Apple's new iPad mini and Google's Stadia gaming platform

A rundown of Apple's latest product updates including the new iPad mini, iPad Air, and AirPods. The Vergecast crew Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller also discuss Apple's upcoming event on Monday and what their new services may contain. Second half of the show features Google's announcement of their new game streaming platform Stadia. Links: - Facebook stored hundreds of millions of passwords in plain text - Apple updates $399 iPad mini with Apple Pencil support -Apple’s new iPad mini is a terrific small tablet with no competition -Apple brings back the iPad Air with 10.5-inch display and Smart Keyboard support -Apple’s new AirPods come with a wireless charging case, Hey Siri support, and more battery life -Apple will let you add 256GB of RAM to an iMac Pro for $5,200-Apple updates iMacs with new Intel processors and AMD GPUs -A brand-new AirPower image has appeared on Apple’s Australian site-What to expect from Apple’s TV and news service event -Apple’s plan for its new TV service: Sell other people’s TV services - gone90.biz -Here are the shows and films coming to Apple’s streaming service - Is this robotic therapy pet the uncanny valley of dog?-Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service, launches in 2019 -Google Stadia uses a custom AMD chip to offer 10.7 teraflops of cloud gaming power-Oculus unveils the Rift S, a higher-resolution VR headset with built-in tracking Thanks to Microsoft Azure for sponsoring this episode. Get started with a free account and 12 months of popular free services at Azure.com/trial today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Real quick, before we start, do me a favor. Go to voxmedia.com/podsurvey. Our company's doing a little survey about what podcasts to listen to, which ones we can make better. I would love it if you took that survey and plugged The Verge. This week on The Vergecast, we talk about Apple's enormous number of announcements, new iMacs, new iPads, AirPods, no AirPower. We preview Apple's streaming TV event next week, and we talk a lot about Google Stadia, its new streaming service.

• 0:21Speaker 01

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• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Vox Media Network, which I said out loud, it's South by Southwest. No one stopped you. Vox Media executives all over the place. Nobody rushed the stage. I still work here. Does that make it true? It's true now. It's as true as it's ever been, which is a medium amount of true. Anyway, hi, I'm Neelai, your buddy. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Your pal.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller. Hello. It's a wild week of news. There's a lot going on. An overwhelming amount of things going on. Nonstop. Nonstop. And so Paul suggested that we do this, and I think it's a good idea. We're gonna not talk about Facebook and content moderation and data leaks and that stuff this week. We do it almost every other week. There was actually just another huge Facebook scandal. Facebook apparently stored hundreds of millions of passwords in plain text accessible by a wide range of employees. So what's new? There it is again. And obviously, you know, there was the horrific shooting in New Zealand. There's a lot of tech and platforms moderation. What do we keep up? How do we get it down? All of that's happening in the world. I don't want to ignore it.

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  But there's a bunch of tech news that it's worth talking about as well. So if you want to get in depth on that stuff, there's only one place to go. It's theverge.com/theinterface. That's Casey Newton's newsletter. It comes out every day. It covers social media and democracy. Casey does a great job. He's been on the show a bunch. He actually interviewed Alex Stamos, Facebook's former head of security, on this show on Tuesday. So you can listen to Casey and Alex talk about that stuff. So if you want to get into that stuff, if that's what you want this week, listen to that episode. Go to theverge.com/theinterface. Casey's your guy. The three of us are gonna talk about some gadgets this week.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Nothing but.

• 3:25Nilay Patel?

  There's just a lot of gadget news. Apple literally released one product a day this week, which was...

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Well, for three days. And then today, we're recording on Thursday. We're all like, huh?

• 3:36Nilay Patel?

  Yep. And there was not a... But today was the iPad mini review day. Uh, Google announced Stadia, which is their cloud gaming service, which seems insane.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Call your doctor if you experience, uh, you know, dry mouth or other symptoms.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  It's true. It's not a great name. And then on Monday, Apple's having a gigantic streaming event. So let's just start with the Apple stuff. I reviewed the iPad mini this week. That's out today. It's on the verge of calm on YouTube. You can read that, watch that. Dieter, you've got the iPad Air.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  I do.

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. A lot of the YouTube commenters made fun of me because I said your name like 10 times in that video.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, Dieter's gonna review the air. I was like, yeah, I know. I'm watching the video.

• 4:18Nilay Patel?

  The way we make the videos is we like shoot them in sections and I just sort of forgot that I'd said it, but I forgot it again. So it just, we just kept saying it.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Lot of pressure on me, man.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  You better review the fucking air. People are counting on you. Anyways, I've got the mini. So on, what is it? Tuesday, Apple announced a new iPad mini, a new iPad Air. They've got basically the same specs. The, the, the main difference is the size and the air has a keyboard, a smart keyboard connector. So A12 processor, TruTone displays, medium cameras, basically. Lightning ports, not USB C bezels, touch. I mean, these are old designs. The mini in particular, the design is seven years old.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Which is crazy.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  I don't even know where to start. The bezels like, eh, like everyone's saying these are parts bin devices. And yeah, sure. But also you said this in the mini review, like, so what? Who else is making tablets of this class?

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, what, which parts bin do you go to to find an iPad mini screen with pencil support? Well, no, I think pencil support is like, it's the first gen pencil, right? Like, I don't, I don't mean parts bin in the sense that Johnny Ive like literally walks into a room with like a wall of blue bins and assembles a modular iPad. I mean, this is a remix of technologies Apple's already developed.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, they didn't, they didn't fundamentally change the casing. They didn't make the screen bigger and get rid of the bezels. They, it's, it's like parts bit insofar as like they used a bunch of like established technologies and established like, you know, bodies. They did, it is genuinely hard, I assume, to take an A12 processor and put it in a, a box that was previously. Designed for whatever the iPad mini had before, an A3. I mean,

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  An A8.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  I don't know. A8. Okay, sorry. Same thing. Actually, iPad Air is a whole other ball of wax, which we should get to. But the point is, like, whether or not you're, like, salty about them not changing the overall design of the thing, it doesn't really make a huge difference because what other tiny little tablet is anywhere in the ballpark of this good? Who do they have to compete with?

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so, you know, I said that, and I said Android tablets don't have a great app ecosystem in their view. And then like you do, and the thing publishes at 7:00 AM and 7:10, 7:15 rolled by, and I was like, I wonder what the Android fanboys are mad about. And I went and checked, and they're all like, the Galaxy Tab S5E is a competitor to this. And that might be true, they just announced it. The S5E has a 10.5 inch display. It's like, it's not. It's just the only other, like, premium Android tablet in the world, right? And there's the weird Lenovo one that turns into an Alexa with a screen. When you put it in the dock, it's like 150 bucks.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Huawei MediaPad, something, something.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  But all, like, Android tablet apps, this is just true. Android tablet apps suck, don't exist. And they really do look like gigantic phone apps. And the iPad app ecosystem, which I think runs into problems on sort of the iPad Pros, like, is kind of great on the mini.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:25Nilay Patel?

  And like, so what I was saying before we started was, I cut a bunch of stuff out of the mini review, because I realized it's all just reflective of, like, the mini being damning about the other iPads, right? So it's not about the mini, but the mini exists with an A12 processor and, like, iOS 12 on the mini is fine, because there's no way you're gonna replace your laptop with this. There's no way it's, you're gonna replace your phone with this. Like, just by the nature of its size, it's a secondary computing device. And so iOS 12 as a secondary computing environment is great, right? You can kind of, like, make it do a bunch of stuff. You're like, I'm watching a video, I want to browse the web, I'm gonna throw the video in a pip window,

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  bang around here for a while. Oh, I want to, like, listen to some music. I'm gonna throw that window out the way. I'm gonna, like, pop over this app. Like, all that's- Cool. Like, it's super cool. And then you try to like extend it onto a Pro and you're like, this is my computer now. And you're like, this is broken.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  So, so just to clarify, it's not damning of the other iPads as far as their features and then that they exist and their size and stuff. It's damning of their aspiration.

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like, I think the fact that the Mini doesn't carry any expectations. Like, it's just so, it's so obviously a secondary device. Like, no one in the world buys an iPad Mini and is like, this is my only computer. The way that lots of people in the world buy a phone and like, this is my only computer. And lots of people have a laptop and that's their main computer. And some people have an iPad Pro. Like, no one is buying a Mini, or at least I haven't heard from them. They're bought, people buy, people love the Mini. This is a true story. Actually, let me, let me say this first. So I'm talking to Apple, I'm like, why'd you update this thing? I thought it was going away. I thought, you know, small, like, phones are getting bigger. Everyone just assumed the Mini would die. You haven't updated in like three and a half or four years.

• 9:07Nilay Patel?

  And they were like, yeah, that's kind of what we thought too. But then people kept buying them. And then Apple, like, and so they did all this research and they're, they realized that the Mini, I think when it was first put out, was the cheapest iPad. Where I'd say, they cut the screen size down. It was the cheapest one. It was the entry point of the ecosystem. And they realized that some people were buying it because it was cheaper, but the vast majority of Mini owners were buying it because they wanted the size. And they realized the size was the primary determinant of the purchase. So they're like, look, the people who want the cheap one, we think they're better served with the $329 9.7 inch iPad. And I think that we, I think we, we've now seen this over and over again. Price conscious buyers want bigger screens.

• 9:50Nilay Patel?

  Right? So like, across the Android ecosystem, you can buy any number of cheap phones with huge screens. It's just a thing. The iPhone XR bizarrely has one of the biggest, bigger screens in the lineup, is the cheapest phone. So, we know that people who are price conscious want bigger screens. So they made this iPad, 9.7 inch iPad, which has a big Albeit not as good screen. And they're like, but people want the size, so we're just gonna keep making the thing at the size and people are gonna keep buying them. I think the design comes down to, we gotta hold the price point, we can make a lot of margin on this thing. Two, like, you know, like Home Depot ships like thousands of these to customer service agents every year, like come to your house and like show you a kitchen. Pilots use them, like, it's a drop-in replacement for all these enterprise applications.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Oh, and so like they can't change the form factor too much, because there's a whole bunch of like point-of-sale boxes that the old ones slotted into and they need the new one to slot into.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  It's kind of the vibe I got, right? But then, it's like, yeah, but you could have probably gotten rid of the bezels and kept the fizz, you know, like, but I think there's like an element here where like you can just keep the cost. And then I honestly think that A8 processor, the iPod Touch and the iPad Mini were sort of like the last standing A8 devices. And like, it's gotta cost more to keep building old chips than to just take some A12s off the iPhone line, right? Like, you're already, you're gonna make a billion iPhones this year. Surely you can spare a couple million A12s. So I think there's like, I think there's just some economy of scale. Like, people are still buying this product, we can, we can actually reduce costs by using a bunch of existing technologies, make the thing a little bit better, we don't have to overthink it, people will just keep buying it.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Then I think that's just where the Mini landed. I, they didn't invent anything. I think the first-gen pencil is ridiculous. It is a ridiculous thing, it's always been a ridiculous thing. I've never liked it, I've always thought the charging is stupid. But it's there, it works. If you wanna do that thing, you can do that thing.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  Here's some breaking news, they told me that when iOS, the next version of iOS 12 comes out, presumably next week to support the streaming service, the Logitech Crayon will work with the iPad Pros.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Really?

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  If you wanna break some news right now, you heard it here first on the Verstcast.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  This is very exciting.

• 12:04Nilay Patel?

  I don't know who's buying a $1,500 iPad Pro and a Logitech Crayon.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Will it work with last-generation iPad Pros? Because like, the Crayon is a genuinely better design than the Apple Pencil. It doesn't roll off the table, it's easier to charge.

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  I have no idea.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:18Nilay Patel?

  I mean, look, if you wanna start your Logitech Crayon blog and break it down, I support you.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  There was a time when every individual tech product had like a microblog devoted to it. But anyway, so the thrust of my review is basically like I'd forgotten how much I liked having an iPad mini. And the main thing that I like about it is that I don't feel rude using it. It's an unquantifiable thing, but I go to a lot of meetings. I try not to take my laptop to meetings. I want to be focused. Laptops are very distracting. And then every now and again, I'm like, I need to look at something and I need to take a note. I pull out my phone and I feel instantly rude. This happens all the time, right? And then like Geter sends me a Slack. I just want to quickly answer the Slack. I pull out my phone. Feel super rude. Someone says something like, I have a terrible memory. I need to write that down. Pull out my phone. Feel super rude. With the mini, it's just like, I want to pull out this thing. It's like pretty purpose driven.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  You can see what I'm doing, more or less, and I'm just like, get this thing done and like come back to you. And it's not a laptop. It's not a big iPad with like all this like, it's just like the size of a notebook.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  The way you're describing it kind of sounds like it's a big phone for you.

• 13:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but so here's the other damning thing. So there's like iOS 12 on the mini is damning to the big iPad. Because I think it works great on the mini because it doesn't have these aspirations to replace the laptop. So it works. And then it's damning to the phone because it's an A12 processor with a lower resolution screen. It has less pixels on its screen than the iPhone XS, right? And it has more multitasking features. So like, why can't I run a pip window for YouTube on my iPhone XS Max? Like, just can't do it. And like this iPad mini can do it. And I think that's ridiculous. So that's right. It's like damning kind of like both directions, right? Like, why can't I just split screen two apps on this iPhone XS Max?

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  But there's honestly no reason I could. I shouldn't be able to do that. But you're right in that I kind of feel like it's a giant phone, but the phone just has so much cultural baggage when you pull it out. Like you're in a meeting, you're talking to someone, you're like, start using your phone. You're, you know, like what, it's a cliche, like my face is buried in my phone all day long. I don't, I literally don't feel that way when I use the iPad mini. I feel like it's, it's just so much more purpose driven because it is so obviously not my primary computer. And that's, that's, it's as squishy of a reason to like a tech device as anything. But I certainly felt like I'm using my phone less. I don't feel compelled to use my laptop for this X set of things. And when I'm done, I'm going to be done.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  My strange idea is if you pulled out your phone during a meeting and that was rude. And then you unfolded it and it was about the size of an iPad mini, would it become less rude?

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, probably.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:03Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, I mean, everyone else is showing off foldable phones that are about this size. Apple's like, check out these bezels. It has an eight megapixel camera with an F 2.4 lens. Like, yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. Uh, but it's also 399.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. And like, that's, I said this in the review and I'll say it again, like every iOS device I've reviewed for the past two years has been like skyrocketing in price. The iPad Pro I reviewed, I think was specced at $2,200. The iPhone XS Max that I reviewed is like specced $1,200. So you're like, I'm always just like doing this stance, like, is this worth it? Like, did this ambition get realized? Will this last? Is this random feature that Apple, like, and we do this with, uh, expensive Android phones too, right? Everything's just getting bigger and more complicated, more expensive. The iPad mini is like, it looks the same as it did seven years ago. This pro, this, the processor in it, well, the last one lasted for four years. This will probably last you for four years.

• 16:04Nilay Patel?

  It's cost $400. Do you want a tablet of this size? This is the only one you can buy. It just, it's so, it's just so simplified my thought process of the review. Like, do I want a tablet of this size?

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Well, and everybody that looked at it, touched it, thought about it, was like, oh yeah, small tablets are really neat, which made me think of, do you guys remember from 2011, the HTC Flyer?

• 16:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, yes.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  So, the reason I thought of this is the HTC Flyer came out about a year before the original iPad Mini. It was an Android tablet, like seven inches or so, and you could use a stylus with it. And one of our producers, Creighton D. Simone, great guy, was obsessed with this thing. Carried it around, it was like, I'm doodling, I'm like being really productive, I've got all my stuff on it, and I could hold it in one hand. And then the iPad Mini came out a year later, and it didn't have stylus, but like, it like had that like, oh yeah, small tablets are great. And then it like slowly disappeared to, out of most people's minds, except for Walter S. Mossberg, who still used and loved his. That now that it's come back, everyone's like, oh yeah, this is great. Like, I actually do like having a device this size.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  And that social thing that you've been talking about, Neelai, like the one-handedness of it, the notebookness of it, and potentially the stylus-ness of it, having to be able to use a stylus of it if you want to. It has a different effect on the room. It doesn't carry that social baggage, and it reminds you of like, it was really convenient to have like a little tablet.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Now, honestly, everyone just forgot about it. Like, maybe Apple didn't do a bad thing by letting the old ones sit for almost four years. It's like everyone forgot that it exists. You know what group of people is bizarrely excited about this, they like been tweeting me, is like pilots. Like pilots are like, yep, this is the best thing for the cockpit that's ever existed. We just want iPad Minis, we finally have them, we're gonna buy new ones, we're super into it. So there's all these like weird little use cases and corners. But for for me, it's literally comes down comes down to I don't I can't care like I just can't work on iPad Pro. It's like never worked out for me. I have people with different experiences. And I just think it's rude to have my phone all the time. So what what fits in this middle zone? It's this product and it's 400 bucks.

• 18:19Nilay Patel?

  And at 400 bucks, it's hard to like over nitpick it.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Right. Okay, so let's talk about the iPad Air for a second.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Um, I'm working on the review. It will include the phrase, it's an iPad, but I don't actually think it's just an iPad. I think it's something more interesting. But I tweeted this thought and I've been rolling around in my head and I think I know the answer now, but I want to hear from you guys. We just had the re-release, the reintroduction of the MacBook Air. And now we have the reintroduction of the iPad Air. What do you think Air means now?

• 18:47Nilay Patel?

  Hmm, the middle.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  That's what it means.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Right?

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 18:52Speaker 03

  It means middle.

• 18:54Nilay Patel?

  It means the middle one.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  Well, but it's interesting because at one time it was aspirational and now it means middle.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't really aspirational, like it was aspirational for the first ever MacBook Air, which was ridiculously expensive.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  Right? It was aspirational for the first iPad Air.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  No, the iPad Air was not priced like the Pro. Like it came out at the same price points as the iPad 4 Retina. Was there iPad 4 Retina? There was.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  But it was the best thing.

• 19:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was. It was the best one. It was the newest.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  The best iPad and for a while the iPad or the MacBook Air was this thing that was way expensive for what you'd get. But you aspired to have it because it was ridiculously thin. And now it's a boring computer and iPad Air is a boring iPad.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, but it's not as boring as the iPad iPad. It's a little bit more expensive. Uh, I think what Air means is it means the middle one and it means you take a Pro and you pull out a lot of the stuff that makes it super expensive. And then it becomes an Air. So a MacBook Pro has, uh, you know, a brighter screen, a couple more ports, maybe depending which one you get. It's got the touch bar. It's got, you know, really high-end GPU. It's got a decent processor.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  And Apple's, okay, so take all the stuff that a normal person won't notice day to day when they're like browsing the web and checking email. Yank that out, it becomes the Air. I think the same thing applies to the Pro. What do you lose? Well, the screen is, I think, slightly worse on the Air compared to the Pro, at least in terms of it doesn't have that like, you know, that nice rounded.

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't have promotion.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Doesn't have promotion, but it sells True Tone. You lose a couple of extra speakers and you get a step down in processor. Will the average iPad user miss any of that? I think that you also lose USB-C. The average iPad user will not. The one step down that I've noticed going from a Pro back to an Air is, oh, God, the sound's coming out of one side of it, which is like really weird. I like, didn't think I cared about that and like, but once it's gone, you're like, oh, that sounds weird.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  But other than that, like, whatever. And the other nice thing about the Air is, the iPad Air, is before, if you wanted to buy an iPad, you had an incredibly terrible choice in front of you. You can buy a $330 iPad and then if you want to type something, you gotta find like a Bluetooth keyboard or and you're like, I just want, I want that keyboard connector. I want to be able to have a keyboard if I want it. And in order to get there, you would have to spend $300 to $400 more. Just a ridiculous choice. You either have to get a Bluetooth keyboard or you have to spend like $300 to $400 more. And now you're looking at the base iPad and you're like, what if I want just a little bit nicer one?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  It's sitting right there. It's like 100, 150 bucks more. And there you go. I think they're going to sell a ton of these. Maybe not a ton on like the grand scale of consumer electronics because we know that iPad sales aren't as gangbusters as they once were. But I think that a lot of people who would have otherwise bought the cheap iPad and been kind of bummed a little bit, and they weren't sure why, but they knew that the keyboard thing was there, will buy the more expensive iPad and be super happy.

• 22:08Nilay Patel?

  So, Apple told me that the $329 iPad is by far the best-selling iPad, which is super interesting to me. Makes sense, cheapest one. What is most interesting to me is the amount of people who are currently cross-shopping the old 10.5-inch Air with the new, or the old 10.5-inch iPad Pro with the new 10.5-inch Air.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  They're the same, I mean.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  They're so close to being the same.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  People will come at me about the processor, but I don't care, man. They're the same frickin' thing. The box that Apple gave us to review for the keyboard was the iPad Pro keyboard. It says iPad Pro keyboard on the box. It's just like, and I use the 10.5. I bought the 10.5 Pro and it's been my iPad. So I'm trying to review the iPad Air and it's actually really difficult because it's just my iPad. It feels exactly the same.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  It's, I mean, it's defined, and that's kind of like the parts bin idea again.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:00Nilay Patel?

  They took in a 10.5 inch iPad Air, they took out two speakers. They gave it a slightly worse display, no ProMotion, and they added an A12 instead of an A10X. I think the A10X versus the A12 is like kind of a wash. I don't like, I literally do not think anyone will ever notice.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Probably, yeah. But like, the move they made with the MacBook Air was they took a MacBook Pro and they took out a bunch of stuff and replaced some stuff and put some less expensive parts in it. And then they gave it a wedge because people like the wedge.

• 23:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Same great keyboard, though.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  Like, just looking around, tons of places, Best Buy, what have you, are selling the old 10.5 inch Pro for $499. If you're like, the iPad Air at $499 is the thing I'm gonna, you should just buy the old Pro. I'm just telling you right now, but you will like having ProMotion and the two extra speakers more than you like eight more months of iOS 16 support or whatever it is.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  That old Pro is going away, though. Like, it's not gonna be around too much.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you gotta catch it while it's hot, but I think that's like a, it's just there. Right now, it's there and it's a better product at that price than the Air.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  The thing that bothers me about the new iPad Air, new iPad Mini, is that this is Apple's old design language and they've already shown their new design language. So it feels like when you're buying this, like, yeah, Apple's a little slower to update iPads, so maybe it'll be two years until there's a refresh. But you know, this is, it's sort of the last of the breed. I mean, Neil, you got a little bit into the fact that this is Lightning instead of USB-C, you know? There's a lot of this that's like backwards looking. And so, as much as these seem like great buys if you actually need them right now, it is definitely one of those cases where there is something much better, seemingly, theoretically, around the corner.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  I think I've come around to the idea that Lightning is never going away. Go ahead, Duder.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, that's the dark thought, is these aren't backward looking at all. These aren't backward because Lightning is never going away. The next iPhone's gonna, these, these iPads make me think the next iPhone's gonna have Lightning.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  You know why I think that? Because the new AirPods have Lightning 2.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, Lightning is, Apple had an insane answer. I asked them, you know, 10 different ways. Like you do, like, you know, you're like a journalist, like sneaky. You're like...

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Don't say that!

• 25:12Nilay Patel?

  You like ask them, you like go through the front door and then you're trying to sneak in the window if you can't get in the front door. Why not Lightning? I was like, let me throw some letters at you. You, just smile if you like these letters.

• 25:25Nilay Patel?

  No, I asked them like five different times, right? And their answer was, we think USB-C is a pro feature, which I understand in the context of an iPad. Right? What they're talking about is this enables you to plug your fancy digital camera right in and get a high transfer speed. This enables you to, you know, plug in a 4K display or whatever you're gonna do with it.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  I get it.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  What it does enable me to do is tether my camera to it and do live shooting the way I can with MacBook.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. First of all, USB-C on the iPad is like so limited anyway. But they're like, the higher throughput of the bus is like why it exists and why we want it there. We want to enable all these use cases. It's pro, pro, pro. Only pros want to do this stuff. Everything else is why. And then they're like, no one's gonna do that stuff on these iPads. But the idea that USB-C, which like literally every phone except for Apple phones has as their charging standard, is a pro feature, is fundamentally ridiculous. So, you know, I think it's a distinction they're making between sort of like, what do, what does a big base of consumer iOS devices use? It is Lightning.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  And then we have this like middle ground of the iPad Pro that's closer to MacBook and we're gonna put USB-C on it. But I think, I just think Lightning is gonna be here for a long time. I think the iPhone going to Lightning, or the iPhone going to USB-C is a beautiful dream that will never, ever, ever become reality.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  Like, Lightning is a nicer port fundamentally, too. It's smaller. So, we'll just see. Maybe I'm wrong, but based on that answer, and again, I really did ask them like 10 different ways. I was like, what does pro mean to you? Like, it was like every which way I could get at it. Uh, and they weren't, they weren't having it. Speaking of the AirPods, we should talk about the AirPods. Yeah. By the way, Dieter, in case you missed it 15 times in my video, Dieter will have an iPad review next week. God. So then the AirPods come out. That was Wednesday. That's Wednesday. So we're going in like a, we're, we're starting in the middle, we're going to the end, and then we'll jump back to the beginning. Well, because they also, they maxed the, in the middle. But like, the man, whatever.

• 27:33Nilay Patel?

  The Mac briefing was crazy. But AirPods. So AirPods come out, they've changed the chip from W1 to H1, which stands for headphones. The W chip still remain in the watch, where it has gone, I believe, from standing for wireless to watch. There you go. H1 chip, basically does a couple of things. It pairs faster. It's Bluetooth 5 now, uh, but still running Apple's, like, if you do use it with an Apple device, it still runs some custom Apple stuff on top of Bluetooth 5. But it's Bluetooth 5 now, so it'll work about. Well, well, let me, well, let me be paired to two devices at once and know which, where the audio is coming from? I don't, I don't know. Okay. We'll see. That's, we're, we're gonna get them soon, we'll find out. So. Sorry.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Has faster pairing, both like out of the box with the thing, faster switching between Apple devices. So it's two times, two times faster switching like a phone to a Mac and back again, uh, faster out of the box to pair. And it has a better, basically DSP, like noise cancellation for the mic. So when you're outside and you're on a call, it'll sound better. And then to the person that you're talking to, not to you. This is like, I realize it's very confusing to describe. It has better noise cancellation on the microphone, so that when you're talking, the other person can hear you better. And then it has, obviously, hey Siri support. So you can say, hey Siri, it'll like, let up. Hooray. Like, new AirPods. Big news is a wireless charging case, which is Qi, which is cool.

• 28:57Nilay Patel?

  LEDs on the front now, lightning on the bottom. That's, so you get that package for 200 bucks. You can get it without wireless charging for like 130 bucks, 150 bucks, something like that. I think it's, uh, maybe 160. Anyway, yeah, yeah. Some number of bucks. Middle, the middle number of bucks. And you can just, if you already have AirPods, you can get just the wireless charging case for your existing AirPods for 80 bucks. Uh, I asked them about recycling AirPods. 160, yeah, sorry. 160 bucks. And they're like, yep, just bring them in, we'll recycle them for you, which has been a big question out in the world. So I'm, I want to dig a little bit deeper on that, because they're basically made of glue. AirPods are like 100% glue. So I kind of want to know what they mean by recycling. But, you know, they feel disposable and I think it's Apple has a commitment to recycling.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  So they say they're going to recycle them, which is cool. Notably, they're Qi. They are not meant to be charged by AirPower, which is the wireless charging method Apple announced in 2017. And everybody thought it would come out this week. There was a rumor. I think the Wall Street Journal published something.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Why does Qi make that true? Wasn't AirPower going to be Qi compatible?

• 30:02Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that was, it was built on Qi. There was some like story about like the Qi people fighting with the Apple people. I just think like the, the Apple Watch isn't Qi, right? So I think if Apple's going to put out its new wireless charging AirPods, the, the most Apple move is to say it charges wireless over AirPower. AirPower can also charge your other Qi devices, but the AirPods charging, like what, that's the most Apple thing they would do.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like the phone is Qi because you know, you got Qi stuff everywhere. But, uh, the AirPods and your watch, you gotta buy the AirPower. But no, the, in the second I saw the AirPods charge over Qi, I was like, AirPower is not coming this week. There's, there's no way to give up all of those attached sales of new AirPods to like some garbage Qi pads on Amazon.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Do you think we dreamed Apple's announcement of the AirPower? It's like a collective fantasy?

• 30:54Nilay Patel?

  No, because it's all over the place. It's like, uh, there's like pictures of it that people keep finding on like random international Apple websites. So there's like a new one today on the Australian website. There's, there's code out in iOS 12 that like obviously shows AirPower like.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you could say there's a lot of evidence of, of like a Roswell like government conspiracy to cover up aliens and stuff like that, you know?

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  There's a lot of evidence out there.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  The Wall Street Journal did say that they've approved the manufacturer of AirPower.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. And there's been analyst reports, but look, we're recording this on Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday. By the time you're listening to this, we may be totally wrong. AirPower could be out. Um, so just go ahead and tweet at Dieter if that happens. He's at back on.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  You know what, you know what I'll do if, if it, if it comes out and you tweet at me, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make a face. I'm going to airglower.

• 31:42Nilay Patel?

  It's good. It's good, Dieter. You did a great job. Your mother's very proud of you.

• 31:51Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, it did come, but charge over T.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  AirPods sound bad. I just need to say it as much as I can. They don't sound great. And I don't know how we went from the, they sound exactly like AirPods. Remember those, the wired ones? Yeah. Everyone in the world knew AirPods sounded bad. But then we cut off the wires. Now everyone's like, these are the best product Apple's ever made. And it is true. They are very convenient. They pair very nicely. It is fun to flip the case. All the, all the sort of like cultural aspects of it are great. It's a meme. People love them. But I just, I just need to tell you.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  It's a very good meme.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  And it's all, it's also, I, I like seeing stuff like the H1 chip in the sense that like tech companies do lots of different things, but a lot of times it looks like the thing that this tech company has done was dreamed up like by some people in a boardroom trying to figure out how they can capture a market. And then there's other things that tech companies do that were obviously some engineers in a basement with a stopwatch. And that seems like a lot of what this H1 stuff is like, this is going to pair faster and switch between devices faster and the battery is going to last longer like that. I mean, you know, there's also just the march of Moore's law that also helps them out, but I, that's, that's really exciting because it's just quality of life improvements. For something that a lot of people use all day.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  I think the Apple story fundamentally is they, they have their chip design team. Right? Like they, they bought some small chip companies and they made them a big chip company inside of like a huge company and that pushes them forward in a way that no one else has really been able to match. So like if, if there's a reason for Apple's dominance, it's like their in-house chip design team, which is doing the A series processor, which is like lapping the field, which is doing these custom controllers like the H1, like all that stuff is cool. Like no doubt. I just think maybe they should, you know, Dr. Dre works there. They could be like, do you sound good? And you might be able to tell them. That'd be cool. Like I, just a fact. Trent Reznor on the Apple payroll. You can just ask him.

• 33:54Nilay Patel?

  Do they, do you sound any good? Like, maybe he would tell you. Lady Gaga, she's not Polaroid's creative director anymore? You should bring her in.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Free agent.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  Free agent creative director, Lady Gaga rolls in, tries on some AirPods. Some people think they sound great. I just, and a lot of, whenever I tweet about that, people are like, they're great for phone calls and they're great for podcasts. Uh, which is true. But every time I'm on an airplane and I see somebody walk in wearing AirPods, I'm like, you're not going to be able to hear shit because they don't cancel anything. Like you're going to hear engine noise and like, a little bit of a podcast. And then every now and again, I watch those people try to turn on the movie on their seat back display and then look at their AirPods in despair and then ding the light.

• 34:37Nilay Patel?

  Just a fact. All right. Last thing, Apple announces week, new IMAX. There, this is all chip stuff. Paul, tell me, it's eighth generation Intel chips and some medium good Vega graphics?

• 34:47Speaker 04

  And a couple of ninth generation chips, typically you have to like custom configure. Apple has taken the past, I'd say four years of computer technology, mostly from the laptop world and smeared it over its IMAC line.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  You know, like.

• 35:06Nilay Patel?

  Like a really messy bagel, those IMACs.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know, those spreads that like, they're really tasty and flavorful, but they kind of rip up the bread a little bit.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Like the, the IMAC Pro, you can now get a Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16 gigabytes of RAM, which is a two-year-old GPU.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  Wait, the IMAC Pro or the IMAC?

• 35:29Speaker 04

  In the IMAC Pro, there's a $700 upgrade option, which is the Radeon Pro Vega 64X. And that is a GPU that came out two years ago.

• 35:40Nilay Patel?

  Right. But the new IMACs that came out, those are new Vegas or old Vegas?

• 35:43Speaker 04

  I mean, there's like a lot of like 2018 type GPUs. There's nothing new in these. There's, I mean, there are, there are newer chips. They are an upgrade from existing IMACs and existing IMAC Pros. But there is nothing like that's that exciting. It's mostly eighth gen. There's a little bit of ninth gen in IMAC. And mostly you have to pay for, you know, really crazy upgrades to get truly new stuff. Yeah.

• 36:12Nilay Patel?

  So, Apple, when they were like telling me about these, they um, they basically were just like, people use iMacs in ways that you don't expect. And it was fine, and they were like, you know, people use them in businesses, and like, kids use them to learn to code, and like, families use them to look at photos. And I, just by the end of it.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Do you mean computers?

• 36:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, by the end of it, I was like, yes, the iMac exists. But like, it was just one of those moments where like, Apple world is so disconnected from the rest of computing. Because there are lots of other good-looking all-in-ones now that people just buy. Like, it's not like everyone at HP just like fell off the face of the earth. They like looked at the iMac and like, we're getting our ass kicked. And they like, made a computer that looks pretty good. And they, it's true, the new HP all-in-ones look fine. Uh, the Surface Studio exists. Also full of laptop parts, I gotta be honest with you, but it exists. It's like a really interesting all-in-one. Uh, and so like, I, at some point, you gotta wonder like, does Apple feel that competition? It's the same thing with the Mini. They don't have any competition, so they're just kinda like, here's some new stuff, like, we just like bumped the chips in it.

• 37:15Nilay Patel?

  And then with the iMac, it's like, there, you do have competition, are you just not feeling it at all? Like, I, I kinda wonder.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  I don't know. Every time I see someone with an iMac, other than I understand there are certain people who are constrained to the Mac platform and need like an iMac Pro for some very specific reason. Other than that, it's just, but why? Why? Why do you have this overpriced bin of laptop parts on your desk with a non-upgradable screen?

• 37:41Nilay Patel?

  Well, cause I will say, I have such a bin of non-upgradable laptop parts on my desk at home. Uh, that 5K display is amazing for the price point.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  You can't really get that display elsewhere. You can, you can go out and buy a screen and you've almost spent as much money as the iPad. Like, you're basically getting a free laptop glued to the back of your 5K.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Okay, fair.

• 38:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like a weird way to think about it.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  And that's great. Like, from Paul's perspective, the laptop is smeared on. And from your perspective, it's slathered.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's like a It's a smear of laptop over the back of a 5K display. That's great. I mean, like, what do I use my laptop for at home? I like do some work. I edit a lot of photos of the baby and the 5K display is like tremendous for that. It's like, I have it. But

• 38:29Speaker 03

  All right.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  Once you configure it to the top end, you're like, this is crazy. Like, this is legitimately ridiculous. Where is the modular Mac Pro Apple's been promising for over a year? Uh, it's not yet available. I imagine we'll see it at like WWDC in some way.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  That's my, that's my guess. You can spec up an iMac Pro with 256 gigs of RAM and it only costs you an extra $5,200. It's ridiculous.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  And on the, on the other end, the iMac, the 21-inch iMac starts at $1,300.

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a little, like, way crazy.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  You would struggle to spend more than $600 on an all-in-one at Best Buy. That would most likely be fairly similar in performance.

• 39:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I bet that were there, where every PC manufacturer cheats out as a display.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 39:17Nilay Patel?

  Like, that display would be like milky blue, right? Like, you would watch a video on it and like half the pixels were just like hold in place while the other half, like, you know, like, they all cheap out in this way. Apple rarely cheats out in this play. I was gonna say never, but that 329 iPad is like a cheap death display. Rarely cheats out on display. So like, it, there's something there. All right, we've gone on for way longer. We're gonna take a break. When I come back, we're gonna talk about the event next week, which, if you may have noticed, Apple cleared the decks for by announcing everything else this week. We'll be right back.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Elie Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 40:13Speaker 05

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it'd be the Second half of 2027 automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when just a few months later in May, team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you, if you extrapolate that out five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  This series is presented by EY. Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically, so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/AF.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Like I said, every day this week, there's been some Apple news, right? You had your iPads, you had your Macs, you had your AirPods, you had your iPad embargo for the reviews. Tomorrow's Friday. Who knows what will happen tomorrow when you're in your car? My car ain't on. You could be driving along and suddenly air power just drops out of the sky. You never know.

• 41:54Nilay Patel?

  But presumably, Apple released all this stuff because they didn't want to talk about it at their event. It's on Monday. It is, look, that list of things I said in, in years past would have just been an Apple event. New iPad Air, right? New model of Air, updated iMac, updated iPad Mini, new AirPods. All that stuff, that's four new products. Apple would have happily thrown an event for 40. Apple, Steve Jobs, once made the entire tech press come to California to introduce the iPad or the iPod Hi-Fi, which was just some speakers. There is a time when this stuff would have

• 42:29Speaker 04

  They get blowback when they do that. This would have been a disappointing Apple event. They can't, they've got to at least redesign one thing or launch some, some one all new product.

• 42:40Nilay Patel?

  If they had had air power, I bet they, this would have been like its own little hardware event.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  And they would have, they would have set expectations and so nobody, yeah, that, I mean, they, when they introduced the iPad, iPad last year, the, the new version, it was like an education focus. And so they had a whole bunch of like education stuff, but they just had the one thing.

• 42:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they made an entire school full of children miss school for a day. So they can talk about how great they were in education.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  Anyways, but in years past, this would have been an event. It wasn't, right? It's a slow drip of news all week, this week, so that on Monday, everyone can be focused on their big event to announce their streaming TV service. And their paid news bundle in Apple News. And maybe some other stuff, we'll see. But I think it's just those two things. And what we keep hearing over and over again is this is a new kind of event for Apple. Like you can tell they're like, the pressure's on, like they're, they're feeling it. So they cleared the decks. They don't want anyone to be distracted, get all that stuff out of the way. They don't want people to show up and be like, where are the new AirPods? Like it's done. It came out in a press release on Thursday. It's got cheese shut up by this TV show.

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  We're done with this, like focus on this. In this event, what's particularly weird about it is I think we already know most of the stuff.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:04Nilay Patel?

  And we, it's not like rumors necessarily. It is literally, Apple has been putting out press releases about famous people they're giving money to for TV shows for like a year.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And if it's not Apple, it's, you know, the, their producer or the studio that's making the thing or whatever. The Hollywood has a different PR cadence. And so we, like, we know the names of a lot of these shows. Like we know the concepts behind them. We know who stars in them. Uh, we just don't know when they're coming out, how it'll be packaged, uh, and how much it'll cost.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  So there's

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  If it'll be any good. There's that key point. So there's a show about like the morning news, like a office comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. There's a, there's a show where Snoopy plays some sort of detective, I believe. That's a real fact that I heard today.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Maybe an astronaut?

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  An astronaut. Is he a detective or an astronaut?

• 44:56Speaker 03

  Snoopy teaches STEM, science and technology.

• 44:59Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's like being a detective.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  Enjoying a bath.

• 45:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  You're discovering the world. You're looking for clues about how it all works. I'm not going to help you with this one.

• 45:07Nilay Patel?

  Whatever, Eric Glower.

• 45:11Nilay Patel?

  Like, so there's just like a long list of shows. And then there's like, you know, the Peter Kofkas of the world who know all the network executives. And so Peter wrote a story for Recode this week that's like, we kind of know what this looks like. Their, their goal is not to compete with Netflix. Apple's goal is to not to get you to sign up for 10 bucks a month to stream a bunch of their original content. They have nowhere near enough original content to do that. They haven't licensed a massive library of old TV shows and movies the way Netflix did to launch. Their goal is, we're going to bring you in with these exclusives inside of the Apple TV app. And then we're going to go to partners like Starz and Showtime and whatever, HBO. And we're going to make it easier for you to subscribe to them and we'll take a cut off of that, which is very much an App Store pricing model, right?

• 45:56Speaker 03

  Right. Doesn't Amazon already do that?

• 45:59Nilay Patel?

  Amazon, Amazon absolutely already does that. And so Kafka and one of the cable executives on background is piece is like, this is just very incremental. Like this is, we understand this model. What Apple doesn't have is a partnership with Netflix. They're not going to sell Netflix or have Netflix content in their TV app. There are some other big players out there who are apparently not participating.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  We don't think HBO is going to participate, do we? Or do we know?

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  I think HBO will participate. But so you get, you get the shape of it, which is, you know, the Apple TV has always had this weird TV app on it. That TV app is in all the other devices as well. Or iOS devices as well. You make that the home screen of the Apple TV. And you start to say, do you want to look at HBO? Like, subscribe to HBO through Apple for $4 a month. Subscribe to a bundle of HBO and Showtime and Starz for $8 a month. And you push the button and then like those shows start to populate this TV app alongside Apple's originals. Right? And like, that's a big model. Peter also reported that Apple's gonna host the streams now.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  So you're not gonna get kicked out into some other app. Like, the TV app will start to do the work of streaming the content to you.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  That's actually kind of a big deal.

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  That's a big deal.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Cause like, a bunch of these other apps, like, they've been using BAM to stream. Or they ruled their own and it sucked. Or they used BAM because BAM was good. BAM is the one that did the good version of HBO, you know, wrestling, blah, blah, blah. But Disney bought them. And like, all of those contracts are like, they happen to be expiring right now. So, Apple handling the streaming means that like, you can trust that you don't have to go to another crappy app. And you can trust that the stream will actually like, stay up during Game of Thrones. Which, uh, nothing else does, except for BAM, anyway.

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's a, I just feel like we have the shape of it. The big question is, what's it really gonna look like? How are the apps across all these devices gonna, gonna like, operate? Are they gonna release a version for the Mac? There's no TV app for the Mac. Are they gonna do something on the web? Are they gonna update the iTunes app that they just shipped for Samsung TVs to be called something else other than iTunes? Which is ridiculous. Uh, so, I mean, there's stuff to be like, learned at this event. But, there's a part of it, it's like, this is gonna be, you know, 45 minutes of watching TV show trailers. Or like, having famous people be like, we're so excited to work for Apple.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, that's, there's gonna be a lot of famous people in the room, I'm sure of it.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  What happened to the dream of this being, like, three years ago, or whenever rumors started? Of this being like, for cord cutting? Like, is there no live TV play in here at all?

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  You know, so right now, the TV app sends hilariously delayed push notifications. So like, it, you know, you, like, it'll send you notifications, like- The Golden State Warriors are mounting a furious comeback in the fourth quarter and you're like, look, and it's like the game's been over for three minutes. Like, they have this thing where they, they do want to kick you to ESPN, they do want to kick you to, so I think sports in particular, because Eddie Q loves sports. But I think that'll be like, we're gonna disaggregate the ESPN app and like layer that through here. Or we're gonna have you push a button and go that. I don't think they're gonna do like, the sling TV, the PS view, sort of like streaming service cord cutter thing.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  Because honestly, those products are just not great, right?

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they're, they're, they're also not consistent across the country. Yeah, you, you never know what you're gonna get.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Like, hard to use DVRs in your web browser.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which at one point was my dream. Don't get me wrong. Like, a complicated web-based DVR was once the pinnacle of technology, but I, we've just moved on.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  How about this? At, near the, after 45 minutes of watching trailers for PG and PG 13 rated TV shows.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Ooh, PG 13, I don't know, man. That might be a little bit risque for Apple.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  Sorry, I don't want to push, push it. Um, PG rated TV shows, uh, the lights dim, and then Jane Munster walks out and announces an Apple television.

• 50:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what I want most of all. Uh, there's just like no way that's gonna happen. I don't think they put the iTunes app on Samsung TVs that they're getting ready to release their own TV. Uh, what I think is crazy is like, you know, the, the Apple TV story starts, sort of in like the modern era, with Steve Jobs telling Walter Isaacson that he's like, quote, cracked it. He's gonna build the simplest TV, he's like, finally figured it out. And like, we've just not, just stumbled our way to this place, where they're gonna sell like a, a Showtime subscription in this TV app. And like, I have a lot of doubts. I'm just gonna be really honest, like, I always have a lot of doubts with streaming services, like, we're in the, we're in the moment with streaming wars, you know, and like, I do think we should make the Go90 tracker of success.

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  And like, I do think the Warner one is gonna go 90 and I do think, you know, like Disney Plus will be a success.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  I built the tracker. I built the tracker. Yeah. You go to gone90.biz. You have to use a desktop because I don't have drag and drop working on mobile. It's gone90.biz and then you just drag all the different streaming services and, and you, you make it your own scale. So if you put like Netflix on the left and then Go90 on the right, and so it's on a scale of Netflix to Go90. There's also a Quebee mode and it just turns everything into Quebee logos.

• 51:17Nilay Patel?

  I love that you add, there's an ad piracy option and that, that's what adds Plex.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, Plex and popcorn time.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  This is tremendous. All right, go.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Gone90.biz and yeah, tweet a screenshot of your, your rankings and also there's probably a lot of things I should add.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  What's the, what's the scale on the left and the right? What are the labels?

• 51:35Speaker 04

  You choose.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  So I put, I put Netflix on the left and gone 90. I feel like that is the spectrum of streaming properties.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Why does Quebee get such a giant logo and everybody else is small?

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Because I, I ran a script to auto resize everything to like a hundred pixels wide. And so it just depends on the aspect ratio.

• 51:55Nilay Patel?

  This is tremendous. Well, I think you should fix Go90 and Netflix on the scale to make it clear for people.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  Oh, just always put them there?

• 52:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll try to do that before we.

• 52:05Nilay Patel?

  The Go90 scale of success.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Maybe there'll be a button, recommended scale of success.

• 52:11Nilay Patel?

  Are you saying that like other people might potentially pick the crunchy roll to criterion channel scale of success?

• 52:19Speaker 04

  I want to know what you think.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, I'm, the only reason I'm so skeptical is it doesn't sound simple, right? It sounds like another thing that you have to pay for, that's going to ask you to pay for more stuff that won't have all the stuff.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  And I already pay for all sorts of stuff.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  What if it just becomes like, Amazon's thing isn't simple either, but it is because I get it through Amazon Prime, which I use to pay for other services and then it's just kind of there and it's another thing that keeps me in Prime. What if Apple like just does the bundle and makes Apple Prime and you get iCloud storage that isn't ridiculously low, which you have to pay for now, and you get Apple Music and you get the, you know, the news thing and you get the, the TV thing.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but what's in the TV thing?

• 53:10Speaker 03

  Well, who cares if it, if it's got like enough, if it's got like five things. Yeah, you're buying it for the iCloud storage.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  And then so maybe you get a subscription to HBO?

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Well, no, that's extra.

• 53:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, what do you get? Like, that's what I don't understand. Like, what are you gonna get? Like, you're the-

• 53:25Speaker 03

  You get the morning show. You get like Apple's eight shows that are good.

• 53:28Nilay Patel?

  But that's insanity.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it works for Amazon.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  No, Amazon bought another library of stuff.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like you, on Amazon, you get like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and you get John Krantz, Krasinski's, you know, Tom Clancy Punch People TV show and you get, you know, some other like specific Amazon Prime movies. It's nowhere near the library that you'll get from, you know, Netflix or HBO or whatever, but like there are a few exclusive shows on Prime.

• 53:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just want to point, but Amazon also made like Manchester by the Sea.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. They're like, they're playing like they're, they're playing at that level.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  And they bought this huge library of other stuff where they're like, do you want to watch The Martian? It's free on Prime streaming right now. Apple just has its like 25 shows where Tim Cook is giving notes like, please make them less mean and don't show Apple products in a negative light. Like, what I'm saying is the Amazon strategy makes sense because you buy Prime and then you get like a reasonably good Netflix clone along the way. Right? And then they're gonna make some more originals. By the way, Amazon's originals program, like its TV studio, film studio operations, notable disaster.

• 54:40Nilay Patel?

  Like not going well, falling apart, executive turnover. Jeff Bezos is like, we gotta make more mass market stuff. We can't just do all this like niche premium stuff. But then they also have like the library of TV shows and movies that like is fake Netflix. Or then you have Netflix where you just like pay 12 bucks a month. And literally any interest you might have, there's at least a C plus show you can watch.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  Like just down the line. And then there's also Schitt's Creek, which is a delight. But like literally, you're like anything. I want to see dogs and it's like, here's 50 shows about dogs. We just made them like, I don't even know who did them. Here they are, just like all day and all night. And like, I want to watch spunky children fighting aliens and Amazon and Netflix is like, here's some remix stuff we made. Here's the Punisher. Nothing happens for the middle four episodes, but you're gonna like it. Like I, I just, I don't see Apple doing that.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Apple doesn't need to, to do that. They don't need to defeat Netflix. They just, I don't, I guess they don't know what they want people to do. They need to, they want people to just live in their little bubble, in the little Apple bubble and hang out there more, more time in the Apple, Apple land.

• 55:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, their whole pivot is to services revenue. So they want you to spend more time on their devices and Apple services where you will spend more money. Got it. Nailed it. Right? If they, if 10% of iPhone owners spend $1, right? They've made a hundred million dollars. Like it's fine. Like, but I just, it's just, to me, it's crazy that they haven't, I, this is what they're gonna.

• 56:13Speaker 04

  Maybe they, they, maybe they did buy a big old, you know, old library of stuff and that, you know?

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  That's possible.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  That's why Netflix has no old movies on it. Apple owns them all.

• 56:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, maybe. It's like possible. The reason I'm saying like they haven't in a definitive way before the event is what Dieter was talking about before. The cadence of Hollywood is so different. We already know, like, there's a post on our website. Here are the shows Apple's gonna launch, like just confirmed over and over again. Like, we kind of know what that catalog looks like. What we don't know is like, what's the sell to the, the average iPhone owner? How are you gonna buy it? And then that sits next to pay for Apple news now. And you'll get access to like a range of paywalled magazines and potentially the Wall Street Journal. And that to me is like, actually sounds pretty good, right? Like, no ads, no tracking, like, a bunch of high-quality magazine stuff that I don't like running

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  into pay. Like, I'll take it, but how much is that gonna cost on top of everything else?

• 57:09Speaker 04

  I like this Apple Prime idea.

• 57:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they've also, there's also rumored they're gonna put out a credit card next week with Goldman Sachs, so.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  What if you could buy groceries at Apple stores? Think about it.

• 57:19Nilay Patel?

  That would be incredible. There's like, the genius bar is replaced by the snack bar.

• 57:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, we'll see. Monday, I think Monday's gonna be a big day, but I think you just look at this week where they just cleared the decks of every other question that people had about their existing line of products, right? Are you gonna update AirPower? What's going on with the iPad Mini? What's going on with these IMAX? Have they been updated in like 600 days? Like, they just like, did it. Like, here's a bunch of new stuff. We're gonna own this week of news. We're gonna take the focus off the gadgets. And we're gonna talk about ourselves as a services company with our big streaming service and new service launch. There's also a little bit of a rumor that they're gonna do something with games. But I got my doubts.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Gene Munster, Apple Television. We've remastered all your shows in 5K.

• 58:08Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's kinda like, they should just make a TV. At the end of this all, oh, here's another question. Are they gonna lower the price of the Apple TV?

• 58:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, they need to.

• 58:15Nilay Patel?

  It's really expensive. Roku's killing them at like $39. Are they gonna make a little stick? Like, I doubt we'll hear about any of that stuff on Monday, but they need scale for these services. I don't think they can just count on like iPhone owners to watch, you know, whatever shows they make on their phones. Like, they gotta hit TVs.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  I walked you through my, my parents', like, Apple TV upgrade saga, right? They, they, they were gonna get a new Apple TV, cuz the old Apple TV was dying, cuz Apple stopped supporting it. So, go to Best Buy to get a new Apple TV. Oh, those are like $200. Well, you could get a whole TV for like $200 or $300.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  So they got like a $600 visio. That's like enormous.

• 58:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  But it all started with just wanting to get a new Apple TV, but they were real expensive.

• 59:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's right. You go in, you spend, you know, $800 on like the TCL with a Roku. It's got Dolby Vision. It looks beautiful. It's like one of the best TVs that's reviewed. It will track the shit out of you until the day you die. Uh, but it does the job. It's like, I think most people don't care. Like, I think that's just the answer. Like, most people just want the big screen. And so now you gotta convince them. I think Apple has to find a cheap way into that. And I don't think it's just AirPlay2 on a Vizio. Like, if their solution to getting people to watch this reboot of amazing stories is to have everybody with a Vizio TV AirPlay it from their iPhone, like, I think they've probably made it. It's probably a miss. It feels like a miss.

• 59:45Nilay Patel?

  The rumor is that they gave Samsung the exclusivity and they'll roll out the app to everybody else over time. But that's just a rumor. Who knows? All right. Real quick. Would you, are you, you gonna like insta sign up for the streaming service?

• 59:58Speaker 04

  No. Absolutely not.

• 1:00:01Nilay Patel?

  Paul's clicking the, he's clicking the piracy mode button right now.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

  I have this feeling that some of these shows are gonna be bad enough to be like meme-able. Like, it's gonna be like a can't-miss cultural event of like, Apple trying to entertain you with television. And so that I'll be sad about, but I don't think I'm gonna pay, pay for it.

• 1:00:20Nilay Patel?

  I am very excited for this event. I'm very excited for this pivot. I'm very excited for Apple to like, confront what it means to put actual cultural products into the world. As opposed to just talking about like AirPods as being the culture. Right? Like, Apple believes that it's like a fashion and culture company. Like, the ecosystem of Apple watchers believes.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Apple loves musicians and artists while Spotify steals from them and sues them.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  I can't. Oh, that story is so annoying. I said we weren't gonna do tech policy on this, on this show. But if you want a hot 10-minute rant about Apple and Spotify, I can deliver.

• 1:00:58Speaker 04

  You know, it already worked.

• 1:01:00Nilay Patel?

  Break him up. That's all I'm saying.

• 1:01:04Nilay Patel?

  All right. I won't do it. Uh, maybe I'll do it after this. We're gonna take a break or come back.

• 1:01:12Speaker 06

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• 1:01:42Speaker 02

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• 1:02:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Paul Miller.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:29Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  Always.

• 1:02:31Nilay Patel?

  You bring the Vergecast home with a segment that you like to call.

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  I believe I have met this robot dog before in a past life.

• 1:02:39Nilay Patel?

  Deja dog.

• 1:02:41Speaker 04

  Have you guys seen this? It's this Tombot?

• 1:02:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  So, so there's that, that, that therapy seal, I think, kind of started all, all like, so this idea that there are people who, for whom it is therapeutic to have something like a animal to pet and to hug and to love, but they, for whatever reason, can't have a real animal, so they have a robot. And this is just, you know, moving along that, um, that spectrum. This is a robot that was designed by the, the Jim Henson Creature Shop. And that's possibly why this dog looks so familiar to me, but I cannot put my finger on it. Like.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  It kinda looks like, I mean, there is like a Muppet aspect. Like, maybe there's a little bit of Ralph?

• 1:03:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  But also, it's like, one of like, the Chris's in the Avengers, maybe? Or like, Matthew McConaughey? I can't, I can't decide.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  You can't decide if this robot looks like Matthew McConaughey, Chris Hemsworth, or a Muppet?

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, like, uh, uh, Dami mentions, um, who's the, what's the, from Neverending Story? The dragon?

• 1:04:01Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, I see that in there.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Falcor, yeah.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  But it's just, I don't know. It's, it's like, someone I know very well, from many blockbuster films, is, has put on a mask, and is now a robot dog that's therapeutic.

• 1:04:17Nilay Patel?

  Here's my question.

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Nilay Patel?

  Why isn't there, oh, there is? I was gonna say, why isn't there a Falcor Technologies? Cause that sounds like the name of an evil company in a movie.

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Nilay Patel?

  But did you know that Falcor is the innovative data platform that powers the Netflix UI?

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  I actually think I did know that.

• 1:04:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, I love this dog. Uh, this dog called, was Sensation, on the internet.

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  Also, surprisingly affordable.

• 1:04:44Nilay Patel?

  How much is the dog?

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  Less than, it's like, $300 for early backers, so it's probably a $600 dog. But like, Ibo is almost $3,000.

• 1:04:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:04:53Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'm buying this dog. But he's wanted a dog for a long time, and I think this Matthew McConaughey dog is the way to go.

• 1:05:01Nilay Patel?

  Very obviously. Alright, Dieter, tell me about Stadia.

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  Oh my god, they're-

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  What symptoms can it, what symptoms do it cause?

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  I think that was a Steven Sinovski joke on Twitter, by the way, so I just give full credit there. So, Google, uh, announced a streaming service with one game. Uh, they haven't announced all the games, um, for the price.

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  It has one game, but there is another game that will also come to it.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  Yes, so it is a video game streaming service that has the following advantages. It sits in Google's data centers where they stream the games to you, which means that they theoretically will have better latency than other gaming streaming services of the past. You can buy a Stadia controller for an undetermined price, and it actually connects via wifi directly instead of like through a console, which means that that will also theoretically help with latency. It will be streamable to Chrome browsers, Android tablets, Android phones. Unclear if it will stream to, say, the Chrome browser on an iPad, my hunch is no. Or a Chrome browser on like an iPhone, my hunch is no.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  Because it's basically just a streaming video and all this stuff happens in the cloud, you get a bunch of advantages. So one, if you're playing it on your phone, it's the same hit on your battery as though you were streaming a video. So you can play for longer. It saves states across devices.

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  Wait, can we just back up for one second?

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Oh god, I can keep going.

• 1:06:26Nilay Patel?

  No, I want you to keep going.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  I just want you to unpack that real quick, because I think the fundamentals of game streaming

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:33Nilay Patel?

  are much simpler than people think, right? So basically, all that's happening here is your controller talks to a game running in the cloud.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:42Nilay Patel?

  And they've managed to minimize latency between your controller and the cloud and the video streaming to your Chromecast or whatever.

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:49Nilay Patel?

  So that it looks like your controller is controlling something that's happening locally.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Directly.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  So they're just streaming a video to you.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  They're just streaming a video to you, and you're controlling the video with your controller.

• 1:06:57Nilay Patel?

  And you're controlling the video with your controller.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  It's like Bandersnatch, but faster.

• 1:07:01Nilay Patel?

  And no one's ever managed to pull this off before, I think is the key.

• 1:07:05Speaker 03

  Correct. And we would be filled with unending levels of skepticism and doubt if Google hadn't done this Project Stream Beta earlier in the year, where we were like, oh, actually, this is okay. But that doesn't mean that we are fully bought in and we think that latency won't be a problem. Because I'm not. I think that you'll be able to play a bunch of games that'll be super fun, but I think that if you're a twitchy first-person shooter kind of person, I think you're going to have slightly more problems with the latency here. You also need, like, they said, like, also, it plays great on terrible connections. Like, look at it on this 15-meg-down connection. It's like, have you been to America?

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  Where 15 meg down is like, pretty good in a lot of places. Most places, in fact. I think they're recommending 25 down. Anyway, there's the nerdy stuff of what are the actual gaming like, hardware that they're gonna put in their data centers, and I think Paul can tell us about that. And then there's a very, very, uh, complex discussion about its interaction with YouTube. You can save stuff directly to YouTube. You can like, click a button to get YouTube like, tutorials on the thing you're stuck on. And if you're watching a game on YouTube, they will just litter the YouTube, uh, webpage with play now buttons. There's just gonna be links everywhere, but instead of opening up a webpage, it's gonna open up a game in Google Service.

• 1:08:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, super into that. I think that's cool. Like, I will say my, uh, my big question here is, one, why did they name it Stadia?

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:08:40Nilay Patel?

  It's not great. And two, like, again, this works in theory. There have actually been some companies that have done it before. Your OnLives, or what have you. Didn't, uh, Sony bought Gamefly, or whatever? What was it called? Was that what it was called?

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so. And then Microsoft is gonna be doing this later this year, too. Like, they're, they're coming next. Anyway.

• 1:09:00Nilay Patel?

  And Microsoft one is called X-Cloud. They say they're gonna go big at E3, so it's coming. I, my, like, major question is like,

• 1:09:09Nilay Patel?

  the economics of how games work doesn't really match up with like, a subscription like this. So, like, a Halo game-

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  You don't know that it's a subscription. You don't know that. You could have to pay for each game individually. Like, we have no idea what the pricing model is. You could still be 60 bucks a game.

• 1:09:26Nilay Patel?

  I just fully assume it's gonna be a subscription. I don't know why, I just fully assume it's gonna be a subscription. How does, how does the gaming not line up with subscription?

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Well, if you wanna play Assassin's Creed 3, or 5, or whatever the latest one is. Assassin's Creed, pick your historical context. The latest one, I think, is Greece. Do you have to buy Assassin's Creed? Or, do you, does it part of a subscription? Or is it, like, Xbox gives you, uh, you know, in their thing, and even Sony does this a little bit, where you get like, a bunch of old games, and like, random indie games? But then you buy the AAA games. If there's a subscription here, I think that's more likely. Or it could just be that like, you gotta pay the subscription to get like your save states in the cloud. And just have access to the service and then you have to buy the games on top of that. Unclear which of those are, but like, people pay for PlayStation Pro and Xbox Live subscriptions all the time.

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  And Nintendo Switch subscriptions, like, that's just part of the industry. And the only question is, what, will, will that subscription for Stadia give you access to games or not?

• 1:10:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I just, for whatever reason, I think I just assumed, just the way that Google works and the way that they want to make it easier to play games. I don't think you can put up that subscription. I don't think you can have, you know, you're watching some streamer on YouTube, playing some AAA game. With like play now buttons and you hit it and Google's like, that'll be $60, please. Like, right? Like, that doesn't feel in line with that goal of, we're gonna blur the line between watching and playing. Cause they, they were talking about all kinds of crazy shit, like, you're watching your favorite streamer play a game. You push the button, you're in the queue, you're gonna play against them next. Like, that is awesome. Like, that's a cool idea. But, the idea that you're also gonna just like discover games this way and constantly be purchasing.

• 1:11:12Nilay Patel?

  Those are, they left a lot of questions wide open, basically.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  I mean, but that, that said, if, if, if people are using these, a, a, a significant fraction of the time they're playing games. Let's say like an average gamer probably plays video games at least like four hours a day. And so if someone's playing, you know, two or three hours on Stadia a day, that, and, and, and, you know, Google listed their specs. The one thing that they were weirdly detailed about was some specs, like they've got a custom GPU that is equal to the PS4 Pro and the, the Xbox One X.

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  Combined.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  Combined, 10 teraflops. They've got a custom x86 processor, which is wild, and 16 gigabytes RAM. But, in a sense, that almost doesn't matter because it's, I don't know, it's instanced, right? That machine isn't. Dedicated to you. It's hard to describe. So they had this phrase, we're giving the entire data center to the developer.

• 1:12:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  And I feel like Google's actual vision here is not that you will rent from a library of old games, right? Like, it's not, it's not the old timey Netflix model where a lot of movies exist and we will allow you to watch them easily. It's, it's a new timey model where we're want, we think that there are new types of experiences that would be possible. One thing they mentioned is, is something like an order of magnitude or definitely a lot more people in the same multiplayer game at the same time, because everything is running all in the same place. Like, the data center that is the multiplayer server

• 1:12:54Speaker 04

  is also the data center that is the computer that is going to blast the video of the game. And there's conceivably a lot of other, other possible video games that aren't really about running one game on a machine, but you're just looking at views on a game, if that makes sense. Like, like a typical multiplayer game, like Overwatch, right? You have, like, however many people are, I think it's five on five. It's been a while since I've played Overwatch. You have five on five people, right? So that's 10 people playing a game, right?

• 1:13:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  So that's 10 machines, 10 instances of Overwatch, and then there's a server, and that's running one instance of Overwatch. And that everybody's connected to that server for that one match. But in the stadium model, it's possible that you could just run one game and blast out 10 video streams of that game, 10 different perspectives of that game as just streaming video. You know what I mean? So it's almost irrelevant what these specs are, because it's not like all the experiences they are expecting to do are just dedicated playing Assassin's Creed by yourself.

• 1:14:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and obviously multiplayer is a much bigger deal than, right, like, That's what people are watching other people's stream on Twitch and on YouTube. It's rarely like, I'm gonna watch this full let's play of Assassin, like one person slowly grinding through Assassin's Creed. I like, I do it, but I like, that's where the action is, Paul. And so I think you're right, like, the specs are irrelevant because they have nothing to do with you. You're not buying those specs. Next year, they're gonna change.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  Yep, right.

• 1:14:31Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, they're gonna swap in some new cards, it's gonna be fine, like. I, I think they say that just because it's gaming and like, that's flashy and fun. Right, and like, the old consoles are at the end of their lifecycle and the new consoles are gonna come out, like. I, I think the bigger point here is exactly what you described, which is, can we re-architect games? Especially these like, huge multiplayer games like run in this world.

• 1:14:54Speaker 04

  And can we re-architect games so that it's a platform lock-in like the world has never seen before?

• 1:15:02Nilay Patel?

  So I will say that Tim Sweeney, who's the CEO of Epic, has just like, been arguing with fools in my mentions for like, three days. It's great. Tim, come on the Vergecast anytime you want, instead of just tweeting with and around me. But, you know, there's like a lot of competition in PC gaming stores, which is great to see.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Nilay Patel?

  Right, especially when, like I was saying, like, I can rant about the App Store versus Spotify all day and all night. The problem is there is Spotify has nowhere else to go. They wanna be on the iPhone, Apple sets the terms. The, you know, the Epic Store is like, what is, it's like 88 12 is the split for developers versus the store. Like, they're not even trying to make money. Steam is something different, like, they're all over the place. I think that's great, right? Like, you're seeing this bifurcation. On the console side, Microsoft does not seem to care about where Xbox Live goes anymore. It's on the Switch now with Cuphead, like, that's cool. And then Google's like, we're gonna have exclusives and you'll only be able to play for state. It's like, this is insane.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  I know, like, it's so weird because exclusives are simultaneous, like, my least and most favorite thing as someone who plays video games. Because exclusives mean that like, oh, like mom and dad are fighting and now half of the good things will not be available to me. But exclusives also mean that this is a really hot market that, that, you know, companies are, are willing to sink a lot of upfront investment in to make a lot of games and entertainment to try to grab market share.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Console exclusives are the presents you get when your parents are divorced. Because they're really trying to impress you.

• 1:16:44Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I'm gonna go with this. I'm gonna just take this a next logical step.

• 1:16:47Speaker 04

  Draw.

• 1:16:48Nilay Patel?

  This implies that Sony and Microsoft were once married?

• 1:16:55Speaker 04

  Google, Google is your prospective stepdad who's trying to win your love.

• 1:17:01Nilay Patel?

  I truly, as someone who is married to a divorce lawyer, I'm gonna tell you, none of this is correct. 0% of this is accurate.

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  My parents have made it a loving relationship for my entire life and I'm really grateful for it.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  One last thing, which we're gonna get into way more, once this thing gets released later this year, for whatever it costs, and you know, whatever games happen to appear on it besides Doom Eternal, is, I'm just gonna quietly mention that here is a titan of industry, the company that like, has a dominant share in online video, YouTube, slightly threatened by an upstart competitor that got bought by another giant Twitch, using its market dominance in video to push a new service in a slightly different domain.

• 1:17:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that's out there. I was arguing with Russell Brandham about this yesterday, or whatever day Stadia came out.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Nilay Patel?

  You're making the antitrust argument, right? Like, they're a giant, they're gonna leverage YouTube to kill Sony.

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Nilay Patel?

  Break him up. No.

• 1:18:12Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm actually, I'm less sympathetic to it in this case. Like, their competitors are Microsoft and Sony. A little bit of Nintendo, right? That is fundamentally already a duopoly, right? In console games. In PC games, it's basically a monopoly, right? There's like, these additional stores, but it's all running on Microsoft's.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  Oh, John Porter, our reporter from the UK, pointed out, you know, like, one piece, one way you could use this technology is, you know, run a desktop, and that if this thing works, you know, Stadia runs on Linux, and so Linux gaming will finally become a thing, and that means that this is the year of the Linux desktop.

• 1:18:49Speaker 04

  This right. Okay.

• 1:18:50Nilay Patel?

  So I think that right like

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  For for Linux gaming. It really is.

• 1:18:54Nilay Patel?

  So you you pull that all the way out there and like suddenly we're like Linux desktop is gonna like, they've gotta do it. I don't I don't think our antitrust conversation in tech. I think it is great to say Facebook is buying Instagram, which is a legitimate competitor. We should prevent that because we don't want them to like monopolize upstart competition. But Google like spending a shitload of money next to YouTube to say people on YouTube are already doing this thing and now we're just gonna let them do it here. But it just seems fine to me because it's not like, I don't think they're gonna kill Sony and Microsoft. I really don't like.

• 1:19:31Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft is gonna release a competitive service to this in a matter of months.

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:19:36Nilay Patel?

  Right. And it's gonna be pretty good, probably, because Microsoft is good at video games. They're good at cloud stuff. Google's really good at cloud stuff, extremely medium at video games.

• 1:19:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. Like, there's like, I, I don't know. I'm just like,

• 1:19:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not saying like,

• 1:19:51Nilay Patel?

  This is the one where like the to Paul's point, the giant tries something and just like falls off the cliff. You know, like Stadia is the thing that leads Larry Page to like quit Google. Like Sergey Brin is like, you know, he's sitting at the edge of a trash dump, holding a Stadia controller, being like, this could have worked like, you never know.

• 1:20:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I'll be very sad in five years if I'm complaining that like, uh, my whole gaming library is stuck in Stadia. And I'm trying to leave Stadia because they're spying on my children, but I can't leave Stadia because they have my, you know, like, that would be annoying. But if all they do is just add more competition and flexibility and like more options to an already, like, I think that's one thing that's just really wonderful about gaming is there are so many choices you can play in so many different ways, especially on the PC, especially if you run Linux.

• 1:20:46Speaker 04

  Your graphics card has good Vulkan support.

• 1:20:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Paul, if this is the thing that makes like Linux on a desktop like super happen, I will be so happy for you. I will come out there. We're gonna do. We're gonna make some Linux PCs together.

• 1:21:03Speaker 03

  I will say, this is the best thing that's ever happened to Android games ever. Cause nothing like like gaming on Android relative to iOS has always been kinda eh despite the fact that there's been many attempts to make Android gaming phones. Um, I think this is the best shot at making a really good Android gaming experience that we've seen in a long time.

• 1:21:21Nilay Patel?

  But it's just gonna stream the video.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Nilay Patel?

  But you you need a connection to do that.

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Speaker 04

  5G, bro.

• 1:21:29Nilay Patel?

  If this stuff works on like GoGo Wi-Fi.

• 1:21:32Speaker 04

  5G at the edge.

• 1:21:33Nilay Patel?

  Actually, the one thing Google did not talk about was 5G and this is like the prototypical 5G example. Right? Everyone talks about VR blah blah because of latency, but this thing that they're describing, a zero latency, high bandwidth application is a this is 5G. This is 5G stuff.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  And by the way, 7,500 data centers or whatever with high-end Linux PCs.

• 1:21:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:21:58Speaker 04

  And custom GPUs. That is not cheap. And so Google either is going to need to charge a lot of money for a subscription, or it's going to need to charge per game and also charge money as I don't know. Or this is a lost leader for something else that's evil and nefarious or just a typical Google. I don't know. Somehow organizing the world's information because isn't that what they're always trying to do? You know what? Secretly scan your books.

• 1:22:25Speaker 03

  If they bundle Google Reader with Stadia, I'm in.

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  You you could run a local instance of Google Reader and it's doing the RSS scraping.

• 1:22:35Nilay Patel?

  In your local in your Linux desktop in the cloud.

• 1:22:38Speaker 04

  RSS at the edge.

• 1:22:39Nilay Patel?

  Well, so here's the thing. Um, uh, Google Cloud is like not as much of a competitor to Azure or AWS is like Google wants it to be. This is a way for them to just instantly drop a massive, successful application on Google Cloud. They just do it.

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:22:56Nilay Patel?

  Um, and they, and then they can go out to all these other customers. So of course it's Google. Like, do you know how they're paying for those 7500 data centers at first? Uh, the, the money they make on Google search, which is also how they pay for Android. Like, it's fine, but I, at some point, this probably has to look like a business for them. Otherwise, you know, they're a public company. They can't just be like, we made Stadia because we're a bunch of nerds. We love it. We're just gonna lose money on it forever.

• 1:23:20Speaker 04

  Well, that's just, I, I feel like in the back of their mind is there this thing where it's like, well, even if the gaming thing doesn't work out, we need to deploy all this edge computing hardware anyways.

• 1:23:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because 5G is coming. I think we've, we've determined this is a giant conspiracy to own the 5G, 5G cloud. Is that true? I don't know. That's definitely not true.

• 1:23:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. I'm not going to. AK AI.

• 1:23:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, here, I'll tell you this. Yeah, you know, uh, Google and Sony are a partner in a lot of things. Sony is not good at software, just a fact.

• 1:23:50Speaker 04

  I can, I can, I could tell you all about that from my experience today, if you'd like, but yeah.

• 1:23:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:55Speaker 04

  Not great.

• 1:23:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like, but Sony TVs run Android TV. Sony, you know, makes some phones every now and again, just for the sake of doing it. There's a world in which the, you know, PS5, which has like Stadia integration. I mean, kind of cool.

• 1:24:07Speaker 04

  PS5 is just a Chromecast.

• 1:24:09Nilay Patel?

  That'd be amazing. They're like, we didn't, we didn't get this right. Uh, it's a Chromecast.

• 1:24:16Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I mean, I'd be into that. I mean, look, uh, I was saying last week I had, I set up PS4 Remote Play and I bought a controller and I didn't use it. Well, this week I have used it. Uh, and it's pretty fun. It's pretty cool to just be able to play like PS4 games on my phone with a, like a Steel Series controller. It's not perfect, but it works just fine on wifi.

• 1:24:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:38Nilay Patel?

  Um, there is an enormous amount of lag and because it's like this weird, it talks to the PlayStation Network stuff and then it connects directly to the PS4 and the PS4 streams. So just like making it connect is a lot of Sony software, just like having to do stuff. Like steam whistles are going off, like, you know, like the factory foreman's like, get that connection. Like 25 minutes later, you're playing a game. It's like not smooth. But it's pretty cool, man. And so like if Google can do this faster, I'd be super into that. All right, Paul, one last thing, Oculus Rift S.

• 1:25:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, this was a nice little surprise. I mean, maybe, maybe everybody knew this was coming. I didn't know this was coming. Oculus is upping the resolution. This matches, it's basically Oculus took their upcoming standalone Quest headset, right? Which has higher resolution screen and inside out tracking. So you can have hand controllers without having to put up those little, little cameras on your desk. And then you can never stand far enough away from the little cameras because you have a small apartment. And so VR turned out to be a $2,000 investment

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  down the, down the drain. So you got inside out tracking and so like modified controllers to work with inside out tracking and higher resolution display. And so it's basically a Quest if you have a PC and that you, the same PC specs, they like lowered the refresh rate on the screen. So that even though you're driving higher resolution display, you can use the exact same minimum spec that worked with the original Oculus Rift to power the new headset. All the games work. Yeah, and it's $400 and they're phasing out the, the old original Oculus Rift. But they're, they're, they wanted to be pretty clear that this is their evolutionary

• 1:26:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Speaker 04

  move for the Rift. This is not their revolutionary, I don't know, whatever, whatever is actually revolutionary in their eyes, but this isn't it.

• 1:26:44Nilay Patel?

  There's a wave of these like higher res headsets coming out, right? An HP one this week?

• 1:26:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's an HP one. I mean, this one is actually built by Lenovo and I think Lenovo's done some Windows mixed reality stuff. And, and so Oculus partnered with Lenovo on this one. And then I think there's some other, I think there's some Vive stuff coming out. I'm, I'm not sure. I haven't paid too much attention, but I was not expecting a Rift S.

• 1:27:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's cool. Dieter, you want to make your disclosure? Just so you My wife, my wife works for Oculus. We have to do it. Someone will call us out if we don't do it.

• 1:27:22Speaker 04

  Can I tell you guys my favorite thing from GDC? Unless you want to talk more Oculus.

• 1:27:26Nilay Patel?

  No, favorite thing from GDC, we should wrap this up.

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  Okay. A few months ago, Nvidia shows up with PhysX 4.0. It's so exciting. It's so much more accurate. It's simulation. It's gonna be so much better physics. So PhysX is the physics engine in Unreal and Unity. Obviously, the two most popular game engines. So come to GDC and Unity gets on stage and they're like, "We're making our own physics engine called Unity Physics, and also we're partnering with Havik to use their physics engine too." And then Epic gets on stage and says, "Unreal is gonna have its own new physics engine called Chaos."

• 1:28:08Speaker 04

  And so neither engine has announced official support for PhysX 4.0. So I think there's a big beef brewing in the physics of game engine space. The reason it's really exciting to me is because multiplayer physics is a really rare thing still in video games. It's a kind of a next gen thing.

• 1:28:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 04

  And to do it, you need deterministic physics, which is one of the features of Unity Physics.

• 1:28:39Speaker 04

  Because floating point numbers are weird on different hardware. There's a lot of stuff to it. But I'm excited that, I'm hoping that that's one reason why these multiplayer experiences that are being pushed by Epic and Unity are gonna have more physics in them, and that's why they needed their own physics engine. I could be totally off on that, but that's my hope.

• 1:29:02Nilay Patel?

  It's just like the race. Like the cool thing to do is say you have a physics engine now? Like the cool thing last year is big AI.

• 1:29:08Speaker 04

  I feel, it feels like a beef. I feel like, what it feels like is that Nvidia's been puttering along with PhysX and either PhysX 4.0 went in a different direction than these engines wanted, or is, like, has a wrong sort of architecture or something that didn't match the specs that they have.

• 1:29:28Nilay Patel?

  I like it.

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  And so.

• 1:29:30Nilay Patel?

  I like a beef.

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Nilay Patel?

  Beef, the original competition. The theme of the Vergecast, is there enough competition?

• 1:29:39Nilay Patel?

  That's another app we should make. Like, is there enough competition? And we just like label markets. Put the iPad mini all by itself in the corner. Yeah. All right, we gotta wrap up. We've gone way over time. Apple's having that event on Monday. That's gonna be a thing. We're gonna get into it. There's gonna be all kinds of coverage all over The Verge. Dieter and Nick are gonna be there. It's gonna be super fun. We'll follow up. I'm actually gonna be at the Winter Music Conference in Miami Beach at the end of next week. I'm giving out an award with Danny Deal, Best DJ Technology. It's gonna be super fun. We'll do some demos on stage. So I'll be, I'm gonna try to find a way to be back on the show, but there's a chance I won't be. But there's streaming stuff I wanna talk about. So I'm gonna try to figure it out. You can also listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka, which I assure you next week will be very interesting

• 1:30:22Nilay Patel?

  because we all have the stuff. Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Pivot with Kara and Scott Callaway. And all three seasons of Why'd You Push That Button are out in the world, and I will tell you, we're talking about that next season right now. So it's gonna be very exciting. Listen to those. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Dieter's at Backlon. Paul's at FuturePaul. We do love to hear from you. Pull over in your car. Send that tweet right now. And give us five stars wherever we can. And go to voxmedia.com/podsurvey and just tell the people you love The Vergecast. Just do that for me. It'll be, it'll be great. Everyone will love you for it. I'll love you for it. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Promo code.

• 1:31:17Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:31:38Speaker 05

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic has now passed human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that- Automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 1:32:03Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  This series is presented by EY. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, agentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com/af.