Weird laptops of Computex, new Intel and AMD chips, and a WWDC preview

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller discuss all the new laptops revealed at Computex 2019, the new processor chips from Intel and AMD, what's to come at Apple's WWDC next week, and more updates on the T-Mobile and Sprint merger. Stories discussed this week: Laptops are getting weird and wonderfulTwin River is Intel’s attempt to build a dual-screen laptop out of fabricDid Intel just nail the dual-screen gaming laptop? Asus put two 4K screens on its extravagant ZenBook Pro Duo laptop Intel, AMD, and ARM each see our computing future differentlyAMD’s flagship Ryzen 9 3900X has all the performance at half the price of IntelIntel’s 10th Gen, 10nm Ice Lake CPUs: everything you need to knowApple WWDC 2019: Mac Pro, iOS 13, Marzipan, and what else to expectApple should make more iPad apps for the MacApple refreshes the iPod touch with the iPhone 7’s processorApple’s latest defense of the App Store shows how hard it is to compete with AppleApple’s former app approval chief says he’s ‘really worried’ about company’s anticompetitive behaviorExperts are furious over the FCC’s rosy picture of broadband accessT-Mobile and Sprint might have to create a new carrier to get their merger approvedSprint’s 5G network is here, and it’s completely different from what Verizon and AT&T are doing5G has arrived in the UK, and it’s fast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Vergecast, we talk about all the new laptops at Computex, new chips from Intel and AMD, big WWDC preview, and we figure out what's going on with T-Mobile and Sprint. This on The Vergecast.

• 0:11Speaker 01

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• 1:22Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge Podcast Armada. I am Neelai Patel, your friend. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  We need more synonyms for the boat thing. What if we're part of a flotilla this week?

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, flotilla is good. That sort of flotilla just suggests to me like a bunch of people having a lake party. I'm not sure that's what a flotilla is. But you know, like the sort of like Lake Michigan flotilla just sounds like all the people. I don't know.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, did that in Lake Minnetaka.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller is here.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Hello. I love boats also.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  For being what is just sort of uncontroversially a boat themed podcast, we never actually talk about boats.

• 2:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's like lots of boat tech that we could be getting into.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  So much. One time I made a video about a truck that turned into a boat.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13Speaker 04

  I remember it well.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  A real high point of the early verge. It was from like a military defense contractor. And so they had an event in DC and there's a bunch of like very serious sort of military journalists in there like, how fast can it go? How many humanitarian missions? Can it support? And I was like, can you make it turn into a boat now?

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  It's like the verge has arrived. There's a lot going on this week. A lot of actual tech news, not just stories of boats from the past. Intel did a bunch of stuff. AMD did a bunch of stuff. There's a million wacky laptops to talk about, which I am super into. WWDC is next week. Dieter tweeted what I think should be his motto, which is a spicy take, but I believe it. About Mars Japan and running iPad apps. There's 5G news floating around in the world, the airwaves. Between the frequencies of 24 and 39 megahertz now vibrating with the power of 5G in cities around America and in Europe.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  There's just a lot going on. We're going to WWDC for a while because there's so much to preview, but let's start with laptops because laptops are legitimately, the design of laptops is having a moment. We got an exclusive on a wild and wacky Intel. I mean, Paul Keyboard in the Front Club, I would say had its best day ever this week with this Intel thing.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  It rolled into Computex like a boss.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  And I'm going to bring, I'm going to bring back that phrase because I think it's really apropos of Keyboard in the Front Club right now.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  There are so many keyboard in the front club devices. So this week, this past week was Computex. This is why all this PC news is happening. And Asus had a thing, the ZenBook Pro Duo or keyboards in the front. And then they just went ham with screens. So between the keyboard and the main display is just another display. Think of it like the touch bar, only gigantic and also useful.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is the laptop I want.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  They also made the touchpad screen as well. It's just a big, massive, let's just put an LCD on every possible surface that we can. And I love it.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  The touchpad is also a screen?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  It turns into a calculator. Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Oh, it's like that, like that sort of screen.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Like a numpad. Yeah, yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Okay, okay. It's a, it's a numpad. Yeah. So because the touchpad's on the right. This is, I think this is my ideal form factor. My, my worry is that it's going to be a little too heavy. I wouldn't want like the, the beefy 15 inch version, but apparently they're going to come out with a slightly lighter weight 14 inch version. I'm sure it's still going to be a little hot and a little heavy, but

• 4:52Speaker 03

  You think?

• 4:53Speaker 04

  It seems so wonderful.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  And then Intel took that same idea, put a big ass screen on the deck of your laptop between the keyboard and the screen. But they, in their honeycomb glacier concept that Sean got to look at, you could just lift the whole thing up. Like the, the, the screen is one hinge and then the actual screen is another hinge. And so like, I can't describe it. You just have to go look at the GIF. Like my most retweeted tweet of the week was just the word what? Next to a picture of this thing.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Because it's amazing.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  So my favorite part about this is one, it's, it's Intel, which doesn't make computers of their own.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  And so in, you watch Sean's video, Sean's video is great. But at some point, he has to like point out that Intel does not actually make computers and doesn't have a supply chain. And he's like, so this middle screen is sourced from the automotive world, which is why it's ugly. And you look at it, you're like, oh, that's the screen out of like a Camry.

• 5:49Nilay Patel?

  It's got huge bezels, a little milky looking. But I, it's great. First of all, the notion that a laptop screen will raise up to be at your eye level, so you don't have to squint down at it is great.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  Second, I do just like the idea of having another giant screen.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  What have we learned from the past decade of technology? People like more and bigger screens.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  And I want to point out, you look at this and it looks like the most impractical thing ever. But take this and take a 15 inch laptop, right? And then put them on two airplane trays side by side and see which one is more usable. I would argue Honeycomb Glacier is more usable in an airplane tray, as ridiculous as that sounds.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Why?

• 6:35Nilay Patel?

  It sounds ridiculous because A, it's called Honeycomb Glacier.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  Two, I just, I love the idea of sitting down airplane, opening your laptop and then being like, whoop.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Think about, think the, the space you have to work with in an airplane. You've got the tray in front of you, right? That's what's going to hold your laptop. Then there's a back wall, which is, is, is the seat in front of you. And that typically results in sort of a concave situation. So if the, your screen is all the way up against the wall, your screen also needs to be configured concave, but if the screen is pulled forward and then jackknifes up some ridiculous double hinge configuration and plus the keyboard's all the way in the front, I think it's going to work.

• 7:22Nilay Patel?

  Paul, that, what you just said, sounds to me like, like the keynote presentation of the keyboard in the front club. Like everyone's in the ballroom and you're like, I'm now, I'll now present to you in controversial proof. The keyboard should be in the front. You're like, you got slides.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Everybody's snapping.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Wait, hang on, is the keyboard in the front club like an academic conference? Wouldn't that be like a plenary session?

• 7:48Nilay Patel?

  You begin delegates to your seats.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  I'm not authorized to explain the actual meeting format.

• 7:58Nilay Patel?

  I like the idea that it, it's a club that meets with ever more convincing, yet elaborate justifications for the keyboard in the front.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Here's my question about all of these. So I, Paul, I support you and your club and the charter that you've laid out for us, the public. Isn't the whole point of having the keyboard tucked back so you have a palm rest?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  This is the great myth. Have you ever used what's known as an external keyboard? You just plug it into your computer with USB, right? You have one of those? Does it have a palm rest?

• 8:32Nilay Patel?

  I've never done that on my lap. Having a keyboard with a palm rest on your lap is kind of the worst. And I know this because I have used a keyboard on my lap, the iPad keyboard, and it's kind of the worst.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  Well, in one of the founding documents of the Keyboard in the Front Club, where I explained why the Zephyrus was a good idea, I pointed out that especially with a gaming laptop, laptop is a misnomer. What you have is a portable computer that you will only usefully use on a desk, or sometimes maybe in an airplane, but never on the lap because it's, it's already too hot to work on your lap and heavy.

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  What you need, Paul, is to put together like one of those like radical group statements from the 70s, like the Port Huron Statement. You know what I mean? And you constantly make reference to it, like when we were doing the Port Huron Statement. But you need a better name for it.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Is that like the cypher punk manifesto?

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Like you're already kind of like a big Lebasky character in my personal universe. You should have some sort of, some sort of weird radical document that you've made at a conference.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  I will gladly create this radical document for you. I will put it, a week from now, if you go to my personal website slash manifesto.txt, there will be a manifesto there.

• 9:50Nilay Patel?

  Wow. But it has to be keyboards in the front.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  I'm excited for Dell's XPS 13 two-in-one. It's basically the nice things about the last XPS 13, but translated to a two-in-one where you can fold the screen around. It has that tiny little itty-bitty webcam, which I think is hilarious. But like the big news, and this will like get us into chips, is that Intel's trying to basically do ultrabooks again. And ultrabooks, you know, like MacBook Air came out, everyone's like, what do we do? Intel said, well, meet these specs and then we'll let you call your thing an ultrabook. And then your laptop will, you know, be good. And that led to a bunch of really good laptops. So they want to do that again, but this time they want the focus to be on battery life. And, you know, a few other like, you know, minimum viable things that you need for a

• 10:42Speaker 03

  good laptop these days. But it's a little bit fuzzier and they have decided, at least initially, that they're not going to create a brand that they're going to like use to like bequeath the, you know, honor of being an ultrabook on these new laptops. So it's called Project Athena. Seems like a good idea. Seems like, oh yeah, maybe, maybe this next generation of Intel chips is going to be okay. And we're going to get a bunch of really good laptops with a really good battery life. And I'll go looking for this thing, but maybe Intel chips aren't that good because they, they don't want to create a new brand that they're going to use to, to push to the next generation of laptops. It's very confusing.

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  Do they have the market power to do this?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Yes. What laptop have you even ever considered buying in the past three years that doesn't have an Intel chip in it? Like there are some AMD stuff and we're going to get into that in a minute, but like realistically, the mass market for laptops is still Intel. Whether they deserve it or not is a different question.

• 11:37Nilay Patel?

  You're absolutely right. But when they did ultrabooks, when they did Cellar on, no, Centrino, remember Centrino?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  When Intel just decided that its brand of wifi was called Centrino and it, it just meant that they'd packaged a wifi chip with the processor. So they, they used to have this like massive leverage over the like Windows laptop space where in order to get Intel parts, they could just say to you, you have to use this branding, you have to have these garbage stickers.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  There was some money that would flow back and that was because they had the best stuff.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  And so ultrabook, they could just say, here are the specs. Intel and Microsoft are powerful enough to basically like dictate the specs of every netbook that was ever made.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  Like to the point where I had a macro for when a new random EPC would come out and it would just like spit out the specs of the netbook.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was four gigs of RAM. What was the processor?

• 12:34Nilay Patel?

  It was a 1.6 core, something, baby core.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:38Nilay Patel?

  Intel baby core processor. But, you know, it was like that, Adam, I'm sorry, Adam N10. Remember all those?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 12:46Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, Intel used to be able to dictate that. Microsoft used to be able to dictate that. Those days seemed to have just sort of like gone by. And so now, even if Intel wanted to say, this is Ultrabook 2. This is what it means to be an Ultrabook 2. Here are the specs you have to use. I'm just not 100% sure the Dells and HPs of the world would go along. Certainly, Microsoft, which makes Surface products, wouldn't go along. They're just gonna do whatever they want. They have all the leverage they need. It just seems like they've lost that moment.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think you're probably right.

• 13:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're failing.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  They did give Sean a statement saying that we do plan, we do, we, we do have plans to help consumers identify these laptops. We're just not, like, it'll be next year or the year after, which, great.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  My theory is that this is Intel's last stand, or their last hurrah. This is their last good times. Because ARM was at Computex with Lenovo showing a prototype of an ARM laptop, right? And Apple's supposedly working on ARM laptops and stuff like that. But ARM is not quite as fast as Intel's upcoming crop of new 10-nanometer laptop chips that are targeted, this, exactly this kind of device, this lower power, like the MacBook style, and then maybe eventually slightly more powerful laptops. And then AMD is super focused on desktop and server.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  So Intel, while they are going to, I think, totally gonna be losing in the low end and in the desktop and server very soon, I think they're the only game in town for this, basically for the Ultrabook. Anything that is a relatively performant Ultrabook or a very performant Ultrabook, basically. That window is Intel's sweet spot, and I think, and that's the, as far as I know, those are the only 10-nanometer chips Intel is currently working on or currently producing, and might be the only 10-nanometer chips Intel ever makes.

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, because they're still working on seven.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  They've got to work on seven. AMD is already on seven. ARM is already on seven. So Intel needs to skate toward the puck is going. The only 10 nanometer chips they've managed to build are these ones specifically for very portable laptops. And so I feel like those are going to be good. I just think it's a very small sliver of the market that Intel will have.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's a very small sliver of like a product line, but it's a huge sliver of the market.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is sort of the most, the most important laptop.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Segment is the one Intel will be making 10 nanometer chips for.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  So they'll probably do, I mean, they're going to sell a lot of chips there.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  But I think the question is, will ARM chips ramp up and take that over? Will AMD chips continue to ramp and provide way more power at lower thermals? Cause now they're seven nanometer. We should actually talk about the AMD chips. You want to walk us through those?

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. So AMD announced new Ryzen chips and this is the third generation of Ryzen. And I mean, we have AMD's word to go on right now, right? I mean, basically the premise is tons of cores, cores for everybody, pretty good clock speed, amazing power draw and really good price. So what you're looking at is a high end chip from AMD is about half the power draw of the high end chip from Intel and about half the price. That's what we're looking at, right? That is the current situation. And so again, you know, these are AMD's words. There could be problems. I forget which Ryzen rollout was like kind of buggy, you know?

• 16:14Speaker 04

  So it's not like, it's not one, but according to what AMD is saying that they have on offer. And according to what we know about Intel's roadmap, AMD is going to destroy Intel in the like enthusiast desktop space and probably pretty soon in the server space.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  So I want to believe that, but it's also like, how well is AMD doing right now? And hasn't it been a story for quite a while that like, yeah, AMD is making something better, but there's a couple of things that holds back. So people are just going to default to Intel again. Like this time around, I'm like, oh yeah, they got it. It's like, but I've been wrong about that so many times before.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  I felt exactly the same. So I watched a lot of YouTube and everybody says the same, the exact same thing. And again, you know, and maybe it's just like people like hoping, you know, hoping that Intel will be taken down a notch, you know?

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  You know, but people are saying, even if Intel goes back to its old dirty tricks of bribing companies to use their chips instead of AMD chips.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Like even if AMD or Intel goes back to full anti-competitive, like in the server space, you know, if the power consumption is literally half or something like it, you couldn't even be paid to take Intel chips.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  Because, because you're not, you're not going to save money in the long term.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  So maybe what AMD needs to do is just launch like a massive marketing campaign and they could like, they could save some money if they went with like a, like if they went Game of Thrones, like that, that show is over, right?

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  They just copy an old marketing campaign?

• 17:43Speaker 03

  No, they could go with Game of Thrones. They put that next to their, their new chips and, uh, you know, like they'd be like, it's the king of chips, you know, just like the king of Westeros, you know, so it'd be like AMD Ryzen brand.

• 17:55Nilay Patel?

  I see what you did.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  I feel like you're doing a bit and I'm, I am not following the bit.

• 17:59Nilay Patel?

  No, I followed it and I reject the conclusion.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  This is how I tweet the puns, by the way. I workshop them.

• 18:07Nilay Patel?

  You workshop them here. No, it's good. If you didn't get it, what Dieter made was a Ryzen brand pun, which was good. It was good. Uh, I'm going to say my suggestion, which is AMD just takes old, successful advertising, licenses it and then just glues a frame of a Ryzen chip at the end is superior. So they're like, where's the beef? And it's just like a picture of a Ryzen chip.

• 18:35Nilay Patel?

  That would be, I think, very successful.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. The, uh, the old McDonald's McDLT song, but at the end it's a Ryzen ship.

• 18:44Nilay Patel?

  It's the iPod dancers, but at the end it's a Ryzen ship.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  I did want to say, a, a kind of a side note, but, uh, one other thing that's coming along with Ryzen Generation 3 is PCIe 4, which is twice as fast as PCIe 3, uh, which we've been on for a long time. And also apparently PCIe 5 is like right around the corner.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  You know, whatever. Um, but I mean, double the bandwidth between your CPU and your graphics card, that's going to be huge. Also, there's like some bonkers products at Computex where it's like a bunch of, uh, PCIe SSDs in like RAID array. And it's like 10 gigabytes per second, like.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Here's my big picture of the stuff at Computex. Do you all remember what happened when Intel's Haswell chip came out? And all of a sudden battery life on like a MacBook Air literally doubled overnight. It's just like all of a sudden battery life was great.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Like when that one chip came out. I feel like we are due for another one of those big step change moments for laptops. And I don't think anything either from AMD or Intel is that moment. Um, or even the, like these prototypes of ARM chips. But you can see how all like, you know, people make an ARM and AMD and Intel all know that they need to have another one of those moments. And they're pushing super hard to get there. And like they, their strategy for getting there seems pretty set. And so this stuff is like the best of the like end of the last line, the end of one generation. And I'm, I am waiting for the best of like the new step change generation. That's how I feel about this.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  Here's my, my fear about that. Cause the step change was now the computer lasts for 14 hours, right?

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and that was as well. Like you, you went from like five to six hours on a, on a laptop to eight, 12, 14, somewhere in there, depending on. My worry is everyone's like 14 is enough. Now we can save all that power from the CPU and divert it to extra ridiculous screens. Which is the other thing that is happening in Computex. Right? They're like, no, 14 is enough. What if we add a second screen? And it's like, you can just see it. I would rather have a laptop with 24 hour battery life.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Really?

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, than a second screen. Oh, absolutely.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  I've been putting together my list of ideal laptop. I've got six hours of active use.

• 21:09Nilay Patel?

  Six hours of active use on a laptop.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  I'm not a very productive person. If I'm actually working for more than five hours in a day, I'm gonna have like a breakdown or probably could find a plug, you know?

• 21:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Um, yeah. My, my big thing is I want high performance. I like, you know, I'm like compiling code. Like, it turns out, like, storage speed and like raw CPU speed has become like really important to me. But I also don't want a hot laptop because it's the summer. So it's become, it's, I don't know.

• 21:42Nilay Patel?

  It's tough.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Well, I, I just, so like, something that was at Computex, Nvidia is going like directly after MacBook Pro customers with like a, a pro line of laptops from a bunch of different partners that have like Quadro 5000 or something like that. Like real GPUs in them. But I know they're all gonna be too hot. You know what I mean? They're all gonna be like Neil's laptop.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Well, laptop is great. The fan isn't on right now. All right? Just give it a couple of minutes, it'll turn on. I've had Chrome open for 10 minutes now. It'll, soon it will turn on. Here's my question. So you said that these Ryzen chips will, will probably stake a big claim to the enthusiast market.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  Obviously AMD makes Radeon graphics cards as well. Is there any downside to having AMD CPU and one of the Nvidia GPUs that everybody actually wants?

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Uh, well, that's seen, now, I don't know much about this, but AMD claims with the new Navi GPUs that are coming out, that they're also gonna be able to be competitive with Nvidia. And Nvidia kind of made like a misstep. As far as I know, there's not actually any mismatch between using an Intel CPU and an AMD CPU and then whatever GPU. Uh, as far as I know, that is not a, a, a problem that people have. But I do know that a lot of people are pretty dissatisfied with the current generation of Nvidia because they went hard on ray tracing. And that didn't result in a lot of actual day to day benefits for most people.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 04

  So A A A D has a window there like they have. It's way, way different than the Intel situation. But but they do have a bit of a window this generation. So Na'Vi could be competitive as well. And especially, you know, AMD has had the sweet spot of being like that. The budget enthusiast or whatever. I mean, if they're gonna make every single next gen console. You know, like they're clearly gonna get very good at doing a certain amount of graphics and CPU. You know, that are apparently competent for a next gen console. So why not be competent for, you know, your your next PC?

• 23:43Nilay Patel?

  I like the the budget enthusiast is a magazine because on a newsstand. You don't know if it's a magazine for enthusiasts on a budget or people who are just enthusiastic about budgets. It could really go either way when you're like looking at the grocery store. Is that why they got good? I mean, that that's kind of my other big step back question. Intel destroyed them for ages. They were not ultra competitive. Nvidia really raced ahead on graphics. Their only big win was that Apple just insists on using Radeon graphics cards. But is it because they made the game console so they were able to like? Get back into the game in such a big way?

• 24:22Speaker 04

  I mean, that sounds like a good narrative. There's also the fact that they're not. They they don't own the foundries, right? So they don't have to worry about like they get set of nanometers for free. They didn't have to work hard at seven nanometers. They get that for free. According to my YouTube.

• 24:38Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  I just love tech YouTube. I I would. I would. I'm sorry that I'm not naming names. I just like I watched a lot of them. I don't remember everybody's name. But one thing that they pointed out is infinity fabric. So AMD is it has this method of of taking multiple chips, basically. Like they don't have to hit a bullseye every time when they're making a chip. Because their infinity fabric technology allows them to take different parts of of of OK chips and put them together. And make a good chip. So, so they do have sort of a somewhat different fundamental technology than Intel is using.

• 25:14Nilay Patel?

  And that let them step ahead.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  That is one theory of what was helping out AMD, get the yields. Cause obviously Intel could make probably a five nanometer chip right now. I don't know, you know? It's, it's about how can you do it at volume, you know? Intel's struggling to make 14 nanometer at volume or at, you know, they're, they've had shortages and they're really struggling with 10 nanometer and they don't even have seven nanometer yet. So that's one theory why AMD was able to, to jump ahead.

• 25:41Nilay Patel?

  So just to pull that back for people.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  It's called infinity fabric.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  It's called infinity fabric. Paul definitely just made that up, first of all.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  Second of all, no, this is like an interesting, we are always talking about these companies being modular or integrated, right?

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:59Nilay Patel?

  AMD used to be, own a fab. They used to make the chips themselves like Intel does now. They actually spun out their fab in a company called Global Foundries. So now AMD, like Apple, like every other ARM vendor goes to TSMC or Global Foundries to make its chips. So Foundries bear the costs of the, the process of going from 10 to seven or whatever, 14 to seven. And AMD just gets to make the designs and print them. Whereas Intel still owns the fab. They're still an integrated company. And for a long time, their process technology was far superior. So their designs could have been worse, but

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  they got to the next process technology faster. But now they're behind. So we actually, they're just behind. They literally cannot make the chips at the same process size, right?

• 26:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  Is that the summary? I think that's super, it's as nerdy as it gets, but it's super interesting that divesting themselves of what you think the core business is, is what. Potentially helped AMD step ahead.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, flies in the face of this concept of like a vertically, vertical integration being like a, a good advantage. I mean, the liability is if, let's say, someone else makes a really great chip and they have way more demand than you, you, you do, unless you have like it all in writing, like unless you have the, um, what should we call it, capacity at the foundry already bought, you know, you could get superseded by a competitor who's, has a better design than you, right? You don't have a God given right to make your chips anymore.

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  That's what, so it's a liability, but it seems to be totally working out.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  That's just really, I mean, we constantly are looking at vertical integration across every part of the industry. Once again, I remind you of AT&T's hit show Game of Thrones.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  But here it seems like breaking those apart was actually, was actually what enabled competition. Again, competition, the theme of the Vergecast, which I will drag us back to at every opportunity. All right, we're gonna take a break. During that break, Paul's gonna write the keyboard in the front club manifesto. Uh, that'd be great if our ads this week was quietly reading manifesto for unergonomic laptops. Uh, all right, we'll be back and we're gonna go through all, all through WWDC. We'll be right back.

• 28:19Speaker 05

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• 29:27Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we've returned. Next week, my friends, Dieter Bohn and I will be in San Jose, California, riveting San Jose, California for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. It seems, Dieter, as though this is going to be a massive show.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  I think it will be, although it's not going to be massive for Apple's biggest selling product, the most successful consumer product of all time, the iPhone.

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, actually, before we get into, can I just get one actual piece of Apple news out of the way?

• 29:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:57Nilay Patel?

  Apple updated the iPod Touch. It now has an iPhone 7 processor. That's what it is. I don't know what else to tell you.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  It's got a headphone jack. It's got a, you know, home button.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It really feels like the parts bin of whatever processor they were using, like, ran out.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, what's the next worst processor we have? And they just put that one in it.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  I will say that it is, it is the, you know, it's 200 bucks to, like, get into, you know, get yourself into the iOS ecosystem. That ain't, that ain't bad. And they're really thin and cute. I don't know. I'm a fan of the iPod Touch.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  I want one. I wish I didn't, but I want one.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:37Nilay Patel?

  All right. That was the news. That's the real news of the Apple news of this week. Now on to WWDC preview. So, go on. It's not going to be big for the, for iPhone, is what you're saying.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, they'll, we're expecting some updates to, like, some core apps. I guess Mail, they're actually, like, they realize people, there's a, they have a Mail client, and it should be, you know, good. Is, I think, the rumor that they're gonna, they're gonna do something about that.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  Who bought and killed Sparrow? I forgot about that until just now. Who killed Sparrow?

• 31:06Speaker 03

  I think it was, I think it was Google that killed Sparrow, right?

• 31:08Speaker 04

  I'm sorry. So, are you saying Apple hasn't bought and killed any good Mail clients yet?

• 31:13Speaker 03

  No, not, not recently, that I can think of. So, they're gonna, there's gonna be dark mode. That's what people will care about. Dark mode. But the bigger news to me is coming to Mac and iPad. And I don't know, where do you want to start?

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, let's just start with Marzipan. So, if you haven't been following the saga of Marzipan, give them the sort of TLDR version.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  So last year, Craig Federighi, software king of Apple, got on stage and put up a slide that said, are macOS and iOS merging? And then he put up a giant slide of like the classic Apple keynote, smoke flies around when the word hits the ground really hard. No, but they are going to find a way to let you put iPad apps on the Mac and they're going to use UI Kit instead of whatever, AppKit whatever before. And you're going to be able to check some boxes and do some stuff in your iOS app and then make it available on the Mac. And it was referred to as a multi-year project. And they're like, and the great thing is, some of the apps we've already shown you today are these great new

• 32:20Speaker 03

  kinds of apps. Apple won't call them Marspan apps, but whatever. And they're like, look at these great apps. And the great apps were voice memos, Apple News, Apple Home, and Stocks. And these apps are hot garbage. They're super, super bad. Like, they're terrible. They're terrible because they don't feel like they belong on a Mac. They feel like just iPad apps slapped on a Mac. And if you haven't noticed, the Mac doesn't have a touchscreen. And that's really useful for iPad apps. So the assumption is, this year, they're going to open up development of this, this style to like, actual third-party developers. And

• 33:03Speaker 03

  the other assumption is, they're going to make, creating these apps, you know, good. They're going to make these apps not suck, so that they feel like they belong on a Mac. And that's a huge deal, because the Mac is not in a cheerful, happy, fun place right now. Like, it's super not. The level of enthusiasm for their laptops has just fallen through the floor, because they have terrible keyboards. The pace of development of like, cool, neat Mac apps has slowed way down. And if not slowed down, there's just less excitement around them. The Mac App Store is not a success, so far as I can tell. And so like, they need to do something, because everyone's sort of wondering, does Apple really care about

• 33:45Speaker 03

  this platform anymore? And Apple's like, we care, we care, we care. And they've shown how much they care by shipping devices with useless keyboards. So.

• 33:54Nilay Patel?

  They added a touch bar? There's a little baby A series processor to control the touch bar and encrypt the hard drive. Now that's how much they care.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  What do you guys think went wrong with that Mac App Store? Because I feel like I remember when the Mac App Store first came out, a bunch of apps came to it pretty quickly and some more followed over like the next six months. And I bought a good number of apps in the Mac App Store. I kind of liked that like automatic update aspect, which was sort of novel at the time. But it has felt like it's tailed off and I've definitely seen that like developers sort of

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's beyond tailed off.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Avoid it for different reasons, but was there an inciting incident or just like, ah, this didn't pan out?

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Well, maybe we're going to need to get into this now, even though we're still in W W C mode, but to me, the thing that killed the Mac App Store was a bunch of developers that have been making it Mac apps for 20 plus years. We're like, okay, cool. We'll give this thing a shot and they're like, oh, this business model sucks. Apple takes, you know, 30%. What?

• 34:58Speaker 04

  And they allow us to have fewer features.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was doing just fine with my website and, you know, paying, you know, random storefront to like sell my stuff. And then I get a direct relationship with the customers. So I'm able to email them. I get the, I get the whole cut of the money. And that just seems nicer. So like the whole community of people that make stuff for the Mac have not had a gatekeeper that took a charge every time you wanted to pass through the gate before. And so they tried it and they went, well, this is stupid and they stopped it. They stopped using it. That's my hunch.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  So I have it, I have it. I can try to synthesize all of this.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna try and I can, I can bring it to Marzipan too. So we can carry on because we, we do need to talk about Apple's like, we're not anti-competitive webpage, but beyond that, the reason Apple's doing Marzipan and the reason the App Store didn't happen is because the web on a desktop computer is pretty good.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:59Nilay Patel?

  And so what you can do is you can just package your app as Electron and give it to people or just say, just use this website. And then for the big apps, the creative clouds of the world, you are absolutely not going to give Apple a cut. You're just not. The you, Adobe has a monopoly there. Right? Is, is like, you can listen to any small, like, the Pixelmator team is like, Adobe, like, pay attention to us. Like, you don't need to have Creative Cloud. There's these other options in the world. And Adobe just, just keeps rolling. Right?

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  So I, I think really what you're seeing, Paul, is the reason Apple's so tightly controlling the iOS App Store is because the second you open up this alternative distribution, people leave, they just leave. They will not use your walled garden. They don't want it.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  And so, there's like this fine balance between, we need the walled garden to exist because it keeps the majority of users safe. We can scan the app for malware. We can ban apps that are bad actors. All this stuff that is good about a semi-controlled platform. But if you don't keep the walls pretty high, people will just abandon you. And I think the walls on the Mac are just not very high. Right? You can just never use the Mac App Store and get a bunch of apps on your Mac.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  And I think the primary method that those apps are coming on to the Mac, which is ultimately even more devastating for the Mac than bad keyboards, or refusal to put a MagSafe port on it, or whatever they're gonna do.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Uh, is Electron. Right? Is the idea that you're gonna package up web apps. And Slack will never write a single line of Objective-C code, or whatever they need to do. They're just gonna like...

• 37:44Speaker 03

  But, to finish the thought, in order to get an app on the iPhone or the iPad, they have to write an app. That's the only way to do it, because getting a web app on those devices is like, not great. And we are gonna see some, hopefully, PWA stuff. I didn't put this in the preview, but we are gonna hopefully see some better ways to install web apps on iOS devices. But, the bottom line is, like Slack and, you know, whomever else, uh, I don't know, Delta, whoever, they have to make a iOS app to like, get on that platform and get in that popular store. And if Apple makes it easy for that app that you've already made to just show up on the Mac, then all of a sudden, they have convinced a bunch of people to like, you know, stop using Electron apps. And like, I think that

• 38:26Speaker 03

  is, like, Apple doesn't feel like it's maybe an existential threat, but if you're using a bunch of Electron apps, if you're using a bunch of web apps, all of a sudden, the barrier to bailing on Apple's bad hardware is much, much lower. Like...

• 38:41Speaker 03

  You, a lot of people I think would be shocked at how easily they could switch over to a Windows machine.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  Or even a Chromebook.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Or even a Chromebook and, and not feel huge hiccups.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  Like I, I love my 2015 Mac, which is just ridiculously bad in a number of ways. It is every day slightly more decrepit, but like it's a bunch of Chrome windows and it's a bunch of Electron apps. And I could walk away from this thing and I would be sad about Lightroom, but I use Lightroom on my desktop computer like every three days. And I could just like keep my iMac and it would be fine, right? And that, I think that's a bigger existent, like that is the WWDC problem. What are they going to show developers that convinces them that moving their iPad app to the Macintosh is a better strategy than moving their web app to Electron, to the Macintosh and every other platform?

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so this is why Apple needs Marzipan to be great. Uh, these apps have to be very, very good. And you know, the, the other open question is like, is this going to be the way to make most apps for the Mac? And that really scares a lot of the Mac faithful, uh, one, because the Marzipan apps are bad, but two, like there's a worry that it could dumb down the Mac. If all the Mac apps are just like ported over iPad apps, well, yeah. But to me, the second reason to put these iPad apps on the Mac and maybe eventually, you know, the iPhone versions if they really want to, isn't just to like bring some vibrancy back to the Mac.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  Mac users are more demanding of apps and, you know, programs, we used to call them programs, uh, than iPad users for whatever reason. And so those apps are going to have to professionalize to work well on the Mac. And all of the benefits that they're going to put into making their apps feel like they're like pro apps that belong on the Mac is going to redound back to the iPad automatically. And maybe the iPad will like manage to get out of the weird zone where like, nobody really trusts it to become their only computer unless they are like, you know, some kind of, you know, I don't know. I'm not going to say fanatic, but like true believer in iOS or if they like. Have very low demands and you know, they don't actually need it for like pro level work.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Uh, so there's a virtuous cycle that's possible here. I can understand why Apple's so enticed by it. But this very same week, Windows gave up on their virtuous cycle of, uh, you know, universal Windows apps. Like that, cause this just failed for different reasons.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  It failed because they don't have any other platforms to care about.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they don't have a phone. They don't, the idea of running universal Windows apps on the Xbox like, was a comedy from the start.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the, the thing with these Marsa Pan apps is that it, it takes a step towards this idea of like, write once, run anywhere, uh, which is what, one of the things that makes the web super great. Um, but it's like the things that made other, other apps like Java and whatever, like really bad. And made a whole bunch of apps work differently and feel, you know, weird and alien on your computer. And the Mac historically like, hasn't had that problem. But I don't think Apple's gonna claim that, write once and it'll run on all, all of our, you know, devices and it'll be fine. But it's a step in that direction. And I think there's like, there's reason to, to like feel trepidation about that.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I just, my mail client on my Mac is Mailplane, which is a very fancy web browser for Gmail.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  That's all, I mean, it, it is all it is. It is fundamentally just a really fancy web browser. And it runs one website. And if Apple can just somehow stop that from happening. Where the best thing about the Mac is that you can write a fancy wrapper for websites on it, then they're in a good place. I just think the gamble here is a gamble that's designed to sort of prop up the iPad at the end of the day. That's what you're describing. That we'll get better iPad apps out of the deal. Cause you'll be, you'll want to use your iOS app to make a Mac app. And then Mac people are so demanding that you'll make that better. And then the iPad will be great is like, that is one step of circular reasoning too far, right?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 42:46Nilay Patel?

  Fundamentally, the problem is I, they still haven't really nailed what is different about an iPad from a Mac, right? They, they haven't, they haven't given the thing enough power in terms of software, not in terms of hardware. They're, they're powerful in terms of hardware. They haven't given enough flexibility in terms of software. To completely overlap the Mac.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  So they won't cannibalize it in that direction. But the idea that suddenly, I don't know, Photoshop on the iPad is going to pick up a bunch of Mac stuff. That seems unlikely.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  You're probably right. But like, on the other hand, like some of the, one of the things that we're expecting for iPad is like some kind of new multitasking system. Some kind of windowing system. Even if it's like, you know, more, you know, better arbitrary split screens or one app can spawn more than one window. Oh my God, imagine that. They need to, they need to create all those features for the Mac. So there are things that have to happen in order to make an app feel good on the Mac that are automatically going to work on the iPad. The question is like, how far down the chain of like third-party developers will that trend go? But like, a bunch of the stuff that we're anticipating is going to happen on the iPad is only going to be made possible because of the changes they were forced to make to iOS app frameworks so that they could work on the Mac. That's really fascinating.

• 44:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and there's already, if you follow like Steve Tratton Smith on Twitter, he's posting screenshot after screenshot of him just sort of like hacking together iPad apps that work on a Mac.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:15Nilay Patel?

  And they're, they don't look terrible.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  They look fine, but it, it also just hearkens back to a, like a bygone era where you're like, I need a stopwatch. I will open a separate app on my computer to run. Like, there's just a lot, I, I think a lot of assumptions about that style of app development have gone away. They were, they're forced on you on iOS in many ways. Like, the best way to do something is to go get a different app and then switch between single tasking views and apps on your phone. That's the way to use iOS. The way I use my laptop is I have 5,000 tabs open in one browser. And then a couple of like pretty heavyweight programs, Dieter. Right, floating around.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  What's interesting is that none of these seem to solve the problem I feel in computers is the disjointness of like, you know, you're talking about these very siloed applications, you know, and it's very difficult in on a mobile device to interoperate between apps. And you have sort of a fake file system that you can kind of do stuff with to maybe pass files around. On a desktop, you're more used to using a file system, but on a web browser doesn't really know about a file system. So that gets weird. Like, you know, like if you have an image in your browser tab, image editor, you know, how are you really going

• 45:36Speaker 04

  to move that to another app? I feel like there's so much work to be done in improving computer use. And I feel like who is doing it?

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  Zero, zero people, right? I mean, what you're describing is like levels of abstraction, right? The iPhone is like totally abstracted away from you, right? Like where do where does software come from the iPhone? It comes from the Safari icon or the App Store icon? And that's it, right? And like, those are two slightly overlapping worlds, but like not really. But almost every other part of that computer is abstracted away from you. Then there's the Mac or Windows, where there's like very little abstraction. You can go look at the file system. If you want to like dive into the library folder of your computer and delete the kernel, like you can just do it. Like, is that appropriate for most users? It is not, but you can if you want to. And then sort of in the middle, I think

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  is the problem with the iPad is you expect to be able to use it any way you want, because it's expensive, especially iPad Pro, but it operates at that iPhone level of abstraction. And there has to be some middle ground. And I just something Apple's located that middle ground of abstraction. And I think that's what you're talking about. You can make, you can make a computer easier to use without making it fully abstracted away from you.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Well, there's like, there's the continuum that you're talking about, but there's also like, I feel like I'm short a hammer. Like I have one too few tools. What I'm using, both my laptop or an iPad. Or an iPhone, like I just like holding things like, I don't know.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Holding things?

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Okay, you know, on the iPhone, you can press the hold and then the all the icons start jiggling around and you can,

• 47:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  You could rearrange them, but you could also kind of gather them together under, you know, and as a group, you can basically hold multiple things on one touch and drag, you know? You can't do that on Android. I was rearranging my icons the other day and it was really frustrating. I felt like I was lacking a tool. Well, I'm saying in a similar sense, my workflows where I'm moving the same concept or file or idea from application to application. I'm lacking a tool that is some sort of framework to frame and contextualize what I'm doing.

• 47:53Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you can.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, Neil is having a thing. Yeah, if you, if you go into jiggle mode and you hold your finger down on an app to move it and you start to drag it a little bit, right? You start to drag it a little bit and then tap on a second icon. And then all of a sudden you're making a whole big group of icons. I swear to God, like every year, somebody writes the article. It's like, you never knew you could do this on your iPod or iPhone home screen. And I was like, oh my God, I had no idea.

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  I would say the other big difference between iOS and the Mac, this, I believe this very sincerely. The other big difference between iOS and the Mac is iOS is an absolute like nightmare of undiscrutable UI.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, the rumors are going to get rid of force touch, 3D touch, deep touch, whatever the touch where you push hard.

• 48:37Nilay Patel?

  Right click. It's called right click.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  But it's just everywhere. There's like all these ways to use an iPhone that are impossible to discover. Whereas at least with the Mac, like I'm going to click on this and see what happens.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Like shake to undo is apparently going away. They're going to give it like a real like button or gesture on the keyboard.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're going to have to ask Siri. This is how they're going to gamify Siri. It's going to be great.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  We should talk about the other big rumor, the thing that actually will probably steal the show, which is the Mac Pro.

• 49:07Nilay Patel?

  What? There's nothing to say.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  We know nothing.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  We know nothing. Here's what we know. They promised it a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. They said, we're gonna do it. And then they had a bunch of journalists out, take you, Portino, a year-ish ago, and said, it's not coming next year. And then now it's the year after that. So now is the time. They promised it would be inherently modular. That's a phrase they used. And they promised there'd be a display. And the rumor out with the display is that it's a 6K display. One more K than you thought you needed.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  Wait, are you saying there's a display like it's an iMac? Or there's a display also?

• 49:43Nilay Patel?

  A Pro, an external Pro display. Cause you know, they partnered with LG.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 49:47Nilay Patel?

  And that that display just had a number of problems. And I think Apple realized like they hate like working with others. Like their report card from kindergarten was like, did not play well with others today. And they just, they realized that.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  So they're like, we're just gonna make our own display, which makes sense. I mean, they, like the iMac display is great. There's no reason they can't just source more panels and then put them in a case. Like they, it's a thing they know how to do. But yeah, those are the rumors. The weird thing is, not a peep. I mean, screenshots of iOS 13 have leaked. That is unprecedented. There is not a word about this new Mac Pro. So we're all expecting it to happen. There have not been any sort of like, there's not been any expectation setting that, you know, kind of happens.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  What if they do the video intro, talk about it? It's not shipping until much later this year, cause they haven't actually started manufacturing it at scale. And they like, maybe have like one prototype under glass, similar to how they introduced the trash can Mac, you know, five years ago, or however long it was.

• 50:48Nilay Patel?

  And then the video is just Tim Cook walking around the halls of Intel being like, where are the chips?

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  Because I mean, they have to presumably they're going to stick with Intel chips, right?

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Presumably.

• 50:59Nilay Patel?

  And it's the whole first conversation is Intel's got to deliver chips that can run this thing. And then if it's inherently modular, what people want out of Apple is not to be stuck using Radeon graphics.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Hey, man. Hey, man. You got this fancy new Ryzen out July 7th. It's got faster PCIe. If you want modular, you want faster PCIe. I have no idea. I literally have no idea.

• 51:25Nilay Patel?

  I feel like if they were going to switch to Ryzen, AMD would have not announced the stuff at Computex and they would have waited to be like, and now the Mac.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  Ryzen. I mean, just imagining Phil Schuler saying the word Ryzen makes makes me sad.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  No, AMD would. Okay, imagine this from the perspective of a desktop computing enthusiast.

• 51:49Nilay Patel?

  A budget enthusiast or a full budget enthusiast?

• 51:52Speaker 04

  I'm saying a high to mid range, full price gaming and desktop enthusiast. They find out about the new Ryzen processor when Apple announces its new desktop computer. I don't think that's.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  Worlds explode.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Good look. I do not think that's a good look for you, AMD.

• 52:11Nilay Patel?

  I would, I'm going to bet you a million dollars that whatever this is runs an Intel processor. It's just like where Apple lives, they're going to stick with that company until they shift the whole line to ARM. They're not going to like switch, right? That's another big switch.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Intel would be lobbying for that in the background so hard. Like, I don't know. Y'all, I think that in their heart of hearts, Microsoft probably wanted to ship the server to go with an ARM processor. I think they really did. And I think that like Intel, like just like, here, we'll just give you these chips for free. Please.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  Here's this. Okay, so that's, there's a Mac Pro. We're expecting it. It is, remains unclear why it took this long, given what the the pro market actually wanted out of it.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like two years after they said, okay, we're going to make something amazing. We're going to fix it. Like, we all just want them to ship the cheese grater again, right? Just like ship a big dumb tower with lots of airspace in it and the end.

• 53:04Nilay Patel?

  Make it so you can replace the graphics card and add other cards for your weird I/O that you have, pro video people. That's all you, that's all they needed to do.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. So what are they going to do that justifies all the time they've spent?

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Maybe they're waiting for PCI four.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  Maybe they were just like, the PCF4 is coming, you know, just hang on, Johnny.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Yep. Oh, there's one more piece of hardware that's rumored.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  Tiles, like, location trackers, made by Apple, which is a wild thing for them to do, number one. So I don't know if I really believe that rumor, but number two, the rumor that does seem true, is it seems like they're gonna combine, like, Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single app, because, you know, you value your friends about as much as you value your iPhone.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, it could be called, my iPhone is my friend.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  No, no, it's going to be called, so far as we know right now, Find My.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Like, Find My, dot, dot, dot.

• 53:57Speaker 04

  It's a generic.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I buy it. I mean, it makes sense, but I feel bad for the Tile people.

• 54:02Speaker 04

  Can I give you just a little parent, parent tech anecdote real quick?

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  For Christmas, I got my parents tiles because they're always losing their phones or keys, right? But what happens is they forget to use Tile for so long, that by the time they actually need to use it, you can use the, there's a Tile app.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Apple has automatically uninstalled the Tile app.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  It's completely worthless.

• 54:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, we'll see. That's neat. It's like a neat thing for Apple to do. Maybe they're, you know, Tile does a cool mesh thing, you know, the tracker's Bluetooth, and so if you're, like, really lost, you can, like, push the button and every Tile owner in the world will, like, search for your Tile. Apple has the scale to make that actually work, so that's cool. Sure. I mean, what do I want from them? I want a huge Mac Pro that looks really cool.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  Or Bluetooth-based mesh internet.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  A space internet.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  That'll be next year, Paul.

• 55:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we gotta talk about the other big Apple thing that is happening in the world, that I think sets the stage for WWDC in a really important way, which is, we've already talked about this, they're being sued in the EU by Spotify for anti-competitive behavior. Addy and I talked to the lawyer who's suing them, class action, consumer saying app store prices are unfair here, that cases, the Supreme Court said it could continue, it's going back. A lot of anti-competitive noise around the App Store.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  The executive who used to run the App Store said he was, quote, "really worried about anti-competitive behavior from Apple."

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he went on Mark Gurman's podcast over at Bloomberg. This is Phil Shoemaker, he's talking to Gurman. He said, "It's a real thing. The fear was that somebody would come along, a Facebook or Google, whomever, wipe off and remove all of our items. And that's why, like, Google Voice clients had a hard time getting through the store." You should go listen to that podcast, it's great. But this is a guy who ran App Review. An important piece of this story that I think got underreported was App Review used to be a part of, like, iOS development process when Scott Forstall was at Apple and ran iOS. And Forstall's argument to Shoemaker and others was, "We should let all these apps in. It will force us to be better and be more competitive." And that has stopped, which I-

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Wait, can you explain? How was App Review part of the development process?

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  So you're gonna build a new hook into iOS. You're gonna build some new APIs in iOS. You bring in the App Store review team, and they say, "Here's, based on our experience, here's how app developers will use it." Right? And they say, "Okay, they're gonna use this to compete with Apple's built-in apps in this way." And Forstall's approach, according to Shoemaker on this podcast, was, "That's good. It will force us to be competitive." But apparently, when Forstall left, that stopped happening. So this is all the background, right? There's this Spotify case in the EU, there's a class action case the Supreme Court said could go on in this country, there's the guy who ran App Review telling Gurman, "Of course we were anti-competitive. We were worried that Google would take over the phone," which is basically how my iPhone

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  operates, right? It's a vessel for Google services. Apple's response to all of this is a webpage, which is good. They're doing the thing that companies do, right? Spotify puts up a webpage to say Apple's anti-competitive. Facebook puts up a webpage to say that it has competitors. Apple puts up a webpage to be like, "The App Store's great. 84% of apps are free, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then at the bottom of this webpage, and you should go look at it and see if you buy Apple's argument, is-

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  The thing that every company that is anti-competitive does is a list of things that Apple believes is competing with it, right? So when Comcast wanted to buy NBC, disclosure Comcast is a minority investor in Vox Media, which owns The Verge. When Comcast was arguing against net neutrality, disclosure Comcast is a minority investor in Vox Media, which owns Verge. When Comcast was arguing against net neutrality, they would put out these documents and be like, there's so much competition for broadband internet access. And they would list like Sprint. Yeah. And be like, no, like, it's not really competition for having like Comcast cable internet because it's Sprint.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Like, they find ways to like say competition exists when no rational person would believe competition exists. So Apple has this list, which I also think you should all look at. But it's like, you know, here's Maps. What are the apps to compete with Maps? Okay, well, Google Maps. Waze, which is also owned by Google. Citymapper, maybe. This app called Maps Me, which is like an offline maps thing people like. Then they're like Messages. What competes with Messages? iMessage. Okay, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Snapchat, Viber Messenger. Okay, they didn't put WhatsApp on here. Yeah. Which is a weird oversight. And then they're like, okay, music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube Music. You're like, you're like, look at this list.

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  You're like, oh, there's only really one or two big competitors and they're from the other big companies. Yep. And then you get all the way to like FaceTime. So here's the list of things Apple believes competes with FaceTime. And I really want everyone to go look at this. House party, fun indie startup for teens. Okay. I buy it. Skype, the rigorously maintained Skype application from Microsoft. Cisco Webex meetings, because everyone enjoys telling grandma's gonna Webex their kid now. Horrible. And then Zoom. Zoom is a success, but I don't think any corporation is like deciding between Zoom or FaceTime is their video conferencing solution.

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  So there's that. And then there's also, they have a one for things to compete with Safari, which to me is like, the worst one. Because web browsers on the, on iOS are not allowed to use a different rendering engine. So these are all just skins of WebKit. There's fundamentally Safari with like, different skins on them. And that's like DuckDuckGo, Firefox, Chrome, Edge. But like, I guarantee you, the Mozilla people are not, do not believe Firefox is competing on an even playing field with Safari on iOS, right?

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:07Nilay Patel?

  And what can't you do with any of these apps? You can't set them as the default. You can't set them as the default link handler. They're absolutely on an uneven playing field.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  You can't buy things inside of them? You can't buy things inside of them? So there's a list of apps that Apple says is competitive with it, is like, apps, first of all, Cisco WebEx Meetings does not compete with FaceTime. I don't know, like, what they were thinking. Second of all, even the ones that are successful, Spotify is saying, "We are not able to compete on, we, we are not the default music app for our iPhone customers." So that, like, this, I just see this playbook over and over again where they insist there's competition. And then you just like, look at their evidence of competition, you're like, this is ridiculous.

• 1:00:50Speaker 03

  Can I just say, uh, yesterday, I got in my car, plugged in my iPhone for CarPlay, and it just started playing some Apple music, which is not what I wanted it to do, uh, which happens to everybody all the time. And there was a brief, like, half second of like, "Man, maybe I should just switch to Apple Music from Spotify, because then this will be easier."

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Speaker 03

  Like, it just happened, against my will. I actually want to continue to use Spotify, but it just, bam.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  The default thing is real.

• 1:01:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  And, yeah.

• 1:01:19Nilay Patel?

  You can't just switch it. And it, it doesn't seem that hard.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  The other thing that I think is hilarious about, uh, all of these arguments that they make is they, they say that it's not, you know, a monopoly or unfair, because developers are, you know, they're free to develop for all sorts of platforms, not, you know, they can, they can go make their money on Roku, or, you know, game consoles, or whatever. And it's like, man, if your case for you're not a monopoly on the iPhone is that I can make an Xbox indie game?

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  You just aren't making a good argument. You just are not.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  That was also, I mean, again, very reminiscent of what Comcast says, very reminiscent of how Facebook describes itself. These are the arguments. Like, I don't want to presume to judge the validity of Apple's specific argument. I'm just saying, the shape of this argument is the same shape that every accused monopolist makes. They point to competition and they often have to reach much farther than logic would dictate that you should have to reach. Right? So if you ask Samsung, who is competitive with you in phones, they'll be like, Apple, LG,

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  5,000 Chinese brands, right? Like, they will just beat Huawei until we retcon Huawei out of existence. Because there's these like one-to-one substitutes for their products.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  Here, it's like these like very far reaches because they're not. And I just see that shape kind of often. And particularly now as the antitrust stuff is heating up, you see, you just see it everywhere. I think at the end of the day, though, the real question is like, developers aren't hap- like, we're going into the developer conference and there's not some parade of iOS developers being like, everything is great.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  There's a bunch of really, really super happy, you know, developers who made apps for parents to help, you know, manage their kids' phones. They're just, they're so happy right now.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  I think Hyam is gonna have a big piece about them by the time this podcast comes out.

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  I just want another app store. Here's what I want. One freebie app store. Apple allows, no, that's not really gonna work. I want F-Droid on iOS and, and only F-Droid, that Apple could stop at F-Droid. And, and they could even like constrain it. They say like, all apps on here have to be open source. I don't know. But I just want some escape valve, some that is not like enterprise certificates, you know? I feel like it, they make, they make some really good stuff and it's really beautiful and it's really performant. And it's nice to look at and, and it's fun to use and it's very frustrating.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  To be so constrained on a computer and my fundamental thing always comes back to is a compute, the definition of computing is that you can compute all things computable, except on an iPhone where you're not, you're not allowed to have a different browser engine.

• 1:04:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I, this to me is like, the fundamental question is how much control does this, these vendors have? And the answer is that we were only really able to democratize computing in this way because the platform vendors exerted some amount of control. Right? There's malware distributed on iOS, Apple has a kill switch. There's malware distributed on Android through Play Store, Google has a kill switch. Google Play Protect is like a really big deal. They scan a bunch of apps for malware. The App Store review process, same deal. Apple scans a bunch of malware. They keep scams out of the store. Josh Hawley,

• 1:04:51Nilay Patel?

  who's a Republican Congress person from Missouri, can be like, we don't want loot boxes to exist and they can enforce that law and they can tell the stores that loot boxes are essentially gambling for children. I personally want to live in an America where children are addicted to gambling. I think that would be very entertaining, but like, you know, you can like do these things. You can, you can outlaw a business model and there's some method of control that exists.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:05:17Nilay Patel?

  Those are good things, right? Like fundamentally, those are good things. It keeps people from having to, well, like Paul, when you get into a modern car, like Ford or Toyota or whoever has like abstracted most of that car away from you. Right? You're like, you push the pedal and it goes and there's, you, you need not know spark plug timing, right? Like you just don't have to know about it anymore. Right? You don't have to know, the car will often brake for you. It will keep you in your lane.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  You don't, when you get into a car crash, you don't have to like, reach forward and pull the airbag handle. Like, the car is doing a whole bunch of stuff to keep you safe and get you to do what you need to do. That's the metaphor that I think is used most often about the iPhone, which is, this is more like a modern car than a vintage car, where you did have to know that the carburetor might flood.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  It's not what computers are for me. That's the, that's not the appeal of comput- you know what I mean? Like, there's a reason I'm a nerd since a kid. And then there's a, it's, there's a possibility that a computer represents, that it can run arbitrary code, and that this cannot.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a dangerous argument to make in this particular thing. Like, it matters for you, but then the answer for you is like, go buy an Android phone, right? It's a dangerous argument to make, because then people will say, oh, well, what you want is just things that nerds want, and not everybody, most people aren't, and so it's fine, this thing is fine. The, the stronger case to make is, like, Apple's actually being anti-competitive against, not just, you know, oh, man, we're into monopoly stuff now, against other businesses. It's not a consumer harm argument, it's, it's a like, other business harm argument. And if you look at Apple's page, they have this one category of, like, they've got different types of apps, right? There's like, cross-platform, and subscription, and paid, and blah, blah, blah, blah. They have a category they call reader, which is

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  apps that people, you know, purchase, and they buy stuff off of the iPhone, and then they don't have to, Apple doesn't get a commission or a cut when it's used on the iPhone. And in that category, they put Amazon Kindle, Audible, Netflix, and Spotify. And like, this is the category, right here, that's actually like, one of the most contentious categories, because

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  all four of those apps would very much like to tell their customers how to subscribe to their apps inside the app, and maybe give them an option to do it. And all four of those apps are like, having to jump through insane hoops to convert a user into a subscribing customer, because they're not allowed to do it in the app, or they have to pay, and they can't. Or, they're not allowed to mention the fact that a subscription in the world might exist if they happen to open Safari and do a search. Like, they can't even do that.

• 1:08:01Speaker 04

  You're right that that is a competitor harm, but that is also directly a consumer harm. Like as a consumer of Audible, the one of the most frustrating things about using iOS is I get like three audiobook credits a month. So I gotta buy three books. I don't have to. I enjoy buying three audiobooks a month.

• 1:08:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 04

  But I have to use garbage mobile Safari Amazon website to do that when I'm on an iPhone. It's annoying. It's frustrating.

• 1:08:31Nilay Patel?

  So one, the problem is how high should the walls be? Right? If the walls are too low, no one will use this store.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Nilay Patel?

  And the store is the mechanism of platform control that enables people to basically not be overrun by malware and viruses and stuff. Maybe there should be another mechanism, but that's the mechanism we have now. So these stores are good in that sense. The apps are also vetted. Apple can get rid of bad actors, blah, blah, blah. Like the mechanism of control that they have is the store. They believe in that mechanism and lots of other people believe in that mechanism.

• 1:09:05Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, if the walls are too low, no one will use the store and then no one will use the store and the mechanism. The walls are too high. It's obviously anti-competitive. I think the argument right now is Apple's walls are clearly too high. You as a consumer, as an Audible customer, do you not have a way to send Apple a market signal that those walls are too high? This is like an obvious, you are not going to switch to Android because it is slightly easier to use Audible.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  I did actually do that, but yes.

• 1:09:31Nilay Patel?

  Just because of Audible or because of all the little cuts?

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Obviously, it's all the little cuts, of course.

• 1:09:37Nilay Patel?

  So that's it. But like, I think those little cuts are not going to add up to a significant, you're not going to see like the wave of people giving up on the iPhone tomorrow, or sales drop, or Android sales increase.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  The little cuts are the litany of reasons that any Android user on a forum arguing against an iOS user is going to, you know, it is what the advocates of the opposing brand are using to argue against your product.

• 1:10:04Nilay Patel?

  Sure. I just, I really think like, like the Kindle is still successful, even though the Kindle app on the iPhone won't let you buy a book. Right, iBooks did not take over the world, but this one very annoying thing persists. Spotify is more successful than Apple Music, even though they think they're being anti. So it's like, finding the harm is, really comes down to, how high should these walls be? And I, I think all of us are sort of like, at the point where we can feel it, that these walls are too high. Like, I can't do this stuff that should be very simple.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just, you want to feel the sun on your face and the, the walls are just causing shade and so you're just, you're cold.

• 1:10:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just, it's just an easier way to think about it than, is the App Store a monopoly for iOS users? Right? Like, that sort of seems crazy to say. It is true. If you want to participate economically with an iOS user, the App Store is the monopolistic way in which you have to do it. Or there's Safari. But like...

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  I mean, that's a sweet solution, Eli, I think about it, Safari.

• 1:11:06Nilay Patel?

  Are they gonna do PWAs on the iPhone?

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  So that's actually like, the funny thing is like, I make a joke, but the, we are expecting more PWA support. And they're maybe down to the point where like, a, a website could like, put an install button on their website to like, make a PWA. Um, the problem is, like, there's, you know, a web app and a progressive web app, a PWA, and a, because like, you know, it saves more stuff locally, it like, reveals more of the app only when you need it, so it can stay small, blah, blah, blah, blah. There aren't actually that many, like, PWAs that people use. Like, Twitter's kind of the main one. Um, everything else is kind of just a web app. I made this mistake when I was talking about like, being able to save Chrome Windows on your Mac. I like, said they're all PWAs, and really they're not. But it's, in theory, like, you can do pretty much most of the stuff that a lot

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  of people want to do inside a Safari rendering engine. So like, there is a world where Amazon could just pull out of the App Store and offer a Kindle web app on the iPhone, and if the experience of like, finding it and installing it is good enough, that might be enough. For like a bunch of the stuff that you do, if Safari as like a PWA container is good and fast enough, then maybe that's all you need and we're back in the world of WebOS.

• 1:12:16Nilay Patel?

  So here, here's the one thing you definitely can't do as of today. You cannot use Spotify and Safari.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there you go.

• 1:12:24Nilay Patel?

  On that, it's true.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:12:25Nilay Patel?

  It's you, they pulled support for Safari.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  Wildvine, something?

• 1:12:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because really what you want is for your web apps to depend on single sourced proprietary plugins for DRM. Anyhow, a lot. That's, that's how I will sum up this section. WWC is coming up. We're expecting a lot of news, right? Apple's got four big platforms. We, you imagine all of them are going to get mentioned in some way. But I would say Apple's relationships with its developers and its customers right now is at a very tense moment.

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Nilay Patel?

  Because what you can do on this platform, how much it should cost and how much Apple should get paid. While they are themselves entering into a massive services push that will make them compete with their own developers more than ever, is well underway. So a fraught moment. We'll be there next week. Check it out. And now we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're not, we're definitely not going to forget Paul's segment.

• 1:13:24Speaker 06

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• 1:13:53Speaker 05

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• 1:14:24Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Paul.

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:26Nilay Patel?

  Every week, my dude.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:14:29Nilay Patel?

  You do a thing.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  I always.

• 1:14:31Nilay Patel?

  It's very consistent.

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's called ATX, more like late TX. So as you are well aware, uh, the, the, the popular form factor uh, for a motherboard is ATX. And there's also like many ATX, micro ATX, but like a typical desktop tower PC has an ATX motherboard in it. But at Computex, Asus showed off Asus Prime Utopia, which is a redesign of a motherboard and it just moves everything around. So you get more spots to put heat sinks, the graphics are on the back of the motherboard.

• 1:15:16Speaker 04

  There, what's really cool is they have mod, it, it really brings to mind this mythical Mac Pro. You know, a typical motherboard, like one of the things that's hardwired to a motherboard are the, the I/O ports in the back. Well, here, the I/O ports are little modular wedges. They each look about the size of like an SD card reader and they all plug in over PCIe. So you get a little bit of fast PCIe, a, a, a reconfiguring of, you know, one thing about motherboards or about any PC tower anymore is you really don't need to have a bunch of drive bays anymore. So, you know, that seems like layouts can change.

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  But one thing that is happening with the motherboards is like with the new Ryzen motherboards, a lot of them have coolers, not just for the, the CPU and not just for the RAM, but for um, the, like basically the interconnects. I'm not exactly sure what, but like just the motherboard is doing some pretty fast, crazy stuff. So anyways, yeah, also there's a screen that apparently can connect to the weather, the motherboard over wifi. So you can move your screen around to check on your fans. I don't know. Check this out. It's bonkers.

• 1:16:32Nilay Patel?

  Over wifi?

• 1:16:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Nilay Patel?

  Why do you need a wireless connection for a fan speed display inside of your computer case?

• 1:16:39Speaker 04

  All right, all right, Neelai, let's say you're rendering, uh, you're baking the lighting for the scene for the next hot video game that you're building, right?

• 1:16:47Nilay Patel?

  Obviously.

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  But you, so while the- Lighting bakes, you want to go make a sandwich, but you want to see how hot your computer is getting. So you make sure that your overclocked Ryzen four processor or whatever doesn't start a fire.

• 1:17:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And then presumably there's like a, like an alarm. I'm just imagining like a Bluetooth meat thermometer.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  By the way, that, that sandwich would be required. You'd have to make it with risen bread.

• 1:17:17Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I appreciate you, man.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  I do.

• 1:17:22Nilay Patel?

  All right. Can I just, can I say one thing about T-Mobile and Sprint? There's a bunch of 5G stuff happening.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Nilay Patel?

  Chris Welch tested out Sprint's 5G network, which is launching in Dallas. Tom Warren tested out a 5G network launching in London. It's all happening. But my favorite wireless industry news, I just want to say it real fast because it's so silly. Bloomberg reported the Department of Justice is considering allowing T-Mobile and Sprint to merge on the condition that they put forth a plan to start a fourth wireless carrier that will compete with them.

• 1:17:54Nilay Patel?

  Which is incredible.

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  Does it have to be like a real plan for a real company?

• 1:17:58Nilay Patel?

  It's as Looney Tunes as it gets. I love it. Right? It's like, it's very like Trump administration, out of the box thinking.

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  What is an analogy for this?

• 1:18:09Nilay Patel?

  Well, I just, the, the thinking is very straightforward, right? We used to have four competitive wireless companies. We don't want to go to three, so we'll let you merge.

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

  I've seen Sesame Street.

• 1:18:20Nilay Patel?

  We, we want to say four. I just, the, now I just can't, because the easier answer is to just say no. Right? And then Sprint presumably will have to come up with a plan to be a fourth wireless carrier.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:18:37Nilay Patel?

  But I think they just lost the AT&T Time Warner case or a little gun shy. So they don't want to say no and go to court and then like be pantsed again. Cause they just lost a big merger case to a wireless company. You know, and then like John Ledger will be out there being like, John, you know, like, so why not come up with like an elaborate scheme that is so onerous that they, they'll just give up? Like, we will let you merge if you take this BMX bike and do five backflips.

• 1:19:09Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's where they're at with this.

• 1:19:13Nilay Patel?

  You can get it, you can merge, but you've got to drive this car up.

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  It would be cool were they to do five backflips.

• 1:19:20Nilay Patel?

  I would be into that. I think it's, it's, it's, so it's just, it's just Bloomberg reporting it. You can kind of sketch out how you would do it. Right? It's like a very complicated trade in like baseball or something where like, so we're going to take Sprint spectrum on these bands and T-Mobile spectrum on this band and we'll give them the Dish Network and they're going to start a wireless carrier and 15 Sprint executives will go over there too. And then there'll be a company, right? Like, sure, they're going to spin off Boost Mobile. We're gonna, we're gonna give Boost Mobile like 20 bucks.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, they can make it in V and O.

• 1:19:59Nilay Patel?

  Right, but we'll give Boost Mobile some actual spectrum.

• 1:20:02Speaker 04

  Okay, so, so this, this is my question. It seems like you couldn't have 20 nationwide carriers. Because there's not really enough spectrum to go around. And so unless they all had-

• 1:20:16Nilay Patel?

  Paul, it is true. Spectrum is a scarce resource that needs to be distributed by some central entity. Oh, my God.

• 1:20:21Speaker 04

  Well-

• 1:20:22Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it's true.

• 1:20:23Speaker 04

  Well, but the situation I want is that use it or lose it. If you're not actively using the, the spectrum within a certain geographical area, then everybody can use it.

• 1:20:34Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 1:20:36Speaker 04

  Wouldn't that be nice?

• 1:20:37Nilay Patel?

  It depends on the time limit. It's like Verizon bought a bunch of 700 megahertz spectrum to build LTE. But they had to like start. So if you gave them 10 years, they probably, they wouldn't have gotten there.

• 1:20:48Speaker 04

  Lose it is not what I, what I, I mean, like actively on an ongoing basis. If you're not using it right now, I can use it. If you do start using it, I'll back off. And if I don't back off, then you can send your police that you love so much to arrest all the bad people.

• 1:21:03Nilay Patel?

  Neil I Patel, lover of the police. Oh, my God. That's who I am. Uh, yeah, they call me Five O Patel. It's great. It's just like a nickname I picked up along the way. Maybe. I just, we can't analyze this too much because it is ridiculous.

• 1:21:19Speaker 03

  Hang on.

• 1:21:20Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Here's what, here's what happens. You know how Sprint stores became Radio Shacks, or Radio Shacks became Sprint stores and it was all really sad, but there's a whole bunch of like, retail space out there that's mostly been sold off, but some of it's still sitting empty and fallow. There's like a whole bunch of potential Sprint retail stores that could be handed over to another company. T-Mobile doesn't need them, right? So, they could, they've got that foundation for another wireless company. But, you know, spinning up a new one, getting the spectrum is really hard. If they spin up an MVNO, everyone will just see through that. What they should do is they should convince Google to spin off FII. T-Mobile will invest in it. They'll give them all of their old stores, and it's just an MVNO for T-Mobile and Sprint

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  anyway. And all of a sudden, the nightmares, and then Google gets all these customers, but Google phones in, and customer support. And the fourth wireless carrier just becomes like the puppet of Google. So we'll have, yeah, they'll have Verizon, AT&T, and a Google puppet. Like, that, that's the nightmare scenario.

• 1:22:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there's more. I can come up with more nightmare scenarios.

• 1:22:29Speaker 04

  But that's a good nightmare scenario. I'm into it. I'm down.

• 1:22:33Nilay Patel?

  Like, like, Spectrum Cable becomes a wireless carrier. They're like, now the same great service you know and love at home, on the go!

• 1:22:43Nilay Patel?

  However you want. Look, it's a, it's a nightmare, but at least at this point, it's turning into like a deeply entertaining nightmare. So, if there's one thing The Vergecast is good for, it's locating deeply entertaining nightmares.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Deeply entertaining nightmares, yep.

• 1:22:57Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we've gone over, next week is WWDC. Dieter and I will be there. We'll have a podcast, the normal time after it, I believe, unless we corral Craig Federighi into a closet, which we probably won't do. But, if I see him, I see a microphone, we'll try to put them together. WWDC, it's coming. Live log, Monday, it's all happening.

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:23:19Nilay Patel?

  Rock and roll.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  Paul.

• 1:23:26Nilay Patel?

  Promo code, oh my god. We're done.

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  Snip, snip.

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