this thing? Like, am I?

• 1:30:10Nilay Patel?

  Just for the content, do it for the gram.

• 1:30:13David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, obviously, I'm dying to know. Have you read, uh, any of this new Apple in China book, by the way?

• 1:30:19David Pierce?

  No.

• 1:30:20Nilay Patel?

  There's long, it's it's really interesting. There's a lot of reporting there, but a lot of it is about how the Apple we know is more shaped by like Chinese resellers standing in line than than anyone can possibly see.

• 1:30:33David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:30:34Nilay Patel?

  And that's that's really the story of gadget lines now. Like, we've all but stopped covering them because it's basically a bunch of resellers standing in line.

• 1:30:39David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 1:30:40Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, it's not like a joyous community. It's it's kind of gross in in a lot of ways, but I think you should go and be like, I'm here for joyous community.

• 1:30:49David Pierce?

  And then just interview a bunch of resellers, see what happens.

• 1:30:52Nilay Patel?

  See what they're like.

• 1:30:54David Pierce?

  I like it.

• 1:30:54Nilay Patel?

  Be like, so you're flipping the Switch, huh? How much?

• 1:30:57David Pierce?

  All right, well, I will I will report back next week, but I think I think I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go to GameStop and see what kind of trouble I can get into.

• 1:31:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, we should end with breaking news. Uh, the tariffs have been paused, David.

• 1:31:10Nilay Patel?

  While we, while we were talking, the tariffs are back on. The pause of the, the pause of the tariffs was paused.

• 1:31:17David Pierce?

  We've unpaused.

• 1:31:20Nilay Patel?

  Court of Appeals has blocked the pausing of the tariffs.

• 1:31:24David Pierce?

  I don't care.

• 1:31:25Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying. Elon Musk is out of the White House. By the way, Elon Musk, you know, he, they, it's clear that he got himself, no one likes him anymore. So he's been off boarded officially from Doge. He's on a toll interview circuit right now.

• 1:31:38David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Nilay Patel?

  He spoke to Ars Technica with CBS News, I think with the Washington Post. He's, he's trying to make a big show of being back at Tesla. Tesla's sales are tanking around the world. But like in ways that are like hard to cover, like in, in Europe, in one quarter, they're down.

• 1:31:54David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:31:54Nilay Patel?

  They're, they've cratered in Quebec. It's like, you gotta, whatever. There's a bunch of data that says a story in like weird, independent ways. And then they're supposed to launch the robotaxis like soon.

• 1:32:08David Pierce?

  Yeah. He's been saying they're like out on the road doing stuff, right?

• 1:32:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's driverless cars in Austin. So if you're in Austin and you see a party speaker or a robotaxi, let, let me know.

• 1:32:18David Pierce?

  If you see a party speaker and a robotaxi in one photo, we will send you Verge merch. I can't, I don't know what it'll be, but I will send you something.

• 1:32:26Nilay Patel?

  I will send you a party speaker.

• 1:32:28David Pierce?

  Yeah. But I think that just the, the one thing I've been thinking a lot about with the, the Musk stuff is the, the thing he keeps saying in all these interviews is that he's like back to sleeping on factory floors and in conference rooms at Tesla. And it's like, it's very much a show of I am back paying attention to my company designed especially to like, you know, appease investors who have been worried about Tesla being completely ignored by its CEO for a long time. I'm very curious to see how that helps Tesla's case versus again, like with, with these sales changes, this ongoing disastrous branding that the company has gone through because of Elon Musk.

• 1:33:09David Pierce?

  That is like, he is the, the company's greatest asset and worst problem. And that's been true for a long time. But for a long time, at least financially, asset outweighed problem pretty aggressively. And it really feels like that has flipped. And I, I'm just curious to see if he can change that perception just by being back at Tesla more. But I don't, I don't see it.

• 1:33:33Nilay Patel?

  I don't either. Also, there's, there's nothing to be done in the factory for him. No. What's he like? He's not, he can't invent a new car to fix it right now. Like,

• 1:33:41David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that's also increasingly clear to a lot of people is that the, the sleeping at the factory might've been a bit and maybe not part of my man's day to day job.

• 1:33:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, he's got more children than father.

• 1:33:55Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, the terrorists are paused. You let me know. There's a lot of updates. If you're out in the world, you let me know what the terrorists are doing.

• 1:34:05Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be a weird iPhone season. iPhone prices are gonna be crazy because of these things. All right. That's it. We've, we covered, as always, we went long because there, there was a slow news week. This is what always happens to us.

• 1:34:17David Pierce?

  It's just fun.

• 1:34:18Nilay Patel?

  It was a good one. We'll be back next week with much more WWDC preview. Lots, lots of stuff. It's The Verge, everybody. It's gonna be great. Pay us the money. You can't tell us what to do. That's it. That's the Vergecast. Talk to you.

• 1:34:34Nilay Patel?

  And that's it for The Vergecast this week. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Will Poor, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

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